[title type="h5"]Wednesday, November 12, 2014.
The New Orleans Terroir?
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When I finish my work at the radio station, the streets are decidedly cold as we head for four hard freezes in the next week. I hate being right about bad things. I said it would be a cold winter six months ago. I could have said it would be a mild winter and still had a fifty-fifty chance of being right, so I can't claim prescience. But, still.
When I arrive at the Bon Ton Café for dinner, owner and ever-present host Wayne Pierce asks whether this is my annual winter visit. It could be--the weather is right. But that dinner is still ahead, in Christmas season. (Long story.)
Instead, I am there to meet with Petra Barran. She is basing her dissertation on the backstreet culinary culture of New Orleans. After she read my book Hungry Town and thought I might have some useful perspectives.
To tell the truth, I don't quite understand her thesis. She calls it "the terroir of New Orleans." Wine-lovers know the word. It describes what a wine takes from the place where it is grown and finished. And it's true that coming from New Orleans places a distinctive stamp on almost everything.
We have more than enough neutral ground for us to fill the two-hour conversation. I come away with a curiosity about something she finds emblematic to the city: the second-line food traditions. She says that the parades that form unpredictably around town to celebrate this or that have a parallel cooking menu. She mentions turkey necks, jambalaya, and yat-ca-mein. I know that these are popular in the old neighborhoods. I've been stuck in traffic more than once while trying to get around unexpected upwellings of Mardi Gras-like activity.
I hope Petra turns up lots of information about that, and that she sends it my way.
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Bon Ton's fried catfish and crawfish, with Alzina sauce.[/caption]
We start with the Bon Ton's fried catfish and crawfish. I have a glass of Sauvignon Blanc in front of me when Petra arrives. She asks for a glass of Champagne. They bring out a split of Korbel. I haven't seen that middle-low-end California bubbly in a long time. It's typical of the Bon Ton that they would serve it. They don't change anything unless they really have to.
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Redfish Bon Ton.[/caption]
Petra has a curious etouffee of shrimp, crawfish, and eggplant, which she enjoys. For me, it's redfish Bon Ton, whose recipe almost never involves redfish. Black drum is the real identity, but the difference between that redfish relative and the actual species is slight. None of this matters, really, Redfish Bon Ton is the signature dish of the restaurant, topped with lots of crabmeat and a clear, reddish butter. It's actually margarine, but there's another recipe from the past that the restaurant will not change. The food is good anyway.
Petra offers to pay the check, but I can't allow that for a visitor who is writing about my city and clearly is in its thrall. I walk her up Magazine Street to the handsome guest house where she is staying. It's well after nine, and I don't feel entirely good walking those blocks alone, even though I've done so for decades. I drop her off, do a 180, run up to the radio station to pick up a few things, and head for the North Shore.
Turkey necks? Well, I will use them on Thanksgiving for my gravy, so I guess I'm part of Petra's "terroir."[divider type=""]
[title type="h5"]Thursday, November 13, 2014.
200 Wines For Hospice.
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I work at home for the first time all week, trying to catch up on a lot of loose matters. One of them is making sure all the pipes are wrapped. We will have a 25-degree night. Mary Ann asked me not to cover the crawl space with the canvas skirts I've hung for years, and which make a big difference in the warmth of the house. Instead, whe was going to get The Boy to build a bunch of planter boxes out of scrap wood she found somewhere. This project had no chance of being finished in time or, probably, ever. Indeed, it hasn't even started. It's not The Boy's fault, but the impracticality of the idea that is the problem. But what do I know?
That done, I head over to Benedict's Plantation, where Hospice Foundation of the South has a fundraiser tonight. I am the honorary chairman, the main duty of which is to walk around the room and talk with people about food and such. What I am not allowed to do is complain that in grazing events like this, I can't walk three feet without being stopped by another guest who wants to talk about food, wine, or the radio show. But that is a light load to shoulder, and I am happy I can be of service.
It is a much better party than I expect. It is certainly well attended, enough so that one could hardly move at some points. Select Brands, a local distributor of wines, provided 200 different ones to taste. Nobody can do that, of course, but it does allow for a good bit of cherry picking. Dwayne Shockley is heavily involved in hospice, and put his wines where his mouth is.
The food could not have been up to that level, but it was good and plentiful enough. Shirley Deluzain, the owner of Benedict's, sent around some great little crabcakes. Tommy Wong from Trey Yuen was there with sweet-heat cho-choo chicken. Annadele Plantation had its fine turtle soup. Chef Willy from Rosetta's also had a turtle soup.
Today for lunch, I had some of the turtle soup brought from Arnaud's to the radio studio by Archie and Katy Casbarian a few days ago. So I have had three different turtle soups in a single day. And a cold one, at that, when hot soup is especially welcome.
As the event winds down, I make my way into a tent where a jazz trio has played all night long. I ask whether the musicians know "Sweet Lorraine."
"Yes, why don't you sing it?" the leader says to me. How did he know that is in my repertoire? I'm glad he did.
Written by Tom Fitzmorris November 20, 2014 13:01 in
