Tonight we did the second biannual Grandmother white elephant gift exchange. I had my eyes on the clucking chicken egg poacher. Obviously there was intense competition and Evan walked away with the prize. He totally owes me an egg bennedict.

Ever since our days in Bozeman, where we often ate at Cafe Zydeco, Brooklynne and I have both loved various New Orleans-style foods, so finding a indigenous cookbook was high on our priority list when we visited Ben in LA last September.  

We ended up getting Cooking Up a Storm. When Hurricane Katrina wiped out New Orleans, alot of people lost their recipes and cookbooks to water damage. So, the Times-Picayune decided to create and publish a cookbook of recipes that were submitted to its local cooking column over the years. A portion of the profits apparently go toward hurricane relief, and the book came highly recommended by the guy who runs the Southern Food and Beverage Museum (whom Brooklynne and I met when we visited earlier this year--and BTW, he is a big Allen & Son fan), so we bought it.

Monday night, we finally had a chance to try a recipe, and since it was Monday (the traditional day for this dish), we made Red Beans and Rice. Oh man, it was good! I altered the recipe a little for ease by substituting a few ingredients such as bacon instead of smoked ham hock, canned beans for the dry ones, and parsley flakes for the fresh stuff. So I'm posting our version of the recipe after the break.

I usually have a twang of hesitation when I post a recipe out of a book (kind of like when I burn a mix CD), but I think I can justify this because we tweaked the recipe enough, and because once you try this dish, you will want to buy the book for the rest.

***Also, this recipe happens to be dairy and soy free for any nursing mothers who may be interested.***