Tuesday, April 26, 2016.
Part Two. A New Mexican Cantina In Metairie.
El Paso is a big new Tex-Mex restaurant, one of a small chain in Louisiana. It takes the place, across the highway from Dorignac’s, of a big Chinese restaurant that had an ambitious and a studied ethnicity. I went there a couple of times and found the Chinese dishes over my head, and the Americanized ones just pretty good.
El Paso has not made that marketing mistake. The menu stays with the dishes popular in the newer Mexican places around town. So we get a salsa that packs a good fresh punch and a lot of lime juice. Street tacos in all their variety. And even a single dish served with my favorite Mexican sauce, molé poblano.
That one appears on a trio of chicken enchiladas. Molé classically is served either with roast chicken or cheese enchiladas. They must have thought that the could kill two birds with one stone. The result is that the molé’s chocolate-and-chili flavors get buried both visually and gustatorily. Not bad, but not quite good enough.
Before that was a soup of charro beans with sausage chunks. Not bad, but it came out barely warm. After the molé, I had a flan, thick and sweet.
It could be that the best part of the evening was a band calling itself the Quarter Notes. They and their singer churned out blues, rock, soul, and pop from a wide repertoire. I went over to congratulate them for their abilities, and learned that there’s live music at El Paso every weeknight. The music–which, of course, was too loud–had the effect of turning the crowd into a party.
Someone will surely post a note to the effect that I went to El Paso too soon. I think that is accurate, but the management seems to have things under control. They inherited from the Chinese place a very handsome restaurant, too.
El Paso. Metairie. 601 Veterans Blvd.
Wednesday, April 27, 2016.
Up The Creek At Commander’s Palace. Legacy Kitchen.
A couple of days ago Ti Martin–the co-owner of Commander’s Palace with her cousin Lally Brennan–asked me to be interviewed for a television program about the career of Ti’s mother Ella Brennan. That is easily done. The only stumbling block is figuring out what to say. Ella’s career was so exemplary that a list of her achievements seems impossible to have been accomplished by just one person.
I did the best I could, relying on the kind of facts that Ella herself embraced. She was a great maker of one-liners. My favorite: sitting down to dinner some twenty years ago, she picked up the menu and scanned it for about fifteen seconds. “I haven’t seen the menu all week,” she said as her eyes went up and across the big card. Then she put it down and said, “This is the best menu in America tonight!” Her tone indicated that no right-minded person would have missed that fact. I was at her table for that dinner, and can report that it was indeed as fine a selection as I could imagine, at least at that moment.
The woman interviewing me kept pressing me to say that Ella was responsible to a great extent for the celebrity chefs so unavoidable in restaurants today. I don’t think she was. Ella and the other Brennans were always slow to bring attention to themselves, usually insistent that the chefs and other staff get most of the accolades.
I think it’s more truthful to say that the superstar chefs–and Commander’s had more than its share–would not have become what they became had Ella Brennan or someone as strong as she was kept them in line.
The interview went on for an hour, punctuated by thunder now and then. I had to stop at two-thirty. It was radio time. But when I got downstairs, I found something I didn’t expect: Washington Avenue was covered with water, from above the curb to above the other curb. It lapped on the steps of Commander’s entrance. Where did this come from?
Ti had one of her younger staffers wade out and fetch my car. I was fortunate in that the water there was only three or four inches deep. But as I attempted to drive to the radio station, I saw many stretches with water a foot deep. Some of the cars leaned deeply into the deluge, certainly taking flood damage.
The water drained out visibly. But it was an hour before I could escape from this flood, which covered about a hundred blocks. I was forty-five minutes late getting on the air. In twenty-eight years, I’ve been late–usually by a few minutes–only about a dozen times.
To dinner at the Legacy Kitchen. I dined at the new Warehouse District location of that restaurant a few weeks ago, and found it a lot different from what I remember from the original in Metairie.
I guess that’s just the inconsistency of a new restaurant, because in Metairie this evening the food was better. I started with a corn and crab bisque with a lot more going on than I find in most such. The entree was a Caesar salad with some offbeat greens, toped by a half-dozen fried oysters. Pretty good.
And that’s when it occurred to me that this was the second corn bisque today. The other one–at the bar at Commander’s earlier this afternoon–was corn bisque with crawfish. What is with this business lately of my getting the same items several times in a short period.
Legacy Kitchen. Metairie: 759 Veterans Memorial Blvd. 504-309-5231.
Key Lime Pie
The rich, tart pie is named for the funny little limes that grow in the Florida keys. Those are almost impossible to find in stores, but regular limes offer plenty enough sacrifice in the amount of time it takes to juice them out. Remember to wear plastic gloves while juicing limes, as something in the skins will make you feel as if you had toothpicks shoved under your fingernails the day after if you don’t.
If you’d like to bake your own pie shell, see the recipe for
Key Lime Pie
The rich, tart pie is named for the funny little limes that grow in the Florida keys. Those are almost impossible to find in stores, but regular limes offer plenty enough sacrifice in the amount of time it takes to juice them out. Remember to wear plastic gloves while juicing limes, as something in the skins will make you feel as if you had toothpicks shoved under your fingernails the day after if you don’t.
10-inch pre-baked pie shell
4 oz. Baker’s semi-sweet chocolate
Filling:
Juice and pulp of 10 limes
Zest of 2 limes
5 whole eggs
5 egg yolks
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 oz. softened butter
1. Melt the chocolate in a microwave oven in 30-second bursts, stirring it between each until it’s completely melted, smooth, and pourable. (This can also be done in a bowl over a pan of boiling water.)
2. Pour the chocolate into the pie shell. With a spoon, spread it around to coat the inside of the pie shell evenly.
3. Combine all filling ingredients except the butter in a metal bowl set over (but not touching) simmering water. Whisk briskly until the mixture thickens and becomes fluffy–about 10-15 minutes.
4. When the mixture has reached the desired thickness, whisk in the butter.
5. Pour the mixture into the pie shell. Put the pie into the refrigerator to set for about two hours.
6. Decorate pie with shaved chocolate, whipped cream, or lime slices.
Serves eight to ten.
Peach And Blueberry Cobbler @ Mat & Naddie’s
In season (spring and early summer) this is such a marvelous dessert that your internal control mechanism is overruled–even though it’s clearly as jammed with calories as it seems. Not so sweet as most cobblers, this has freshness and elegance. Bad news: like most dishes at Mat & Naddie’s, this one comes and goes, depending on what else is coming from their bakery. I don’t see it on the current online menu, for example. But if they happen to feature the P&B cobbler, don’t miss it.
Mat & Naddie’s. Riverbend: 937 Leonidas. 504-861-9600.
This dish is ranked in NOMenu’s list of the 500 best dishes in New Orleans restaurants.
April 28, 2016
Days Until. . .
Jazz Festival Resumes Today
Mother’s Day 9
New Orleans Wine And Food Experience 28
Restaurant Anniversaries
Today in 1932, Charlie’s Steak House opened on Dryades Street a block off Napoleon Avenue–right where it is today. Charles Petrossi started it, and turned it over to his children decades later. One of them–Dottye Bennett, who waited tables in the restaurant for decades–still shows up at Charlie’s now and then. Matthew Dwyer, who bought Charlie’s and renovated it after the hurricane, continues to roll along with the place, which is as close as you could get to what it was before the storm without applying grime to the new walls.
Today’s Flavor
The celebration of the best part of crawfish season here in Louisiana continues. Today is Crawfish Pie Day. Crawfish pie became famous outside the precincts where it’s most enjoyed through the agency of Hank Williams’s hit song Jambalaya. That song created a three-way combo that Cajun restaurants offer to this day: jambalaya, crawfish pie, and filé gumbo. Crawfish pie starts with the same ensemble of ingredients you’d use to make crawfish etouffee, but with no tomato and less liquid. It’s also enriched with a little cream and thickened with a touch of egg. Although the classic crawfish pie is made in a standard (but small) pie shell, my preference is to make it as a turnover, baked or fried.
It is also National Blueberry Pie Day. Blueberries aren’t in season yet–our bushes here at the ranch have nothing yet, and this is as far south as it gets–save, of course, for Chile, from which almost all blue- and blackberries come this time of year. In any case, blueberry pie sounds better than it is. For the blueberries to hold a berry texture, they must float in a thick matrix, which is too often made super-sweet. Blueberries are so marvelous in their fresh state that this comes across to our palates as a parody. But then, I like blueberry jam on my toast.
Gourmet Gazetteer
Orange is a small farming community in northeast Pennsylvania. It’s 1145 feet up in the hills overlooking the Susquehanna River valley, with Scranton to the east and Wilkes-Barre to the south, each about ten miles from Orange. The place to eat around there is the Checkerboard Inn, which boasts that it makes fine cocktails as well as appetizing food. It’s five miles away in Trucksville.
Celebrity Chefs Today
Today is the birthday (although he won’t tell me which one) of Richard Hughes, the chef-owner of the five-star Pelican Club. Richard first attracted our notice when he worked for Iler Pope at Dante By The River (where Brigtsen’s is now). He then moved on to New York City, where he was the chef at a well-liked restaurant called Memphis. (Despite the name, it served Louisiana food.) He and some chef partners started the Pelican Club in July of 1990. After the hurricane, Richard took full control of the restaurant. As star chefs go, he’s one of the quietest, and seems to enjoy flying his restaurant below the radar.
Speaking of star chefs: Alice Waters, the founder of Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California, was born today in 1944. Her inspiration was in tirelessly searching for the best possible ingredients, and encouraging farmers to raise better quality foodstuffs, with as few artificial additives and techniques as possible. She led the movement toward organic foods in restaurants, and in doing so became one of the three or four most influential figures in the modern American restaurant industry. Here’s a good site that tells about her and her ideas.
Annals Of Food Research
We don’t think of sugar beets often, but in fact a great deal of sugar is extracted from them, particularly in Eastern Europe. The man who developed the method for extracting the sucrose, Franz Karl Achard, was born today in 1753. As far as I know, sugar beets are rarely eaten as is.
Edible Dictionary
salmonberry, salmonberry, n.–A large, orange-red berry similar in shape and appearance to blackberries and raspberries, but a bit larger. They grow on bushes instead of vines, and the bushes are perennial–not biannual like blackberries. They look and are very juicy, but their flavor isn’t as tasty as that of the other members of its family. They grow along the West Coast, from northern California northward. They’re found in particular profusion in the temperate rainforests of the Alaska panhandle. The bears love them. They’re very pretty to look at.
Turning Points In Dining
W.H. Carrier patented the modern air conditioner on this date in 1914. This was an incomparable for restaurants in places like New Orleans. Try to imagine dining at Galatoire’s or Arnaud’s on a 95-degree day in August with 85 percent humidity with nothing more than the arsenal of ceiling fans to keep patrons cool. (If you can’t, go to Southern Italy in July and dine anywhere.) Thank you, Mr. Carrier!
Annals Of School Lunches
Remember the student who was apprehended at his grammar school and had his pack searched, because he appeared to be carrying a gun? And that it turned out to be a very large burrito wrapped in aluminum foil? It was in Clovis, New Mexico, today in 2006.
Music To Do Shots By
Today in 1958, the mostly-instrumental song Tequila, by The Champs, hit Number One on the pop charts. The only word spoken (not really sung) in the number is the title.
Deft Dining Rule #838:
You can have fun picking and eating wild berries, but no matter how many you find and eat, you will still need lunch afterwards.
Food Namesakes
Appropriate for today, Canadian singer Dorothee Berryman was picked today in 1948. . . Today is the birthday, in 1930, of James Baker III, cabinet member in the Reagan and Bush I administrations.
Words To Eat By
“A person who can get a good table at Chez Panisse at the last minute is a very important person indeed. Royalty begins with Alice Waters.”–Willard Spiegelman.
“I’ve got a lot of ham in me.”–Actor Lionel Barrymore, born today in 1878.
Words To Drink By
“I drink no more than a sponge”–Francois Rabelais, French author.
What Exactly Does Farm-To-Table Mean?
Well, it depends on the milieu. This one comes from the perspective of a comic strip. Only three out of four get it.
Click here for the cartoon.