Tuesday, July 12, 2011
PT Cruising Again! Crescent Pie And Sausage Company.
The doctor's permission yesterday for me to drive my car again was exciting news. But Mary Ann left an interior light on last time she ran the engine, and the battery died before she tried to get it started a few weeks ago. Fortunately, I have a battery charger and hooked it up yesterday afternoon, and now it's ready to go.
I was also concerned about what condition the gasoline was in, after it had sat in the tank for over four months. Gasoline can go bad--unless the tank is completely full. Then, like in an unopened bottle of wine, there's not much surface area exposed to air. I must have tanked up on my way into town on Lundi Gras, because the needle was just above the F mark.
Moment of truth. I got in and, with the foot with the healed ankle, I pushed the clutch to the floor. A mild ache, but nothing I haven't felt while walking. I moved my foot around and found one position in which there was no pain at all. I turned the key. My PT Cruiser started right up. It's a little over four months since the last time I drove it.
I threw it into reverse, backed down the driveway, then began the fifty miles from the Cool Water Ranch to the WWL studios. No problems at all. I am whole again!
It's Round Table Show Day. The first hour was dominated by a guest we've tried to get on for months. But James Carville is a busy man. He cancelled on us once before, and today he said he had to leave after the first hour for an interview on CNN. He brought along a cookbook his mother Nippy Carville published in 1988. It's called Delicious Heritage, and in flipping through it I found that this was my heritage, too. Nippy came from Avoyelles Parish, where my mother's family lived before they moved to the French Quarter in 1918. Indeed, I later found out that Carville and I are something like third or fourth cousins. (My sister Karen digs genealogical research.)
Mary Ann told me I had to ask Carville about the television commercial he did for Miracle Whip. At the end of it, he says something about his wife disagreeing with him about not only that but everything else. I can see why MA would be interested in that. Ours is the same kind of marriage.
We stayed away from politics, and went on and on about the function of food in our southern society. I asked Carville about growing up in his namesake town. Carville the town is the former home of the country's only community for victims of Hansen's disease--leprosy. There are better treatments than ostracism now, and the large, architecturally interesting development. Carville said growing up there was wonderful, because it's so isolated that you feel that you live on a vast wilderness that you have all to yourself.
After Carville left, the attention turned to our other three guests. The husband-wife chef-owners of MiLa confirmed what they said during our discussion at the Wine and Food Experience seminar: that they get along just fine in the kitchen. But they revealed that the two of them act more as expediters than as cooks. (Expediters are the final check on dishes as they move from the kitchen to the dining room, and critical in keeping consistency and quality high.) Slade Rushing said that one of his cooks is on vacation, and that would force him to actually cook tonight. He jokingly wondered whether he were up to the task. Allison Vines-Rushing (she affirmed that she likes being called by the whole hyphenated name) assured him that he could do it.
The short-staffing at MiLa forced the Rushings also to leave early, at five o'clock. That left Scott Varnedoe alone with us for the last hour. I first encountered him during his two stints as chef of the Marigny Brasserie, and its anteciedent Café Marigny before that. For the past ten years or so, however, he's had restaurants in Fairhope, Alabama, St. Francisville and Natchez. Now he's the chef of a fairly new place in Baton Rouge called Stroube's. And in a couple of weeks he's off to New York for his second cheffing of a dinner at the James Beard House.
I always liked Varnedoe's food at his New Orleans postings. So I was surprised to hear him say that he's getting into some of the molecular approaches to cooking which, I've been relived to note, have been on the way out lately. But I guess Baton Rouge must get its taste of this.
Scott Varnedoe is a good chef and an interesting guy, but with just him and me in the studio the last hour, the magic of the Round Table show format was missing. I will tell Mary Ann to make sure that we never go below two guests at a time. And that we have a wine or spirits guy with us every week. That does more than any other strategy toward keeping the conversation lively.
Dinner tonight at a restaurant that's been on my list for a long time: The Crescent Pie and Sausage Company. It has full credentials as one of the Hip Scenes of the past couple of years. It really does make all its own sausages and all its pies--meat pies a la Natchitoches, and pizza pies a la Naples. It's in a familiar neighborhood: two blocks behind Jesuit High School.
The main entrance involves climbing up about ten steps. So I pulled out my golf putter for the climb, just in case. Took a seat by a window, where a waitress with dazzling blue eyes told me what was going on. First, she said, if I had an appetizer of the jambalaya, the entire five bucks would go to Chef Nathanial Zimet's fund. Then she recommended one of the entree specials, a plate of penne pasta with a red sauce and Italian sausage. That sounded good to me.
Iconic a Louisiana dish though it may be, jambalaya is a rarity in restaurants outside those in the tourist category. And most of the ones you do find, even in the good places, are not very good. Crescent Pie & Sausage's jambalaya, however, is a notable exception. Perhaps that's because they make it the way I'd cook it at home. I think the big problem with most jambalaya is gummy rice. I like rice firm and discrete in most dishes. (Asian rice is an exception, as is paella.) This one was exactly that. It had a nice brown color, chunks of chicken and sausage, a convincing pepper level, and just enough fat. The five-buck, lend-a-hand-to-Chef-Nat portion was twice as much as I could eat as a starter, but that was good: Mary Ann, a jambalaya hound, would like to finish this off.
The pasta was only slightly more substantial than the jambalaya, and very simply prepared. The sausage was peppery, the sauce a little so. Just right for one with a hunger for such a thing.
They're big on beer here. I had a Meantime India Pale Ale. Appetizing with all the food that came until the blackberry pie, by which time the beer was gone anyway.
During dessert I ordered a pizza to go. The order was entered as a "kids red sauce n chz," to distinguish it from the standard model--made Margherita style, with sliced tomatoes. (I like that, but it doesn't hold up in travel.) I ate a few bites of it at the table to take its measure as it came out of the oven. Good crust, good sauce--and fresh milk mozzarella? That's unusual.
The Crescent Pie & Sausage has more variety than I expected to find. And it was less busy than I expected. But the hippest and best places are often the least busy. A bitter irony.
Crescent Pie & Sausage. Mid-City: 4408 Banks Street. 482-6264.
