38th Chef’s Charity For Children Next Tuesday.
Many charitable events now feature chefs cooking and serving their food. The blue-ribbon such happening–the originator of the concept, in fact–came from the minds of Chef Warren LeRuth and WWL-TV’s Phil Johnson. Thirty-seven years ago, they pulled together their chef friends for the first Chef’s Charity for Children, to raise money for St. Michael’s Special School. The school celebrates its fiftieth anniversary in the coming year. In all those years it has helped thousands (this is no exaggeration) of children and young adults who are developmentally disabled.
That the chefs come in and perform a demo of one of their dishes. That dish is afterwards served to all the attendees, who get a book of all the recipes. It takes place in the spacious ballroom of the Riverside Hilton Hotel, at the foot of Poydras Street.
The Chef’s Charity is of such quality that the chefs involved consider it an honor to be part of it. One of the chefs who proudly takes part now had to wait over ten years for a spot to open up so he could join in. The Chef’s Charity outlived its founders, though the memory of Warren Leruth and Phil Johnson still inspire the event. Many of the original chefs from 1978 are still on the program.
The featured newcomer (a returnee, actually, after an absence of several years) is Greg Sonnier of Kingfish. Here are the rest of this year’s all-sta’s this year’s impressive list:
Andrea Apuzzo (Andrea’s)
John Besh (August, La Provence, Domenica, American Sector, Luke, Borgne, etc.)
Leah Chase (Dooky Chase)
John Folse (R’evolution)
Goffredo Fraccaro (retired; La Riviera)
Emeril Lagasse (Emeril’s, NOLA, Emeril’s Delmonico)
Greg Reggio (Zea and Mizada)
Tory McPhail (Commander’s Palace)
The Wong Brothers (Trey Yuen)
David Woodward (Hilton N.O. Riverside)
It begins at ten in the morning next Tuesday, January 13. First the chefs do their bits (this is entertaining as well as informative). Then all the dishes are served buffet-style, with plenty enough food to make a substantial lunch. It goes on until 2 p.m. And you get a cookbook with 35 recipes, to boot!
The place is the Riverside Hilton Hotel, at the foot of Poydras Street. Tickets are $65. Call 504-524-7285 to see if you can still get in. (It’s always a sellout, but at this writing tickets can still be had. Tickets are also online at www.stmichaelspecialschool.com.) Visa & Mastercard accepted. For thie first time, Patron tickets for $250 give you table service and a number of unique bonuses–one of them a work by the special students.
Many of the people who attend the Chef’s Charity are there every year. It’s no wonder. Go once, and it will become a fixture on your calendar.
Chef’s Charity
Riverside Hilton Hotel: 2 Poydras at the River. 504-524-7285. http://stmichaelspecialschool.com/Benefactors.htm.
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.
Saturday, December 27, 2014.
A Website Crisis. A Show For Two.
Websites are ticklish. Today, a minor adjustment to NOMenu.com takes the whole site off line. It won’t be back to normal functioning until tomorrow, after a day of angst and paranoia.
Mary Ann calms me down by reminding me that all the presents under the Christmas tree–whose lights are still not functioning properly–are for me. There are six packages, all wrapped and beribboned with care. The first one is a pound of hazelnut creme coffee. I am no big fan of flavored coffees, but I like brewing a potful on a night like tonight. It makes the whole house smell not only good but festive in the tone of the season.
The other five are all jams and preserves. The Marys have long made fun of my habit of starting the day with a slice of multi-grain toast, spread with something fruity and not too sweet. Mary Ann believes that my liking of this simple pleasure is actually pathetic, especially considering the real delight I show in trying a new flavor. Here is what Santa gives me for Christmas: peach-amaretto jam, orange-cranberry marmalade, wild Maine blueberry jam, fig and ginger jam, and blueberry-cherry preserves. All of these will compete in the coming months with Rouse’s blueberry preserves, which is the gold standard at the moment. Wonderful! My delight makes the girls shake their heads with wonder.
This gives us something to talk about when Mary Ann and I continue a radio experiment we began last Saturday. She wants to get back on the radio. Jude’s marriage (they’re still in Paris on their glorious honeymoon, by the way) and Mary Leigh’s apparently solid relationship have convinced MA that she is not needed as a mommy anymore. Besides, every time she sits in for me on the show, people ask why we don’t have her on more often. I think she and I can do a lifestyles program that would be just different enough from the weekday show that it would stand out. It is no surprise to me that the program immediately takes on a life of its own.
Sunday, December 28, 2014.
Burger And Saints. Audio Discovery.
I show up for nine o’clock Mass at St. Jane’s in Abita Sorings, making good my threat, made after Christmas Mass, to join its fine little choir. The keyboardist, who seems to be in charge, is both surprised and pleased to see me. The songs are familiar and easy. We’re not doing voice parts. I don’t really know the standard pieces like the Gloria, but I will pick them up soon enough. It’s nice to have another new place to sing. Mary Ann even thinks it’s a good idea. Someday, I will talk her into joining in.
Great hamburger and not-so-great fries at The Chimes.
The Boy has returned from Christmas with his parents in Baltimore. The four of us go The Chimes, where three of us watch the Saints struggle to win their last game of what I hear has been a dismal season. I am there because I have a hankering for a hamburger. The Chimes does good burgers, and I have not had any of the 1.2 hamburgers I am allotted per month. (Formula: divide 100 by the sum of your age above fifteen plus the number of pounds you are overweight. Result: your permissible hamburgers per month. I thought of this myself.) I wish I weren’t there because a) it’s too cold outside, but MA insists on eating on the deck anyway and 2) the fries are really awful. In its first years, The Chimes was better than I expected. But the food is decidedly on a slow decline during 2014. Fortunately, the best part of the menu–the oyster bar and grill–is stil first-class.
My annual Christmas Toast in the newsletter is too long, I decide. Too late to do anything about that now, but it gets me to thinking about how I might record it for easy play on the website. I perform a couple of experiments and, before I’ve given the task five minutes, I have figured it out. For once, a project is much, much easier than I had supposed. Great! This gives me just the right project to work in as I increase the usefulness of NOMenu.com beyond what my so-called competitors are doing.
Pork Tenderloin Diane
Steak Diane is a famous dish from the really old days, and persists in only the few restaurants that still perform a lot of tableside preparation. (Brennan’s is one.) I thought pork tenderloin might work with the recipe, and played around with it until it did. Beautifully and juicily.
2 whole pork tenderloins
2 Tbs. Creole seasoning
2 Tbs. butter
1 oz. Bourbon
1 Tbs. lemon juice, strained
3 Tbs. Worcestershire sauce
2 Tbs. Tabasco Caribbean-style steak sauce, or Pickapeppa
1 tsp. Dijon mustard
1/3 cup heavy whipping cream
1/2 tsp. coarsely-cracked black pepper
1 Tbs. French shallots, very finely chopped
1. Slice the tenderloins about an inch thick, and season with Creole seasoning.
2. Heat the butter in a skillet over medium heat, and sauté the pork until browned on each side. Remove and keep warm.
3. Add the Bourbon to the pan and bring to a boil, whisking to dissolve the browned bits. Add the lemon juice, Worcestershire, steak sauce, and mustard. Stir and cook for a minute, then add the cream. Lower the heat to a simmer.
4. Return the pork to the pan and cook to heat through while coating the pieces with sauce.
5. Place the tenderloin slices on plates, nap with a little extra sauce (if there is any), and top with a light sprinkle of chopped shallots and pepper.
Serves six.
Roast Beef Poor Boy @ Tracey’s
Tracey’s is a revived name from an Irish Channel bar from long ago. Its management operated Parasol’s for many years, until a disagreement with the landlord caused them to move and change names. However, if you have a fond memory of a roast beef poor boy at Parasol’s, you will recognize the flavor of Tracey’s. You order at the window in the back, grab a beer from the bar, pick up, and eat a poor boy in the old style.
Tracey’s. Garden District: 2604 Magazine St. 504-897-5413.
This is among the 500 best dishes in New Orleans area restaurants. Click here for a list of the other 499.
January 6, 2014
The Twelfth Day of Christmas
Although some calendars say that yesterday evening was the Twelfth Night of Christmas, for some reason that observance is tonight in New Orleans. It comes on the evening of the Feast of the Epiphany or King Day, commemorating the visit of the Magi to the baby Jesus. Here, the date has greater importance than in most places, because it not only ushers out the Christmas season but commences Carnival. The official deed is performed by the Lord Of Misrule at tonight’s ball of the Twelfth Night Revelers, one of the oldest organizations in the New Orleans Carnival hierarchy. Its characters and rituals predate New Orleans by centuries in Europe. Shakespeare wrote a play about it.
The central ceremony at the Twelfth Night Revelers ball is the cutting of the king cake. The debutantes in attendance at the ball each have a slice of king cake, each with a silver bean inside–except one. She is the Queen, and her slice has a gold bean. (It’s supposed to be a surprise, but she probably knew about it in advance.)
The king cake spread from there to become one of the culinary icons of New Orleans. It’s not long before an icon graduates to an obsession, then to commercialization. King cakes have indeed spun completely out of control, being available everywhere throughout the Carnival season. Variations on king cakes have begun spreading out into the Christmas season, and I’ve even seen them made in green for St. Patrick’s Day.
The New Orleans-style king cake is a ring of sweet yeast dough–often made in the style of brioche–decorated with coarse granulated sugar colored purple, green, and gold–the colors of Mardi Gras. Sometimes the dough is braided, with cinnamon between the layers. The cake is frequently topped with white icing, and some versions are filled with fruit or custards. An essential ingredient is a small plastic baby. The person who gets the slice with the baby inside is required by tradition to give the next king cake party. Hundreds of thousands of them are baked and shipped throughout the year to people elsewhere who want a piece of New Orleans culture, but don’t know (or care about) the tradition behind it.
Our Legendary Culinarians
Today is the ninety-second birthday anniversary of Leah Chase, the reigning queen of Creole cooking in New Orleans. She was born in 1923 in Madisonville, and came to New Orleans in 1937. Miss Leah, who made Dooky Chase restaurant into a mainstay of local dining, started her cooking career at the old Coffee Pot restaurant in the 1940s, and she keeps at it today. In fact, one of her cookbooks is very appropriately entitled And I Still Cook. Her most recent cookbook is another one of her favorite lines: Listen, I Say Like This. Dooky Chase is back open at last, serving mostly lunch and early dinner. What a wonderful lady. To know her (or even to just meet her) is to love her.
Gourmet Geography
Link Road takes a gentle bend at the little community of Link, near the geographical center of Tennessee. It’s forty-eight miles south southeast of Nashville, in a horse and dairy farming area. Lots of big open fields full of bluegrass. A large farm at Link has many stalls for horses and milk cows. Pleasantly bucolic, with a few rock-topped hills poking up about a hundred feet above the terrain. If nobody at the farm offered to fry up some sausage for you, it’s a ten-mile drive to the Robatin Family Restaurant in Eagleville, ten miles west.
Edible Dictionary
pickled pork, n.–Also called pickle meat. The concept is at least a century old, and was originally a method of preserving pork in the days before widespread refrigeration. Freshly-butchered pork–usually shoulder, sometimes other miscellaneous, moderately fatty parts of the pig–is pickled in an intense brine with a good deal of vinegar, and allowed to marinate for several days. Afterwards, the pork was stored in the icebox, but had a much longer shelf life. Pickled pork became the meat of choice for seasoning red beans and rice in New Orleans, and is still insisted upon by many cooks, although its popularity has been on the wane for some time. Pork can be pickled at home, but is done so only by hard-core old-time cooks.
Looking Up
Today we turn the final corner on the way to summertime. This morning’s sunrise was the latest of this year (by standard time, anyway). The earliest sunset was about a month ago, and the shortest day two weeks ago. Everything will look a little brighter each day from now until the summer solstice, when winter will be long forgotten. Now, all we have to do is get through the temperatures in the teens tonight.
The Saints
Speaking of local saints, today is the traditional birthday, in 1412, of Joan of Arc, the patron saint of New Orleans. She was born in Domremny, France, and became a French hero in the Battle of Orleans when she was only 19. Our namesake French city adopted her as their patron, and so did we. A statue of St. Joan stands in the triangle at Decatur and Conti.
Alluring Dinner Dates
British cookbook author and food writer Nigella Lawson was born today in 1960. Her two best known books are How To Eat and How To Be A Domestic Goddess, both of which sold in the hundreds of thousands. Then she went to television, first in England and now on the Food Network. She grabs attention with lusty, borderline sexy commentary about the pleasures of cooking and eating. She claims no particular training in cooking; she does what comes naturally. She seems to know what many food writers and TV people don’t: what tastes good. Being very attractive has helped, too.
Annals Of Cereal
Today in 1880, Tom Mix was born. He was the original movie cowboy, going back to the silent movie era. A radio show sponsored by Ralston Cereals featured Tom Mix as the lead character, but portrayed by other actors. The jingle comes to my mind, sung to the tune of “When The Bloom Is On The Sage.” Here are the lyrics:
Shredded Ralston for your breakfast
Starts the day off nice and bright
Gives you lots of cowboy energy
And a flavor that’s just right
It’s delicious and nutritious
Bite-sized and ready to eat
Take a tip from Tom*, go and tell your mom
Shredded Ralston can’t be beat.
*Tom Mix, not this Tom. Maybe I’ll sing this on the radio show today if somebody asks. One more bit of trivia: Tom Mix is the cowboy on the cover of the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album.
Restaurants On Television
Vic Tayback, who played the memorably the grumpy cook-owner of Mel’s Diner on the TV show Alice, was born today in 1929.
Food Namesakes
Pro football player Robert Bean walked onto the gridiron of life today in 1972. . . He was followed by fellow pro Bubba Franks in 1978. . . Theoretical chemist and winner of the 1999 National Medal of Science Stuart Alan Rice conducted his first experiment–breathing air–today in 1932. Theoretical chemists are being consulted by some avant-garde chefs lately. . . Allan Appel, who writes novels about time travel (among other things) came to us from out of 1945 today. . . Pro baseball pitcher Brian Bass stepped onto The Big Mound today in 1982.
Words To Eat By
“In taking soup, it is necessary to avoid lifting too much in the spoon, or filling the mouth so full as almost to stop the breath.”–St. John Baptist de la Salle, the founder of the Christian Brothers.
Words To Drink By
Stir the eggnog, lift the toddy,
Happy New Year, everybody.
–Phyllis McGinley, American poet and writer of children’s books.
Trying Hard To Serve The Underserved.
But understanding what kind of service those diners want, actually, is not clear to every server.
Click here for the cartoon.