Sunday, April 23, 2017
Brunch With Forks, Corks. Pickup Spouse.
Long and busy day. I am to sign on the radio at around three in the afternoon and stay until six. This means I must catch Sunday dinner at breakfast or lunch time. I choose Forks and Corks, one of Osman Rodas's North Shore trio of restaurants. F&C is more Creole-French than Osman's flagship Pardo. That makes it ideal for brunch. The dining room filled up faster than I expected, but I was there well before the main crowd.
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Eggs Sardou, Chef Marvin's way.[/caption]
The one-course brunch before me is a dish that has breen spreading to other restaurants throughout the area lately. It's either an omelette or a poached-egg, Benedict-style, hollandaise-flooded job. I have the latter. The main focus is a combination of exotic mushrooms and lump crabmeat, all in an emulsified butter sauce. This is a great combination of flavors, one good enough to deserve a name. Oh! Wait. I forgot. We no longer make up names for dishes, we just list the ingredients in it. Still, I think I will begin calling it eggs Riccobono, for Vincent Riccobono of Mattina Bella, which is the first place I ever tasted the dish. Vincent used to work at the Peppermill, creating confusion with his cousin Vincent Riccobono (another one), who actually owns the Peppermill. They serve the dish, too.
Back home, I continue rewriting the introduction to the new edition of my cookbook. This is going faster than I thought it would. I should be able to deliver it well before the May 15 deadline. On the other hand, I regret telling the editor that I have photographs of many of the dishes we're including in the book. Trouble is that my photo collection is an unindexed mess.
At nine I strike out across the Causeway. After almost a month with Jude and Jackson (son and grandson), MA is coming home tonight on an eleven o'clock flight. I arrive well ahead of schedule, but manage to make a poor choice of a parking spot, one far away from the debarkation point. But MA's feet hurt, and she won't see a long walk as a plus. Especially not when I have to tell her that I'm sort of semi-lost.
The problem is that the airport's two main parking garages have two Level 3's. MA tells me this is impossible. But the sweeper tells me how to get to the right Level 3. (One is color coded as pink, and the other, correct one is pale green.) He tells me that the color would appear on my parking ticket. It is Pink 3. But I have parked in Green 3. And the two areas are atop one another, with few accommodations for going from one to another. Am I the first to be victimized by this? Or am I as dumb as MA says I clearly am to have done something this careless?
Because of this we don't have the nice, welcoming conversation I expected on the way home. The dogs are happy to see her, though, as if I starved them to death.
Forks & Corks. Covington: 141 TerraBella Blvd. 985-273-3663.
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Monday, April 24, 2017.
In Desperate Need Of Red Beans.
Mary Anne came home saying that she has lost a lot of weight, and that she's not going to let me push her into returning to the eating I have plagued her with these many years. But we can't decide on a dining venue. I let her pick a place, because anything will be fine. (Except The Chimes, but she knows better than to bring that up.)
At Pontchartrain Po-Boys--which both of us love--we get red beans and lima beans and hot sausage and a big salad. That is after we manage to get a table in this deservedly busy strip-mall. The place is very busy, and includes some six Teresian nuns. MA identifies them quickly, because they taught her in both grammar and high schools.
This gets me to thinking about the upcoming fiftieth anniversary of my gradation from Archbishop Rummel High, which was staffed largely by Christian Brothers. And my non-graduation from Jesuit. Enough Jesuits remain that we will have at least one or two of them at the reunion.
But before we get to that, the fiftieth anniversary of Prom Night is less than a month away. I am ready now for my turning on of that time machine. Even the Marys seem to be sympathetic.
Pontchartrain Po-Boys. Mandeville: 318 Dalwill Dr. 985-626-8188.
