Evolving Thoughts on Food Media and Life

I wrote an entry on this blog in 2009 where I treated a few food celebrities rather harshly. Maybe one of the most satisfying while paradoxically uncomfortable experiences in life is to realize personal growth, and for this reason I believe that I particularly owe both Andrew Zimmern and Adam Richman an apology.

I still stand by my belief that Zimmern's overseas work on Bizarre Foods, the shows that made him a celebrity, are a little bit silly. But I think that in my needless cynicism I missed the humility with which he undertook the task, never taking himself too seriously. Of course, the work we have seen from him lately has, to use a dreadful food celebrity cliché, kicked it up a notch. I braced myself when Bizarre Foods America visited New Orleans, but found myself smiling inside as Zimmern rode around with Kermit Ruffins. This was nothing compared to the show's thoughtful and sensitive rendering of West Virginia, a place whose culture has been hackneyed more than perhaps any other in the nation. Buckwild anyone? Many kudos to Zimmern who may have done the impossible - capture the essence of West Virginia while neither sanitizing nor essentializing. 

It was Guy Fieri who actually opened my eyes to newfound appreciation for Adam Richman. If you compare the formula for Man vs. Food to Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives, you will quickly see parallels. Both shows visit comfort food restaurants that most Americans would enjoy. This is where the similarities end. I don't know Guy Fieri, but the screen presence he delivers is flat and disingenuous. Is everything he eats at these places really "off the chain?" Nor does he seem to be liked very well by his peers if the reaction to his Times Square restaurant is any indication. Perhaps he is the victim of jealousy. I hadn't watched Man vs. Food for a while, and so it really hit me that Richman, like Zimmern, enters into the show with a great deal of personal humility, genuine interest, and overall good will. What a contrast it is to "Triple D." 

The viewpoints I shared on competitive cooking shows, however, have in some regard intensified over the last four years. I must confess that my wife and I are fans of Chopped, but not without reservations about the overall formula and what it says about the culture in which we live. A mystery basket, a ticking clock, even the judging of whose dish is best -- these are all fun. Yet the increasingly ludicrous tear-jerker stories of the contestants have grown so very tiresome. "I'm doing this for a charity who helps orphans with no legs" or "I'm doing this for my grandmammy who died last year," or "my daughter needs a special wheelchair." What is this, The Hunger Games? Dreadful.  Yes, $10,000 bananas is better than a sharp stick in the eye, but it won't change your life. Hell, it won't even buy a new Hyundai. Please, focus on the basket contents and try not to cry when the master-hipster of ceremonies, Ted Allen, invokes his best funeral director voice and tells you "I'm sorry, you've been chopped."

Yet the worst transgression of food television seems to be the furthering of everything that has gone wrong with the art of cooking by airing The Next Food Network Star. In its eighth season, this is the program that spawned Guy Fieri. Does the world really need another food celebrity? I can't help but wonder if Julia Child would have made it today. 

Benny and the Jets

I stopped by a local small grocery store to buy a few things to bring home for lunch today. Nestled on a corner in a historic residential neighborhood whose live oaks only add the setting’s ambiance, Langenstein’s grocery is in a much better position to deliver on another chain’s slogan of “where shopping is a pleasure.” Cutting across the grain in a business governed by economies of scale, it manages to hold its own against the gleaming WholeFoods Market only blocks away through a combination of nostalgia, tasty prepared foods, convenience, and incredibly good service. Founded in the twenties, it’s a true survivor.

They also like to play rock-n-roll hits from the 1970s and 1980s over the store’s sound system. This can sometimes lead to humorous juxtapositions. One time I came through the entrance and peered down a narrow aisle of pickles, olives, and maraschino cherries to see an ancient Uptown matron gently scooting her walker to “I’m Just a Love Machine” by The Miracles. Langenstein’s reaches an older demographic than the Whole Foods. Yoga pants are also a less common sight, though not entirely unknown. The music, annoying at times, ludicrous at others, has grown on me. I realize that it harkens to an age when grocery stores like Langenstein's were starting to yield to big chains. Step into the store and it could be 1980 - in more ways than one.

As I brought my basket of egg and shrimp salad and coleslaw to the check out counter, the speakers began pumping out Elton John’s “Bennyand the Jets” and it all came flooding back. I saw it as clearly in my mind as it was then, even thought it was probably thirty years ago. Ed Steck, counting the proceeds from our annual summer garage sale, singing along to the lyrics happily while he sipped on a can of beer. “Ben-neee, Ben-neee, Ben-nee-ee and the Jets…” It struck me then and still makes me think that this was the first time I had ever seen a real grown up man singing along to popular music. Not only did my father, who was roughly the same age not listen to rock, he rarely if ever listened to music. He definitely never sang along. In fact, the only time I have heard my father sing was equally as memorable – at his “uncle” Art’s funeral. (Art was maybe a cousin. Certainly not an uncle, but one of dad’s favorite relatives.) I think I might have been ten at the time. Ed and Carolyn Steck had come up differently than my parents, I suppose. They had definitely married later and I suspect that Ed had been to college.  These were some of the key differences, but there were probably lots of others that drove one man to sing along with the radio and another to listen to Wally Phillips.

The scene hit me doubly this afternoon because I realize that at forty-one I am now almost exactly the age that Ed Steck was when he died. He was diagnosed with lung cancer not long after that summer garage sale. It moved fast and I know for a fact that he was gone by the time I reached the seventh grade. I think we may have had one more garage sale afterward with Carolyn but I have no memory of it.

With the consent of the Almighty, my father will be seventy-nine this summer. He’s a great guy. But I’d bet against his ever singing along to Elton John.

The Fightin' Side of Me

With my apologies for borrowing so wantonly from Merle Haggard, an occurrence during my daily morning walk with Greta set my morning ablaze with indignation. We've arrived at that time of year when families unceremoniously dump their tinder-dry Christmas Trees at the curb. The sight fills many people with regret, rooted mostly out of some lost childhood memory, but in New Orleans these trees end up fighting coastal erosion - at least in some small way. Besides, that's not the source of my indignation. There, heaped among the old wrapping paper and overstuffed trash bags of clutter begat of inane New Year's resolutions to "get organized" stood a tattered and abused American flag. 

it's old bones laid out to fold after getting it home and freeing it from the pole.

The shiny new black-and-gold "Who Dat?" pennant swaying gently from the house's flag escutcheon only reinforced the already sound impression that to the offender an American flag was no more than a seasonal decoration to be disposed of in the fashion of holiday gift wrap. It was disgusting and I need not go into the "men and women who died for this" routine. That should be obvious and cliché in any event. I offer no quarter here.

I am probably fighting against the tide in a country where Guy Fieri and Justin Bieber occupy a position of cultural importance to suggest one reconnect with any ritual of our forefathers. Still, I carried the flag for the remainder of our walk and brought it home for a respectful end. To the person who placed this flag at the curb with the morning trash, I know that I can safely address you like an idiot, so let me point you to something called "Google," an amazing invention that allows you to key in questions like "how do I properly dispose of an American Flag?" It will find useful sites like this one with the right answer.

The soiled and tattered condition of the flag was the former owner's first offense. For those who need an immediate answer or have not mastered hot links, the proper disposal method is a respectful burning. (Yes, Virginia, there were some jingoistic morons not long ago who proposed making this a crime.)You see, I respect, however I might disagree with, the right to burn a flag as a matter of free speech - but to dispose of it in a toweringly distasteful demonstration of one's ignorance? I think not.

a tip: if it is a nylon flag, make sure it is well-ventilated!

Thus, off it went. And, as an added bonus, it was nice to finally smoke out the Burger King on an early morning instead of the other way around.

A Christmas Tradition

It somehow seems ironic that we can trace the literal roots of our newest Christmas tradition to the broiling New Orleans summer. We had gone to shop for plants at Banting's Nursery on the Westbank over the Fourth of July weekend last year and came home with a much hoped-for pink grapefruit tree. For me, trips to Banting's, while fun, almost always result in an afternoon of exhausting work planting our purchases in near 100-degree New Orleans heat. It is almost always worth it. Most of our purchases have resulted in a steady beautification of our property. But on this particular afternoon, a friend of ours came over mid-tree planting and managed to lock us out of the house! More accurately, we were locked IN our back yard. With some reaching and climbing, we were able to free ourselves and toast with a cold beverage to a memorable afternoon. (This episode resulted in a subsequent replacing of our gate's latch, padlocked on the outside, to a numeric door lockset.)

 

 

Louisiana Pink Grapefruit with morning dew. Taken with Sony A77/16-50 2.8

When last spring came, our little tree held forth with all manner of fragrant white blossoms. Jessie, the practical one, suggested that we give the little tree a year to grow and remove the newly-formed marble-sized fruit that followed. "No," I said, "I want grapefruit." Nature took care of some of the decision as fruit fell off over the course of the summer, the majority between the quarter and lemon size stage. As Jessie predicted, the branches devoid of fruit grew handsomely, while the half-dozen grapefruit that made it to the fall continued to grow fat.

There are deep historical ties between Christmas and citrus. The origins of the connection between oranges and Christmas go back to old St. Nick himself, a story better told by the keepers of his memory than cribbed here by me. Trade between the Mediterranean (particularly Spain, Corsica, and Sicily) and Northern Europe supplied its manor houses with citrus for centuries. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century it became en vogue to add an orangery to one's estate, making the ability to pluck fresh citrus from one's own trees in drab gray England or Poland the ultimate mark of status. We have no need build an orangery onto our New Orleans home, but we have been known to throw some old bedsheets on the citrus, hibiscus, and other sensitive plants during those rare freezes. Somehow the look is more vagabond than regal.

I have always loved the decoration of the Della Robbia wreaths found in the South (and made by the Boys Republic program in Los Angeles still today) to be an attractive expression of the region's flora. Here in New Orleans we are treated to the fall blooming of bougainvillea and camellia - and the groaning weight of Meyer lemons, oranges, satsumas, and grapefruit bending the limbs of neighborhood citrus trees.

Ready to eat!

Our first grapefruit was just as sweet as we could have wanted. Still firm and a tinge green on the outside, it was a lush pink on the inside, full of juice and flavor. In my mind's eye, I see this tree growing large, producing enormous amounts of fruit and enabling us to share this tradition with friends and family who either don't live here or haven't gotten around to building that orangery.

Put a Lid On It!

Entries to this blog normally revolve around food, but I am going to from time to time report on the doings of my various home improvement projects. This stems partly from the fact that these projects have taken away from my time in the kitchen, but also that many people who are interested in cooking also like old houses and often work on them.

By New Orleans standards, our 1928 Craftsman bungalow does not qualify as an "old" house. I read somewhere that the average age of occupied houses in Orleans Parish is around 100 years. But in the objective sense - wear and exposure to the tropical elements of the region - the house is not exactly new. We moved into the Fontainebleau neighborhood in October of 2009. Although we are enormously happy with our home, part of town, and our incredible neighbors, there were a few surprises about this place that have reinforced the legal maxim of caveat emptor.

We knew after a few months that our roof definitely leaked, but we weren't sure how much. For a long time, it seemed that the leaks were just here and there, something that could be easily fixed. In retrospect, I should have been suspicious of all of the shiny new radiant barrier that the previous owner had tacked up in the attic. Maybe he was mostly interested in insulating the house and that it hid all the roof leaks was just a side benefit. Then came Tropical Storm Lee. The random leaks had converged into a full-fledged sprinkler system.

It seems that after Katrina, there were a lot of unqualified and downright dishonest workmen repairing roofs, and ours was one of their work sites. A worthwhile tip to anyone buying a house in New Orleans: don't rely on your inspector to be very knowledgeable about a roof. We used a national home-inspection company that sent out someone who seemed to have been on the job for less than a month. A better idea is to pay a reputable roofer $100 or $125 to come out and do a specialized roof inspection. Had we done this, we would have known then that the post-K roof had been installed with an especially high degree of ineptitude.

We had an incredibly positive experience with our Realtor, Joey Walker, when we bought the house, so we turned to him for a few recommendations for roofers. We braced for how expensive this might be, but remained hopeful that with the slow economy we might find a deal. The first quote we got was for a whopping $15,800, which did not include some of the repair work to visible rot. Needless to say, we were taken aback by what I call this "born yesterday price." The second company that came out, however, quoted us $7,765 plus repairs, which were estimated to be $980. This was better!

In researching online, we found very little information about what to expect when putting on a roof, which has been in some measure, the main inspiration for sharing our experience. We signed a contract with Schwander-Hutchinson Roofing, Inc. in mid-October, and by mid-November had a new roof. What happened in between was a reassuring process.

It took about three weeks for the company to schedule our re-roofing. You need to be a little patient, after all, roofers cannot change the weather! The project began at 7:30 AM with the delivery of a dumpster, followed shortly thereafter by the removal crew. Schwander-Hutchinson's men worked like dogs for the next three days, repairing an enormous amount of rot and putting on a nice looking water-tight roof.  Even though they encountered A LOT more rotten wood than we had anticipated, the total bill for roof and repair came in at $9,440, which struck us as a good deal. They left our yard spotlessly clean and on time. It poured the very next day, but not a drop fell in our attic.

See ya' leaky old roof!

Moral of the story? Shop around. We could have paid twice as much for the roof we ended up getting. But even more so, don't rely on a regular home inspector when buying a house. Of course, there is still plenty of plaster to repair because of said roof, but that is a tale for another day.

A Tribute to Lola

The first trip I ever made to New Orleans was in the spring of 1999. I was in my second semester of graduate school and needed to perform the first bit of research at the City Archives for a project that ultimately became my first book. A friend of mine in Athens, Georgia was at the time a training officer for the Clarke County police department. He had recently been to the Crescent City for a law enforcement conference, and shared what dining tips he had gleaned from his colleagues. Cops, you see, have an uncanny ability to sniff out some of the best neighborhood-style places. High on his list was Lola's.

From www.dineintown.com

Located at 3312 Esplanade Avenue in the beautiful Bayou St. John neighborhood, Lola's is as critic Tom Fitzmorris observes, the longest running Spanish restaurant in town. The paella that I ate on my first visit was so memorable (along with the garlic spread on bread) that it was virtually all I ever ordered for perhaps my first half-dozen visits. These were the days when the restaurant was cash-only and didn't have a liquor license, but the original Whole Foods was across the way and one could easily pick up a bottle or two for the evening's table.

There have been many memorable meals at Lola's in the last twelve years. Trips with visiting friends, hot summer nights with one too many bottles of Malbec, that first return visit after Katrina - all link the flavors of the restaurant's small open kitchen with people and key moments during the last decade of my life. Today Lola's takes cards to pay for your meal and you can find wine at either Canseco's, which took the old Whole Foods space, or Swirl, a bonafide wine shop next door on Ponce de Leon.

At some point along the way, I began ordering the wonderful garlic shrimp appetizer. Imagine a cast iron pan the size of a paint can lid full of peeled shrimp cooked in an amazing garlic/pepper/butter sauce. Consumed with the aforementioned garlic spread and a pistolette, you approach something near garlicky nirvana.

The following is my tribute to Lola's garlic shrimp. It doesn't pretend to be the same thing. If you want to replicate what's made on Esplanade Avenue, go taste it and you will probably pick up on the modifications one needs to make to this recipe to get closer to the flavor profiles served there. This recipe contains elements of Shrimp Mosca and the various New Orleans-style "barbecue shrimp" dishes you will find on the internet.

Do not fear garlic!

The best thing about this recipe is its ease of preparation and compatibility with entertaining guests. All of the real prep work can be done hours in advance, with the actual cooking time taking no more than ten minutes. In that time you will fill your kitchen with aromas that make your guests quite ready to eat!

Use: 1 pound of shrimp. De-head, peel, and de-vein. Set aside in your bowl.
Add: A ton of chopped garlic. Are three tablespoons too much? No, that's probably a minimum.
a tablespoon or so of Worcestershire sauce (important)
a tablespoon of good paprika
two tablespoon of finely minced onion
two or three tablespoons of finely chopped parsley
two tablespoons or more of finely minced shallot
hot sauce, salt, pepper to taste

Mix all of this up with some olive oil in your bowl. This can sit in your refrigerator until guests arrive. The key to all of these seasonings is that they will flavor the massive amount of butter in which you will cook the shrimp. This makes a dipping sauce for your bread.

This is what it looks like all mixed and ready for the pan. You can hold this until guests arrive.

 
To cook: Heat a small skillet to medium high temperature. Make sure you are not so hot that you brown or, God forbid, scorch your butter.

Toss in a good 3/4 stick of butter.  Don't be bashful. This is what restaurants do. Get over it and go to the gym tomorrow.

When the butter is all bubbly and nice, toss in your mixture, making sure the shrimp aren't clumped together. Turn them after a few minutes. Sautee this concoction long enough to make sure that the garlic and onions are getting a little bit cooked. Yet don't cook it forever so that shrimp get tough. You should be able to take this off of the burner within 10 minutes. Probably less.

Garlicky goodness in butter. Notice that the shrimp have not yet been turned.

Serve in a bowl with a side of nice French bread. I'm sorry I don't have a picture, but this dish usually gets eaten before I can get a good shot!

Celebrating the Fruit of Freedom

berries await our buckets!

We had been invited on many occasions to visit the country place of our friends Bob and Kelly, but it took until this Fourth of July weekend for other commitments and obligations to finally align and make the trip possible. The raison d'être for the journey was to pick blueberries. Bob, an avid horticulturist, has over the last fifteen years groomed their forty-acre Pike County, Mississippi farm into an Edenic escape from New Orleans. Included among the flora planted by his hand is a compact arbor of now-mature blueberry bushes.

The missus in the arbor

Blueberries, like strawberries, grow well from the deep South all the way into northern climes, but they are distinct varieties, so if you have fantasies of planting your own bushes, make sure your climate offers adequate hours of chilling for the plant in question. Southern berries are smaller than the nickle-sized variety that I once picked at a farm in the mountains when I worked at nearby Virginia Tech or the similarly plump fruit found on the bountiful Michigan crop. But they are very sweet.

our host at work

He explained to me as we stood plucking the fruit in the building morning heat that they are at variety of Southern Highbush Rabbiteye blueberry that require at least 350 hours of chilling for the fruit to set. There are types of blueberry that require fewer chilling hours and, as a consequence, can be planted further south - even in New Orleans. We've been seeing these berries at the Crescent City Farmer's Market since May. But it is July now, and we are picking away. A successful attorney in his weekday pursuits, Bob has a long list of clients and associates who look forward to sharing in his harvest.

The finished tart with a glaze made out of apple jelly

I decided to make a tart crust before leaving town and packed my bag with my rolling pin and tart pan for the trip to the farm. The crust is straight out of Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything, which my mom bought me when I went to grad school thirteen years ago, and remains my single-most favorite cookbook. My only exception to his instructions is that I find that warming up the dough and kneading it slightly after chilling makes for a better rolling experience. I'm not a pastry chef, so perhaps this technique is apostasy. I only know what works - and kneading until pliable works! It also seems to me that you can never use too much corn starch in your blueberry pie filling. The quarter cup that Bittman calls for isn't enough. A half cup is more like it. And with blueberry baking, cinnamon and a little lemon juice are your friend.

It was a fine weekend. Bob made a tasty chicken sauce piquant from Don Link's Real Cajun cookbook, and we followed it up with the tart. The only downer of the trip is that Greta, my faithful German Shorthair Pointer of nine years, once again has a sore paw after romping around the fields. The result of a chronic condition not unassociated with old age.

Refreshed, we drove back I-55 to town right in time for a friend's Fourth of July barbeque. Poor Greta is recuperating on the bed and dreaming of the bunnies she'll chase on our next visit.

"we could just move in, you know"

Ash Wednesday Poor Boy

Some interval has passed since my last post, the result of immovable obligations consuming what little time I might devote to recreational writing. But I offer this new missive thanks to the Carnival season break granted by Loyola University New Orleans and my ability to ignore a hard deadline for another project when it is at least four days hence.

The Church of the Immaculate Conception  in New Orleans

My wife and I will forsake the consumption of meat as part of our Lenten sacrifice this year. It is not so much that we eat a great deal of meat normally, but that it is so very easy to do so when busy. After all, throwing a hand-formed burger patty on the grill after a long day at work is simple, inexpensive, and so very satisfying.

Ash Wednesday marks an important milestone in the Catholic liturgical year, the gatepost, if you will, to a forty-day season of spiritual cleansing in preparation for Christ's resurrection. Even if you aren't Catholic, Christian, or even religious, a semi-prolonged period of sacrifice and mental inventory of one's ethical values constitutes worthwhile philosophical endeavor. Only the culturally unaware would miss that Catholic roots run deep in New Orleans, and by extension, that Lenten offerings for New Orleanians often involve forsaking some aspect of food or drink.

The Poor Boy sandwich occupies an iconic place in the culinary landscape of the Crescent City, and it appears on menus in manifestations that range from the sublime to the ridiculous. Yet for all these iterations, I cannot remember ever seeing an establishment offering a vegetarian poor boy sandwich. (And a shrimp or oyster poor boy disqualifies as vegetarian!) Below is my interpretation.

Part Fresh, Part Global. 

The ingredients found in this sandwich have a Mediterranean flair, but they ride to glory on a New Orleans staple, the poor boy loaf.

Ingredients (and immersion blender!) for hummus

I start by making a Hummus. Your recipe can vary here - any decent one will do, as there are a variety of ways to make it. We like ours garlicky with lemon juice, while our favorite quick Middle Eastern place doesn't even use olive oil in their hummus. A tip: use an immersion blender. The thickness of hummus can burn up the motor of a lightweight kitchen blender, and then there is the problem of scooping it all out from around the blades in the container. It is also much easier to clean up after using the immersion blender (unless you are careless and fling hummus across your kitchen!) Tip two: find a good Middle Eastern grocery for your olive oil, feta cheese, and especially, spices. It makes enormous economic sense to buy such things from people who cater to a culture that uses them in quantity!)

Pan toast the poor boy loaf with some butter. Delicious all on its own!

Toast your poor boy loaf bread in a pan with butter. I put our toaster away some months ago simply because I prefer pan-toasted bread. My wife wins the argument, however, by pointing out that it is difficult to pan-toast a bagel. We don't eat many bagels these days. (Whoops!) Tip: I cut my bread a little differently. Poor boy loaf has a tougher outside and a very soft inside. Cut along the top instead of the side of the loaf, but not all the way through, leaving the bottom crust intact. This will allow you to better cradle the contents of your sandwich.

People always complain about the difficulty of finding fresh avocados. It really isn't that difficult except that you need to plan a few days in advance. These avocados were as hard as baseballs last Saturday - and that is they way you want to buy them. Allowing this fruit to ripen in a grocer's bin is generally a bad idea, so you have to take control of the process. Place your hard, green avocado in a brown paper bag and crumple the top closed. Leave this bag on your counter for a few days so the natural ripening process might take place in an even and controlled way. (This is exactly how you ripen those hard peaches or pears!) Here, four days later, we have picture-perfect avocados!

The rest of this sandwich is easy. Spread your hummus across the toasted bread, and top with seeded cucumber spears, avocado, tomato, and (if you have it - I did not use it here) some provolone or feta cheese. A little sprinkle of salt and pepper, and you are ready to go!

The Devil is in the Details

Gougères, hot out of the oven and in front of my lens!

There are few things more annoying in the home kitchen than a baking recipe that has either left out a key ingredient or has botched quantities so profoundly as to make the project irretrievable. Yet as a writer, I accept that no matter how much you copy edit, typos will happen. Perhaps, then, the greater sin are intentional, idiotic, and unnecessary complexities often built into baking instructions that are calculated to made to make the author seem like un chef extraordinaire. Highfalutin' pastry chefs, are the most notorious offenders.

A favorite recipe for gougères taken from Wine Spectator put me in mind of this fact. You can't get the text of the recipe from the magazine's web site, but this location copies it verbatim, idiosyncrasies and idiocies intact.

First off, let me say that when the quantity of flour listed hits the prescribed amount of wet ingredients, a dough ball will form immediately. There is no need to "wait until the dough pulls from the sides" while stirring over medium heat. Did anyone even try to make this recipe? The quantities are right, and the gougères turn out wonderful, but please.

Of course, if you bake said gougères as instructed, you will have a batch of underdone soggy cheese pastry lumps. But at least you can be comforted by knowing that you performed the meaningless task of rotating the tray after 5 minutes of baking. That way you can just admit to everyone that your modest little abode's cheap consumer-grade oven must heat unevenly and you can let the vast majority of your 400 degree heat escape. OR you could just bake them for 16 minutes like you would for something pedestrian like, say, cookies, and they will turn out perfectly. I'm guessing that I've missed the true significance of the baking instructions, but we're hard-headed down here in fly-over country.

Amidst all of the fluff in this article and recipe, they manage to leave out something useful: pipe the batter onto the sheet in a swirl, not unlike a softserve ice cream cone - it will give the pastry a little more loft. Last time I checked, loft is what you want in a puff pastry. 

For those who are interested, a few modifications will make this recipe turn out wonderfully. And this is not a terribly difficult thing to make, so don't be at all hesitant to try it out. I can't wait to try filling these. I think some variant of our cheeseball with a little dab of tapenade would be fantastic. Maybe sardine paté? Who knows?

Student films related to foodways in New Orleans

With the spring 2010 semester rapidly diminishing in my rear view mirror, I find myself looking back with a great degree of satisfaction on the documentary films that the students in my first year seminar at Loyola made. I challenged these freshmen to make a short, 5 to 7 minute film depicting "some aspect' of the immigrant experience in New Orleans. The topics that they found were diverse and interesting, and everyone who completed a film told a great story. You can see all of them at the Vimeo group that I set up for the class.

Two films in particular, however, deal with food in New Orleans. The first one embedded below is by Shelly Wu, a criminal justice major, and Hilary Landry, a biology major. Their topic was the New Orleans tradition of St. Joseph's Day. Hilary and Shelly were definitely the most organized team in the class and were almost always the first to complete a task. What was remarkable about their work is that neither are terribly "artsy," nor do they have much in the way of technology experience. Their film (as were most of our films) was shot with a consumer-grade Canon Vixia camcorder for interviews and with the simple Flip Video camera for other footage. Stills that they took with a digital camera also appear in the film.


St. Joseph's Day from Shelly Wu on Vimeo.

The other foodways film may well have been the last one completed, but it was certainly the most original in terms of topic. It tells a particularly lucid story and one not oft told in the Crescent City - to wit, the Sunday Feast at the Hare Krishna temple on Esplanade Avenue. Sam Yoger and Devon Baldwin are both students from California and are in Loyola's excellent music program.

Hare Krishna Documentary Final (Baldwin/Yoger) from Devon Baldwin on Vimeo.

Bacon: A Love Story

This morning witnessed a convergence of ideas and circumstances that happens all too infrequently. It is spring break at Loyola this week, and while I have an endless list of tasks to complete before classes resume, I will allow myself a tiny bit more flexibility than I normally might otherwise. Yet routine is a terrible master. After deciding that I should enjoy a leisurely breakfast while grading World Civ exams on the front porch, I soon found that I simply wasn't hungry. Breakfast here is generally coffee and some fruit or perhaps a bagel, not the smoky unctuousness of bacon smoked by Allan Benton.

But Greta, my German Shorthaired Pointer, was interested. She's definitely a mooch (as is our new cat.) She's a good mooch, though. Jessie and I often joke that Greta plays Nina Simone's classic "Put a Little Sugar in My Bowl" when mooching, only substituting "bacon" for "sugar." Thus, the soundtrack here was never in doubt. 


Bacon: A Love Story from Justin Nystrom on Vimeo.

The Positive Influence of Inlaws: Coconut Cake!

On several occasions now, while gathering for family events at the Armstrong family home in South Carolina, Jessie's sister Alicia has made a fantastic coconut cake. Last Saturday, Jessie made known her wish to have a piece of this cake. The quest to replicate sister's recipe was on. After a phone call to Ohio, Jessie produced an index card bearing the basic instructions. The recipe is something of an amalgam of several cookbooks including the 1950 classic, Betty Crocker's Picture Cookbook. Rich, creamy coconut milk lends a wonderful flavor. In its appearance and taste, this cake would make an ideal addition to an Easter feast. If I were to give this a "cookbook" name, it would be "Triple Coconut Cake." Triple you ask? Coconut appears three times - to wit, in the cake, in the custard, and in the coconut flake exterior.

The only modification that I've made below is that I've reduced the baking soda from 3 to 2 teaspoons. Three teaspoons was definitely one too many, and may have been an error. Two should definitely suffice to leaven this cake.

Cake:
2/3 C butter
2 C sugar
3 C cake flour
2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 c. coconut milk
2 tsp vanilla extract
5 egg whites (reserve 2 yolks for custard)

Cream sugar and butter. Then add thrice sifted flour-baking soda-salt mixture alternately with the coconut milk. When mixed, beat egg whites to a stiff meringue and fold thoroughly into batter. Fill 3 x 9-inch pans with the batter. Bake for 30 minutes in a 350F oven.

Custard:
The custard goes in between each layer of cake.

1 C. coconut milk
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1/2 C. sugar
3 tbsp. flour
1/8 tsp. salt
2 egg yolks

Heat in a heavy saucepan the coconut milk and vanilla, but don't bring to a boil. When hot, add sugar, flour, salt. When dissolved, temper the egg yolks, then add and mix. Note: if you assemble the cake when the custard is still warm, it will more easily spread onto the layers.

warm custard steaming away!

Frosting: (a basic "7-minute" frosting)

1 1/2 C. sugar
3 egg whites
1/4 tsp. cream of tartar
1/8 tsp. salt
1 tbsp vanilla extract

Simply put all the ingredients into a metal bowl over a pot of simmering water (à la double boiler) mix at first with a whisk until everything has dissolved together and is hot. Then stick your electric mixer and beat away. When the mixture starts to thicken up, pull it off of the heat, and place it on the counter (on a towel so it stays warm) and continue mixing until the icing is thick and firm. At this point, ice the cake and then coat with coconut flakes.

Saturday morning market at MQVN

We were on the road by 6 AM this morning in order to head out to the Vietnamese market in New Orleans East. Word has it that the market begins around 6:30 and is over by 9:00 AM. Last week was extremely cold (for here) with hard freeze temperatures. This has undoubtedly depressed the normally abundant quantity of fresh produce. Last night and today have been characterized by steady rain, and this probably reduced the number of vendors at the market this morning. Yet there was definitely plenty of seafood to go around! Spec trout, redfish, mackerel, drum, some very small flounder, numerous other fish, and even an eel (that was sold before I could film it) were available to buy. Then there were the rabbits...

PS: Gwen, you may not want to watch this video!

New Orleans East Vietnamese Market from Justin Nystrom on Vimeo.

Vietnam by Way of Chef Menteur Highway

Dong Phuong Oriental Bakery & Restaurant at 14207 Chef Menteur Highway, New Orleans.

In advance of my spring course at Loyola on "Immigrant New Orleans," I decided to head out to talk with Cam Tran, education coordinator at the Mary Queen of Vietnam Church in New Orleans East. In 2005, Katrina laid waste to this part of the city and rebuilding has been an uphill battle, to put things mildly. The group that has arguably made the greatest progress has been the tightly-knit Vietnamese community one finds heading eastbound along Chef Menteur Highway just beyond Michaud Boulevard.  It is not unlike setting foot in a foreign land, right here in Orleans Parish.

The po-boy station at Dong Phuong

On the way back to the office, I decided to grab a bite at the Dong Phuong Oriental Bakery on the Chef Highway. It was but one of many tantalizing options. I'd read about Vietnamese po-boys before during the fall 2009 po-boy festival here in New Orleans and Cam mentioned that I could find one at Dong Phuong. I opted for the #5 - Vietnamese Grilled Pork, which involved incredibly seasoned meat topped with shredded carrot, cabbage, cilantro, and a beautifully crisp pickle wedge. But perhaps the greatest surprise (that is, after I scurried off to the car to unwrap my bag full of aromatic bliss) was the light, crispy wonderfulness of the bread produced in the bakery's ovens. At $2.85 - yes, that's right - under $3, I would place it in the lunch value hall of fame.

A pastry case offers a range of savory and sweet treats.

A savory meat turnover and package of coconut macaroons rounded out my shopping for the day. Other than their sweet coconut flavor, the only key impression that I can convey about the macaroons was the ease with which one can eat them while driving. By the time I'd reached Loyola, only three of nine remained in my bag. The turnover proved to be a delightful sweet pastry dough filled with egg, seasoned pork, cilantro, and tomato.

The meat turnover with pork: sweet, tender pastry with savory filling. Good cold. Probably good hot too!

There are few eateries where I find myself planning to return with friends before I've gotten a fourth of the way through my meal. Maybe it won't be as good as the first visit, as I've read a few unfavorable online reviews here and there. But I'll take my chances.

A fleeting glimpse of my #5 po-boy right before being devoured.

Fêtes Past, Fêtes Future: Finding Something Lost in the Réveillon

There is no city the same size as New Orleans that cares as much about its food, a fact that is probably no more true than it is today. I think this has to do with the type of person that the city is attracting as of late. This also has some likely bearing why Orleans Parish cannot boast a single TGI Fridays, Applebee's, or Red Lobster. Few times of year are more appealing to revel in this fact than Christmastide, when réveillon menus begin to appear at local restaurants.

A recent article in the often joyless publication Cooking Light did a fine if ironic job of recounting the resurgence of the réveillon tradition in New Orleans. For a moment I imagined its subscribers' tears dropping wetly on the page as they juxtaposed a life they will never allow themselves to know with the I Can't Believe it's Not Butter lurking in their refrigerator and the 7 pm spinning class at the gym. Yet I soon reawakened to reality and acknowledged that they will only see it as a novelty undertaken in a strange land.

Indeed, the key failing of the Cooking Light piece is that it does not mention the most important dimension of réveillon, and that is the philosophy behind it. To be sure, the feast is a meal. But more critically, it is a statement - it is a worldview. Moreover, you needn't be as wealthy as the Brennan clan to pull the thing off at home. At some level you just have to reject the no trans-fat microwave popcorn age in which we live. That is why the réveillon is also a perfect fit for today's New Orleans, a city increasingly made up of individuals who have come here seeking to be expatriates yet remain in their own country. It is a place where old ways (both high and low) and all their attendant inconveniences still flourish. For certain, the city has been grossly commodified for tourist consumption, but it is also a world without Outback Steakhouse. It is a place with color and character so often missing in American landscape. Certainly, you can find similar restaurants offering multi-course prix fixe menus elsewhere (like Baccanalia in Atlanta, for instance) but few places where it is part of the lifestyle.

Jessie and I are looking forward to the day where we can host our own réveillon feast after Midnight Mass, but that will sadly be some years away. Newly married and yet without the great family magnet that are newborn babies, we must still travel to the East for holidays. We decided, however, to avail ourselves of a grand indulgence last night and take in a réveillon menu at one of our favorite local restaurants.

Martinique Bistro on Magazine Street has been the site of many enjoyable dinners. For the same price or maybe a tiny bit more than what you might spend on a mediocre meal at Romano's Macaroni Grill, you can have fine dining, excellent service, and a decent wine list. When the weather is fine, there are few restaurants that offer a more pleasant courtyard. In the winter, the dining room offers a cozy retreat that might as well be in Provence. Last night, we took in their réveillon menu.

I do not intend this post to be a restaurant review, because I question my qualifications to take on Martinique on its level. Suffice to say that going during the Saints game was a stroke of genius. The Saints lost to Dallas anyhow (we caught the occasional "son of a bitch!" coming from the kitchen) and the place was nearly empty, making it a homey experience.  Yet a few recommendations - the lobster appetizier - the endive salad - the gumbo - the duck....!

For now we will collect these menus and memories until the day when family gather here for our own réveillon.

Merry Christmas from New Orleans!

Louisiana Citrus

It is time for another post of morning lagniappe! Partly because it is all I seem to have time for these days but mostly because the greatness of Louisiana grapefruit cannot be ignored!

While our wonderful Satsuma crop is familiar to some outside of Louisiana, few people outside of the state realize that you can readily acquire navel oranges and grapefruit grown right here. Only the southernmost region of coastal Louisiana features a climate that can reliably support commercial citrus production, most famously in environmentally fragile Plaquemines Parish.

I noticed grapefruit for sale at Dorignac's a few weeks ago, but finally decided to buy this week when the price hit an incredibly low mark of $.59 apiece. The flavor of the sweet ruby red fruit is as good as the photograph in this post suggests.

Morning Lagniappe

We've got a busy day ahead of us today, having to drive to Atlanta from New Orleans - and we can't leave until at least 4:00 PM. So I whipped up a late breakfast for Jessie and I as we both go about our morning work at the house. This is definitely one of life's luxuries of her working from home and my being an academic - a somewhat flexible schedule. Of course, it only works because we actually get things accomplished this way!

In the refrigerator was a package of Richard's Cajun Country tasso-style ham originally destined to season some collard greens. I also had some early Louisiana Satsumas that bought a few days ago at the Robért Fresh Market that is only a 3-minute walk from our house. Add some eggs and a little leftover smoked Gouda cheese from a party we had a couple weeks ago for the wedding, and there you have it!

In a lot of ways this dish is not remarkable save for two things. One is the early Satsuma, which is green on the outside and is an absolute visual treat on one's plate when sliced open. One can never call Satsumas "beautiful" late in the season unless referring to the flavor (which is better, I think.) Alas, Satsumas are almost never shipped outside of Louisiana. The other element here is the tasso, which for mass market packaged meat, was pretty darn delicious! Then again, to say that this is "mass market" means that it is sold from perhaps Hattiesburg in the East and Beaumont in the West. One finds it here next to the Oscar Meyer bacon.

Of Plum Cakes and Such

It all happened a couple of weeks ago while in the midst of moving into our new home in New Orleans. While we were no longer swimming in boxes, and the with the furniture was mostly in place, our cupboard would have definitely registered something approaching recognition on Mother Hubbard's face. There was only one thing for it - a stocking up trip to my all-time favorite grocery store in the metro, Dorignac's on Veterans Parkway in Metairie.

And there they were, right by the entrance, stopping me dead in my tracks. Prune plums, like Concord grapes, are simply not available year round. In fact, neither are they a fruit you that will find just anywhere. First there is the relatively recent and perverse obsession with blotting the word "prune" from the lexicon (they aren't "prunes" anymore, but "dried plums" for those keeping score at home.) What is a grocer to do? Label the bin "plums that could be useful for making dried plums?" Fortunately for us, New Orleans is home to a substantial Italian culinary tradition, and the prune plum figures into this culture. It is a fruit that reaches its true potential when baked, a process that allows the intense flavors of its deep purple skin to burst forth in all their glory. Reinforcing the notion that I'd fallen into some rarefied prune plum cosmic reality, they were also on sale for only $1.69 a pound. Too busy to bake? Probably. But this opportunity left me with no choice.

My grandmother's plum cake is a thing of pleasant childhood memories, and I'm sure I babbled about it on the drive home. Once there, I called my mother to get the recipe, it not being among my clippings. Luckily she knew where it was - it had been printed in the Cary, Illinois jubilee cookbook published some time in the 1960s. Reading the ingredients over the phone and transcribing them was fun, but mom and I both agreed that it was missing salt. Regina Hohenstein, aka "grandma," was not above holding out on a key ingredient. But there was no fooling us. The recipe is not Italian, at least to my knowledge, but makes a fantastic after dinner dessert with coffee or an equally tasty breakfast. Here it is below (with all of the ingredients!)

1/2 lb. butter
4 eggs
1 C sugar
2 C flour
grated (or better yet, Microplaned) rind of a lemon
1/2 tsp. salt
sugar and cinnamon for dusting.

In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter with a mixer, adding sugar and salt. Separate the 4 eggs and beat in the yolks only, reserving the whites in a separate mixing bowl. Add flour and lemon rind and mix into butter/sugar mixture with a wooden spoon or similar utensil. At this point it should be fairly stiff, almost like a cookie dough. With a clean mixer, beat the egg whites until nice and fluffy and then fold into the batter. Once you have incorporated the egg whites, spread into a 12x18 ungreased jelly roll pan. Don't be afraid to spread it fairly thin - it will, in fact rise. Just make sure it is even. Slice prune plums into quarters, pitting them (be careful, the edges of prune plums can be like little razor blades - I sliced my thumb open on one!) and placing the wedges just as close together on top of the batter as they will lie. Sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar. Bake for 30-35 minutes at 350.  The cake should not be too brown - you will know it is done when the edges start pulling away from the pan. If it starts getting brown, pull it out!

New Orleans Restaurant Map

With so many friends and family coming into town for the wedding in October, I've taken it upon myself to begin construction on a Google Map with restaurant recommendations. New Orleans has so many fantastic eateries that no list can be comprehensive, but for those who are unfamiliar with the city, this list will quickly expand your horizons. As you can see, a car is probably the best way to get around town.


View Justin's New Orleans food picks in a larger map

The Frustrating Phenomenon of "Almost Great"

Blackboards with campy phrases adorn the cheerful interior of Ignatius Eatery.

Every now and again, I encounter this in the classroom: the student who, despite revealing enormous capacity for greatness, never quite fulfills their promise. I can see them in my mind's eye now, schlepping across campus in flip-flops, perpetually happy with a too-easily gained "B" average.

Perhaps this is too harsh of an analogy to make with Ignatius Eatery at 4200 Magazine Street in Uptown New Orleans. In many ways, it is a great neighborhood restaurant, offering reasonably priced fare, an inviting atmosphere, and decent service. But their capacity to do some things extremely well and plating them next to the dreadfully ordinary is just kind of frustrating. It's good, but it could be so much better than it is.

Straight up, I would recommend Ignatius to anyone who wants an easy and mostly satisfying meal, especially if you have out-of-town guests in tow who are looking for some local New Orleans favorites such as po-boys and red beans and rice and yearn for a hassle-free outing. (Of course, if I were in the French Quarter, I would go straight to Stella! ...but that's another post. And my favorite po-boy is hands-down the fried oyster variety at Domelise's, but they offer limited hours and accept cash only. )

While I have read online reviews that complain about bad service, I have found the staff both friendly and attentive on recent trips. One online reviewer from Chicago, her heart set on "jumbalaya," ended up at Ignatius when she found that she couldn't wear jeans at Commander's Palace. She declared the food "just okay," but the bread pudding as "YUM!" On the one hand, this made me think that the Crescent City might want to ramp up its campaign of culinary enlightenment in the rust belt. But I was also struck at how I and this gourmand from the City with Broad Shoulders came away with the same impression of Ignatius, if for different reasons.

Like that "B" student, there are many things that Ignatius does very well. Guests at every table receive a carafe of ice water and chilled glasses upon arrival, which is a particularly nice touch on a hot August afternoon. Beer is served in paper bags ("Camp Street" style) - a trifle silly but tolerable in a place that aims to be funky. Yet it is the food where a restaurant lives or dies, and there's a little of both taking place on the table at Ignatius.

Despite the heat of the day, Jessie and I shared a cup of the crab and corn bisque and found it wonderfully rich, tangy, and sweet with terrific crab flavor. Likewise, my roast beef po-boy featured many of the best qualities of its kind served throughout the city. I'm not a huge fan of sandwiches slathered with Maggi-style brown gravy mix, and while I find the famous "debris" at Mother's quite tasty, I always feel afterward as if I'd been bobbing for apples in a hotel pan full of pot roast juice. Ignatius delivers tender pulled beef in a savory sauce on a Leidenheimer roll - simple and good, though a little on the dry side for some people's tastes. I'll admit that I was also happy that I wasn't wearing part of the sandwich when I left.

The menu also includes something advertised as "boudin meat loaf." (Those unfamiliar with boudin sausage, a foodstuff with nearly as many variations in southern Louisiana as there are snowflakes in the Antarctic, should really check out The Boudin Link.) To call it such is a little misleading, as the boudin really only contributes a small amount to the meatloaf's pleasant flavor profile, yet it was tremendously good. That no thought had been given to the meatloaf's appearance could have been forgiven if it were not next to a scoop full of soggy yellow corn and unmemorable potatoes that would have been more at home in an army chow line. And this is crux of my gripe: what dish could be easier to render (in summer, no less) than simple sweet corn? Moreover, in an establishment where ketchup bottles line shelves in the dining room, wouldn't it have been simple to put a little color on meatloaf? With more care, and Ignatius could be oh so much better. Maybe not Commander's, but better.

Then again, perhaps I doth protest too much. Like my "B" students, Ignatius is eminently likable, and I'll undoubtedly make a return visit.