It’s summertime at Dick &Jennie’s, which we used to celebrate because summer was the only time when you wouldn’t have to wait for a table. Now that they take reservations, life is a lot easier.
They also have made their summer menu more eater-friendly. The full menu shows about ten dishes marked with asterisks. All of these may be paired with other lucky recipients of the asterisk to create a summer menu with a lot of range. Here are the members of the Order of The Asterisk:
Corn-Fried Oysters
House remoulade, southern coleslaw
~or~
Cristiano’s Original Chargrilled Oysters
~or~
Louisiana Blue Crab Bruschetta
Red bell, shallots, celery, fried capers,Greek yogurt, creole mustard.
~or~
Mussels a la NOLA BBQ
PEI mussels, Abita amber, rosemary, garlic butter, hot sauce, Worcestershire
~or~
Risotto Balls
Gulf shrimp, house smoked tasso, parmesan risotto, panko crust, house-made pepper jelly
~~~~~
Summer Squash Pomodoro
Zucchini spaghetti, yellow squash, patty pan squash, tomato, portobello, capers, vidalia onions, garlic, artichoke hearts, basil, parmesan
~or~
Black Drum
Bronzed gulf fish, crawfish risotto, shaved asparagus
~or~
Bouillabaisse
Crab, shrimp, gulf fish, mussels, tomatoes, steamed rice, saffron-fennel broth
~or~
Niman Ranch Braised Pork Cheeks
Sautéed southern greens, sweet potato salad, rosemary biscuit, white bbq
The price for these summer sessions on Tchoupitoulas Street is $35 for the two-course repast, which also includes your choice of a blueberry panna cotta for dessert or a glass of wine.
Dick & Jenny’s
Uptown: 4501 Tchoupitoulas. 504-894-9880. www.dickandjennys.com.
NOMenu invites restaurants or organizations with upcoming special events to tell us, so we might add the news to this free department. Send to news@nomenu.com.
Friday, August 12, 2016.
Baco Bar, Ever More Confusing.
Mary Ann is packing for another trip to Los Angeles, she to get a respite of peace and quiet. She will bask in the aura of our eight-month-old grandson, Jackson, the happiest little boy any of us have ever seen. Not only that, but Jackson’s parents Jude and Suzanne have actually managed to equal Mary Ann’s standards for parental responsibility. (She can get away with this because she herself was the ultimate in mothers.) No wonder she likes to hang out with the Los Angeles branch of our family.
Dining room at Baco Bar
She and I have a farewell-for-now lunch at Baco Bar, in the big new shopping area of Covington off I-12. She liked Baco Bar at first, but with each new visit–today’s is number four for me, and over six for her) our thoughts converge on this thought: what kind of restaurant is this, anyway? We find Chinese, island, Mexican, and Japanese influences, but when everything converges into a meal, we find little for our appetites to grab hold.
Baco Bar’s fries.
My lunch, for example, is a pair of those puffy white Chinese steam buns, with some herbs and cabbage inside and a couple of finger-size bits of fried catfish. I don’t like those buns–they have no detectable flavor, and the dryness of their texture takes over you mouth in what I find an unpleasant way. MA, who disagrees with me about nearly everything, feels the same. And it totals out to, “What exactly are we supposed to get out of this?”
I get a side dish of Mexican street-style corn. I’d had this before and liked it both times, even though the portion is so large (to make up for the catfish?) that I can finish only half of it. That may be partly due to our having an order of fries earlier. Meanwhile, MA has sone grilled shrimp that she sends back to be cooked a bit more. (Not an uncommon thing for her.)
I finish off with a dessert about which the waiter is almost too enthusiastic. It’s parfait with a sort of chicory-coffee panna cotta, and some whipped cream and a little cocoa and (I think) cinnamon across the top. It is very rich and very sweet.
When our analysis of the purpose of this menu peters out, the rain that greeted us when we arrived increases. We didn’t know it at the time, but this was the slow-moving, waterlogged system that would bring disastrous flooding from the Tangipahoa River through Baton Rouge and beyond tothe west.
Fortunately for MA, this doesn’t affect her afternoon flight out. I watch the progress of this system on radar. It gives me something else to be anxious about. The radar makes the storm look like a hurricane. It has circular motion, an identifiable eye, and less power on the east side than on the west side–all hallmarks of a hurricane depicted by radar. The only difference is that there is almost no wind at all. But thank God for that.
I can’t work up the enthusiasm to go out to dinner. So I have another bowl of Lazone’s turtle soup.
Baco Bar.. Covington: 70437 LA21. 985-893-2450.
Veal Saltimbocca
Saltimbocca–a contraction of “salta in bocca”–is as delightful name as I’ve ever heard given a dish. It translates literally as “jump in your mouth”–a reference to how good it’s supposed to be. This is a simple veal dish, a classic of Italian cooking. You can knock people out with it, and spend less than fifteen minutes cooking it. Wait until you can find some fresh sage leaves, though. That shouldn’t be too hard, markets being what they are these days. Using dry Marsala wine (Florio is the big name in that) to make the sauce brings in some of the flavor of veal Marsala. But you can also use dry white or a light red wine. The most important datum in this recipe is that the veal must be sliced and pounded very, very thin.
8 large, thin scallops of white veal, about 2 oz. each, pounded
Flour
Salt
White pepper
8 thin slices of prosciutto (domestic is okay, Italian is better)
8 large leaves of fresh sage, washed
2 Tbs. extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 cup dry Marsala (or white or light red wine)
2 1/2 Tbs. butter
1. After pounding out the veal, dust (don’t dredge) with pinches of flour and season with salt and pepper. Place a slice of prosciutto along one side of each of the veal slices, and top with a sage leaf. Fold the veal over to cover the prosciutto and sage (not necessarily completely) and pound along the edge to seal. (You can use a toothpick to hold this pocket together if necessary.)
2. Heat the olive oil until it shimmers and is fragrant in a large heavy skillet over medium-high heat. Cook the veal about 20 seconds on each side and remove, doing four at a time.
3. Add the Marsala to the pan and bring to a boil, while dissolving off the browned bits from the bottom of the pan. Reduce the liquid to about one-half the original amount, then remove the pan from the heat. Whisk in the butter in small pieces to give a creamy look to the sauce. Adjust the seasoning with salt and pepper.
4. Return the veal to the pan just long enough to coat with the sauce, and serve immediately. This is great with a bitter green vegetable (broccoli di rape, or just plain broccoli) or wild rice.
Serves four.
Fried Chicken @ Sal and Judy’s
The great New Orleans-Italian restaurant in Lacombe may seem an unlikely entrant on a list of the best fried chicken in town, but there it is. It’s a half-chicken cut up into the traditional four pieces, fried to order to a crisp, greaseless darker-than-golden brown. It’s seasoned exactly the way thinking about it would conjure up, and just plain good. They even have fresh-cut fries to go with it. Although this is perceived as an upscale restaurant, the price of the chicken is like what you’d expect to pay in a neighborhood joint. All you have to do is get into the place. Reservations are essential.
Sal and Judy’s. Lacombe: 27491 Highway 190. 985-882-9443.
This is among the 500 best dishes in New Orleans area restaurants. Click here for a list of the other 499.
August 16, 2016
Days Until. . .
Coolinary Summer Specials End 14
Today’s Flavor
National Bratwurst Day today. We don’t do brats much around New Orleans, although the coarser, more authentic kind is becoming popular due to the homogenized buying practices of national chain grocery stores. What they call a brat in Chicago and Milwaukee looks like a fat albino hot dog. Like many favorites from other places, that’s never caught on here, although some restaurants have tried.
Edible Dictionary
knockwurst, German, n.–It’s not too much of an oversimplification to call a knockwurst a short, fat hot dog. It’s made with very finely chopped pork or veal or both, flavored with garlic, stuffed into a thin casing, and smoked. Because the only people who buy knockwurst are serious about their sausages, it tends to be of better quality than a typical frankfurter. The name is actually knackwurst, a reference in German to the way its skin cracks when is sizzles over an open fire. Again, a lot like a hot dog does. A 1970s sandwich shop near Jesuit High School (called Dagwood’s until the owners of the comic strip told them to change the name) had a great hot knockwurst poor boy with sauerkraut and provolone cheese. They called it the Elmer special.
Gourmet Gazetteer
Pheasant Hill is in the northeast corner of Oklahoma, seventy-two miles northeast of Tulsa. It rises 840 feet above sea level, about 150 feet above the bed of Big Cabin Creek, which runs along its western flank. Two cemeteries are on the broad top of Pheasant Hill. This is an oil drilling area, with numerous wells nearby. It’s unlikely that you’ll dine of pheasant nearby (unless you shoot and cook it yourself). But a hunger can be sated five miles south the Pheasant Hill at the Hornets Corner Diner in Vinita.
The Beginnings Of A Great Cocktail
Today in 1498, on his third voyage, Christopher Columbus landed on the beach of the island of Margarita, off the coast of what is now Venezuela. He was met on the beach by Jimmy Buffett, who, in 1948. . .oh, wait. I transposed two numbers and now. . . well, never mind.
However, it’s also National Rum Day. Until the storm, New Orleans had the only rum distillery in the United States, making N.O. Rum. Logically enough, this is also Baba au Rhum Day. Rum baba–a cake soaked with rum mixed with syrup–was once a popular dessert in New Orleans restaurants. The old Chris Steak House made an especially good one. But I don’t think any restaurant serves it anymore.
The Gourmet Of The Opera
Gioacchino Rossini was one of the great composers of opera, a dedicated gourmet, and the man for whom the foie-gras-topped dish filet de boeuf Rossini is named. He didn’t just like it: he created it. Today in 1846, he got married. He never composed another opera. “Why do you waste all that time writing all that stuff for big women to howl?” his wife probably told him.
Annals Of Oyster-Eating
Grand Central Station began construction in New York City today in 1904. It’s the last of the Apple’s great train stations, and also the home of the fabulous old Oyster Bar and Restaurant (that’s it’s official name). In a unique space with its arching tile ceilings, they serve not only great oysters from all over the world, but a lengthy list of daily fish specials. The oyster bar was a New York creation that we adopted, as much as we think of the institution as our own.
Wine Pioneers
Today is the birthday of Fess Parker, who was a hero to many guys my age who were little boys in the 1950s, when he played Davy Crockett. After his acting career ended, he did well in many other ventures, including the excellent winery that bears his name in Southern California. The label features a small coonskin cap in gold. It was one of the biggest thrills of my radio career to have him as a guest on my show about ten years ago. I was sorry to hear that he passed away early this year at 86. He’ll always be the king of the wild frontier to me.
The Saints
Today is the feast day of St. Roch, a well-known name in New Orleans food history. The St. Roch Market, on the street with the same name at the corner of St. Claude, was one of the last neighborhood public markets. Like all the rest was made obsolete by the advent of supermarkets. In recent decades, it was the home of a seafood restaurant, which later opened branches in New Orleans East and Covington. Roch (pronounced “rock”) was a French nobleman, alleged to have been born with a birthmark in the shape of a cross. He lived in the 1300s, when plague was running rampant. He caught it himself, and while waiting to die in the woods outside Montpelier, he was kept alive by a dog who brought him food every day. He is much revered in Italy, where he’s called St. Rocco.
Food Names
Singer Eydie Gorme was born today in 1932. . . Bill Spooner, who was a member of the rock group The Tubes, was born today in 1949. . . Ebenezer Sage, a Congressman from New York in the early 1800s, was born today in 1765.
Words To Drink By
“Let us candidly admit that there are shameful blemishes on the American past, of which the worst by far is rum. Nevertheless, we have improved man’s lot and enriched his civilization with rye, bourbon and the Martini cocktail. In all history has any other nation done so much?”–Bernard De Voto, American novelist.
“Beer is not a good cocktail party drink, especially in a home where you don’t know where the bathroom is.”– Billy Carter.
Words To Eat By
“If the material world is merely illusion, an honest guru should be as content with Budweiser and bratwurst as with raw carrot juice, tofu and seaweed slime.”–Edward Abbey.
An Unexplored Pairing.
Which wines go best with mystery books? With romantic novels? Or self-help tomes?
Click here for the cartoon.