I've been cleaning out my iphone photo roll and came across some great shots that made me swoon, laugh, and shake my head at how good this stuff was. This year I got to go to my first LSU game in Baton Rouge, and although I probably lost a small percentage of my hearing, I had a great time. And the jambalaya was great! We're also enjoying some shucking-good oysters these days. Come visit!
Creole Creamery: knock your flip-flops off good!
The other day I was behind a lady buying two full loaves of po-boy bread, and the check-out guy said, "You making some po-boys?" And she said, "Naw, I'm gonna feed the ducks." You should've seen the sad look on that man's face. But I started dreaming about duck po-boys...because I had Po-Boy Fest on the brain! Seriously, I'd been waiting for it for months, because I'd never made it out to that particular fest. The whole thing lasts a mere 9 hours, so you've got to get up and get yourself there, and the earlier the better, before the booths sell out. I went looking for po-boys I don't see on menus, for some new experiences. I could only handle two, but they were mighty tasty. Below, One's pate and pickled vegetables (rich & vinegary):
This gorgeous woman is my great-aunt Valentina Wilkinson Sanford Duckworth--or as we like to call her, Aunt Rudy. She's 99 and a half, and has spent most of her life in New Orleans. She's pictured here with her boyfriend Joe Minacapelli of Slidell. My grandmother, Frances, was Rudy's youngest sister; they had another sister, Florence, who passed away a number of years ago. Rudy is the oldest and the last surviving, and she recently moved back to the New Orleans area after a long stint in Cleveland, Oklahoma, where she moved to open a needlework business with Frances.
The needlework business was sort of a "retirement project" for the sisters, and they did well with it for about 10 years, but I don't mean to imply that once Rudy left New Orleans for a small town in Oklahoma, her life somehow quieted down. In fact, once she joined up with Frances, Rudy started to travel the world. My grandmother had taught foreign languages in high school, and had become the kind of French teacher who took a group of seniors to Europe each summer. She'd caught an insatiable travel bug, and when the needlework store started taking off, she and Rudy booked passage to Europe, Scandinavia, the U.S.S.R. (it still was, then), China, Australia, Israel, and places in between, with the dual itineraries of heavy-duty sightseeing and textile purchasing. But let me not forget eating--they loved to try the local specialties, no matter how unusual. So when Rudy talks about restaurants, she's speaking with a wealth of experience, from cooking during the Depression to 13-course meals in Moscow--but you can tell that her favorite memories are from times she had in the grand restaurants of New Orleans.
Because New Orleans (and all of Louisiana) is such a melting pot, and because Cajun and Creole dishes often have similar roots, including French, Spanish, Italian, African, Haitian, Cuban, German, and Native American, some of the distinctions between what's Creole food and what's Cajun food can be hard to make. In his book My New Orleans, chef John Besh explains that Creole gumbo pays tribute to a "rich variety of cultures and ingredients, whereas Cajun gumbo evolved as the essence of peasant food, a way to feed a large number of people making the very best of whatever meager ingredients were at hand," and John Folse's Encyclopedia of Cajun & Creole Cuisine extolls Creole cuisine as a "more sophisticated cousin" to Cajun cooking. Explanations like these work perfectly when comparing elegant Creole dishes to rustic cast-iron Cajun stews, but the waters grow murkier near a pot of jambalaya.
I have two wonderful places to tell you about, that really couldn't be more different. Let's start with Dooky Chase Restaurant, located in the Treme neighborhood of New Orleans and headed by chef Leah Chase (read an interview with her here). Dooky Chase specializes in Creole cooking and offers its own well-loved versions of city classics like gumbo, red beans and rice, and fried chicken. But one of its most special events is offering gumbo z'herb (pronounced "zairb") on Holy Thursday (known as Maundy Thursday to yankees). Gumbo z'herb is basically a stew of greens and every kind of meat imaginable. That's right--just because it's green don't mean it's vegetarian. It is, however, delicious and light, and so full of vitamin power that you just might find yourself invigorated enough to do some spring cleaning after a bowl of it. Holy Thursday at Dooky Chase is all about gumbo z'herb, fried chicken, and cornbread, and you must have a reservation if you'd like to eat it in their gorgeous dining room--some families arrive in packs of 12 or greater. The good news is that you can also call in a take-out order, which is what we did:
Red beans and rice is one of the quintessential New Orleans dishes. You eat them on Monday--every Monday, if possible--after cooking them on Sunday and soaking them on Saturday night. Monday was "wash day" in New Orleans, and became the traditional day for eating red beans because they could be cooked all day with little fuss while doing other chores. I love to make huge batches and freeze them in meal-size portions, so each Monday morning I can set one container out to thaw and dinner is planned. Make up some fresh rice, heat the beans, and get some pickled onions...oh yes, the pickled onions. More on those later.
includes a welcomingly brief explanation of the author’s apprenticeship and tenure writing about the city’s most important industry, and quickly gets to the good stuff--the food. But Fitzmorris’s friendships (and rejections) behind the scenes provide backstory vital to understanding the intensity of the most formative years of New Orleans restaurantism--like when Paul Prudhomme’s blackened redfish hit the scene and so many cast-iron skillets nationwide--or when Prudhomme asked onetime pal Fitzmorris to stay out of his restaurant because of “controversial” discussions held on his radio talk-show--whether K-Paul’s should, in fact, offer diners more selection than their usual two wines. 
