[title type="h5"]Thursday, January 29, 2015.
Unique Wine Dinner At Pelican Club.[/title]
When I first began visiting the California wine country in the 1980s, one went to Napa and Sonoma. If you were ambitious and had a lot of time, you'd then go the Central Coast, south of San Francisco. But every trip I made revealed another new wine making area. I have not been as frequent a visitor to San Francisco and environs in the last two decades, using my vacations for Boy Scout summer camps with my son and cruises with the Eat Club. So I am behind in my oenological explorations.
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Jeff Runquist.[/caption] This set me up for the likes of the dinner tonight. Runquist Wine Cellars, which supplies the juice for a wine dinner at the Pelican Club tonight, is the producer of wines from all over the place. Jeff Runquist--who I have encountered a few times over the years, although I can't remember where or when--buys grapes from Napa, all right. But also Amador County, the Sierra Foothills, Clarksburg and Lodi. The last two places have raised wine grapes for as long as grapes have been grown in California, but historically they were rarely considered great wines. That has changed. While keeping the rustic style that sets them apart, Lodi wines in particular are fascinating to me. I think they go very well with Cajun and Creole food--especially if sausages are involved.
Pelican Club owner/chef Richard Hughes has about thirty people lined up at a single table for the Runquist dinner. Richard, who has a somewhat rustic style himself, kept his flavors as big as those of the wines all night. And that took some doing.
Jeff Runquist shows up with more red wine than anything. So, to pair with a very red Grenache was bouillabaisse. A risk, but it worked, with a highly miscellaneous array of seafood. Littleneck clams, stone crab claws (!), black grouper, gigantic shrimp, and (to raise the level of civilization) jumbo lump crabmeat. Nice.
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Rabbit with three-cheese grits.[/caption]
Now a slowly-cooked smoked rabbit with meaty oyster mushrooms, awash in a sauce made from a reduced rabbit stock and Marsala wine, surrounded by grits incorporating three cheeses. The wine stood right up to this hunter's food: a Barbara, even bigger in its aromas and flavors than the Grenache. A country-style wine with a little Italian flavor.
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Angels on horseback.[/caption]
"Angels on horseback" is a great name for a simple but delicious dish: broiled, bacon-wrapped oysters. Yet here was the name applied to a very different collection, with only the bacon and the stick remaining from the classic definition. The rest of it was duck breast, Stilton cheese, foie gras and dates, with purple cauliflower and onion hash as garnish.
This was lusty eating, and paired with the most interesting wine of the night. Petit Verdot is a classic blending wine in the recipe for many (perhaps even most) of the great Bordeaux wines. But the only time I've imbibed it on its own was at the barrel tasting during the Napa Wine Auction many years ago. Tonight, it was one of those wines which you know is good, but you can't figure out why. And the more you drink of it, the more it grows on you. I keep coming back to this Petit Verdot the rest of the night.
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Filet with unique chimichurri variant.[/caption]
Richard never hesitates to serve a big filet, and here it was, with his take on chimichurri, made with red onions and balsamic vinegar. On the side was a gratin of celery root and some other vegetables. Hey! That's something I served at Thankgiving about ten years ago!
Jeff Runquist balances this off with his Petit Sirah. There is nothing petite about that wine, one of the darket and most solidly built of the wines of California. (I think it's a California exclusive. I've never seen a Petit Sirah from anywhere else.)
Richard has a great, sort-of piña colada dessert: a tarte tatin of pineapple and coconut ice cream. Jeff saw this ace and raised it one glass of the sweet Muscat Canelli. And then we had coffee. Great dinner. Even Mary Ann loved it, and she doesn't do too many wine dinners. But she loves The Pelican Club as much as I do.
[title type="h5"]Pelican Club. French Quarter: 615 Bienville. 504-523-1504. [/title][divider type=""]
[title type="h5"]
Friday, January 30, 2015.
Pascal's Manale, Before The Parades Start.[/title]
Mary Ann didn't cross the puddle today, so I look for dinner companionship to one of my favorite dining partners: my little sister Lynn. Bob DeFelice--one of the three brothers and one sister who own and manage Pascal's Manale--is a client of hers. So let's go there, she suggests.
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The barman with a smile and a story at Pascal's Manale. [/caption]The tenders of both bars at Manale's apparently listen to my radio show. The guy who makes the cocktails (and insists that he be allowed to craft one for me) kept throwing my radio catchphrases at me. Meanwhile, Thomas--the best-known and best oyster shucker in the city, now that Drago has retired--was cracking those shells for a bunch of people, and told me that people tell him all the time about other people who call my show to affirm his skill and personality. You certainly don't go to Manale's with the idea of running into dry, businesslike personnel.
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The best oyster shucker in New Orleans.[/caption]Thomas shucks a dozen monsters for us. They are so corpulent that I could stop the meal right there and go home full. But we move on.
Lynn bought into a special of grilled redfish topped with peeled barbecue shrimp, with a lot of the famous sauce. I kept going with oysters, ordering the oyster combination pan roast. Lynn said the last time she had this great, unique dish, there wasn't much in the way of oysters or shrimp inside the matrix of the smooth, light-green sauce. I brush that off, but indeed, there could have been quite a bit more oyster and shrimp content there. I still like it especially with a side of spaghetti Collins, which is like spaghetti bordelaise except made with green onions instead of garlic and parsley.
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Black drum with barbecue shrimp on top.[/caption]
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Oyster pan roast at Pascal's Manale. [/caption]
Today is the final day in which I host The Food Show from noon until three, a schedule which has done much damage to my other endeavors--most especially my writing projects. But that experiment is now over, and it is with great joy that I will return Monday to the three-till-six block, when our program is at its maximum effectiveness. I hope I can hold onto that timing until the end, however long from now that may be.
[title type="h5"]Pascal's Manale. Uptown: 1838 Napoleon Ave. 504-895-4877.[/title]
Written by Tom Fitzmorris February 06, 2015 13:01 in
