Saturday, September 10, 2019.
Tumbling.
My life resumes its oneliness as the sun rises in the east over Lake Pontchartrain. Mary Ann barely made her five-thirty flight to Los Angeles, and then only after begging the airline to accept her her highly miscellaneous standby documents. I don’t know how she does it, or why I’m the one with the hypertension instead of her.
When I arrive home I take a two-hour nap. I meet with Paul and Mike, two fellow singers from NPAS, to rehearse “Tumbling Tumbleweeds.” Our audition before Alissa the conductor is this Monday. I’m still having trouble with the last two notes, but I’m improving.
Beginning this week, my Saturday show on WWL Radio moves to middays, where it was during most of the years since Katrina. This will make for fewer pre-emptions for my show during the LSU football season. But fewer is not all. My show ends not at three, but at two p.m. Next week we go only until one.
I take another nap (I have been up since four this morning). I have dinner at Thai Chili.The lady running the dining room by herself is very friendly. When I ask if she will change the channel omn the television from a boxing match to anything else, she gives me Fox News. I guess that’s a little better than a fracas of fisticuffs.
Another friendly face appears in the dining room. It’s Vicki Bayley. Every time I see her anywhere, the same thing happens: She is so beautiful that for a moment I don’t recognize her. Vicki’s amazing career includes several years as general manager of the Fair Grounds, opening Mike’s On The Avenue not once but twice, renovating and opening Artesia in Abita Springs, where John Besh first became famous. She’s also a mommy.
She tells me how fabulous I look. This weight loss of mine is getting more such comments than I’ve ever heard in my entire life. I know I’m not that good looking. Then a friend tipped me off to something I should have known: when a woman compliments a man, it is likely that she is shopping for nice words about herself. Still nice to hear, though.
Vicki, who is a good friend of Mary Ann, finds the Wedding Non-Day Massacree story fascinating. How did she know about it? I can’t tell it fast enough. Everybody seems to know already.
Lately Vicki has been working on a private-dining enterprise in the Jax Brewery. I went to one of her events a few months ago, and thought that the space–with a view of the river–is very nice. She told me where Chef Mike Fennelly is. Sounds like he’s doing more visual art than cooking these days.
She came to my table a few minutes after my entree arrived. It’s pad thai, the national dish of Thailand. It is not one of my favorite Thai dishes. In fact, I’d say that the broad range of Thai-style pasta dishes are not really to my taste. The pasta was like a linguine, served in much too great a portion. The flavor of the sauce and its vegetables is very good–Thai Chili is not shy about loading up the plates with pepper.
The pad thai was strictly for research purposes. One of the drawbacks of doing what I do for a living is that I have to eat dishes other than my favorites.
Saturday, September 10, 2019.
Thai Chili, Too Much Linguini.
My life resumes its oneliness as the sun rises in the east over Lake Pontchartrain. Mary Ann barely made her five-thirty flight to Los Angeles, and then only after begging the airline to accept her her highly miscellaneous standby documents. I don’t know how she does it, or why I’m the one with the hypertension instead of her.
When I arrive home I take a two-hour nap. I meet with Paul and Mike, two fellow singers from NPAS, to rehearse “Tumbling Tumbleweeds.” Our audition before Alissa the conductor is this Monday. I’m still having trouble with the last two notes, but I’m improving.
Beginning this week, my Saturday show on WWL Radio moves to middays, where it was during most of the years since Katrina. This will make for fewer pre-emptions for my show during the LSU football season. But fewer is not all. My show ends not at three, but at two p.m. Next week we go only until one.
I take another nap (I have been up since four this morning). I have dinner at Thai Chili.The lady running the dining room by herself is very friendly. When I ask if she will change the channel omn the television from a boxing match to anything else, she gives me Fox News. I guess that’s a little better than a fracas of fisticuffs.
Another friendly face appears in the dining room. It’s Vicki Bayley. Every time I see her anywhere, the same thing happens: She is so beautiful that for a moment I don’t recognize her. Vicki’s amazing career includes several years as general manager of the Fair Grounds, opening Mike’s On The Avenue not once but twice, renovating and opening Artesia in Abita Springs, where John Besh first became famous. She’s also a mommy.
She tells me how fabulous I look. This weight loss of mine is getting more such comments than I’ve ever heard in my entire life. I know I’m not that good looking. Then a friend tipped me off to something I should have known: when a woman compliments a man, it is likely that she is shopping for nice words about herself. Still nice to hear, though.
Vicki, who is a good friend of Mary Ann, finds the Wedding Non-Day Massacree story fascinating. How did she know about it? I can’t tell it fast enough. Everybody seems to know already.
Lately Vicki has been working on a private-dining enterprise in the Jax Brewery. I went to one of her events a few months ago, and thought that the space–with a view of the river–is very nice. She told me where Chef Mike Fennelly is. Sounds like he’s doing more visual art than cooking these days.
She came to my table a few minutes after my entree arrived. It’s pad thai, the national dish of Thailand. It is not one of my favorite Thai dishes. In fact, I’d say that the broad range of Thai-style pasta dishes are not really to my taste. The pasta was like a linguine, served in much too great a portion. The flavor of the sauce and its vegetables is very good–Thai Chili is not shy about loading up the plates with pepper.
The pad thai was strictly for research purposes. One of the drawbacks of doing what I do for a living is that I have to eat dishes other than my favorites.
Sunday, September 11, 2016
A Calm But Frantic Day.
After singing at St. Jane’s, I drive over to Mattina Bella for breakfast. I am reading an article in the New Yorker by a guy who operates a restaurant so much in demand that its few tables are booked until 2020. The chef-owner makes everything he serves himself, often from very offbeat ingredients–leaves, lichens, sticks…it gets more improbable as it goes along. The restaurant charges $450 per person. Among New York goodies, this is supposed to be among the fifty best restaurants in the world. I am once again convinced that New York chefs, restaurateurs and customers are less interest in deliciousness than they are about sheer novelty. Thank goodness we only have a little of that sort of foolishness around here.
While I read about that, Vincent Riccobono of Mattina Bella tells me that he has a new approach to crab cakes for one of his poached egg dishes. It’s loaded with crabmeat, as is his blue-crab Benedict. But the new cake also has a girdle of bacon running through it. I would say that this tastes great, but the bacon does get in the way of the crabmeat flavors. This urge to add bacon to everything grows. If only most of them were as good as this.
I was hoping to work on the lawn tractor, but I have neither the time nor the tools to fix the tire that is keeping it from working. The grass is getting embarrassingly high. But between the bad tire and the rain, what can I do?
I don’t like how quiet things get at the Cool Water Ranch when MA is not around.
Tuna Salad
I see nothing in the world wrong with the idea of eating a tuna salad made with good quality canned tuna. The classic French salade Nicoise is usually made with canned tuna in France. After much trial and error, I find that by leaving out a lot of the stuff that’s usually found in tuna salad (hard-boiled eggs, for instance), you get a better-tasting dish.
1 rib celery, leafy section cut off, coarsely chopped
4 Tbs. mayonnaise
1 tsp. yellow mustard
1 Tbs. buttermilk (substitute with more mayo if necessary)
1 tsp. celery seed
1/4 tsp. dried tarragon
1 tsp. very tiny capers
1/4 tsp. Tabasco jalapeno pepper sauce
1 can solid tuna packed in oil
Salt and black pepper to taste
1. Combine all the ingredients except the tuna, salt and pepper in a bowl.
2. Drain the tuna, and add it to the sauce ingredients. With a fork, stir it in without breaking it any more than necessary. Add salt and pepper to taste.
This is better if it’s made an hour before you eat it, and stored covered in the refrigerator.
Serves two to four.
Lamb Chops @ Galatoire’s 33 Bar & Steak
A handful of New Orleans restaurant obtain fantastic Colorado lamb chops from a long-running New Orleans meat purveyor. It’s so good that at any of the restaurants that carry it (Commander’s, Galatoire’s, and Antoine’s, to name three) its excellence will be obvious. At Galatoire’s new steak house this lamb chop is a feature, and it stands out a bit more than it would in the more sanctified restaurants. The cook it to crusty, even when it remains medium-rare in the center. The variety of sauces–particularly Galatoire’s great bearnaise–adds the crowning touch.
Colorado lamb chops.
Galatoire’s 33 Bar & Steak. French Quarter: 215 Bourbon St. 504-335-3932.
This is among the 500 best dishes in New Orleans area restaurants. Click here for a list of the other 499.
September 15, 2016
Days Until. . .
Summer ends 7
Gourmets Through History
Today is the birthday in 1857 of William Howard Taft, the twenty-seventh President of the United States. He weighed over 300 pounds, a record for the chief executive. Big guys were common in those days of massive eating. Banquet menus from that time make today’s wine dinners look like snacks. Taft, after he finished his term as President, became the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
Turning Points In Eating
Marco Polo was born today in 1254. The explorer from Venice traveled widely in the Far East, establishing trade with those lands. The primary commodity: spices. Marco Polo is often credited with having brought pasta to Italy from China, but pasta was already there. Still, there was once a restaurant in Gretna (in the building where Kim Son is now) named for Marco Polo. Its menu combined Chinese and Italian food. Not a big hit.
Eating Around The World
This is Independence Day for most Central American nations. Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica all broke away from Spain today in 1821. There is without question a distinctive Central American cuisine. It has two sets of roots, in Spanish cookery and in that of the native pre-Columbian populations. It’s based on the foodstuffs native to the area: corn, chile peppers, and beans.
Each Central American country has its own particular dishes, and many of them have different styles of cooking on their east and west coasts. One items found in all of the countries is the tamal–cornmeal and a little meat enclosed in a banana leaf. But even that shows big differences as you move around the isthmus.
New Orleans has never had many Central American restaurants. The most persistent was Pupuseria Divino Corazon, a Salvadoran cafe in Gretna that is no longer with us. New Salvadoran restaurants have opened since the hurricane, notably the two locations of Pupuseria Macarena. We’ve occasionally had Nicaraguan and Honduran restaurants, even very good ones. Someday we’ll support them long enough for them to become permanent.
Today’s Flavor
In honor of the independence of the five Central American nations today in 1821, this is Pan-American Tres Leches Day. In any restaurant where you find it, tres leches cake can be counted on to be the best dessert in the house. Meaning “three milks,” tres leches is made by layering a firm yellow cake with marshmallow cream, then soaking the whole thing in condensed milk, evaporated milk, and fresh milk. A good deal of variation appears in the recipes. Not all of them use the marshmallow cream. Some use fresh cream instead of one of the milks. Coconut milk also shows up in some. Crushed fruit, rum, and nuts in others. There’s some dispute about its origins, but it seems to us that Nicaragua has the best claim. Tres leches is now found in almost every Central American restaurant in the United States. With good reason: it’s wonderful.
Deft Dining Rule #2
Eat it where it lives. To paraphrase: When in El Salvador, eat pupusas.
Gourmet Gazetteer
Fishville is nineteen miles north of Alexandria, in the center of Louisiana. It’s in the Kisatchie National Forest, and has long been a casual spot for outdoor recreation in the long summers. Many swimming holes are in the area, fed by numerous creeks, all of which are running streams with fish to be caught. Fishville is old enough to have once had a French name: Poissonville. The place to eat some fish is nine miles south of Fishville in Ball: Paradise Catfish Kitchen.
Edible Dictionary
Dijon mustard, n.–Strictly speaking, this is a prepared, smooth mustard made in the city of Dijon, in Burgundy, France. It is so highly through of, however, that similar mustards (often called dijon style) are made in other places. It’s made of crushed, dark-brown mustard seeds, verjus (the unfermented juice of wine grapes), a little wine, and/or wine vinegar. It’s used in as many ways as a mustard can be, but it’s perhaps best known as the starting point for two essential sauces: mayonnaise and vinaigrette.
Annals Of Candy
Today in 1995, the tan M&M’s were replaced by blue ones, as a result of a poll of M&Ms eaters that revealed a groundswell of interest in a blue piece. Interestingly, the tan M&Ms entered the pouch to replace purple ones in the 1940s.
Music To Drink Cheap Wine By
Jimmy Gilmer was born today in 1940. He had two rock radio hits, both with food/drink titles, that appeared six years apart. The first was Sugar Shack, in 1963. The second, with a completely different sound and under the name The Fireballs, was Bottle Of Wine. It blistered the radio in 1968.
Music To Drink Cognac By
Bobby Short, perhaps the greatest male American cabaret singer in history, was born today in 1926. For decades, he played in the Cafe Carlyle in New York City, a little club that was packed with his fans every night. I’m one of them. Short had a preference for the standards, rendered in a unique, sassy, jazzy way. He accompanied himself brilliantly on the piano as he sang with enough vibrato to shake leaves off a tree. He died in 2005, but his albums are still available. I’d recommend My Personal Property.
Food Namesakes
David Stove, an Australian philosopher, was born today in 1927. . . His countryman Terry Lamb, professional rugby football player, hit the Big Field today in 1961.
Words To Eat By
“Dessert is probably the most important stage of the meal, since it will be the last thing your guests remember before they pass out all over the table.”–The Anarchist Cookbook.
Words To Drink By
“A drunk was in front of a judge. The judge says ‘You’ve been brought here for drinking.’ The drunk says ‘Okay, let’s get started.'”–Henny Youngman.
The Worst New Restaurant Concept In Many Years.
And it’s already out of business.
Click here for the cartoon.
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Friday, September 9, 2016
Boucherie Is Smoking!
Mary Ann is leaving for Los Angeles tomorrow, so she is making up for her absence from the Cool Water Ranch in advance. This means being available for a meal or two. Tonight’s entry from this series takes place at Boucherie, after we fail to find an open space in our first two restaurants we try. Gautreau’s–proves to be as full as I would have guessed. A multiple-week-in-advance reservation is needed for Fridays and Saturdays there. MA suggests we try Mariza in the Bywater, but it’s closed for vacation.
We almost didn’t get into Boucherie, either. The only table available is out on the sidewalk. It is still in the 90s outside. MA is not daunted by that, of course. She’s so happy with the table that she calls our friends the Swifts to join us. They were in the middle of something, but say they will show up within the hour.
While she is finagling that get-together, I have a cocktail called the Sophia Loren. It’s a variation on the Negroni, with the bitter part of the classic recipe being replaced with grapefruit juice. I also arrange for a basket of Boucherie’s excellent fresh-cut fries to come our way. (I believe I’ve mentioned in this space how well French fries go with cocktails.)
The inevitable conversation about the future of our daughter and her boyfriend is much less pressing than it was a week ago, the night before the Wedding That Wasn’t. During the week we have been pleasantly surprised by the willingness of the caterers, the band, the church, and almost everybody else to refund large parts of our deposits. It will not be the fiscal bloodbath that loomed a week ago. I hate to bring up this crass matter, but almost everybody who has heard about the postponement (officially, that’s where things stand) immediately asks how much this cost us.
Boucherie serves us boudin, pork ribs, and a plate of Wagyu brisket. Although the place has a large barbecue component in its menu, its range is much wider, and it’s more of a fluke than a plan that our supper suggests tumbleweed country.
Fresh-cut fries at Boucherie.
We are just finishing those eats when the Swifts appear. It’s no problem. The two of them get into a political conversation with MA. To avoid problems later, I extract myself from the debate until it moves to MA’s fear that her car is low on oil. I tell her to meet me at the gas station and we’ll check it. But I had forgotten that one of Doug Swift’s hobbies is fixing cars. He pops the trunk (that where I was stymied), unscrews the oil cap and checks the level. It is a little low. MA produces a bottle of oil and they fill it up. A restaurant critic is not much needed in a moment like this.
Boucherie. Riverbend: 1506 S Carrollton Ave. 504-862-5514.
Peanut Soup
Peanut soup is found here and there around the South–especially the Carolinas. We don’t see it very much around New Orleans, but every now and then somebody asks me for a recipe. This recipe comes from the kitchen of my sister Lynn Fleetwood, a pretty good cook herself. The critical points in making a good peanut soup are to balance off the bitter aspect of the nuts with richness (cream, here) and spice.
1 lb. dry-roasted peanuts
6 cups chicken stock
1/4 cup minced onion
1 tsp. curry powder (or to taste)
1 Tbs. cornstarch
2 cup half-and-half cream
Freshly ground black pepper
2 dashes Tabasco
2 Tbs. chopped cilantro
1. Grind the peanuts in a blender, a few at a time, until they’re mealy–about like grits. (Do not overgrind into peanut butter.)
2. Heat the stock in a large saucepan. Stir in onion, ground peanuts, and curry powder. Bring to the boil, then lower to a simmer and hold there for 30 minutes, stirring frequently.
3. Strain the soup and puree the solids in the blender, adding a little of the broth to make it smooth. Return the puree to the broth in a saucepan over low heat.
4. In a bowl, stir the cornstarch into the half-and-half, then stir it into the soup. Cook, stirring, until the soup is thickened. Season with salt, pepper, and Tabasco.
5. Cook a few minutes longer. Sprinkle with cilantro and serve very hot.
Makes 6-8 servings.
Banana-Blueberry pie @ Impastato’s
At the end of a dinner at Impastato’s, it’s amazing that anyone can think of dessert. For that reason, the dessert menu here has never been a strong suit there. When anyone brings one up, however, it’s almost always this one. It’s like a cheesecake, but gooier. The banana and blueberry flavors are not only fresh and vivid, but really do go well together. I’ll bet that this will be the most popular dessert at tonight’s (or Sept. 14, 2016’s) Eat Club dinner at Impastato’s.
Impastato’s. Metairie: 3400 16th St. 504-455-1545.
This is among the 500 best dishes in New Orleans area restaurants. Click here for a list of the other 499.
September 14, 2016
Days Until. . .
Summer ends 8
Food Calendar
This is International Shish Kebab Day. Stringing pieces of food on a stick and roasting it over an open fire is such simple but delicious method of cooking that it’s been practiced since prehistory. The word has been traced back to the oldest Middle Eastern languages. The method not only has tremendous flavor and aroma appeal, but uses meat very efficiently. A lot of meat comes in pieces substantially smaller than a roast or a steak. Even when they don’t, it’s easier and faster to cook small pieces of meat than large ones.
But small pieces of meat have a way of falling into the fire. The shish–the skewer–solves that problem elegantly. The skewer holding kebab meat together takes many forms, from short wire rods to large vertical spindles that are more like rotisseries. All are considered kebabs; the shish is an option. The homeland of kebabs stretches from India to Morocco, and from there they’ve spread almost everywhere else in the world.
Local Culinary Personalities
Today is the birthday of Mike “Mr. Mudbug” Maenza, in 1959. His family was in the produce business for a long time. He started his own company to do crawfish boils for big parties. It grew into a major producer of prepared sauces, soups, and other dishes for restaurants all over the country. If I gave you a list of the restaurants that buy finished dishes from Mr. Mudbug, you’d be astonished. It’s all good stuff, though.
The Old Kitchen Sage Sez
If you want to grill shrimp on skewers, use two of them per portion. That way, when you turn the shrimp, they can’t rotate. So no shrimp wind up getting cooked twice on the same side.
Gourmet Gazetteer
Chuckville is sixty miles southeast of Abilene, Texas. The Hill Country has given way to the plains by the time you arrive here on TX 36 from the east. It’s watered by scenic Copperas Creek. Fields of corn, cotton, and milo are all around. So are pastures full of grazing cattle. So you could probably get some beef chuck in Chuckville if there were any restaurants to serve it to you. Unfortunately, the nearest one is four miles west in Rising Star. It’s called Main Street BBQ.
Edible Dictionary
en brochette, French, adj.–On a skewer, French style. Dishes en brochette are known as pinchos in Spain, shish kebabs in the Middle East, souvlaki in Greece, and satays in the Far East. They can be grilled, fried, or set up on a rotisserie. The advantage of the method is that it employs pieces of food too small to be cooked conveniently if they’re loose. The most common brochette in New Orleans involves oysters, which are usually fried and napped with brown butter for an appetizer.
Restaurant Namesakes
Today in 1927 Isadora Duncan, dancer and free spirit, died when her long, flowing scarf became entangled in the wheels of the convertible sports car she was driving in Nice, France. A very good restaurant here in New Orleans once bore her name. Isadora was where the Allegro Bistro is now, on the ground floor of the Energy Center at Poydras and Loyola. A painting depicting the moment before her demise hung on its wall.
Food In Science
Ivan Petrovich Pavlov was born today in 1849. The Russian scientist is most famous for his experiments with dogs. He found that any kind of stimulus a dog associated with food would make the dogs salivate. This worked not only for the sight and smell of food, but any activity that routinely preceded the dogs’ being fed. This became known as a “conditioned reflex,” and it works on people as well as dogs. For example, just the thought of the Supreme Court building in the French Quarter makes me hungry for turtle soup at Brennan’s, across the street.
The Saints
Today is the feast day of St. Notburga, who lived in the thirteenth century in Tyrol (now Austria). She is a patron saint of waiters and waitresses. She worked as a maid for a wealthy family that threw its leftovers to the pigs. Notburga would surreptitiously collect the food and give it to poor, hungry people instead. In one of the stories about her, she was caught doing this by her employers, who demanded to know what she had in her apron. When she opened it, the food had turned to wood shavings and vinegar.
Today’s Worst Flavor
Today in 2006, the Food and Drug Administration announced that it had found fresh bagged spinach contaminated with e. coli bacteria. For weeks afterward, no spinach salads were served anywhere, and fresh spinach became hard to come by.
Food Namesakes
Constance Baker Motley, the first African-American woman to be elected a New York state senator or appointed to a Federal judgeship, was born today in 1921. . . Erieatha “Cookie” Kelly married Magic Johnson today in 1991. . . Deryck Victor Cooke, a British composer, was born today in 1919. . . British pop singer Amy Winehouse uncorked today in 1983.
Words To Eat By
“The most usual, common, and cheap sort of food all China abounds in, and which all in that Empire eat, from the Emperor to the meanest Chinese; the Emperor and great Men as a Dainty, the common sort as necessary sustenance. It is called Teu Fu, that is paste of kidney beans. I did not see how they made it. They drew the milk out of the kidney beans, and turning it, make great cakes of it like cheeses, as big as a large sieve, and five or six fingers thick. All the mass is as white as the very snow, to look to nothing can be finer. Alone, it is insipid, but very good dressed as I say and excellent fried in Butter.”–Friar Domingo Navarrete.
Words To Drink By
“We frequently hear of people dying from too much drinking. That this happens is a matter of record. But the blame almost always is placed on whiskey. Why this should be I never could understand. You can die from drinking too much of anything–coffee, water, milk, soft drinks and all such stuff as that. And so long as the presence of death lurks with anyone who goes through the simple act of swallowing, I will make mine whiskey.” —W. C. Fields.
Leaning How To Taste Wines.
It’s very simple, really. . . but it can be made as complicated as you like.
Click here for the cartoon.