Diary: Tuesday, March 6, 2018. ZohReh is Back, With Vyoone. Mary Ann is unavailable for dinner, because she says that she ate too much during the many events surrounding the wedding of one of her nieces. But she tells me to go out to eat in a restaurant that I haven't visited lately. Since when did she become the editor-in-chief of the New Orleans Menu Daily? I could have sworn I was the only editor on the staff since I found it in 1977. Being married is rightfully a factor of total change in one's life. I must say I like it. But the surprises come and go with frequency.
To fulfill MA's orders for my dinner tonight, I sit in my office after the show and wait form some good ideas to appear. There are restaurants that could use a visit, particularly in the Marigny and Bywater neighborhoods. Although the pickings are slim on the West Bank, I consider the Chinese and Vietnamese places over there.
Then comes to me the rich possibilities in the CBD and the Warehouse District. One of these places is the closest restaurant to the radio station's headquarters: Vyoone's. It's pronounced "Vehyahn," the name of one of the two partners in the business. The other is Vohreh Khaleghi, the former operator of the Flaming Torch on Magazine Street, which had a fire a couple of years ago. Zohreh--who is an active visual artist as well as a restaurateur. The two opened a few weeks ago in a classic Warehouse District brick building with a small courtyard and a nicely-opened-up dining room and bar. It is planning for its grand opening this Thursday, March 8, 412 Girod Street, half a block from Tchoupitoulas and one door away from Emeril's Meril. And a half block from the radio station.
I managed to get a table without being seen by Zohreh, who I know very well from her past restaurant. But she had the good sense to hire some excellent servers and bartender, all of whom saw me come in and alerted the troops of my invasion. Minutes later, I was sitting at Zohreh and Vyoon's table, explaining to the server and the bartender the formula for my cocktail order: a half-and-half. It's not well known except in Italian restaurants, where there is no puzzle as to what this has to do with the combination cream and milk you see at the supermarket. In an Italian place, they know without asking that this is half dry vermouth, half red vermouth, served on the rocks with a twist. It's a little sweeter than most wines, although that's what it is--wine flavored with botanical. The red vermouth brings the sweetness.
The waiter and I get into a conversation about the soup du jour. It's a combination of eggplant and tomato with a touch of red pepper and cream. The eggplant-tomato combination is so good that I wonder why it's so seldom served. A long-gone Uptown bistro chef whose identity escapes my memory made this a signature dish. It's also good tonight, without needing the dash of Tabasco I usually add to most soups. After I taste it, of course. It's insulting to the chef when you add salt, pepper, sherry or anything else without tasting it first.
The restaurant wasn't very busy at six-thirty. ZohReh tells me that they are quite a bit busier at lunchtime. That figures, what with all the offices of attorneys and other white-collar workers in the vicinity. There's certainly more going on here than there was at the old Flaming Torch.
The entree is a pair of racks of lamb, the bones curled around the loin, with a sharply-seasoned glaze with a touch of sweetness. This is a very fine piece of meat, coming from the small racks that come from Australia, New Zealand, and the Middle-East-style restaurants. I order it mid-rare to test a conclusion I came up with a few years ago: that these baby lamb racks are better grilled to full medium doneness. What's needed is the tenderness that the extra tenderness provides. Lamb this young has almost nothing in the way of tenderizing effects. But it was also big enough that I couldn't finish it.
On the way out I was asked to introduce myself to another diner who says he listens to my radio show. He then gives enough quotations from my mouth to convince me. But I immediately knew who this was: Tim Eagan, who I remember very well from my Jesuit High School days. Tim was a lieutenant in the quasi-military pecking order at Jesuit. The platoon he led was that of Class 1-C. But that was the one I was in! I remember Tim well for that connection. We all liked him, mainly because he didn't push the hup-two-three-four drill routine we did twice a week. If I remember right, he was also a cheerleader. These were the days when all the Jesuit cheerleaders were us guys. It would be a few more years before girls integrated that confraternity.
Tim was rare in that he kept up with me as we both began spilling out the Jesuit alma mater, the Greek version of the Odyssey, remembrances of teachers and goings on during those golden years that could only have occurred at Jesuit.
If ZohReh and Vyoon can attract this mjnd of customer base from so nearby, Vyoon's will do very well.
Vyoone. 412 Girod St. 504-518-6007.
Shrimp Remoulade With Two Sauces
I think remoulade sauce is one of the most useful and enjoyable flavoring agents that money can buy. I like it so much that it's the very first recipe in my cookbook. There are two kinds of remoulade sauce served around New Orleans, and everybody has a distinct favorite. My preference is for the orange-red kind that's utterly unique to our area. White remoulade sauce, made with mayonnaise, is actually closer to the classic French recipe. It's good enough that in recent years I've taken to making both kinds of sauces, and letting people take their pick.
What they have in common is the main active ingredient: Creole mustard, a rough, brown, country-style mustard that has a bit of horseradish mixed in.
The shrimp for shrimp remoulade should be medium size--about 25-30 count to the pound. If you're making only the red style of remoulade, a good trick is slightly to under-boil the shrimp, then marinate them in the rather acidic sauce. That will finish the "cooking," in much the same way the marinade of ceviche does.
The words "remoulade," by the way, is an old French dialect word that refers to a kind of radish that hasn't been part of the recipe for centuries.
- Shrimp:
- Leafy tops of a bunch of celery
- 5 bay leaves
- 3 cloves
- 2 Tbs. Tabasco garlic marinade
- 1 large lemon, sliced
- 1/2 cup salt
- 3 lbs. shrimp
- Red Remoulade Sauce:
- 1/2 cup chili sauce (bottled) or ketchup
- 1/2 cup Creole mustard
- 1 Tbs. paprika
- 1/2 tsp. salt
- 2 Tbs. lemon juice
- 1/4 tsp. Tabasco
- 1/2 tsp. pureed garlic
- 1/2 cup green onion tops, finely sliced
- 1 cup olive oil
- White Remoulade Sauce:
- 1 cup mayonnaise
- 1/2 cup Creole mustard
- 2 Tbs. lemon juice
- 1/2 tsp. garlic-flavored Tabasco
- 1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
- 1/2 tsp. salt
- 1/2 cup green onion tops, finely sliced
1. Bring a gallon of water to a boil and add all the ingredients except the shrimp. Boil the water for fifteen minutes, then add the shrimp. Remove from the heat immediately, and allow the shrimp to steep for four minutes, or until the shell separates from the meat easily.
2. Remove the shrimp and allow to cool enough to handle. Peel and devein the shrimp
3. To make the red remoulade sauce, combine all ingredients except green onions and olive oil in a bowl. Add the oil a little at a time, stirring constantly, until all oil is absorbed. Taste the sauce and add more mustard or chili sauce to taste. Stir in green onion tops.
4. For the white remoulade sauce, just blend all the ingredients except the green onions. Then add the green onions last.
5. Place the shrimp on a leaf of lettuce, sliced avocados, sliced tomatoes, or Belgian endive leaves. Drizzle half the shrimp with one sauce, half with the other. The sauces can also be served in pools for dipping.
Makes eight appetizers or six entree salads. [divider type=""]
March 8, 2017
Days Until. . .
St. Patrick's Day--March 17
St. Joseph's Day--19
Easter--April 1
Food Calendar
It is National French Onion Soup Day. Let's make some before the cool weather ends completely. The story behind the dark, slightly sweet, aromatic onion soup, served in a crock with a cap of cheese on a floating crouton, was that it was first served in Les Halles, the gigantic marketplace that once was in the center of Paris. Like all such markets, it opened very early in the morning, and it could be cold. One of the vendors began cooking an onion soup covered with enough cheese to keep the soup from cooling quickly. The cheese would re-seal itself after every incursion of the spoon. (So it's wrong to eat the cheese first, at least if you want to be entirely traditional.) Although French onion soup lends itself to cold weather eating, it's pretty good all the time. I make a version that involves using six different onions and six different chili peppers (small ones).
Gourmet Gazetteer
Easter--April 1
Food Calendar
It is National French Onion Soup Day. Let's make some before the cool weather ends completely. The story behind the dark, slightly sweet, aromatic onion soup, served in a crock with a cap of cheese on a floating crouton, was that it was first served in Les Halles, the gigantic marketplace that once was in the center of Paris. Like all such markets, it opened very early in the morning, and it could be cold. One of the vendors began cooking an onion soup covered with enough cheese to keep the soup from cooling quickly. The cheese would re-seal itself after every incursion of the spoon. (So it's wrong to eat the cheese first, at least if you want to be entirely traditional.) Although French onion soup lends itself to cold weather eating, it's pretty good all the time. I make a version that involves using six different onions and six different chili peppers (small ones).
Gourmet Gazetteer
Pepper Branch is a five-mile long tributary of Duck Creek in central Texas. The confluence of the Pepper and the Duck is 144 miles north northwest of Houston. The branch runs dry most of the time through a mix of open fields for cattle ranching and oak woodlands. US 79 is within shouting distance, and an active former Missouri Pacific (now Union Pacific) main line follows the curves of Pepper Creek for most of the stream's length. After checking all this out, head southeast to Camp Creek Cafe, very much out of the way on Camp Creek Lake.
Edible Dictionary
chitterlings, chitlins, n.--The cooked small intestine of a pig, often (but not always) stuffed with any of a wide variety of stuffings. Even among those who say they use every part of the pig except the squeal, chitterlings are low down on the desirability list. Chitterlings are as widespread throughout the world as poverty and hunger are--which is to say everywhere. Many people who have risen above that level still celebrate chitterlings as a reminder of where their forebears came from. The big problem with using chitterlings as food is that they must be very aggressively cleaned, lest the taste and smell of what's inside that organ in its living state rise to perceptability. As Bill Cosby says, "Chitlins is spelled with the wrong first letter."
The Old Kitchen Sage Sez:
Always buy one or two bunches of green onions when you're at the store, even if you don't have any explicit plans for them. Having them in hand will make you slice them up and use them somehow, and that can't help but make your meals more interesting.
Annals Of Soft Drinks
The six-bottle carton of Coca-Cola was introduced today in 1923. They cost less than the price of six bottles bought one at a time--usuallly the price of five bottles, so you got one free. The bottles themselves held seven ounces of the drink. Compare that with the refrigerator packs of Coke and other soft drinks today, which hold twenty-four cans at twelve ounces each. Ah, these are the good new days! (Or, come up with your own conclusions.)
The Saints
San Juan de Dios--Saint John of God--was born in Spain today in 1495. Today is his feast day, too. He is the patron saint of alcoholics, many of whom he cared for in a house in Granada that he ran for the sick.
Dimes In Dining
The New Orleans branch of the U.S. Mint began making its first coins--dimes--on this day in 1838. A dime could buy a lunch in those days, but there were no restaurants as we know then around to sell it to us. Antoine's would not open for another two years. Vendors in the French Market would sell you at least a dozen oysters for a dime, though.
Food Namesakes
Cheryl James, "Salt" in the all-girl rap act Salt 'n' Pepa, was born today in 1964. . . Pop singer Cheryl Baker got the beat today in 1954. . . Jim Rice, an outfielder who won Most Valuable Player in the American League in 1978, came to life today in 1953. . . Baseball pitcher John Butcher had a less successful career in the majors--just seven years--but that's not nothing. He was born today in 1957.
Words To Eat By
"Happy is said to be the family which can eat onions together. They are, for the time being, separate from the world, and have a harmony of aspiration."--Charles Dudley Warner, American journalist of the late 1800s.
Words To Drink By
“In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is Freedom, in water there is bacteria.”?Benjamin Franklin.
