Helana Brigman

Helana Brigman is the creator of the award-winning blog Clearly Delicious (soon to be Dances with Lobsters: Clearly Delicious Recipes from the coast of Maine to the Gulf of New Orleans), a food writer, photographer, and cook whose work has appeared in Louisiana Cookin’ Magazine, and her column, “Fresh Ideas” with Louisiana’s state newspaper, The Advocate.

A doctoral candidate in English, Brigman lives in Baton Rouge, LA, with her dog Cara where she writes, photographs, and eats the best of southern cooking.

Her first book, The Fresh Table: Cooking in Louisiana All Year Roundis out this March with LSU Press (more about it here and here).

So, that’s the “snippet” / biography view, and this is me:

My name is Helana (Elizabeth) Brigman, a 27-year-old Doctoral Candidate in English, and owner of a nervous, but beautiful greyhound (Cara). I’m wildly energetic and incredibly ambitious (20-layer cake? got it. 8-mile run? sure. PhD? ok. Publish a book? sounds fun.)

I grew up on the coasts of (rocky) Rockland, Maine, with my twin sister and red-headed hippy mother (a poet, a writer, a cook). As a child, I road fishing boats and danced with lobstermen. I was incredibly wild. The only thing I didn’t do was keep my pig-tails in their proper “place,” and I sometimes thought I should have been a boy since all I ever wanted to do was climb hills, go fishing, or wear hand-me-down plaid shirts.

me age 3 or 4

Pictured: me, age 3 with my twin sister (unfortunately cropped off to the left, but same head shape and shiny hair) and cousin. I literally used to cry my eyes out that I never got to wear red. To keep us straight, my mother would put my twin, Haley, in red, and me in blue. ‘Cause sometimes…it was hard to tell.

I was a tomboy, and I was obsessed with my mother’s cooking:

mom split screen

Pictured: two of the most important images I own. Left: A photo of my mother, Rebecca, doing “galley work” on a friend’s boat in Rockland, Maine, 1974. Right: A photo of my mother (same boat) taking down the sails. The caption reads, “I’ve walked the Plank, Straddled the Boom, and Brought down the Sail. Now to get back onto the Schooner, 1974.”

I moved to the south after my mother’s death in 2000 (a particularly sad time), went through a period of radical culture shock, came to my senses, and fell in love. The people, the food, the world were unlike anything I’d experienced in New England, and the change was great for me (in fact, I stopped wearing plaid shirts).

Later, I attended Columbia College (one of the few women’s colleges left in America) where I felt confident and capable in ways I never anticipated. When going on to my PhD, the natural fit was even farther south—Baton Rouge, LA (near New Orleans), where I could finally eat crawfish and make eye-contact with alligators (and, let’s be honest—boys). Here is where my mother once met my father and had her twin girls. In fact, I was actually born in New Orleans.

lecreole

Pictured: a candid taken during my visit to Le Creolé in Baton Rouge, LA (home to Chef Ryan Andre). Good food, good wine, good people, and bright smiles. Welcome to Louisiana.

Today, I am a hopeless optimist and workaholic. I’ll forever believe in the good in people, appreciating our cultures and our friends, having good manners, saying “thank you” (which includes sending “thank you” cards), and understanding how valuable every second is while we have it. I’m perhaps more concerned with ethics and “being a good person” at the end of the day than most people I’ve met, and whether I taught a successful class or made a difference in a student’s writings can keep me up at night.

Did I mention I’m also a teacher?

At Clearly Delicious, I share my geographically changing world—tastes, sights, sounds, and the colorful characters in it. I hope you enjoy the range of recipes and voices I share here with weekly contributions from food writers, friends, and my beloved interns.

IMG_8395

Pictured: Scenes from this year’s Mardi Gras (2013). I’m, literally, addicted to my DSLR Canon and candid action shots of every place I visit.

As far as I know, we fawn over no pictures of cats (not that this won’t be the case in the future), and you’ll find no food writers with perfectly manicured nails in our blog posts. My nails are chipped from peeling crawfish and shucking oysters, and I’m pretty proud of my sore thumbs.

Welcome to our online home, and please stay awhile. I can promise there will be cookies, and we’d love to meet you.

Below are the other faces you’ll see at Clearly Delicious, so spend a few extra minutes meeting our contributors, technicians, and interns. You may want to remember my interns faces especially—one day, you might be reading their food blogs too.

Contact: helana [at] clearlydeliciousfoodblog [dot] com

9 Comments

  • Reply
    Clearly Delicious » Asparagus, Shallots, & Spring Peas in Parmesan Vinaigrette
    April 19, 2013 at 10:28 pm

    […] Helana Brigman […]

  • Reply
    neil mixon
    June 15, 2013 at 11:56 am

    I just sent you an email.not sure it wenyt through so I wlll ask it again here;
    in you recipe for the grilled pork chops with pepper jelly,in #6 you say,”dress”with pepper sauce”what do you mean to “dress”?
    does that mean to rub the cooked pork chop with pepper sauce?or what?
    sound yummy,cant wait to try it.thanks for sharing the recipe.
    thanks
    neil

  • Reply
    Helana Brigman
    June 24, 2013 at 6:17 pm

    Neil – this is a great question. Since the pepper sauce (not jelly) goes on at the last minute – “plate pork loin chops and dress in pepper sauce to taste” – this means simply to “sprinkle” or to “dress” the chop lightly. Think of it as sprinkling a dish with Parmesan or parsley – it’s a spice, not something you want to use a lot of, especially since the Stubb’s Boathouse Pepper Sauce can be *very* spice. Notice that I say, “to taste,” so you can add as much or as little as you’d like. I’ll look for your e-mail so I can forward you this reply. Let me know what you think!

  • Reply
    Jason
    July 6, 2013 at 7:05 pm

    Sitting at a camp watching the rain on false river and read your review of satterfield’s. bored so I browsed the site and found your bio interesting. You seem like a nice young woman and I wish you well. Thanks for taking time to share your creativity and experiences with others.

  • Reply
    Valerie
    August 4, 2013 at 8:33 pm

    I tried your tenderizing steak method twice now. Both time steaks were tender but were way t salty! I rinsed them off, especially the second time, really well but were still to salty. Very disappointed.

  • Reply
    Helana Brigman
    August 5, 2013 at 8:25 pm

    Hi Valerie – I’m sorry to hear you had a negative experience with this recipe! I’ve had great success with it, but another reader mentioned the meat seemed too salty as well. Since you don’t provide which cut of steak you used, the length of time you exposed it to kosher salt, or how much you used, please refer to my note to readers on the “How To: Tenderize a Steak” page. I’m pasting it below. I imagine the issue lies in over-exposure to salt (which definitely sounds like what happened) and the wrong cut of steak. As you’ll see (below), prime and high-quality cuts do not need this radical of a tenderization method, nor do they need as long exposure to salt. See notes below and feel free to e-mail me if you have questions.
    -Helana

    Dear Readers & Pinners,

    The below recipe uses a basic salt tenderization technique that measures the length of time by the thickness of the meat. Jaden Hair has a great (and funny) article using this same technique here.

    If this is your first time trying this recipe, a couple of tips: 1 – use this method to revive cheap cuts of meat. Not prime or fancy cuts. Cheap. 2 – test the recipe with a shorter time (or less salt) than the formula suggests. If you’re not a fan of salt, don’t go as heavy-handed, but do use enough to create the chemical reaction that leads to proteins in the meat breaking down.

    Not a fan of salt? See Food Scientist Matthew Cael’s comments about using fruit juice as an alternative in the comments section below. He really knows his stuff!

    Suggested Method of Cooking: Grilling.

    Happy Grilling!

    -Helana

  • Reply
    Keith Couvillion
    August 22, 2013 at 2:59 pm

    This is such a joy to read,and Dances With Lobsters will give me many hours of learning and recipes! I so enjoy when we get to talk,and thank you so much for the Bread and Butter pickles,they are DELICIOUS !!! Thank you for being so outgoing and generous,so glad you live here !!

  • Reply
    Helana Brigman
    August 23, 2013 at 3:38 pm

    Hey Keith! Thanks so much for the sweet comment! And, you’re more than welcome to have those Bread & Butter Pickles (I hope your wife enjoyed them too). I need to pick up smaller mason jars, but I’m sure you don’t mind having a quart! I’ll post the recipe soon, and thank you for all the stuff you do for the Rittiner folks!

  • Reply
    Phaedra
    December 12, 2013 at 9:45 am

    What news from Fat to Fit? Are you working with them anymore? Thanks.

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