"Eating, drinking and carrying on..."
Little dribs toward normal life. It's still bad. My good friend Michael has been taking "therapeutic" bike rides through devastated neighborhoods in New Orleans, and while it's been depressing him it's also good to keep a grip on reality. We rejoice at every step that's taken (e.g., Audubon Zoo reportedly stationing people at the gates on reopening day just to hug weeping locals who lined up to see the zoo again) toward resuming normal life in New Orleans, but no good can come of wearing blinders and never leaving the Quarter or the Garden District. New Orleanians must be aware of what's going on (and more importantly, what's not going on) in the city. That said, there's another thing to rejoice about ... Kermit's going to start playing Vaughan's again tomorrow night.  That's Vaughan's, as it looked on October 11, 2005, six weeks after Katrina -- a little battered from wind but looking more or less okay. It reopened not long after, and tomorrow finally gets back into the swing of things. Thursday nights at Vaughan's means Kermit and barbecue, and that'll be a most welcome return. I wish I could be there. GW Fins on St. Louis Street in the Quarter reopened last Friday, just in time to entertain my folks for their 45th wedding anniversary. Arnaud's reopens tomorrow. Ben Franklin Elementary reopened yesterday, the first Orleans public school to do so. My new issue of New Orleans Magazine hit my mailbox, leading to a gasp and a watery eye. Baby steps. There are still fewer than 90,000 full-time residents of the city, though, down from 450,000 before Katrina. Daytime population is about 150,000, as some people commute in from elsewhere. Scum. Meanwhile, the Bush crony appointed to "coordinate Katrina recovery" won't commit to a stronger levee system. What we should do is make him wish he'd have never taken the job until he tells his bullshitting government to make that commitment. I must admit I kinda like the idea of New Orleans sealing off the flow of commerce it provides to the rest of the nation; if only we could do it without hurting the city. We've also now been told that the 17th Street Canal floodwalls were "doomed", and that the disaster was entirely man-made due to the Corps of Engineers' astonishing screwups in constructing the levees and floodwalls, now being called "the costliest engineering mistake in American history." Whose heads will roll over this? Anyone's?
Were they all smoking crack? Or more likely, did they do as the levee safety inspectors did, cutting the inspections short, to just a few hours for the entire system, so that they could all knock off and go to a restaurant for a long lunch? Someone must answer for this. It's enough to fill anyone with overwhelming outrage; for instance, our friend Ashley (not safe for work, younger readers, little blue-haired old ladies or anyone offended by lots and lots of swearing). Cartoon of the day. This week's installment of the always-wonderful "This Modern World" brings us an American parable ...  Click for full cartoon Yeah, we wanted them to fail and we hate America, too! Quote of the day. From today's Los Angeles Times ...
Via Wes, who adds, "Oh, the sheer comedy of it all ..." The misleaders. Slate asks, "Who does Dick Cheney think he's kidding?" The second paragraph of this excerpt is the very definition of bullshit, from an administration that has raised bullshit to a horrific art form:
More vapid bullshit this morning, too. I couldn't bear to listen. Bill O'Reilly is truly batshit insane. Allegedly! (As Kathy Griffin would say.) Here he is ranting on the radio (and don't miss the audio) about a "very secret plan" by the "secular progressive movement" to "diminish Christian philosophy in the USA", which begins by stopping people from saying "Merry Christmas". He goes on to rant about how the conspiracy (which must have been going on for decades) has "wiped out religion ... in every secular progressive country", then goes on to name such countries: Stalin's Soviet Union, Hitler's Nazi Germany, Mao's China and Castro's Cuba. ("Secular progressive" countries?) Then he lashes out at the "hateful liars" who are in fact asking serious questions about Bush, Cheney and their Iraq agenda and how he's "gonna bring those people down." And on his TV show? Batshit insane. (You really can't make this stuff up, it's priceless.) The voices in his head must be quite something. Talkin' 'bout egg nog (egg nog!) ... Ah, I love mondegreens. That's a term applied to misheard lyrics, as in "Heartbreaker, with your bowling ball" that I mentioned a while back. Steve found a site that collects many of these, and it contained a New Orleans classic, "Iko Iko". It's a song based on Mardi Gras Indian chants, first recorded commercially by James "Sugarboy" Crawford in the mid-1950s, then by myriad artists from Dr. John (my favorite rendition) to the Dixie Cups to even the Grateful Dead (and the Deadheads insisted on misspelling it as "Aiko Aiko"). The Belle Stars did a version way back when, and that was the basis for this chuckleworthy entry in the annals of misheard lyrics. ("Jack him off in a lake?" Now really.) And while we're on the subject of New Orleans song lyrics, it seems that the Meters actually prophesied Katrina and the flood back in 1975. [ Link to today's entries ]
Surviving Thanksgiving. I did. Two-and-a-half pounds heavier, and with a three-alarm hangover on Friday, but I survived. No kitchen disasters, no burns, no cuts, and everything came out great. We started off with lots of cheese -- Manchego, aged white cheddar, a really smelly blue (the variety of which I forgot), cave-aged Emmenthaler, Taleggio, and Dubliner with membrillo (quince paste). Tom also made a platter of goi cuon, Vietnamese spring rolls, plus there were those fabulous Thai chile and lime cashews from Trader Joe's, cornichons, pickled okra from Louisiana, Lucques and spiced Sicilian black olives and some Pineau des Charentes as an apéritif. Before a single dish came out of the kitchen, Gregory said, "Just put the turkey and everything into Tupperware ... I'm full." Oh yeah, the turkey. When it came to turkeys, for years I was Mr. Brine -- soak that sucker in flavored salt water overnight, and good ol' osmosis will draw fluid into the meat, making it nice and plump and juicy. There's just one thing ... it's a royal pain in the ass to brine a turkey, especially a large one. My researches indicated that if you've got a really high-quality fresh (not frozen) bird and you roast it properly, you're going to get very moist white and dark meat. The turkey was a free-range one from Bristol Farms (a 20-pounder at $2.99/lb. made it a little pricey at $60, but it was very much worth it; the heritage turkey at $5.99/lb. was out of our reach this year), and I thought for a while about how I wanted to treat it. What I came up with was a mixture of a little more than a stick of softened butter (Kerrygold Irish, mmmmm) mixed with about a half a cup of apple butter. I reserved about a quarter-cup of it for the gravy, and the rest got rubbed under the breast skin. Inside the front cavity went a quartered apple. Inside the main cavity went another quartered apple, a quartered onion, and big sprigs of fresh thyme, sage, rosemary and tarragon; then, the legs were tied with twine. The outside was rubbed with olive oil, seasoned with kosher salt, freshly ground black pepper and Creole seasonning, and along the top of the turkey I placed four nice, fatty strips of bacon. I will never not put bacon on a turkey ever again (except if I try soaking cheesecloth in bacon fat and putting that on top instead). Some more quartered onions and carrots in the bottom of the pan, along with 2 cups of homemade turkey stock, then into 325°F oven for about 4.5 hours. I covered the entire roasting pan with foil, sealing the edges, for the first hour and 45 minutes, then removed it to let the skin get chestnut brown and crispy. The bacon slowly melted and basted the breast with trickles of bacon fat, then crisped up and adhered to the skin. The temperature probe was set to 165°F, and when it rang the turkey rested for 30 minutes while the sides cooked. It was perfect. Flavorful, insanely juicy, and with bacon attached to the skin. (Next year I'm bacon-wrapping the drumsticks, too.) Brining, shmining. The gravy was the pretty standard preparation -- pour off drippings, deglaze pan with a little turkey stock, scrape up brown bits, strain it all, skim off the fat (saving a few tablespoons for roux), add turkey stock to get about six cups. Make a roux with the turkey fat and a quarter-cup of flour, add to the hot stock and drippings, then I mixed a few more tablespoons of flour with the reserved butter-apple butter and made a paste and used that to thicken the gravy more. Bring to a boil and simmer until thick, season with salt and pepper. Yum. (If we hadn't had a guest who was allergic to alcohol, I would have added some Calvados or applejack as well.) So there we have it ... Roasted Turkey with Apple Butter and Bacon, with Giblet Gravy. The stuffing came out great, too ... Ciabatta Bread Stuffing with Smoked Duck and Brandy Sausage, Celeriac, Chestnuts and Figs. It was a takeoff on my basic cornbread and andouille dressing, except I substitued ciabatta for cornbread, duck sausage for andouille, and added about a cup and a half each of quartered chestnuts and dried Mission figs. (The chestnuts came roasted, peeled and packaged from Trader Joe's, which was a huge time saver.) Second stuffing for the vegetarian crowd, Cornbread and Chestnut Stuffing, made with jalapeño and green onion cornbread, plus lots of leftover diced celeriac from the other stuffing. I also improvised another dish for our vegetarian guest, so that she didn't have to eat just side dishes all day -- I took some of those TJ's Thai chile-lime cashews, whizzed them in the blender and made a spicy cashew butter. That went inside roasted portobello mushrooms brushed with garlic oil, then sprinkled with the fried garlic from the oil, some thinly-sliced red onions that had marinated in rice vinegar and sugar, and some fresh cilantro. That came out really well. The yams were my trademark holiday dish, Spiced Sweet Potatoes and Pears with a Bourbon and Louisiana Cane Syrup Glaze. Somewhat labor-intensive but a very pretty presentation, always good and always very popular. I don't usually make mashed potatoes for Thanksgiving, but since Wes' sister was coming, I knew that she would be shocked and appalled at the idea of a Thanksgiving without mashed taters. Instead of the usual I did it with an Irish twist, one of my favorite ways to make mashed potatoes -- Scallion Champ. It's dead easy; just slice up some green onions and heat them up with the milk for the potatoes, and let it infuse for a little while, then add it all with tons of butter. (I also used half-and-half this time instead of milk, for some extra richness.) Fab. I wanted to provide a bit more for the vegetarians, so I also did a quick and easy green vegetable side -- Asparagus in Brown Sage Butter with Parmigiano-Reggiano. Also dead easy; blanch the asparagus and shock it in ice water the day before, and then while the turkey's resting make a brown butter (i.e., melt and cook butter until the solids begin to brown and it gets a nutty flavor and aroma), throwing in some fresh sage leaves about halfway through. Drizzle that over the asparagus, cover and stick in the oven for 10 minutes or so until warmed through, then grate a bunch of Parmigiano over it. If I were serving fewer people I'd also fry some eggs in the brown butter, sunny-side up, then serve them over the asparagus. When you break the yolks, it makes a fabulous sauce. (That's a trick I learned from Mario Batali.) We had two cranberry preparations this year: a fresh, whole-berry Cranberry Sauce with Tangerine and Chinese Five-Spice (bag o' berries, juice and zest of 2 tangerines, water to make the liquid up to 1 cup, 2/3 cup sugar and a half-teaspoon of Chinese five-spice powder; bring to a berl and simmer 10 minutes); and a Cranberry-Onion Relish with Jalapeño (bag o' berries, 1/4 cup honey, couple tablespoons lime juice and the zest of 1 lime, whizzed up in the food processor until chopped into a relish, then about 1/3 cup of finely chopped red onion folded in). Nothing that slid out of a can appeared on our table. Wes' mom brought a Green Salad with Teardrop Tomatoes and Goat Cheese, and we provided some pomegranate seeds from our tree to sprinkle on; I also made a lime vinaigrette to dress it. I also made dessert, a tart in fact, which is always dangerous. I kinda suck at baking. I dug around a bit and chose a Chocolate and Coconut Pecan Tart, which had a chocolate crust. Dough came out pretty well, surprisingly, but the recipe made too much filling and I overfilled the tart shell. Consequently, it glurped up, out and over the sides of the tart pan and then cooked into a substance that approached the elemental atomic forces that keep electons from flying out of their orbit; that goddamn tart pan was permaglued to the sheet pan on which it was resting. Fortunately I had a particle-beam fusion weapon and blasted it free from the pan, and lo and behold ... it came out perfect. "You could sell this," said Wes' mom. (Yay!) That said, I had a store-bought chocolate pecan pie from TJ's as a backup in case I fecked it up, which it turned out we didn't need 'cause I didn't feck it up. Dessert accompaniment was Modern Spirits Chocolate Orange Vodka. "Wow," Gregory said. "This stuff's great! And so smooth it's dangerous ... you could have eight or twelve of these easily before you realize how much you've had." (I should have noted this observation later on.) I did that by myself, with no help (other than the salad and cleanup), all from scratch. I must be insane. What I was was dead-tired, what with all that and being "on" as a co-host all day Thursday. I was so tired that by the end of the day I started losing tracks of how many drinks I was having, what with how dangerously smoothly that chocolate orange vodka went down, and how Gregory asked for a Szarłotka cocktail (superdelicious Polish Żubrówka vodka and apple juice), and me thinking, "Ooh, I'll have one of those too!" ... oh my. A couple of things knocked over, and then I decided it was time for bed. Apparently once everyone left I just said, "I'm tired,", collapsed into bed, and didn't move again until our idiot neighbor started breaking up ceramic tiles on his deck at 7:45 the next morning. Hope y'all had a fun Thanksgiving! [ Link to today's entries ]
It's time for the nation to return the favor. An editorial from the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Read it, do what it says, and send it to everyone you know. Make sure they read it and do what it says.
Don't let them kill New Orleans by their false promises and their neglect. News flash: Brussels sprouts can taste good! Who woulda thunk it? First, a little background. Back in gradual school, my good friend Andy and I became roommates. Andy's a great guy, and was a great roommate -- fun to hang out with, pretty tidy, conscientous about paying the bills on time. There was one thing, though ... his occasionally odd culinary habits. One of them was to open a can of sauerkraut (canned, not fresh!), dump the entire contents into a saucepan (without rinsing!) and heat it up, subsequently filling the entire house with a foul, rotten cabbage odor. He'd then eat it right out of the saucepan. "This is great! Ya want some?" Um, no. Thank you. The other odd culinary habit evidenced itself this way. I came home one day, sat on the sofa and began going through the mail, when I noticed a foul odor. Further sniffing revealed that it was coming from beneath the sofa. My first thought, given what it smelled like, was that my cat Vic had eschewed the use of the litter box that day, for some god-knows-why reason (ostensibly to teach me some kind of lesson, as was her wont) and instead done her litter box duties beneath the sofa. It wasn't Vic's litter box duties. What it was was a paper plate containing the remnants of Andy's lunch, featuring two left-behind Brussels sprouts (as the rest of the meal had been raptured into his tummy). Brussels sprouts smell like cat turds. QED. (By the way, you know I love ya, Andy, wherever you are. :-) That trauma, combined with occasional childhood Brussels sprouts traumas and the god-awful sprouts that had once been served to me at Bewley's Café in Dublin, pretty much put me off Brussels sprouts for life. In fact, in addition to lima beans and tripe, they were really the only things that I absolutely refused to eat. My friend Gregg took this as a challenge, and bet me that he could make Brussels sprouts that were not only edible but that I'd actually enjoy and want to make again. The challenge took place last night. Gregg and Mike offered, as a birthday present, to take me up to a wonderful little meat market in La Crescenta called Harmony Farms, pick up some exotic meat and/or sausages, and grill 'em up for dinner. I'd never heard of that market, and was assured that it would end up becoming one of my favorite food places. They weren't wrong. Meat of every description -- beef, pork, chicken, turkey, rabbit, buffalo, ostrich, venison, deer, elk, wild boar, you name it, they've got it or can get it. The plan was to grill some sausages, and they had a wide variety of really exotic-looking ones. We settled on a duck and apple sausage with brandy, duck and bacon sausage with jalapeño chiles and a wild boar sausage with cranberries, with the asterisked parenthetical comment below the sausage name, "made with meat from feral swine". Oh, I'm so in. The sausages were fabulous, all of them (although I think the duck and apple with brandy was my favorite, and I'm going to pick up another pound of that to use in the Thanksgiving stuffing on Thursday), and were accompanied by slowly caramelized onions, a few mustards and a variety of beers and ciders (boy, do we love Galco's in Highland Park). and ... the Brussels sprouts. The verdict? Really good. Much to my astonishment. You kinda can't go wrong cooking them this way, and remember the the trick to making Brussels sprouts tasty and not having them smell like cat turds -- get them fresh on the stalk, cook them quickly and do NOT overcook them. If they get mushy, you're dead. Keep some texture. I'm not sure where Gregg's mom got this recipe -- Gourmet or Bon Appétit, perhaps -- but she's apparently been making them this way for nearly 20 years.
Really, really good. Just in case, though, when you make this recipe, keep any cats out of the vicinity. [ Link to today's entries ]
The Cocktailian. In today's edition of Gary Regan's fortnightly column, the Professor, our cocktailian bartender, mixes up a Menage au Poire, which looks great. Read about it at the link, but have a look at the recipe first:
This looks brilliant; I can't wait to try it. We've been looking for ways to use Belle de Brillet, which we love (and which Wes used in his Mary Jane Cocktail, a relative of the Footloose). This is very inventive. We do what we do. Poppy Z. Brite writes in yesterday's Times-Picayune:
Mary, Wes and I were wondering about this too, and specifically wondering about how Poppy would deal with it in her writing, even before Poppy herself began talking about it on her journal. As much as I want to remember home the way it was (and always will), we're all going to have to deal with the ugly reality. As much as I want to preserve New Orleans in amber the way it was before August 29 ... well, just to name one example, if I was reading continuing stories about Rickey, G-Man and their adventures at restaurant Liquor in a world where Katrina didn't happen, while at the same time having to go see my parents on the feckin' Northshore because their house got wiped out, I'd feel that something was missing. That said, I still wouldn't mind reading more short stories about her fictional characters' lives pre-Katrina, but I'm also beginning to wonder how Rickey and G-Man made it through the storm, and how they'll deal with the destruction of the neighborhood where they grew up. When I end up reading in Poppy's future work (as I suspect I shall) about this, I'll also end up thinking about Holy Cross High School, about the gymnasium building which housed the music department where I spent countless hours through high school, and how it'll have to be demolished and wondering what will become of the rest of my Lower Ninth Ward school, its students and the surrounding neighborhood. To read about that will be healing for me and everyone else from home who reads Poppy's wonderful stories, not to mention healing for Poppy herself. The healing will commence, as Poppy points out, with everything we do, how we do what we do:
Yeah you rite, dawl'. Even 2,000 miles away, I eat well, I feed others, I'm comin' to Carnival, and I try to make as much art as I can, whether it's a few scribbles here, a music compilation there, a photograph or three every once in a while. And I like to eat red beans 'n rice on a Monday night. The Guardian goes to NOLA. Excellent article from the UK newspaper on the struggle of the local music scene to recover, and features interviews with Dr. John, Irma Thomas, Reggie Scanlan of the Radiators, Big Chief Monk Boudreaux of the Golden Eagles Mardi Gras Indians. Their guide, drummer and writer Ben Sandmel, helps take them through the city and to a variety of venues, including the newly reborn Tip's:
Yeah you rite. Where da streetcars at? When I was home last month, one of the things that struck me as being wrong as I drove down St. Charles Avenue, besides the decimation of the beautiful oak canopy over the street, was the lack of streetcars. The electrical lines powering them were down, and in some places (such as at the Riverbend in front of the Camellia Grill) the tracks looked as if they were buried in mud.  This New York Times article was depressing; we might not see the streetcars roll for a long time.
You know, frankly I don't give a shit about Bourbon Street, at least anything between Galatoire's and Lafitte's. The hell with Bourbon Street. That's where a lot of out-of-town drunks go to get their ya-yas out, which I suppose brings needed money into the economy. But Bourbon Street is not the real New Orleans. The streetcars are. Do you think our vile, stinking Congress (who under the Republicans are still trying to eliminate programs for the poor while cutting taxes for millionaires, and fortunately failed to do so yesterday) will help with this cost? Probably not, as they're already well on their way to abandoning New Orleans. At the same time, for example, they've given $13.5 million to the International Fund for Ireland, which will fund various projects around that country. Don't get me wrong; I love Ireland, and fair play to them ... but right now we need to cut back on aid to other countries while our own is hurting, and while our Congress seems to be balking at doing what's necessary, what's right, to help Louisiana and the Gulf Coast. They won't, though. Bastards. My old pal Ed Branley runs a wonderful website about the streetcars of New Orleans, the new Canal Street line in particular. Check it out, and check out his book New Orleans: The Canal Streetcar Line, available at the link from Amazon.com They're still finding bodies in New Orleans. I knew this would happen. You have have read about this or seen it on CNN already, but in case you haven't ... read all about it. The state called off house-to-house searches for bodies on October 3, saying they'd seen everything and that there were no more. They were wrong, of course.
Were they wrong ... or did they just not bother to look hard enough? This is horrific, and the city, state, feds, whomever, need to get their collective asses back into the Lower Ninth and make sure that NOBODY else comes home to find a body in their house. [ Link to today's entries ]
Say it ain't so! Save Torani Amer! I just got the folowing disturbing email from Robert:
If this is true, it means the death of nearly 50 new and especially classic cocktails, including the Brooklyn, my own Hoskins Cocktail and the lost New Orleans classic, the Mother-in-Law Cocktail, to name just three. Torani Amer is the only substitute for Amer Picon, a now-all-but-discontinued bitter orange aperitif liqueur that's called for in classic after classic (including the Picon Punch, the national drink of the Basques), not to mention newer creations. If Torani, makers of fine syrups for flavoring everything from sodas to coffees to cocktails, does in fact discontinue this wonderful product, they will single-handedly orphan a huge chunk of cocktail history. Please write to the Torani Company via contac page, or even better, call them at (800) 775-1925. Be polite and imploring. Explain to them how important this liqueur is to you and to cocktail history. Tell them you can't live without Brooklyn Cocktails. Tell them that there's an army of cocktailians out there who want this stuff (well, in your own words, of course). We need them! Pledge drive tonight. God, I hate asking for money on the air, but unfortunately it's the only way we make money. KCSN hosts their semi-annual Pledge Drive this week, and tonight is my program "Down Home"'s turn. Tonight, between 7 and 9pm Pacific Time, call (800) 795-KCSN, that's (800) 795-5276 and pledge your support for great New Orleans and roots music radio! We've got a wonderful treat this year too ... all pledges of $120 will be matched by our rich anonymous benefactor! For your pledge of $120 you can receive as our thank-you gift either my New Orleans box set "Doctors, Professors, Kings and Queens: The Big Ol' Box of New Orleans", or the following 5-CD "Down Home" pack:
You can pay by credit card too, all at once or in four easy, almost-unnoticeable installments of $30. Such a deal. Call tonight! Or pledge anytime via the website. We needs yo' money! [ Link to today's entries ]
Dinner at Lucques. (Danger, food porn!) That was the "mystery restaurant" where Wes took me for my birthday last Friday. He did let it slip that we were going to West Hollywood, but I didn't even try to think about which one it would be, and I quite literally didn't know where we were going until we arrived at the front door. I was thrilled. We had been meaning to go here for ages, especially for their famous "Sunday dinners", but I certainly didn't mind trying the main menu first. Their bar came highly recommended as well, with several specialty cocktails. I'm usually leery of most restaurants' "specialty" drinks these days, as even places as high-end as Patina invariably make drinks that are way too sweet sweet sweet. Imagine my delight as the two we had at Lucques involved both Campari and a variation on the classic Perfect Martini with no liqueur in it at all!
We tried this at home, but flipped the Cointreau and Campari. I think we'll flip it back, but add a little more lemon juice. The ingredients work well together, but you could get some interesting variations by changing the proportions.
We loved this. Does anybody remember what a Perfect Martini is anymore? If you do, how many times have you said to a bartender, "I'll have a Perfect Martini please," only to have him haughtily reply, "All my Martinis are perfect!" No no no, silly sod; a Perfect Martini is one that uses half sweet and half dry vermouth, instead of all dry. Perhaps the reason why most people don't know this is that most people have forgotten that a Martini has vermouth in in. All this horseshit about waving the closed bottle of vermouth over the shaker has nothing to do with a Martini, and has everything to do with drinking cold gin, up. That ain't a Martini. A Martini has vermouth in it. Period. QED. I have spoken. Hendrick's Gin is a wonderful, hand-crafted small-batch gin made in Scotland, and has amongst its unusual mix of botanicals an infusion of rose petals and cucumber, giving it a unique flavor that I happen to love. We'd make regular Martinis with it, not wanting that unique flavor to get too lost in a cocktail, but had never tried it as a Perfect Martini before. That, combined with the cucumber slice and the nifty name, has made us big fans of this drink, named after the silent movie star in whose former carriage house the restaurant is housed. Safety last!  Everyone who dines at Lucques is brought a little amuse-bouche of the restaurant's namesake Lucques olives, gorgeous warm toasted almonds tossed in almond oil, a pat of lovely butter and a dish of coarse sea salt, along with a basked of breads. Thinking to save a little bit of room for dinner, one of us said something like, "Um, we probably shouldn't eat all these almonds," as we chain-ate the almonds until they were gone. As usual, I've got pork on the brain. I was actually planning to go for lighter fare, perhaps starting with an interesting salad and moving on to fish. Hmm, that arugula salad with the pomegranate looked good ... but then ... I saw it. Roasted Kabocha squash and braised bacon with dates, dandelion and pumpkin seed oil.http://worldclassneworleans.blogspot.com/  Oh my. They could easily have called it "Braised bacon with kabocha squash"; the flavor of that bacon (more like thick slices of pork belly, but not too fatty) was rich and intense, and went perfectly with the nutty squash. The bitter tang of the dandelion leaves balanced it perfectly. It would have been very, very silly of me to get a salad with this on the menu. Of course, since I was already infused with pork, there was really only one dish I could have ordered from tne enterées ... Suckling pig with long-cooked romano beans, grilled baby leeks and romesco.  The pig, said our server, had been roasting at a relatively low temperature overnight and was ... exquisite. Everything else on the plate was fine, and went well with the dish, but I frankly didn't care about any of it. All I cared about was that marvelous, butter-tender, intensely delicious pork. (Well, the Domaine des Vieux Pruniers '04 Sancerre that I washed it down with was pretty great as well.) The serving was fairly Gargantuan, too; there was a ton of it, topped with a thin piece of "crispy skin" the size of my palm. Pork lovers, get to Lucques and order this dish before they change the menu this winter. Of course, there's always room for dessert. However, I found the paucity of chocolate on the dessert menu to be distressing. Of course, it doesn't have to be chocolate to be dessert, but I was hoping for a little more choice in that area. Most of the desserts looked really good, but I opted for something a bit lighter (as opposed to a huge chunk of cake or bread pudding or something like that). Piloncillo ice cream with caramel nut wedge and a shot of hot chocolate was what I settled with.  Piloncillo is unrefined Mexican brown sugar that comes in three-inch solid cones, and is earthy and delicious. The ice cream was excellent, and the "hot chocolate" that accompanied it was more like thick chocolate fudge with a perfect bitter chocolate tang to it; I was pleased that the pastry chef wasn't timid about making it not-too-sweet. Given the price of all the desserts, though ($10!), I was a little miffed at the miniscule portion -- one quenelle of ice cream, about 1/4 cup of the chocolate, and the "caramel nut wedge", although good, was a tiny piece of candy. Seems like they could drop the price on this one a bit. I also managed a splurge with the digestif, a 1979 Château de Ravignan Bas-Armagnac that was deep and wonderfully rich on the palate, full of dried fruit and toffee flavors. I've got to start looking into Armagnacs more.  That's one happy, bloated-- er, well-fed birthday boy. I'd like to say "it's back on the austerity diet now, Chuck", except last night (four days after this meal), a bunch of us went to the sadly closing Italian restaurant Rocca in Santa Monica for their famous porchetta, "A |
