    "Eating, drinking and carrying on..." -- Adelaide Brennan
New Orleans is Not OK. If you read anything today, read this. New Orleanian writer Poppy Z. Brite has a sledgehammer-to-the-head post up today which you should read, and which everyone you know should read. Every idiot politician from New Orleans City Hall to the Oval Office should read this too, so they'll know why we voted their asses out of office. (Emphases and added links mine.)
Copy, paste, and disseminate far and wide, with Poppy's blessing. Here's the permalink. Commander's Palace, Las Vegas. Gotta have something good amidst all this today ... Right now Commander's Palace in Las Vegas is the only Commander's that's open; the Brennan flagship restaurant in New Orleans got Katrina'd pretty badly (despite its initial appearance) and had to be gutted. It won't be open until summer, probably. In New Orleans Café Adelaide, a superb restaurant in its own right, is also serving as a fill-in Commander's, as you can get certain classic Commander's dishes there now (turtle soup, Tasso Shrimp Henican, and the like). Other than than that, if you want a Commander's fix, it's Vegas, baby, Vegas! Besides being Wes' birthday party weekend, the day we went to Commander's for dinner was also our friend Diana's birthday, so a double celebration was called for. We arrived early, so that we could get a little bit of an early start on the cocktail swilling and so that we could check out the newly-relocated Museum of the American Cocktail, which will reside at Commander's in Vegas for the next year until an eventual permanent home is found in New Orleans. It was nice to see the exhibit again, and our little things in it, but we were thrilled and surprised to see this, newly installed at this exhibit:  We were honored to be mentioned, and listed among that august group. A few Sazeracs, Negronis and Gibsons later we sat down to order, extremely well cared-for by Santino, their fabulous maitre'd (who were were very glad to see back at the restaurant; he'd left for a while), our captain Steve and his waiters. First out came the amuse bouche ...  A little scoop of mousse made one of their appetizers, Tabasco "Mash" Cured and Smoked Salmon, in which the salmon is cured with the salty pepper mash from the white oak barrels that's later mixed with vinegar to make Tabasco sauce, folded into a mousse and served on a toast point with microgreen salad and a little jalapeño oil. I was tempted to order more of that salmon, but I knew what was coming ...  One of my favorite dishes at Commander's, and in fact one of my favorite dishes in New Orleans -- Tasso Shrimp Henican, with Crystal Hot Sauce Beurre Blanc, Five Pepper Jelly and Pickled Okra. This is the late Chef Jamie Shannon's dish, and its retention on the menu is a continuous memorial to his talent (we all miss him terribly). The shrimp are semi-butterflied and stuffed with a lardon of tasso ham, flash-fried and coated in the Crystal beurre blanc, served in a puddle of the jelly with the okra as garnish (and I eat all the garnish). This is served as an appetizer, but is so good that a double portion of it would make an entrée that would rival any shrimp dish in town (an idea I'm going to steal from Poppy one day). There were a few Commander's virgins in the crowd, so we had to get the shrimp and, of course, the crab ...  I'm not usually a fan of crab cakes. Usually they have too much filler, too much breading, too much something which takes away from the flavor of the crab, which one would think a crab cake should feature. I've had crab cakes so thoroughly fried that they had a carapace that had to be cracked open, only to find lots of mushy breadcrumb dressing flecked with crab inside ... yecch. As far as I'm concerned, if you want crab cakes, you go to Commander's. Why? Because they're The Best Crab Cakes In The Universe. Over an inch thick, mixed with just barely enough dressing to hold them together, just enough seasoning to enhance, not to mask, the flavor of the magnificent jumbo lump crabmeat that consitutes about 90% of the composition of this dish. They're ring-molded, briefly seared on both sides and served barely warm ... absolute perfection. When we were chatting at the bar there was a gentleman sitting there dining alone, having made a meal of a starter of the Tasso Shrimp and a small main course of a dish that so startled me that I think a comic-strip thought balloon containing "!!!" had appeared over my head. It's a dish I'd never seen at Commander's in New Orleans, apparently because it's the creation of the executive chef of Commander's in Las Vegas, Chef Carlos Guia, and hasn't made it to the Crescent City yet. It's a dish that I had never thought of, because, well ... who'd think of such a thing?! A genius? A madman? We debated that very question as soon as we saw the dish prominently featured front and center on the menu, inside a box so that we couldn't miss it: Foie Gras Gumbo. A couple of us were immediately skeptical and suspicious, with Louise thinking it inappropriately highfalutin', gumbo being an earthy dish of the people, and the addition of foie gras being a rich man's affectation. Well, it was an expensive dish, but not that expensive; at $14.50 it's one of the most affordable foie gras appetizers I've ever seen (with the exception of the $9.95 seared foie gras at Café Giovanni in the Quarter, but that serving is about the size of your thumb.) It's not a huge serving either, not as large as you'd expect from a bowl of filé gumbo, but you have to think about how rich this dish probably is, and how it could floor you if you're not careful. This consideration is reinforced when you hear about how it's made; captain Steve explained it to us, but here's a more detailed description excerpted from Nation's Restaurant News:
 Oh my. As for our skepticism ... we were wrong, wrong, wrong. (Well, I thought we were, and I wasn't all that skeptical to begin with; in fact, I was kinda excited.) There's nothing wrong with taking a simple dish and elevating it to higher levels of complexity, and even a working man's gumbo is pretty complex in flavor. We ended up ordering one of these to share, and it's a good thing -- it's rich, very rich, and given all the other food that was to come that was probably wise. I must confess that it was so frackin' good that I was seriously considering ordering another one just for me (well, I'd probably give Wes some too), but if I had done that you would have had to change my name to Mr. Creosote by the end of the meal. We got some sides too -- the Stone Ground Grits with Goat Cheese, Spinach Rockefeller and some Crawfish Étouffée (made with Breaux Bridge, Louisiana crawfish and superb), and then it came time for the entrée. Given this crowd and its history, you'd think that the seven of us would have ordered seven different things, with the plates orbiting the table all night as we take tastes (which we've done several times), but as it turned out, five of the seven of us zeroed in on the same thing ...  Well, we are The Fat Pack after all, and what do our lives revolve around? PORK! In this case, Kurobuta Pork Loin, and here's its description from the menu: Iron skillet seared Berkshire "black hog" served with fingerling potato steak fries tossed with toasted garlic and buttermilk blue cheese, cayenne ketchup emulsion and Creole mustard-bourbon sauce. Um, holy frackin' bejeebies. This was mind-bogglingly good; the pork seared to perfection, with a beautiful crust and perfectly pink on the inside, with that great tangy sauce (there was ketchup in that, go figure, and they say so proudly!). The fries, though, the fries ... Michael didn't like them as much, declaring them to be insufficiently crispy, and despite the fact that I'm a crispy fry fanatic I disagreed. They were crispy enough, and besides they were tossed with a topping (which makes my head spin just thinking about it right now). Fingerling potatoes have such a great flavor just plain and roasted, but like this, oh man. I actually left a little of the pork and finished the fries (well, I knew what was coming next). Next, to our delight, was a dessert bomb, a Brennan specialty in which the table is bombarded with one (or more) of every single dessert on the menu, which also included a couple of plates of pralines decorated with "Happy Birthday!" in chocolate sauce for Diana and Wes. (Thanks, Ti!) Unfortunately my dessert bomb pictures are not the best, mostly due to two cocktails, two glasses of wine and the beginning of the onset of food coma. I'll try to see what I can salvage in Photoshop later, but for now the menu descriptions will have to do: Creole Opera Cake, thin layers of pecan genoise layered with chicory coffee buttercream and dark chocolate ganache, topped with Bourbon Chantilly and pecan praline cream; Passion Fruit Crêpes, housemade crêpes filled with passion fruit curd and California stawberries, topped with mixed berry granita and caramelized orange reduction suace; French Quarter Beignets, traditional New Orleans beignets dusted with powdered sugar, served with warm café au lait sauce and chocolate drizzles; Creole Bread Pudding Soufflé, Commander's signature dessert, a rich bread pudding whipped into a light fluffy soufflé and served with Bourbon whiskey sauce; and finally, the Brennan family classic, Bananas Foster, bananas cooked in brown sugar, butter and cinnamon and flamed with rum, served over vanilla ice cream. Even though we didn't finish it all, the waiters were nevertheless impressed by how much we did finish (well, this group is not to be trifled with). It was the perfect capper for what may have been our best-ever meal at Commander's, and they've all been great. Taking very shallow breaths (as my stuffed-as-full-as-a-haggis stomach didn't allow much room for my diaphragm to expand my lung capacity), we waddled carefully out of the restaurant. Michael and Louise headed to Barbary Coast to see a band called Darby O'Gill and the Little People (hey, how were they anyway?) while the rest of us headed back across the street to Bellagio and digestivos at Petrossian Bar -- 20-year tawny port for Diana and Robin, Macallan for Steve, 16-year Hirsch Bourbon for Wes and a Chartreuse for me. Later, we slept soundly. No money for levees? Hey, New Orleans! 'Member when I said I'd do whatever it takes to rebuild your levees bigger and better then ever, no matter what it took? Well, turns out there ain't enough money to fix 'em up like I said. Sorry. Take lots of pictures of your city before next hurricane season so we'll all know what it once looked like.
I wish that at least they'd be as honest in their dishonesty as Earl Long was when he was governor, running on a tax cut platform and then realizing he'd have to raise taxes. When asked what he was going to tell the people, he said, "Tell 'em ah lied." Clean house in New Orleans. The following information came via an email forwarded from Rob Florence in New Orleans, about a grassroots political movement called Clean House New Orleans. It all looks really good, but I fear it may be fizzling, at least as an organization; the "next meeting" listed was nearly two months ago, and since their blog was started in mid-February there have been no postings. Still, the stuff in the email is more than worth thinking about:
The more you think about the situation during Katrina, and the more you see what's being done (i.e., what isn't being done) locally in New Orleans, the more you think about getting rid of everyone in local office and starting over. So NoTORIous! An only slightly fictionalized sitcom starting Tori Spelling, playing herself, amidst a gaggle of demanding friends and Loni Anderson as her perfectionist mother, in which Tori's looking for friendship, respect and love? Um, sounds unlikely on the surface, and a show I'd be unlikely to watch, but ya know what? It's pretty funny. I'll be watching and you should too, and that's not just because my friends Damon and Sharon are writers on it. There's a lot of humor from Hollywood in-jokes and celeb name-dropping, but that's all part of Tori's world, so if you ever wanted to make fun of celebrities, or watch celebrities make fun of themselves (and Tori's very charming as she goes about it), then check out this show, running ... um, practially around the clock on VH-1. [ Link to today's entries ]
Would monsieur care for an after-deener meent? Eet's wahferr-theen! (Ooohhhh ... f*ck off, I can't eat another bite. I'm absolutely stuffed.) Okay, enough with the "Are you alive? Have someone check your pulse!" emails. I'm alive, just fat and groggy. In the final blowout for Wes' 40th birthday month, we headed to Las Vegas (along with about 30 other friends and family from L.A., New Orleans, New York and Ireland) to have a party. There were four Gargantuan meals -- Rosemary's, Carluccio's Tivoli Gardens (formerly Liberace's Tivoli Gardens, next door to the Liberace Museum), brunch buffet at Bellagio and a mind-boggling meal at Commander's Palace. Net weight gain -- five days, five pounds. (Oy.) Fortunately three have already come off, as I've been eating vegetables, soup and toast for the last three days. The party was a total blast, and was held at the Piano Room at Carluccio's. The restaurant was designed by Liberace, and the Piano Room is completely mirrored and festooned with twinkly lights (which unfortunately gave a couple of our friends headaches), with the music to his signature song "I'll Be Seeing You" etched along the mirrored walls, a giant bar shaped like a grand piano and anchored with one of Liberace's mirrored pianos, which is signed. It doesn't get any kitschier than that, folks. Food porn up soon, when I have time to get some of the pics into Photoshop. The Cocktailian. In today's edition of Gary Regan's fortnightly column, The Professor, our cocktailian bartender, plays with yet another wacky new liqueur called "Qi", made with smoky Lapsang Souchong tea, adds Bourbon, Peychaud's and orange bitters and a few kumquats and comes up with a cocktail called the Memere. Fond as I am of my Earl Grey infused gin, I'm wondering if I'll ever end up with a bottle of something as off-the-wall as this stuff, but I guess we'll have to see. Maybe I can find a 50ml of it somewhere. The drink sounds intriguing, though, full of bitters as it is. [ Link to today's entries ]
Cocktail of the day. We've got an inadvertent theme going this week -- whiskey-based cocktails that are closely related to one another and yet very distinctly flavored. We were back to Irish whiskey last night with this entry from Gary Regan's The Joy of Mixology. Lovely drink, and a very close cousin (if not sibling) of my own St. Dominic's Preview. The whiskey was once again Tullamore Dew, the bitters Regans', and the vermouth Martini & Rossi. The recipe specified a garnish of a green maraschino cherry, which visually is in keeping with the theme of this cocktail. Unfortunately green maraschino cherries are macerated in a mint syrup and taste absolutely vile, and fortunately we didn't have any. A red one was substituted. Use a green one if you can find one that isn't minty-fresh.
Up the Dubs! (Well, cocktail-wise, anyway. If I cared about such things I'd be a Galway man. Actually, on the rare opportunities I get to do so I love watching hurling; it's really exciting.) Hmm ... do I need to invent a cocktail called "The Galwegian"? I'm shocked, shocked to find that there are drunk people in this bar! Bushland's latest absurdity. "So the next step," Rick asks, "is sending undercover agents into Olive Garden to arrest people for being fat?" You ordered the Fettuccine Alfredo with extra cream sauce, ma'am ... you're under arrest.
I have a big problem with this. Wes put it perfectly: "What business is it of the state if I'm intoxicated in a bar (an establishment that, hello, has a license to sell alcohol), as long as I don't drive drunk or otherwise injure someone or cause property damage? Since when has the 'public' part of 'public drunkenness' been interpreted to include the interior of a privately owned bar? At this rate, we'll have to turn them all back into clubs and charge a nominal membership fee so they can be considered 'private.'" I'm all for the return of the speakeasy, if it'll keep these kinds of absurd intrusions at bay. Look, I drink (although rarely to excess). I enjoy alcohol, I consume it responsibly and usually enjoy a cocktail when I get home from work, or a glass of wine with dinner. That said, I'm no fan of obnoxious drunks. I'm all for preventing injury or death perpetrated by a drunk behind the wheel, and this is why a bartender is legally mandated to stop serving someone who's obviously intoxicated. The problem is, if a person can't even have one too many in a bar and stay there safely while he or she drinks water or soda to sober up before leaving, i.e. going out in public, without some idiot cop coming up to said person in a bar and forcing them to take a breathalyzer test for sitting on a barstool while intoxicated, then this goes too far. It's a little too much like the "Precrime" cops in Minority Report. Where do draw the line? If you're in a bar and have had two drinks within an hour, you're probably above the .08 BAC that's the cutoff for being too drunk to drive. Can these cops arrest you in a bar for that, or are they looking only for people with lampshades on their heads? Where do they draw the line? I don't like it. [ Link to today's entries ]
Cocktail of the day. I thought I had posted this drink before, but an internal search reveals no mentions on Looka! ... weird. It's an old favorite of ours, and we had a couple last night. It's listed in CocktailDB, albeit with no notes as to its origin, but we first found it at Robert Hess' DrinkBoy. The brands we used for the first three ingredients were Eagle Rare 10 Year Old, Maraska and Regans' No. 6, respectively.
It was, of course, the inspiration for Wes wanting to create his first original cocktail, in hopes that (at least at one or two bars) he'd be able to walk up to the bar and say, "Bartender, I'd like a Footloose, and my friend here will have a Fancy-Free." Ah, maybe one day. Chowhound gets bought. If you hit the main page of one of the best food sites on the web, the beloved Chowhound, you'll see the startling news that they've been bought out by CNET (more here.) The Chief Hounds seem excited, and after a moment's thought I'm excited too. Chowhound, due to its always having been a homegrown effort, had really overworked, lousy software, and I hated having to load literally 2MB of posts on one page before I could read anything. (I subscribe to the weekly Los Angeles ChowNews to get the digest of the best stuff.)
Bravo. I hope all the great Houndfolk who've been running this site for so long got a pile of money and a living out of this, and I can't wait to see how the new site will look. Let's keep our fingers crossed that it all goes well. (Hmm, I wonder if they'll keep charging $30/year for ChowNews.) Glencreosote and other Scots whiskies. I'm still very early in my journey to learn about Scots whisky (a term some seem to prefer to "Scotch" these days), as I've historically been more of an Irish, Bourbon and rye man. My Scotch collectoin is small but not too bad -- some Glenmorangie, Dalwhinnie (which is quite good), Compass Box Hedonism and Orangerie (the latter being a Scots whisky and orange liqueur, actually), Glenlivet 12 Year Old, the blended Famous Grouse and a bottle of 10 Year Old Laphroaig (only 1/4 ounce of which I've used, in a Dreamy Dorini Smoking Martini from when Wes and I spent New Year's Eve at home three years ago, watching movies and getting drunk on Audrey Saunders cocktails) which I am not yet qualified to drink neat. What I should probably do is attend more whisky tastings. Eric Felden of the Wall Street Journal (not typically my favorite paper, but in this instance we've at least got tippling in common) visits the Scots Malt Whisky Society in Edinburgh for a tasting. (Read and/or save the page soon, as this link will rot in less than a week.)
I like the flowers, but I might have to learn to appreciate the solvents. (Mmmmm, neeps and barbecued cat.) Cooking for dummies. Sadly, we are now afflicted by the dumbing down of cooking.
I seem to have missed this distressing phenomenon, as I come from a culture of people who cook and because I generally don't make recipes that come from places like Kraft or Betty Crocker (usually heavy with their own processed products). I have gotten occasional emails from people reading my recipes, asking what it means to sauté something; I just assumed they were anomalous dumbshits. (Okay, just kidding. Sorta.) Seriously, if you're going to cook, you can get a paperback copy of a basic cookbook like The Joy of Cooking for just a few bucks. Why would one try to do anything without learning a single thing about how to do it properly? Gee, I think I'll take up simple auto mechanics, but I won't bother to learn what a spark plug is or how to drain oil from an engine. Word of advice -- if you're unfamiliar with a culinary term you come across in a recipe, remember that (as in so many other situations) Google Is Your Friend. Organic food vs. local food. Some very interesting points raised in this Slate article -- while singing the praises of organic food stores like Whole Foods, there's more to think about when you look more closely at what they offer.
I've always been a little suspicious of the whole "organic" thing anyway -- more often than not "organic" is a synonym for "expensive", and although we still get our bi-weekly delivery from Organic Express (primarily for convenience), we often find the quality of the produce from the neighborhood Albertson's on the corner to be superior for certain items. I'm really big on local produce and small farmers, and one of the best ways to support and take advantage of that is to visit your local farmer's market, something I wish we did more often. [ Link to today's entries ]
St. Joseph's Day in New Orleans was yesterday, and the altars are back great form. Always a big holiday among the large Sicilian community in New Orleans and those around them, St. Joseph's Day also meant that my mom and grandmother would bring home a sack full of goodies, mostly Italian cookies and pastries, plus a "lucky bean" so that the pantry would never be bare. Although I've left Catholicism behind, I still like this holiday. Poppy's been writing about her participation in St. Joseph's Day activities (plus here, here and here. Don't miss her photo set of the St. Joseph's altars she visited, and have a look at this "virtual St. Joseph's altar" featuring a pile of recipes for Italian dishes. Yesterday was also Super Sunday -- did anyone go see some Indians? Saving Broadmoor. David Winkler-Schmit of South Prieur Street writes about how he and his neighbors are determined to rebuild and restore their flooded New Orleans neighborhood, after seeing that the Bring New Orleans Back Commission saw their future as a big green circle (i.e., future parkland). Cocktail of the day. Because you're going to need a drink before continuing to read today's posts. This one, a very tasty Manhattan variation, came from The Old Waldorf-Astoria Bar Book. For best results, use a high-quality, spicy sweet vermouth like Carpano's Punt E Mes or Antica Formula, and Regans' Orange Bitters No. 6.
Yum. Your tax dollars at work, part 8,617. Rather, your tax dollars at waste:
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