Martinique Goes Away; New Restaurant Coming
Cristiano Raffignone and Kelly Barker, the owners of Martinique and Dick & Jenny’s, along with Christiano’s in Houma, announced today that they have closed Martinique. A new restaurant will open in the next few months, operated by a chef/owner to be named later. Raffignone and Barker retain ownership of the old dining room and adjacent courtyard on Magazine Street near Nashville Avenue.
The loss here is mainly suffered by those who like to cook and eat in the French idiom. Nearly all of the French restaurants in town are bistros like Martinique, and not many new ones have appeared during the past decade. Martinique was cooking some very good variations on French themes. It would be nice if we could get that from the new restaurateurs, but if the trends tell us anything it may turn out to be another Mexican-Pan-Asian fusion, with pizza.
Martinique
Uptown: 5908 Magazine ST. .
NOMenu invites restaurants or organizations with upcoming special events to tell us, so we might add the news to this free department. Send to news@nomenu.com.
Wednesday, December 24, 2014.
Caroling On The Radio. Cooking Christmas Dinner.
I go into town for the Christmas Eve radio show, which features my listeners singing carols for about an hour in exchange for semi-valuable prizes. I’d like to broadcast from home–I have a lot of cooking to do for the next day’s feast–but I’m concerned about the small but perceptible delay introduced by my remote broadcast gizmo. That makes it impossible to perform duets with the listeners.
But this year I discover what should have been obvious. If I don’t sing along with the callers, I get better singers. So, starting this year, I will let them sing solo, and I will inject one or two of my own, to make it look as if I’m doing something.
Staying home would solve my other problem of Christmas Eve: I am usually one of the last two or three people to leave the building. And by that time there is almost no place to grab a bite to eat. This contretemps afflicted my adult years until Mary Ann and I were engaged in 1988. From then on, we were at her parents’ home on both Christmas Eve and Day.
This year a large shortfall in the number of restaurant seats available for Christmas Eve dining has emerged. Many people will wish that they had either invited people to their homes, or were invited to other people’s homes. I see that Burger King is now open twenty-four hours. All night long on Christmas Eve and Day. I guess that’s for the elves’ refreshment.
Thursday, December 25, 2014.
Christmas. A Modest Celebration.
By nine o’clock, I have the prime rib past the oven-searing stage. That had the oven up to 450 degrees for about fifteen minutes, to crust it up a bit. Then I lowered the temp to 225 degrees for four hours of slow roasting. Meanwhile, the lower oven has been baking a small root beer-glazed ham at 350 degrees for about two hours.
Prime rib in the oven.
As we have since I left the choir at Our Lady of the Lake in Mandeville (it changed its rehearsal day to one I would never be able to attend), we go to Saint Jane de Chantal Church in Abita Springs. We arrive just early enough to hear the adult choir perform a short program before Mass begins. Typically in the past the music at St. Jane’s has been either folk, youth or Spanish music. But today there is a straight-ahead adult choir, and they sound good enough that after the service I go upstairs to give my congratulations on their good singing. They tell me that this is largely the former youth choir, which grew up but didn’t stop singing.
I ask whether they could use another tenor or baritone or bass voice and, if so, when are rehearsals? They tell me that they don’t rehearse at all, save for a short run-through of the Christmas songs they just performed. They say that if I want to sing with them I am welcome. I’d say that was my best Christmas present this year.
But not the only one. On the way home, Mary Ann tells me that all the presents under the tree are for me. I will not have time to unwrap them until deep into the afternoon. We both get back to work on dinner. A dozen and a half people are coming. Half of those are Mary Ann’s brother Patrick’s nuclear family. Her brother Lee–who hosted Jude’s post-nuptial brunch eleven days ago–shows up with his dentist son and his wife, who in turn bring their adorably cute little kids.
Later in the day, these charming moppets line up at the glass door of the living room, where they get a kick out of the dog Susie outside. For some reason, Susie is in a snarling, fang-baring dyspepsia from the sight of these smiling children. Dogs are so unpredictable!
Mary Ann makes her usual assortment of appetizers and side dishes. Most in demand is a variation on her ham pinwheels. But today the meat is a spicy Italian sausage, rolled up in four layers of phyllo pastry with a stratum of grated Swiss cheese, sliced into half-inch-thick spirals, then baked on a cookie sheet. These are very, very good, and we run through four or five whole rolls of them.
Root beer-glazed ham.
Mary Leigh–the biggest fan of my famous ham–says that this particular ham is the best I have ever made. She is busy making cookies of various kinds. All of these are good except for one small batch of chocolate cookies which, if a suit of chain mail could be made of them, would constitute a bullet-proof vest. She doesn’t mess up many baking experiments, and she hopes nobody remembers this rare failure.
My main concern is that prime rib roast–the $138, three-bone, dry-aged, USDA Prime tomahawk cut. I usually begin this on the Big Green Egg outside, to get a nice, crusty browning all around. But this time I wanted to run the entire cooking process in the oven, to give better advice to listeners and readers. They ask for it often this time of year.
An added challenge is that almost every member of Mary Ann’s family prefers his or her beef overcooked by my standards. Making the guests happy is more important than trying to educate them.
After almost four hours in the oven, the roast’s internal temperature is about 140 degrees in the center. I take it out now and let the temperatures balance for fifteen minutes. That will result in medium doneness. Patrick was standing next to me when I cut into it. He said it looked good to him. Mission accomplished. Special bonus: the liquid in the bottom of the roasting pan is not just flavorful but copious. I say and will make the gravy with it, but MA shoos me away, saying that I don’t understand gravy.
By this time the young women in attendance were slicing away at the ham, with the usual preference for the black, spicy crust formed by the glaze. The shrimp remoulade–intentionally underboiled last night, and marinating in its mustardly, lemony sauce for about twelve hours–also gains a lot of young friends.
I have two big items left. Mary Ann persuades me to make bread pudding, a dessert she doesn’t even like. I cook down some apples with the usual spices, maple syrup, and a little lemon. The pudding itself benefits from a surplus of egg whites from somebody else’s projects, and a whole loaf of rock-hard poor boy bread.
It all comes together in a pudding that literally got oohs and ahhs–including me. It was cloudlike in texture as it oppped about an inch above the level of the baking pan. The apple flavors are different. If only we had more than three people here who like this greatest of all New Orleans desserts! Mary Ann’s father and her brother-in-law were pudding fans, but they both have left us. I will try to hold up their ends.
I can’t believe that I screwed up the potatoes again. On Thanksgiving I aimed for mashed, but took them off the stove a little too soon. This time, I was after gratin dauphinoise–a fancy potatoes au gratin. Again I didn’t boil the spuds long enough before slicing them. This could be a leftover paranoia from about twenty years ago, when I was Chicago chef Charlie Trotter’s sous chef for a dinner at Cakebread Cellars. He roundly chewed me out for cooking the purple potatoes too long. I guess I just don’t cook potatoes often enough.
In the beverage department, a pattern emerged when the first guests arrived. Everybody wants iced tea or coffee. I mean “everybody” literally. I didn’t open a single bottle. How am I going to deplete all these old wines in my collection if nobody drinks with me?
Friday, December 26, 2014.
The Forty-Six-Year Reunion.
Because it falls on a Friday, this First Day of Christmas feels like Christmas Eve. I go into town, but I don’t have a radio show: corporate has decreed this a company holiday. That works out well, because I was planning on taking the day off anyway and getting Mary Ann to host the show.
Today is the Jesuit High School Class of 1968 Forty-Sixth Annual Reunion Lunch, held between Christmas and New Year’s at the Court of Two Sisters for as long as I can remember. Joe Fein, one of our company, is the owner of the Court these days. The attendance is unusually large–about forty guys. I see some faces I haven’t in a long time. And for the first time, I am asked if I know this or that guy over there sitting next to whoever that is. When I learn some identities (I’m am no better at this than anyone else), I am flabbergasted by how many high-school friends I have forgotten. But after almost fifty years, most of us look a lot different. (Everybody except Nick Matulich, who continues to avoid any sign of aging.) On a brighter side, none of our number has died in an improbably great number of years.
The menu that has obtained for quite a few years is still in force. A few rounds of drinks at the bar (Sazeracs are in favor, as usual). Then upstairs for osso buco. I like that well enough, but I have determined that it fires off the gout. Instead, I ask for and get a bowl of the Court’s excellent turtle soup. I didn’t ask for a recipe, but I got that, too.
Another thing I didn’t expect: Jay Baudier bangs on his wine glass and asks me to lead a singing of the Alma Mater–a wonderful song. I’ll know I’ve begun to really lose it when I can’t remember the words to that.
Nola
French Quarter: 534 St Louis. 504-522-6652. Map.
Nice Casual
AE DC DS MC V
Website
ANECDOTES AND ANALYSIS
Emeril Lagasse hung around NOLA a lot in the early days of the restaurant, when NOLA was his first expansion restaurant property and he was only beginning to be known nationwide. It was a fun place to be, back then, because Emeril and his kitchen staff would create some wild dishes. Jablaya on a pizza. Shrimp remoulade served warm over pasta. Fish roasted on planks of wood that would start smoldering, thereby giving a fascinating flavor.
NOLA evolved into a different animal, particularly since Katrina. Its customer base has become heavy with visitors, although it has no small number of French Quarter residents at its tables. You can spot the latter easily: they never ask for Emeril.
WHY IT’S NOTEWORTHY
NOLA is Emeril Lagasse’s most casual restaurant, at least in New Orleans. In recent years it’s evolved into Emeril’s Greatest Hits Cafe. There’s nothing wrong with that, and it likely appeals tremendously to the many visitors that wander into the superb location. NOLA has created more than a few of its own specialties, too.
WHAT’S GOOD
Although the prices here are a shade lower than at Emeril’s other two New Orleans establishments, all the bedrock standards that brought the chef his fame are in force. The kitchen exploits fresh local product, making everything in house, maintaining a full pastry kitchen, and collecting an impressive stock of wines. The service staff is sharp without being formal.
Slow-roasted smoked duck.
BACKSTORY
“NOLA” is familiar to all New Orleanians as shorthand for “New Orleans, Louisiana.” It was Emeril’s second restaurant, opened a couple of years after his flagship a mile away. It took over a space built out as a very hip Italian restaurant called Spunto, and took full advantage of the edgy decor while adding more of it. It has historically been the place where his organization brings up new chefs, managers, and dishes.
DINING ROOM
The restaurant occupies three floors, the bottom one sporting an open kitchen and its popular food bar. There you sit right in front of the wood-burning oven and grill, and watch the food as it’s cooked. The tables on the first and second floors can look at each other over the atrium-like fore part of the restaurant. The third floor is a private dining space with a very cool bar.
REVIEWER’S NOTEPAD
More notes appear in our Dining Diary. Click on any of the dates below for those reports, all written a few days after a meal at Nola.
12/9/2014 ~ 10/9/2012 ~ 8/19/2009 ~
FULL ONLINE MENU
BEST DISHES
»»Miss Hay’s Stuffed Chicken Wings
Homemade hoisin dipping sauce
Crab cake.
New Orleans Style Crab Cake
Creole corn maque choux, green tomato chow chow
»»»Emeril’s Barbecue Gulf Shrimp
Rosemary biscuit
»Wood Fired Prince Edward Island Black Mussels
Charred corn, roasted peppers, caramelized onions, cornbread crouton, Abita beer-Benton’s ham broth
»»Hickory-Roasted Duck
Whiskey-caramel glaze, buttermilk cornbread pudding, natural jus, haricot verts-fire roasted corn salad, candied pecans
»»Grilled Pork Chop
Brown sugar glazed sweet potatoes, toasted pecans, caramelized onion reduction sauce
»Pan Seared Creekstone New York Strip
Cauliflower purée, confit wild mushrooms, garlic bordelaise
»»Garlic Crusted Drum
Wood-burning oven roasted, brabant potatoes, crimini mushrooms, bacon, sauce beurre rouge
»Pecan Pie Bread Pudding
Sweet potato ice cream, bourbon anglaise, caramel sauce, pie crust crumble
»»Crème Brûlée Trio
Vanilla bean with fresh berries, coconut with a coconut truffle, mocha with chocolate-almond biscotti
FOR BEST RESULTS
Emeril’s people very much appreciate locals, so be sure to let them know you are if you are. Leave room for dessert, a very strong course here.
OPPORTUNITIES FOR IMPROVEMENT
One of the best and most innovative dishes here–the fish roasted on a cedar plank–is overdue for a return to the menu.
FACTORS OTHER THAN FOOD
Up to three points, positive or negative, for these characteristics. Absence of points denotes average performance in the matter.
Dining Environment +2
Consistency +1
Service+2
Value -1
Attitude +2
Wine & Bar +2
Hipness +2
Local Color +2
SPECIAL ATTRIBUTES
Romantic
Good for business meetings
8-25
Open Sunday dinner
Open Monday dinner
Good for children
Free valet parking
Reservations honored promptly
Osso Buco
“Osso buco” means “bone with a hole.” It’s strange that a hole is the highlight of a dish, but in fact the hole in the big leg bone is where the morsel of marrow–prized by connoisseurs of this dish–is to be found. Most diners, however, are more interested in the tender meat that falls off the bone after the long, slow, moist cooking that’s essential to unlocking the flavor. A good osso buco, however, will be as tender as any veal dish you ever ate, and with a lip-licking goodness not found in anything else.
4 pieces veal shank, cut 2 inches thick
1 cup flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper
1/4 cup olive oil
1 rib celery, coarsely chopped
1 medium onion, coarsely chopped
1 medium carrot, coarsely chopped
1 leek, well washed and chopped, white part only
1/2 cup tomato puree
1 cup dry red wine
1 tsp. dry marjoram
3 sprigs parsley
1/2 tsp. dried thyme
2 bay leaves
1 sprigs fresh rosemary
Sauce vegetables:
1/2 carrot, coarsely chopped
1/4 onion, coarsely chopped
1 rib celery, coarsely chopped
1/4 leek (white part only), well washed and coarsely chopped
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
1. Reserve 1/3 cup of flour. Blend the salt and pepper into the rest of it, and dust the veal shanks lightly with the mixture.
2. Heat the olive oil in a heavy saucepan over high heat. Brown the veal shanks on all sides. Remove from the saucepan.
3. Add celery, onion, carrots, and leeks and saute until the edges of the onion start to brown.
4. Add tomato puree and red wine. Bring to a boil, stirring now and then. Reduce by about half. Add the reserved flour and blend into the sauce.
5. Add enough water (or veal stock, if you have it) to bring the depth of liquid to about an inch and a half. Add marjoram, parsley, thyme, bay and rosemary and return to a boil.
6. Return the veal shanks to the saucepan, and place the saucepan into a preheated 400-degree oven. Cook for about 90 minutes, or until the meat begins to fall off the bone.
7. Remove the shanks and keep them warm. Return the saucepan to medium-high heat on top of the stove, and reduce the stock by a third to a half. Skim top of pot to remove foam and fat. Then strain the stock through a fine sieve.
8. Return stock to a medium simmer and return veal shanks to it, along with the sauce vegetables. Add salt and pepper to taste. Cook long enough for the vegetables to get tender. You may also cook this a little longer to make the sauce thicker, but a thinner sauce is more authentic.
Serve one shank per person, with risotto or pasta. Serves four.
Pizza @ Brooklyn Pizza
Few pizzerias in New Orleans capture the thin crust, lightly topped style of a Northeast-style pizza, and Brooklyn Pizza is one of them. The ingredients all taste like something instead of overwhelming one another. Even individual slices (available all the time) are terrific. The dining room is minimal, but the pizza more than makes up for that.
Brooklyn Pizza. Metairie: 4301 Veterans Blvd . 504-833-1288.
This is among the 500 best dishes in New Orleans area restaurants. Click here for a list of the other 499.
January 5, 2014
Eleventh Day of Christmas
Eleven pipers will be piping. Some old lady is trying to cross Veterans Highway with eleven Schwegmann bags. Allan Sherman got an automatic vegetable slicer that works when you see it on television but not when you get it home. Andy Williams’s friend brought gifts for one and all. And in my own attempt at this song, I’ll barbecue for you eleven jumbo shrimp. Tomorrow is Twelfth Night, the end of the Christmas season, and the beginning of the Carnival season.
Annals Of Food Research
Nobody (including him) knew what day he was born, so we note that this is the day in 1943 when George Washington Carver died. The son of a slave, Carver made revolutionary discoveries in agriculture, most of them motivated by a desire to help poor farmers in the South. He is best known for turning peanuts into a major cash crop. He also encouraged the wider consumption of sweet potatoes. He was brilliant enough that Henry Ford, among others, wanted to hire him. But he stayed at Tuskegee Institute and dedicated his life to helping the lot of poor farmers.
Gourmet Geography
Yamhill is the name both of a county and a town in it, in west central Oregon. The town is thirty-five miles southwest of Portland, on the western edge of the Willamette Valley. They may grow yams in that fertile, temperate valley, but much better known to those who share a love for the pleasures of the table are the wines that come from there. Pinot Noir from the area is particularly celebrated. Yamhill Family Vineyards makes good examples of this. Quite a few cafes are in Yamhill; I like the sound of the Trask Mountain Outpost.
Edible Dictionary
yam, n.–Around Louisiana, the word “yam” means nothing other than the sweet potato we grow widely here. But that’s not strictly a correct usage. The sweet potato–a New Word vegetable–is not related even distantly to a true yam. That’s a root vegetable, genus Dioscorea, that originally grew mostly from Africa through Asia. Its roots are much thicker, yellower, and more bitter than the sweet potato. It also contain bitter elements that need to be cooked out. The roots burrow deep into the soil, and they’re hard to harvest, especially in Africa (which gave the yam its name). People usually ate them only when there was nothing else. The Africans brought them to the Caribbean, where they remain popular. If you ever encounter true yams, they’ll probably be involved in a dish with Caribbean roots (no pun intended).
Food Inventions
Today is the birthday, in 1914, of Aaron Lapin, the inventor of whipped cream in an aerosol can. He called it Reddi-Wip, and it really was (and still is) whipped cream, not plastic stuck together with vegetable gum the commonly comes from a can. Reddi-Wip was made with light cream, although they have a fattier and creamier version.
Annals Of Popular Cuisine And Food Writing
The trademark Home of the Whopper was issued to Burger King on this date in 1965. That very year, Burger King became the first restaurant I ever dined in on my own, with my own money. It was the one on Airline Highway near Turnbull, the first location of the franchise in New Orleans. I had a Whopper, fries, and a Coke. I got there on my bicycle after a ride of about three miles. I was fourteen.
Food Calendar
Because of the item about Reddi-Wip above, today is National Whipped Cream Day. As long as it’s real whipped cream, we love it. It’s easy enough to make, even by hand. You may use either regular or heavy whipping cream. Gadgets have even been developed to use light cream, half-and-half, or even skim milk to make whipped “cream,” but you’d be better off using less of the real thing instead of more of that less satisfying stuff.
It’s fortunate that the whipped cream observance should be today, because we are now well into the Louisiana strawberry season. We bought some real beauties from a roadside stand yesterday, and my daughter has already eaten three pints of them. Sweet and wonderful, with or without whipped cream.
The Old Kitchen Sage Sez:
When making your own whipped cream: a) Keep the cream cold; 2) Whip in a back-and-forth, not circular, motion, and iii) Don’t overbeat, or the whipped cream will break into butter and whey.
Etymology Of Dish Names
Today is the birthday, as far as we know, of the word hamburger. It first appeared in the expression “hamburger steak” on this day in 1889, in the Union-Bulletin newspaper in Walla Walla, Washington. It was in an ad for a restaurant that served a popular dish among the many German immigrants: the Hamburg steak, made of ground beef.
Restaurants And The Economy
The Consumer Age in America was born on this date in 1914, when Henry Ford announced a new plan for the employees of the Ford Motor Company. He reduced the work week to five days of eight hours a day, with no reduction in pay. He also set the minimum wage at five dollars a day. “We believe in making 20,000 men prosperous and contented rather than follow the plan of making a few slave drivers in our establishment multi-millionaires,” Ford said.
Ford was widely criticized in business management circles for this decision, but it transformed the country. Ford employees, with more money and time on their hands, spent it on leisure pursuits. One of the first things they did was buy cars. Now the American economy is largely fired by consumer spending, as a result of the trend Ford set in motion. We certainly wouldn’t have our enormous restaurant industry were it not for the prosperity of the average American.
Food Namesakes
Tracy Ham, a Canadian professional football quarterback, passed into life today in 1964. . . Michael DeWine, a Congressman from Ohio, was born today in 1947. . . And the aforementioned Reddi-Wip inventor Aaron Lapin was born today in 1914. “Lapin” is the French word for rabbit.
Words To Eat By
“When I was young, I said to God, ‘God, tell me the mystery of the universe.’ But God answered, ‘that knowledge is for me alone.’ So I said, ‘God, tell me the mystery of the peanut.’ Then God said, ‘Well, George, that’s more nearly your size.'”–George Washington Carver.
“Nothing important has ever come out of San Francisco, Rice-a-Roni aside.”–Comedian and writer Michael O’Donoghue, born today in 1950.
Words To Drink By
“When your companions get drunk and fight,
Take up your hat and wish them good night.”–Unknown, Irish.
Choosing A Place To Eat, Regardless Of Price.
The big chains have stretched the range of dining possibilities much wider.
Click here for the cartoon.