Thursday, October 2, 2014.
A Taste Of A Different Carreta.
The long-running routine for the Cool Water Ranch’s dog contingent (now in its fifth generation) was rudely–but understandably–interrupted today. The pooches are used to freely running the length of our little country road and into the woods that flank it on both sides. This is common in our exurban area. But the number of our neighbors has doubled in the past decade. And a lady down our road who walks with her leashed dogs up and down the road has a keen dislike for our dog Steel, a largish German Shepherd. He is a friendly dog, but like most dogs, if he picks up a scent of fear–especially if the person expresses it by shouting or running–there may be what is perceived as trouble. And, since there’s officially a leash law here, Steel is the one whose needs must be adjusted.
The law is the law. Fair enough. We fenced off an area the size of a tennis court for the dogs. But somehow today the route from the fenced area to the larger world opened, and Steel was off his usual stroll with the dog Suzie. But our neighbor was out there, too, and there was the usual problem.
The next thing we knew, a St. Tammany Police cruiser was in our driveway. The officer was calm and understanding and polite, but he told Mary Ann that if any canine resident of the Cool Water Ranch is seen running around uncontrolled, the officer was required (having now given us a warning) that the person currently presiding at our address would be arrested and thrown into the pound.
Mary Ann wrings her hands over this possibility. But all I can think is that it would be my luck to be the only one home on the day when someone left the wrong door open, and I would be the arrestee. Which would almost certainly have me on the front page of the newspaper, between that day’s murderers and indicted public officials.
The crisis is already solved. The dogs have failed to find a way through the fence after many months of trying. For them to get out, we have to let them out. But MA says that a tennis court isn’t enough room for our freedom-loving animals. She wants to fence in a full acre, at least, preferably one with trees, a running stream, and a place where they can watch the passing parade on the road. I give her my standard verdict: “I agree. Take care of that for us, will you?”
I head into town, taking my mind off the massacree with my current audiobook, “The Goldfinch,” which is proving to be superb. At the station, my radio show takes on a life of its own (as I wish it did every day). I get a good nap in my office afterwards, then catch up on a lot of web-page whittling.
To dinner at Carreta’s Grill. This is one of two (the other one is La Carreta) small Louisiana Mexican restaurant chains, both with locations in the New Orleans metro area. Both are headquartered in Hammond. The many menu similarities seem to indicate that there is a common ancestor somewhere. But both outfits say that they have no connection at all with the other.
Because my daughter Mary Leigh is wild about the food there, we eat at La Carreta all the time. There is a Carreta’s Grill on our side of the puddle, too. But it’s been a long time since we last tried it.
The Carreta’s Grill on Veterans Blvd. in Metairie is the latest in a long parade of restaurants that have stood at that location. (River side of Vets, about midway between Causeway Blvd. and Bonnabel.) I remember particularly Ichabod’s Galley in the 1970s and Jalapeno’s in the 1990s. Apparently the location is hard-wired into the mental maps of Metaterraneans (isn’t that what you call a Metairie resident?), because the Carreta’s Grill restaurant was on a waiting list, with many people standing around in the parking lot or sitting on the benches.
I get a table faster than I expect. Looking over the menu, I see a familiar collection of dishes. Many bear the same offbeat names used for similar (but not identical) dishes at La Carreta. Who used them first I wouldn’t guess.
Choriqueso, a.k.a. queso fundido.
I began with a large vat of “choriqueso,” the restaurant’s name for chili con queso with chorizo sausage stirred in. (This is known as “queso fundido” in other places.) It is good, but there’s too much of it. It could have served a table of four. Overeating a particular dish is an easy way to lower one’s esteem for that dish.
Carreta’s Grill’s very large tamales with ranchero sauce.
The entree is interesting, and not something I recall from the other place. It consisted of two very large tamales inside of corn husks, stuffed with shredded beef with a ranchero sauce. It looked like an oversize rendering of a Manuel’s tamale, eight and two-thirds times as large. I thought this was very good, with a rustic Mexican flavor.
Cheese enchilada and rice at Carreta’s Grill.
But that was only half of the dish. On a separate plate is a single cheese enchilada with an acidic, greenish sauce–like enchiladas Suezas, with tomatillos. It shares its plate with a pile of the usual forgettable Mexican yellow rice. I would not have missed the contents of this platter if they had been left out altogether. The tamales were the money part of the dish.
So, a better dinner than I expect.
When I get home, Mary Leigh has the kitchen counters piled high with the detritus of another of her magnificent cakes. Recently, I heard her say that someone paid $700 for one of her wedding cakes. Even though creating a cake like that takes days, this is proving to be a better gig than even those of us who love her and all her works would have hoped for.
Carreta’s Grill. Metairie: 2320 Veterans Blvd. 504-837-6696.
Roasted Potatoes
We wanted potatoes to go with some beautiful strip sirloins we’d found, but we didn’t want mashed or fried or baked. So we roasted, with the potatoes at Mosca’s and the potatoes fournou from Greek restaurants in mind. After a few tries, here’s what we came up with.
3 lbs. medium potatoes, preferably Yukon Gold
2 Tbs. salted Creole seasoning
2 tsp. dried oregano
1 tsp. dried dill
Leaves of 1 6-inch sprig fresh rosemary, or 1 tbs. dried rosemary leaves, chopped
Juice of 1 /2 medium lemon
1/4 cup olive oil
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
1. Scrub the potatoes and place them on a baking sheet. Bake in the preheated 400-degree oven for 20-35 minutes (depending on size), until a kitchen fork plunged into the largest one no longer encounters hard resistance.
2. Remove the potatoes and let them cool enough to handle. While waiting, preheat the broiler.
3. Cut the potatoes into quarters (or eighths if they’re on the large side). The pieces should be about two inches long. Place them skin side down on the baking sheet. Sprinkle the potatoes with the Creole seasoning and the herbs. Then sprinkle the olive oil over the potatoes.
4. Put the potatoes in the broiler, about two inches from the heat source. Roast until the tops of the potatoes begin to turn dark brown. Remove and serve immediately.
Serves six to eight.
Grilled Hawaiian Fish, Grilled Hearts Of Palm, Sweet Onions, Mushrooms, Meyer Lemon Butter @ Lilette
Among the very few downsides of having great local seafood is that we don’t get as much exotic fish as, say, New York or San Francisco restaurants. John Harris has a history of using visiting fish, particularly from the Pacific Ocean, and here’s a great example of that. Interesting species over the Aloha land, beyond mahi-mahi. I haven’t seen the same one twice–another hallmark of the chef’s curiosity. I would say that fish is the most exciting food they cook here.
Lilette. Uptown: 3637 Magazine. 504-895-1636.
We find this dish to be among the 500 best in New Orleans area restaurants.
October 9, 2014
Days Until. . .
Halloween 22
Today’s Flavor
It’s Poor Boy Day in New Orleans. It’s well documented who invented the poor boy sandwich: Bennie and Clovis Martin. It happened during the famous streetcar strike of the late 1920s. The idea was to provide the “poor boys” out on the picket lines with a big, filling sandwich containing only scraps of meat for a low price—originally a nickel. The day it happened is not known, but the now-defunct Council for the Preservation of the Poor Boy Sandwich (it disbanded in 1973, when it became clear the danger of extinction had past) declared today as the official day of celebration.
The Martins persuaded their baker–John Gendusa, a couple of blocks up Touro–to make a special extra-long loaf of French bread that was the same thickness from end to end. That was an adaptation from the standard New Orleans French bread, which was shorter and had a wide middle and tapering ends.
Most New Orleanians agree that a well-made roast beef poor boy is one of the most delicious eats in this great eating town. We all remember our first one. For me, it came from Clarence and Lefty’s, an old joint on Almonaster at N. Tonti. It was so good I ate two of them. That taste still stands as my benchmark: homemade beef and gravy, fresh hot French bread. It’s the gravy that makes the sandwich unique. That caused a myth to grow that the sloppier the sandwich, the better. I do not subscribe to that theory. I have encountered some poor boys with so much gravy that they were impossible to eat. There’s a golden mean here, and only the really good shops get it right.
The best poor boy shops have many other kinds of poor boys, including unusual meats like liver cheese and hogshead cheese (together?) Of them all, I think the most underrated is the ham poor boy and its variants–especially the grilled ones. Then we have all the fried seafood poor boys. Those differ in being better without the lettuce and tomatoes found on their meatier brethren. The toasted bread should just be slathered with melted butter, the seafood doused with hot sauce, and a bunch of pickles thrown in for acidity and textural contrast.
The poor boy universe is a unique and essential part of the dining scene in New Orleans. Any place with a good poor boy gets a star on my mental culinary map.
Gourmet Gazetteer
Cherrystone, Virginia is just inside Cherrystone Inlet, near the southern tip of the Delmarva Peninsula, and the entrance to Chesapeake Bay. One might suspect that the community gets its name from the clams that occur in marketable numbers around there. In fact, it’s the other way around: the clams were named for this place. Despite the obvious access to the fisheries in these estuaries, the land is covered with farm fields. The small sub-peninsula on which Cherrystone is situated terminates in a beach and a docks. Looks pleasant. The nearest restaurants where cherrystone clams might be on the menu are two miles south in Cape Charles: the Bahama Breeze and Aqua.
Edible Dictionary
upside-down cake, n.–A rich, sweet dessert baked in the oven in a rounded pan or skillet. In the most common version, pineapple rings are placed on the bottom of the pan along with brown sugar and butter, all of which are lightly caramelized. After cooling to just warm, a yellow cake batter is poured in, and the cake is baked in the oven. When served, the cake is flipped so that the fruit on the bottom shows on top. Other fruits and other batters can also be used. but the pineapple version is the classic.
Deft Dining Rule #654:
The thickness of the meat, cheese, and dressings on a poor boy sandwich should equal or exceed that of the top layer of bread.
The Old Kitchen Sage Sez:
The perfect poor boy will, after being completely assembled, be warmed in a 400-degree oven for no less than three minutes, then served immediately.
Food In Science
You know those tendrils of liquid that climb up the side of your wine glass or brandy snifter? We call them “legs,” but Johann Andreas von Segner, a German physicist who was born today in 1704, called the effect a meniscus, caused by surface tension in the liquid. Surface tension allows a bug to walk on water, and for little beads of water to roll across the surface of a bowl of water when dribbled. It can force many liquids to climb solid barriers. Far up, in the case of some of our alcoholic beverages. The length of the legs in wine, by the way, has almost no meaning in terms of quality.
Emile Fischer, who won the Nobel Price for Chemistry in 1902, was born today in 1852. Most of his work involved the chemicals in food. Most notably, he greatly expanded our understanding of what happens when sugars ferment (a critical step in winemaking, among other things).
Music To Eat Beignets By
The calliope was patented today by Joshua Stoddard. Live steam blows across tuned (if we’re lucky) pipes and generates a tremendous amount of sound, as anyone who’s ever been in the neighborhood of a calliope-equipped steamboat knows. Although its sound is associated with the 1800s, modern passenger riverboats usually have them, to create atmosphere. Hearing a calliope is now part of the experience of having cafe au lait and beignets in the French Market or oysters at the Crescent City Brewpub.
Annals Of Drugstore Soda Fountains
Charles Rudolph Walgreen, who founded the drugstore chain that bears his name, was born today in 1873. The soda fountain was already common in pharmacies when Walgreen got into the business. They remained so until the 1970s. A decade later, they were almost all gone. Walgreen has a dessert named for him (informally; the name isn’t on the menu) at Antoine’s. It’s a ring of baked meringue with ice cream, nuts, chocolate sauce, and whipped cream. Must be because it resembled the kind of sundaes you once could get at Walgreen’s (and every other drugstore’s) soda fountain.
Food Around The World
Today is independence day for Valencia, now part of Spain. In 1237 on this day James I drove the Moors out its the capital city. Valencia (city and state) is the homeland of paella, the delicious dish of rice, vegetables, seafoods and meats which has become more common around New Orleans in recent years. It also indirectly gave its name to the Uptown social center for teenagers, which was once described as “a club for overprivileged children.”
Celebrity Chefs Today
Today is the birthday, in 1964, of abrasive television chef, restaurateur, and grilling specialist Bobby Flay. He doesn’t understand or like New Orleans food, so here’s a special salute to his birthday.
The Saints
It’s the feast day of St. Denis, the first bishop of Paris, who lived in the Third Century. There used to be an egg dish named for him at Antoine’s–it had a sauce made with chicken livers, ham, and sherry–but it’s been gone a long time.
Food Namesakes
Strawberry Fields, in New York’s Central Park, was christened today in 1985, on the late John Lennon’s birthday. . . Dutch actor Paul Beers was born today in 1935. . . Former North Carolina Governor and Congressman William Kitchin was born today in 1866.
Words To Eat By
“Peace is a good thing, and so is salmon when it’s smoked.”–Sean Ono Lennon, son of John and Yoko, born today in 1975. It’s also the anniversary of his father’s birth, in 1940.
“A hippo sandwich is easy to make. All you do is simply take one slice of bread, one slice of cake, some mayonnaise, one onion ring, one hippopotamus, one piece of string, a dash of pepper. That ought to do it. And now comes the problem: biting into it!”–Shel Silverstein, writer of children’s books and artist in Playboy Magazine.
Words To Drink By
“Drinking beer doesn’t make you fat, It makes you lean. Against bars, tables, chairs, and poles.”–Unknown.
Hell’s Bistro.
The funny part (to me, anyway), is that I said the same thing to the waiters in a number of restaurants lately. When did hot food stop being important, anyway?
Click here for the cartoon.