Monday, April 11, 2011.
Brisket. Chef Champions. Crawfish In Lobster Sauce. Oranges Tap Out.
Joe Pollet, the top engineer at the radio station, alerted me to a problem with the link from my house to the studio. He said I might have to come in to do my show today. I wouldn't mind doing that if I could do it without turning Mary Ann's day upside down. I still am at least a month away from being able to drive. And the process of my getting down the six steps from house to driveway requires another person.
But they worked it all out. Today makes five weeks since the last time I set foot in the radio studio. I hope I don't break the record--nine weeks, after Katrina.
Mary Ann scoured the bathtub in preparation for my first shower in the same five weeks. And she bought what she thought was a seat I could use while showering. It was a table for houseplants. Utterly incapable of supporting even my now-reduced weight. The tub has absolutely nothing to grab hold of, so I need to sit down while showering. Oh, well. I'm keeping myself sweet-smelling with a splashy, messy routine at the bathroom sink.
During our discussion of this, Mary Ann mentioned that I ought to use Old Spice. She said Jude uses Old Spice. When did grandpa's after-shave aroma become hip again?
The fresh oranges have run out, and Mary Ann refuses to buy any more. She can't stand the process of squeezing them, and won't let me do it myself. She says I make too much of a mess--but I've been doing it every day since before we were married! Our fallback is an excellent bottled juice, pulpy and flavorful, that Vincent Riccobono buys for his Mattina Bella in Covington. We go there for breakfast a lot, and I've always thought his juice was almost as good as fresh. That is all I will have until I stop being a uniped.
During the radio show, a call came in from a young-sounding man. He had a question I've begun hearing about once a week for the past few months, but never before then. He said that he read that Chef Sue Zemanick of Gautreau's is one of the finalists in a televised national chef competition. He wanted to know why New Orleans has had relatively few winners of these contests, since we certainly have chefs as good as or better than many of the ones who win these trumped-up faceoffs. Why are they always from New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, he wanted to know.
In other words, why is our team not going to the cooking equivalent of the Super Bowl?
My blood ran cold. Is this the way real people are starting to see the art of cooking? As a competitive event, an exhibition, instead of as the source of direct personal enjoyment?
Who would prefer to watch chefs cook on television to actually going to a restaurant and eating the food these same chefs cook in the real world? Apparently some people have been brainwashed into equating those two activities.
If this trend continues--and it shows no signs of stopping--chefs will be spending more time on makeup, teeth, chef-jacket fashion trends, how to make clever conversation, and how to get good ratings instead of, you know, like, cooking.
This is the beginning of the end of the world as we know it. Or at least as I know it. Becoming famous is already becoming the main way chefs promote their restaurants and careers, not by cooking brilliantly. I've long noticed that the goodness of a restaurant is often in inverse proportion to the number of awards it has on its walls.
By the way, Sue Zemanick is on the side of sanity. She is in a league with any other chef in town, and deserving of any honors she wins--mainly because the food at Gautreau's is great every night. That she's an articulate looker is secondary.
Supper was much less glamorous for me: an assortment of food from the French Quarter Festival. Brisket from Tujague's: no pain in eating that. Crawfish in lobster sauce with crawfish fried rice from Trey Yuen. And a square of carrot cake she picked up from Zoe's. Nice little meal, for leftovers. A little voice in the nether reaches of my conscience says, "Don't get used to eating like this, or you'll lose the passion!" I think I'm safe from that. What I really had a hankering for was an oyster poor boy from Bozo's.
After eating, I went through the mail on the counter. In it was the bill for my surgery. Thirty grand. All covered by insurance, they say. Whoopee!
