Saturday, August 27, 2011.
Crabmeat And Eggs. Nathan's.
Tomorrow Mary Leigh moves back to her dorm at Tulane. Mary Ann is wrapping up her baby girl's summer at home in her usual ritualistic way. She thoughtfully includes me in this, although I get little choice of activities. But she picked a good one: we would have breakfast.
While the Marys enjoyed Mattina Bella's perfect pancakes, I indulged rather a bit more ambitiously. A crabmeat and mushroom omelette was running as a special. I asked whether they would mind placing the crabmeat and mushroom filling underneath a couple of poached eggs, atop the English muffin they'd use for the standard Benedict. What came out would have been up to the standards of Brennan's, Commander's, or anywhere else. The crabmeat was jumbo lump, the mushrooms were nice and firm, and the hollandaise blorped over the top (I won't say draped, because that's what everybody says) was perfection. None of this is foreign to Vincent Riccobono, who owns the place and spends most of the time in the kitchen. Or his son, who I understand does most of the cooking. This was a steal at $15.
Otherwise, it was a peculiar day. My radio show was moved to three in the afternoon, and ran four hours instead of the usual three. That would have been an ordeal on my weekday gig, but as usual the big audience on WWL kept things going without a pause for the entirety of the gig.
Mary Leigh got an invitation to dinner from her Folsom cousins, giving MA and me a preview of the evenings a deux to come. I suggested that we go to Nathan's in Slidell, so I could update myself on what Chef Ross Eirich is cooking these days. I do live commercials for him on the radio show, and I must refill my mind with facts once in awhile.
We started with shellfish: crab claws in a buttery, herbal sauce for MA, the smoked oysters for me. Ross has to come up with a different name for that. The flour coating on the fried oysters is the smoked part. They come out on a bed of naked cole slaw, there to be topped by a sweet, smoky sauce and blue cheese. This is a superb concoction of flavors, and the best new dish Ross has come up with.
For the entree, Mary Ann remained true to her favorite restaurant dish: grilled fish (redfish, in this case) with crabmeat on top. Along with artichokes and mushrooms, in this case. The crabmeat was applied with an almost ridiculously heavy hand. The MA and I have done some serious damage to crabmeat stocks today.
I was taking a risk on the entree. A veal porterhouse had great possibilities. I was a little wary because a) big slabs of veal have a way of drying out, even if left rare. Which they shouldn't be, since veal, I'm convinced, is better at about medium. And 2) this is exactly the sort of thing that has triggered episodes of gout in the past. But I haven't had one of those in three months, so I decided to live dangerously.
The veal chop needed something more than the jus it had. Mushrooms? Demi-glace? Peppercorns with cream and demi? Wasn't quite there. The filet part was as white and tender as rabbit, though, and the strip section had a muskiness I like in veal (although I should think of a better word, because "muskiness" is the sort of thing that scares people away).
This was more than enough food, and I was also downing a lot of bread. (Bread is the greatest eating evil in my life, and as enjoyable to me as evils often are. I would way forty pounds less if I didn't eat bread.)
Yet I found the invitation to have a house-made cannoli hard to reject. I ate about two-thirds of it. Very tasty.
In the parking lot of the marina on our way out we saw some preteen boys chasing a cat around. Mary Ann through she should step in and save the kitty. I said that if we did, then we'd have to bring it home and adopt it. That took care of that. Those boys didn't look like the type to harm a cat, anyway.
Mattina Bella. Covington: 421 E Gibson. 985-892-0708.
Nathan's. Slidell: 36440 Old Bayou Liberty Rd. 985-643-0443.
