Saturday, October 4, 2015
Prohibition Returns To Antoine’s; So Do Cocktails.
Prohibition brought about a lot of lawbreaking across America, with every place developing a different style. In Chicago you had gangsters. In the Appalachians were the hillbilly whisky stills and white lightning. In California the many Italian winemakers saw a tremendous increase in the amount of sacrificial and medicinal wines and brandy.
Police keep Prohibition going in New Orleans.
And in New Orleans. . . well, near as one can tell, the alcoholic beverage consumption was hardly diminished at all, didn’t vanish. It just went into hiding, most notably in the better restaurants around town. Most of these were owned by second- or third-generation French Creoles, who laughed at the idea that there would be no wine or spirits. The histories of the grande dame restaurants–Antoine’s, Arnaud’s, Galatoire’s, and Broussard’s–all have fascinating chapters on how the hooch was brought into the building, and how it was disseminated to the customers. Most of the smaller French restaurants like Maylie’s, La Louisiane, and Tujague’s also have funny tales to tell.
Fifth-generation Antoine’s descendent and boss Rick Blount and Mrs.
Antoine’s continued its 175th anniversary celebration tonight in a gala with Prohibition as the theme. The restaurant closed for the night and filled its rooms with regular customers and other friends. Food was everywhere in the building, with nothing held back. I personally consumed about a half-cup of jumbo lump crabmeat ravigote, a half-dozen each of oysters Foch, Rockefeller and Bienville, and only one soufflee potato. I lubricated that with a Sazerac made for me by a man in a phramacist’s jacket.
Jimmy Maxwell and singer Julie Jule at Antoine’s.
Jimmy Maxwell’s excellent big band played the music of the era (and later ones) while some professional dancers familiar with the moves of the period swept through the big red dining room in the back. A picket line of sour-looking women carried signs in favor of banning the evil potion of alcohol. “Lips that touch liquor will never touch mine!” said the sign carried by a demonstrator who looks to have never touched any other kind of lips, either.
Elswhere in Chez Antoine was a gambling room where you played the games, but no money changed hands. Mary Ann said that was a lot of fun. She doubled her chips, then lost enough hands to bring her back to where the started. A dessert hall was busy flaming cafe brulot and dispensing a baked Alaska, whose size approached that of a small blimp. All the private dining rooms were filled with people taking advantage of the tables and chairs there. (It is one of those events in which guests are encouraged to mingle.)
But there are a lot of people to talk to. The event is a fundraiser for the Historic New Orleans Collection, a fascinating research museum around the corner. I have no doubt that the HNOC contributed a lot to the history project Antoine’s performed for its anniversary. Its director Priscilla Lawrence and her husband John Lawrence were all over the place, along with longtime researcher John Magill, who I haven’t seen in decades.
This is the kind of party we should have more often. It wasn’t just food, drink and loud music, but an interesting energy, full of stories to be told and recalled, unique to this night. I man I don’t know but who knows me said, “This is the kind of party that will never be this good again.” He’s right. If they try to repeat it, it would be a parody of itself.
Margarita Bergen, whose presence makes it a real party.
We were supposed to dress in period costume. What did people wear in the 1930s? Pretty much the same clothes I still wear all the time, but with one addition: the fedoras that men wore universally until JFK made them taboo. I wore mine, and quite a few other men did, too.
The party wound down at ten. Mary Ann’s parking-witch powers brought into existence a legal on-street parking spot a block and a half up St. Louis Street from Antoine’s. But it may have had bad gris-gris. Four young men were closing in on us after we crossed Bourbon Street into the relative darkness. The biggest of these guys seemed to be giving quarterback calls to the others. I stepped into the street, opened the driver’s door for Mary Ann, and kept moving as she jumped in, slammed the door, and turned the lights on, and started the car. I crossed the front of the car, opened the passenger door, jumped in, and slammed the door. By that time the group was on the other side, seeming puzzled about where the two of us went. If I knew the football jargon for this move, I’d take credit for–if not the move itself– my metaphoric telling of this moment.
How nice it is to be married to a designated driver!
Deviled eggs are not thought of as a particularly brilliant appetizer, but I say that’s because most people have never eaten them with New Orleans-style red remoulade sauce. That combination was a specialty at the historic, lost Creole cafe Maylie’s. Arnaud’s revived the idea some years ago with their superb remoulade sauce, and the idea still holds up. Add some sliced ripe avocado, lettuce, and tomatoes to the plate and you have a fine little salad.
Deviled eggs remoulade. (The garnish is different from that of the recipe, but you can use a free hand with that.
Red Remoulade Sauce:
1/4 cup chili sauce (bottled) or ketchup
1/4 cup Creole mustard
1 Tbs. paprika
1/4 tsp. salt
1 Tbs. lemon juice
1/8 tsp. Tabasco
1/4 tsp. pureed garlic
1/2 cup olive oil
1/4 cup green onion tops, finely sliced
8 hard-boiled eggs, at room temperature
1 Tbs. chopped onion
1 Tbs. chopped celery
1/2 tsp. smallest possible capers
1/4 cup mayonnaise
2 Tbs. yellow mustard
1/8 tsp. salt
4 drops Tabasco
4 small ripe but not soft Hass avocados
1. Make the sauce first. In a bowl, combine all the ingredients except the olive oil and green onions. Add the oil in a thin stream while whisking. Stir in the green onions. Refrigerate.
2. Put the eggs into a saucepan and cover with an inch of cold water. Turn on the heat to medium. When the water comes to a boil, turn off the heat and remove the pan from the burger. Cover the pan and let the eggs sit in the hot water for 12-17 minutes, depending on the size of the eggs. (the bigger, the longer.) Remove the eggs and allow to cool.
3. Peel the eggs by first cracking the shell on the counter, in a few places. Then roll the egg on the counter while pressing down a bit. Begin peeling from the end with the depression in the white. Try to peel it in a spiral. (You won’t be able to, but that motion will get the peel off most effectively.)
4. Slice the eggs in half lengthwise. Scoop out the yolks into a bowl. Set the whites aside.
5. Combine the yolks with the onions, celery, capers, mayonnaise, mustard, salt, and Tabasco. Mix well with a whisk (you can even beat it to fluffiness).
6. Load the mixture into a pastry bag and pipe it into the centers of the boiled egg whites.
7. Slice the avocados in half and remove the pit and skin. Slice the avocado about as thick as a quarter, but retain its shape. Fan out the slices on a plate and put the egg where the pit was.
9. Drizzle the remoulade sauce generously over everything and serve chilled. For an extra touch, a couple of boiled, peeled shrimp could be added.
Serves eight.
Soft Shell Crab With Crabmeat Meuniere @ Clancy’s
Although New Orleans is just about the only place where we routinely top soft-shell crabs with lump crabmeat, this version of the dish is made along classical French lines. Clancy’s proprietor Brad Hollingsworth came to appreciate it when he worked as a waiter at LeRuth’s. It’s simple enough: the crabs are dusted in flour, fried in such a way that the legs and claws fan out, then served with brown butter. This is classic French meuniere.
Chef Warren LeRuth added another touch, topping it with lump crabmeat. That’s without doubt the most popular gambit for cooks and waiters in New Orleans restaurants, so much so that more fish is served with crabmeat on top in white-tablecloth restaurants than without. But LeRuth hatched the idea of doing that with a crab, which makes eminent sense. Clancy’s turns this out as well as LeRuth’s did, and when soft-shells are in season it’s the best dish in the house.
Clancy’s. Uptown: 6100 Annunciation. 504-895-1111.
This is among the 500 best dishes in New Orleans area restaurants. Click here for a list of the other 499.
October 6, 2015
Days Until. . .
Halloween 25
Today’s Flavor
Today is National Seafood Chowder Day. In the Northeast, this means clam chowder, so widely available in restaurants that, with a New England sound, it’s known as “cuppachowdah.” Here in New Orleans, we don’t have good clams (despite the millions of them in Lake Pontchartrain). So when we make chowder, it’s usually with leftover fish and shrimp and crabmeat. I like it and think it’s an underutilized idea, because it’s good and contrasts with gumbo, bouillabaisse, and bisques.
A chowder contains, in addition to seafood, three essential ingredients: potatoes, bacon (or something like bacon–pork cracklings, for example), and fish stock (or something like fish stock). I make mine with oyster water, which I beg from my friends in the oyster business. The rest is easy. The recipe is in today’s newsletter.
When I find myself in New England, I eat clam chowder at almost every meal. They make it very thick. One cookbook says it should be almost as solid as mashed potatoes. I don’t go along with that. Nor do I like the very mild seasoning you find in New England chowder–but that’s a New Orleans palate talking.
Gourmet Gazetteer
Clam Creek is a natural tidal inlet that has become completely surrounded by Atlantic City, New Jersey. It gores right into the middle of that Atlantic coast resort town. Also there is Clam Thorofare, another natural stream that separates the city from the wetlands to the north, and makes Atlantic City an island. This is certainly a favorable habitat for edible clams, although whether it’s been polluted out of existence is a question. Clam Thorofare is part of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway, so a lot of ship traffic passes through it. Atlantic City is loaded with restaurants. But I think I’d go down Atlantic Avenue three miles to the Knife and Fork Inn.
Deft Dining Rule #860
No matter what anybody tells you, New England clam chowder is incomparably better than the tomato-based Manhattan clam chowder.
Edible Dictionary
littleneck clam, n.–The smallest, tenderest specimens of the hard-shell clams found all along the northern Atlantic Coast. Littlenecks are the same species as the larger quahogs used for making clam chowder–just younger and smaller. They are eaten raw on the half shell, steamed, baked (sometimes with a thick, bread-crumb-crusted sauce), or in a white sauce for pasta. Like the slightly larger cherrystones, littlenecks get their name from the place where large beds of them once lived: Little Neck Bay, on Long Island, New York.
The Old Kitchen Sage Sez
The two methods for lessening the work of shucking clams are exactly the opposite of one another. Either put them into the freezer for a half-hour, or drop them in boiling water for ten seconds. With way, they give up a lot quicker.
Annals Of Food Marketing
Cream of Wheat was introduced today in 1893. It was a desperate effort to save a near-bankrupt flour mill in Grand Forks, North Dakota, during the financial panic of that year. Thomas Amidon, the head miller, used the “middlings”–the prime part of wheat grains, also called farina–to make a hot cereal that could be packaged dry and sold in stores. The owners of the mill sent a sample of it to their broker in New York. The broker famously responded, “Never mind shipping us any more of your flour, but send a car of your ‘Cream of Wheat.'” The original logo with its cartoonish black cook was used because the printer of the label found it in a pile of old plates in his plant. Cream of Wheat is a bigger deal elsewhere than in New Orleans, where we’re more likely to fill that space on the menu with grits.
Music To Eat Crawfish Pie By
Today in 1952, Hank Williams had the top country hit with Jambalaya, which forever united that dish with crawfish pie and filé gumbo. Not a bad combination, really, and one found on more than a few Cajun menus.
Lounges Through History
Today in 1889, the original Parisian song-and-dance bar opened. At Moulin Rouge (“red windmill”–the building really was one) one could not only have a glass of wine or an absinthe, but also see a live show. It spawned an entirely new genre of hangout in Paris. Its fame continues not only because it’s still in business, but because of the many posters advertising its shows. The most famous were drawn by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, a seminal figure in Art Nouveau graphic design. There’s hardly a French bistro anywhere that doesn’t have a Toulouse-Lautrec poster for the Moulin Rouge somewhere on its walls.
Food Namesakes
Actress Anna Quayle hit the Big Stage today in 1936. . . Singer and songwriter Matthew Sweet was born today in 1964. . . Mets pitcher David Cone struck out nineteen batters today in 1991, tying the National League record. . . Olympic marksman Lloyd Spooner was born today in 1884. . . Long-time South Dakota Congressman E.Y. Berry was born today in 1902. . . New Hampshire Congressman Perkins Bass, whose son Charles also held that post, was born today in 1912. . . Movie and television actor Jerome Cowan was a big hit with his mom today in 1897. (“Cowan ” is a French-Cajun word for an alligator snapping turtle, the kind used to make soup.)
Words To Eat By
“Clam chowder is one of those subjects, like politics or religion, that can never be discussed lightly. Bring it up even incidentally, and all the innumerable factions of the clam bake regions raise their heads and begin to yammer.”–Louis P. De Gouy, French chef and cookbook author of the early 1900s.
Words To Drink By
“A man that lives on pork, fine-flour bread, rich pies and cakes, and condiments, drinks tea and coffee, and uses tobacco, might as well try to fly as to be chaste in thought.”–Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, early health nut, brother of the cereal magnate
But who wants to be chaste in thought?
When A Frankfurter Goes Over The Hill.
He lived life with relish.
Click here for the cartoon.