[title type="h5"]Friday, January 2, 2015.
Custard At Peppermill. [/title]
The radio station isn't what I would call a buzzing hive of activity, but the whole staff is there save for a few people who are taking vacation days. I can't figure the way vacation works over there, and as a result over the years I've left vacation unused. One accumulates a certain number of hours every work week. But they must be used by the end of the year, or be lost! So how does a person get the vacation credit he earns on the last working day of the year? The management is actually flexible about this, but I'll bet a lot of people wind up taking days off at the end of December, a time when few of us are getting a lot of work done, anyway. I predict that by the time I retire (around 2025, although I'm not looking forward to that) nobody except doctors and policemen will work during the last two weeks of the year.
I for one am on the job, still writing and recording commercials to replace those that refer to the holiday season, plus some new, first-of-the-year spots.
Then I head out to dinner alone and aimless. On such evenings there's a strong chance I will wind up at the Peppermill. I order a Manhattan, pull out a New Yorker magazine, and try to catch up on my reading. I have found that, as a subscriber, I can read the entirety of every issue from my smart phone. The problem is that I have a Windows phone, which seems to be incompatible with everything. I enter the code from the label of my magazine, but to finish connecting the two technologies, I must click a button that is off the screen and can't be reached by any method I have yet found.
[caption id="attachment_37271" align="alignnone" width="400"]
Oysters Riccobono.[/caption]
At least the dinner is familiar and easy. I start with a salad and finish with oysters Riccobono, probably the best dish here. Oysters, mushrooms, garlic, olive oil, and bread crumbs, all baked to bubbling, with a roll of angel-hair pasta bordelaise on the side. Yum.
[caption id="attachment_38319" align="alignnone" width="325"]
Caramel custard.[/caption]
Caramel custard for dessert. I developed a taste for this simple dinner-ender in my late teens, when I had dinner two or three nights a week at the Buck 49 Steak House on Carrollton Avenue at Maple. The Buck 49--now extinct--was the ancestor of the Peppermill. Many of its dishes live on in the latter-day restaurant, and caramel custard is one of them. Whoever prepares it at the Peppermill has the knack. It's at least the equal of Galatoire's, which is considered by many to have the ideal version.
Caramel custard once was in nearly every white-tablecloth restaurant in town. Now it's a rarity, even in the old-line establishments. It's not to be found at Antoine's, Commander's, the Bon Ton, or Tujague's these days, let alone in the hip bistros.
Fortunately, it's very easy to make at home. Which, if anyone but me liked it, I would do more often.
[title type="h5"]Peppermill. Metairie 2: Orleans Line To Houma Blvd: 3524 Severn Ave. 504-455-2266. [/title][divider type=""]
[title type="h5"]Saturday, January 3, 2015.
Breakfast @ Mattina Bella. A Discovery: Opal Basil.
[/title]
I will publish this day's entry on Monday. There's much to say about the Opal Basil, and I don't have time to do it justice today. Instead, if you will, this:[divider type=""]
[title type="h5"]Sunday, January 4, 2015.
Doughnuts, King Cake. Choriqueso, Enchiladas De Molé.[/title]
I make my third appearance in the choir loft at St. Jane's. (I neglected to note that I was there on Thursday, a holy day of obligation, formerly celebrated as the Feast of the Circumcision but now carrying a family theme.) The loft is nearly full, with some young singers engaged in the performances. I like it.
Before I even arrive I am thinking about the coffee and doughnuts that will be served after Mass to all the clued-in parishioners. By the time I get there (stopping to talk with a number of people who spot me and wonder whether I am who I am, or Steven Spielberg), the coffee is gone (except for decaf, which of course isn't coffee). King cake is here, and I eat two thin, very sweet slices. The oversize, not-so-good doughnuts that seem to appear at every parish event like this are thoroughly unappetizing. Good! I may finally be shut of my lifelong mental association between Mass and doughnuts.
One of the people I speak with today outside the church is John d'Hemecourt. He is the owner of the Abita Quail Farm, a former restaurant now operating (for a couple of decades, at least) as a catering facility. Nice rustic scene there and good food. John and I have many New Orleans Incest connections, as per my theory that only 500 people actually live here. He and I were both heavily involved in campus politics at (LS)UNO in the early 1970s. We were both in the convenience store business for a fair length of time. And our circles of friends intersected improbably often. But our paths have not crossed in decades, and we catch up.
Not long after I get home, the Marys and The Boy go to lunch at La Carreta, and I tag along. Despite the fact that it's so cold and windy that even the most palate-searing food cools to below room temperature faster than I can eat it, Mary Ann insists on eating outside. We are the only ones out there. The people inside must think we're fools. And maybe we are.
Usual regimen: choriqueso (two orders for the table, plus two more orders of just queso), steak tacos for The Boy, chicken enchiladas with molé poblano (olé!) with bean soup on the side for me. We return home and I walk all this off in a full one-hour strut around the ranch. Winter is at its worst when it's wet outside, which it is today and very.
[title type="h5"]La Carreta. Mandeville: 1200 W Causeway Approach. 985-624-2990.[/title]
