200 Wines, Food, Tonight, Benedict’s Plantation
The Hospice Foundation of the South is throwing its annual fundraiser tonight at Benedict’s Plantation in Mandeville–just barely on the other side of the Causeway. Ten restaurants will be there serving their specialties, and Acquistapace’s astonishing wine department will be there with 200 different vintages for us to sample. A raffle ticket puts you in the running for an instant wine cellar: 100 different bottles from the wineries of Select Brands and Acquitapace’s.
The beneficiary is the Hospice Foundation, which offers a place where terminally-ill patients can live their last days in comfort without overwhelming their families. I am well acquainted with the North Shore Hospice. The wonderful lady who lived next door to us for many years was a volunteer at Hospice for a long time. Then, years later, she was a patient. We saw what a wonderful service this is.
The party runs from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. tonight. A live and silent auction will be there, too. Tickets are $65, available at the door. (You can also get them at the Slidell, Mandeville, and US 190 (Covington) branches of the Whitney Bank. And at the Hospice Foundation: 501 Robert Blvd., Slidell. For more info, call 985-643-5470.
Here’s a map to Benedict’s.
Benedict’s Plantation
Mandeville: 1144 Lovers’ Lane. 985-626-4557.
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.
Thursday, November 6, 2014.
The New Releases From Penfolds.
My friend and dermatologist Dr. Bob DeBellevue is one of the most knowledgeable American authorities on the wines of Australia, which he has collected since long before Australian wines became cool. Penfolds–the top name in fine wines from down under–knows him well and has at times asked for his opinions and advice.
Penfolds holds a tasting of its current top offerings tonight for its best customers, wine shops, and restaurants. One of the wines is the new release of 2010 Grange, one of the most revered red wines in the world. Dr. Bob is there, of course, and he opened a door so I could sneak in. I always grab the chance to taste some Grange. It and I were born the same year. But the $575 price per bottle is daunting.
We begin with Penfolds Riesling. That’s the most underrated white wine grape in the world, but it has a way of being made into sweet wines. I love running into dry Riesling, and I have run into one tonight. Riesling is a relatively new game in Australia, but they make the wines very well.
The provenance of the grapes for Penfolds’s red wines is complicated, to put it mildly. Near as I can tell, they move the grapes around from label to label to take best advantage of the fruit at hand. Knowing the percentages of Shiraz and Cabernet that will go into this year’s Bin 407, Bin 9, Bin 389, Bin 707 and all the other Bins tests one’s data-storage abilities to the limits.
So I take my usual approach and go for laughs. “It’s funny that they would name Bin 707 after an airplane,” I say to DLynn Proctor, Penfolds’s spokesman for this part of the world.
“Oh, so you know about that!” he said, with all seriousness. What? “Yes, it was named for the first Quantas jet that flew across the Pacific in regular service,” he said. So much for my laugh. What a weird coincidence.
The 707 is a terrific wine–even bigger, I thought, than the Grange. As for which, it’s hard to tell about a wine that is clearly made for long aging, if you’re tasting it on release. On the other hand, after four years in cask and bottle, it is certainly approachable. And it’s only $245 a bottle. On the other hand, the Bin 8 and 9 and 28, at under $17 each, are far from rejects.
All this went on with a good deal of light sculpture in Generations Hall. Lots of food, too, along the lines of antipasto, but with some fried oysters, lamb chops (the ultimate meat to eat with Grange), cheeses, and enough other nibbles to make dinner unnecessary. And the twelve-block walk to and from Generations Hall takes care of most of my exercise needs. It’s a nice, cool evening.
VERA CRUZ
French Quarter: 1141 Decatur
Uptown: 7537 Maple
Late 1970s-late 2000s
The 1100 block of Decatur Street was the first bohemia in the French Quarter for the Baby Boom generation. With Molly’s and The Abbey on its uptown end, in the 1970s it swas a hangout for people who lived or worked in the French Quarter.
In the restaurant revolution of the early 1980s, the block became a good place to eat. At the end of the decade it was a restaurant row, with French Market Seafood, Greco’s, the Mediterranean Cafe, Cafe Sbisa, Molly’s at the Market, Coop’s Place, G&E Courtyard Grill, Maximo’s, Margaritaville, and the Decatur House.
But the first modern restaurant on the block was Vera Cruz. With lots of greenery, a pleasant well-worn quality, and a style of Mexican cooking not seen elsewhere around New Orleans, it attracted a dedicated following of regulars. They came in often enough to have favorite tables and waiters.
Vera Cruz arrived at a time when Mexican dining was at a crossroads. Most of the old family places from the 1950s (El Ranchito and Castillo’s, to name two) were either gone or soon to be gone. Meanwhile, totally Americanized Mexican places–some of them national chains–moved in. Chi-Chi’s, Cu-Co’s, and Dos Gringos were typical of the time.
Compared with those plastic places, Vera Cruz seemed adventuresome and real. For those who had never been to Texas, let alone Mexico, its food came across as authentic. By today’s better informed standards, it would be laughable. But innovators have to start somewhere, and Vera Cruz’s food was a learning experience for most of its customers.
It helped that the young, friendly waiters were frank about the food. They’d warn you against advanced peculiarities, while also waxing appropriately enthusiastic about dishes like the terrific mesquite-roasted pork loin, loaded with garlic, sliced into pieces with some nice hard edges.
Fajitas was just beginning to appear in these parts. Vera Cruz was one of the local pioneers of that exciting dish. They grilled chicken, beef, and pork over mesquite while sizzling peppers and onions on the hot plate. You rolled all this up in flour tortillas with pico de gallo. (My 1985 review explained that pico de gallo is a coarse relish of onions, cilantro, tomatoes and herbs, but you know that now.) The fajitas came in a big platter for two people. That fact and the attention drawn by the sizzling plates created moments when everybody in the place was eating fajitas.
The menu went on to include well-made versions of the standard Mexican combination platters. They used more pork than most Mexican places did, always to good effect. Dishes that had strong similarities to salads were all over the menu. One of these was an odd, popular tostada called the India: a tortilla with seemingly everything in the house on top.
On the other hand, much of the menu was disappointing. I never thought much of their guacamole, for example. The beans–prepared juicy instead of in the more familiar refritos style–were nothing more than filler.
The menu at Vera Cruz didn’t change much until near the end of its run in the 2000s. By that time, enough Mexican restaurants with more adventuresome menus had surpassed it. The French Quarter original restaurant closed first. A renovation of both food and environment at the Maple Street Vera Cruz kept it going a few years longer. By then, the college crowd knew better than this, and went elsewhere to find it.
Supreme de Volaille et Homard
Sorry about the French name. I just couldn’t think of a fancy way of saying “chicken and lobster” without your thinking I was talking about a chicken lobster (the little ones that restaurants sell cheap). This is a dish that was presented on October 12, 1991 by Chef Felix Sturmer at the Westin Canal Place. I had challenged him to do an all-white-food dinner, and this is one of the dishes he came up with. (It was a forerunner of the Eat Club.)
As a rule, I don’t like poultry and seafood together. But the ginger in this recipe pulls the flavors together. You can also make this dish with turkey breast if you want to glorify Thanksgiving.
3 large chicken breasts
1 8-oz. lobster tail
1 lemon
1 oz. brandy
1 stick butter
1 Tbs. French shallots, finely chopped
1 Tbs. flour
1/4 cup grated fresh ginger root
3 cups chicken stock
1/2 cup dry white wine
1. Remove lobster from the shell. Devein and cut lengthwise in half. Season with salt, pepper, lemon juice, and brandy, and allow to marinate for 30 minutes.
2. In a saucepan over medium-low heat, melt half of the butter and saute the shallots until they turn clear. Add flour and make a light roux.
3. Add the ginger and the chicken stock and reduce over low heat to half the original volume.
4. Meanwhile, with a sharp knife cut a pocket in each of the chicken breasts. Slice the lobster tail on the bias into three pieces. Stuff the lobster inside the chicken, making sure that the lobster is surrounded by chicken meat.
5. Season chicken with salt and pepper. Put it on an oiled baking pan or in an ovenproof skillet. Pour the wine over the chicken and place the skillet into a preheated 300-degree oven for 20-30 minutes–until chicken is cooked all the way through.
6. After the sauce is reduced, whisk in the rest of the butter, one chip at a time. Adjust the seasoning with salt and pepper. (Note: this should not be a spicy dish.)
7. When chicken is cooked, pour off juices from the pan into the sauce and blend in. Slice the chicken breast to get a disk of lobster in the center. Spoon sauce onto the plate and place slices of the chicken/lobster on top.
Serves four.
Soft-Shell Crab Loaf @ Casamento’s
Eating a soft-shell crab sandwich is–when you try it the first time, or think about it thereafter–a kind of strange thing. You start out eating legs and claws. The center of the sandwich delivers the jumbo and backfin lump meat. Then you fall into a lull in the middle, but then the lumps come back into play. It ends how you started, with the appendages. At Casamento’s, they only serve soft-shell crabs in season, so they’re big and fat. The loaf comes out not on the usual French bread but the unconventional, toasted, buttered “pan bread.” Flawless.
If the thought of soft-shell crabs makes you hungry, satisfy the urge before the cold, nasty weather makes them hard to get.
Casamento’s. Uptown: 4330 Magazine. 504-895-9761.
This is among the 500 best dishes in New Orleans area restaurants. Click here for a list of the other 499.
November 13, 2014
Days Until. . .
Thanksgiving and Chanukah–14
Christmas–42
New Year’s–49
Annals Of Popular Cuisine
The wiener was invented today in Vienna (called Wien by its citizens, who call themselves Wieners). The inventor was Johann George Lehner, who today in 1806 began selling what he called wienerwurst. That means “Vienna sausage.” This must be an example of divergent evolution, since a hot dog has little in common with those awful little sausages we, for some reason, stock up on when hurricanes head our way. In any case, the wiener was just another sausage in a land of sausages until it was popularized by the World’s Fair in St. Louis of 1904. Now it’s the hot dog.
Annals Of Canned Fruit
Today in 1895, the first shipload of canned pineapple left Hawaii for the mainland. Where would we be without pineapple? In addition to its natural uses in desserts, it turns up in some unexpected places. The inclusion of pineapple in spicy Vietnamese shrimp and seafood soup is intriguing and good. Antoine’s Alciatore sauce is a brown savory sauce made with caramelized pineapple; they serve it on steaks and (better) lamb chops. Pineapple juice is an effective tenderizer for tough cuts of beef. Pineapple would be pretty good in bread pudding. In moderation, anyway. Speaking of that. . .
Today’s Flavor
Today is alleged to be National Indian Pudding Day. That’s made with cornmeal and molasses, usually with a little spice, too. It has the texture of grits. Not a biggie. But here in New Orleans, we celebrate National Bread Pudding Day.
Bread pudding is found all over the country, but nowhere is it better or more popular than in New Orleans, where it’s all but the official regional dessert. No two bread puddings are alike. You find heavy versions and light ones. Some made with raisins, some with fruit, some with neither. Some with a lot of vanilla or cinnamon and some with less. There are chocolate (white and dark) bread puddings, banana bread puddings, praline bread puddings. You can even make bread pudding into a savory side dish with ingredients like mushrooms and cheese.
One thing all makers of bread pudding agree upon are the basic ingredients: bread (preferably stale French bread), eggs, milk, sugar, and vanilla. From there almost anything goes, as long as the flavor is rich. Even so, it’s not expensive to make. Which is one of the reasons that bread pudding appears on the menus of New Orleans restaurants ranging from the most humble to the most expensive.
My own variation on the theme is something I learned from my mother. She topped hers with a layer of meringue, which she then toasted a little with a quick pass through a hot oven. In a slightly different form, that is the famous bread pudding soufflee at Commander’s Palace.
The final fillip of creativity in a good bread pudding is the sauce. Like the pudding itself, this receives a wide range of interpretation. It can be a custard, or a very dilute butter cream, or chocolate sauce. It’s common for the sauce to contain rum, brandy, or whiskey, in various degrees ranging from the barely detectable to the equivalent of an after-dinner cordial. Infinite variability make a great dessert.
Gourmet Gazetteer
Livermore, Colorado is eighty-four miles north of Denver, on the eastern edge of the High Rocky Mountains. It’s a sort of last-chance fork in the highway as you start climbing west. Livermore Mountain, about six miles southwest, is a commanding peak that rises 1600 feet from the already lofty 5880 feet at the place called Livermore. Whether they eat liver more or less than anywhere else is a question that will not be answered in a restaurant, because the nearest one to Livermore is fourteen miles away, on the outskirts of Fort Collins.
Edible Dictionary
turkey melt, n.–The turkey melt sandwich is one of the true horrors of American roadside cafe cooking. It’s a sandwich on sliced bread that’s made more or less like a French croque, with much gooier and richer, with very inexpensive ingredients. The turkey is chopped or sliced, and cooked with butter, onions, cream cheese and sour cream until the pan contents merge into a thick mass. This is spooned on a slice of bread, usually of a hearty kind: rye and dark whole wheat are most common. A slice of cheese (your call) goes over the turkey stuff, and the second slice of bread removes it all from sight. The top slice of bread is generously spread with softened butter. The sandwich is turned over and placed in a clean, hot skillet until the bread is toasted. That step is repeated for the other slice of bread. And there you are. Variations include adding bacon, replacing the cream cheese and sour cream with barbecue sauce or mayonnaise, or including bread crumbs in the turkey mix. None of this turns it into a good sandwich.
The Old Kitchen Sage Sez:
The bigger you make a bread pudding (up to the size of your largest baking dish), the better the bread pudding. Those made with a dozen eggs or more are the best.
Food In Film
Today in 1939, John Steinbeck’s famous novel The Grapes of Wrath, about the lives of people who worked in agriculture in California, was published. I picked grapes once for Cakebread Cellars, and can’t imagine what it must be to do that under the pressures of the harvest. Fortunately, most of that is done by machines these days.
Food Inventions
Today in 1930, a gizmo called a Rotolactor was installed in a daily laboratory in New Jersey. It was an automated system for milking cows. It looked like a merry-go-round. Fifty cows climbed aboard and were milked, washed, and dried so efficiently that the thing could handle almost 1700 cows a day. The Rotolactor was invented by Henry Jeffries, and was one of the major marvels of the 1939 New York World’s Fair.
Food Namesakes
Civil War Brigadier General Edward Burd Grubb was born today in 1841. . . Ginger Aldren, the girlfriend of Elvis Presley who had the misfortune of being the person who found him dead, was born today in 1956.
Words To Eat By
“If you could make a pudding wi’ thinking o’ the batter, it ‘ud be easy getting dinner.”–George Eliot.
Words To Drink By
“If you know someone who tries to drown their sorrows, you might tell them sorrows know how to swim.”–Unknown author.
The Power Of A Restaurant Customer.
They can get anything they want, if they get their minds into the right state in which to relate to the restaurant and its offerings.
Click here for the cartoon.