[title type="h5"]Saturday, August 23, 2013.
Molé Is Near.
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After my radio show, the four of us went out for a late lunch at La Caretta. Mary Leigh went there a week ago (is that really the most recent time?) and came back with the report that the long-promised molé poblano was finally on the menu. I go where the molé goes, and my palate was ready for this rare deliciousness. (If you're just joining the Diary, molé poblano is the Mexican sauce--a contender for Best Sauce In Any Cuisine--made with bitter chocolate, chili peppers, sesame seeds, and some three dozen other ingredients.)
But at the restaurant, I went through the menu four or five times without finding the molé. It was definitely the new menu La Carreta's owner Saul Rubio showed us months ago. But where were the couple of promised molé dishes?
[caption id="attachment_43616" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Mole with chicken at La Carreta.[/caption]
I asked the waiter. His eyebrows shot up. "Molé!" he all but shouted. A manager came around with equally bright eyes. "We had to take it off the menu, because Saul is still working on it," he said. "He wants to be sure it's perfect! But we have some and we'll serve it to you on chicken!"
Saul is right in thinking that the sauce needs a little more refinement. But it was at least 80 percent there, and 80 percent of molé is better than 100 percent of most other sauces. And here it was, very thick (I'd say a little too), atop grilled chicken (overcooked; it would be better as a whole chicken breast instead of a cutlet). But good anyway. We're getting this sauce sooner or later.
Until then, we continue to eat far too much of the chili con queso with chorizo here. Hard not to.
[title type="h5"]La Carreta. Mandeville: 1200 W Causeway Approach. 985-624-2990.
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Sunday, August 24, 2014.
Mandina's In Mandeville.[/title]
In the scorching summer heat, I cut all the sections of lawn at the Cool Water Ranch, including the parts I only bother with three or four times a year. The front lawn is beautiful green, pillowy soft. The animals love it. No dried-out diebacks this year.
[caption id="attachment_43617" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Soft shell crabs at Mandina's in Mandeville[/caption]
To dinner at Mandina's in Mandeville. It closes early--eight o'clock--and we barely make it in. But the place is as busy as we ever see it. Salads. Spaghetti and meatballs. Two soft-shell crabs for me. I eat the fries, which I shouldn't have. If I have the will power to tell the kitchen at Mattina Bella to give me neither the fried potatoes nor the grits at breakfast, why can't I do the same thing here? Still no oyster-artichoke soup. Still not as good at Mandina's on Canal Street, and since it serves the same food more or less, the Mandeville branch suffers more than it should by comparison. Still too much food to finish comfortably.
[title type="h5"]Mandina's. Mandeville: 4240 La 22. 985-674-9883. [/title]
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[title type="h5"]Monday, August 25, 2014.
Bamboo Shoots.[/title]
Watching my daughter and The Boy dining with me at Thai restaurants has had an interesting effect on my own appreciation of that cuisine. Because they're just starting out in eating pad thai and Thai fried rice, when I look for dishes to try I am pulled away from the various curries into the stir-fry dishes. Today I thought I'd try Thai Pepper's version of a dish described by the menu only as "Bamboo shoot." There's much more in there, of course, none of which I anticipated. The sauce was a dark brown, almost as if it had been made with a roux. Such dishes appear somewhere in most Asian cuisines. Mandarin chicken is the most familiar, from the Chinese menu. Vietnamese places are having good luck with their version of beef stew. And now here's a Thai dish. Lesson of the day: I didn't like the first two, and I don't like this.
[caption id="attachment_43618" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Bamboo shoots and beef, Thai style.[/caption]
So the discovery is: the curries and dishes made like curries--all of them more like soups than stews--are what I love best when it comes to Thai eats. Fortunately, in any good Thai restaurant, there will be at least of dozen of these--maybe as many as fifty or sixty if you count all the meat and seafood variations.
The Boy is still specifying "thai hot" for his spice level. And then he sprinkles on a lot of crushed red pepper. Mary Leigh says that she is coming to like it that way, too. Just keep your fingers out of your eyes, I tell them.
[title type="h5"]Thai Pepper. Mandeville: 1625 US 190. 985-624-3057. [/title]
Written by Tom Fitzmorris September 03, 2014 12:01 in
