Monday, February 13, 2016.
A Non-Controversial Italian Salad.
I meet up for lunch with Mary Ann at Pontchartrain Po-Boys. I have the salad which is formerly (but now very seldom) known as the “wop salad,” then as the “Italian salad,” and now increasingly more often the “guappo” salad. The last one is where the first one came from. A “guappo” is a brash young Italian man, dressed up a little too well, who is always collecting new girl friends, while at the same time relying on his mother for almost everything.
Chef Duke.
More important than the nomenclature is the salad’s contents: green salad with tomatoes, the olive salad you’d find on a muffuletta, and often (but not always) with some of the meats and cheeses you find in a muffuletta. Pontchartrain Po-Boys has a large version of this, along with a very large and an even bigger. The last two usually get divided by a table of people. I stuff myself with the smallest one.
I already love my new schedule at the radio station. I have been thinking for some time that the three-hour show was too long, especially on a station that has signal issues, such as 1350 always had. But now we take advantage of one of the most misunderstood aspects of radio: the audience differs almost totally from hour to hour. So we now have a two-hour show that’s like it always has been, followed by those two hours over again. Very few people listen to the whole four hours that generates, but more total listeners wind up hearing most of it. And the sponsors get a better push.
When I finish today at five, I take a walk, a shower, and a nap. But no supper. Still full from the guappo salad. I arrive early for NPAS rehearsal, where Carol and I run through out rendition of “I Won’t Dance.” I think we have it down. But every rehearsal makes it better.
Tuesday, February 14, 2017.
Valentine’s Day @ Café Giovanni.
I go to town today because I need to record a few more promos for the new radio show schedule. Every time I do this, I find that there are more aspects of the program that I don’t yet have in my head. For example, I am so accustomed to coming out of a commercial with a certain word formula that I find myself lost now that the formula has changed. What is it, anyway? “This is the Food Show,” I recite from rote. But then. . . I find myself with nothing more. I can’t say it’s 3WL, or 1350, or anything else from the opld days. My producer is exasperated with my failure. “105.3!” He shouts. “WWL-FM HD2, Kenner New Orleans!” He goes on. How could I not know this by heart? Where is the radio geek in my brain? The one that remembers very well inanities like “This is CBS, The Columbia Broadcasting System”?
It’s Valentine’s Day. Mary Ann, who usually insists that the holiday be celebrated with all its trappings, seems lately to be less involved in any activity that requires that she likes me.
Mary Leigh gets to work on finding reservations. The first half-dozen or so are booked completely. I suggest that we go to Café Giovanni, where Chef Duke will certainly have a table for us. It’s busy there, but not overwhelmingly so.
When we’re seated, ML lays down her main rule for the evening. I am not permitted to sing next to the Marys’ table. The opera singers are here, and both of them have already asked whether I will be singing tonight. Fortunately for the girls, the room is so full of people that it would take a more powerful voice than I have to be heard across the room. Also, the lady playing the piano doesn’t know my songs. (That’s not a criticism of her. Her repertoire is pretty big. But nobody knows everything.)
I’m the only one who doesn’t order the special Valentine’s Day dinner. Mary Leigh has fettuccine alfredo–period. Mary Ann has an assortment of side dishes. I start with the seafood martini: crab, shrimp, fish, crawfish, etc., served cold in a martini glass. This has always been delicious here. Then a demitasse of crawfish and corn bisque as kind of a late amuse bouche. MA and I agree that this is as fine a creamy bisque that we’ve had in recent memory.
My entree is something new to me: a thick pork tenderloin with a sharp, somewhat fruity stack of the meat in question, and a sauce of raspberries and chipotle peppers. Too much to finish, but nothing unusual about that in this place.
Duke sends us each half-glasses of a wine he’s hot on right now. The grapes come from Chile, but the wine is made in the Napa Valley by Caymus, a major producer of top-end wines. The sample tells me that the wine is youthful both in terms of the age of the grapevines and of the wines made from them.
But whenever I’m even near Caymus wines, I recall a magnificent dinner I had in the winery during the Napa Wine auction in the 1990s. We had eight vintages of Caymus Special Selection Cabernet–a wine that often tops lists of the best wines in the world. It was a black tie event–a rarity in Napa. After the dinner, major cigars were passed around to the diners that wanted them. This included a fair number of women. What an evening that was.
Cafe Giovanni. French Quarter: 117 Decatur. 504-529-2154.
Cheese And Herb Biscuits
We had a bunch of people over for dinner some years ago. One of my goals was to make bread from scratch, so we didn’t buy any bread. I guess it was predictable, but I ran out of time and didn’t manage to get to the home-made bread. I filled the gap with this variation on our family’s favorite buttermilk biscuits. Mary Ann showed me a recipe for something along those lines in Bon Appetit, and I borrowed a couple of ingredients from there. They came out of the oven savory, spicy, and a good match for turkey, ham, or fried chicken. They may be a bit too assertive to be eaten at breakfast. They’re best right out of the oven, but they’re good at room temperature, too.
You can underbake these a little and freeze them. When you’re ready to serve, microwave them for about thirty seconds and then pop them into a 400-degree oven (a toaster oven works fine) until browned completely. They will taste as if they’d just come out of the oven!
4 cups self-rising flour
1 stick butter, softened
2 cups finely shredded cheddar cheese
2 green onions, tender green parts only, finely snipped
6 sprigs flat-leaf parsley, leaves only, chopped
1 tsp. dried oregano
1 heaping tsp. salt-free Creole seasoning
1/2 tsp. sage
2 cups milk
Preheat oven to 475 degrees.
1. Measure flour into a large bowl. Add the butter and stir with a wire whisk until the mixture resembles coarse cornmeal. It’s okay for there to be a few small lumps. Then stir in the cheddar cheese, herbs, and Creole seasoning to evenly distribute.
2. Blend in the milk with light strokes of a kitchen fork until the dough leaves the side of the bowl. Add a little more milk if necessary to work all the dry flour at the bottom into a sticky, thoroughly damp dough.
3. Lightly grease a baking pan. Spoon out the dough with a soup spoon into balls about two inches in diameter. Dip your fingers in water and press the balls down only slightly (high biscuits come out better than flattened ones), and shape the dough up a bit if necessary.
4. Bake 14 minutes in the preheated 475-degree oven. They’re ready when the little peaks on the biscuits begin to brown. Don’t look for a dark overall brown; that indicates overbaking.
Makes about twenty little biscuits.
Cannelloni With Shrimp, Tasso, And Cream @ Two Tonys
For most of its history Two Tonys (also spelled “II Tonys) has been an elementary New Orleans Italian trattoria and West End-style seafood house. Construction of the new Bucktown pumping station forced the restaurant to move to the former location of the West End Cafe. That larger restaurant moved Tony Jr. (his father, the first Tony, had passed away) to expand his menu. The specials that grew from that effort have been particularly good. This is one of them: cannelloni stuffed with shrimp and tasso, with both a cream sauce and a light roux-based filling. That combination was a big deal in the 1980s. First time I’ve run into it in a while. Good stuff.
Two Tonys. West End & Bucktown: 8536 Pontchartrain Blvd. 504-282-0801.
This is among the 500 best dishes in New Orleans area restaurants. Click here for a list of the other 499.
February 20, 2017
Days Until. . .
Mardi Gras–8
St. Patrick’s Day–26
St. Joseph’s Day–28
Today’s Flavor
Many websites claim that today is National Cherry Pie Day. The problem with this is that cherries are totally out of season right now, and we must make any cherry pie with canned cherries, resulting in a cloyingly oversweet dessert. Remember when you could get a cherry pie at McDonald’s and places of that ilk? Just apple now, I think (although I’m behind on my research on fast-food fried pies.)
Great Moments In Grocery Shopping
The square-bottomed paper bag was invented by Luther Crowell of Cape Cod, who spent his spare time folding paper and attempting to make things out of it. He got a patent for his flat-bottomed bag in 1867. It would remain universal in grocery stores until the plastic sack took over.
Beer Through History
The Yuengling Brewery opened in Pottsville, Pennsylvania on this date in 1829. It’s still in business, the oldest American brewery that can make that claim. I guess that makes them a bit older than Dixie. It continued operation during Prohibition by making a nasty drink called “near-beer.” Here’s some background on the outfit, if you’re interested.
Inventions For Better Eating
A toothpick manufacturing machine was invented on this day in 1872, by two guys, J.P. Cooley and Silas Noble. One of them did the round toothpicks and the other flat. The best toothpicks are made of alder wood. Ask the next very expensive restaurant you dine in whether they have alder toothpicks. Then tell them that they should. Let’s see how long this takes to make it into the national food magazines. Most of the toothpicks made in America, by the way, are made in Maine.
Annals Of Wine Marketing
The first wine auction that we know about took place in London on this date in 1673. Amazingly, a bottle of Phelps Insignia went for almost $2,000. No, it didn’t. The wine being auctioned was entirely in barrels, and was sold as a bulk commodity.
Gourmet Gazetteer
Roosterville, Georgia is five miles from the Alabama state line, sixty-six miles west southwest of Atlanta. It does appear to harbor roosters in a large chicken farm nearby. Roosterville is just a busy junction of country roads, so small that it was removed from the official Georgia map in 2006. But a few houses and a general store are there, as well as a bunch of beehives and sheds for milking cows. The nearest place to eat is Captain Billy’s Fish House a mile and a half away. For chicken (although probably not coq au vin), it’s the Big Chic, six miles away in Carrollton.
Edible Dictionary
arancini, Italian, n., pl.–A Sicilian appetizer made by rolling rice moistened with a meaty red sauce into balls an inch or two in diameter. They’re coated with bread crumbs and fried. The word means “little oranges,” an apt name. Arancini usually have a lump of cheese in the center. This gives rise to their alternate name, suppli al telefono–“telephone wires,” which is what the festoons of cheese look like when you take a bite and they stretch out from the arancino to your teeth. Sometimes meat or peas or other fillings are in the center, along with the cheese. Arancini are found everywhere in Sicily, and are slowly becoming popular in this country.
Dining In The Movies
Today is the birthday of accomplished film star Sidney Poitier. Among his best-known movies was Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner? in 1967. It’s about the problems the older generation had when their children started hanging around with people with other racial backgrounds.
Words To Eat By
“The majority of those who put together collections of verses or epigrams resemble those who eat cherries or oysters: they begin by choosing the best and end by eating everything.”–Nicolas Chamfort, an eminently quotable author from the mid-1700s.
Words To Drink By
“What’s drinking? A mere pause from thinking!”–Lord Byron.
This Comic Is Just Half Funny.
This has happened more than a few times in Louisiana, as Wildlife and Fisheries agents arrested chefs and restaurateurs whose stock of fish came from unauthorized sources.
Click here for the cartoon.