Couche Couche - Cajun Breakfast Cereal

This Cajun Breakfast Cereal, known as Couche Couche, Cush Cush or Coush Coush, is made from a cornbread batter, poured into a hot, cast iron skillet, crusted and turned several times, then covered and steam cooked to finish and served with milk or cream.

Couche Couche

Unless you live down in this part of the Deep South, you've probably never heard of this dish. Often referred to as a Cajun breakfast, cornmeal cereal, though it's enjoyed just about any time of the day. It comes under a few different names, including  Cush Cush, Couche Couche or Coush Coush, all pronounced "coosh-coosh."

Although some folks will want to compare this to a cornmeal mush, it's actually quite different.

A classic, homestyle lasagna, made with a ground beef and Italian sausage, a homemade tomato based pasta sauce and layered in with lasagna noodles and cheeses.

Classic Lasagna

Lasagna is one of the best loved casseroles there is. Even on the All Recipes website, the all time, most popular recipe is what's called "World's Best Lasagna," which turns out to be pretty much the same as my recipe, my Mama's recipe, and likely I'd guess, pretty similar to just about every other good, homemade lasagna in the world, really.

Even that recipe has a striking resemblance to the McCalls 1973 cookbook recipe, that I'm certain many homemakers adopted as their own at the time.

Chicken wings, air fried naked, then tossed in a lemon pepper sauce and finished in the air fryer. 

Air Fryer Lemon Pepper Chicken Wings

Wings. I love, love, love them as football food. Or, anytime food really. The Cajun and I eat them all the time and you can find my collection of recipes by tapping or clicking right here.

Whether you grill, smoke or bake them, they are an excellent addition for any gathering, whether it's a party of many or a party of two. I was really astonished how easy and good they are in the air fryer too!

Slow Cooker Bourbon Beans

These bourbon baked beans are a perfect classic side for anything grilled or smoked, pulled pork, burgers and dogs, chicken or ribs. Made with beans and bacon, chopped onion and sweet bell pepper and a savory, sweet and spicy sauce, made easy using a slow cooker.

Slow Cooker Bourbon Baked Beans

So, if you've been hanging around this blog for any amount of time, you already know I'm not super big on slow cooker usage. I have some recipes here and there, and I still use one occasionally, mostly to write recipes for the website and for those of you who do use them regularly.

Do I like baked beans the best when they're, well... baked? Yes indeed!

Chile Cheese Tex-Mex Cornbread

Easy to make, this tender and moist Mexican Cornbread brings a sweet heat to those Tex-Mex and Mexican meals, soups, stews and chili dishes. 

Mexican Cornbread

I know for a southerner it's likely to sound a little sacrilegious, but we aren't super huge on cornbread down here along the Gulf Coast. 

Sure, we eat it and we enjoy it, but French bread and yeast rolls are much more prevalent down here. Because of that, we don't necessarily subscribe to the idea that there is only one way to make cornbread, and, we don't even mind, if occasionally, it's got a little sweetness to it. I know. I can hear the gasps.

A blend of Tex-Mex seasonings, pantry staples and some cooked chicken make for a quick and hearty chicken soup. Shown here with my Honey Jalapeno cornbread.

Chicken Taco Soup

I absolutely love this soup, whether it's made with ground beef or chicken. It's got such great flavor and it's about the easiest soup there is to throw together.

You can start with raw chicken that you poach, a deli chicken or chicken that you previously put up in the freezer, which I tend to have the most. Thanks to on-sale whole chickens, an Instant Pot and a Food Saver, there is always some cooked chicken in my freezer. I chose to chop up my chicken this time, though shredded is also good for this.

A homemade buttermilk biscuit, with a very light touch of cornmeal, providing subtle corn flavor and a slight crunch.

Cornmeal Buttermilk Biscuits

I am a bread lover - especially yeast breads and rolls. But biscuits?

Yeah, biscuits are more common in my house and I make them fairly regularly. Certainly, biscuits are faster and easier, but still delicious all on their own, and the variety is endless, though classic buttermilk are still the ones I make the most.

Onion, sweet bell pepper and garlic, sautéed in bacon drippings, topped with black-eyed peas, chicken stock, chopped ham and a pork hock and cooked under pressure in the Instant Pot. 

Instant Pot Black-Eyed Peas

Black-eyed peas are always on my New Year's Day menu. Always. And... maybe I'm especially superstitious, but this year I think it's even more important to uphold that tradition, don't you?

Typically, I have made mine in the style of which I do most southern peas - using dried peas and cooked right on the stovetop - but, with the popularity of the Instant Pot {affil link} and other electronic pressure cookers, the past few years I've switched over to making them this way for the New Year's Day meal.

A casserole of lump crab, a highly seasoned cream sauce and a mix of two shredded cheeses.

Crabmeat au Gratin

Crab au gratin is a delicious, decadent treat for sure, because, unless you are doing your own crabbing, boiling and picking, it can be a pricey dish for sure. If you've ever done any of the above though, you know the work that goes into picking crabs, and the effort required to get those nice, large lump pieces, so it's worth the price.

This dish can be used as an entrée, served with a nice garden salad and some hot French bread, or as an appetizer, served with some nice, sturdy crackers. As an entrée, I prefer to serve it in individual au gratin dishes {affil link}, though it can also be prepared in a casserole dish and spooned out onto plates. It's much more atheistically pleasing in the individual dishes. 

A quick, small batch soup, made using a vegetable mirepoix of onion, carrot and celery, with fresh minced garlic, okra, tomatoes, leftover cooked chicken and rice and a quality commercial stock or broth.

Southern-Style Chicken and Rice Soup

Whole chickens are on sale around here often and I sure take advantage of them, always buying a larger one for intentional leftovers. Sometimes I'll roast one, sometimes stew it, or cut it up and bake it. Very often I'll use my Instant Pot {affil link} to cook a whole chicken using my "ready chicken" recipe, use some of it for a meal, then reserve the rest to use in a soup, chicken and dumplings, a casserole, some chicken salad, or even just to put up in the freezer for another day.

Chicken wings, baked in a barbecue sauce, infused with onion, garlic and pepper jelly, that provides that sweet heat we all love here in the Deep South!

Pepper Jelly Barbecue Wings

Here's another one for the wing collection! 

We eat a lot of chicken around here and wings are an all time favorite cut for me. In fact, as white meat goes, I prefer them over chicken breasts, and the flats section of the wing are my favorite over the drumettes. The Cajun will eat either, so you can bet that I make sure that I pick out the flats I want first!

A quick and easy dessert salad, made with fruit, pudding mix, non-dairy topping, chopped pecans, and topped with a pinch of nuts, coconut and Maraschino cherries.

Pineapple Orange Fluff

Okay, seriously. How can you not love a fluff? Easy to throw together. So creamy and delicious! There are lots of different variations on it these days, but the standard base ingredients usually include some kind of fruit, a complimentary flavor of pudding mix and non-dairy topping (aka Cool Whip) at minimum. I typically like to add mini marshmallows and chopped pecans also.

Three of the most popular versions, and my personal favorites, are pistachio, orange and pineapple, although there are a multitude of variations left only to the imagination! Some recipes these days use pie filling, some sweetened condensed milk, cottage cheese, some use Jello instead of pudding, some use sour cream, some even use flavored coffee creamers or extracts.

A shortcut sweet potato casserole with the unusual addition of banana and finished with rows of marshmallows and brown sugar sweetened cornflake cereal crumbs.

Sweet Potato Banana Crunch

I am all for being about tradition when it comes to holiday meals. Keep the dishes that you know and love on the menu, because everyone will be expecting them, every, single year!

My Mama's holiday table was the same every year, with very little variation between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I miss those times so much, and while we now share our holidays with my son, our daughter-in-law and grandkids, I still find myself missing my Mama tremendously this time of year.

A classic Deep South dressing, made with torn French bread, vegetables and fresh Gulf oysters with their liquor.

Classic Oyster Dressing

Growing up, Mama always made two dressings. One, she made with bread, most often using the Pepperidge Farms herb stuffing mix and it went right into the bird, with leftovers to be baked in a side dish. I always ate the one from the turkey and despite modern day warnings, I somehow survived. It really was the best!

The other dressing she made was an oyster dressing for my Daddy. Daddy was the oyster lover in our family and none of the rest of us were all that interested in it to my recollection.

A quick and easy, creamy corn chowder made with veggies, sautéed in bacon drippings, cubed potatoes and shrimp.

Corn Chowder with Shrimp

I started off intending to make this chowder with some frozen crawfish tails, that I was sure I had in the freezer. Unfortunately, after having to hurriedly rearrange things and transfer stuff from the refrigerator freezer, to the deep freeze, courtesy Hurricane Zeta, it was just faster and easier to grab some shrimp. 

No worries. They are delicious too! The only difference really, is the flavor that comes from the fat in the crawfish, but honestly it's a good chowder either way. You can even use a combination of the two, or throw in some crab as well. Although not as popular down here, clams may also be substituted. Oysters as well.