The New Tujague’s Age Embraces The Coolinary.
It’s been just a few years since Mark Latter transported Tujague’s into the present era of Creole cooking. Where once was a limited table d’hote menu that offered you a choice of “take it” or “leave it,” now the kitchen has a range as broad as that of any other Creole gourmet bistro. On the other hand, it would be wrong for a century-and-a-half restaurant to be entirely on the cutting edge. The menu for the Coolinary show how the current and trandtional styles are getting along.
Panzanella Salad
Marinated tomatoes, watermelon, cantaloupe, feta cheese, toasted almonds over butter lettuce tossed in champagne vinaigrette
~or~
Royal Red Ceviche
Gulf Shrimp, Pineapple, cucumber, Jalapenos and Cilantro over house made potato chips
~or~
Pork Rillettes
Confit pork shoulder, pickled apricots, cornichons, garlic toast and a creole mustard vinaigrette
~~~~~
Seared Sea Scallop
Pan seared Scallop with sweet corn, Yukon gold potatoes and bacon finished off with a Clam veloute
~or~
Marinated Skirt Steak
Balsamic and herb grilled, chimichurri sauce, served with potato and vegetable
~or~
Grilled Swordfish
Marinated and grilled, topped with avocado butter, served with starch and vegetables
~or~
Panneed Pork Tenderloin
Thinly pounded and herb crusted tenderloin topped with lump crabmeat and lemon butter, served with starch and vegetables
~~~~~
Bread Pudding
~or~
Lemon Pound Cake
Chantilly cream and macerated strawberries
Strawberry Shortcake
Tujague’s
French Quarter: 823 Decatur. 504-525-8676. www.tujagues.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.
Day Twenty-Three After The Storm
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
Drago’s Serving Thousands Free, Needs Help. Yesterday (the report is still here, below) I told you about Drago’s opening its doors to serve relief workers and others for free. I’ve since learned that effort has grown substantially. Here’s a letter I got from Gerry Cvitanovich (Drago and Klara’s son and Tommy’s brother):
A few days after Hurricane Katrina, Drago’s Restaurant started cooking free food for anyone with an appetite. Initially, without water, electricity, or telephone, Tommy and our loyal employee family started cooking, using propane and a generator.
They served less than a hundred very hungry people that first day. Since then they have increased that number to two or three thousand people a day. For some of those people, it was their first hot food in days. We feel blessed to be in a position to help. We have been serving lunch only up until now. So far, no charbroiled oysters. . . but they will be back!
Drago’s has received assistance from several institutional food brokers, other businesses, and individuals. But the overall costs to our family have been substantial. As hard as it is to ask for charity, we need help in order to continue to provide free food to our fellow citizens. We plan to continue for another month or more.
We have set up a charitable foundation to offset some of the costs. The Tax ID number is 20-3471145. All money goes to pay for feeding the people. The only administrative cost was that of setting up the foundation. Any and all donations are appreciated.
Send them to:
Drago’s Foundation
PO Box 640951
Kenner LA 70064
Please consider a donation to help us continue our mission. Also, we would appreciate it if you could forward this message to others.
Thanks! God Bless You!
The Drago’s Family
Absolutely! I’ll bet they wouldn’t turn away anyone who wants to volunteer to work, either.
Zea Reopens, Needs Staff. Gary Darling, Hans Limberg, and Greg Reggio–The Taste Buds–are looking ahead to reopening their Zea Rotisserie and Grill restaurants as soon as possible. One location–the one on Hickory–is already open. They’re trying to locate all their employees (amazing what a difficult job this has been for everybody in every business). They also say that they will have many vacant positions to fill, and are taking applications and conducting interviews starting tomorrow, Thursday, September 22, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. at the Zea in Clearview Mall, 4450 Veterans Blvd., Metairie.
The Zea Rotisserie Café on Hickory at Citrus in Harahan will open today–Wednesday, September 21–from 7 a.m. with breakfast till 10:30 a.m., followed by a limited menu until 6 p.m.
They’ll open the Zea Rotisserie & Brewery in Clearview Mall in a week to ten days, then the location in the Esplanade Mall in Kenner. The St. Charles Avenue location, which is not only beset by the infrastructure problems in New Orleans but also was looted, will follow later. They have more info on their website: www.zearestaurants.com.
Eat Club Dinner In Washington, DC. I have been contacted by about a dozen people who either live in the DC area and subscribe to the New Orleans Menu Daily, or who have evacuated here as I have. All of them had the same idea: to hold an Eat Club dinner here. I have the perfect place for it: Acadiana, a new Louisiana-style restaurant on 9th and New York. It’s owned by Chef Jeff Tunks. He was the chef at the Windsor Court for a few years about a decade ago, and I think he may have been the best chef they ever had. I’m having lunch with him today and will ask if it’s doable (I think it will be; they’ve already hosted a fund-raising poor boy sandwich event) and the details.
We may even do another one. The Smith and Wollensky here has been incredibly forthcoming in asking me what they can do to help. It would be great to do a Louisiana-style dinner there. If you’re interested in attending either dinner, e-mail tomfitzmorris@nomenu.com.
Cajun Seared Scallops With Near-Guacamole
Save this recipe for occasions when you find those sea scallops that are almost the size of filet mignons. Sea scallops that size are wonderful, and lend themselves particularly to pan-searing. In our part of the world, this verges on blackening, and that’s just fine, assuming the pan is really hot and you don’t let the scallops sit there too long. They should bulge after cooking.
The salsa is essentially my recipe for guacamole, but with the avocados sliced on top instead of blended in.
1 lb. sea scallops, the bigger the better
Creole seasoning
Salt
1/2 stick melted butter
Sauce:
2 tomatillos, peeled and chopped
1 medium sweet onion, chopped
Juice of one lime
1 Tbs. red wine vinegar
1 Tbs. olive oil
2 tsp. Tabasco jalapeno pepper sauce
2 large ripe tomatoes, skinned and seeded, chopped
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. coarsely-ground black pepper
2 tsp. Vietnamese fish sauce
2 Hass avocados, ripe but not soft, sliced into 8-12 slices each
8 sprigs cilantro, leaves only, chopped
1 green onion, tender green part only, sliced
1. Heat a black iron skillet over high heat.
2. Check the sea scallops to make sure they’ve been well trimmed (sometimes you”ll find some fibrous stuff at the edge). Coat the sea scallops generously with Creole seasoning and a little salt. Roll them through the melted butter and put them, still dripping, into the hot pan. Cook them for about a minute on top and the bottom. (Don’t cook the sides.) They’re ready when they’re distinctly brown but still bulging at the sides.
3. Combine all the sauce ingredients up to the avocados in a food processor. (You can use that to do the chopping.)
4. Spoon about 1/4 cup of the sauce onto the plate. Place four to six scallops on the plate (depending on size). Put the avocado slice between them. Garnish with chopped cilantro and green onions.
Serves four.
Oysters Al Areganata @ Ristorante Filippo
Baked oysters in the Italian style appear more than once on this list, representing different recipes. This is the most polished of them all. Phil Gagliano serves them sizzling in an au gratin dish, topped with the usual bread crumbs, garlic, Parmesan cheese, herbs, and a bit of pancetta. The aroma of this is marvelous, and the taste even better. Be careful eating: this is a real mouth-searer when it first arrives. And it’s also one of the few baked oyster appetizers of which one can actually eat a half-dozen and then move on to an entree. Maybe even a salad.
Ristorante Filippo. Metairie: 1917 Ridgelake. 504-835-4008.
This is among the 500 best dishes in New Orleans area restaurants. Click here for a list of the other 499.
August 24, 2015
Days Until. . .
Coolinary Summer Specials End 7
Annals Of Popular Cuisine
Chef George Crum invented potato chips today in 1853. He worked in a resort in Saratoga Springs, New York. The chips were meant as an insult to a customer who complained that Crum’s fried potatoes were too thick. The chef sliced them paper-thin, fried them, and sent them out. The customer loved them, and so did the chef. And they took off in popularity from there. Few restaurants serve freshly-fried potato chips locally; more ought to.
Gourmet Gazetteer
Pudding Hollow, New York is indeed a low spot in the hills of Adirondack Park, on Ridge Road off NY 28N. It’s in a winter ski area and is almost entirely wooded. A few chalets and lakes are nearby. It’s 250 miles upstate of New York City. The most interesting dining–and we base this on the names alone–are the Lucky Leprechaun and Owl At Twilight, both about four miles away in Olmstedville. Here’s a map.
Deft Dining Rule #125
A fish and chips vendor without malt vinegar is like an oyster bar without Tabasco, an Italian restaurant without Parmigiana cheese, or a sushi bar without wasabi.
Today’s Flavor
It is National Gyros Day–but only in the United States. Gyros, pronounced any way you like but most commonly “ghee-rho,” is a staple of American Greek restaurants. It may have been invented in this country, although that’s not certain. It is uncommon in Greece, except where American tourists congregate. No classical Greek dish is like it, although Lebanese shawarma is similar. It’s certainly not old; no mention of it has been found earlier than the 1970s.
Gyros is a processed blend of finely-chopped lamb and sometimes beef with seasonings, pressed into a tapering cylinder which is then mounted on a vertical rotisserie. Assuming the stuff is sold at a reasonable pace, the outside of this cylinder gets a little crust from the flame it passes on every rotation. The chef slices it off from top to bottom.
Gyros is serves as either a platter or a sandwich. In either case, it’s accompanied by pita bread, tzatziki sauce (a white sauce of yogurt, cucumber, and dill) lettuce, and tomatoes. If it’s a sandwich, sometimes it’s stuffed into the pocket of the pita, and sometimes the pita is wrapped around it like a taco shell. Despite its processed, fast-food aspect, gyros is pretty good. It’s certainly a great change of pace from the hamburger, which it resembles in enough ways to become popular.
Edible Dictionary
lentil, n.–One of the oldest foods cultivated by humans, lentils are round, flattened beans that grow in pods on an annual plant. They seem to have originated in the Middle East or Egypt, but have been planted and eaten so long that this can’t be pinpointed. They’re now grown most in India, where they are not only much eaten as is but are turned into a flour from which poppadums and other bread-like items are made. Lentils are second only to soybeans in their protein content–around 25 percent. There are many kind of lentils, differing in size and color. Some are even rare and expensive, as in the case of the tiny, green verte du puy variety in France. The Latin name for lentil is lens; from that comes the word “lens,” as in the glass in your camera. It’s shaped like a lentil: thick in the middle.
Disastrous Interruptions Of Dinner
Mount Vesuvius’s most famous eruption–the one that buried Pompeii and Herculaneum–occurred on this date in 79 AD. From the excavations in the lava we’ve been able to learn much about the lifestyles of the Romans at that especially rich time in their history. Pompeii is an astonishing place to see, but go on a cool day–the heat there is unbearable in summer. Those rich Romans must have dressed lightly.
Annals Of Breakfast
Today in 1869, Cornelius Swarthout of Troy, New York patented a waffle iron. Although waffles existed for hundreds of years, and Thomas Jefferson brought a patterned waffle iron back from the Netherlands (where they have long been popular), Swarthout’s breakthrough was in creating the grid pattern we now identify with waffles. In those days before electricity, the iron was heated over an open fire or in an oven.
Movie Restaurants
Alice’s Restaurant, a movie about the place where “you can get anything you want, excepting Alice,” premiered today in 1969. It grew out of a long, folky, humorous song performed by the movie’s star, Arlo Guthrie. The recording was better than the movie, a prime piece of pop culture of the late 1960s.
Looking Up
Today in 2006, the International Astronomical Union stripped Pluto of its status as a full-fledged planet. Back in the days when New Orleans had five-digit phone numbers, we dialed PLUTO to get the correct time. Before you got it, you’d hear an ad for Coca-Cola. Example: “Take five! Coke brings you back alive! Four thirty-one p.m.” To this day, whenever I think of Pluto I think of an ice-cold six-ounce bottle of Coke. What a great ad buy that was! And how antique such a service seems to be now.
The Saints
This is the feast day of St. Bartholemew, one of the Apostles. He is much revered in Italy, and in Florence he is the patron saint of cheesemakers and salt merchants.
Food Namesakes
Baseball outfielder Tim Salmon was born today in 1968. . . British comedian Stephen Fry was born today in 1957. . . John Cipollina, guitarist with Quicksilver Messenger Service, a major band in the Summer of Love in San Francisco, was born today in 1943. . . Max Beerbohm, a British artist of caricatures, was born today in 1872. . . . Kenny Baker, who played R2D2 in the Star Wars movies, hit the Big Stage today in 1934.
Words To Eat By
“Lyon is full of temperamental gourmets, eternally engaged in a never-ending search for that imaginary, perfect, unknown little back-street bistro, where one can dine in the style of Louis XIV for the price of a pack of peanuts.”–Roy Andries de Groot, American food writer.
Substitute “New Orleans” for “Lyon” and “joint” for “bistro,” and the sentence remains true.
Words To Drink By
“A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring;
Their shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
—Alexander Pope.
A Double Negative Makes A Positive.
At least the claim for what this isn’t is made in small print.
Click here for the cartoon.