Coolinary With Hot Flavors At K-Paul’s.
The spirit of Creole and Cajun cooking that got everybody in America worked up when Chef Paul Prudhomme made his big splash in the 1970s and 1980s is in full force in K-Paul’s summer menu. Not only does this illustrate better what the local cuisine is all about than anything else I can think of, but the price is attractive even by Coolinary standards: $36 for the whole three-course repast. I’ll bet you haven’t been to K-Paul’s in a long time. Time to recall what a difference that restaurant made.
Gumbo
Pan-braised chicken and andouille sausage, smothered with onions, bell peppers, celery and cooked in chicken broth with a dark roux. Served with rice.
~or~
House Salad
Mixed greens served with your choice of one of our homemade dressings, green onion, Danish blue cheese or pesto vinaigrette
~or~
Fried Green Tomatoes
Battered in seasoned cornmeal and layered with sauteed fresh shrimp in a chipotle remoulade sauce
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Pan-Fried Flounder with Herbal Brie Cream
Fresh Louisiana flounder fillet, pan-fried, sauce of onions, tomatoes, dill, basil, herbs, Chardonnay, cream and brie cheese. Potatoes and veggies.
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Paneed Chicken Breast with Jambalaya
Tasso, sausage, chicken, tomatoes, jalapenos and garlic, smothered in a rich chicken stock and simmered for hours, the right amount of rice folded in. Sauce piquant and veggies.
~or~
Shrimp and Andouille Creole
Creole sauce of onions, bell peppers, celery, stock, tomatoes and seasonings. Rice and veggies.
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Bread Pudding
Our homemade muffins and yeast rolls soaked in a rich custard and baked with raisins, pecans, served with a hard sauce.
~or~
Sweet Potato Pecan Pie
Creamy sweet potato filling and a pecan syrup layer, baked and served with chantilly cream.
K-Paul’s Louisiana Kitchen
French Quarter: 416 Chartres. 504-524-7394. www.kpauls.com.
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Wednesday, July 29, 2015.
Barbecue At. . . Commander’s Palace? Stormy!
Mary Ann calls in the middle of the radio show with a great idea. Why don’t we go to Commander’s Palace for dinner tonight? The magnificent restaurant, always cited in surveys and reviews from the least to the highest sources as the best restaurant in town, is not hesitant to roll out wild new ideas. They have one such right now: a promotion called “White Tablecloths And Barbecue.” Which brings forth the immediate image of a crisp, starched table-topper with smudges of barbecue sauce all over its surface.
This is the theme for Chef Tory McPhail’s current “Chef’s Playground,” the point of entry for his more daring leaps into culinary adventure. Mary Ann has some doubts about Commander’s Palace, but none at all about barbecue. Smoky, tender meats falling off bones are among her favorite eats, right up there with burgers and fries. She makes the reservation. I will see her at six-thirty.
Or so I thought. During the five o’clock hour, a large, very dark cloud moves into the downtown area. By five-thirty, lightning and torrents are in the vicinity. Nevertheless, with the Commander’s reservation in mind, I leave the studios promptly at six, umbrella in hand.
I stop in the lobby, whose large expanse of windows shows that this is no typical afternoon shower, but a full gale sending down sheets of the hardest rain walking uptown on Magazine Street. A manhole cover just outside blows out of its manhole from the pressure of air and water in the drainage pipes just below. I hear it clang again and again as it blows off then lands back in the hole, shooting blasts of water in every above-ground direction.
I think there’s a possibility that a window may shortly be blown out. I go back up to the radio station’s eighth-floor offices and into the WWWL studio, where I bring up the weather data. Winds, sez the official readings, are steady at 47 miles per hour, gusting to 65. It would take only nine more mphs for the gusts to be within the definition of a hurricane.
They never get that high, but they don’t slow down, either. I sit in the dark in my studio, watching the Mississippi River Bridge disappear and reappear. It’s about a half mile way. The currently defunct but saved from extinction World Trade Center is only three blocks from where I sit, but the rain obliterates it too, off and on.
I enter the newsroom, on the other side of twin-glass windows from mine. The Causeway is closed! I learn. Street flooding is scattered here and there around town. Mary Leigh is working in a part of town that know to be liable to street floods. I call her and get an “I’m okay, I’m all grown up” response.
Mary Ann, meanwhile, has been at Commander’s Palace for the last hour and a half. She says that the servers are taking very good care of her. She also has studied the barbecue menu, and says that it is not exactly what she had in mind. I could have told her that. You don’t go to Commander’s to get your own mental ideals of dishes, but to get entirely new hybrids of the standards.
Oyster with granita at Commander’s Palace.
The storm dies down at around eight. I collect my car and head up Magazine Street, which historically has rarely flooded. Not even for May 3, or for Katrina. But it is flooded here and there tonight. Around Felicity Street, I barely miss splashing into something like six inches of water in both Magazine gutters. I will later learn that in the two hours it rained, one and two-thirds inches have fallen in New Orleans.
At Commander’s, it’s as if nothing happened. The car valets are taking them in and letting them out. The dining room is nearly full on the first floor. I don’t check out the upstairs Garden Room, but I don’t see anybody head up that way. Dan The Wine Guy has news of new additions to his wine list, from which I choose a Spanish red curiosity. He also says that four or five members of his wine team–one of whom is also on the kitchen line–have passed the tests to become certified sommeliers.
Crostina with burrata and anchovies.
We get raw oysters on the half-shell topped with a coriander-flavored granita. I get a second: MA doesn’t eat raw seafood. She does have some fried oysters while I have a peculiar-looking crostini with burrata–the hyper-rich mozzarella variation that’s hot on the edible top forty right now. I am missing only a piece of Commander’s famous garlic bread. I ask our waiter, and he says it will be right out.
Pork BBQ that doesn’t pass MA.
MA’s entree is some kind of pork “barbecue.” I didn’t quite catch the description, but MA says it went against one of her rules: “Layman’s food should never be gourmet-tized. Barbecue at Commander’s? What was I thinking?”
Barbecue antelope, probably the best dish I’ve had this year so far.
I more than take up her slack with my enthusiasm about the smoked antelope loin, injected with beef fat. The latter is an idea I’ve always thought had possibilities, especially regarding low-fat meats like antelope. (They run around so much that the stay very fit.)
This antelope dish–which also includes an antelope tamale, tomatoes, and queso fresca–is far beyond merely a curiosity. I think it’s the best dish I’ve had this year so far. I will have to think about that a little more, but I’m pretty sure it wins that contest. A thin black sear encloses juicy red meat with a superlative flavor package. It looks like a sous-vide job. How much the beef fat and the cheese add I don’t know, but when something tastes this good I don’t question the pleasure.
I do question the garlic bread. Where is it? Second request. Third request. Finally, it shows up after my fourth asking. But we are not in the natural life cycle for the famous butter-and-herb bread crescents. In contrast, everything else about Commander’s vaunted service was right up to standards.
Creme brulee, with all crunch.
The desserts, for example. Mary Ann doesn’t really eat dessert, and I chose something I haven’t had at Commander’s before. What we get are six desserts, ranging from the Creole cream cheesecake from the Emeril era, and the late Jamie Shannon’s unique creme brulee under a fleur de lis.
The people booked for “The Turn” (when those with 6:30 p.m. reservations have eaten and gone, and the second shift of diners arrive) show up in substantial numbers, the rainstorm be damned (or dammed, as the case may be).
Things are beginning to slow down for the summer, Says The Wine Guy. But the place looks prosperous to me.
Commander’s Palace. Garden District: 1403 Washington Ave. 504-899-8221.
Blueberry Cornbread Pudding
The association of blueberry growers sent me this receipe along time ago. Only recently did I find it in my files, fortuituously at time when I had three-fourths of a pan of dried-out leftover cornbread in the refrigerator. And–believe it or not–a container of blueberries going south in the same reefer. I was home alone with nobody to bake cookies or brownies for me. The next thing I knew, all of these conditions came together in a wonderful dessert. It is also delightful as a breakfast. You know how good blueberries are for you.
6 cups leftover, preferably dry cornbread, cut into 1-inch cubes
1 cup sugar
1 Tbs. ground cinnamon
2 cups milk
1 cup half-and-half
4 eggs
3 egg yolks
2 tsp. vanilla extract
2 cups fresh (can be overripe) blueberries
1/2 cup unsalted pistachios, shells removed, or almonds
Sauce:
2 Tbs. sugar
2 tsp. cornstarch
3 cup frozen (unthawed) blueberries (optional)
Preheat oven to 225 degrees.
1. If the cornbread is still soft and moist, place the cornbread cubes on a baking sheet or pizza pan and bake until dry (about an hour). If you started with stake cornbread, skip this step.
2. Raise oven to 325 degrees. Grease a 10 x 12-inch baking pan.
3. In a large bowl, combine sugar, cinnamon, milk, cream, eggs, yolks and vanilla. Add the corn bread, blueberries and pistachios (or almonds) and stir it all gently. This step is finished when the biggest cornbread chunks still are a little dry in their centers.
5. Pour the cornbread mixture into the baking pan. It should have cracks and open areas. Cover with aluminum foil and bake for an hour. Remove the foil cover and continue baking for about 25 minutes more, until the top of the pudding is golden brown. Remove it from the oven to cool.
6. In a medium saucepan off the heat, stir the 2 Tbs. of sugar and cornstarch together until blended. Add the frozen berries and toss until coated with the sugar-cornstarch mixture. Cover the pan and cook over low heat. The blueberries will melt and slowly become a thick, bubbling sauce.
7. Drizzle the sauce over the baked blueberry pudding. But into three-inch squares and serve, warm or at room temperature.
Serves 12.
Pecan-Crusted Fish With Crabmeat Meuniere @ Dick & Jenny’s
As is true with many New Orleans dishes, those named “meuniere” are made in more ways than one. Two, in this case. The version they do at Dick and Jenny’s is the one originally created at Arnaud’s, with a thick, light brown sauce with a buttery, lemony flavor and a hint of stock. It also takes an idea from Commander’s Palace. In the 1970s, Chef Paul Prudhomme replaced the trout amandine everybody in town served with a more distinctly local fish dish using pecans. It was a tremendous hit and widely copied. This is the best version I’ve found around town, generous with the fresh local fish, and an exciting, big-flavored sauce. And, like everything else at this rightly popular restaurant, the price is a bargain.
Dick & Jenny’s. Uptown: 4501 Tchoupitoulas. 504-894-9880.
This is among the 500 best dishes in New Orleans area restaurants. Click here for a list of the other 499.
August 5, 2015
Days Until. . .
Coolinary Summer Specials End 27Three-course dinners $39 (or less). All the menus can be found here.
Food Calendar
Today allegedly is National Mustard Day. I’m all for mustard. I don’t think we use it nearly enough. Here in New Orleans, we’re lucky enough to have a home-grown, unique variety of mustard that gives many of our dishes a distinctive flavor. One of the most ubiquitous sauces in Creole cookery–remoulade, in all its different colors and recipes–includes a good bit of Creole mustard.
Mustard is made from the seeds of a member of the cabbage family native to Europe. The seeds contain oil, so when they’re crushed they become a paste. When water is added, a sulfuric compound in the seeds reacts to give the sharply flavored mustard bite. It fades away unless something acidic (vinegar, usually) is added.
Mustard has been used to flavor food in Europe since ancient times. Mustard seeds come in many colors, but yellow is not one of them. The yellow color in prepared mustards and Colman’s dried mustard powder comes from the addition of turmeric. The plant that grows mustard seeds is also eaten as greens. But that’s another flavor, another matter, for another day.
Gourmet Gazetteer
Watermelon Branch comes tumbling down the Walnut Mountains in far western North Carolina. This is part of the Pisgah Range, which one travels when on the Blue Ridge parkway. In about a mile and a half, Watermelon Branch comes down about a thousand feet, then washes into the equally swift Big Laurel Creek, a favorite of rafters. From there the water works its way through intermediate streams into the Tennessee River, the Ohio, and the Mississippi. This part of the United States has more places with food names than any other. The Little Creek Cafe five miles east is the place to eat.
Edible Dictionary
Christmas chili, n.–Although you can eat Christmas chili during the holidays, no more or fewer orders for the dish are served every other time of the year. The expression means that both red and green chili served on a single plate. In New Mexico, most restaurants serving the native cuisine add a choice of either red or green chili as a side dish. An order of “Christmas” brings both. The chili is a stew made with peppers and chunks of pork or beef (or not). The most authentic restaurants will insist that you have some kind of chili on your plate, so much a part of the New Mexican cuisine chili is. Asking for Christmas marks you as a local in Santa Fe.
Deft Dining Rule #261
If the mustard a restaurant brings to the table is coarse-ground brown stuff in a little dish (as opposed to yellow stuff in a plastic squeeze bottle), you’re in the right place to eat sausage.
World Food Records
On this date in 1990, a one-hundred-layer cake was baked and assembled. It measured 1214 inches high. It was the showpiece at the Shiawassee County Fair in Corunna, Michigan. They must have a lot of time on their hands around there. A rumor that the purchase of all the candles needed to top it caused the price of birthday candles to spiral uncontrollably has not been confirmed. Near as I can tell, this still holds the record for the world’s highest cake.
Eating Around The World
This is Independence Day in Burkina Faso, a former French colony previously called Upper Volta. It’s a landlocked nation just south of the Sahara desert. The French influence on the food there is evident, but for the most part the diet of the average Burkinabe is grain-based: rice, wheat, and millet. They eat gumbo, their version being a stew made from okra. An unusual staple food is néré seeds, eaten at most meals, usually fermented and rolled into dark-brown, nutty-tasting balls.
Food Namesakes
Theodore Sturgeon, the author of a number of science fiction books, died on this date in 1985. . . The rural philosopher and poet Wendell Berry was born today in 1935. He writes about how wonderful it is to live in the country, a sentiment with which I concur.
Words To Eat By
“You are what you eat, and who wants to be a lettuce?”–Peter Burns, British musician and cut-up, born today in 1959. He was talking about vegetarians.
“Mustard’s no good without roast beef.”–Chico Marx.
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, American writer.
What Is Cheese?
Let’s just say that there are worse things you can eat.
Click here for the cartoon.
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