Thursday, November 10, 2016.
My Work Versus The Universe.
I am in a dark mood, one exacerbated by the joviality of woman I love, who is flying high today. I give her all the room she needs for that. My exit strategy for times like this is to dive deep into my work. Problem is, there is so much work awaiting my urgent attention that getting something done means turning to the next thing. This can be depressing if I let it be. But having to fight it is yet another task to be addressed.
Mary Ann is leaves tomorrow morning for Washington D.C., where she and our daughter Mary Leigh will pack up all of ML’s furnishings from her dissolved apartment, and move to ML’s new apartment back here in New Orleans. After weeks of looking, they just sign onto an address, pending my inputs on the lease. The rent is thirty-one times what I paid monthly for my first solo apartment, but I’d better not think about that too much.
The radio show is hard to launch today. I guess everybody is still preoccupied by the Chicago Cubs’ World Series win. Yeah. That must be it. The calls finally start coming in at around four-fifteen, and we have a better-than average program. Our dinner special of the day is at Ralph’s On The Park, where a guy named Tony tells us that they have a complex appetizer of beef cheeks. Sounds good. I like the mileage we’re getting out of these daily reports.
I thought I’d go for dinner to Cuzco, the new Peruvian restaurant on Ferret Street. I thought–and then I gave it up. Trying to drive on Jefferson Avenue is close to impossible, as the eternal rebuilding of the uptown drainage system continues.
Plan B is to visit Bistro Orleans in (ironically) Metairie. They run frequent commercials on my radio show, so I need to visit now and then to find out what’s going on. My dinner begins with grilled oysters with sizzling butter and far too much bacon. Although bacon is a great flavor match for oysters, this would have been a better use of exactly same ingredients if they had turned them into oysters en brochette. It also would be a nice contrast with Bistro Orleans’s many other oyster dishes. The oysters themselves were certainly big enough to accommodate that under-served classic.
Now I have a cup–but it amounted to a bowl–of oyster-artichoke soup. That is as fine as always. I follow it with a perfectly-made, old-style stuffed crab. Not a crab cake, which has to be mostly crabmeat. Instead, it’s a well-made stuffing with a lot of crabmeat, jammed on top of a real crab shell, not the metal kind. Excellent.
I once again forget, when I ask for a dessert of bananas foster, that Chef Archie Saurage actually flames it tableside, and with amazing skill. The flames flicker from a skillet the chef is holding in his right hand, while he has the ice cream and bananas in his other hand, and when he unites the two contents, there’s a quick lick of flames again.
I am getting good at persuading bands into letting me sing with them. When I open Bistro Orleans’s front door, I hear a trio playing in the bar. It’s led by a deft jazz guitarist named James Easter. With him is a fellow playing the upright bass, and a lady singing standards very well. After they play “I’ll Be Seeing You,” I tell them that the song was the closing theme of Arthur Godfrey’s long-running daily radio program, and it also was the closing music of Johnny Carson’s last Tonight Show.
James Easter Jazz Band.
This breaks the ice. I have already put a Hamilton into the jar to show my appreciation. The girl singer asks, “Do you have any requests?” I raise my hand and say “Autumn In New York.” The song has been running around in my head for the last few days.
“I don’t know all the words,” she says.
“Well, I do!” I say. James says, “This will be a first. Nobody has ever walked up from a table and sung with us.” We do it. I goof up a few lines, but I make up alternate lyrics so I can keep on going. Nobody notices but me–I think. The other customers in the bar say they like it. Two of them know my secret identity.
“How about another one?” asks James. We do “There Will Never Be Another You,” which I nail.
James Easter and his ensemble play at Bistro Orleans Thursdays and Fridays. Very listenable, they play mostly standards. My favorite music.
As I write this, I think of something else that would have caught his ear. Next time, I will tell him that I was delivered from my mother’s womb by another jazz guitarist. Dr. Edmond Souchon was not only a well-known obstetrician, but a much-recorded jazzman.
I feel much better as I cross the lake. I have the best night’s sleep I’ve had in quite a few days.
Bistro Orleans. Metairie: 3216 West Esplanade Ave. 504-304-1469.
Pasta With Shrimp, Garlic, And Vegetables
Pasta and seafood come together easily. So do shrimp and garlic. And pasta and vegetables. Using those truths, Katie’s developed a great dish during its first incarnation. In the reborn Katie’s that returned from the hurricane in 2010, the dish wasn’t really on the menu. (They let you create pasta dishes almost any way you want, though.) While I was waiting for Katie’s to come back., here’s how I made that dish. This is also terrific with vegetables other than the ones on the list below. Green beans, for example.
1 rib celery, chopped coarsely
1 carrot, chopped into thin sticks
1 cup broccoli florets, broken into very small pieces
1 cup cauliflower florets, broken into very small pieces
4 Tbs. butter
1/2 cup olive oil
2 Tbs. chopped garlic
1/4 tsp. crushed red pepper
1/4 cup dry white wine
1 cup small peeled shrimp
1 tsp. Creole seasoning
1/2 tsp. dried oregano
1/2 large ripe tomato, seeds and pulp removed, chopped
6 sprigs parsley, leaves only, chopped
4 green onion, tender green parts only, snipped thinly
1 lb. farfalle (bowtie) or other pasta, cooked al dente and drained
1. Bring two cups of water to a boil in a small saucepan. Add the carrots, celery, broccoli, and cauliflower. Cook for two minutes. Drain and rinse the vegetables with cold water. Drain and set aside.
2. Heat the butter and the olive oil together in a large skillet until shimmering. Add the garlic and crushed red pepper, and cook until fragrant.
3. Add the shrimp, seasoning, and oregano, and cook until the shrimp have just turned pink.
4. Add the wine and bring it to a boil. Add the carrots, celery, broccoli, cauliflower, and tomato. Cook only until all the ingredients have heated through.
5. Turn the heat off and add the pasta to the pan. Toss to distribute the ingredients evenly.
6. Serve in large pasta bowl. Garnish with chopped parsley and green onions.
Serves four.
Panneed Rabbit With Oyster And Tasso Pasta @ Jacques-Imo’s
The most wildly popular dish in the early 1980s around New Orleans after blackened redfish was the revival of panneed veal–a dish everybody ate at home but no restaurant served. Jacques-Imo’s version enhances the pasta aspect of the dish with a cream sauce involving spicy, smoky tasso ham and oysters. Eating this is like stepping in a time machine for me. And a lusty pleasure, too.
The slogan of Jacques-Imo’s.
Jacques-Imo’s. Riverbend: 8324 Oak. 504-861-0886.
This is among the 500 best dishes in New Orleans area restaurants. Click here for a list of the other 499.
November 11, 2016
Days Until. . .
Thanksgiving: 13.
Christmas: 44.
New Year’s Eve: 51.
Restaurateur Hall Of Fame
On this date in 1955, Owen E. Brennan died of a massive heart attack following a gourmet society dinner at Antoine’s. He was only 45 at the time. Owen founded the Brennan restaurant business, and was the father of the three brothers who operated Brennan’s on Royal Street from 1973. This was tragic for reasons beyond the obvious. Brennan’s was about to move to its present location, an event that transformed the restaurant. Owen E. Brennan never saw the new restaurant he built. I would love to have met him; he was one of the great visionaries in the restaurant business. And he is reputed to have been the best of hosts. I wonder what he’d think about the current edition of Brennan’s under the management of his nephew Ralph Brennan. My guess is that he’d be very impressed.
Observances
This is Veterans Day. It grew from Armistice Day, which commemorated the end of World War I. The exact moment is famous: the armistice was signed at 11:11 a.m. on 11/11, in 1918. . . Same day, same year, it was Independence Day in Poland, which got its identity back for the first time in two centuries at the end of World War I. Why do we have no Polish food in New Orleans to speak of?
Today’s Flavor
Elsewhere around the country it is Sundae Day. Ice cream with sauces, fruit, and whipped cream poured over it got that name because it was created on a Sunday for service on that day of the week. Here in New Orleans, it’s Nectar Soda Day. Nectar is a uniquely New Orleans flavor. It’s a combination of almond and vanilla flavors, always artificially colored pink. It was created at the soda fountains of the old Katz and Besthoff drugstores. They later passed along the formula to the I.L. Lyons Company, which made it for a very long time. Originally, the pink color was cochineal, made from an aphid-like insect that sucked cactus plants in Mexico. Later, the cochineal was replaced by an artificial color. (Many foods and drugs colored bright pink for no apparent reason originally used the cochineal dye, too.)
Nectar sodas come two ways: with or without ice cream. The basic version is nectar syrup, milk, and soda water, the latter shot into the mixing cup from a soda jet that mixed the ingredients and made the soda foam up.
Although some retro new places like the Creole Creamery make it, it’s hard to find a nectar soda made that way now. But is danger of extinction. The lady who owned the New Orleans Nectar Soda Company–and who claimed that she had the original formula, from I.L. Ly0ns–passed away not long ago.
Nectar remains one of the most popular flavors in sno-ball stands all around New Orleans.
Gourmet Gazetteer
Yamhill is the name both of a county and a town in it, in west central Oregon. The town is thirty-five miles southwest of Portland, on the western edge of the Willamette Valley. They may grow yams in that fertile, temperate valley, but much better known to those who share a love for the pleasures of the table are the wines that come from there. Pinot Noir from the area is particularly celebrated. Yamhill Family Vineyards makes good examples of this. Quite a few cafes are in Yamhill; I like the sound of the Trask Mountain Outpost.
The Old Kitchen Sage Sez:
The judicious and subtle use of food coloring in savory cooking is not as bad an idea as it has come to be viewed. The most useful color of all is green. Guacamole. Oysters Rockefeller. Green Goddess salad dressing. Just a drop.
Edible Dictionary
cock-a-leekie soup, n.–One of the most popular soups in Scotland, cock-a-leekie is self-descriptive: it’s made with a rooster and leeks. Or would be, if the cook raised chickens and had spare roosters. It’s more likely to be made with a hen or just standard dark-meat chicken. The soup is often thickened with barley or oatmeal. This still leaves it a more or less conventional chicken soup. It becomes distinctly Scottish when primes are added, either as a garnish or stirred into the broth. That’s the original recipe, one not much followed anymore.
Deft Dining Rule #202:
The additive used to turn a shake into a malt works better if it’s in liquid form, and the best soda fountains know this. Ask for an extra squirt.
People We’d Like To Dine With
This is the birthday of the brilliant ad-lib comedian and actor Jonathan Winters, born today in 1925. He played a wide range of wacky characters, and was a very funny guest on talk shows. Winters was once in a movie with a food name: The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh. He looked as if he enjoyed eating. He passed away in 2013.
The Saints
This is the feast day of St. Martin of Tours, a converted Roman soldier who lived in the fourth century. He is, among many other things, the patron saint of both alcoholics and winemakers. He’s also the patron of geese and people who raise them, which would give him a connection with foie gras.
Weather Guess
The Old Farmer’s Almanac maintains that today, St. Martin’s Day, is the beginning of Indian summer, the brief resumption of warm days after a spate of cold. But they’re in New England, and we’re here, and it seems to me that if we have Indian summer at all, it’s in those days in the middle of December when it goes up into the eighties for no apparent reason.
Food Namesakes
Andy Partridge, an English pop-rock musician, was born today in 1953. . . The great Chicago blues singer LaVern Baker was born today in 1928. . Perry Bass, whose family makes the shoes of the same name, was born in 1914 on this date. . . In 1899 Pie Traynor, a Baseball Hall of Fame third baseman and Pirates hero, was born today. . . Another historic baseball player, Rabbit Maranville, stepped up to The Big Plate today in 1891. He was an infielder, named for his speed on the bases. . . Today in 1493 was the first stanza in the life of Italian poet Bernardo Tasso. . . David L. Cook, Christian country singer and comedian, made his first funny sound today in 1968.
Words To Eat By
“That was the best ice-cream soda I ever tasted.”–Lou Costello, the funny half of Abbott and Costello. He is supposed to have said these words right before he died.
Words To Drink By
“The biggest danger for a politician is to shake hands with a man who is physically stronger, has been drinking and is voting for the other guy.”–William Proxmire, long-time U.S. Senator, born today in 1915.
Name Three Peaches By Their Pen Names.
Tomorrow: Nicknames Of Watermelons. (Don’t spend much time trying to find the humor in here.)
Click here for the cartoon.