Monday, April 17, 2017.
The Waiting Room Is Well Named.
I have a minor matter to investigate with the doctor. Getting to her office eats up a lot of time when all of St. Tammany Parish seems to be moving in my direction. So I leave early, then read an entire New Yorker magazine while waiting.
I address my luncheon hunger at New Orleans Food & Spirits. Everybody knows me there and is cheerful. Red beans and rice with smoked sausage are good as usual.
Back at home I send out the newsletter, then give forth with two hours of radio. The guest today is Roseanne Rostoker, the owner and chef of Red Gravy. The image that this name brings forth is largely inaccurate. This is not a neighborhood Italian trattoria flodded with marinara sauce, but a breakfast and lunch café for the lower precincts of the CBD. But Roseanne is quick to point out that she has in her repertoire a number of breakfast and lunch dishes that have a distinct tomato-sauce component. I can think of a few such that I eat regularly myself.
Roseanna is a New Jersey girl who fell in love with New Orleans many years ago. So here she is on a permanent stay, with her cute little eatery, one with a contingent of local regulars. She sounds great on the phone, which makes for a good show. I hang onto her until a quarter to two, after which we have a better flow of telephone callers through the rest of the live segment of the broadcast.
Chorus rehearsal at seven. We are scattered today. Conductor Alissa is busy with another program, in which some of our singers are going to Europe during the summer. I wish I had the time to join them. We have no cruise planned for this year, for the first time in years. I needed a break is one reason. Another is that MA doesn't want to travel with me anywhere she has already been. But she will do a river cruise in Eastern Europe. I'm not sure I want to go that way for awhile.
And that's why my only firm, major travel plan is the round trip via rail to Los Angeles and San Francisco in June. Grandson Jackson is not just walking but running. I haven't seen him since before Christmas. And I haven't taken a train trip in two years. The Sunset Limited in particular is a relaxing escape from the real world, and traverses the desert Southwest, which I love. And I know I'll have some interesting food and wine in L.A. and S.F. I'll do some radio shows from out there, and let Mary Ann host the others.
Getting back to the NPAS rehearsal: we continue our study of Motown Music from the 1970s. Most of it is music I like, but I can't quite connect with the Michael Jackson stuff. I think I'll attend the next board meeting and ask for a moratorium on songs whose lyrics include dubious words like "dee dee wop," "boo-brrrrrrrree-umop itty-mop mop mop" "doodle-dogee-bip" and the like for a term to be voted upon. I actually like bee-bop to a point--but one can go overboard. But I may be overreacting.
Red Gravy Cafe. CBD: 125 Camp St. 504-561-8844.
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Tuesday, April 18, 2017.
Piccola Gelateria.
I thought that I was onto something a few years ago when a fellow food writer--I can't remember who she was other than that we were attending the same event in the Napa wine country--said that the difference between gelato and ice cream is that gelato has a gelatin component that makes it more affordable to the people in Sicily who like it most. "Gel" appears in both "gelato" and "gelatin," so I bit for it. Not so, say a dozen or more other authorities. The "gel" coincidence is no more than that, they say. It comes from the same etymology as "gelid," which means "really, really cold." Which certainly applies to both gelato and ice cream. (Note to self: If I ever open a snoball stand, I will use the word "gelid" in its name.)
I brought this up during a radio conversation today with Ria Turnbull, who with her husband has a gelateria ("place that sells gelato") on Freret Street just uptown of Napoleon Avenue. I detected an accent of the Balkans in her speech. Indeed, she says, since she is from Bosnia, just south of Croatia.
She proceeded to fill the better part of an hour talking about gelato and the ingredients and techniques necessary to make it excellent. She brought four flavors of her hubby's hand-made gelato, the first one stracciatella. I've never seen two versions of stracciatella that were alike. But I've not had a bad one, either. And this one--basic vanilla with a million little naturally-shaped knurdles of chocolate--is wonderful. Also here is a dense, dark chocolate gelato, which I would bring to the Marys if 1) it didn't melt on the way to the Cool Water Ranch and b) if they were in town to begin with. So I passed it over to my radio boss Diane Newman, who seemed to appreciate this late-afternoon treat.
The most interesting of Ria's offerings was a pistachio gelato that was riddled with microscopic particles of the namesake nut, ground down to the texture od fine sand. It not only was good (pistachio is my favorite ice cream, gelato, or whatever) but it felt healthy to eat.
At the end of the live two hours of the program, I called Mary Leigh to see if she were an available supper companion. No dice. She has had a grueling work week, with nothing but more gruel in the next few days. Ah, for the stamina of a twenty-four year-old!
I have dinner at Ristorante Fillippo, where I have not been for so long the all the staffs says things like, "Hello, stranger!"
I eat too much here. After chef-owner Phil Gagliano informs me of the inevitable absence from the menu of the chicken spiedini, I order a cup of tomato-basil soup, a house salad, a small portion of a pasta special with a sauce that's like bordelaise but with some white wine. The entree is the standard appetizer version of oysters areganata--a wet variation of dishes like oysters Mosca. The oysters they used to make it are titanic in size. A bit too big, I'd say. But the flavor and the aroma are both there in full measure.
Did I mention that I always eat too much food at Filippo? Well, so does everybody else, near as I can tell.
Ristorante Filippo. Metairie: 1917 Ridgelake. 504-835-4008.
