Jewish Roots Celebration
Saturday evening (6:30 p.m., March 5, to be exact) four well-known, adroit chefs who happen to be Jewish will cook for a big gathering at the Hyatt Regency Hotel for a fund-raising bash form the Jewish Children’s Regional Service. Since 1855, the JCRS has aided Jewish children and families in trouble throughout the mid-South, with programs of outreach, scholarships, Jewish summer camps, and other assistance. Last year, over 1500 young people benefited from the JCRD programs.
The chefs are Alon Shaya of Shaya and Domenica; David Slater from Emeril’s; Daniel Esses, of Three Muses; and Nathaniel Zimet of Boucherie. In addition, the staff of Commander’s Palace will add to the richness of the dinner.
Also on the program is the Panorama Jazz Band. I will be there not only to enjoy the food and company, but also to make sure that my silent auction item of a dinner for four at a four- or five-star restaurant draws high bids.
The price is $200 per person, and can be obtained at www.jcrs.com, or by phone at 504-828-6334.
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.
Correction
In yesterday’s editions of the New Orleans Menu Daily, a dated review of Cafe Lynn appeared. After spending three hours updating and rewriting the review, I neglected to push the button that replaces the old review with the new one. (It’s always the little things that get you.)
The updated Cafe Lynn review that should have run is here.
Wednesday, March 2, 2016.
One Step Behind Tujague’s.
Tujague’s has been on my mind at dinner times lately. It’s been over a year since the last time I was there, and probably time to see how Mark Latter has reworked the menu. He told me some months ago that he was considering the eighty-sixing of the restaurant’s famous boiled brisket of beef. He changed his mind after Ralph Brennan said that if Tujague’s stops serving brisket, he would immediately put it on the menu in his restaurants.
I ask Mark what changes have been made in the menu since my last visit. He said the thing I hate to hear most: “The new menu starts day after tomorrow.” Few things are more useless to a restaurant reporter than a menu about to become obsolete. It’s incomprehensible how often I hear that.
The chef takes mild pity on me, and crosses my table with a fried soft-shell crab covered with a bright orange-yellow sauce, sprinkled with thin slivers of green onions. It’s the first time I’ve encountered soft-shells lately. The recent cold snap made all crab products hard to find. This one is medium in size and very good.
Soft-shell crab at Tujague’s.
Next comes vegetable soup, another long-term standard dish at the 160-year-old restaurant. That figures: boiling brisket leaves behind the best possible beef stock for making vegetable soup. Today’s version is dominated by lima beans, and as enjoyable as ever.
Oysters en brochette at Tujague’s with too much bacon and a great meuniere sauce.
For the entree I have a double order of oysters en brochette. Here is another example–second in a week!–of the messing up of this simple dish through the use of too much bacon. Although it’s widely believed that there is no such thing as too much bacon, here it is. It was also at Galatoire’s last week. Their oysters en brochette are a signature dish. But wrapping the bacon around the oyster keeps the oyster from cooking right, and removes the crisp mouthfeel and aroma of the bacon.
On the other hand, I congratulate Tujague’s for its excellent thick, brown meuniere sauce. It’s almost overwhelming, but it works well. The crusts of French bread in the plate lets you scoop up the extra sauce.
I have bread pudding with cranberries. That’s been on the menu here for decades, but it is lighter and better than I remember.
The dining room is empty when I arrive, but a sizeable contingent of people in town for a meeting fills it up. These guests are from well out of town, and show a real appreciation for this ancient café.
One couple warms my heart when I overhear them saying that they came to town by way of the train they call The City of New Orleans from Chicago. She doesn’t look abnormal or geeky.
I parked in the long lot along the railroad tracks on the river side of the floodwall. The price for two hours is $10. The lots between the components of the Jax Brewery development now get around $20 for that.
Tujague’s. French Quarter: 823 Decatur. 504-525-8676.
Thursday, March 3, 2016.
The Future Of Flying.
I decide early in the day to remain at the Cool Water Ranch for the show. I have a pile of miscellaneous jobs to perform, including articles to write for Inside New Orleans and CityBusiness. I also agreed to begin a series of vignettes about food for Magic 101.9, one of the six stations in our radio cluster. Since everyone seems to like this diary, I’m going to try writing the short radio pieces in a journal format. I never run out of projects to keep me busy.
I don’t have anything like a real meal until after the Food Show plays out at six. Before I leave, I check in with Mary Ann, who is on her return drive home after a week in the Washington, D.C. vicinity with our daughter ML and her fiance Dave, formerly known as “The Boy.” MA says she is having no trouble with the fourteen-hour trip, a straight shot from Northern Virginia all the way to Abita Springs. But she runs into heavy rain past Meridian.
I catch the same downpours on my way home from the Acme Oyster House, where I have fried oysters remoulade, a cup of red beans and rice, and a salad. MA pulls in at around nine, seeming none the worse for wear.
She has booked my flights to and from Los Angeles next month so I can attend the christening of my grandson Jackson. Who has just begun to smile. I was hoping to catch that while I was there last week, but only saw a few glimmers. Now he has all the personality a three-month-old needs.
Back to the flights: MA bought flights on Spirit Airlines, a new player at New Orleans International. The price is around $160, round-trip, non-stop. I go online to see what else I can learn about Spirit. The outfit makes no bones about the fact that its coach seats are even closer to one another than typical. No free drinks, not even water. The maximum carry-on size is smaller than usual. No movies. This is how they keep fares down, they say. But Mary Leigh who has flown on Spirit, says it didn’t strike her as bad in any way. But I’m bigger than she is.
Pasta Ai Frutti Di Mare
Bob, Mark, and Sandy DeFelice tell me that this is one of the most popular dishes at Pascal’s Manale, which their family has operated since 1913. It’s basically a red sauce spaghetti dish with a lot of seafood–not a combination we see often around New Orleans, where seafood usually comes to pasta enclosed in a rich cream sauce or an garlicky olive-oil-based concoction. The amounts given here are what they says they serve for one, but it’s easily enough for two. Don’t hesitate to substitute seafoods other than the ones specified here. Crawfish in season instead of lobster would be great. Try to resist topping this with parmesan cheese.
1/4 cup olive oil
2 oz. lobster meat, cut up
1 tsp. chopped fresh garlic
1/2 cup chopped green onions
1/2 tsp. crushed red pepper
6 large peeled, deveined shrimp
2 oz. brandy
8 oz. seafood stock
1/4 cup dry white wine
8 oz. marinara sauce (spicy tomato sauce)
8 raw oysters
4 oz. lump or claw crabmeat
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. black pepper
1/8 tsp. cayenne pepper
1 lb. spaghetti, cooked al dente
8 sprigs flat-leaf Italian parsley, leaves only, chopped
1. Heat the olive oil in a skillet over medium heat. In it saute the lobster until lightly browned.
2. Add the garlic, green onions, and crushed red pepper. Saute until the onions are tender.
3. Add the shrimp and cook until pink. Pour in the brandy and carefully flame it.
4. When the flames die out, add the seafood stock and the wine. Bring to a boil and reduce for one minute. Add the marinara sauce and return to a simmer.
5. Add the oysters, crabmeat, salt, and peppers, and heat for one minute. Add the fettuccine and toss with the pan contents until well blended.
6. Divide onto two plates, garnish with chopped fresh Italian parsley, and serve with lots of sauce and hot garlic bread.
Serves two entrees or four appetizers.
#16: Combination Pan Roast @ Pascal’s Manale
Although Pascal’s Manale is most famous for its shrimp, in my opinion their great specialty is oysters. They’re good from the raw ones in the bar through this dish, one of the most complex of their concoctions. It started as an all-oyster entree, but evolved into an appetizer with oysters, shrimp, and crabmeat. Holding everything together is a bechamel sauce that looks cheesey, but isn’t. It does include a lot of green onions, which makes the dish. Bread crumbs on top, a pass through the oven until it bubbles–then it’s eating time. A good time.
Pascal’s Manale. Uptown: 1838 Napoleon Ave. 504-895-4877.
This is among the 500 best dishes in New Orleans area restaurants. Click here for a list of the other 499.
March 4, 2016
Days Until. . .
St. Patrick’s Day 13
St. Joseph’s Day 15
Easter 24
Our Historic Restaurants
Today in 1979, Archie Casbarian closed on his purchase of Arnaud’s Restaurant from Arnaud Cazenave’s daughter, Germaine Cazenave Wells. The old restaurant, once the city’s finest restaurants, was in such a poor condition that it would take Casbarian most of the rest of the year to get it ready for reopening.
Our Celebrated Chefs
Chef Gerard Maras was born today in 1952. Maras was the opening chef and tastemaker of Ralph’s on the Park and the now-gone Table One. But he first came to our attention as chef at Mr. B’s during its greatest years in the 1980s. Their matchless barbecue shrimp recipe is his. He’s not currently cheffing, exactly; and his wife run a farm raising gourmet vegetables and herbs near Franklinton. Maras was one of the first local chefs to encourage local growers to raise better produce, and we have him to thank for the improvements in that market. He occasionally teaches cooking classes at the New Orleans Cooking Experience.
Today’s Flavors
It really ought to be put off until tomorrow, but this is National Whole Fish Day. The number of fish that come to the table still looking like a fish–with the head, tail, fins and everything in between still intact–is growing. For a long time, the only fish served whole was the West End-style whole flounder. Thank our Asian restaurants for making other large whole fish popular. Most people who enjoy fish that way first had it fried or steamed in a Chinese or Vietnamese restaurant.
Whole fish fall into two categories. Some weigh a two or three pounds, and are presented at the table, usually for more than one person. The most common fish prepared that way in New Orleans are redfish, drumfish, red snapper, and Dover sole. The other category is fish designed to be served to one person, who will pull the fish apart as he eats. The most famous of these is the Gulf flounder, fried or broiled whole. During the past few years, Mediterranean sardines have appeared, usually two or three to an order as an appetizer.
The best whole fish of all is a whole pompano of about two pounds. Hardly anything needs to be done to it besides gutting. It can walk across the grill and onto the plate, becoming the most delicious of all fish dishes.
It is also alleged to be Pound Cake Day. A pound cake is so called because it classically uses a pound each of flour, sugar, and eggs. Which is actually not a particularly good formulation. You also want to add a few things like vanilla and lemon peel.
Gourmet Gazetteer
Peach, North Carolina is just south of the Virginia state line, in the northeastern corner of the state. It’s fifty-two miles south of Norfolk, on the Atlantic coastal plain. Large farmed fields in the area wedge between equally large woods. This looks like tobacco country to me. Peaches are grown widely in North Carolina, but there don’t seem to be any orchards in the fruit’s namesake place. It’s not much more than that: a crossroads. Ask about what’s going on and have a bite to eat at Peggy’s Country Cafe. Maybe they’ll have some open-pit pulled pork barbecue, smoked over peach wood, with that sloshy vinegar-based sauce.
Regional Flavors
Vermont became a state today in 1791, the first to be admitted after the original thirteen. Vermont is a rough, infertile place for farmers, dominated as it is by the Green Mountains that gave the state its name. Dairy farming is a big deal, creating excellent cheeses. Vermont’s most famous food product, of course, is the syrup that comes from its sugar maples–even though most maple syrup comes from Canada.
Annals Of Game
Today in 1909, the Unites States banned interstate transport of game birds. That was the first of a variety of laws that make it impossible for restaurants and grocers to sell pheasants, ducks, geese, and other avians killed in the wild. To this day, every duck, quail, or squab you eat in a restaurant is farm-raised.
Edible Dictionary
arroz con calamares, [ah-ROEZ-con-call-uh-mah-ress], Spanish, n. Literally, “rice with squid.” But that doesn’t capture the big-time distinctiveness of this familiar Spanish dish. One of the main ingredients of the dish is ink from the squid’s system of camouflage. A little of it goes a long way. A well-made bowl of arroz con calamares may be as black as anything you ever eat in your life. The ink provides not just color but flavor, too. It’s usually made with enough pepper to make an impression that way, too. It’s usually served as an entree, and although it might not seem to be the sort of thing that wears well, no avid diner leaves any of it behind.
The Old Kitchen Sage Sez:
One of the great mysteries of taste is why a fish that tastes “fishy” is considered undesirable by most people. This is like complaining that strawberries taste too strawberrylike.
Music To Dine By
This is the birthday in 1678 of Antonio Vivaldi, whose classical work The Four Seasons is almost certainly the most often-heard piece of classical music in restaurants. That’s because everybody likes the first part of it. The second movement, while still a chef d’oeuvre, is less suitable as background. I once heard a restaurateur order that it be removed from the system for that reason. It seems to me that classical music is being played much less often in restaurants these days, giving way to smooth jazz (aaauugh!), sappy soft rock, or even grunge band music (somebody shoot me).
Music To Blow Out Candles By
The song most often heard in restaurants was published in sheet music form today in 1924. Happy Birthday To You–which evolved from a song called Good Morning To All–came under copyright protection in 1934. Public performances of the song still generate royalties for the Hill family, and will for another decade or so years. That’s why chain restaurants have their own birthday songs instead of singing that one. Independent restaurants are a little too hard to persecute for celebrating their customer’s birthdays by having waiters sing four lines of the ditty badly.
Food Namesakes
Early American racecar driver Buck Baker put his foot on the Big Gas Pedal today in 1919. . . Comedian John Candy had a fatal heart attack today in 1994. He was only 43. . . Folk singer Nancy Whiskey was born in Scotland today in 1935. . . Punk rocker Scott Sturgeon (stage name Stza–good luck pronouncing that) screamed for the first time today in 1976. . . Baseball pitcher Lefty O’Doul was born today in 1897. He founded a restaurant with his name on it in San Francisco; it’s still there. But he has no connection with the non-alcoholic beer of the same name.
Words To Eat By
Robert Orben, one of the most quoted people in the world, was born today in 1927. He’s still on the lecture circuit, still performs as a magician, and still writes funny speech material. He began writing gags for comedians, but his lines have such resonance that they’re at least as popular among motivational speakers. He has quotable lines on every imaginable subject. Here are some about food:
“I always wondered why babies spend so much time sucking their thumbs. Then I tasted baby food.”
“I understand the big food companies are developing a tearless onion. I think they can do it–after all, they’ve already given us tasteless bread.”
“Remember the days when you let your child have some chocolate if he finished his cereal? Now, chocolate is one of the cereals.”
“Old people shouldn’t eat health food. They need all the preservatives they can get.”
Words To Drink By
“Then trust me, there’s nothing like drinking
So pleasant on this side the grave;
It keeps the unhappy from thinking,
And makes e’en the valiant more brave.”
—Charles Dibdin, English writer, born today in 1745.
If Only This Preoccupied The United Nations General Assembly.
All their time would be taken up by these issues, defusing more troublesome matters. And wait until they make a muffuletta of all this!
Click here for the cartoon.