Saturday, May 21, 2011.
Mad Hatter Tea And Quiche. Speckled Trout At Café Lynn.
A few weeks ago, I asked Mary Ann whether she wanted to go to breakfast. She chewed me out for not knowing that she doesn't like breakfast to begin with, and eating the meal messes up her weight-loss program. Ever since, I have kept my mouth shut about breakfast. But she thinks she may have been a little too strident, and now suggests breakfast every Saturday. I am enjoying this while it lasts.
Another force is making it more likely I will get Saturday breakfast out. Mary Ann wants to add blogs written by others to balance out my flood of words. She has so far found experts on coffee, wine, and now tea. Jan Lantrip, who owns the English Tea Room with her husband, is writing the tea blog. Jan is a tea fanatic, and her three articles so far have all told me things I didn't know.
And the English Tea Room serves breakfast! So there we were this morning. I'd just finished editing a piece she wrote about an Alice In Wonderland themed tea party she held for young people a couple of weeks ago. She blended a special tea for the occasion. It sounded marvelous, and was: a straightforward tea with a number of fruit notes in the flavor, aroma, and even the unique pink-magenta color. I drank a whole pot of it.
And a couple of scones, a slice of spinach and artichoke quiche, and cinnamon toast. Mary Ann contended herself with a more conventional tea and scones. The latter are made from scratch in house, and are the best around, MA says. I agree. They're the perfect nibble for late in the evening. We took a dozen of them home.
No lunch, of course. The radio show's hour and forty-five minutes were busy on a topic that got started oddly. A caller was listening to The Splendid Table on WWNO, and heard the host say that an alligator pear was a chayote. That's the vegetable we call a mirliton around New Orleans. Yet another name for it is "vegetable pear." Maybe he or the host were confused by that. But there is no question that an alligator pear is an avocado, not a mirliton. At least it is in our part of the world. And in Mexico, too, where the avocado originated. I think I ought to get a James Beard Award for clarifying that, but I don't want to pay the entry fee required to enter their competitions.
We kept talking about avocados. A fellow called me up who wanted to know how long it would be before his wife's avocado tree would bear fruit. "She loves avocados but thinks they're too expensive. She can't wait to start picking them from the tree."
Planted from a seed? I asked. Yes. Bad news, then. Avocados do not reproduce true. The tree that grows from seed will not produce avocados like the one the seed came from. They might be edible, but probably not great. All Hass avocados are grown from cuttings that can be traced back to one now-deceased tree that grew in Los Angeles. Gosh, I'm sorry.
Someone called to add more bad news. "You need two trees to pollinate one another," said the caller, who added that he heard this from Dan Gill, who certainly knows.
Mary Ann was determined not to go out to dinner tonight, but she didn't mind driving me around for that purpose. Chuck Billeaud called to say that he had one of my cookbooks for a friend of his, and wanted me to autograph it. His wife was unavailable, too, so why just meet for dinner?
Chuck and I have often dined with and without our wives at Galatoire's. We weren't going there, but anything like it on the North Shore? First idea: Gallagher's Grill. No reservations there. Chuck suggested Café Lynn, the restaurant of Joey Najolia, former chef de cuisine at La Provence during Chris Kerageorgiou's final years. They could get us in, and Mary Ann didn't mind driving me all the way there and back.
I worked my crippled self into a chair. Chuck was waiting with a martini. Every time before, I would have followed suit, but I'm afraid of martinis now. I ordered a bottle of Sonoma-Cutrer's Les Pierres Chardonnay, a single-vineyard wine I remember loving about twenty years ago--which may have been the last time I had it.
Fried calamari, more than enough for two. They were crisp and nice, but the sauce served with it was nothing much. I ate too many anyway.
Chuck had three entrees in mind. Two of them were already sold out by the time we ordered. Stuffed eggplant with seafood is what he wound up with, but I think that's what he wanted. Another of the night's specials was speckled trout meuniere. This was perfect for one with a palate tuned to the Galatoire's frequency, if different from the way the old place does it. The fish was pan-seared with the skin still on, instead of fried. That works for me. The sauce was just brown butter, as it is at Gal's. Potatoes and fresh green beans finished a nice plate of food.
We haven't broken bread in awhile, so we had many notes about our kids to share. We each have two, about the same ages. His younger daughter Taylor and my Mary Leigh were close friends in grammar school, which created our connection. Chuck is in the business of building houses: not the greatest business these days, but he wasn't moaning about it.
Dessert for me was bread pudding, without the caramel-pecan topping, which sounded too sweet to me. But I should have let the chef be the chef. The custard mixture soaking the pudding was minimally sweet, and it needed the sauce. But I just let it be.
Cafe Lynn. Mandeville: 3051 East Causeway Approach. 985-624-9007.
It has been over three years since a day was missed in the Dining Diary. To browse through all of the entries since 2008, go here.
