Friday: Love In The Garden. Food And Drink, Too.
For the past nine years, the New Orleans Museum of Art has staged a light-hearted party centered on local artists. A lot of the attention this time around goes to artists whose careers began in the New Orleans Center For the Creative Arts. With its roots at NOMA, after forty years NOCCA is now a major secondary school for young artists of all kinds.
The food will come from nearly sixty local restaurants. I went over the list looking for those to avoid and came up with almost nothing. If you don’t believe me, check the list yourself here. On top of all those cooks, the mixologists from fifteen major local bars will make craft cocktails.
The garden where all this love will be put forth this Friday (September 26) is the Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden at City Park. There will be three parties, really: the patrons show up at seven for their $150-ticket food and beverages. At eight, the main party attendees will show up with their $100 ducats. At nine, NOMA will continue its recent success with a late-night party tailored for younger participants at $50 a ticket. (All must be over 21.) Members of NOMA get a $25 discount off patron and main party admissions.
Tickets and other information can be had here.
Love In The Garden
Friday, September 26. : New Orleans Museum of Art, City Park.. 504.658.4121. http://www.noma.org/events/detail/867/LOVE-in-the-Garden-presented-by-Regions-Bank.
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.
Tuesday, September 16, 2014.
I Talk My Wife Into Galatoire’s.
Jude says that when he and his soon-to-be bride move in together, they will have a tremendous surplus of kitchenware and place settings. He wants us to take some of this off his hands. We actually do need a new food processor, and he has an extra. What we will do with all the rest of it is a mystery.
Jude is in the habit of shippping bulky items across country on Amtrak. Train Number 2, The Sunset Limited, left late Sunday evening with two boxes of cargo for us in its baggage car. It arrives tonight at Union Passenger Terminal. Mary Ann came into town to collect it all and to have a few meetings.
After the radio show, I check the train’s progress on my smart phone. It is expected at eight-thirty–a ninety-minute early arrival. That gives us time to go somewhere for dinner that would take a good bit of time. In fact, we had to do that. It was raining off and on, and we certainly didn’t want to hang around the train station.
I say that we should go to Galatoire’s. If we sit around there for three hours or longer, we wouldn’t get any flak for it. And we haven’t been there together in a long time.
The idea appeals to her, so there we went. Even after the parking disaster yesterday, she conducts a search for a nearby open space on the street, to avoid having to park in a garage. You just don’t know where those parking valets have been, she says. I don’t know, but I don’t care, either.
The Parking Witch finds a perfectly legal gap on Canal Street between Bourbon and Dauphine. A block and a half from Galatoire’s. Not far enough for us to get wet from the rain, even though we have only one small umbrella.
A slow night at Galatoire’s.
Galatoire’s has many vacancies. Early September business is always terrible. What convention would be dumb enough to meet in New Orleans at the peak of hurricane season?
The best-known waiters take the night off when it’s like this. Only a few of those working are familiar to me. I tell maitre d’ Arnold Chabaud that it didn’t matter who serves our table. A young woman takes the assignment. She has me sized up as a tourist. That has not happened to me here in decades.
But my anonymity helps me pull off my birthday scam. I claim that it’s my birthday every time I dine at Galatoire’s. The management and all the first-string servers are onto me. Nobody cares much. I get away with a free caramel custard (food cost: about seven cents). Genuine birthday celebrants also get a nice-looking Galatoire’s pen. I only write with fountain pens, however, so I let them keep theirs. But our server went through the whole routine, and had nearly everybody in the restaurant singing the song.
Galatoire’s goute: crabmeat maison on the left, shrimp remoulade on the right.
We start dinner with a combo shrimp remoulade and crabmeat maison, as superb as always and served very generously. While we picked at that, I checked on the running of the Sundet Limit. Uh-oh. It had lost a half-hour since last time I checked. Still an hour early, thought. We would have to remain here at Galatoire’s a little longer.
Crabmeat Yvonne.
We should have had a soup-and-salad course, but we head right into the entrees. Mary Ann is pleased with crabmeat Yvonne, a tremendous amount of the namesake ingredient sauteed with butter, garlic, mushrooms, artichokes and a few other things. I remember when this dish–named for Yvonne Wynne, the long-time manager of the restaurant–was brand-new, in a restaurant that didn’t change much on those days.
Grilled pompano with brown butter.
My entree is a big, pretty fillet of pompano with brown butter. I have called this the best seafood dish on town, the best dish at Galatoire’s, and a few other chart-toppers. I still feel good about all of that.
I get my caramel custard, candle and my song. The Sunset Limited doesn’t get any closer. We hear that it’s caught behind a freight train–a common problem. It will come in at about ten, but that’s too late to pick up our parcels. We (more likely, I) will have to pick it up tomorrow. I will hear about this for the rest of my life, every time I ship something on Amtrak.
At least it’s stopped raining.
Galatoire’s. French Quarter: 209 Bourbon. 504-525-2021.
Wednesday, September 17, 2014.
Where’s The Railway Express? Eating At The Bridal Show.
Right after the radio show ends, I drive over to Union Passenger Terminal to pick up the packages Jude sent us by rail. But while the Amtrak agent knows about the parcels’ existence, he had no idea where they were. We know that they made it aboard the baggage car in Los Angeles, but they seem to have disappeared somewhere between there to here.
The leading theory is that it went to Chicago. From L.A. to San Antonio, the Sunset Limited carries several cars that branch off at that point to become the Texas Eagle. Maybe our goods wound up in one of those cars.
Why are we shipping this on the train in the first place? I turned Jude onto the idea when he needed to send some bulky props and equipment for one of his movies to the shooting location. It worked perfectly, and was a bargain.
But in just the way that a dog knows when you don’t like or or afraid of him, the train must know that it is not trusted by Mary Ann, who indeed hates trains. So it screwed up the assignment.
In more delectable news, Mary Leigh had a booth in a bridal show tonight in Covington. She decorated two of her magnificent cakes to show her design sense, and baked several layer cakes with many different fillings to show off her abilities to deliver taste as well as display. Whether she made any sales or not is unknown. But other exhibitors came by for samples and were raving about her works. Even a major baker from Hammond was impressed.
She indicated that she’d like it if I dropped in to see her display. It would require figuring out a way to get supper late in the evening, but I am more proud of her work than I am hungry. It turned out that some vendors were caterers who had food to be sampled. Shirley Deluzain of Benedict’s Plantation was griddling up some nice crab cakes and napping them with remoulade sauce.
While I enjoy my second crab cake, Shirley asks me to be honorary chairman of a fund-raising event for St. Tammany Hospice. That organization comforts terminally ill people in their last days, for free. Happy to lend what I can to that program. Miss Betty–the lady who lived across the field from us when we first moved to the Cool Water Ranch–was a volunteer at Hospice. A decade later, she was a patient there. I’ll bet they gave her extra-good care.
Another vendor cooked up a good pasta dish with shrimp and pepper jack cheese. So much for needing anything to eat.
Years ago, I used to lull myself to sleep with the comforting thought that I would never die of hunger, because if things really got bad for me, I could always go to wedding receptions and graze. Nobody would throw me out. “You intimidate the caterers into doing a better job,” a friend whose daughter was getting married once told me. Maybe I could rent myself out.
Why Can’t I Get My Favorite Table?
Q. Whenever I call a certain restaurant for a reservation, I ask for my favorite table. They tell me that they can’t promise it to me. I am a regular customer. We eat there three or four times a year. Sometimes I get the table, but I usually don’t. I’ve tried calling a long time in advance, but nothing seems to work. What’s the trick?
A. There isn’t one. You (and most other diners) have a different idea of how reservations work than is actually practiced by restaurants.
Very few restaurants reserve specific tables for their customers. Instead, they juggle the number of people on the book, the number of seats available, and the number of servers in the room. The assignment of the actual table doesn’t happen until you arrive. At that moment, the skillful host/hostess (I make that qualification, because not all of them have skill) sizes up the situation at that moment, and make the decision as to where you will be seated. If you’ve seen a hostess look over a seating chart, you have seen this process in action.
It’s already a tricky matter figuring out how much room a restaurant has at a certain time–particularly after the first seating. The length of time the first customers stay is impossible to predict. To do that on a table-by-table basis would be a nightmare. The only restaurants that pull it off have more seats than customers. Antoine’s, for example, is vastly larger than it needs to be, so they can reserve specific tables with placards.
However, even in busy restaurants, some guests can command a certain table. While four times a year may seem regular to you, that’s only occasional patronage for most restaurants. Special favors start clicking in when they see you once a month or more often. Or if every time you come in you spend a memorable amount of money. So what else is new?
Having said all that, I must add that one strategy works at least some of the time. Show up right as the restaurant opens, and you may get your pick. Unless a VIP is competing with you for the table, you should be able to request and get it.
Stir-Fried Satsuma Shrimp
When satsumas start coming in from Plaquemines Parish, we eat them by the sack. But I never cooked with them until my Cub Scouts picked a short ton of them. This dish was inspired by something I found in “Hot Wok,” one in a great series of books about Asian cooking for American cooks by Hugh Carpenter and Teri Sanderson.
Stir-fry dishes, in order to come out right, require a great deal of heat and either a wok or one of those wok-like skillets. Flat-bottomed woks are better for most home cooks, and essential if you have an electric stove. You have to preheat the wok for about ten minutes before you start cooking. And the pieces of food, particularly meats, need to be cut up smaller than your instincts tell you.
This concoction is very good served atop a spring mix salad, with a few satsuma sections scattered about, in a warm-cool contrast.
Stir-Fried Satsuma Shrimp
1 lb. medium shrimp
1 red bell pepper
3 green onions
1/3 cup chopped pecans
3 Tbs. canola oil
1 Tbs. chopped garlic
Zest of 1 satsuma (or mandarin or tangerine)
1/2 cup satsuma juice, strained
1 1/2 Tbs. Vietnamese fish sauce (nuoc mam)
1 Tbs. hoisin sauce
1 tsp. Asian hot sauce
2 tsp. cornstarch
1/4 cup chopped cilantro or parsley
1. Spread the pecans on a pizza pan and put them into a preheated 350-degree oven. Toast the pecans, shaking them around a time or two, for about five minutes. Remove and cool.
2. Slice the shrimp into four or five pieces each, crosswise.
3. Remove the seeds and stem of the bell pepper, and slice it into small dice. Slice the green onions into quarter-inch lengths.
4. Combine the satsuma juice, fish sauce, hoisin, hot sauce, cornstarch, and cilantro, and stir to blend completely.
5. Preheat the wok for ten minutes over the highest heat you have. Add the canola oil and roll it around to coat the sides of the wok. Add the garlic and satsuma zest and cook for a few seconds, then add the shrimp. Stir-fry constantly until the shrimp turn white at the outside–about 30 seconds.
6. Add the bell pepper and green onion and stir-fry for another 15 seconds or so. Let the vegetables remain crisp. Add the satsuma-juice mixture and stir it around until it thickens, which it will in about 15 to 30 seconds, depending on the heat you’ve been able to work up.
7. Add the pecans. Add salt to taste, and spoon out onto a warm platter.
Serves two entrees or four to six appetizers.
Moo-Shu Vegetables @ Trey Yuen
Moo-shu pork is a famous Mandarin dish whose fanciness and unique style of serving are at least matched by its deliciousness. Pork, eggs flowers, matchsticks of various savory vegetables, and exotic mushrooms all come together in a thick sauce. You spoon all that into a “pancake” (it’s more like a thin flour tortilla), roll it up, and eat with your fingers. It’s sort of a Chinese burrito. It’s so well-liked that lots of customers asked to have the same dish with chicken or beef. It was inevitable that someone would want moo-shu with just vegetables. When that happened, the Wong brothers just whipped it up and sent it out. It may be the best moo-shu of them all, the meat’s absence made up for with more vegetables and more mushrooms, in several varieties.
Trey Yuen. Mandeville: 600 Causeway Blvd. 985-626-4476.
We find this dish to be among the 500 best in New Orleans area restaurants.
September 24, 2014
Days Until. . .
Halloween 37
Today’s Flavor
Today is widely noted as Cherries Jubilee Day, celebrating a dessert that’s all but gone from restaurant menus, living on only at historic establishments like Antoine’s. (Which, in fact, makes the definitive version.) It’s pretty simple: cherries are cooked down in a syrup made right there in the pan, then flamed with kirsch, and served over ice cream. It is believed to have been created by no less than Auguste Escoffier, the arbiter of classic French cooking, on the occasion of Queen Victoria’ s fiftieth jubilee. Escoffier’s original recipe didn’t have ice cream, but that was such a natural addition that it’s now universal.
Gourmet Gazetteer
Turtle, Missouri is 138 miles southwest of St. Louis. It’s a collection of three or four homes and farm facilities, far out in the countryside on highway N. Big fields are interspersed with patches of woods. The latter are part of the Mark Twain National Forest, a perfect environment fro the many species of turtles that live there. Don’t eat the box turtles: they eat poisonous mushrooms to which they are immune. You have to drive ten miles northwest into Salem to find a restaurants, and then you’ll find mostly chains. An exception is the Red Hen Breakfast Cafe.
Edible Dictionary
prosciutto, [pro-ZHOO-toe], Italian, n.–A dry-cured ham in the Italian style. A pig’s hind leg is covered with salt and a bit of fat, then hung up to dry in a building with free, cool air flow for about a year. (It can be between nine and eighteen months, depending on the place and its climate.) The salt is washed off and the ham is dried. Sometimes the bone is then removed, but sometimes even the hoof remains on. Prosciutto is usually served as is, sliced very thinly. It shows up most often in the antipasto course, where it is so common that in most Italian restaurants it is the most common first course. The word comes from a Latin expression meaning “dried out.” The two most famous prosciuttos come from San Daniele in northeast Italy, and Parma at the top of the boot. Prosciutto is also made domestically, but it doesn’t compare with the real Italian article.
Cocktails On Television
Today in 1977 was the launch date for The Love Boat, the situation comedy-drama set on a Princess cruise ship. The series tremendously boosted the popularity of cruising as a mainstream vacation. Previously, the average age of cruisers was “deceased.” The Love Boat showed people of all ages having all kinds of fun on a spiffy, glamorous ship. What I remember most about The Love Boat was that no matter where you were on the ship, no matter what time it was, if you ordered a cocktail it would be mixed by Isaac, played by Ted Lange. He appeared to be the only cocktail server on the whole ship. Also at odds with our experience on cruise ships was the ease with which one could arrange to have dinner at the captain’s table.
Annals Of Coffee
Riccardo Illy was born today in 1955. He joined his family’s coffee company in Trieste, Italy, where he greatly expanded the marketing reach of Illy Caffe. He wrote an influential book about how to make espresso, starting with the unroasted beans and finishing in the cup. He then went into politics, where he’s still a major player in that field.
Annals Of Brewing
Arthur Guinness, who founded the Guinness Brewing Company, was born today in 1725, in Dublin, Ireland. Members of his family worked as brewers, but Arthur got into the business on the entrepreneurial side. He started out making ales, but then moved to porter–the higher-alcohol, darker beers for which Guinness eventually became famous. Guinness is now the leading brand name of such beers, as well as the sponsor of the Book of World Records. The latter began as a means of settling arguments that may well have started over glasses of Guinness Stout.
Annals Of Restaurant Advertising
Today is the birthday, in 1870, of Georges Claude, the Frenchman who invented the neon lighting tube in 1910. Restaurants have been among the best customers of neon signmakers, and still use them heavily. Imagine the Acme Oyster House, Mandina’s or Tujague’s without neon!
Music To Eat Pie By
Today in 1967, Jay and the Techniques hit Number Three with their biggest record, Apples, Peaches, Pumpkin Pie . It was about a girl!
Eating Around The World
Today is Heritage Day in South Africa, a holiday celebrating the ethnic diversity of that country. It is also known as National Braai Day. A braai is a barbecue, the kind you’d have with family and friends. Since it’s early spring in South Africa, it’s sort of the kickoff of that season.
Food And Drink Namesakes
We begin with food-named twins: Paul and Morgan Hamm, both American Olympic gymnasts, born today in 1982. . . Today in 1865, James Cooke walked a tightrope from the original Cliff House in San Francisco to the Seal Rocks, well out into the Pacific Ocean and covered with sea lions. . . Actor Don Porter, whose most famous role was as Sally Fields’s father in the television show Gidget, hit The Big Stage today in 1912. I wonder if he knew that he shared a birthday with the most famous name in porter, Arthur Guinness (see above).
Words To Eat By
“Time’s fun when you’re having flies.”–Kermit the Frog, the Muppet created by Jim Henson, who was born today in 1936.
Words To Drink By
“First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you.”–F. Scott Fitzgerald, born today in 1896.
More Deadly A Day Later.
That’s the story of French bread. Unless, of course, the wielder of the loaf has pain perdu or bread pudding in mind.
Click here for the cartoon.