Monday, October 6, 2013

[title type="h6"]Days Until. . . [/title] Halloween 25 [title type="h5"]Chef d'Oeuvre du Jour[/title] #472: Crab, Corn, And Cho-Cho Chowder @ Rum House, Uptown: 3128 Magazine. The most common chowder around New Orleans is made with crabmeat, corn, and cream. Sometimes the potatoes that make a soup a chowder are in there, but sometimes the corn covers that position on the team. The version at this Americanized but interesting Caribbean-style restaurant is unique. The firm, starchy vegetable is mirliton, under its Jamaican name "cho-cho." It works--but how far wrong can you go with crab, corn, cream, and Creole seasoning? This is one of NOMenu's 500 Best Dishes in New Orleans. Collect all 500! [title type="h6"]Today's Flavor[/title] Today is National Seafood Chowder Day. In the Northeast, this means clam chowder, so widely available in restaurants that, with a New England sound, it's known as "cuppachowdah." Here in New Orleans, we don't have good clams (despite the millions of them in Lake Pontchartrain). So when we make chowder, it's usually with leftover fish and shrimp and crabmeat. I like it and think it's an underutilized idea, because it's good and contrasts with gumbo, bouillabaisse, and bisques. A chowder contains, in addition to seafood, three essential ingredients: potatoes, bacon (or something like bacon--pork cracklings, for example), and fish stock (or something like fish stock). I make mine with oyster water, which I beg from my friends in the oyster business. The rest is easy. The recipe is in today's newsletter. When I find myself in New England, I eat clam chowder at almost every meal. They make it very thick. One cookbook says it should be almost as solid as mashed potatoes. I don't go along with that. Nor do I like the very mild seasoning you find in New England chowder--but that's a New Orleans palate talking. [title type="h5"]Gourmet Gazetteer[/title] Clam, Virginia is on the narrow southern end of the Delmarva Peninsula, three miles wide between the Atlantic Ocean and Chesapeake Bay. In Pokomoke Sound on the bay side, there probably are a lot of clams, and certainly lots of oysters. The crossroads that is Clam seems more involved with farming than clamming, though. If there is chowder to be had, it will be found two miles away in Parksley, perhaps at the Lunch Box or the Club Car Cafe. [title type="h4"]Deft Dining Rule #860[/title] No matter what anybody tells you, New England clam chowder is incomparably better than the tomato-based Manhattan clam chowder. [title type="h6"]Edible Dictionary[/title] egg drop soup, Chinese, n.--A universal soup offering in Chinese restaurant for over a century. Egg drop soup is made of chicken broth with just enough herbs and savory vegetables to add flavor, but not much solid matter. The major part of the mouthfeel comes from beaten eggs stirred into the near-boiling soup. The eggs immediately congeal into raggedy shreds. Everything about it is light,including the taste. The same technique is used in other soups from other cuisines, notably the Italian stracciatella. [title type="h5"]The Old Kitchen Sage Sez[/title] The two methods for lessening the work of shucking clams are exactly the opposite of one another. Either put them into the freezer for a half-hour, or drop them in boiling water for ten seconds. With way, they give up a lot quicker. [title type="h4"]Annals Of Food Marketing[/title] Cream of Wheat was introduced today in 1893. It was a desperate effort to save a near-bankrupt flour mill in Grand Forks, North Dakota, during the financial panic of that year. Thomas Amidon, the head miller, used the "middlings"--the prime part of wheat grains, also called farina--to make a hot cereal that could be packaged dry and sold in stores. The owners of the mill sent a sample of it to their broker in New York. The broker famously responded, "Never mind shipping us any more of your flour, but send a car of your 'Cream of Wheat.'" The original logo with its cartoonish black cook was used because the printer of the label found it in a pile of old plates in his plant. Cream of Wheat is a bigger deal elsewhere than in New Orleans, where we're more likely to fill that space on the menu with grits. [title type="h6"]Music To Eat Crawfish Pie By[/title] Today in 1952, Hank Williams had the top country hit with Jambalaya, which forever united that dish with crawfish pie and filé gumbo. Not a bad combination, really, and one found on more than a few Cajun menus. [title type="h5"]Lounges Through History[/title] Today in 1889, the original Parisian song-and-dance bar opened. At Moulin Rouge ("red windmill"--the building really was one) one could not only have a glass of wine or an absinthe, but also see a live show. It spawned an entirely new genre of hangout in Paris. Its fame continues not only because it's still in business, but because of the many posters advertising its shows. The most famous were drawn by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, a seminal figure in Art Nouveau graphic design. There's hardly a French bistro anywhere that doesn't have a Toulouse-Lautrec poster for the Moulin Rouge somewhere on its walls. [title type="h6"]Food Namesakes[/title] Actress Anna Quayle hit the Big Stage today in 1936. . . Singer and songwriter Matthew Sweet was born today in 1964. . . Mets pitcher David Cone struck out nineteen batters today in 1991, tying the National League record. . . Olympic marksman Lloyd Spooner was born today in 1884. . . Long-time South Dakota Congressman E.Y. Berry was born today in 1902. . . New Hampshire Congressman Perkins Bass, whose son Charles also held that post, was born today in 1912. . . Movie and television actor Jerome Cowan was a big hit with his mom today in 1897. ("Cowan " is a French-Cajun word for an alligator snapping turtle, the kind used to make soup.) [title type="h5"]Words To Eat By[/title] "Clam chowder is one of those subjects, like politics or religion, that can never be discussed lightly. Bring it up even incidentally, and all the innumerable factions of the clam bake regions raise their heads and begin to yammer."--Louis P. De Gouy, French chef and cookbook author of the early 1900s. [title type="h6"]Words To Drink By[/title] "A man that lives on pork, fine-flour bread, rich pies and cakes, and condiments, drinks tea and coffee, and uses tobacco, might as well try to fly as to be chaste in thought."--Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, early health nut, brother of the cereal magnate. But who wants to be chaste in thought?