Thursday, February 18, 2016.
Eat Club At Café Giovanni.
The Eat Club gathers at Café Giovanni tonight. It is a little less well attended than usual--probably because we didn't let enough of the Lenten season play out. A lot of people observe the penitential days and cut back on their dining. But that effect is usually over by two or three weeks after Ash Wednesday. We only gave it one week. So instead of having about sixty or seventy people (Chef Duke would prefer having something like eighty), we had around fifty. That's actually my idea of the ideal number of diners, because it allows me to land at all the tables for more than a quick visit.
[caption id="attachment_50708" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Seafood Caprese salad.[/caption]
The dinner peaks in the first course, which features the chef's unique blending of a Caprese salad (tomatoes, fresh-milk mozzarella) with a seafood ravigote (shrimp, crawfish, crabmeat in a sort of white remoulade). This is not only good, but served in a portion that recalls the tremendous feasts in the early days of the Eat Club at this restaurant.
We next have a classic Creole turtle soup. Nice dark roux, a substantial component of real (that's what the chef says) turtle meat. No possible complaint here, unless the eater doesn't like the taste of turtle.
[caption id="attachment_50707" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Crawfish cannelloni.[/caption]
Next, one of those dishes for which the appreciation varies according to how much the eater likes cheese. It's crawfish cannelloni, and it's very rich, with a cream sauce topped with a goodly amount of shredded cheese. Crawfish are once again picking up in quality, just in time.
[caption id="attachment_50706" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Rabbit ragu with a bisccit. [/caption]
This is followed by a ragu of rabbit, in which substantial chunks of the light meat (in color, texture and flavor) are awash in a sauce that looks a lot like an old-style turtle soup--the kind with a lot of tomato. I recall a dish I had somewhere else--at La Foret, I think--where the chef made a the same sort of thing, and I congratulated him for coming up with a new, easy-to-make variation on turtle soup. And so this dinner has--sort of--two turtle soups, each in a style very different the other.
[caption id="attachment_50705" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Baby black drum with langoustino. [/caption]
Now we have baby drumfish (also called "puppy drum." The garnish is ruddled with South American red langostino--somewhere between shrimp and lobster in flavor.Also here is an eggplant casserole with a stuffing quality. The wine is Sonoma Cutrer Chardonnay, surely one of the most familiar wines in America. For that reason, I haven't ordered it in years. It works well with the drumfish.
The main main is a prosciutto-wrapped tournedos (next slice over from the filet mignon in a tenderloin) that bears a made with red vermouth and marsala, with mushrooms and demi-glace adding some heft. With this is the best wine of the night, a Cabernet from Justin in Paso Robles. I've always liked Justin's wines.
[caption id="attachment_50704" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Baked cannoli.[/caption]
The dessert is the latest variation on something Chef Duke served with a bang at our last Eat Club here. It's a cannoli, made of sweetened ricotta cheese with candied fruits and chocolate nuggets. At Angelo Brokato's--the most famous vendor of this dessert--it's jammed into a crisp shell. Here it's baked inside a pastry, giving an overall effect similar to that of bread pudding.
[caption id="attachment_50703" align="alignnone" width="480"]
The New Cafe Giovanni Singers.[/caption]
Then I sing my usual song with the Café Giovanni singers, who have been joined since last time by a lady who not only plays the piano behind the mezzo and the tenor but sings very well herself.
Our party extends until almost ten o'clock, by which time I have heard a convincing number of comments on the goodness of the feast just ended. Nothing new there: Chef Duke gets the concept of the Eat Club: the familiar balanced by the forward-looking, in abundance. Some of the tables remain in in full career as their occupants empty the last of the wine.
I don't wait for them to depart, but head for home. I stillhaven't packed for my trip to Californioia tomorrow to lay my eyes, for the first time, on Jackson Fitzmorris.
Cafe Giovanni. French Quarter: 117 Decatur. 504-529-2154.
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Friday, February 19, 2016.
To The Coast For Four Days.
I'm up around five-thirty, my bags not quite packed for the three nights I will spend in Studio City and other environs of Los Angeles, where my son Jude, his wife Suzanne and their three-month-old son Jackson live.
Mary Ann conveys me to the airport on a perfect day for flying. I change planes in Dallas, where the first flight arrives at 11:30 a.m. But the other flight boards at 11:25! The tension builds until I'm off the first plane and find that the gate for the second is right next door. Still, that's too close for comfort.
Suzanne picks me up at the airport, with Jackson in the care of a nanny who has cuddled several of Suzanne's young relatives over the years. Suzanne suggests we have lunch at a mixed-Asian restaurant called Take A Bao. A bao is a steamed Chinese-style bun in many variations, usually filled with some kind of protein, usually with a juicy gravy. More important, Take A Bao is the restaurant where Jude and Suzanne met a few years ago. They still love the place and are regular customers.
[caption id="attachment_50710" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Take A Bao's tom yum soup.[/caption]
Suzanne has a chicken burrito (like most restaurants in Los Angeles, this one has food with a blend of influences). For me, a bowl of tom yum soup. That name is usually applied to a translucent Thai soup, but it's hard to stick a name on what comes out. It's loaded with vegetables and greens, in a spicy (but not overly) orange broth. Also floating around are cubes of tofu and some dumpling-like pasta disks. All this is very good, and served in a quantity at least double what I could possibly get down.
All is calm when we arrive at the House Of Jude, Suzanne, and Jackson. The construction that has gone on there for months is coming to a close, but the contractor shows up with something else that needs to be done just about every day. The renovation fatigue I've long read about (and experienced, but not to this degree) is very much under way, made more troublesome by the presence of a three-month-old baby.
Lately, Jude has been intrigued by the pesto pasta the Marys and I found in Genoa when we were there last summer. He asked me to make a batch for the family dinner tonight. We go to Ralph's--the equivalent of Rouse's in that part of California--and pick up the ingredients. The most critically important of them--fresh basil--is is terrible shape. But that's normal: basil is not a winter vegetable. I hand-chop a triple fistful of the picked leaves (no stems) a quarter that much of parsley, olive oil, butter, shallots (not garlic, but shallots), and a little white pepper. It comes out with the texture of crunchy peanut butter. I thin it out a little with a couple of tablespoons of the water in which the pasta was cooked, and give it one more stir in the processor.
The blade on Jude's processor is very sharp, and I nick my finger. I'm accustomed to the kind with fine serration. This one was as sharp as a French chef's knife.
From there, everything is easy. The hot pasta gets tossed with enough of the buttery, herbal pesto, and we serve it with a variety of Parmigiano cheese whose label fell off before I had a chance to copy its name.
We each eat a good-size pile of the pasta. And then the extended process of persuading Jackson to fall asleep begins. The most effective part is a bath in flowing, warm water. That puts him out, even though drying him and putting his clothes back on is something he lets us know is not his favorite procedure.
Jude tells me that his prohibition against my publishing pictures of Jackson is still in force. I respect his request, even though I don't know what it's about.
[caption id="attachment_50708" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Seafood Caprese salad.[/caption]
The dinner peaks in the first course, which features the chef's unique blending of a Caprese salad (tomatoes, fresh-milk mozzarella) with a seafood ravigote (shrimp, crawfish, crabmeat in a sort of white remoulade). This is not only good, but served in a portion that recalls the tremendous feasts in the early days of the Eat Club at this restaurant.
We next have a classic Creole turtle soup. Nice dark roux, a substantial component of real (that's what the chef says) turtle meat. No possible complaint here, unless the eater doesn't like the taste of turtle.
[caption id="attachment_50707" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Crawfish cannelloni.[/caption]
Next, one of those dishes for which the appreciation varies according to how much the eater likes cheese. It's crawfish cannelloni, and it's very rich, with a cream sauce topped with a goodly amount of shredded cheese. Crawfish are once again picking up in quality, just in time.
[caption id="attachment_50706" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Rabbit ragu with a bisccit. [/caption]
This is followed by a ragu of rabbit, in which substantial chunks of the light meat (in color, texture and flavor) are awash in a sauce that looks a lot like an old-style turtle soup--the kind with a lot of tomato. I recall a dish I had somewhere else--at La Foret, I think--where the chef made a the same sort of thing, and I congratulated him for coming up with a new, easy-to-make variation on turtle soup. And so this dinner has--sort of--two turtle soups, each in a style very different the other.
[caption id="attachment_50705" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Baby black drum with langoustino. [/caption]
Now we have baby drumfish (also called "puppy drum." The garnish is ruddled with South American red langostino--somewhere between shrimp and lobster in flavor.Also here is an eggplant casserole with a stuffing quality. The wine is Sonoma Cutrer Chardonnay, surely one of the most familiar wines in America. For that reason, I haven't ordered it in years. It works well with the drumfish.
The main main is a prosciutto-wrapped tournedos (next slice over from the filet mignon in a tenderloin) that bears a made with red vermouth and marsala, with mushrooms and demi-glace adding some heft. With this is the best wine of the night, a Cabernet from Justin in Paso Robles. I've always liked Justin's wines.
[caption id="attachment_50704" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Baked cannoli.[/caption]
The dessert is the latest variation on something Chef Duke served with a bang at our last Eat Club here. It's a cannoli, made of sweetened ricotta cheese with candied fruits and chocolate nuggets. At Angelo Brokato's--the most famous vendor of this dessert--it's jammed into a crisp shell. Here it's baked inside a pastry, giving an overall effect similar to that of bread pudding.
[caption id="attachment_50703" align="alignnone" width="480"]
The New Cafe Giovanni Singers.[/caption]
Then I sing my usual song with the Café Giovanni singers, who have been joined since last time by a lady who not only plays the piano behind the mezzo and the tenor but sings very well herself.
Our party extends until almost ten o'clock, by which time I have heard a convincing number of comments on the goodness of the feast just ended. Nothing new there: Chef Duke gets the concept of the Eat Club: the familiar balanced by the forward-looking, in abundance. Some of the tables remain in in full career as their occupants empty the last of the wine.
I don't wait for them to depart, but head for home. I stillhaven't packed for my trip to Californioia tomorrow to lay my eyes, for the first time, on Jackson Fitzmorris.
Take A Bao's tom yum soup.[/caption]
Suzanne has a chicken burrito (like most restaurants in Los Angeles, this one has food with a blend of influences). For me, a bowl of tom yum soup. That name is usually applied to a translucent Thai soup, but it's hard to stick a name on what comes out. It's loaded with vegetables and greens, in a spicy (but not overly) orange broth. Also floating around are cubes of tofu and some dumpling-like pasta disks. All this is very good, and served in a quantity at least double what I could possibly get down.
All is calm when we arrive at the House Of Jude, Suzanne, and Jackson. The construction that has gone on there for months is coming to a close, but the contractor shows up with something else that needs to be done just about every day. The renovation fatigue I've long read about (and experienced, but not to this degree) is very much under way, made more troublesome by the presence of a three-month-old baby.
Lately, Jude has been intrigued by the pesto pasta the Marys and I found in Genoa when we were there last summer. He asked me to make a batch for the family dinner tonight. We go to Ralph's--the equivalent of Rouse's in that part of California--and pick up the ingredients. The most critically important of them--fresh basil--is is terrible shape. But that's normal: basil is not a winter vegetable. I hand-chop a triple fistful of the picked leaves (no stems) a quarter that much of parsley, olive oil, butter, shallots (not garlic, but shallots), and a little white pepper. It comes out with the texture of crunchy peanut butter. I thin it out a little with a couple of tablespoons of the water in which the pasta was cooked, and give it one more stir in the processor.
The blade on Jude's processor is very sharp, and I nick my finger. I'm accustomed to the kind with fine serration. This one was as sharp as a French chef's knife.
From there, everything is easy. The hot pasta gets tossed with enough of the buttery, herbal pesto, and we serve it with a variety of Parmigiano cheese whose label fell off before I had a chance to copy its name.
We each eat a good-size pile of the pasta. And then the extended process of persuading Jackson to fall asleep begins. The most effective part is a bath in flowing, warm water. That puts him out, even though drying him and putting his clothes back on is something he lets us know is not his favorite procedure.
Jude tells me that his prohibition against my publishing pictures of Jackson is still in force. I respect his request, even though I don't know what it's about.
