Tarragon Butter: A Lesson in Versatility

Earlier this month, we gathered with friends and strangers to celebrate a life taken too soon, that of beloved Mississippi outdoors writer Bobby Cleveland. 

Bobby Cleveland may have been best known for the scenes and stories he shared in his long time Clarion-Ledger column on hunting and fishing, but those who knew him best remember him for his wicked humor, good taste in music, and incredible skill in the kitchen. At the memorial, Bobby’s closest friends and family told side-splitting stories of their times together, and each recounted at least two or three meals, recipes or cocktails that they loved most when shared with Bobby. 

This recipe for Tarragon Butter came to mind as one of Bobby’s fishing buddies recounted a trip to South Louisiana that resulted in a sizable catch of red drum and an encounter with a machete-bearing Cajun. Much like this recipe, the story illustrated the value of versatility in a life well lived. Some days you catch the limit, and others, you catch a buzz and create memories that carry on long beyond our earthly days. 

My mother, Sandra Miller, is the culinary mind behind this recipe. She often kept it in the refrigerator for a quick meal of fish or shrimp, and it is equally as good slathered on French bread and toasted as a savory side to beef, chicken and pork. And while I haven’t tested it yet, I’m most certain that this compound butter would make delicious roasted potatoes. 

Tarragon Butter

¼ cup butter, softened 
1 shallot, minced
1 TB tarragon, minced (1 tsp dry) 
1 TB chives, minced (1 tsp dry) 
1 ½ tsp parsley, minced (1 tsp dry)
⅛ tsp black pepper 
1 TB Dijon mustard
1 clove garlic, pressed 
1 tsp Mrs. Dash (salt free lemon pepper or garlic herb flavor) 
½ tsp lemon pepper 

Combine all ingredients and mix well. Brush on seafood or bread. 

Catfish with Tarragon Butter

Season catfish with salt and pepper. Brush fish with tarragon butter, making sure to cover fillets evenly. Squeeze half a lemon over the buttered fish. Bake at 375 for 18 minutes, and finish by broiling on high for 3 minutes. Ladle liquified butter over fillets and serve with lemon wedges. 

How to Survive a Hot Sauce Challenge

One of my favorite things about food is that it can always surprise you. Sure, if you want cold ham sandwiches at every meal, you can choose that. You can choose to never let food surprise you. But if you really love food, it offers the endless possibility to taste, to experience, to learn. And… to be challenged.

Enter one of my favorite food activities: the hot sauce challenge. If you’ve never seen the YouTube show Hot Ones (“the show with hot questions, and even hotter wings”), you should correct that unfortunate oversight. Maybe start with fan favorite guests Gordon Ramsay and Paul Rudd. 

The premise: host, Sean Evans, expertly interviews celebrity guests as they trudge through a grueling course of ten progressively hotter chicken wings (or veggie nuggets or cauliflower if they prefer). Sean’s well-researched questions also increase in intensity, mirroring the rising Scoville units of the hot sauces. In the current lineup for their 17th season, the first sauce comes in at 1800 units, and the tenth is over 2 million. You can order the full set (as well as individual bottles) here to do the challenge yourself. I’ve done it several times, with different groups of people, and it’s always fun, even when it hurts a little.

To survive it, I recommend stocking up on cooling accoutrements to tame the heat, including dairy-based, starchy, veggie and sweet options:

• Ranch and Blue Cheese Dressing

• Milk 

• Ice Cream (milkshakes, smoothies and Dole Whips are nice too)

• Bread, Rice, Crackers or French Fries

• Crunchy and Creamy Veggies (carrots, celery and avocado)

• Sweet Fruit (tart is less helpful, since sugar is what will do battle against those high-Scoville sauces)

Pickle-Brined Spicy Chicken Wings

Serves 4 (10 wings each, plus a few extra)

Ingredients

2 cups milk
1/2 cup juice from bread and butter pickles or dill pickles 
4 lbs chicken wings (a mix of flats and drums)
2 cups all-purpose flour
3 to 4 quarts peanut or canola oil
10 hot sauces, ranging in spiciness from mild to downright painful

Directions

Combine milk and pickle juice (if using dill pickle juice, add 1 TB granulated or brown sugar to balance the acidity) in 13x9-inch baking dish. Add wings, turn to coat, then cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate at least two hours and up to eight, turning wings at least once.

Place flour in pie plate or shallow dish. Heat oil to 375°F in deep fryer or large Dutch oven. Thoroughly drain wings in large colander, then dredge wings one at a time in the flour, being careful to coat evenly. Fry chicken in batches, 10 to 15 minutes per batch, until cooked through (at least 165°F in center of thickest part of the wing). Drain wings on paper towels, then either toss in desired hot sauce or serve with the sauce for dipping.

To keep warm, place cooked wings on a rack over a rimmed sheet pan in a 200° oven for up to an hour.

Good luck, and remember the most important key to survival: wash your hands before touching your eyes, nose or privates! 

An Asian Twist on Comeback Sauce

Funny how these ideas start.

It was a conversation about gochujang, the Korean chili sauce. I fell in love with it several years ago when I discovered it at Wally World in the Asian foods section.

I started keeping it in my regular pantry rotation to use in sauces and marinades, in particular for making Korean bulgogi, a flavorful beef dish that you will return to time and again.

Alas, I have lamented gochujang’s disappearance from Wally’s shelves for quite some time now. Like those cotton candy grapes they have for about five days once per year, I walk slowly past the section, confirm its absence, then continue on with less spring in my step. Oh, how thou hast forsaken me, Wally World!

Our friend LeAnne recently posted a food pic with a cabbage slaw and gochujang-mayo sauce. She used a recipe from Bon Appetit. Chili sauce and mayo. I immediately made the connection between the gochujang-mayo and Comeback’s chili sauce-mayo recipe requirement and wondered aloud: “What if?”

LeAnne’s reply: “Like an effing umami bomb!”  

I sought that answer, and LeAnne was right. I flipped several of Comeback’s required ingredients to their Asian counterparts, and the result is fantastic.

If you are not from Mississippi or the South, Comeback Sauce has a variety of uses: delightful on salads as a dressing, as a dipping sauce for chicken or anything fried, and as a condiment for sandwiches and such. Essentially, it is Mississippi’s version of a remoulade, or it’s akin to Thousand Island dressing without the pickles, but with more heat and a garlicky and oniony bite.

Here, like LeAnne, I used it in a slaw.

If you haven’t made Comeback before, note that you will find many versions out there. There is an historic version with a curry bent, which is fine with me as a novelty, but I would much rather encourage the heat and bite innate to the non-curry styles.

Oxford chef and restauranteur John Currence makes the standard Comeback version that I like the most – raw onion and garlic instead of their powdered counterparts, though I do reduce his ketchup requirement and up the chili sauce in its place. That’s one great thing about Comeback – it’s flexible.

You can find Mr. Currence’s recipe by Googling “John Currence Comeback Sauce” and selecting the James Beard Foundation blog link. 

So, ultimately, here is a recipe twist on an old Mississippi standard. Note that the sesame oil and fish sauce are optional. They are there to replace the traditional paprika and add a nice, albeit subtle, background flavor, but they are not required, especially if you would have to buy those ingredients just to use for this.

Watch that pocketbook. And enjoy …

Asian Twist Comeback Sauce

1 ¼ cups mayonnaise
¼ cup gochujang chili sauce
2 TB shallot, minced
1 TB minced garlic
1 TB freshly squeezed lime juice
1 tsp soy sauce (see note about salt)
1 tsp prepared spicy mustard
2 TB olive oil
½ tsp fish sauce (optional)
¼ tsp sesame oil (optional) 

Whisk all the ingredients in a bowl if you want the shallot and garlic bits to really pop. Or you can add all ingredients except oil to a blender and blend for about 20 seconds, then stream the oil in and blend until thoroughly combined. Pour into a Mason jar or other container and refrigerate for at least an hour before serving. If it can sit overnight, even better.

For the Asian slaw, I mixed one 16 oz. bag of pre-shredded, tricolor slaw with 1 cup of the Asian Comeback. If you like a less saucy slaw, start by adding ¾ cup then judge to your liking. Allow prepared slaw to cool and soften in the refrigerator for at least an hour before serving.

The recipe yields a little more than 12 oz. of sauce/dressing so you will have some left over if you are using it to make slaw as I described, or you can use 24 oz. of pre-shredded tricolor slaw from two bags to use the entire recipe of sauce/dressing.

In talking to Maggie about the recipe, she mentioned some great other pairings for the sauce: drizzle on top of an Asian rice bowl with fried chicken and kimchi, as a sauce for tempura-fried green tomatoes and shrimp, and on pulled pork nachos with mozzarella and cilantro. Yum! She had me at fried green tomatoes. Make a fried green tomato po'boy with bacon and cool, crisp lettuce, drizzle some sauce on, and you will never look at a BLT the same way again.

NOTE ABOUT SALT: I used regular soy sauce (not low sodium) and did not need to add salt. If you use a lower sodium soy sauce, you may add more soy sauce to taste or you may want to add salt at the end. Taste along the way, and you can’t go wrong.