Saturday, June 26. My Food At A Carwash. Taming The Pasture. Pizza And Pizzaiola At Carmelo. Mary Ann and I returned to Toad Hollow to see whether last week's superlative breakfast there was just a fluke. I had good luck with the southwestern style last week, and tried it again with the sausage migas. Migas is a scrambled eggs dish with pieces of corn tortilla, salsa, and an assortment of other possible items stirred into the eggs as they cook. Tasty, but with a weak spot: the sausage, made with chicken and apples. This was nowhere near as good as a similar pork sausage would be, but no red meats appear on the menu here.
Meanwhile, MA enjoyed another crispy omelette like the one she had last week. We both came to the conclusion that the toast here is exquisite, using as it does a whole-grain bread with actual chunks of grain and nuts in the mix. One slice is not enough, even though it's much more substantial than one slice of any other kind of toast.
We parted company and ran our respective errands. One of mine was to have my car washed for the first time in months. My threshold of automotive filthiness is far too high, but at last it was reached about ten days ago. It took a half-hour for a basic wash and wipe-down, fifteen minutes of that for vacuuming. You don't want to know.
I turned down the cashier's offer of a reduced-price, frequent-washer discount card, then helped myself to a cup of coffee and a free bag of popcorn. (The wash was $33, so I felt no guilt about this.) The waiting room had a lot of things one could buy. I was very surprised by one of them. There, on a revolving rack of books, were three copies of Tom Fitzmorris's New Orleans Food. This was the last place I would have expected to find it. I asked the cashier if she'd ever sold one of them. "One or two," she said. I asked whether she'd like me to autograph the stock. She said she'd have to check with the boss, but he wasn't there.
I hustled back home to get on the air with my WWL show. Every week during that show, with its numerous long breaks for news and commercials, I sort through the food photographs I took in the previous week. I weed out all but the best, sort them into computer files, and edit the ones that needed it. This task occupies a separate part of my brain from the one generating radio conversation. It's one of the few jobs like that. And now, if I don't perform this necessary task during the show, I find myself running behind the rest of the week. That is why I can't get my car washed often.
An efficiency expert might look at what I did after the show and say, "No wonder you can't get your car washed! There you are taking a nap for a half-hour!" But the day I can no longer get my nap most afternoons is the day before the day I go crazy. I picked up the habit in my early twenties, long before the perfect metaphor appeared to explain its effectiveness: it does for my brain what a reboot does for a computer.
I made up for this shocking indolence (one which Mary Ann has never once so much as questioned, thank God) by cutting the grass. It was very high, particularly in the meadow by the pond. Parts of that half-acre were up to my waist, and more than ready for its first trim of the year. The whole project took two and a half hours.
Mary Ann was ready for dinner as soon as I showered. The usual indirection ensued. I brought up Ristorante Carmelo, which I know she loves. But: "Is that a place you need to go to again? We go there a lot." I told her to mind her own business and get dressed. Sometimes a man has to force his woman to do what she wants.
The restaurant was reasonably busy for a Saturday in June, with lots of people away on vacations. I had a Negroni, then another one, because the first one didn't have enough moxie. A pizza came more or less with the cocktail, making an eminently acceptable first course.
"I have a whole redfish I can cook for two," Carmelo said. "I also have grouper and nice red snapper. All fresh. No oil." Ha, ha. The Doonesbury comic strip has begun a series set in restaurants where the management guarantees there's no crude oil in their fish by pointing out that all their fish was bought months ago, before the oil spill, frozen. This stuff kills me. No matter how much evidence and sense there is in noting that no oil-tainted fish could possible turn up in a restaurant, people are still thinking otherwise, and eating significantly less seafood. Pure fear, no reality.
Mary Ann wanted red snapper done up in a style that was more or less a puttanesca: tomato sauce, capers, peppers, and--most appealing to her--olives. Looked good, tasted good.
Many as-yet untried dishes attracted me, but the one I kept coming back to was the sirloin strip steak. Prime, the menu said. Twelve ounces. "Get it!" Mary Ann said. "Why not?" I asked Carmelo if his kitchen staff could make a credible steak pizzaiola. Of course they could. Nice steak, and so was the mushroom-and-red pepper sauce. The combination of steak and a red sauce is underrated, I think. They go very well together.
All four of Carmelo's daughters were there tonight. One of them is one of the lead chefs, the others are performing various dining room duties. Carmelo's wife was also on the scene. Even though it's in a new strip mall, everything about this place has the style of a family-operated restaurant in Italy--right down to what's on television. Sports you can't figure out, dramatic programs with very racy plots and extremely hot love scenes. None of those Italian game shows with topless contestants, though.
Ristorante Carmelo. Mandeville: 1901 US Hwy 190. 985-624-4844. Northern Italian.
