Saturday, June 27, 2015.
Boomers And Oldsters. Sake Garden.
For the past few years, our radio stations that have listeners over forty years old have put on a show addressing those people directly. Boomers And Beyond Expo has been successful, pulling in members of my generation. An antique car show in which I am distressed to see cars I remember from when they were new is there). So are bands playing music that was popular from the 1940s through the 1960s. More up-to-date are chefs performing cooking demos.
I have been fully engaged with Boomers since it began, not only broadcasting from it but also doing one of the recipe run-throughs. That’s appropriate, I guess. I came to Planet Earth in the middle of the Baby Boom. My parents had their first child just as World War II began, but no more until I came along in 1951, followed about as rapidly as possible by two more sisters. That was the Baby Boom program, all right.
I am not the only person there who registers a mild dismay when we see what the Expo’s participants are trying to sell us. Bathtubs with doors. Walkers and canes. Hospitals and health insurance. Reverse mortgages. Wrinkle cream, diet programs and special exercise routines. And, finally, funeral services.
We fans of the Beatles and Stones know very well that these things are coming our way. But that doesn’t make it any more comfortable to think about it all.
Clark.
The three hours of radio go off well, with live visits from a number of regular callers to the show. Clark, the Gourmet Truck Driver, for instance. He never misses anything like this.
My cooking demo is only a little more difficult than last year’s. That one was guacamole made with fifty different kinds of hot sauce, a few drops of each. My goal was to make the point that what attracts people to dishes is often pure bunkum, not flavor. Fifty hot sauces? Who could make out what each of them added to the mix?
Today, I make chocolate mousse the way I do at home. It’s based on a terrific recipe I got from the Rib Room in 1975–when most Baby Boomers were still in their twenties. It included some magical steps, the order of which makes the difference. In brief, here’s the way it goes:
1. Melt the chocolate gently. Microwaving is a good way to do it.
2. Beat egg yolks, combine them with a half-cup of strong coffee-and-chicory with hot milk, and stir them into the melted chocolate.
3. Beat egg whites and sugar into a meringue, then fold it into the chocolate.
4. Whip heavy cream, and combine it with the chocolate until the streaks are gone. Finished!
I thought for a moment that the chocolate had seized up in step one, but it righted itself. I did screw it up later: My first samples were too large, and I was down to tablespoons by the time the last attendee was served.
The Yat Pack at full strength.
While I stirred chocolate, the Yat Pack played in the auditorium. By the time I was done and cleaned up, their gig had ended. I wanted to talk with them about the future of their entertaining Sinatra-era show. Tim Shirah–the younger of the two lead singers–has moved to Florida for his real job. Founder and singer David Cook will keep the band together–the instrumentalists are excellent–but there seems to be some question as to whether the Yat Pack act will go on, lacking one of its lead singers.
I wonder if. . . naaah.
It’s too early for dinner as I leave the Expo. I hate to waste a potential South Shore dinner, but I’m just not hungry until, an hour later, I’m in Mandeville. By that time, my appetite has made its demands clear: it wants sushi.
I go to the Sake Garden, a Japanese restaurant that’s not on my regular rotation. I don’t know why. It’s certainly one of the three or four best. (The others, in no order, are Little Tokyo, Kazoku, and Megumi.)
The best food I’ve had in the past at Sake Garden have been hot dishes. I only get one of those this time. It’s the baked mussels, served on the shell with a sauce made of mayonnaise and tobiko (Japanese flying-fish caviar). This has been available for some time in the better local Japanese places, but for some reason I never payed it much attention. Now I’m wild about it.
The sushi side of the menu was something called the local roll: spicy tuna, salmon, avocado and a few minor ingredients. This is very good and very large. I charged ahead and had a smoked salmon nigiri and an asparagus roll. I am now full, but comfortably.
Sake Garden. Mandeville: 1705 US 190. 985-624-8955.
Sunday, June 28, 2015.
Brunch At Ox Lot 9.
When I get back from singing at St. Jane’s, Mary Ann says that she wouldn’t mind brunch at Ox Lot 9 in the Southern Hotel in Covington. We were there two weeks ago and liked it pretty well. We grab a deuce next to a window and begin by splitting the quiche of the day. The firm pieces in the very light custard are all vegetable. I think it’s pretty good, but it’s not cooked enough for MA.
Quiche of the day during brunch at Ox Lot 9.
I let the waiter serve Ox Lot 9’s standard coffee: a dark roast brewed in a French press. Although many people would consider this a mark of quality, I am not taken in by the French press idea. Its main flaw is that it allows particulates from the coffee grounds to get mixed with the hot water, making for a bitter flavor. (It should be noted that many coffee drinkers say that they like the particulates and the bitterness. Fair enough.) It is not intolerable, but it’s not for everybody. Another problem is that unless you knock it back, the second cup is less than steaming hot.
“Chicken biscuit.”
The entrees diverge from the familiar ways of doing things, too. The name “chicken biscuit” creates an illusion different from the reality. It had me thinking about a big biscuit with chicken worked into it. I should have asked. This proves to be a fried chicken breast with a biscuit, and syrup on the plate. So, a variation on the chicken ‘n’ waffles concept. Not one of my favorite things.
Grillades and grits at Ox Lot 9.
It is, however, right up Mary Ann’s alley. We swap entrees, something we do often. I wind up with what the kitchen calls grillades and grits. It is necessary to bring an open mind to grillades. No two recipes are alike. Only one version in my experience lived up to its name by actually being grilled. This one was pretty good, made with pork loin with very rich grits and a medium-light pan gravy. It is unusual in that the sauce and grits form a yin-yang pattern on the plate. It’s too big to finish, and I don’t. Food’s a little salty here.
Osman Rodas, the owner of Pardo’s, comes in with one of his chefs and some six other people. While Ox Lot 9’s servers pull a table together for them, Osman and I shoot the breeze about this and that. One essential topic is the story behind the change of chefs at Pardo’s a month or two ago. I now know the real story. It’s exactly what I would have guessed, and not interesting enough to relate. “Chefs move around a lot” about covers it.
We skip dessert and head home. I would like to cut the grass, but there’s been too much rain. Instead, I walk five laps around the Cool Water Ranch–one more than usual. I have not been able to take my walk for a week, and I miss it, even figuring in the humid heat lately.
Ox Lot 9. Covington: 428 E Boston St. 985-400-5663.
Walker’s BBQ
New Orleans East: 10828 Hayne Blvd. 504-241-8227. Map.
Very Casual.
Cash only.
Website
ANECDOTES AND ANALYSIS
It’s the nature of barbecue that It can’t be cooked to order, and that it must be cooked ahead of time. The good side of this is that it can be quickly served. The bad news is that when the restaurant runs out of meat, it’s out. Walker’s only cooks enough barbecue to sell on that one day. After that, they turn the closed sign. So go early, pick it up, bring it home, and enjoy. Wait too late, and you need to wait another day. They open at 10:30 a.m.
WHY IT’S NOTEWORTHY
Walker’s first became famous for its cochon de lait poor boys, sold for years (and still) at the Jazz Festival. From that grew a catering business, followed after the hurricane by a full-fledged barbecue restaurant. It has become a candidate for Best In Town honors. They go about it right, with slow, long smoking and a sweet, homemade barbecue sauce.
WHAT’S GOOD
As in all good barbecue joints, the menu is brief and to the point. Smoked meats with traditional Southern-style sides, and sandwiches. If there’s anything here that’s not delicious, I haven’t run into it. The cochon de lait poor boy is as least as delectable as reputed.
BACKSTORY
Walker’s appeared on Hayne Boulevard so quickly after Katrina that it was a godsend to the people in its neighborhood. Almost everything in New Orleans East was destroyed, but Walker’s building is right up on the lakefront and free of major flooding. And the supply of customers was infinite, what with all those people in the extended neighborhood with lots of work and few sources of food and drink.
DINING ROOM
Until recently Walker’s was an order-and-pick-up window without a dining room, with people going next door to Castnet Seafood to sit down. Now they have a small but pleasant place to sit down, as well as to wait for orders.
FULL ONLINE MENU
BEST DISHES
Sandwiches
All on poor boy bread or bun
Cochon de lait (pork) roast suckling pig
Beef brisket
Sausage
Chicken salad (smoked or not)
Pork & brisket
Berbecue Dinners
Sausage
Chicken
Pork
Pork ribs
Brisket
Smoked wings
Burnt ends (Buffalo or barbecue style)
Desserts
Bread pudding with whiskey sauce
FOR BEST RESULTS
The hours are unconventional. They open a little early for lunch, but when they run out of the day’s batch of meats, they close–around two. During Jazz Festival season, all bets are off.
OPPORTUNITIES FOR IMPROVEMENT
The sauce is a shade too sweet and not peppery enough for my taste, but that’s not reason enough to change it.
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
Consistency +3
Service
Value +2
Attitude +1
Wine & Bar
Hipness +1
Local Color +1
SPECIAL ATTRIBUTES
Good for children
Easy, nearby parking
Bruschetta
Bruschetta is the forerunner of garlic bread, popular in Italy for at least 500 years. The essential ingredient is a loaf of bread in the Tuscan style: with a thick, dark crust and a coarse interior, with an up-front yeasty flavor. French bread will do in a pinch, but it’s worth buying a loaf of bread in a rustic style to make this. Bruschetta is the perfect appetizer to make when you have a surplus of tomatoes. The riper they are, the better.
By the way, it’s pronounced “brooss-KET-tah.” Not “broo-shet-tah.”
1 loaf crusty, rustic bread
2/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1/4 cup chopped fresh garlic
5 sprigs flat-leaf parsley, leaves only, chopped
24-30 leaves fresh basil, sliced into ribbons
1/2 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
1/4 tsp. salt (sea salt makes sense here)
1 1/2 cups ripe tomato, seeds and pulp removed, chopped into 1/2-inch dice
4 oz. ricotta salata cheese, shredded
1. Combine the olive oil, garlic, parsley, basil, black pepper and salt in a cup.
2. Slice the loaf of bread on the bias to make slices a little less than an inch thick and about four inches across. Using a hot grill, broiler, or toaster oven, toast the bread until medium brown.
3. Stir the olive oil mixture well and spoon about a teaspoon of it across each slice of bread. Cover that with a layer of the chopped tomato. Drizzle another teaspoon of the olive oil mixture across the tomatoes, and top with a sprinkle of the ricotta salata.
Serve while the bread is still warm. You can keep it warm in an oven that’s barely on, but not for long–the tomatoes should remain cool.
Serves eight to twelve.
Pan-Seared Halibut @ Gautreau’s
Halibut is not a local fish, but we can forgive it that. It’s one of the best of the exotic species we find on New Orleans menus. Chef Sue Zemanick at Gautreau’s features it as often as she can get it fresh (usually and best from Alaska). She cuts thick rectangles from the enormous fillets, and either sears them or roasts them under an herbal crust. It has become a signature dish at the Uptown bistro.
Gautreau’s. Uptown: 1728 Soniat St. 504-899-7397.
This is among the 500 best dishes in New Orleans area restaurants. Click here for a list of the other 499.
July 6, 2015
Days Until. . .
Tales Of The Cocktail 7
Satchmo Summer Fest 24
Food Calendar
Today is National Fried Chicken Day. In the 1960s and before, fried chicken was considered a gourmet dish, featured with total respect in fancy food magazines like Gourmet. Then, just as they did to the hamburger, the mass-production restaurants moved in on fried chicken and ruined its reputation. Fortunately, good fried chicken still exists, although it requires some diligence to either find it in a restaurant or make it yourself.
The main criterion of fried chicken excellence is the crust. Different from most fried foods, a crispy coating on fried chicken is not necessarily a good thing. The best fried chicken I’ve had in my life had a rather thin, non-crisp coating. What it did have, though, was an interesting flavor dominated by herbs, with pepper as a background flavor. Much of that flavor comes from marinating. I like to use buttermilk as a marinade, because it tenderizes as well as flavors the chicken. It also seems to make the coating stay on better.
The next two hallmarks of great fried chicken are that it comes out hot and greaseless. Those are both the result of the same kitchen skill. When chicken is fried and then held under a heat lamp–as it is in most restaurants–it gets soggy and greasy. Cooking it right before serving makes all that difference. This is something the fast-food operators can’t abide, because frying a chicken takes fifteen or twenty minutes. Even Colonel Sanders knew that. As late as the Sixties (before it was bought by Pepsi) Kentucky Fried Chicken was fried to order. They did it in a pressure cooker to speed things up, but they did make it specially for you.
This is a very big subject, fried chicken.
Deft Dining Rule #866
No restaurant where the surroundings seem to call for eating fried chicken with a knife and fork is a good place to eat fried chicken.
Gourmet Gazetteer
Wing is a one-house crossroads in the rural woods and farmlands of western North Carolina. It’s 122 miles northwest of Charlotte, in Appalachians at about 3500 feet. Wing is on Wing Branch, a ten-mile tributary of the wild and scenic North Toe River. That water flows into the Nolichucky River, then the French Broad River, Holston River, and finally into the Tennessee. The nearest restaurant is Sallie’s Mountain View Family Restaurant, two miles away in Bakersville. This is the part of America where more towns are named for food than any other.
Edible Dictionary
Mandarin chicken, n.–Deep-fried boneless chicken in thick slices, served with a very thick brown sauce and sprinkled with almonds. It was a staple on the menus of the first generation of Chinese restaurants in New Orleans. This is about the only place where “Mandarin chicken” calls forth that dish. Elsewhere, Mandarin chicken is a sweet, stir-fried dish with a sauce made of mandarin (tangerine) juice and its orange flavor. New Orleans-style Mandarin chicken is an old Cantonese dish known to Chinese chefs as wor shu gai. Many people who first ate Chinese food in the era of House of Lee, Gin’s, or the Canton ate no other dish, likely because the two main components of the dish–fried chicken and brown gravy–were very familiar. To my palate, it is the very worst dish in our local Chinese restaurants. Which doesn’t (and shouldn’t) keep people from looking for it. And asking about it.
People I Wish I’d Dined With
Today in 1918, the film and television actor Sebastian Cabot was born in London. He was a rotund, bearded fellow who liked New Orleans (he was a good friend of the Brennans) and was a connoisseur of good food. He was best known for the television show Family Affair, although I remember him most fondly as the host of the television version of the long-running radio series Suspense.
The Saints
Today is the feast day of St. Goar of Aquitaine, France. He lived in the sixth century, and is a patron saint of vinegrowers and hoteliers. It’s also the feast day of St. Maria Goretti, who is much venerated in New Orleans as a patron saint of children.
Paying For Food
Today is the birthday of the dollar. It was chosen to be the monetary unit of the United States by the Congress of the Confederation on this date in 1785 . We are approaching the day when it will become impossible to find anything on the menu of any restaurant that can be bought for a dollar. (It may surprise you to know that we aren’t there yet.) One of these days, I’ll make a list of the dates when certain benchmark dishes hit a dollar in price. I have a menu from Antoine’s in the 1960s, for example, that shows oysters Rockefeller for a dollar. I sold six-packs of Jax Beer at the Time Saver in 1970 for a dollar. I remember being able to buy two roast beef poor boys at Martin’s Poor Boy Restaurant for a dollar.
Food Namesakes
The Cherry Venture–a Scandinavian cargo ship that became a tourist attraction on the Australian beach where it wrecked–ran aground there today in 1973. . . Former Illinois Governor John Lourie Beveridge was born today in 1824.
Words To Eat By
“Chicken may be eaten constantly without becoming nauseating.”–Andre Simon, French-born British gourmet and wine merchant.
Words To Drink By
“The chief reason for drinking is the desire to behave in a certain way, and to be able to blame it on alcohol.”–Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic’s Notebook, 1960
The Average Home Cook.
He’s hoping that the kale and truffle dressing will cover the complete failure of the main ingredient.
Click here for the cartoon.
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