Friday, May 4, 2012.
Crawfish Bread, Boudin, Pheasant Gumbo. Where Else But At The Jazz Festival?
I'm one of many who remember with nostalgia how things used to be on Friday at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. Friday attendance during the first two decades would be considered embarrassingly sparse now. Mostly local people, listening to great musicians we either never heard of or knew all our live, but who in any case were probably not destined for stardom. The big names would be there Saturday and Sunday, and with them the crowds that kept you from getting close enough to hear the music directly from the players instead of only though the overcharged speakers. On those past Fridays you could shoot the breeze with the food vendors and find out how they made their dishes, instead of waiting in line to exchange quickly your money for a paper plate of food.
I know how to relive those days: show up as soon as the gates open on the second Friday. That's what I did today, for about three hours. No lines for anything. It was nice to be able to chat with the foodsters again.
I was there to do an hour of book autographing, an annual ritual ever since I started publishing a new book almost every year. An organization of local independent booksellers has a tent every year, and does pretty well with it. I autographed about twenty-five books, most of them Lost Restaurants of New Orleans.
The nicest part of that hour was meeting people who love New Orleans from a distance, and come to the Jazz Fest and its like every year. They are more enthusiastic about our city than the average Orleanian, and they love to talk about it. Many are subscribers to NOMenu. Some of those invite me to have dinner with them while they're here, or in their home cities if I should thereto wander.
Before and after my shift in the book tent, I made a pass through the food booths. First dish was the famous crawfish bread. It generates talk all year long, because it's hardly available anywhere or anytime except Jazz Fest.
One bite told me that it was a long time--maybe ten years--since I last tried one of these. Crawfish bread--made by some people from Marksville--is like an enormous, oblong calzone cut in half so the innards can ooze out. The stuff is made of what looked and tasted like crawfish etouffee mixed in with a tremendous amount of cheese. All this is installed on the unbaked dough, which is then folded over and baked. It was far above my threshold for melted cheese, but even so it was easy to understand why so many people like this. People ask me for a recipe often. I think I will whip one up before crawfish season ends.
My next stop was for a crawfish sack from Patton's. I inadvertently omitted that booth--whose oyster patties and crawfish beignets are also long-time favorites at the Jazz Fest--from my rated list on the website. (I fixed it after Tim Patton wondered why I left him out while running a picture of a very happy eater buying one of his combo plates.) The sack is like a rich crawfish bisque inside a crepe, tied at the top and fried. Hard to eat, but delicious.
Now boudin. Not the boudin balls that they handed me by mistake, deep fried with a thick bread crumb crust, but a ten-inch link of the iconic Cajun rice-and-pork sausage. The first boudin I ever ate was here at the Jazz Festival, in 1975. With the exception of one odd year, it always has been for the apotheosis of boudin-eating pleasure. And it was again this year. I don't usually eat the entire serving of anything at the Jazz Festival--I don't have enough stomach space--but I left not even the little knots at the ends of the boudin link.
The guy selling Prejean's pheasant, quail and andouille gumbo would not sell me a half-portion for the full price. I could have enjoyed this entire big serving. It's close to gumbo perfection for me, and for a lot of other people. But then I wouldn't be able to try anything else.
Like the link of merguez from Jamila's, from the hand of Jamila Sbaa herself. Lamb and veal sausage, spicy. Yum! The Jazz Festival's food offerings could be advertised as a Sausage Festival without changing much of the menu.)
Or maybe the Crawfish Festival. Crawfish Monica was next on my menu, even though Monica Davidson wasn't there. I did talk with her husband Pete Hilzim, who seemed to be pleased with the crowds generated by the perfect weather.
Patty Poche appeared, wearing a straw hat. She and her husband John joined me and MA for a lot of dinners over the years, because our sons were at Christian Brothers School and Jesuit together. They moved to Los Angeles a couple of years ago. But they must come home for Jazz Fest.
Superb white chocolate bread pudding from Coffee Cottage did me in. I walked around and met other friends, although not as many as I expected to see. Few strangers stopped me to say hello. But new people come to the Jazz Festival every year, and my generation of Fest-goers shrinks with each passing year.
The Jazz Festival makes me more nostalgic than excited, and that says something. I expect to feel that connection with the past as long as the food vendors--who hardly vary at all from year to year--keep on serving this sausage, crawfish, and all the rest of the now set-in-stone Jazz Fest menu.
To the radio station for a nap, then the show. The Zoo To-Do is tonight, and I had tickets. But the logistics of doing the Jazz Festival, then a show, then changing into formal wear for the Zoo's big fundraiser was more than I could handle. I just went home. It's times like this that make me wish I had an apartment in town.
It's over three years since a day was missed in the Dining Diary. To browse through all of the entries since 2008, go here.
