Tuesday, November 8, 2016.
Dinner With Andrea.
Almost as long as my radio show has been on the air, Chef Andrea Apuzzo–owner of Andrea’s Restaurant in Metairie–has been a sponsor. In the early days, commercials on the show often consisted of phone conversations with the chefs as to what was going on in their restaurants that day. This soon got difficult, because back then I had no producer, and had to assemble the electronic pieces myself while trying to keep a conversation going at the same time. Only Andrea was willing to call in on his own initiative and wait on hold until I could get to him.
Dining room @ Andrea’s.
Those call-in spots for Andrea’s are still running on the Food Show. They go on much longer than standard spots. Left to his own devices, Andrea would keep talking (he hardly ever takes a breath) until he ran out of things to say. Which can be a long time. It’s so pervasive that listeners have the feeling that the spots are daily. In fact, they only run twice a week.
Every now and then, Andrea’s oration includes something that sounds delicious. Today’s was a risotto with crabmeat and shrimp. He created this some twenty years ago, when he opened a short-lived branch in the French Quarter. I remember this risotto as excellent, so I thought I’d revisit the dish. It was as good as I recalled, with a lot of crabmeat and a few large, pretty shrimp. The Arborio rice had the little bit on crunch in the centers of the grains that makes a well-made risotto good.
Chef Andrea with some fresh pompano.
While I was working on that, Andrea pulled a few whole pompanos out of his refrigerator. He gave me my pick of them, then went back and pan-broiled my half of the selected fish. This was as large a pompano as I’ve seen in awhile, and it lived up to its role in my eating history as my favorite fish species.
It was a very slow night at Andrea’s, and Andrea had plenty of time to sit down with me and shoot the breeze. We spoke about our relative health. He and I are almost exactly the same age. (He’s about three weeks older than I am.) We are both watching our weight. He had a heart attack a few years ago, but you’d never know that to watch him. He’s always had the energy of three normal people. We each have a beautiful woman in our lives. We talk about our exercise regimens. Pretty boring stuff. After a couple of hours, we part. We will always be friends, especially if his food is as good is it was tonight next time.
Wednesday, November 9, 2016.
Fireworks.
Mary Ann spent last evening with some good friends of ours. Their son and our son Jude were in the same Scout group for ten years, with parents who participated as much as the boys did. Magic days.
They were watched the election results. When the results became clear, our friends found fireworks left over from Scouting events of long ago, and started shooting them off. They were soon followed in that display by neighbors.
At home, I awakened at around three-thirty a.m. and turned on the radio. I didn’t have to listen long. A CBS reporter said: “. . . and so Hillary Clinton and her supporters leave their headquarters and try to figure out what went wrong.” I turned the radio off and tried to get back to sleep.
Much later, Mary Ann called me as I entered the radio studio. She is in town and wants to have dinner with our friend Maria. It’s her birthday, and we take her out to Restaurant Rebirth, which she likes a lot. So do we.
En route to the Warehouse District eatery, we encounter a set-to between a parking officer and someone who was about to have a boot put on his car. This person is caught between the booter and us, and for a minute it looked as if the person is about to hit our car. The bootee had already run over the boot–not the smartest move.
We get out of there and take Mary Ann’s car to the radio station’s parking garage. Her own car will be booted if the booters see it on the street.
Maria brought a bottle of Champagne to celebrate her birthday. It is “Femme,” the tete de cuvee of the Champagne house Duval-Leroy. I haven’t encountered Femme in a long time, but I remember it well. The base of the bottle is larger than standard, spreading out from the neck to form emphatic curves. Any man who has ever put his hands around a woman’s waist will recognize the shape by touch alone. It’s certainly well named.
A single crab claw, with a lot of stuffing and crabmeat.
We start with an amuse bouche of one crab claw, but with a large clump of the stuffing. The women get chicken-andouille gumbo while I disassemble a quail stuffed with andouille. (I keep coming back with increasing certainty that eating a quail is too much work.
Quail with kale.
The entrees include a mammoth slab of bison ribeye steak. The flavor is excellent, and the sauce–chimichurri, which is sort of the pesto of Mexico–gives it a good tang. The steak itself requires a bit of chewing, but that is a hallmark of bison, which has much less fat than a cow does.
Bison ribeye steak.
The conversations at our table and all the others on the same subject, one I don’t pursue in this diary.
Restaurant Rebirth. Warehouse District & Center City: 857 Fulton St. 504-522-6863.
Daube Glace
The beef answer to hogshead cheese (sort of), daube glace is a cold dish associated with the holiday season. It’s also one of those dishes that everybody talks about as being wonderful, but relatively few people eat. The explanation is that this is a lot of work to prepare. Indeed, I personally think you’re better off buying it already made from Langenstein’s or the like.
I failed to take that advice a couple of years ago and tried making my own. I researched the recipe in a bunch of local cookbooks, most of which had more or less the same ancient recipe from century-old Picayune Creole Cook Book. That source differed from the others in using pig’s feet to get the gelatin required to create the glace effect.
I thought about the gelatin, and oxtails came to mind. When you make a stock with them, they give an amazing amount of gelatin. The shreds of beef that come from it are very nice, too. So I thought I’d use that as the only meat in the mix.
This recipe takes two days to prepare, but most of the time it doesn’t need much direct attention. Still, if you make this I think you’ll find your guests will like it, and you can claim to have cooked up something challenging.
6 lbs. oxtails
2 Tbs. oil
1 large onion, chopped
2 ribs celery, chopped
1/4 tsp. crushed red pepper
1 Tbs. mixed peppercorns (or black)
4 cloves, crushed
2 bay leaves
1 cup red wine
1 tsp. dried thyme
1 1/2 tsp. marjoram
6 small carrots, finely diced
1 large rutabagas, finely diced
8 cloves garlic, chopped
1 large onion, chopped
2 ribs celery, chopped
1 very ripe (reddish) green bell peppers, chopped
1 tsp. thyme
1 tsp. dill
1 cup red wine
1/4 cup chili sauce
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1 bunch chopped flat-leaf parsley
1/4 tsp. cayenne
3 Tbs. salt
1 Tbs. black pepper
1/2 cup tawny port (or ruby port that’s been sitting around open)
3 envelopes Knox unflavored gelatin
2 Tbs. Tabasco Caribbean-style steak sauce, or Pickapeppa
1. Heat the oil over medium-high heat in a heavy kettle or Dutch oven. Sear the oxtails in batches on all sides until they’re lightly browned. Remove the oxtails as you finish browning them.
2. Return the oxtails to the pot and add all the ingredients in the first part of the list above, up to the marjoram. Add enough water to barely cover everything. Bring the pot to a boil, then reduce to a simmer. Simmer for three to four hours, uncovered.
3. Remove the oxtails to a bowl. Strain the stock into another bowl and discard all the vegetables. Pull all the lean beef off the oxtails and set aside. Add all the juices that come out as you do this to the stock. Discard the bones and fat. Slice or shreds any big chunks the beef into pieces no bigger than about an inch long. Cover the beef and refrigerate.
4. Cover the bowl of stock and refrigerate four hours or overnight. The fat will rise to the surface and form a solid cap. Remove this and discard. The stock will have set into a jelly, from all the natural gelatin in the bones.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
5. Bring to a boil one cup of water in a saucepan over medium heat. Add the carrots, rutabagas, and lemon slice. Cook until the vegetables just begin to turn soft. Remove the lemon, and strain out the water. Leave the vegetables in the saucepan, and add the garlic, onions, celery, bell pepper, thyme, and dill. Add the wine, vinegar, and chili sauce. Bring to a boil for a minute.
6. Add the stock and the beef to the pot and stir until the mixture is well blended. Cover the pot and put it in a preheated 350-degree oven for three hours. Remove and cool.
7. Skim any fat from the pot and discard. Add the parsley, port, and steak sauce. Dissolve the gelatin in a cup of water and stir in thoroughly.
8. Add salt, pepper, and cayenne to your taste. (This should be on the spicy side.) Pour the mixture into rectangular glass baking dishes (or terrine molds or whatever strikes your fancy). Refrigerate overnight (at least).
9. Before unmolding, scrape off any fat that may have risen to the surface. To remove the daube glace from the pan, run a knife all the way around the sides, and set the baking dish in a bigger pan of hot water for a minute. You can slice the daube glace before serving, or serve as is with a wide-bladed knife for guests to use to serve themselves. Serve with crackers or toasted French bread.
Serves a party of about 20, or appetizers for about 12.
Chocolate Fondue @ Bistro Daisy
The classic chocolate fondue at Bistro Daisy comes and goes from the menu with the cold weather. But even when it’s not on, they always have a chocolate dessert so rich and intense that chocolate lover will roll their eyes. At this writing that would be the warm chocolate ganache-filled crepes
with candied walnuts, cherries and brandy. Save room.
Bistro Daisy. Uptown: 5831 Magazine. 504-899-6987.
This is among the 500 best dishes in New Orleans area restaurants. Click here for a list of the other 499.
November 10, 2016
Days Until. . .
Thanksgiving: 15.
Christmas: 46.
New Year’s Eve: 53.
Today’s Flavor
This is National Satsuma Day. Those juicy citrus fruits from Louisiana are at the peak of their season right now. Satsumas come originally from the old Satsuma Province, on the island of Kyushu in Japan. The tree that grows them appears to have been a mutation of a kind of orange tree. In Japan, they’re called “mikans.” They came to this country in 1878, and are better known as mandarins (another reference to the Far Eastern origin, although that’s a Chinese word) or tangerines.
The satsumas in Southeast Louisiana–brought by Jesuit missionaries fresh from Japan–are different from those found in most other parts of America, and are close to the original Japanese import. The skins are thin, but have large oil pockets that flavor your fingers as you peel them off. As we all discover as children, the skin is very easy to remove, and the sections usually come apart without breaking open. The flavor is distinctly different from that of an orange. I find that when I make juice with even a half a satsuma with four or five oranges, I can immediately notice the satsuma flavor.
Satsuma trees are hardier than oranges. Except in the areas that were totally flooded with storm surge water after Katrina, most of the satsuma crop survived the storm and have produced good crops since then.
Gourmet Gazetteer
Satsuma, Louisiana is twenty-four miles east of Baton Rouge, close enough that it’s become a suburb of the state capital. Satsuma began as Stafford, a station on the Baton Rouge, Hammond and Eastern Railroad (still a main line, part of the Illinois Central). It was renamed Satsuma because the Post Office already had a Stafford, Louisiana when it opened shop here in 1911. And because there was a satsuma grove nearby. There may be satsuma trees still around there, but typical winter temperatures probably keep that from becoming a major farming endeavor. If you’re hungry in Satsuma, you’ll have to drive four miles east into Livingston, and find Mike’s Grill.
Edible Dictionary
lemonfish, n.–Also known as cobia and ling, lemonfish is a large, white-fleshed Gulf fish. It can grow as large as 100 pounds, but in any size it’s considered a prize catch. The fillets of even a moderate-size lemonfish can be as much as two or three feet long and four inches thick. The name is a reference to a citrusy taste that the fish is alleged to possess, although that has eluded my palate. The best way to cook lemonfish is to cut it into thick slabs, season it generously, and grill it. It’s thick enough to encrust without overcooking, and firm enough to stay in one piece when cooking. Lemonfish sushi is also terrific, with ponzu, green onions, and a squirt of hot sauce.
The Old Kitchen Sage Sez:
Whenever you find yourself with blemish-free oranges and a few minutes on your hands, scrape the zest off the skins and freeze it in a plastic food storage bag. Remember it when a sauce needs a little something.
Annals Of Vegetable Gardening
Washington Atlee Burpee was born today in 1858. He created the world’s largest seed company by developing many new varieties of vegetables and flowers that one could only grow by planting Burpee’s Seeds. Is this a food name?
The Saints
This is the memorial day for a patron saint of gardeners. St. Tryphon was a gooseherder in Phrygia in the third century, and a martyr.
Annals Of Winemasters
Andre Tchelistcheff, the scientist who sent California winemaking on the path that led to its excellence and influence, died today in 1994 at the age of 93. He spent many years at Beaulieu Vineyards, then had a long career as a consultant for wineries all over California, especially in Napa. His innovations included everything from cold fermentation and strategies for fighting grapevine diseases.
Music To Eat At Sea By
Today in 1975, the iron ore ship Edmund Fitzgerald on Lake Superior. Gordon Lightfoot had a hit with a song about the disaster. The most heart-breaking lyric in it was:
When suppertime came the old cook came on deck
Saying “Fellows, it’s too rough to feed ya.”
Now that’s a disaster.
Military Food And Drink
Today is the birthday of the United States Marine Corps, founded in 1775 at Tun Tavern in Philadelphia. (A tun is a barrel for beer.) Samuel Nicholas, commissioned by the Continental Congress to convene a battalion, recruited the first Marines in the tavern on this date. Mother’s Restaurant, which for many years was owned by two generations of Marines, proudly displays a banner identifying itself as Tun Tavern New Orleans.
Among the many other Marines who’ve cooked famously in local restaurants is Sgt. John Besh, who just opened his new American Sector restaurant in the World War II Museum. He saw action before his chef days, in the first Gulf War. I wore a Marine uniform for a year in the JROTC at Jesuit High School, where I learned how to disassemble and clean an M1 rifle from actual Marines. Semper fi!
Food Namesakes
Sesame Street came to television on this date in 1969. . . Sir Tim Rice, who wrote the lyrics to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s music for Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita, and other musicals, was born today in 1944. . . George Washington Cook, Union soldier and early Colorado politician, was born today in 1851. . . English record producers Roy Thomas Baker, who produced for the Rolling Stones, The Who, and David Bowie, began his Big Record today in 1946. . . Sounds like a food name, but isn’t: George Fenneman, the great announcer for You Bet Your Life and Dragnet on both radio and television, was born today in 1919.
Words To Eat By
“And I’ve seen
Toasts to Tangerine
Raised in every bar across the Argentine
Yes, she’s got them all on the run
But her heart belongs to just one.
Her heart belongs to Tangerine.”–Johnny Mercer, American songwriter and singer.
Words To Drink By
“To Gasteria, the tenth Muse, who presides over the enjoyments of Taste.”–Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin.
Making Cheese Quickly From Scratch
The best she will come up with is a lot like Creole cream cheese.
Click here for the cartoon.