Chef Frank mixes the science of cooking and the technology of the culinary arts together in this section of the Website.  He has attempted to answer obvious questions about food preparation and how it can be made easier with his spices and  seasonings; but you may have a specific question he hasn't included in the FAQ's.  If that's the case, feel free to e-mail Frank at his personal website. frankd@frankdavis.com, or fax him at 504-643-6888.  He will be happy to answer any cooking questions you have and give you detailed specific information about using his products to help you cook real Cajun and Creole!

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS?

Q1 I have a problem whenever I fry my seafood.  It seems that no matter what I do the batter falls off in the oil and my shrimp and fish never ever come out crispy.  What am I doing wrong, Frank?

A1 That's easy--you're using the wrong fish fry!  Now, I know this is going to sound like nothing more than a blatant outright hard-sell commercial, but the truth is the truth.  Most fish fry mixes were never  designed to get your seafood crispy--they're just there to make your "naked" trout fillets and popcorn shrimp and softshell crabs look pretty.   And that's the reason I decided to formulate a real New Orleans kind of fish fry and package it.  Everybody complained to me that the stuff they were using kept falling off in the oil, about it getting gritty and soggy in our humidity, about how it would never fry up crunchy unless they dipped it their seafood into this thick sticky milk and egg wash.  Well, to make a long story short, it took me about six months and several dozen test batch samples, but I came up with the right blend of five grades of ground corn and all the spice it took to season it!  Bottom Line?  My fish fry doesn't use an egg wash (just wet seafood); it won't--no, it simply can't!--fall off the seafood and into the oil; it won't ever turn soggy in our New Orleans humidity;   it always always fries up crunchy crispy and golden brown;  and most importantly, it won't absorb grease, which means you get practically greaseless fried foods!  I can tell you how wonderful it is until the cows come home, but you're going to be skeptical until you try it and see for yourself!  You can order it right here on the website--just go to the Cookbooks and Products Section, click in your order, and send it to me by e-mail!  If, on the other hand, you're reluctant to order over the Internet just pick up your phone and call my live operators at 1-800-742-4231.   I can't tell you how happy you're gonna be!

Q2 I looked over the product list here on the site and noticed that you have a passle of seasonings?   Do I need them all?  I mean, don't you have an all-purpose seasoning?

A2 The bronzing mix and the sprinkling spice could double for a so-called "all-purpose seasoning" if that's the way you prefer to cook.  But let me explain a little kitchen science to you right about here!  The trouble with "all purpose" seasoning is that regardless of what you put it on it's all gonna taste the same!  I preblended my entire spice line  on the principle that there are specific herbs and spices that intensely accentuate each kind of food--sage on pork, for example, oregano on veal, thyme on turkey and chicken, cumin on beef.   And then I built in enough latitude whereby you could get creative and utilize the heavy cumin-base in the beef seasoning, for example, to grill chicken breasts and make them taste like fajitas, or sprinkle pork seasoning onto your microwave popcorn to give it a "crawtater" flavor, or mix the Sicilian with about a cup of extra-virgin olive oil so that you can make Italian garlic bread!  So now that you know how I came up with the concept, why not browse on back over to the product department and do a little grocery shopping?

Q3 Chef Frank, I have tried to use your fish fry mix to do my Sunday fried chicken.  And while it's great as a baked coating, or even as a coating for deep frying nuggets and chicken fingers, it browns before the thicker pieces get done.  What do I do?

A3 That's an easy question to answer.  Use my new Chicken Fried Mix for your fried chicken!  I recognized that lots of you were trying to substitute the fish fry when frying chicken, and it wasn't working!  So I immediately formulated the new Chicken Fried Mix. It's out now!  And it is absolutely perfect for chicken-fried chicken, chicken-fried steaks, chicken-fried eggplant, chicken-fried broccoli, chicken-fried okra, and chicken-fried anything!  It comes in both the small 9-ounce bottles as well as the 6.5 lb. gallons.  And by the way, the new Grill-N-Broil seasoning and the new Complete Seafood Boil is also out now too!

Q4 Hey, Frank?   So whadaya got?  Two web sites?  I called your office the other day looking to download the latest recipes from your TV show and the lady on the phone said go to www.wwl-tv.com and not to www.frankdavis.com. You want to explain the differences?

A4 Sure, m'frien!  My webpage at Channel 4 (CBS) deals specifically with projects I do just for television.   If you go to that site and click on Frank Davis you'll then be able to click on The Fishin' Game Report (which is my television fishing show), or Naturally N'Awlins (which is the human interest feature shows I do every Wednesday and Friday), or In The Kitchen With Frank Davis (which is my weekly Tuesday morning cooking show), and finally Frank's Recipe Archive (which is a scroll-down list of virtually all the recipes you see me do on my TV show).  The other website is my corporate website, which is totally responsible for the sale and promotion of my line of preblended spices and seasonings as well as all my books.  But more than that, this site give me a venue to showcase a newsletter, post a question and answer page, keep me in touch with the public through my personal staff, and stage anything else I want to do creatively.   The only thing you can't do at my corporate website is order recipes generated by shows on Channel 4.   Thanks for giving me an opportunity to explain the two.

Q5 Chef Frank - I watched you do those eggplant patties recently on your TV show.  Can you explain again how you got the eggplant soft to begin with?  Momma always boiled them.

A5 Yeah, both my Momma and my Grandma usta  boil them, too.  But I discovered a much easier way to do 'em (and a way that locks in all the great concentrated eggplant flavor).  All you do is wrap the raw, unpeeled eggplants in individual sheets of aluminum foil (just like you'd wrap baked potatoes).  Then you bake them in a preheated 375 degree oven for about 50 minutes (for small eggplants) or 90 minutes (for the large purple eggplants). All in all, you want them to become completely soft before you remove them from the oven.  Then you let them cool a little, slice them in half lengthwise, and take a spatula and scrape the pulp away from the outer skin.  I'm telling you, this is slick!  Oh--and you can bake a bunch of them all at once, store them in ZipLok bags, stash them in the refrigerator, and use them as you need them as vegetable side dishes. They'll last in the fridge for about 10 days cooked! 

Q6 Chef Frank, I have all three of your present cookbooks--bought 'em right here off the webpage, as a matter of fact.  Wouldn't take all the money in the world for them!  So my question is, when's the next one coming out?

A6 Well, I'm glad you asked.   I'm presently have the next cookbook in the works right now!  I'm probably gonna call it FRANK DAVIS COOKS NEW ORLEANS HOMESTYLE, and it will include a lot of favorite recipes from your Grandma and mine!  I'll let you know how it's coming along from time to time.

Q7 Frank--if I don't want to order your seasonings by e-mail or the 1-800 number, how can I get them? 

A7 You're gonna have a tough time, m'frien'.  Oh, there are a handful of specialty shops and gourmet retailers around the country that stock them, but for the most part 99.9% of all my products are distributed by mail.  By mail order, I don't have to compete with all the guys who distribute poor quality "stock spices" on the supermarket shelves.  By mail order, I can not only guarantee you top quality herbs and spices, but quality control too because I have my finger on product selection, batch production, and packaging.  I can also personally guarantee how my customers are treated because every order passes over my desk.  But best of all I can keep the lid nailed down on cost--your cost and mine, because you're dealing directly with me and I'm dealing directly with you and I don't have a jillion markups to add to the price between me and you!  Yeah, I know that's old-fashioned. . .but, hey, I'm an old-fashioned kind of guy!  Of course, if you have a favorite store in your community that you recommend would do a good job retailing the absolute finest New Orleans seasonings available anywhere, tell 'em to call my 1-800 number.  I'll talk to them. . .and if they want to do my products right, I'll ship 'em out to them!

Q8 Frank, here lately we've been doing the SugarBusters thing and cooking most of the meat we eat out on the grill.  I've been using your beef, your pork, as well as your bronzing mix to season with.  Do you have a special barbecue seasoning I should be using instead?

A8 Yep, and it's brand new.   When you go to order it, ask for the Frank Davis Grill-N-Broil. You can use it on anything, including meat, poultry, seafood, or vegetables that you cook on the grill, on the pit, or in the oven.  Just sprinkle it on just like you sprinkle on salt and pepper and your foods will be seasoned perfectly with just the right touch of herbs and spices.  Call the 1-800 number or go to the order form page on this website and we'll ship it to you.

Q9 Chef Frank, somebody told me just recently that you had given them a secret recipe or formula for a special way you blend two of your seasonings to make a "super-crunchy, Cajun-spicy" coating for frying seafood.  I use your regular fish fry and it's wonderful; but can you tell me how to do the special recipe you make?

A9 I usually like to keep this one to myself, because it's the mix I use when I fry fish, shrimp, oysters, crawfish tails, and softshell crabs at my food demonstrations and banquets.  This is the one that causes everyone who tastes it to ask, "How did you do that?" So I'll tell you how you do that: you take equal parts of both my fish fry and my chicken-fried mix and blend them together.  Then you quickly dip the seafood you're going to cook into cultured buttermilk, dredge it in the formula mix, shake off the excess, and fry it at 350 degrees until it becomes a beautiful honey brown.  So now you know what I do--and that means if you want to impress folks with the spice and the crunch, you can't just order my fish fry by itself.  You gotta order some of the chicken-fried mix too.   Once you taste what you get when they're blended together, you'll be happy you made the investment.   Just don't go spreading this around, okay?

Q10 I heard Paul Prudhomme created "blackening" and you created "bronzing". Scientifically, what's the difference?

A10 The art of blackening goes back to the early 70's when my old friend Paul and I got together every Saturday on my radio cooking show on WWL. Paul came up with the blackening technique using a redfish fillet, a cast iron skillet heated to white hot, a handful of spicy seasoning, and a bowl of melted butter. A couple of weeks later - maybe a month - I introduced "bronzing", which differed from blackening in so much as a Teflon skillet was used to replace the cast iron, the dipping vat of liquid butter was replaced by a tablespoon of margarine, and the cayenne in the seasoning spice was toned down by about half (I was intent on creating a lighter more healthier alternative to a great technique). Later, of course, after months of prodding by my radio listeners and TV fans, I bottled my bronzing mix formula…which is now my Number One best selling spice and which has now become one of New Orleans' most common all-purpose seasonings. It can be ordered by clicking on the "Cookbooks and Products page of this Web site."

TO BE SHOWCASED AT THE NEXT UPDATE……….
How to Make Some Of Your Own SugarBusters! foods!
Tricks for Boiling Perfect Seafood Every Time! 
How To Tell When Your Shrimp Are Cooked!
The Newest Method for Baking Gourmet Sweet Potatoes!
And a whole lot more!!

Remember--if you have questions that just can't wait,

• E-mail Frank at frankd@frankdavis.com
• Fax Frank at 504-643-3888
• Call Frank at WWL-TV in New Orleans (CBS) at 1-504-529-6441.
• To order products by check, make them payable to FRANK DAVIS PRODUCTIONS, INC., 333 DOVER STREET, SLIDELL, LA 70458.

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