Friday, November 25, 2016.
A Fete For The Little Ones. What A Birthday Cake!
Nobody asked me to cook during my visit to Los Angeles these recent days, but I pay my dues today. Mary Ann has a friend in the wholesale seafood business, and she offered to give us a substantial larder of shrimp, crabmeat, and--until we realized how logistically difficult it would be--a sack of unshucked oysters.
The pretense for the party today is to celebrate Jackson's first birthday. He, of course, has no sense of the moment, except that a good time is being had by other babies his age and other, older ones. Those kids had a ball with all of Jackson's newly-accepted toy gifts.
Thanks to the food and conversation among the adults, the party went on for hours. I turned big heads-on shrimp into what I think is among the best three or four dishes in all of Creole cookery: barbecue shrimp. The shrimp we have are exactly the right size, and we had about ten pounds of them.
I usually follow the recipe Chef Gerard Maras created for Mr B's in the 1980s. But that involves a pan on top of the stove, and we have far too many shrimp for that. My alternate approach is to line the shrimp up about a shrimp and a half deep in a baking pan. The two versions come out differently, but I wouldn't say that one's better than the other. The baking-pan recipe also requires three pounds of butter, a little olive oil, lemon juice, worcestershire, a little salt, and an immense amount of ground black pepper.
It also requires explaining how to eat the messy dish. About half of the people got right into it. About a quarter begged either an allergy to shellfish or a religious observance. The shrimp did look very primitive, but those who let themselves go started spreading the word, and we consumed more barbecue shrimp than I've ever cooked at one time in my life.
We also have three pounds of white crabmeat. Not jumbo lump, but it does the job we have in mind: a kind of garlic-and-bread crumbs, Parmesan gratin. I have it ready to go into the oven when Mary Ann adds about a cup of water from the crabmeat containers. So much for my crisp bread-crumbs crust. Nevertheless, this becomes one of the most popular dishes on the table.
Good as all that was, the culinary highlight of the party was the cake Mary Leigh built. Making everything from scratch, she created a cake so perfect that everybody kept watching her as she kept on building. The theme was the sea, with cartoons--all made by hand--of octopi, submarines, sharks, and other denizens of the deep. She spent hours last night and more hours today to assemble this masterwork. She could be a pastry chef in the best restaurants in town. (In fact, she did, for a while, at La Provence.)
I never took a picture of it. What's the matter with me?
Even though the little kids and babies were the focus of the festivities, the adults are fun to talk with. More than I would have guessed had Louisiana connections that did not flow through me, Mary Ann or Jude. One guy was from Abita Springs, even.
