Broccoli-Chicken Cheddar Curry Casserole
Rappie Pie: A Matheson Family Tradition
Left: My father as a child
Right: My mother as a child
My parents are classic high-school sweethearts. They’ve been together since 1973 when my mom’s family moved to Woodstock, where her father was the new chief of police. Dad saw the most beautiful girl he’d ever laid eyes on and was lucky enough to make a life with her and raise four kids.
We had an active family life filled with lots of weekend camping and visits to the grandparents. We really loved getting out into the woods. One of our favorite camping spots was Cape Blomidon, Nova Scotia. It’s a true wilderness experience on the Bay of Fundy, with the highest tides in the world. There’s lots to do there: hiking, rock hounding, fishing, just being part of nature. And there’s very little ambient light, so the stars at night are spectacular. Mom and Dad learned a lot about camp-cooking during this time and our camp meals evolved into full-on dinners with all the sides.
As us kids were growing up, Mom and Dad did a few things differently. We had no TV in the home until my youngest brother was nine. We had a stone-mill grinder. Mom ground fresh flour and baked the most amazing bread every day. Mom cooked turkey dinner with all the fixins almost every Sunday. Sometimes she’d make pork roast or roast beef instead. My mom’s roasts were my favorite.
Her ability to turn leftovers into what we thought was a gourmet dish kept us all well fed and living within the budget of a six-member family of a risk-taking entrepreneur. This means that sometimes money was tight. Today, I’m not much of a leftovers kind of guy. I find them boring. I hate eating the same thing two days in a row. We all took turns with chores—dishes, laundry, cleaning the litter box—and we all got to work on our cooking skills. So far two of us have become good in the kitchen: my sister, Sarah, and me. The other two, Steve Jr. and Adam, not so much. I still have hope that one day their genetic code will take over and they will become decent cooks instead of living off cereal.
When I was in fourth grade, my dad started a new company, which brought our family to a new province—Ontario. We packed a moving van full of everything we owned, and the family into our Plymouth Sundance. We drove seventeen hours from Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, to Fort Erie. That drive was fucking insane. Three boys in the backseat with my sister sitting shotgun and my mom driving. My dad was in the moving van solo. It felt like we were driving for fifty-six days straight. We cried the whole way, never to see any of our friends again. I was crushed.
We didn’t even have a house when we got there. We lived in a hotel for a week until we found an amazing house to rent in Crescent Park, Fort Erie. I went to elementary school and high school in Fort Erie until I got kicked out of high school for being a mischievous idiot. That landed me at Lakeshore Catholic High School, where I met the love of my life, Trish, and some lifelong best friends.
Although at first I was crushed about moving, Fort Erie quickly became our home. We moved around a lot in the Maritimes as kids, but in Fort Erie our family was able to get grounded. We quickly became a part of the community. My brothers and I played lacrosse and baseball. In high school, our house turned into the social hub of our group. With three boys who all had lots of friends and parents with an open-door policy, at any moment there could be a large group of teenagers at our house. On the weekends, we would have parties. It was kind of like a Canadian, high school version of Animal House, except with the parents and their friends in attendance. The best part of that was that every Sunday during Buffalo Bills season, my dad and mom would make more food than you’ve ever seen in your life for the hungover psychopaths I called friends. My parents never seemed hungover and they always managed to make food for the whole fucking block.
By the end of high school, I wanted nothing more than to leave Fort Erie for the big city—Toronto. I used to hate it, especially when I would have to come back for Christmas break during cooking school. That can’t be any further from how I feel now. I love it. I try to go back to Fort Erie as much as I can.
A beautiful, resilient family. Clockwise from left: “Steve Savage,” “The Sister,” “Beav,” “Boney Joany,” “Griz,” and me, motherfucker.
My mom always made bread. She would even mill her own flour. Every morning, there would be a few loaves of fresh-baked white or whole-wheat bread, and most mornings we would have the bread either with strawberry freezer jam or as cheese bread with a spicy mixture on it. As kids, we loved it so much. I was, for some reason, ashamed of my big bread sandwiches at school—I always wanted Wonder Bread like all the other kids. Thinking back, I was such an idiot. I wish I had the time and patience to make fresh bread every morning for my son, let alone for four children and a husband. When I talk to Mom about her bread making now, she just laughs and says she was crazy back then. She hasn’t made bread since we were in elementary school.
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SERVES: 6
PREP TIME: 2 HOURS
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2 cups (480 ml) warm water
⅔ cup (135 g) granulated sugar
1¼ teaspoons active dry yeast
1¾ cups (420 ml) canola oil, plus more
1½ tablespoons salt
6 cups (750 g) all-purpose flour or whole-wheat flour
2 cups (230 g) grated Cheddar cheese
2 tablespoons Mexican chili powder
½ tablespoon cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon smoked paprika
¼ cup (60 ml) Worcestershire sauce
Freshly ground black pepper
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In a bowl, combine the warm water and sugar, then sprinkle the yeast on top. (The sugar helps activate the yeast.) Let sit 5 minutes.
Into the bowl of a stand mixer with a bread hook, pour the oil and salt; add the yeast and, slowly, the flour, 1 cup (125 g) at a time (so you don’t get covered in flour), until fully incorporated. Mix 5 minutes, until the dough is fully kneaded.
Place the dough on a clean surface; cut in half and form into 2 balls. Transfer to two large bowls with some oil to make sure they don’t get dry. Flip the dough to coat in the oil. Drape a warm, damp kitchen towel over the bowls and let the dough sit and rise in a warm place in your house, 1 hour. Punch the dough and let rise for another 30 minutes. Place each ball in a greased 9¼ by 5¼-inch (23.5 by 13.3 cm) loaf pan and let rise again, another 30 minutes, or until it has risen 1 inch (2.5 cm) over the rim of the loaf pan.
Preheat the oven to 375°F (190°C). Bake 45 minutes, or until golden brown with a nice crust.
Remove from the oven and let rest 20 minutes. Slice into 1-inch (2.5 cm) pieces and cover them with the cheese, chili powder, cayenne, and paprika. Place on a rack set on a baking sheet and bake until the cheese is melted. The edges should be a little burnt and the middle should be soft and chewy. Splash with the Worcestershire sauce and sprinkle with pepper.
There’s something to be said about casserole. I’m not sure when it became popular, maybe in the 1950s, around the same time as TV dinners and the rise of Valium. Grab a bunch of meats, vegetables, and starches, and add milk, cream, cream cheese, or something else that would hold this mess together. Finally, bake it in a glass casserole dish. The sides get crispy, the cream kinda splits, and the oils run up and down the glass dish, looking like a bubbling science experiment. My mother was never an amazing cook, but she made breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day. I don’t think she was a bad cook; she was more about maintaining three growing boys and a daughter on a tight schedule.
I would go to some of my Italian friends’ houses and see these massive dinners with handmade pasta, seafood in tomato sauce, prosciutto-wrapped melons, veal Parmesan, tiramisu, and other foods I hadn’t seen before. We were very much a meat-and-potatoes household.
This dish is one of those fail-safe meals that parents make when maybe there’s a little too much going on. I grew to love this dinner. I’d never had Indian, Pakistani, or any kind of curry, but I loved this dish. I fell in love with the broccoli, chicken, Cheddar cheese, and curry cream sauce. Served with a side of minute rice, you’re flying all over the world with a culinary freak flag. Every family has that one dish that your parents would make a few times a year that was misunderstood. This is that dish. It’s an underdog; the original recipe was probably on the side of a can or a box, but I fell in love. It’s a what’s-on-the-inside kind of dish. It means well and is pure at heart.
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SERVES: 6 TO 8
PREP TIME: 2 HOURS
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2 chicken breasts, cut into 1-inch (2.5 cm) cubes
4 boneless chicken thighs, cut into 1-inch (2.5 cm) cubes
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
Canola oil
1 yellow onion, diced
1 tablespoon grated garlic
1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
4 teaspoons yellow curry powder
1 cup (240 ml) heavy cream
1 cup (230 g) cream cheese
2 cups (230 g) grated orange Cheddar cheese
1 head broccoli, chopped
2 cups (630 g) frozen hash browns
1 bunch green onions, sliced
1 bunch cilantro, chopped
2 limes, quartered
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Preheat the oven to 400°F (205°C). Season the chicken with salt and pepper. In a large cast-iron pan set over medium-high heat, pour just enough oil to cover the bottom. Sear the chicken on all sides until golden brown, 2 to 3 minutes. Remove the chicken and set aside.
Add a little more oil to the pan. Cook the onion until lightly brown. Then add the garlic, ginger, and butter. Let the butter froth and melt. Add the curry powder and stir 2 minutes. Turn down the heat to medium-low and add the cream, cream cheese, and half the Cheddar cheese; stir until fully melted. You’ll see the mixture turn into a beautiful yellowy orange color.
Add the chicken, broccoli, and hash browns to the mixture; stir to combine. Pour into a glass baking dish. No need to use cooking spray—it’s gonna be a mess. Sprinkle the remaining Cheddar cheese over the top of the casserole and bake until bubbling and the cheese has browned, 20 to 30 minutes.
Let the casserole rest 15 minutes—it’s gonna be really hot. There’s no right way to serve this. Plate, bowl, fuck—serve it out of a boot. Scoop it out, sprinkle some green onions and cilantro on top, give it a squeeze of lime, and enjoy the one dish that still boggles my mind but is so good. Trust me!
This is my family’s biggest Christmas culinary tradition, and one I look forward to sharing and making with my family for years to come. We have had rappie pie every Christmas Eve. It is an Acadian dish that my Nanny Poirier learned from her grandmother. I think it should be as well known as poutine, but it has never gotten the love. I think it has to do with the fact that it’s not the prettiest dish.
Everything about this dinner makes me happy: making the chicken broth, reconstituting the potato pulp that was often freezer-burnt and grayish, pouring the chicken broth, stirring the gummy potato mash back to life, and picking the meat off the braised chicken. You can buy frozen blocks of grated, drained potato from a few stores in the Maritimes, or you can make your own potato base. My Nanny would eat and make this dish a lot as a child, growing up on the shores of Nova Scotia. You could substitute mussels, rabbit, or clams for the chicken, but Nanny would never use beef. I love that this dish is served at Christmas and comes from hard times. It may seem very plain to most people, but to me, this dish is the cornerstone of my culinary makeup. This dish is family to me, it is celebration, it is tradition. And coming from a guy who has very few traditions, I hold this one close to my soul.
When we first moved to Ontario, I really missed this meal. We didn’t go back to the Maritimes for almost four years when we first moved to Fort Erie. And this dish was one that always kept us connected and wouldn’t let us forget our Maritime blood and history.
Please note: A rappie pie pan is a specialty item, so you will most likely have to use a deep cake pan. Do not use a glass pan; it must be a basic metal pan.
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SERVES: 8 TO 10
PREP TIME: 6½ HOURS
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2 (3 to 4-pound/1.4 to 1.8 kg) whole chickens, quartered
2 onions, quartered
2 carrots, peeled and roughly chopped
2 stalks celery, roughly chopped
1 bunch thyme
1 bunch parsley
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
Potato base for rappie pie (this page) or 2 frozen potato blocks
2 bunches green onions, sliced
Cooking spray
Molasses, for serving
Hot sauce, for serving
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In a large pot, place the chickens, onions, carrots, and celery. Cover with cold water, bring to a boil, and skim the scum that rises to the top. Add the thyme and parsley. Turn the heat down to low and simmer 3 hours.
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C). Remove the chicken and let rest 15 minutes to cool so you can pick the meat off the bones. Leave the meat in large chunks—we will use all of it, light and dark. Strain all the chicken broth into another pot; season with salt until it’s tasty. Set the broth to a low boil.
Now, in a very large stainless-steel bowl, place your potato base (recipe follows on this page if you can’t find potato blocks). Add your hot chicken broth, 2 cups (480 ml) at a time, stirring it continuously with a large wooden spoon to form a dough. Keep adding chicken broth until it’s smooth, like thick cake batter. If you can find the blocks, there are instructions on how much liquid to add. Basically, what liquid is taken from the potato is replaced by broth, so it’s important to get that balance.
Add the green onions to the mixture. Once again, add salt until it tastes like a solidified chicken soup.
In a large well-greased (Pam works best) rappie pie pan or stainless-steel hotel baking pan, pour half the mixture. Layer the chicken on top, then layer with the remainder of the potato mixture.
Bake until you get a golden crispy top, about 3 hours. It’s okay if it takes longer because you really can’t overcook this dish. Remove from the oven and allow to rest 20 to 30 minutes so it’s not soupy and has time to set. Cut into squares and serve with molasses, hot sauce, or plain—the way I love it. Maybe add some salt and pepper. The edges, much like a lasagna, are the most sought after. Make sure you get a corner square!
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To make your own base for rappie pie: Peel and grate 20 pounds (9 kg) PEI potatoes very finely and then squeeze out all the liquid. What will be in that liquid? Mostly water but also a lot of starch. You must save all the liquid and starch, not to use but as a measure of what you need to put back in the remaining pulp to reconstitute it properly. It’s pretty cool to see the starch settle out of the liquid. (That’s what they used to use to starch shirts!)
The old-school way to do this is to peel the potatoes and put them in a bucket of water so they don’t turn brown. Then finely grate a couple pounds at a time, put those gratings in cheesecloth, and wring out all the liquid you possibly can. This is very hard work.
Many devices have been made to take some of the work out of this, but today we have a machine that anyone can buy to do this: a juicer! Keep the dryish pulp for use, and keep the juice for measuring so you know how much liquid to put back. Cut your potatoes so they fit in the mouth of your juicer. Have a bowl handy to collect all the pulp and another bowl for the liquid. When all the potato is pulped, measure your liquid by volume. That is the amount of chicken broth you will add back to make the rappie pie mix.
D’Eon’s makes the best rappie pie blocks. It’s oddly difficult to find these, even in the Maritimes.
Nanny cutting a fresh-out-of-the-oven rappie pie in the early 1990s
I feel very lucky to have grown up eating roasted goose instead of turkey at most Christmas celebrations. There’s something about that dark meat and the roasted vegetables in that golden goose fat. Goose fat is almost too good for you and definitely makes you smarter and stronger. If you had to build a house for your family during a snowstorm on the side of a mountain, this roasted goose would be the food to power you through that.
When cooking this, you might run into some small questions, like how do I not have dry breasts and undercooked legs or un-crisp skin. That’s why I’m here to hold your hand and guide you through this, to make sure you finish building that house on the side of a mountain during a snowstorm with a belly full of goose. I love a roasted goose. You will love roasted goose, and you will learn how to cook this with all the love in the world. Also, save all the fat that’s left over for stews, pie doughs, soups, eggs, or anything else you’re going to be cooking anytime soon. It’s worth more than gold! (Not really, but yeah, it is!)
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SERVES: 6
PREP TIME: 4 HOURS PLUS OVERNIGHT REFRIGERATING
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1 whole goose
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
10 shallots, peeled
6 cloves garlic, peeled and halved
4 parsnips, peeled and each cut into four spears
4 carrots, peeled and each cut into four spears
1 rutabaga, peeled and cut into wedges
1 turnip, peeled and cut into wedges
15 baby new potatoes
A few sprigs thyme
3 cups (720 ml) red wine
1 cup (240 ml) chicken stock
2 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cubed
1 lemon
Thick berry compote, for serving (optional)
Sherry vinegar, for serving (optional)
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Remove the organs, including the heart, liver, and gizzard, from the goose and refrigerate your goose, uncovered, overnight. This will allow for a very crispy skin.
Preheat the oven to 400°F (205°C) and season the goose with salt. Place the goose in a roasting pan with a rack on the bottom. Roast the goose until golden brown, 15 to 20 minutes; turn down the oven temperature to 300°F (150°C) and roast for 1 hour.
After the goose has been cooking 1 hour, you will have a lot of fat that has rendered. Drain off all the fat very carefully by taking the goose out of the oven and ladling the fat into a new baking pan. Place the shallots, garlic, parsnips, carrots, rutabaga, turnip, and potatoes in the new pan with the goose fat. Season with salt and pepper and place some of the thyme among the vegetables.
Place the goose and the vegetables back into the oven and roast another 2 hours. Cooking in that gorgeous goose fat will make the vegetables crispy and tender.
Take the goose out of the oven when a thermometer inserted into the thickest part reaches 165°F (74°C). The goose should be a dark brown with crisp skin, and the vegetables should look beautiful, all singing away in that bubbling goose fat.
While you let the goose rest, you’ll find some very nice juice swimming in the goose fat, and we want it for a quick pan sauce. Strain the rest of the fat into a glass container and let the fat and the goose essence separate. Skim off the fat, and you’re left with just the essence.
In a medium saucepan, place the cooked shallots and a little of the goose fat and start cooking down the shallots—get them nice and caramelized, 10 minutes. Add the wine and chicken stock and reduce the liquid by half. Add the goose essence and the remaining thyme; simmer 5 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat and add the butter; stir, using a whisk, and add a squeeze of lemon juice and some salt and pepper to taste. You could serve with thick berry compote, as well as some sherry vinegar, if you’re feeling like you want that fruity, tangy vibe.
My dad makes the world’s best lobster bisque. I still have never had a better one! He would be in the kitchen all day, just him and his bisque. My sister loved it so much that she would stand by his side and eat all the pressed mirepoix right out of the strainer, like it was the best dinner of her life. We didn’t eat this all the time because buying lobsters in Ontario is like trying to buy crack from a cop . . . you get fucked! But when my dad would cook this bisque, it was his duty to make sure he got every single ounce of flavor out of those shells! This recipe is pretty much a Matheson family secret, and I didn’t want to put it in the book at first, but people need this in their lives, they need it in their mouths, they need to share it with others. You need to make this bisque right now!
What is a bisque? It’s a creamy seafood soup that’s made with only crustaceans. Anyone who calls any creamy soup “bisque” is ridiculous and annoying. You can’t make cauliflower bisque or red pepper bisque or cod bisque—you can only make bisque with shelled seafood. So, get the fuck over it with all that bisque nonsense. This is the bisque to end all bisques. Please take your time and please take this seriously. This is a Matheson treasure.
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SERVES: 6
PREP TIME: 5 HOURS
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FOR THE LOBSTER STOCK:
Kosher salt
6 (2-pound/910 g) lobsters, from the Maritimes or Maine
Canola oil
1 cup (240 ml) brandy
2 cups (480 ml) chicken stock
1 bunch parsley
1 bunch thyme
1 bunch tarragon
4 bay leaves
FOR THE BISQUE BASE:
1 pound (455 g) slab bacon, diced
3 Vidalia onions, peeled and diced
3 cloves garlic, peeled and diced
2 stalks celery, diced
2 carrots, peeled and diced
2 parsnips, peeled and diced
1 bulb fennel, diced
1 red bell pepper, diced
¼ cup (½ stick/55 g) unsalted butter (optional)
3 tablespoons tomato paste
4 plum tomatoes, crushed
1 cup (240 ml) Madeira wine
FOR FINISHING THE LOBSTER BISQUE:
4 cups (960 ml) heavy cream
2 tablespoons cayenne pepper
1 cup (240 ml) brandy
1 cup (2 sticks/225 grams) unsalted butter
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
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Make the lobster stock: Bring a large pot of water to a boil for blanching the lobsters. Add enough salt so the water tastes like the ocean. Once the water is boiling, add 2 lobsters at a time and cook for 4 minutes. Place cooked lobsters in a salted ice bath until fully chilled. Cooking the lobsters for 4 minutes will only par cook them and will make sure your lobster meat is perfect when you add it to the bisque.
Twist and pull the tails off the bodies. To catch all the juices and essence, pull off the claws over a bowl. Cut the tails into halves lengthwise and crack the claws open using the heel of your chef’s knife, cracking down on the claw just enough and making sure not to cut all the way through. The goal is to keep the claws whole and cube the tail and knuckle meat. A good pair of kitchen shears is very useful for removing the tails and knuckle meat. Put the meat into the bowl and place your perfect claws on top; cover with a wet paper towel and refrigerate.
Place another large pot over medium-high heat; add just enough oil to cover the bottom of the pot. With the shears, cut all the shells into 1-inch (2.5 cm) pieces; add to the pot and cook 5 minutes, stirring every minute or so. Now you’re going to deglaze with the brandy. It should flame, so be careful. If it doesn’t, use a long kitchen match and ignite the brandy. Reduce the liquid by half, then add the chicken stock and 3 cups (720 ml) water and bring to a boil; skim the scum. Add the parsley, thyme, tarragon, and bay leaves. Turn the heat down to low and simmer for 1½ hours. Set the lobster stock aside.
Make the bisque base: Place the bacon in a Dutch oven set over low heat. Let the bacon start rendering fat, until almost crisp, then add the onions and garlic. Cook 5 minutes in the fat, then add the celery, carrots, parsnips, fennel, and red bell pepper. If you need to add butter you can as well. I always do. Cook 1 hour on low, until all the veggies are cooked down and caramelized.
Add the tomato paste and tomatoes and cook 5 minutes. Now, add the wine and reduce by half. Pass all the juices from the bowl with the lobster meat through a sieve to make sure there are no shells or dirty guts. Add to the pot and cook 30 minutes to let this base really come into itself.
Now strain your lobster stock into another container. You have to really smash the shells through a sieve with a ladle to get all the good stuff. Discard the shells and herbs. Return the stock to the pot and reduce by half, then add to your lobster bisque base. Bring to a boil, skim, and turn down to a simmer; cook 1 hour. Then strain this, and once again, really work all the vegetables and bacon for all you’re worth. And what you’re left with is the real beginnings to the best lobster bisque.
Finish the lobster bisque: Reduce your bisque one more time by half, about 20 minutes, then add the cream, cayenne, and remaining brandy; simmer 15 minutes. Stir in the butter till the bisque is silky smooth.
Add the lobster meat to the bisque and cook 5 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Ladle into bowls and let your mind be blown.
This gumbo is another one of my dad’s favorite things to make. It’s one of those dishes that really speaks to me. We would always have it in the summer. There’s something addictive about eating a hearty soup like this when it’s hot out. Seafood, sausages, poultry, and a spicy broth made with lots of love makes for layers of flavor. I add lots of extras to it, like crab, turkey necks, quails, and large chunks of andouille sausage.
You are only as good as your roux. Take your time to cook your flour and fat. It takes time and maintenance—you need to really pay attention and cook that roux until it’s dark and beautiful.
A few years ago, I went down to the Tabasco factory on Avery Island in Louisiana and it blew my mind. I made a version of this recipe for the higher-ups there, and they said it was one of the best they had ever had. Either they were being nice, or it was perfect, like I thought it was. Be warned: The spice levels can lead to an out-of-body sweating experience.
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SERVES: 6
PREP TIME: 3 HOURS
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2 cups (4 sticks/455 g) unsalted butter
1 cup (125 g) all-purpose flour
½ cup (120 ml) duck fat
2 pounds (910 g) andouille sausage, cut into ½-inch (12 mm) slices
1 pound (455 g) slab bacon, cut into 1-inch (2.5 cm) chunks
3 yellow onions, finely chopped
1 green bell pepper, chopped
1 red bell pepper, chopped
1 jalapeño, chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
4 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced
3 tablespoons tomato paste
2 tablespoons cayenne pepper
4 tablespoons filé powder
2 tablespoons Cajun seasoning
2 cups (480 ml) white wine
1 gallon (3.8 L) chicken stock, plus more if needed
2 large turkey necks, cut into 2-inch (5 cm) pieces
6 quails
½ cup (120 ml) Tabasco sauce
½ cup (120 ml) white vinegar
2 whole crabs
4 king crab legs
1 cod fillet, cut into 3-inch (7.5 cm) pieces
2 pounds (910 g) shrimp
3 cups (465 g) okra, trimmed and sliced
2 pounds (910 g) clams
2 pounds (910 g) mussels
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
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In a large Dutch oven over medium heat, melt the butter until bubbling and frothy, then add the flour. Cook this roux with a watchful eye and whisk constantly to make sure the flour doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pot, 15 to 20 minutes. Making a good dark chocolate–colored roux is very important to this dish.
In a second large pot, place the duck fat, sausage, and bacon. Cook over medium heat to render all the fat, 5 to 10 minutes. Add the onions, bell peppers, jalapeño, celery, and garlic; cook until tender and caramelized, about 10 minutes. Add the tomato paste; cook 5 minutes, stirring constantly. Next, add your spices (cayenne, filé, Cajun), then deglaze with the wine.
Slowly add 4 cups (960 ml) of the chicken stock to your roux. Use a whisk to stir, making sure there aren’t any clumps of flour. After well combined, add your vegetable-and-sausage mixture. Next, add the remaining chicken stock, and you’ll be left with a very nice red fatty soup. It shouldn’t be thick, so add more chicken stock, if needed.
Drop the turkey necks into the gumbo and cook 1 hour over medium-high heat, then add the quails whole and cook another 45 minutes. Add the Tabasco and vinegar and cook 10 minutes.
Each type of seafood cooks for a different amount of time: First, add the crabs and crab legs and cook 5 minutes, then add the cod and cook 5 minutes. Add the shrimp and okra and cook another 5 minutes, then add the clams and cook another 3 to 6 minutes or until they open. Finally, add the mussels and cook another 1 minute or until they open. Discard any shellfish that doesn’t open, and season with salt and pepper. Serve.
Prime rib is the best meal ever! Cooked right, it has so many amazing layers: the salty crust; the tender and broken-down outer deckle, much like pot roast; the fat that almost turns to bone marrow after being properly rested, and the eye! You get four different textures and tastes with prime rib, and I think that’s why I love it so much. You never get bored with it. It keeps you coming back for more. Just when you think you can’t eat more, it sucks you back to wipe up that last bit of gravy, mashed potato, or maybe even that little au jus–soaked Yorkshire pudding.
My father loved prime rib as well, and we were lucky enough to have a Ronco rotisserie oven. It was magical. I used to watch the turning piece of beef more than I’d like to admit. There’s something about the rendering fats coating the salty meat mass and just turning and turning and turning. It really mesmerized me—like I was a young Mowgli looking into Kaa’s eyes, being lured into the snake nest! I can smell the roasting meat as I’m writing this. It’s just one of those things that fills the house and demands respect. I love prime rib. Don’t be like my dad: Do not overcook this beautiful piece of meat, and be sure to let it rest before slicing and serving.
Prime rib is easy to make, even without a Ronco rotisserie oven, and you shouldn’t be scared to take on this massive, intimidating piece of meat. This may be one of the easiest recipes in this book: You salt it, roast it, and then rest it!
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SERVES: 8 TO 10
PREP TIME: 2 HOURS
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1 (7-bone) prime rib
1 cup (240 ml) canola oil
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
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Preheat the oven to 500°F (260°C) or set on the prongs of your Ronco. Rub the entire prime rib with the oil. Season heavily with salt—be very liberal here. If you feel it’s a lot of salt, add a little more. Then season with a smaller but still healthy amount of pepper.
If you are using your Ronco, just set it and forget it. We want to roast this bad boy until it hits 120°F (49°C) for medium rare (about 15 minutes per pound).
If you are using your oven, place the prime rib on a rack on a baking sheet and roast till dark golden brown, about 10 minutes. Turn down the heat to 300°F (150°C) and cook 1 hour, or until a thermometer inserted into the thickest part of the meat reads our desired 120°F (49°C).
Remove from the Ronco or oven and wrap the prime rib with plastic wrap like it’s a newborn baby. Keep wrapping till it’s airtight. Let rest 45 minutes. Cut off the plastic wrap and slice. You’re welcome.
