Tuesday, November 17, 2015.
Balise, Again.
The word from the Marys is that Mary Leigh’s apartment is cute and looking good, what with all the new furniture she and Dave are buying. I didn’t have new furniture until my fifth residence. Come to think of it, I still don’t have all-new furniture. The desk at which I spend more time than anywhere else but our bed is one I bought in 1976. It’s made out of fake walnut-grain Formica over solid wood and weighs two or three hundred pounds. I bought it for fifty dollars from Jim Derbes, who bought it from Benjie Morrison, both of whom were journalists.
To dinner at Balise with the Giancolas. I invited them to join me a couple of weeks ago, knowing that MA would be out of town and I’d be looking for dinner companions. But the original reason for the meeting was to give Barbara the books I promised for a charity auction. I already completed that pass this past Friday at Galatoire’s, but if I cancelled our dinner date tonight, it would belittle our friendship.
First floor dining room ay Balise.
As it was when I dined at Balise a couple of weeks ago, the place is busier than I expect. I’m glad I made a reservation. We sit at a smallish four-top next to an escape door, complete with fire alarm on the wall adjacent. Chef-owner Justin Devillier (he of La Petite Grocery) has not performed a deep renovation of the building. The present space has the feeling of a French bistro, with the floors in this part of the restaurant totally different from the floors in that part. But it looks like a lot of people like the look.
Much more thoroughgoing is the inventiveness of the kitchen. In some ways, the food has an antique quality. The sort of thing you’d get in a much older restaurant. But that fits the neighborhood, especially for a guy my age, who remembers what the restaurants around here were like forty years ago (i.e. Maylie’s and Turci’s).
Amuse-bouche.
The Giancolas and I like cocktails, and we had a round of them. Mine was a drink called the Anti-Churchill, which I recall reading about somewhere. The waiter tells me that it’s the most popular drink at Balise. It’s Hendricks gin, Cocchi Rosa, and chamomile grappa, shaken and strained. It packs a punch, but had a flowery quality, too. I can’t find an explanation for the name.
I get an order of fresh-cut fries for the table to help with the cocktails. Barbara has a salad special, and Vic gets smoked fried oysters. Both are happy, but there’s no way that they could have been more pleased than I was with the soup of the night, a creamy seafood chowder, made with an assortment of local (no clams) fish and shellfish. A light drizzle of Tabasco brought it to perfection. Had it not been so rich, I would have gone for seconds.
The kitchen sends us the same amuse bouche that everybody else in the room enjoyed–a few generous flakes of crabmeat on some crunchy leaves. But we also get an unasked-for order of rigatone with a bolognese-style sauce. The meat part of this is beef cheeks, which melt in the mouth.
Braised lamb.
The Giancolas are both interested in the braised lamb and shrimp, a thick stew with a fascinating array of other ingredients–oyster mushrooms, some dramatic green leaves with red veins, and a few other things. It tastes as good as it looked, which is saying something.
Cobia with pears, onions, and grated cheese.
I have an appetizer of seared cobia for my entree. I already had a little too much to eat, and Balise’s menu seems stronger in the small plates than in the large ones. It is basic in preparation, but that’s a good thing for cobia (a.k.a. lemonfish).
The Giancolas skip dessert. I have the combination of satsuma and coconut sorbets. Speaking of satsumas, how is my cat of the same name doing? Fine, growing like a weed, and soon to become an outside cat with his brother, Valencia.
It was supposed to rain tonight, but that doesn’t come until I get home. I do have to deal with very high winds on the Causeway. And a tornado watch for the overnight. The weather stays weird.
Balise. CBD: 640 Carondelet St. 504-459-4449.
Wednesday, November 18, 2015.
Homeworking. Panneed Chicken. Homecoming.
The predicted rain of several inches did indeed come through overnight. The half-acre outside my office windows fills when we get two to three inches of rain, and has. This means the road is probably flooded. I decide to work at home, and have an extra slice of toast with breakfast to tide me over until I go out to dinner after the radio show. The Wednesday special at New Orleans Food and Spirits is that superb pairing of a big piece of panneed chicken over a large pile of angel hair pasta with both white and red sauces. It is as lusty as usual, but this is not something I should eat more often than once a month if I want people to keep telling me how much weight I appear to have lost.
Chicken with two sauces and pasta. They now toss the pasta with the sauces.
Mary Ann decides to drive the entire distance between the lovebirds’ new home in Vienna in northern Virginia and the Cool Water Ranch. That’s a bit over a thousand miles. She left at four in the morning our time, and turned up at the Ranch at around nine p.m. Why anyone would torture oneself in this way when there are so many hotels between there and here is a mystery. But what man understands why his wife does the things she does? If I brought the matter up, she would probably say–correctly–that I would have taken the train. And how goofy is that?
New Orleans Food & Spirits.. Covington: 208 Lee Lane. 985-875-0432.
Avo
Uptown 3: Napoleon To Audubon: 5908 Magazine. 504-509-6550. Map.
Nice Casual
AE DC DS MC V
Website
ANECDOTES AND ANALYSIS
Trying to think of a place for dinner recently, with the limitation that one of us didn’t want Italian, the three of us could think of nothing but Italian restaurants. We finally settled on an Italian restaurant that was just different enough from the standard to make it seem. . . well, not really Italian. Whatever that means. Avo’s take on Italian food is very new to the scene, having premiered only six months earlier. It wasn’t until we were deep into the meal before we saw that not only is Avo’s very Italian but very deep New Orleans-Italian roots.
Red snapper at Avo.
WHY IT’S NOTEWORTHY
Avo’s main selling point is its premises, a rebirth of the former Martinique restaurant and its hedge-surrounded, open-air courtyard. That part of the renovation was the deepest: it’s now a weatherproof dining room that nevertheless has an outdoor-dining feeling. If the weather is even remotely nice, they open all the big windows. The menu is different enough from any other in that part of restaurant-loaded Magazine Street to be attractive. You will walk past at least three restaurants between your parking space and Avo.
Pork shank at Avo.
WHAT’S GOOD
While a case could be made that no part of town needs more Italian restaurants, it’s also true that the regional cuisines of Italy other than those of Sicily, Naples and the lands between them aren’t well represented. Avo does little to change that. On the other hand, the number of possible variants of Sicilian cuisine may be infinite. Avo deviates from the standard lengthy Italian menu. One scan about covers the possibilities. The way the courses are broken down, along with the presence of many dishes that require explanation creates the illusion of depth.
Gnocchi.
BACKSTORY
Owner Nick Lama is a fourth-generation Sicilian-Orleanian, and proud to be. His family operated the famous seafood emporium in the old St. Roch Market. He is rightly proud of this, a feeling that starts with the restaurant’s name, which means “grandfather.” Immediately before opening Avo, Nick was the chef de cuisine at Gautreau’s. The restaurant itself had a good run as Martinique, under the management of Christiano’s of Houma, which still owns the building.
Meatballs @ Avo.
DINING ROOM
The courtyard is by far the preferred dining area. Either a reservation or a long wait is essential for getting a table there. The smaller, less atmospheric but pleasant enough indoor dining room has been deeply renovated, with a new bar, The service staff has been exceptionally deft since the beginning, and is as conversant about the fine points of the wines as for the food.
REVIEWER’S NOTEPAD
More ruminations appear in our Dining Diary. Click on any of the dates below for those reports, each written a few days after a meal at Avo.
10/8/2015
BEST DISHES
The menu changes deeply and frequently. Here is the card in use on November 3, 2015.
Starters
Polpette (pork & beef meatball, soffritto)
Cheese & charcuterie board
Hamachi crudo (sashimi Italian style, with orange, fennel, lemon granita, radish, garlic chips)
Gnocchi alla Romano, wild mushrooms, Fontana cheese
Charred octopus, lardo, eggplant, cranberries, black garlic
Bruschetta del giorno
Soup del giorno
Burrata salad, grilled pears, prosciutto, arugula, balsamic
Apple salad, grapes, radicchio, endive, romaine, gorgonzola, red onion, apple cider vinaigrette
Hearts of palm salad, avocado, citrus, charred cucumber, basil, parmesan, orange-herb vinaigrette
Pasta
Linguine & clams
Lasagne, beef short rib ragu, mushrooms, béchamel
Pumpkin ravioli, sage brown butter, ricotta salata
Squid ink giglio (flower-shaped pasta, jumbo lump crab, chili, green onion
Entrees
Pork shank, herbed spaetzle noodles, orange, cider-braised cabbage
Chicken cacciatore, Tuscan black rice, mushrooms, cipollini onion, olives
Ribeye steak, cannellini beans, rapini, vincotto
Cioppino (mussels, clams, shrimp, fish, scallop, tomato-fennel broth)
Snapper, parsnip purée, grilled escarole, carrots, pomegranate gremolata
Scallops, smoked mussels, Brussels sprouts, onion soubise, almonds, pea shoots
Desserts
Banana zuppa inglese (English trifle)
Chocolate & espresso budino, pistachio biscotti, meringue
Zeppole (Italian beignet, chocolate hazelnut, blackberry almond, coconut caramel)
Banana zuppa inglese.
FOR BEST RESULTS
The kitchen veers far enough from the classic definitions of many of its dishes that you should ask a lot of questions. For example, a special offered as a ragu had none of the falling-apart tenderness and richness of the standard ragu.
OPPORTUNITIES FOR IMPROVEMENT
I found almost everything I’ve had here low in seasoning. I know they’re trying for a new flavor pallette, but some dishes are in desperate need of some Parmesan cheese, to a degree more important than the imperative for creating new culinary approaches.
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
Attitude +2
Wine & Bar +2
Hipness +2
Local Color +2
SPECIAL ATTRIBUTES
Courtyard or deck dining
Romantic
Open Monday dinner
Difficult curbside parking. Security guard on duty.
Reservations accepted
Root Beer-Glazed Ham
This is without a doubt the most asked-for recipe in the seventeen-year history of my radio show. Demand for it rises during the holidays, but never goes away completely.
The root beer-glazed ham is a fixture on my table on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter. It’s in the oven all morning (good thing my turkey is usually out on the grill!), and it makes the whole house smell good. You’ll find that lots of your guests will fight over the black crusty parts of the ham. (And all the rest of it, too.)
If you live in New Orleans, I strongly urge you to buy the superb locally-produced Chisesi ham for this. It’s widely available at supermarkets, usually in the deli department. Otherwise, a top-quality, lean, naturally-smoked boneless ham is what you want.
One more thing: The drippings get so crusty in the pan that you’ll want to use a disposable pan to bake the ham. The stuff is very hard to dislodge.
Root beer-glazed ham.
Glaze:
24 oz. (two cans) Barq’s root beer
1 1/2 Tbs. pepper jelly
1 bay leaf
1 1/2 Tbs. Tabasco Caribbean style steak sauce (or Pickapeppa)
6 cloves
1 stick cinnamon
Peel and juice of one-half an orange
Peel of half a lemon
~
1 cured, smoked ham, about 8-10 pounds
~
1/2 tsp. dry mustard
3/4 cup dark brown sugar
1. I usually make the glaze the night before, so I can get the ham right into the oven in the morning. Combine all the glaze ingredients in a saucepan. Bring the mixture to a boil, then lower to a simmer, and cook for about a half-hour. Strain the pan contents and discard the solids. Reduce the liquid to about a half-cup. Refrigerate if you do this in advance.
2. Place the ham on a rack in a disposable aluminum pan. Cut shallow gashes in a criss-cross pattern across the top half. Spoon the glaze over the ham to completely wet the surface.
3. Combine the brown sugar and the dry mustard and pat it all over the ham. Pour a half-cup of water into the pan. Put the ham in the oven at 350 degrees.
4. Spoon some of the glaze over the top of the ham at 15-minute intervals until it’s all used up. Try to get some glaze on all parts of the ham. Add more water to the pan when it dries up.
5. Continue baking until the ham reaches an internal temperature of 160 degrees on a meat thermometer. Remove from the oven and allow to rest for a half-hour before carving.
Serves about twenty.
An assortment of greens with a tremendous amount of shrimp and crabmeat is one of the most popular entrees at Galatoire’s, especially in the summer or at lunch anytime. It’s named for the now-extinct Godchaux’s department store, formerly two blocks away on Canal at Baronne. The salad is the last remaining of what was once a long list of entree salads. Each of them was named after another downtown department store. So there was once a Maison Blanche salad, a Holmes salad, and a Marks-Isaacs salad.
Galatoire’s. French Quarter: 209 Bourbon. 504-525-2021.
This is among the 500 best dishes in New Orleans area restaurants. Click here for a list of the other 499.
November 20, 2014
Days Until. . .
Thanksgiving–2
Christmas–35
New Year’s–42
Food Calendar
Today is National Whole Ham Day. I cannot imagine Thanksgiving without a turkey. But I also cannot imagine it without a ham. It’s not just because I like ham. It’s also because I love the way the house smells when this ham is in the oven. As it is all morning Thanksgiving. And I love the way the early arrivals fight over the black ham–the crusty stuff I cut off at the beginning of the carving, coated with the brown-sugar-and-mustard black crunchy stuff. And I like to contrast of color and flavor with the turkey, even though the two are sliced more or less the same.
A whole baked ham is a joy far beyond the more familiar deli sliced ham. The texture and flavor change completely in the baking. I found this out the hard way, when one year I used a bigger ham than usual and didn’t bake it long enough. Nor did I leave it out overnight to take the chill off. I had a temperature reading of over 150 degrees after four hours of baking (the ideal is 160). When I cut in, the difference in color and texture between the center and the outer two-thirds was alarming and disconcerting.
The most common baked hams these days are those spiral-sliced jobs you find in specialty ham stores and supermarkets. I’ve had my share of them, but I haven’t bought one for years. I like the ones I bake myself better. Not just because I have a good recipe, but because I’m starting with a better ham than the ham shops do. Those hams ate too sweet and sliced far too thickly for my taste, too.
There’s only one thing wrong with a baked ham: getting rid of it. (You’ve heard that Dorothy Parker definition of eternity as two people and a ham.) We have a lot of people over for Thanksgiving, and everybody who wants it gets a big chunk of ham to take home. But we do all sort of things with what we have leftover. Sandwiches and omelettes of course, but red beans and jambalaya, too.
Five Days Till Thanksgiving
This would be the perfect day to buy the ham, if you’ll have on on the table for Thanksgiving. You don’t need to do anything to it beforehand, but it’s such an important part of our dinner that I’m reluctant to take the chance that I can’t find a Chisesi ham in the stores. Just keep it in the refrigerator until Thanksgiving morning, and you’ll have that potential problem avoided. I’ve already told you, but as each day passes, the chances of your getting a desirable restaurant reservation for Thanksgiving dwindles. Here’s a list of all the restaurants that are open that day.
Gourmet Gazetteer
Whenever we find a food name in Michigan, it’s always on the wild Upper Peninsula. That’s where Stew Creek runs for about two miles through heavily forested, uninhabited land. It winds up in the Ontonagan River, which lows into Lake Superior. Another creek with a food name–Hash Creek–does the same trick about a half-mile north. Yet another–Trout Creek–is in the vicinity of the nearest restaurant to Stew Creek, about nine miles as the crow flies, but thirty-six miles by car. (Logically, it’s called Trout Creek Restaurant.) All of this is in the Ottawa National Forest.
Edible Dictionary
chess pie, n.–A staple dessert of the American South, chess pie is most succinctly described as a pecan pie without the pecans. It also resembles a custard pie, except that it’s made without milk, and usually sweetened with corn syrup. It’s also common for the crust to be made with cornmeal or corn flour instead of wheat flour. It has no top crust. Chess pie is usually very sweet; some bakers add a little vinegar to the custard to offset this. The origin of the name is something of a mystery. The story that rings most true (or it could be that it’s just the most entertaining one) is that it’s the expression “just pie” (as planin old pie) said with a Southern accent. It does not seem to have anything to do with the game of chess.
Deft Dining Rule #888:
The thinner the ham is sliced, the better the flavor. More surface area for your taste mechanism to work on.
The Old Kitchen Sage Sez:
When buying a country ham, always buy the left leg. It’s slightly smaller but more tender. [This is a matter of controversy.–Tom.]
Annals Of Popular Cuisine
The fifty billionth hamburger was sold by McDonald’s today in 1984. I remember when the tally, advertised on the Golden Arches sign, went from 500 million to 600 million. Not long after that they changed that line to merely “Billions and Billions Sold,” so often did it need to be changed. What a troubling thought.
Today’s Worst Flavor
Today in 2002, the State of Louisiana set a bounty on nutria, at four dollars per animal. The gigantic rodent, introduced to the state’s swamps by Edward McIlhenny of Tabasco fame, found the place very much to its liking and continues to eat vegetation voraciously, such that marshes are denuded in spots. An earlier effort to promote the eating of nutria meat–in which quite a few local chefs were involved–failed badly. With good reason: in texture, appearance, and taste, nutria is unappetizing. What would you expect from a big orange-toothed rat? The things are still running amok.
Food Namesakes
Alistair Cooke, long-time host of Masterpiece Theatre, was born in Britain today in 1908. . . A movie called Nuts, starring Barbra Streisand, premiered today in 1987. . . Drew Ginn, Australian Olympic rower in 1996, was born today in 1974. . . Dutch World War II resistance fighter Ferdinand van der Ham was born today in 1916. How appropriate! . . Pro football quarterback Greg Cook was born today in 1946.
In a class by himself was R.W. “Johnny” Apple, who not only has a food name but was a food writer, mostly for the New York Times. That interest was secondary to his main gig, which was as a political reporter and analyst for the Times. His writing about food, however, was clearly fired by real passion. He was as knowledgeable about where to eat anywhere (including New Orleans, where he visited often) as any of the Times’s restaurant critics. Today is his birthday, in 1934. He died in 2006.
Words To Eat By
“Ham’s substantial, ham is fat.
Ham is firm and sound.
Ham’s what God was getting at
When He made pigs so round.”–Roy Blount, Jr.
Words To Drink By
“It is most absurdly said, in popular language, of any man, that he is disguised in liquor; for, on the contrary, most men are disguised by sobriety.–Thomas de Quincy, British writer of the 1850s.
One Big Pot Of Chili Con Carne. Coming Up.
Ingredients: 1 gallon rendered beef and pork fat.
Click here for the cartoon.