By Tom Fitzmorris
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
979 restaurants are open in New Orleans today..
Looking Up
Today we turn the final
corner on the way to summertime. Today is our
latest sunrise of the year (by
standard time, anyway). The earliest sunset was about a month ago, and
the shortest day two and a half weeks ago. Everything looks a little
brighter each day from now until the summer solstice, when winter will
be long forgotten.
The Twelfth Day of Christmas
Although yesterday evening was
really the Twelfth Night of Christmas, for some reason Twelfth Night is
celebrated tonight in New Orleans. It is the Feast of the
Epiphany or
King Day, commemorating the visit of
the Magi to the baby Jesus. It's also one of many days historically
celebrated as Christmas; it still is by a few sects.
In New Orleans, today is the
first
day of the Carnival season, ushered in by the Twelfth Night
Revelers, one of the oldest organizations in the New Orleans Carnival
hierarchy. It holds it annual ball tonight, presided over by the Lord
of Misrule. Its central ceremony is the cutting of the
King Cake. (More on that below.) A
special room on the second floor of Antoine's was created for the
Revelers a few years ago, adding to that restaurant's collection of
krewe-themed dining rooms. The krewes actually do have their dinners in
those rooms, but the Twelfth Night Revelers will not be able to use
theirs this year. It's in the part of the Antoine's complex that sagged
under the attack of Katrina, and it's under heavy renovation.
January 6 is, then,
King Cake Day. The
tradition of the king cake has spread far beyond the rarefied air of
the Twelfth Night Revelers' ball (where it determines who will lead the
ball next year) into all levels of New Orleans society and to the rest
of America. King cakes have spun completely out of control, being
available everywhere throughout the Carnival season. Variations on king
cakes have begun spreading out into the Christmas season, and I've even
seen them made in green for St. Patrick's Day.
Edible Dictionary
king
cake, n.--The New Orleans-style king cake is a ring of sweet yeast
dough--often made in the style of brioche--decorated with coarse
granulated sugar colored purple, green, and gold. (Those are the colors
of Mardi Gras.) Sometimes the dough is braided, with cinnamon between
the layers. The cake is frequently topped with white icing, and some
versions are filled with fruit or custards. An essential ingredient is
a small plastic baby. The person who gets the slice with the baby
inside is required by tradition to give the next king cake party. King
cake is traditionally served on January 6, the Feast of the Epiphany,
commemorating the visit of the three Magi kings to the newborn Jesus.
However, king cake has become such an icon of New Orleans eating that
king cakes are baked and consumed long before King Day and every day
through Mardi Gras. Thousands of them are baked and shipped throughout
the year to people elsewhere who want a piece of New Orleans culture,
but don't know the exact tradition. ¶ Click
here for the entire dictionary so
far. Click here to ask about a food word you've wondered
about.
Delicious-Sounding Places
Cake Hill,
altitude 4406 feet, in in Niobrara County, Wyoming. That's pretty much
in the middle of nowhere, 104 miles east northeast of Casper. It's
about the same distance and direction to Mount Rushmore. Cake Hill is
in the middle of a hilly, arid basin between some much more serious
mountains. It's only reachable by dirt trails, of which there is a
dense web in the area. Looks like a happy place for off-roaders. The
nearest restaurant is the well-named Outpost Cafe in Lusk, about
thirty-five miles as the eagle flies.
Deft Dining Rule
#106: Only eat as many slices of king cake as you drink cups of coffee with it. (Click here for all our
Rules For Better Dining.)
Celebrity Chefs Today
Today is the birthday of
Leah Chase,
the reigning queen of Creole cooking in New Orleans, in 1923. She was
born on the North Shore, in Madisonville, and came to New Orleans in
1937. Miss Leah, who made Dooky Chase restaurant into a mainstay of
dining here, started her cooking career at the old Coffee Pot
restaurant in the 1940s, and she keeps at it today. In fact, one of her
cookbooks is very appropriately entitled "And I Still Cook." Her most
recent cookbook is another one of her favorite lines, "Listen, I Say
Like This." Dooky Chase is not in the best of shape right now, but she
says she's determined to get it open again. What a wonderful lady. To
know her (or even to just meet her) is to love her.
The Saints
Speaking of local saints, today is the traditional birthday, in 1412,
of
Joan of Arc,
the patron
saint of New Orleans. She was born in Domremny, France, and became a
French hero in the Battle of Orleans when she was only 19. Our namesake
French city adopted her as their patron, and so did we. This year
begins a a new parade in her honor. It begins in Woldenburg Park at
five this afternoon, with depictions of Joan by four actresses and
paraders in medieval costume. Singers will give a performance of French
songs. The parade will be short, going from the riverfront to the
statue of St. Joan that stands in the triangle at Decatur and Conti.
Alluring Dinner Dates
British cookbook author and food writer
Nigella Lawson
was born today in 1960. Her two best known books are How To Eat and How
To Be A Domestic Goddess, both of which sold in the hundreds of
thousands. Then she went to television, first in England and now on the
Food Network. She grabs attention with lusty, borderline sexy
commentary about the pleasures of cooking and eating. She claims no
particular training in cooking; she does what comes naturally. I think
she's good because she knows what many food writers and TV people
don't: what tastes good.
Annals Of Cereal
Today in 1880,
Tom Mix was
born. He was the original movie cowboy, going back to the silent movie
era. A radio show sponsored by Ralston Cereals featured Tom Mix as the
lead character, but portrayed by other actors. The jingle comes to my
mind, sung to the tune of "When The Bloom Is On The Sage." Here are the
lyrics:
Shredded Ralston for
your breakfast
Starts
the day off nice and bright
Gives you
lots of cowboy energy
And a
flavor that's just right
It's
delicious and nutritious
Bite-sized
and ready to eat
Take a
tip from Tom*, go and tell your mom
Shredded
Ralston can't be beat.
*Tom Mix, not this Tom. Maybe I'll sing this on the radio show today if
somebody asks. One more bit of trivia: Tom Mix is the cowboy on the
cover of the Beatles'
Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Restaurants On Television
Getting back to food. . .
Vic Tayback,
who played the memorably the grumpy cook-owner of Mel's Diner on the TV
show Alice, was born today in 1929.
Food
Namesakes
Pro football
player
Robert Bean walked onto
the gridiron of life today in 1972. . . He was followed by fellow pro
Bubba Franks in 1978. . . Theoretical chemist and winner of the 1999 National Medal of Science
Stuart Alan Rice
conducted his first experiment--breathing air--today in 1932.
Theoretical chemists are consulted by some avant-garde restaurants
lately. It seems so, anyway. . .
Allan Appel, who writes novels about time travel (among other things) came to us from out of 1945 today. . . Pro baseball pitcher
Brian Bass stepped onto The Big Mound today in 1982.
Words To Eat
By
"In taking soup, it is necessary to avoid lifting too much in the
spoon, or filling the mouth so full as almost to stop the breath."
--St.
John Baptist de la Salle, the founder of the Christian Brothers.
Open Less Than Three
Months
Cafe
Sbisa Closes Again
Cafe Sbisa, which opened under the
management of Glen Hogh of Vega Tapas Cafe on October, has closed again. Here's
what the press release said:
Cafe Sbisa [has] closed due
to unforeseen circumstances. Glen appreciates all of the support you have
offered since he re-opened the historic restaurant, so we felt it was important
to inform you of this sad turn of events.
Glen was sub-leasing from
others who made the decision after a few months in business that they were no
longer interested in running Cafe Sbisa, so the plug was pulled. Glen is
currently talking with the building owner, and his hope is that they will be
able to work things out so that the restaurant will once again
operate.
That's as mysterious as it is disappointing. I wonder what
the real problem is.
This, by the way, is one of the reasons I let
restaurant run for six months on average before I review them.
About 100 More Restaurants
Nothing Big Happened In 2008
I hated writing this column. It's about the most boring year for New Orleans diners that I remember.
This has been a year of few major openings (but no major closings) and
few major improvements. The restaurant business has had to struggle so
hard to revive itself that it's not surprising that it spent most of
the year marking time and catching its breath.
That thought didn't well up until I began to look for a restaurant to
call the best new restaurant of the year. Nothing jumped out of my
mind. I kept thinking. Still nothing. So I decided to ditch that old
concept and invent special awards for this year only.
Was the best new restaurant
MiLa,
the Rushing couple's slick, innovative, polished new restaurant in the
CBD? I rated it five stars in an earlier column this year. But it
opened in 2007. So it's the
Best New Restaurant of Last Year. (Which is different from Best New Restaurant of 2007. That was Bistro Daisy.)
Patois? Another good one,
a delicious bistro a block from Clancy's, successor to the just-okay
Nardo's, with a chef who did good things at the closed Bank Café
in the Marigny. But that opened even earlier in 2007 than MiLa did.
It's the Best Almost-New Restaurant of 2008.
Pellicano Ristorante did
open this year, in Kenner. And it is very good--four stars' worth. But
it's not well known, hard to find, and lightly attended. The best thing
to happen there lately is that the management finally put up a sign big
enough that you don't drive right past the place as you search for it.
By the way, despite the name, it's not Italian, but contemporary
Creole.
Best Unheralded New Restaurant of the Year.
O'Brien's Grille? The
Gretna steakhouse was a welcome addition to the sparse population of
white-tablecloth restaurants on the West Bank. Good steaks, stark
exterior, cool interior. Good steaks. Good service. Opened on St.
Patrick's Day this year.
Best New Limited Menu of the 2008.
A good potential candidate for the
Unqualified Best New Restaurant of the Year would be
Rambla,
the new Spanisgh and Basque restaurant in the CBD. It was opened by Ken
lacour and Kim Kringlie, the owners of Dakoa and Cuvee, and Bob
Iacovone, the chef at Cuvee. But it's only been open a few months, not
long enough for me to recommend it, or to go there myself. The few
reports have been good, however. It's in the International House Hotel
on Camp at Gravier, where the Lemon Grass Cafe was.
As I continued cogitating on this, a few other newsmaking premieres
came to mind. But they all involved rebirths. The big story of the year
was the return of
Charlie's Steak House,
a minor player on the scene for seventy years. Because of the current
imperative that all real New Orleans restaurants be funky, it has been
a subject of intense interest since the hurricane shut it down. Now
it's back, same old place. Best Reincarnation of the Year.
There were two more unexpected, welcome returns from the dead this year. Coincidentally, they're less than a block apart:
Maximo's, which has a new owner but the same chef, and
Café Sbisa, operated--until early this week--by Glen Hogh, the owner of Vega Tapas Café. They jointly win the
Best Reborn Neighbors of 2008. The fate of Cafe Sbisa, however, is uncertain. See the story above.
Early in the year,
Chateau Du Lac
moved from its tiny, unattractive space in Kenner to a much more
appealing bistro in Metairie Road. That made it twice the restaurant it
was, qualifying it for
Best Expanded Restaurant of the Year.
Kevin Vizard, a chef whose work I've always enjoyed, did the opposite.
He left a rent increase on his post-K St. Charles Avenue (Best New
Restaurant of 2006!) to opened a smaller, tighter new
Vizard's
on Magazine Street this year. The best news here is that he didn't just
close and disappear for a couple of years, as he has been known to do
in the past.
Best Shrunken Restaurant of the Year.
After struggling to establish his own cuisine at Peristyle, Chef Tom
Wolfe--who bought the restaurant right before Katrina--gave up that
fight and started another one. He renamed the place
Wolfe's
(no big deal; it's had at least three other names in its past) and
reopened with a new menu that was supposed to be more in a Creole vein.
But the changes have been subtle; the menu reads much like the
Peristyle version, to me.
Best Side-Stepping Restaurant of the Year.
The year began on a very optimistic note at
La Provence,
with Chef Rene Bajeux--probably the most gifted French chef in town
then. He was in the kitchen cooking and in the barnyard raising pigs
and chickens, saying it was great to be a chef again. Then he was gone.
Randy Lewis, who we remember from Indigo a few years ago, came in as
not only chef but partner with John Besh. His changes were deeper than
we expected, winning the
Best Hard To Dope Out Restaurant of 2008.
After a long foreplay, Chef Scott Boswell of Stella! finally reopened
Stanley!--his cool post-Katrina grill and soda fountain--in the Lower Pontalba at year's end. He wins
Best New Restaurant of Last Year, Next Year.
While all this was going on, the increase in size of the New Orleans
restaurant community continued. On the first day of 2008 year, 884 real
restaurants were open in the New Orleans area. Two weeks before year's
end, the number is 980. We had 809 before Katrina. To put this in
perspective, almost all other parts of the country saw their restaurant
populations dwindle. New York and Los Angeles have seen significant
drops. We are not doing badly.
But I'm hoping somebody wakes us up in 2009.
#82
Irene's Cuisine
Italian.
French Quarter: 539 St. Philip, 504-529-8811. Map.
Dinner Monday-Saturday.
Casual.
AE DC DS MC V
WHY IT'S ESSENTIAL
In a part of the French Quarter where most people on the streets are
visitors, Irene's stays busy with a strong local clientele. They are
there for the most important reason: the food here is delicious, ample,
just offbeat enough to set it apart from other Italian restaurants, and
consistent.
WHY WE LIKE IT
The
menu is more along the lines of Tuscan cooking than the Sicilian styles
more common around New Orleans. That's not necessarily better, but it
is a refreshing change. Lots of dishes roasted in the oven with much
olive oil, herbs, garlic, and prosciutto, with fish, birds, and veal.
BACKSTORY
Irene DiPietro's family has run Italian
restaurants around town for decades. She's related to the owner of
Fausto's, for example. Her ex-partner is Tommy Andrade, who now owns
Tommy's in the CBD.
SURROUNDINGS
It's
in an old paper warehouse with odd spaces. The kitchen, entrance, and
bar are not where you'd think to find them. The dark main dining room
isn't big enough to accommodate everybody who'd like to eat there, and
some tables outside it are not very comfortable.
ESSENTIAL DISHES
Oysters
Irene (pancetta and Romano). Oysters Vittorio (Italian style, plus
artichokes). Roasted chicken with rosemary and garlic. Veal Sorrentino
(and all the other veal dishes). Tiramisu. Bananas Foster bread pudding.
FOR BEST RESULTS
Show up right when the place opens if you don't like waiting.
OPPORTUNITIES FOR
IMPROVEMENT
Waiting for a table here is never fun and sometimes lengthy. The reservation system is sketchy at best.
FACTORS OTHER THAN FOOD
Up to three points, positive or negative, for these characteristics.
Absence of points denotes average performance in the matter.
- Dining Environment
- Service +1
- Consistency +2
- Value +1
- Attitude +1
- Wine And Bar
- Hipness +1
- Local Color +2
SPECIAL ATTRIBUTES
- Live
music
- Romantic
- Open Monday
- Vegetarian dishes
- Unusually large servings
Comment
on this review.
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Monday, November 24. Lola For Lunch. Dinner?
Maybe my Mondays are so frantic is that I often go out to lunch instead
of sticking at my desk. But Jude is here, and he wants to go out, and I
have a good excuse. I need to see what's up at the noon meal at Lola in
Covington to finish the review I wrote as soon as we got back.
But before we got back, we ate. The little place in the old train
station was full, with a line of eight people ahead of us. We would
prove to be the last in that line. Isn't that how it always happens?
Unlike the dinner menu--inspired by the cooking of Brennan's, since the
married couple that owns the place both worked as chefs there before
opening this--lunch at Lola is mostly about soup, sandwiches, and
salads. They bake their own bread and desserts, which sounds
impressive. Mary Ann says that this is not a plus, at
least not in the
bread department. It's a medium-dark bread with a loose crumb that
doesn't make a particularly good sandwich. The fillings are good,
though. I had a tuna salad on mine, which I liked--but I left the bread
there. (At Manresa, I resolved not to eat bread unless I really liked
it, and not often even then. I'd weigh thirty or forty pounds less if I
never ate bread.)
Mary Ann skipped the bread entirely by getting a shrimp and corn bisque
that she liked a lot. My soup was good, too: a portobello mushroom and
wild rice potage, not creamy, very hearty. Jude devoured the Bostonian
sandwich, a sort of club with avocado and provolone.
The main topic of discussion was Jude's life, which has a way of taking
over any conversation in which he is in attendance. It is pretty
interesting. This movie-making stuff gives him lots of stories to tell.
I always run into someone I know but have not seen in awhile when I eat
at Lola. Today it was Monty Montgomery, the founder of Time Saver, my
first employer. He must be in his seventies now, but he still looks and
sounds the same to me. He's one of the really nice guys. He's also
evidence for my theory that only five hundred people live in New
Orleans. Monty's grandson was a fellow Boy Scout, Jesuit Blue Jay, and
Georgetown Hoya with Jude. Pure coincidence--but easy to understand if
you recognize that there are only Five Hundred People.
I don't usually go into town on Mondays, but it was necessary today.
After taking off last Thursday and Friday, I have some production work
to catch up at the radio station. (And I'll only come in tomorrow for
the remainder of the week.) After finishing that easy work at around
eight-thirty, I went straight home with no supper. So far so good on my
Manresa food-reduction resolution. But Thanksgiving looms, so I'm being
realistic.
Lola. Covington: 517 N New Hampshire. 985-892-4992. Sandwiches. Platters.
Tuesday, November 25. Arrears. Impastato's. It
is an outrage that I can't take a four-day weekend off without falling
desperately behind in my work. But there I am. Thanksgiving will not
help things. My main concern is the looming deadline on my memoir. It's
not scary yet, but it's getting there.
I was surprised that Mary Ann and the kids (I don't use that phrase
often, now that Jude lives elsewhere) stayed on the South Shore long
after Mary Leigh got off school. ML wasn't happy about that, but she
could be mollified by dinner at Impastato's. Why not? The four of us
jammed into a booth that seemed smaller than I remember. Of course, we
are bigger. All four of us, only two in a normal way. Our children have
not followed in our fat footsteps.
We wanted a light supper, but that is not possible here. Joe sent a
plate of prosciutto dashed with lemon juice and olive oil. Then shrimp
scampi and crab claws. Fettuccine Alfredo (inhalable as always) and
pasta asciutta. Romaine salads. Finally, speckled trout. This is the
short season when that great local fish is available in restaurants.
(The population of fish is enormous, but the recreational fishing lobby
has stolen almost all of it for itself by legal manipulations.) I had
mine with artichokes and mushrooms. Mary Ann surrounded hers with
crabmeat and shrimp, and said it was as fine as any she could remember.
(That is one of her two or three favorite dishes.) Jude had something
like chicken parmigiana, and Mary Leigh got another pasta combo, then
began complaining of sleepiness. Logical: she gets up at six.
They left. I stayed and talked with Joe Impastato and Ken Caldcleugh,
the owner of Cellars of River Ridge. We compared wine notes, talked
about a vodka tasting we did at his shop a couple of years ago, and
about the chef who's now operating his deli. Nice guy.
Then I got up and did a song with Roy Picou. I had good luck with "From
Here To Eternity" last time I was here, so I ran that again. If there
was a house to be brought down, I would have. I was happy with it,
which is the main reason I sing anyway.
Impastato's. Metairie: 3400 16th Street. 504-455-1545. Italian.
Wednesday, November 26. Cheesecake And Brining.
As I write this, I wonder: why did I not take any photos at all of any
of the dishes we cooked today for Thanksgiving tomorrow?
Mary Ann forced us all to eat leftovers today as we worked on cleaning
the house and getting a jump on the cooking. My big project the day
before Thanksgiving is always the cheesecake. It takes about an hour to
put together, an hour or so to bake, then three hours to cool. If I
start on this project after the radio show, I will be up very late
getting the cheesecake into the refrigerator. Last year, I was so
punchy that I slipped and let my masterpiece (I do claim that
unabashedly) hit the floor and disintegrate. I all but cried.
Another day-before project in recent years has been baking bread. I am
much less able at that, and I've never been entirely happy with my
results. I need to bake more the rest of the year. This time, I tried a
recipe in the cookbook Chef Andrea and I wrote twenty years ago. Like
the cheesecake, the recipe for the molasses brown bread came from
Andrea's pastry chef in those days, the late Lonnie Knisley.
The recipe makes too much dough, though. I will need to scale it back.
It rose successfully twice, and although it was getting late I went
ahead and baked it. Underbaked it, actually. My plan was to run it
through the oven tomorrow to get the crust right. I'll just say right
now that didn't work out. I had too many other things to do to attend
to the bread. Note to self: have the bread completely finished the
night before. Maybe start on Tuesday.
The last project of the day was to brine the turkeys. I have this down
to science, including my routine of using turkey roasting bags to hold
the brine, inside a couple of plastic buckets that just fit the turkey.
But when those babies were in the refrigerators, I had no room to store
the ham. Aha! I will put it in the trunk of my car. It will be cool
enough overnight to keep it that long.
To bed at a little after eleven, with the clock set for six tomorrow morning. That's comfortable.
Thursday, November 27. Thanksgiving.
I was awake at six. Mary Ann rolled over and said, "You know, we don't
need both ovens today. Why don't you roast one of the turkeys in the
oven? That way you'll be able to sleep another hour." That's because I
don't have enough room on the Big Green Egg to smoke two turkeys at the
same time, so I do them serially. But they take so long that I need to
start early. I liked her idea and did, indeed, go back to sleep until
seven.
Back up, I started the charcoal fire. Then de-brined, rinsed, stuffed
(with apples, orange peels, rosemary, onions,and celery), and seasoned
(with my Creole seasoning) Turkey Number One. Onto the pit it went,
protected from direct heat by a sheet of aluminum foil and a V-shaped
rack.
Now, the ham. Oven on: 350 degrees. Ham removed from the trunk of the
car. It looked a little gray. I don't think this one is as fresh as
what I usually buy. That's what I get for not buying it myself. Using a
batch of glaze I made last year (for a ham we wound up not baking), I
applied a wet coat and packed a layer of brown sugar mixed with dry
mustard over it. Problem: this brown sugar was coarsely granulated, not
the semi-wet brown sugar we usually have. It didn't stick as well. (It
never does stick perfectly, but as it melts in the oven in winds up
coating the whole ham.)
I stopped cooking and cleaned up the kitchen until radio show time, at
nine o'clock. I've hosted the WWL mid-morning show on Thanksgiving for
eight years. Long enough that several listeners called to say that
hearing me talk about what's going on in my kitchen is an essential
part of their own Thanksgiving preparations.
When
the show ended at eleven, it was time to take the turkey off the grill.
Beautiful! Mahogany brown! Not really having a place to put it just
yet, I shut down the fire (you can do this on a Big Green Egg) and just
let it remain out there.
Mary Ann discovered at this point that she was wrong about not needing
both ovens. But it was too late to begin a second smoked turkey! And,
besides, I wanted to use the roasting bags in which I brine the turkeys
for their intended purpose. I remember that during my very first
Thanksgiving radio show twenty years ago, someone told me how good a
turkey baked inside a paper Schwegmann's bag came out. I wanted to see,
using the state-of-the-art bag.
Luckily, the ham was almost done, and when I took it out shortly after
Turkey Number Two went in, Mary Ann had the room she needed for. . .
what was all that stuff, anyway? A casserole of beets, turnips, and
carrots? Hmm. Aside from herself, who would go for that? But it is
seasonal.
As for me, I went back to cleaning up the kitchen, which during my
radio show had been laid waste by the girls. Even Jude was down here,
messing around with something. This morning, I think I spent twice as
much time cleaning as cooking.
I shouldn't complain. For once, we were still ahead of the game at
noon. This is about the time when MA and I start getting testy with one
another, or worse. All was calm.
But not perfect. I had just finished the mashed potatoes and creamed
spinach, and was making little crab cakes as the guests arrived. I did
those a little differently. Bechamel with green onion, celery, and bell
pepper formed the center, as usual. But sprinkling bread crumbs over
the cakelets as I formed them did much to hold them together. I put
them on a pizza pan, and my sister Lynn--one of the first arrivals--cut
little chips of butter atop each one. Under the broiler they went. Five
minutes latter, we had some marvelous crab cakes that went very fast.
My plan was to make Italian-style baked oysters. But I never got around
to it. People were here. The ham was being picked at by Mary Leigh and
her cousin Hillary. Time for Daddy to start slicing ham and turkey.
That occupies me completely until everyone is fed. And everyone, this
day, was twenty-eight people. The oysters will have to wait till
another day.
I took a break from carving to check on Turkey Number Two. The
temperature in the thigh was 185--a little higher than I like. I took
it out, and found the meat on the wings and legs was falling off the
bone. But dryness wasn't a problem. This was very moist meat, and the
breast was too. The miracle of brining! I like the results inside this
roasting bag. Now I had turkey in two flavors out there.
And the bag-roasted bird gave us drippings for the gravy Mary Ann was
trying to make. She took the gravy job away from me this year, saying I
never got it right. But she was no happier about her own efforts. I
don't care. I never liked gravy with turkey anyway.
I sawed away and poured wine and refilled the mashed potato chafing
dish and tried to get the molasses brown bread into the oven. The
kitchen was becoming a mess again. I give up. Give me a plate. The chef
will now eat.
As for the wine, it happened again: people brought more wine than I
used from my own racks. So the inventory went up, not down, even though
we went through at least eight bottles. No Beaujolais Nouveau! How did
that happen?
Too many desserts. My cheesecake went fast, but we had three pecan pies
brought by others. My sister tried making a chocolate pie, but it
didn't set up, and she pitched it. Mary Leigh passed her homemade ice
cream sandwiches around to the other girls.
The population was a bit different from past years. The older members
of the family were not here. Mary Ann's parents are gone now. Her
oldest sister's husband is ailing too badly to go out. On the other end
of the spectrum, for the first time in years we had little kids. The
ones who were in that category when we took over the family
Thanksgiving feast a decade ago are now all teenagers.
We had one non-family guest. I invited "Pal Al" Nassar, with whom I've
worked at the radio stations for many years (he took retirement
recently, although I doubt he's finished with his thirty-something-year
radio career). His father died a few months ago, and he seemed to be at
loose ends. Turns out that ours was one of three parties he would visit
today. But he hung around for hours with us.
He was still here after dark, when Jude and the other teenagers decided
we needed a bonfire. I had a good-sized pile of collected branches out
in the meadow for just this purpose. The only challenge was lighting
it, since it had drizzled earlier. But if there's one thing a boy
learns in the Scouts, it's how to get a fire going. The little boys
were fascinated by the pyre, of course, and went around picking up more
sticks to keep it going. Which it did, for a couple of hours, everybody
standing around and smelling that burning-leaf aroma so distinctive
this time of year.
Smiles! Smiles! Smiles! A near-perfect celebration.
And, once again, I neglected to take a single picture. (The one here of the turkey on teh Big Green Egg was take on 2005.)
Saturday, November 29. Mattina Bella. Romance And Marriage Revisited. Pot Stickers. We
began our Saturday with a full-family repast at Mattina Bella, our new
Saturday breakfast venue of choice. (Mary Leigh's choice, really, but
that's fine with the rest of us.) Pancakes, omelettes, bacon, hash
browns, and biscuits all around. Mary Ann got the prize for strangest
breakfast: a link of grilled Italian sausage and grits. I came in
second, with an omelette of cheese, spinach, and avocados, topped with
hollandaise.
The kids savored it to the hilt. They know that this repast flies in
the face of Mary Ann's imperative that we subsist on leftovers until
there are no more. But who ever heard of breakfast leftovers?
I had a three-hour radio show to perform on WWL at noon today. The rest
of the gang went out in search of tiles for the new bathroom upstairs
and other pork-barrel projects. After the show, I sat down at the
computer and worked on the chapter of my memoir that describes how Mary
Ann and I met, how she hired me for my radio job, how we got married,
and why all of that was as good as it was unlikely. It made me mushy
and mellow to put all that down on paper.
Mary Ann, who relishes this week with the entire family back in the
house, did not push leftovers for supper. But we will eat at home
tonight, she decreed. Not only that, but we would all gather in the
kitchen and make dinner together. Specifically, Chinese pot stickers, a
labor-intensive dish with lots of labor for everyone.
To me fell the job of making the filling. It's ground pork, spinach,
green onions, water chestnuts, garlic, soy sauce, crushed red pepper,
and some egg, all cooked down in a skillet. The girls cut and stuffed
the pasta squares with the filling, then passed them back to me. I'd
steam them first, then fry them in a little oil in a skillet.
For some reason, we can't seem to locate the round gyoza wrappers that
make perfect pot stickers. Just the square ones. After you trim those
into circles (they won't stuff right unless you do), they're really too
small for the cooking process. But we got by.
Mary Ann and the kids--wait a minute. What has Jude been doing all this
time? Other than playing the piano, same song over and over, cursing
each time he hits the wrong key?
So. It was really just the two Marys and me. They also stuffed some
bigger wrappers with cabbage, carrots, shrimp, and a few other things
to make egg rolls. Again, I was the fry cook. I didn't have high hopes
for these, but in fact they came out good, if a little heavy.
We ate all of this as fast as we cooked it, and then went to our
separate rooms. I returned to the delightful task of writing about our
honeymoon in Belgium.
Mattina Bella. Covington: 421 E. Gibson. 504-892-0708. Breakfast. Neighborhood Café.
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Peas, Please
Hughes asks:
Where do I find fresh peas? I want to make some split pea soup.
Tom sez:
Fresh peas are indeed hard to find. That's beacuse less than five
percent of the peas grown are eaten fresh, instead of frozen or canned.
The problem you will have now is that this is not the time of year for
peas, really. Down here, this is a good time to plant peas for harvest
before it gets really hot. Most people plant them in summer and harvest
them in mid to late fall. They do not grow especailly well in our
climate.
You wouldn't want fresh peas for split pea soup anyway. Dried work
better, dissolving a little as they cook and thickening the soup. Start
with a vegetable stock and forget about ham. How that became part of
split pea soup I'll never know. I love ham, and I love peas, but I
don't really like them together.
By the way, in all my years of dining around New Orleans, I've
encountered fresh peas exactly once: at K-Paul's. The waitress told me
that they had fun sitting around shelling them, a very time-consuming
process.
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New Orleans
Chicken-and-Mushroom Hash
When defrosting our old extra refrigerator one weekend, I discovered
six--SIX!--whole chickens in there. "They were on sale!" said my wife.
I started thinking of things to do with them, and realized I hadn't
made chicken hash in ages. I decided to start from scratch and see if I
could come up with a New Orleans-style approach to this old American
classic. It was good enough to make over and over. Now I wait until
some of the bolete mushrooms that grow in the woods next to my house
come up to do it. Of course, I have to go out and buy the chicken.
- 1 free-range chicken, about four pounds
- 1 large onion, cut up
- 4 ribs celery, cut up
- 1 Tbs. black peppercorns
- 1 bay leaf
- 1/2 tsp. thyme
- 4 Tbs. butter
- 3/4 cup flour
- 4 thick slices of smoky bacon, fried crisp and crumbled
- 1 cup coarsely-chopped fresh mushrooms
- 1/2 red bell pepper, seeds and membrane removed, chopped into tiny dice
- 1 Tbs. Worcestershire sauce
- 1 Tbs. salt-free Creole seasoning
- 1 tsp. salt
- 1/2 cup freshly-grated bread crumbs
- 1 green onion, sliced finely
- 8 sprigs parsley, leaves only, chopped
1. Bring a gallon of water to a
boil in a stockpot and add chicken, three-fourths of the onion, two
ribs of celery, peppercorns, bay leaf, and thyme. Bring to a boil,
uncovered, and then lower to a simmer. Cook the chicken for one hour.
2. Remove the chicken and let
it cool. Debone the chicken and remove skin. Chop the meat into
half-inch dice. Strain the stock, dispose of the solid parts, and
reserve a quart and a half of the stock. Save the rest for other uses.
3. Chop the reserved celery and onion.
4. Melt the butter in a
saucepan. Stir in the flour and cook to a blond roux. Add the bacon,
mushrooms, bell pepper, chopped celery and chopped onion. Sauté in the
roux for about four minutes.
5. Add diced chicken,
Worcestershire, Creole seasoning, salt, and 6 cups chicken stock. Bring
to a light boil and cook until almost all the liquid has been absorbed.
6. Stir in the green onions, parsley, and bread crumbs. Adjust seasonings with salt and black pepper to taste.
Serves six.
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Why Does A Waitress Who Serves A Whole Breakfast Get A $2 Tip. . . and
a waiter who opens a $100 bottle of wine get a $20 tip? That question
is asked in this article from the Wall Street Journal, which goes on to
discuss what the current standards are for restaurant tipping.
Interesting.
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FOOD FUNNIES
Some Recipes You Don't Give To Just Anybody. Or, the end of a great romance. Click
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cartoon. 
