Wednesday, August 3, 2016
Superlative Eat Club Dinner @ Trenasse.
The Eat Club has dinner at Trenasse, the two years new restaurant in the Hotel Inter-Continental. I wish every Eat Club event went off as well as this one did. We were slightly overbooked, but the restaurant jumped into action and made up an extra table for us tout de suite. They were on top of everything else all night long.
The people who filled all these forty-three seats were an unusually light-hearted bunch. The first-timers were a majority, something that almost never happens. (The breakdown for a typical Eat Club dinner is equal thirds of novices, occasional diners, and frequent attendees.) This made it a good party all night.
But the food stood out, according to everyone I spoke to. There was a story behind ou menu. The owners of Trenasse, asked by the hotel’s developer to show its stuff in a big dinner, passed the test with such flying colors that they brought the same menu back especially for us.
We began with a grilled oyster with its cheesy, smoky sauce. Then a trio of soups: fowl gumbo, crabmeat bisque, and an artichoke soup. All three were excellent, especially if the eater saved the very spicy gumbo until last.
Now a tidbit that seemed trivial: a miniature puck of potatoes au gratin, topped with a creamy sauce with crabmeat. How the chef managed to elevate to the lofty extent that he did I don’t know, but almost everybody remarks how remarkable the thing is. The dish has a track record: at the Wine and Food Experience this year, the dish won Best Of Show. For once, an award proves its veracity in reality.
The entree is surf and turf, a phrase that usually indicates a restaurant without ideas. Not here, though. A nice fillet of redfish with a powerful medium-brown meuniere sauce is on my left, and beef short ribs–first smoked and then braised–are on the right. I am no fan of short ribs, but this is astonishingly fine. Mary Ann, a short-rib admirer, is thoroughly pleased.
The dessert is a nice, soft landing, a clafoutis of local berries with vanilla mint ice cream (!).
The wines make no huge statements, but the idea of serving a Trimbach Reserve Pinot Gris with the amazing potato dish is inspired. On the other hand, I’m still trying to figure out why the Clendenon Pinot Noir was served cold.
The dinner even ended on time. And before it started, I interviewed the owners and the chef and found them full of stories. But I expected that, since Trenasse is a descendent ofn a Florida Gulf Coast restaurant called “Stinky’s Fish House.” In digging into that, I discovered an odd fact. One of the owners worked in the kitchen of Commander’s Palace during the Jamie Shannon days. He said that everybody in the kitchen back then referred to each other as “Stink.” As in, “Hey Stink! Got that veal chop mid well?” “In my hand, Stink!” I guess it’s better than some of the languages I’ve heard in restaurant kitchens.
Trenasse. CBD: 444 St Charles Ave. 504-680-7000.
Thursday, August 4, 2016.
Into The American Sector.
With the addition of the four food-and-beverage outlets at the newly-reopened Pontchartrain Hotel, John Besh is clearly in the restaurant management business. That’s a very different thing from being the chef of a restaurant, requiring different skills. But John has those skills. Perhaps even more important, he has a staff of restaurant-management professionals who execute the day-to-day at a very high level.
When the number of restaurants in a management group gets large enough, it’s typical that some units (“restaurants,” to translate from the industry jargon) stop being a good fit with the others. That appears to be the reason why John and company stopped running the American Sector, the restaurant in the World War II Museum. A couple of years ago, the Sector was taken over by Centerplate, a management company that handles such projects here and there around the country. Locally, this includes the food services in the Convention Center and the Superdome.
For some reason, I’ve been asked about the American Sector more than a few times lately. That makes sense: the WWII Museum is such a spectacular draw for New Orleans visitors and the millions of people interested in history. And the idea of having a restaurant with food, music, and graphics from the 1940’s makes perfect sense.
If only they did it in even a little above average way.
The first time I went to the American Sector recently was the day after the Fourth of July. It was closed. The second time was today. It was open, but sparsely populated for dinner. A women’s club that has some connection with WWII history was in a semi-private room having dinner.
The menu does indeed have a number of dishes that were much more popular in the 1940s than now. Meat loaf, to name one. But ordering a war-era dinner that’s both true to the tastes of the past and good is not, let’s say, easily done.
Fried oysters and pork belly, with a levee of microgreens.
But we try. We begin with a big bowl of fresh-cut fries, squirted here and there with aioli and flavored (faintly) of truffles. The server said it was a tall order, but we finish it off handily. Then a sort of deconstructed fried oyster sandwich, with no bread (MA’s spec). The oysters come with cubes of pork belly and tomato jam. Interesting flavor, big, crisp oysters. But this is no 1945 dish. More like 2012. Not a huge failing, since the eating was agreeable. But still. . .
Garlic chicken with orzo.
My main dish is also very much a latter-day recipe. It’s described as garlic chicken with orzo. What comes out is a bowl of rich, thick pasta nodules (orzo is pasta in the shape and size of rice grains). The chicken is in small cubes, totally overwhelmed by the pasta and its creamy sauce. It’s not bad, but so rich that I could only get through about half.
MA has a second entree, but only after she ascertains that the salmon involved is wild-caught from Atlantic waters. (Most of her food has to pass tests like this lately.) It’s big, and she doesn’t finish that, either. I put a modest dent in it. Again, pretty good, but about as much along 1940s tastes as rap music is like Big Band. (Salmon in New Orleans was, until around 1978, almost always canned product, which this clearly was not.)
Salmon with Brussels sprouts (in the skillet).
We have more fun watching the silent movies of classic World War II moments. Lots of Bob Hope and his nemesis Jerry Collona. (I think comedians ought to have their own nemeses these days.) And female singers we couldn’t identify. MA remarks that women back then had much bigger thighs than now.
I leave with the same thought I came in with. If I were visiting New Orleans I would certainly spend a long time in rhe WWII Museum. But I’d have lunch or dinner elsewhere. Many, many great places to eat in that neighborhood.
American Sector. Warehouse District & Center City: 945 Magazine St. 504-528-1940.
Mexican Creme Brulee
Creme brulee appeared in New Orleans in the early 1980s (Arnaud’s served the first one), and over the years it supplanted the once-universal caramel custard. It’s now on almost every non-Asian menu. The difference between creme brulee and caramel custard is that the former is made with cream and has the sugar crusted on top; the latter is made with milk and has sugar caramelized into a syrup at the bottom of the baking cup.
Creme brulee must be baked very carefully and slowly, or it will not reach its proper perfect semi-flowing state. You can’t do it in standard custard cups; much better are shallow (an inch or so deep) glass or ceramic ramekins or au gratin dishes. They also have to be straight-sided, so there’s no thin rim of custard to burn when you blast the sugar topping.
It is also essential to insulate the bottoms of the dishes from the pan they’re sitting on. Those air-insulated baking pans work well. If you don’t have one, you can get the same effect by setting the baking dishes into a pan with about an inch deep of warm water.)
To give the creme brulee a Mexican flavor, use Mexican vanilla–the kind sold in quart-size bottles in every Mexican kitchen or gift shop . My own preference is for Ronald Reginald’s Melipone vanilla, made here in New Orleans and created by the late, great Chef Warren LeRuth. The aroma of Melipone (named for the bee that fertilizes the vanilla orchids) is almost alluring enough to use as a perfume.
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1 quart whipping cream
9 large egg yolks
2/3 cup sugar
2 Tbs. top-class, powerful vanilla
Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
1. The first step is not essential, but does give an extra measure of elegance. Spread the brown sugar out, breaking all the lumps, on a big plate. Put it into the microwave oven for 10 minutes at 10 percent power, then let it cool for 30 minutes. This will remove the excess moisture from the brown sugar and keep it from turning to syrup when you blast it later.
2. Combine 1/4 cup of cream and the egg yolks in a metal bowl, and whisk to blend well. Stir in the sugar until nearly dissolved.
3. Put the rest of the cream into a small saucepan and heat it over medium heat until wisps of steam start appearing. (Don’t boil even a little.)
4. Add the vanilla to the warm cream. Stir, then pour the warm cream slowly into the metal bowl while whisking.
5. Strain the custard through a fine sieve into a large measuring cup. Pour the custard into the baking dishes.
6. Pour hot water into the pan until it’s halfway up the sides of the baking dishes. Put the pan into the preheated 325-degree oven and bake for 30 minutes. Depending on what dishes you’re using, it may take as long as another 15 minutes. The custard should be set but not solid.
8. Remove the dishes from the pan and set out to cool for a half hour, then refrigerate for at least three hours, or as long as a day.
9. When ready to serve, preheat the broiler. (Or the broil feature of your toaster oven, which works better for this than you might imagine.) Sprinkle enough brown sugar on top of each custard to completely cover, and run them under the broiler for about 30 seconds–until the sugar melts. You might want to turn the dishes so that this happens uniformly.
Serves eight.
Bananas Foster Poor Boy @ Ye Olde College Inn
If you soak a piece of stale French bread in the kind of liquid custard you’d use to make lost bread or bread pudding, you can bake it and find that it still looks like a piece of French bread. The amazing thing is that it now tastes like bread pudding. Mark Quitney–former chef of the Marriott Hotel on Canal Street–came up with this idea first, using bananas Foster as the custard component. But not long afterward, the College Inn put forth its version in the Po-Boy Festival and won second place. The College In still has that unique, optical illusion version on its menu. It’s the best dessert in the house, and one of the most original desserts I’ve ever enjoyed.
Ye Olde College Inn. Uptown 4: Riverbend, Carrollton & Broadmoor: 3016 S Carrollton Ave. 504-866-3683.
This is among the 500 best dishes in New Orleans area restaurants. Click here for a list of the other 499.
August 9, 2016
Days Until. . .
Coolinary Summer Specials End 22 Three-course dinners $39 (or less). All the menus can be found here.
Annals Of Fishing
On this date in 1593, Isaak Walton was born in England. He was to write a book that not only set down everything one could know about fishing at that time, but set the standard for books that studied any particular field. It was called The Compleat Angler. Its antique spelling lives on as a common affectation. The book was more about catching fish for food than for sport, although fun was part of it too.
Annals Of Smoking
Today in 1902, King Edward VII was crowned as the monarch of England, succeeding Queen Victoria, his mother. His first official act when he appeared before Parliament was to rescind an edict of the late Queen with this line: “Gentlemen, you may smoke.” He smoked a dozen cigars a day, plus a pack of cigarettes. That’s why a popular line of inexpensive cigars was named for him.
Food Calendar
This is National Rice Pudding Day. Rice pudding is one of those dishes that’s much loved but rarely eaten. It’s brought up on the radio show six or seven times a year always with an undertone of longing for some wonderful memory of the past. It even has a cherished old French name: riz au lait. I have a recipe for it in today’s newsletter. (It’s also in my cookbook, if you have it.)
The Old Kitchen Sage Sez
To really love rice pudding, you must be over seventy.
Gourmet Gazetteer
Mushroom Farms, Pennsylvania is thirty-one miles east of Scranton, in the Pocono Mountains. They really do grow and package mushrooms in the area, which is wooded and hilly enough that many wild mushrooms probably grow, too. Maybe some of them turn up on the pizzas you can order for dinner at Napoli Pizza, a half-mile away.
Cookbooks Through History
This is the birth date, in 1762, of Mary Randolph. She married into one of the most prominent families of Virginia and lived a life of privilege, until her husband fell into disfavor with Thomas Jefferson and lost his job. Their fortunes declined. Mary Randolph opened a boarding house, where her skills at running a large manor made it a success. She wrote a cookbook called The Virginia Housewife, . It is considered the first major work on the subject of Southern cookery. Written for women with genteel lifestyles, it was carefully assembled, and included exact measurements of ingredients–a rare quality in recipes of the time.
Edible Dictionary
Szechuan pepper, n.–The husks of the fruits of Zanthoxylum piperitum and related plants, all native to central China. When used in combination with other hot peppers (usually red chilies), Szechuan peppers create the distinctive hot flavors and sensations found in the dishes from the Szechuan region. The peppers are unusual in that the husks, not the seed inside, are used in cooking. It doesn’t have much of a flavor, per se; it works on nerve endings to make them more receptive to other flavor sensations. True Szechuan peppers are not often found in American Chinese restaurants, which usually get by with only the red chili peppers.
Annals Of Public Buildings
The Superdome’s first public event–a loss for the Saints against the Houston Oilers in a pre-season game–took place today in 1975. Best food: the SuperDog, created by the now-gone local King Cotton meat-packing company. The dog was indeed bigger than normal, and better, too, with an interesting spice and garlic component. . . Today in 1173, construction began on the Campanile in Pisa, Italy. Better known as the Leaning Tower of Pisa, its image is seen somewhere in three out of four American Italian restaurants. I wonder how many pizzerias with the name “Tower Of Pizza” there are around the world. We have one here, of course.
Food Namesakes
Claude I. Bakewell, former U.S. Congressman from Missouri, was born in St. Louis today in 1912. . . Baseball pro Mike Lamb was born today in 1975.
Words To Eat By
“Blessed be he that invented pudding, for it is a manna that hits the palates of all sorts of people; a manna better than that of the wilderness, because the people are never weary of it.”–Francois Maximilien Mission, French writer.
Words To Drink By
“Drinking is a way of ending the day.”–Ernest Hemingway.
Why Baseball Isn’t As Popular In Italy As It Is In The U.S.
It all has to do with how the balls are made. Which is something your Sicilian grandmother can tell you all about.
Click here for the cartoon.