Saturday, June 29, 2013.
The Old Babies. Cooking At The Brink Of Disaster. A Fine Dinner At Austin's.
The six radio stations in the group for which I toil assembled an extra-curricular event today. The theme was "Boomers And Beyond," a reference to the post-World War II Baby Boom of the late 1940s through the 1950s. I'm right in the middle of that demographic. We long dominated the tastes and behaviors of the American population. Whatever we wanted at any point in our lives, the greater society gave us, just because there were so many of us.
But it's been awhile since popular culture left us behind. The decisive moment was coincident with Hurricane Katrina. After our radio stations returned to normal, KOOL shifted from FM 95.7 to an internet streaming channel, then disappeared completely. KOOL played Rock Oldies, the music we Boomers listened to when we were in school--and ever since. The station had ratings and sales near the top of the local radio market for many years. But the handwriting on the wall said that Baby Boom listeners were old and getting older, and young audiences were better.
But there are some things us old coots still want to buy, and this Boomers And Beyond was a showplace of them. Bathtubs with doors so you can get out of them easily. Reverse mortgages. Travel plans. Campers and RV's. All that white-hair stuff.
I performed my regular noon-to-three Saturday show from the event, talking about my usual things. (Baby Boomers still like to eat.)
And then came a wonderful surprise. My cousin and godmother Audrey Normand showed up with her husband and friends. She moved to Los Angeles in the early 1960s, and I haven't seen her since. When I was a kid, she used to send me Wild West gifts for my birthdays. Bolo ties, for example. She became a West Coast kind of girl, epitomized by a photo I have of her driving a convertible with the top down on a distinctly L.A. boulevard.
But she's a New Orleans girl, too. Her mother's nickname was Calas--for the old Creole rice cakes that have become nearly extinct.
All this was going on at the Pontchartrain Center in Kenner. After my show ended, I checked out the offerings. I like the idea of those new-fangled showers. Mary Ann was with me, however, and decreed that no such things would be in our house. Oh, well.
It was back to work at four, when I was to give a cooking demo. I followed Chefs Duke Locicero (Café Giovanni), Andrea, and Greg Reggio (Zea). They cooked up a bunch of stuff and fed the crowd. I don't have the equipment to mount a major demo, so I kept it simple.
The cooking advice I most often give on the radio involves the basic but very effective technique of deglazing a pan. This I did with pork tenderloin. But I hit a bump at the beginning. I would ordinarily cook this by searing the meat, transferring it to a roasting pan in the oven, then deglazing the original pan and building a sauce in it.
But there was no oven here, so I had to do the full cooking in the pan. And instead of two tenderloins in the package was one big one. I should have cut this into two or even four pieces end to end right away to facilitate the cooking. Instead, I kept on going. By the time the pork was seared, the butter in the pan was starting to get too brown. I did ultimately subdivide the loin into four pieces. And I added the deglazing liquids--about a half-cup of sweet Riesling wine and a cup of apple juice to save the rapidly-desiccating stuff in the pan.
I wouldn't do it that way again, but the move saved the day. The boiling liquid finished the pork tenderloin cooking to a pale blush, and caught more juices from the meat. By the time I'd finished slicing the pork (Mary Ann was helping me with that), the pan sauce with its two added tablespoons of pepper jelly tightened up. The bubbles alone told me that. I took a taste with a sense of foreboding. Miracle: no burned flavor at all. Mary Ann, who always gives her full opinion on anything she tastes, seemed to be genuinely surprised that this sauce was delicious.
But that was a close call.
When that episode ended, MA and I adjourned to the other side of the meeting facility for a performance by the Yat Pack. She was very impressed by these two guys who, with a brassy, five-piece backup band, perform as if they were Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. and Louis Prima in the 1950s in Las Vegas. This is my kind of music, but I'm surprised that Mary Ann had to be torn away from the show.
No real lunch had passed our lips, so we decided to have dinner. She mentioned Austin's, which had been on my own mind. She wondered whether her brother Tim or her sister Sylvia could join us. The latter was available, and lived within walking distance of the restaurant.
I questioned whether we would get a table at Austin's. A candidate for best restaurant in East Jefferson Parish, it's almost always full. But it's summer, less than a week before the Fourth of July, and a table was easily had.
It's been awhile since I'd been here, and the place looked better than I remembered. Although it's in a standard Metairie strip mall (the restaurant occupies what had once been five slots in the building), it had the same kind of feeling that places like the Red Onion and Frank Occhipinti's had in their day. Low lighting and quiet rooms, a big bar with a very listenable pianist playing with few breaks, good service, a well-made Manhattan--just to my liking.
Mary Ann also found the menu appealing. We began with some steamed-then-grilled artichokes with aioli and fried shrimp remoulade. Sylvia showed up then, and she and MA conspired to split a soft-shell crab with crabmeat and creamed spinach. The crab was big enough for them to do that without leaving hungry.
Whenever I find myself in a restaurant where I previously enjoyed a first-class strip sirloin, it's hard for me to resist getting it again. Austin's steaks fit that description, and I felt myself falling. Then I remembered a trick I learned last time this happened. I get the double-cut pork chop cooked in the sizzling-in-butter style of a steak. I find this satisfies me as much as the steak would have (I love a good pork chop), while giving me a look a previously untried dish. And, usually, at about a third less expense.
One of the chop's side dishes revealed the only noticeable problem with the food here tonight. The dirty rice was dry and cool. And the pureed sweet potatoes were like baby food in both texture and insipidness. I didn't need to eat any of that, anyway.
The dessert--fresh berries in a dish of creme anglaise--was a little peculiar in that the sauce would have been better if it had been thicker but less sweet. Not a big deal.
I kept wanting to jump out there and start singing with the pianist. But I don't think he (or anybody else on staff) knew me. And I know Mary Ann barely puts up with my singing in public, even though several times tonight she said that it would give my soul a boost to get back to warbling.
But it was late and I was tired. It was a long day for a Saturday.
Austin's. Metairie: 5101 West Esplanade Ave. 504-888-5533.
To browse through all of the Dining Diaries since 2008, go here.
