[title type="h5"]Saturday, February 7, 2015.
Same Old Friends Dine With Us At Bosco's.[/title]
It's a goobered day. Mary Ann and I don't go on the air until four in the afternoon, at which time our instincts for taking over an on-air conversation kick in. Some people can share the energy of a two-host talk show, but neither one of us did much of that in our respective broadcast careers. Nevertheless, I think we're getting the hang of it.
The subject helped: Valentine's Day. Mary Ann believes that if a guy can't manage to take his lady to a romantic dinner on Valentine's Day itself--not a day before and sure as hell not a day late--he's not deserving of what he thinks he might get out of the holiday. I don't keep score, but I think MA won the decision three times out of four in our twenty-six years together.
To dinner at Bosco's in Covington. For the first time since its new-restaurant honeymoon, we find the nice-looking trattoria full, with a waiting list. After a few minutes, the hostess brings us to a back room we didn't know existed. It is utilitarian, windowless, and generally not nearly as pleasant as the main room.
As if that isn't already a disappointment, a guy at the next table appears to be running a business with his cellphone, and speaks loudly enough to be the dominant voice at every table in the room. Worse still, he is working out a solution to a plumbing problem in a trailer he owns. We get all the details without even trying to tune them in.
I tell Mary Ann that I will get us another table. She tried to talk me out of it, even though if she were in boss mode (she usually is), we would have left three times already. I say I'm going to the restroom, but in fact check with the hostess as to when a table in the main dining room might open.
"Actually, we have one right now!" she says, with cheer. And there we go, to a window table.
Now, how is this possible? A month ago, we encountered Don and Andrea Smith at Opal Basil. They were Eat Club regulars at many dinners and cruises. Hadn't seen them in years, though. Well, I ran into Andrea again about a week later. And who should be sitting at the bar tonight, waiting for a table? That's right! I bop over and invite them to fill the other two seats. A would-be dining disaster becomes a fine evening.
[caption id="attachment_46636" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Bosco's crawfish king cake.[/caption]
We start with a curious item: a savory king cake with crawfish in a sherry butter sauce? I have become used to seeing new variations on the standard king cake designed to make it look and taste different and better. But all of those remained desserts. This may look like a standard king cake, but a crawfish filling? Purple, green, and gold butter over the top? It's better than it sounds.
Food flows well thereafter. Two orders of Italian-style oysters. Crab cakes with artichokes. Veal Marsala. The house fish with the shrimp sauce. Talk about our kids and theirs, all of whom are more or less in the same twenty-something life. We always enjoy hanging with the Smiths.
[title type="h5"]Bosco's. Covington: 141 TerraBella Blvd. 985-612-7250.[/title][divider type=""]
[title type="h5"]Sunday, February 8, 2015.
The Unavoidable Sunday Dinner. [/title]
My birthday present from the Marys is a springform pan with a glass bottom. I had and very much liked one of those, but some years ago the bottom hit the floor hard during one of the avalanches in the pantry, and I couldn't replace it. Now I have a nicer, heavier model, whose sides have non-stick coating.
I can't wait to try it out. I have something in mind: a quiche, the ingredients for which I bought yesterday. But by the time everyone had conducted his or her morning rituals, it's afternoon, and nobody wants to wait for me to make a quiche. Especially when I say that I couldn't remember ever having baked a quiche before.
We leave all that behind and are off to the usual Sunday lunchroom: La Carreta. I go along mainly so I can get a bowl of their bean soup, which I find very satisfying, especially in the cool weather. I have never had a bad bean soup in my life. And when I run across an exceptionally good bean soup, the ratio of pleasure to expense is as high as it ever gets.
[title type="h5"]La Carreta. Mandeville: 1200 W Causeway Approach. 985-624-2990.[/title][divider type=""]
[title type="h5"]Monday, February 9, 2015.
Together At Last: Quiche And Tortillas.[/title]
Everything works out for me to make a quiche Lorraine in my new springform pan this morning, including having the Marys around to help me eat it. (Cooking for myself feels hollow.)
I even have an innovation, one that gets me past the most daunting part of making quiches: the crust. While at the grocery, I see a display of Hola Nola flour tortillas, rendered green with spinach and herbs. The owners of Hola Nola were on the radio with me some months back, and I was impressed by their story. They're the only commercial maker of tortillas in Louisiana, and use recipes they devised from scratch.
These green tortillas are ten inches across and quite thin. In my mind's eye I could see the tortilla tucked into the springform pan's lower corners, with the sides folded and cut to fit.
After a lot of thinking, I recall that at one of our Easter parties in the days when our kids still were, we served mostly eggs, with quiche being a major item. I couldn't recall how I made them, nor find a recipe in my files. So I check a few cookbooks, using the elements they had in common and improvising the rest. Simple enough: eggs beaten until frothy, half-and-half, Chisesi ham sliced into one-inch squares and broiled until a little crusty, grated sharp provolone cheese, green onions, parsley, spinach, and Creole seasoning.
[caption id="attachment_46635" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Quiche Lorraine. Not "quiac."[/caption]
While it's in the oven, I remember two anecdotes about quiche and me. In the mid-1970s, a woman I probably should have married (I was too immature and selfish to know that then) invited me to her house for Sunday brunch. She was making a deep-dish quiche, she said. While we sat in the kitchen drinking coffee, I saw a river of beaten eggs roll out of the oven and onto the floor. She shrieked, took the pan out of the oven, beat some more eggs and added more cream, and with a look of confidence returned the pan to the oven. A few minutes later, I watched the rivulet form again. I didn't want to tell her, but I had to. She was thoroughly dejected. I took her to brunch at Commander's Palace.
Second story: My very first restaurant review, published in the Driftwood (the student newspaper of LSUNO, as UNO was called in 1972) contained a reference to quiche. The dish was on the menu at the Flambeau Room, a white-tablecloth lunch restaurant in the University Center. Peter Sclafani Jr. was the manager, and Leon Ricard was the chef. Both were well-versed in fine dining. I was not. I had never heard of quiche before--the first of many points of ignorance I have had to work through. But even though Peter and Leon surely did know what a quiche was, for some reason they spelled it "Quiac Loraine" on the menu. I assumed that this was the name of the dish, and I printed it that way in my column. I am still embarrassed by it.
I would not be embarrassed today. "It smells wonderful!" the Marys each say. It does indeed, and I wasn't expecting that. It was in the oven 35 minutes--a little too long, but not a disaster. I unlock the springform sides and the glass bottom falls a quarter-inch onto the counter. I does not break. We each cut big slices and eat. It is wonderful. I look forward to returning to the kitchen after the radio show to have another slice before going off to choral rehearsal.
I will publish the exact recipe for this quiche in the NOMenu edition after Ash Wednesday. Writing recipes is more time-consuming than anyone but than other recipe-writers know.
