Tomorrow (Saturday, June 7) at ten in the morning, the twenty-eighth French Market Creole Tomato Festival begins. With music, of course, on a stage near the French Market Farmers Market Arch (Ursulines between Decatur and N. Peters).
Creole tomatoes are very much in the markets now, and in celebration of that fact a lineup of cooking demonstrations by local chefs goes on throughout the festival, a new chef every hour and a half or so. Food vendors–some restaurants, but mostly outfits along the lines of food trucks–will sell a wide variety of ethnic dishes, including New Orleans ethnic. And you can buy Creole tomatoes by the box from the farmers who will be in the French Market’s vegetable sheds.
A couple of years ago, the Creole Tomato Festival was freshened up and made even more pleasant. The cooking demonstrations are now in air-conditioned (and rain-proof) tents near the Flea Market. An interesting competition will take place at noon both days: the Creole Tomato Eating Contest.
Admission to everything is free. You just buy your food and drinks.
Creole Tomato Festival
French Market
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, May 30, 2015.
Sea Day #2. Juggling Diners.
Going to bed past midnight makes it easy to sleep until almost nine. The gentle rocking of the ship, and a kind of throbbing that goes on most of the time, make it even more restful.
We have the second and final day at sea today. The Marys are bored silly, although they do get a lengthy round of ping-pong in. I spend most of the day writing and sorting through my photos, trying to figure out how to publish them online. The satellite internet on board the ship is too slow and expensive for the effort to make sense. I decided to pull it all together when I get home, and create one big document about the entire cruise. I get many requests for that anyway, even years after the cruise in question.
Fish and chips in the Queen Victoria’s Pub.
We do have a nice family lunch in the Pub, a space we liked a lot on our first Cunard Atlantic crossing years ago. At lunchtime, they have British food like fish and chips (Mary Ann loves the idea of that, if not entirely the reality). I ordered the steak and mushroom pie, a toned-down version of steak and kidney pie. It comes out in a broun sauce with mushrooms and ale. I have a half-pint of Guinness, and felt very British. ML ate the Ploughman’s Lunch, which is more or less a ham sandwich, made with the baked ham they prefer in England.
A Negroni in the Chart Room.
The Chart Room is the meeting place for the Eat Club during the hour and a half before dinner. It’s already so popular that we have to move a lot of chairs to seat all the ladies, leaving a few guys standing. I have not had many Negroni cocktails lately, but I associate it with cruising, and so I have one in most of these pre-dinner parties.
And then I find myself with one of my least favorite tasks as host of these cruises. Our group has five tables in the main dining room. On most nights the roll call at any particular table is different. Tonight, because some of the diners have gone elsewhere than the main dining room for dinner, two people will wind up sitting alone. I have an obvious remedy: ask a couple of people seated at one of the full tables if they wouldn’t mind moving in with the couple sitting by themselves. But I couldn’t get them to budge. Luckily, just as I was about to move myself (Mary Ann is not dining tonight) to the sparse table, another couple shows up late and solves the problem.
An Eat Club table in the Brittania dining room.
The only bottle of Tabasco on the ship (my conjecture) has made its way back down to the first floor, but our waiter finds it and brings it to us, the better to flavor the beef consomme. Now there’s a soup you don’t see often. But it always comes up in every cruise we’ve ever taken. Old classics live on at sea.
The highlight of the dinner is venison as an entree. It’s a bit overcooked, and the sauce could have been more complex, but this makes up for the venison I was hoping to have had in Rules a few days ago.
Sunday, May 31, 2015.
The Rock Of Gibraltar.
Our first port of call is determined–so the rumor goes, anyway–by the availability of fuel at low taxation in the British colony of Gibraltar. And although Cunard’s ships are officially registered in other countries, the line has many British connections.
The time in port is brief. We arrive around ten and depart at three. This gives us barely enough time to penetrate the town, whose 23,000 residents brag about having zero unemployment (indeed, 10,000 people come in from Spain to fill open positions). Also here: the fifth most dangerous airport in the world. A four-lane highway crosses the single airstrip at grade. Sounds like a good reason to go there by ship.
Strolling through downtown Gibraltar.
The Marys and I walk in front of the Catholic cathedral just as Mass is beginning. It’s Sunday, so we go in and are blessed by a priest who looks Hispanic but speaks with a thick English accent.
Mary Ann tries hard to find a way to the top of the Rock of Gibraltar. The tramway–like a ski lift–is the most popular way. But a power outage early this morning had it out of commission. As we walked around trying to figure out what to do next. A fellow driving a van pulls over and tells us that for fifteen pounds per person he will take up up to the spot where the tramway would have. Will we see the caves and tunnels? Yes. What about the famous Barbary Apes? the ones that come right up yo you and attempt to steal anything hanging from your body? Yes, I know all the monkeys personally, says the driver.
Who, as we drive up the steep incline, tells us that he is an actor, a singer, and a producer of big musical events. He is also well-versed on the history of Gibraltar the city, the rock itself, and its involvement in a number of wars over the years.
A cave in the Rock of Gibraltar, where a major opera performance happened a few days ago.
The caves in the rock don’t look entirely natural, but they predate a time when preservation was on anyone’s mind. Now the stalactites and stalagmites are illuminated by eerie electronic lights. Chairs arranged in audience mode can seat about two hundred people, who most recently came here for an evening of opera.
One of the famous Gibraltar monkeys walks in front of our path.
We get as close to the summit as possible in a vehicle, and we meet up with the monkeys. They are not scarce. The rule, we are told, is that the monkeys are allowed to touch you, but you can’t touch them without risking a bite. They seem tame enough. But suddenly two of them have a a disagreement with one another about two feet from Mary Leigh, who is alarmed. We give the monkeys a wider berth.
It is very foggy near the top, and there’s not much to see. The Singing Driver takes us down the road to the spot where the British built a redoubt during World War II. Tunnels with barely enough headroom for me snake through the very solid rock. Displays tell about how the feat was accomplished (with great difficulty and some loss of life) while tunes from the era play in a peculiar, worrisome way. It’s one of those trails that goes downhill all the way, so it’s a panting climb back up again. The whole tour is much better than we dared hope for.
The many thin layers of a feuillete of salmon, cheese and herbs.
The ship sails away from the Rock at three. I try to do a little writing, but all the walking gets the better of me and I must take a nap. Then it’s dinnertime. The Giancolas join us for dinner in the Verandah, the gourmet restaurant of the Queen Victoria. (Unless you count the restaurants in Queen’s and Princess’s Grills, which by all accounts shame all other services on this and the other Cunard ships, at a much higher cost.)
A foie gras terrine and a rillettes of duck in the Verandah, the specialty dining room on the Queen Victoria.
Upscale cruise restaurants are usually difficult to reserve. But not only was it easy for us to get a table, but there were hardly any other customers in it. Were it not for the string quartet playing there, it would have been much too quiet in there for comfort.
We took a sampling of the menu, which delivers a four-course repast for a $25 upcharge. The Marys ate the usual variations on steak, their fingers crossed that they come out well done. As usual, one or the other orders something she hates. In this case, it was a pate de foie gras, smooth and rich, with a terrine of wild mushrooms. These get passed to me, and I both enjoy and overeat.
The starter that I actually ordered is a feuillete of smoked salmon, cheese, and a creamy sauce, all cold (intentionally). It is the first dish I’ve had by that name since Louis VXI was still in business and made an appetizer of thinly-sliced seafood layered between flakes of pastry.
Scallops and monkfish, the latter wrapped with bacon.
The entree made composed of some handsome sea scallops in orbit around a clump of monkfish wrapped with bacon. Monkfish is known for its pearlescent white color and its textural resemblance to lobster meat. This worked for me.
An offbeat creme brulee in the Verandah.
The only real dessert on the table was a warm, somewhat underbaked Grand Marnier soufflee. Even a dismal failure in the browning process wasn’t enough to make this less than enjoyable. One of the Marys sends over a creme brulee that the waiter brought for her, since she hadn’t ordered a dessert.
I am writing this five days later. We have not returned to the Verandah. We would usually go to the specialty restaurant at least twice more on a cruise of this length. They need to rethink this place, I think.
Green Peppercorns In Brine
Green peppercorns are the unripe, soft fruits of the pepper plant, piper nigrum. As the species name implies, this is the plant that gives black peppercorns–which are the same as green, but ripened and dried. Green peppercorns are not as pungent as black peppercorns, but they do have that famous flavor. They’re especially good in making sauces. The green peppercorns you need for that purpose, however, are the undried kind, sold marinated in brine. For some reason, these have become hard to find. (The reason may be that many grocers, not understanding what they are, put marinated green peppercorns on the same shelf with capers, which are about the same size and color but radically different in every other way.)
One of our readers, Victoria Olson, sent me this recipe for turning the very common dried green peppercorns into the soft, sauceworthy kind. It doesn’t come out exactly the same as the never-dried kind, but close enough.
Victoria says that the excess vinegar brine can be used as a condiment.
4 oz. dried green peppercorns
1 cup white vinegar
2 tsp. pickling salt or kosher salt
1/2 tsp. white sugar
1. In a small, heavy-bottomed saucepan with a well-fitting lid, combine all the ingredients. Over low heat, bring to the lightest of boils, then lower to the lowest heat setting. Cook for about an hour with the lid in place. Be careful not to breathe the vapors, which are irritating.
2. After an hour of cooking, remove the pan from the heat and let the contents steep, covered, for another hour.
3. Pour the entire contents into a 12-ounce, processed canning jar. The peppercorns can be used immediately, or stored in the refrigerator.
Makes about five teblespoons
Gnocchi With Crabmeat And White Truffle Oil @ Restaurant August
Many orders of this dish are served as a complimentary amuse bouche, which is the way people discover it. Afterwards, Chef John Besh has you hooked. You’ll want it every time you go to August thereafter. Fortunately, this marvelous little dish is a fixture on the menu. The name explains it fully. The gnocchi are fingerlings of potato pasta, cooked until soft as pillows. With lumps of crabmeat, butter, and truffle oil. It’s outrageously good, but too rich to eat much more than an appetizer’s worth. The white truffle flavor and aroma are a big part of the appeal, for me; the sexy qualities of that miraculous fungus live on after the season in the oil. The flavor of the tout ensemble carries forth to make all the following courses taste a little better.
Restaurant August. CBD: 301 Tchoupitoulas. 504-299-9777.
This is among the 500 best dishes in New Orleans area restaurants. Click here for a list of the other 499.
June 12, 2015
Days Until. . .
Father’s Day 9
Food Calendar
Celebrate National Crabmeat Au Gratin Day. The crabmeat is big and fat right now, and that means this is the time of year to eat this rich casserole of crabmeat, cream, a small amount of cheese, garlic (if you’re lucky), cayenne, and a sprinkling of bread crumbs over the top, baked till bubbly.
We see more crabmeat au gratin these days, mainly because of the availability of cheaper pasteurized crabmeat. Used to be that you could get the essential jumbo lump crabmeat only this time of year; now it comes in from all over. It’s sad that even some of the most expensive restaurants in town have taken to using canned crabmeat from Southeast Asia here. So it’s a mixed blessing: we get less flavorful crabmeat, but we can get crabmeat au gratin all the time.
But in crabmeat au gratin it makes less of a difference, I’d say, than in a cold crabmeat appetizer. The sauce is so rich that the fine points of the crabmeat’s flavor are, if not lost, at least hidden. The best versions are at the Bon Ton, Galatoire’s, Antoine’s, and Vincent’s. It doesn’t have to be expensive: at Fury’s, they give you a tub of white (not lump) crabmeat whose only flaw is that there’s too much cheese (ask them to leave off the two slices they melt on top).
Edible Dictionary
salmagundi, n.–A British name for a kind of tossed salad made by combining a great variety of foods that might not seem to belong together. In many cases, they truly don’t. Those who celebrate salmagundi say that the more heterogeneous the mixture, the better it is. This makes me suspect that it’s liked as much for its novelty than for its taste. A typical salmagundi might contain chicken, grapes, anchovies, hard-boiled eggs, onions, beets, pickles, and pork. The word is a reference to the fact that many of the ingredients are salted and seasoned. The innards of a muffuletta sandwich, tossed with lettuce and tomatoes, might be considered a salmagundi.
Gourmet Gazetteer
Crab, Virginia is on the west shore of Chesapeake Bay, in the Hampton Roads area, just off US 17. Crab is on Sarah Creek, a harbor for hundreds of fishing boats. This is indeed a prime crabbing area, with the same blue crab species we enjoy in New Orleans. The nearest restaurant is a lunch house called Sweet Madeleine’s, a few blocks away, but many more restaurants are about a mile away in nearby Gloucester.
Annals Of Silverware
On this day in 1962, three prisoners on Alcatraz dug to freedom using soup spoons. I guess they didn’t like the soup du jour. One may have said, “This is an outrage. I’ve had soup du jour all over the world, and it tastes nothing like this!”
Gourmets Through History
Lillian Russell married for the fourth time today in 1912. In her day, Russell was the heartthrob of American males, including her long-time squire, playboy Diamond Jim Brady. She was a noteworthy gourmet, and could keep up with Brady or any other man at the table in her in her consumption of food and drink. As in four dozen oysters as an appetizer. She had the figure to prove her eating acumen. At that time in America, fleshy women were much admired.
Food And The Law
Today in 2004 in federal court, a Department of Agriculture rule to the effect that frozen, batter-coated French fries are fresh vegetables was upheld as valid. The judge said, in essence, that the term “fresh vegetables” had no real meaning. That’s how ketchup once flew in as a vegetable. Many, many restaurants claim to use fresh vegetables when in fact they used canned or frozen–again, I suppose because of this absurd reading of the English language. Seems obvious to us that fresh means fresh. As in unprocessed, uncooked, unfrozen. Right? I say we should raise this standard. And raise hell, too.
Annals Of Candy
Today in 1928, the trademark “Good and Plenty” was registered for the colorful, sugar-coated, soft licorice candy. It is the oldest branded candy in the United States, having first been marketed in 1893. And remember: licorice is the liver of candies.
Deft Dining Rule #107:
One of the first steps to becoming a gourmet is deciding whether you want good or plenty.
Food Namesakes
Vanessa Baker, a diver in the 1996 Olympics for Australia, was born today in 1974. . . In the same games was the unrelated Philippa June Baker, born today in 1963. She was a rower from New Zealand. . . Today in 1837, British inventors William Cooke and Charles Wheatstone patented a telegraph, a few years before Samuel Morse did. Morse’s method, however, became dominant. . . Bun Carlos, the drummer with the band Cheap Trick, got the beat today in 1951. . . David Rockefeller was born today in 1915. The famous oyster dish was named for his grandfather, because he had a lot of money and the sauce was green.
Words To Eat By
“I do not like broccoli and I haven’t liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it. And I’m President of the United States and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli. Now look, this is the last statement I’m going to have on broccoli. There are truckloads of broccoli at this very minute descending on Washington. My family is divided. For the broccoli vote out there: Barbara loves broccoli. She has tried to make me eat it. She eats it all the time herself. So she can go out and meet the caravan of broccoli that’s coming in.”–George H.W. Bush, born today in 1924.
Words To Drink By
“When alchemists first learned how to distill spirits, they called it aqua vitae, the water of life, and far from considering it the work of the devil, they thought the discovery was divinely inspired.”–Gene Logsdon, American essayist.
The Most Dangerous Food Fight.
Some dishes just should not be thrown.
Click here for the cartoon.
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