appetites

The Windsor Court hotel has recently re-opened its formal dining room, and given it a new name – the Grill Room is now the Louisiana Grill.
The Grill Room was consistently one of the best restaurants in New Orleans. It was always high-end, but had remarkable food, service, and wine. I was apprehensive about the kind of changes the hotel might make, but if my lunch this past week was an indication, my fears were unfounded.
Physically, the restaurant’s dining rooms are largely un-changed. The entrance has been moved to one side, but the room otherwise appeared the same. The “Louisiana” aspect to the menu is not any more obvious than the physical changes. The emphasis is still on excellent ingredients, presented artfully. There is a gumbo on the lunch appetizer menu, along with raw oysters ($11 a dozen, and they’re Malpeques, rather than Gulf), as well as turtle soup.
The Windsor Court salad is still on the menu, and there is a sandwich of deep fried soft-shell crab with smoked salmon, sliced egg, “peppercress” and tomato and tarragon mayonaise ($20) that has something of a New Orleans angle.
The entrees, on the other hand, had little discernable connection to Louisiana. That’s not a criticism; just the opposite. I like the fact that there is at least one restaurant in town that uses the finest products available worldwide in addition to local goods.
The restaurant has a $22 chef’s daily menu consisting of three courses, with two choices for each. The menu when I visited featured pan roasted scallops, with a garlic puree, porcini mushrooms, and a red wine jus for one appetizer, and a soup of chanterelle mushrooms, white beans, and olive oil as the other.
The entree choices were a blanquette of grouper, scallops, and arctic char, with fava beans, baby turnips, and Riesling sauce, or crisp-roasted free-range pork belly, with Louisiana peaches, caramelized endive, “Southern” grits, Boudin Noir, and marjoram jus.
For dessert I had to choose between a strawberry and lavender shortcake, and a soup of summer berries with fromage blanc ice cream.
After I was served an amuse of roasted butternut squash soup with parmesan and truffle cream, I started with the scallops. The first thing I noticed was that this was one hell of a big appetizer. Three very large scallops, arranged in a triangle around a oblong mound of garlic puree, large, tender pieces of porcini, and a light, brown sauce.
The scallops were cooked perfectly. Too often when I order scallops, the chef has seared the exterior, but left the interior completely raw. I prefer the interior to be just lightly cooked – still tender, but with a bit of texture. The scallops were topped with fried parsley leaves and coarse salt. The porcini pieces were fantastic; almost meltingly tender, and with a wonderful, earthy flavor. I don’t often see fresh porcini, so that was a treat. The puree was very, very mildly garlic flavored. I am actually not completely certain that there wasn’t some potato in the mix, but I think not. Overall the dish was very good, very rich, and very filling.
The entree followed the same pattern, except that the presentation was even more elaborate. Two, two-inch square pieces of pork belly at either end of the plate, with three cylinders of boudin noir in between, each topped with a small, cooked peach slice. All set over a bed of grits, with chanterelle mushrooms, batons of bacon, tiny pearl onions, and flash-fried celery leaves in the foreground. The caramelized belgian endive was placed to the rear of the oval plate. The whole presentation was pretty cool.
The boudin was very soft, and had a bit of spice. The pork belly was served skin side up; the skin was crisped like crackling, and if the chef hadn’t already made horizontal incisions into the skin prior to cooking, it would have been difficult to cut. As it was, turning it on its side and cutting vertically through the pre-cut areas gave me pretty uniform slices of the pork belly, with all the distinct layers present in each bite. The pork, aside from the skin, was as tender as well-cooked ribs, with some of the fat remaining to give it a tremendous richness.
The “Southern” grits, weren’t. The grits was studded with bacon, and flavored with truffle oil. It was a subtle flavor, but it was enough to notice. At first I was put off by the amount of bacon in the grits, because it turned what I’m used to eating as a pure starch into something much richer, but I ended up enjoying it.
The chanterelles and pearl onions were yet another layer to the dish. The onions had been poached in red wine and/or red wine vinegar, and added a very welcome acidity to the dish. So did the celery leaves. They were crisp, and the slight bitterness was another good contrast. They were also arranged towards the front of the plate, and though I’m not doing justice to the visuals, you’ll have to trust me that they looked great in the foreground of the dish.
I like Belgian endive, and the kitchen did a great job with them. They were poached (in white wine) then cut in half down the lenght, and the cut sides were caramelized. The result was a softened texture, with acidity from the wine, bitterness from the endive, and a touch of sweetness from the caramelization.
Dessert was very good. The shortcake was flavored subtly with lavender, and the berries (though out of season) were good. The dish was served with a strawberry granite, and a tart sauce, along with some whipped cream (that I think had some creme fraische as well).
I was stuffed by the end of the meal, and though $22 is not exactly cheap, it was an outstanding meal. Considering that the lunch entree prices run between $16 and $24, it was also as good a deal as you can get at the Louisiana Grill.
I’m glad the Windsor Court hasn’t abandoned the kind of restaurant that has made the Grill Room famous.

The Windsor Court hotel has recently re-opened its formal dining room, and given it a new name – the Grill Room is now the Louisiana Grill.
The Grill Room was consistently one of the best restaurants in New Orleans. It was always high-end, but had remarkable food, service, and wine. I was apprehensive about the kind of changes the hotel might make, but if my lunch this past week was an indication, my fears were unfounded.
Physically, the restaurant’s dining rooms are largely un-changed. The entrance has been moved to one side, but the room otherwise appeared the same. The “Louisiana” aspect to the menu is not any more obvious than the physical changes. The emphasis is still on excellent ingredients, presented artfully. There is a gumbo on the lunch appetizer menu, along with raw oysters ($11 a dozen, and they’re Malpeques, rather than Gulf), as well as turtle soup.
The Windsor Court salad is still on the menu, and there is a sandwich of deep fried soft-shell crab with smoked salmon, sliced egg, “peppercress” and tomato and tarragon mayonaise ($20) that has something of a New Orleans angle.
The entrees, on the other hand, had little discernable connection to Louisiana. That’s not a criticism; just the opposite. I like the fact that there is at least one restaurant in town that uses the finest products available worldwide in addition to local goods.
The restaurant has a $22 chef’s daily menu consisting of three courses, with two choices for each. The menu when I visited featured pan roasted scallops, with a garlic puree, porcini mushrooms, and a red wine jus for one appetizer, and a soup of chanterelle mushrooms, white beans, and olive oil as the other.
The entree choices were a blanquette of grouper, scallops, and arctic char, with fava beans, baby turnips, and Riesling sauce, or crisp-roasted free-range pork belly, with Louisiana peaches, caramelized endive, “Southern” grits, Boudin Noir, and marjoram jus.
For dessert I had to choose between a strawberry and lavender shortcake, and a soup of summer berries with fromage blanc ice cream.
After I was served an amuse of roasted butternut squash soup with parmesan and truffle cream, I started with the scallops. The first thing I noticed was that this was one hell of a big appetizer. Three very large scallops, arranged in a triangle around a oblong mound of garlic puree, large, tender pieces of porcini, and a light, brown sauce.
The scallops were cooked perfectly. Too often when I order scallops, the chef has seared the exterior, but left the interior completely raw. I prefer the interior to be just lightly cooked – still tender, but with a bit of texture. The scallops were topped with fried parsley leaves and coarse salt. The porcini pieces were fantastic; almost meltingly tender, and with a wonderful, earthy flavor. I don’t often see fresh porcini, so that was a treat. The puree was very, very mildly garlic flavored. I am actually not completely certain that there wasn’t some potato in the mix, but I think not. Overall the dish was very good, very rich, and very filling.
The entree followed the same pattern, except that the presentation was even more elaborate. Two, two-inch square pieces of pork belly at either end of the plate, with three cylinders of boudin noir in between, each topped with a small, cooked peach slice. All set over a bed of grits, with chanterelle mushrooms, batons of bacon, tiny pearl onions, and flash-fried celery leaves in the foreground. The caramelized belgian endive was placed to the rear of the oval plate. The whole presentation was pretty cool.
The boudin was very soft, and had a bit of spice. The pork belly was served skin side up; the skin was crisped like crackling, and if the chef hadn’t already made horizontal incisions into the skin prior to cooking, it would have been difficult to cut. As it was, turning it on its side and cutting vertically through the pre-cut areas gave me pretty uniform slices of the pork belly, with all the distinct layers present in each bite. The pork, aside from the skin, was as tender as well-cooked ribs, with some of the fat remaining to give it a tremendous richness.
The “Southern” grits, weren’t. The grits was studded with bacon, and flavored with truffle oil. It was a subtle flavor, but it was enough to notice. At first I was put off by the amount of bacon in the grits, because it turned what I’m used to eating as a pure starch into something much richer, but I ended up enjoying it.
The chanterelles and pearl onions were yet another layer to the dish. The onions had been poached in red wine and/or red wine vinegar, and added a very welcome acidity to the dish. So did the celery leaves. They were crisp, and the slight bitterness was another good contrast. They were also arranged towards the front of the plate, and though I’m not doing justice to the visuals, you’ll have to trust me that they looked great in the foreground of the dish.
I like Belgian endive, and the kitchen did a great job with them. They were poached (in white wine) then cut in half down the lenght, and the cut sides were caramelized. The result was a softened texture, with acidity from the wine, bitterness from the endive, and a touch of sweetness from the caramelization.
Dessert was very good. The shortcake was flavored subtly with lavender, and the berries (though out of season) were good. The dish was served with a strawberry granite, and a tart sauce, along with some whipped cream (that I think had some creme fraische as well).
I was stuffed by the end of the meal, and though $22 is not exactly cheap, it was an outstanding meal. Considering that the lunch entree prices run between $16 and $24, it was also as good a deal as you can get at the Louisiana Grill.
I’m glad the Windsor Court hasn’t abandoned the kind of restaurant that has made the Grill Room famous.

Technically it’s fall. It hasn’t felt like it yet in New Orleans, but that’s beside the point. Last weekend, at Whole Foods, they had a good deal on boneless chuck roasts. I decided to make a pot roast.
Pot roast is a recipe I have had mixed success with in the past. When I first started cooking, my pot roasts tended to be tough and dry. Either I cooked them too long, or more frequently, too briefly. Now that I’m more comfortable with the process, I’ve found it’s pretty foolproof. At least, if you have enough patience to spend the time that’s sometimes required.
The basic recipe I followed was from Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything, (though I added a piece of porcini) but it could just as well have come from a dozen other cookbooks. I was actually paying attention to most of the ingredients I used, so I will provide something more of a recipe than usual.
1 3lb. boneless chuck roast, tied
1 medium yellow onion, chopped (around 2 cups)
2 carrots, chopped (around 1 and 1/2 cups)
1 stalk celery, chopped (around 1 cup)
2-4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
1 bay leaf
herb or spice rub (around 2-3 tbs.)
salt/pepper
1/2 cup red wine
1 and 1/2 cups stock
2″ piece of dried porcini, rinsed, then soaked in 1/2 cup hot water for 10 minutes
olive oil
Using a narrow, thin bladed knife, make incisions in the roast on both top and bottom, and insert the garlic cloves. (save any leftover garlic slices) Season the meat with salt and pepper, then rub with whatever mixture of herbs and/or spices you like. I used a mixed, dried “poultry seasoning,” which was comprised of dried, ground thyme, marjoram, sage, rosemary, black pepper, and nutmeg.
Heat around 2 tbs. olive oil in a large dutch-oven type pot on medium-high heat. Brown the roast on all sides, and remove it from the pan. Add the chopped vegetables, along with any leftover garlic, and saute until they’ve softened, and taken some color.
Deglaze with the wine, and reduce a bit, then add the porcini, its soaking liquid, and all but around 1/4 cup of the stock. Return the roast to the pot along with the bay leaf, and cook on very low heat, turning every 20 minutes or so, until it’s tender. How long that takes will depend largely on the shape of your roast. If it’s long and thin, it will cook much faster than a larger, more compact roast. Count on it taking as little as 1 and 1/2 hours, or as long as 4. The key is to check it periodically (which is pretty easy to do, since you’re flipping it pretty often. When you can insert a knife into the meat without much resistance, it’s done.
Remove the roast, and let it rest in foil while you reduce the liquid in the pot to a sauce. If you want, you can add chopped, fresh herbs at the end, and/or put the liquid and remaining vegetables through a food mill to make a smooth gravy.
On the night I made the pot roast, I served it with rice. The next night, to accompany some chicken thighs I marinated in orange juice, garlic, onion, parsley, and red pepper, I made some potato pancakes.
I got the recipe for the pancakes from Elizabeth Lambert Ortiz’ The Book of Latin American Cooking. The basic recipe I used is Ecuadorian, Llapingachos (trans: the gachos which llap), though I did modify it a bit. The basic recipe calls for you to mix mashed potatoes with sauteed onion and a little butter. You let the mixture cool, then form balls of potato, into which you insert some grated cheddar cheese before sealing and shaping the ball into a patty. You chill the patties in the fridge for at least 15 minutes before shallow-frying them in lard or butter.
I added a couple of tablespoons of cream to two mashed Idaho potatoes, and substituted shallots for the onion and gruyerre for the cheddar. Instead of inserting the cheese into the center of a ball of potato, I mixed the cheese into the potatoes before spreading the mixture onto a sheet pan in a 1 inch layer and cooling. I cut the “dough” into roughly 3 inch squares, lightly floured them, and fried them in peanut oil on high heat.
They turn out crispy on the outside, and very light on the interior. It’s something of a trick to turn them, because after all, you’re pretty much just frying mashed potatoes, and the patties have a tendency to soften up. But if you learn to fiddle with them as little as possible, you get the hang of it quickly.
I only made a couple of the cakes to eat with the chicken, but tonight, they worked really well alongside the leftover pot roast which actually improved both in taste and texture during the two days I held it in the fridge.

In an update to his prior post, Clay Shirky clarifies what he meant. He didn’t mean to say that one person’s opinion was always inferior to the opinion of many (demonstrated through “collaborative filtering” such as Zagat’s survey). What he meant was that where the issue is “is this restaurant better than another restaurant,” or “is this restaurant one worthy of my patronage,” collaborative filtering is the preferable method. At least, I think that’s what he meant.
He might be right, if the template he was using to demonstrate his point was something along the lines of a collective weblog. But it’s not. What he’s using to demonstrate the superiority of collective filtering is a survey which condenses the information provided by numerous individuals into simple, concise data. That data can certainly be useful, but as Shirky points out, it can’t replace expertise.
Where I think he really misses the point, though, is in his view of what a restaurant critic does; or more precisely, how a restaurant critic does what he does. Shirky is right that William Grimes is paid to distinguish between restaurants — to provide readers with a way to gauge whether they want to eat at a particular restaurant or not. In a very real sense, he is comparing one restaurant to another; not directly, but certainly cumulatively. When he gives three stars to a restaurant, one should safely be able to assume that a restaurant given two stars is, in some way, inferior. (Grimes might quibble, along the lines I did in the post below, that comparing a three star restaurant to a two star restaurant is comparing apples and oranges, of course).
Grimes’ job, ultimately, is to make recommendations. But the manner in which he does that is what’s important, and it’s what Zagat’s can’t (and doesn’t try to) compete with. Grimes is a capable food writer, and when he reviews a restaurant, his intent is to provide a sense of what the restaurant is like. Principally the food, but also the overall experience. It is precisely through this kind of expertise that Grimes helps us find, “a restaurant that is consistently a pleasure to eat at…” There is really no substitute for that expertise, at least, if you value it to begin with.
In that sense, Zagat’s, and its legion of amateur reporters, are not in competition with Grimes at all. There is no way Zagat’s can, in the space it alots to each restaurant, compete with Grimes in terms of conveying a sense of the restaurant. And for this reader, that’s important.
What Zagat’s does instead is valuable, but it’s not the same. Shirky thinks that Grimes’ revisiting of the Grocery was prompted by his fear of competition. I think it was prompted by the incongruity of the rating the relatively unknown restaurant got in Zagat’s compared with his review. That may be a pretty fine distinction, but I think it’s important enough to note.
I also read the re-review differently; or at least, I read the import of the re-review differently. I think Shirky betrays something of a bias when he ends his paraphrasing of Grimes’ review with “…though it lacks the haughty grandeur of La Salope en Papillote over on Park and 63rd…” Aside from that condescension, I think he got the heart of what Grimes was saying. I’ll do my own paraprhse of the review: “It was rough when it opened; it’s gotten better, and for what it does, it’s nearly flawless. Still, it isn’t really appropriate to compare The Grocery to Daniel, or Nobu, because they are in a different class altogether…”
If Grimes had been asked to re-rate the restaurant, I do not think he would have significantly changed his rating. Maybe another star to reflect the improvements he observed, but that’s it. The reason is really pretty simple. Given the the system that the NYT employs to review restaurants, a restaurant such as The Grocery is not going to get four stars. Whether Grimes was not tasked with re-rating the restaurant for fear of alienating readers who’d also participated in the Zagat review is another question. I don’t think so, but then I guess I have a different conception of just who reads the NYT food section, and why.

I read an interesting story recently at Many 2 Many, a collective blog (to which I was linked by Instapundit, actually.) The gist of the story was, I think, a general criticism of the media, or perhaps the NYT, using a specific example involving restaurant critics.
Apparently the new Zagat survey of restaurants in New York is out, and one of the most highly rated is a small, husband and wife-run place called the Grocery, which NYT critic William Grimes rated at one star in a recent review. This week, Grimes re-visited the restaurant, and pronounced that it does what it does pretty much perfectly.
He ends the article by noting that what it does is more modest than the food produced at, say, Le Bernardin. He compares the Grocery to a minor league baseball team; noting that even if a minor league team wins all of its games, it’s still not going to compete with the Yankees.
There is also an article by Florence Fabricant that discusses the Zagat guide more generally. Fabricant notes that Zagat is intended as a statistical survey of consumer opinion, that only 100 votes are needed to qualify a restaurant for the “top 50″ rating, and that there is no way to confirm that people commenting on a restaurant in the Zagat guide actually ate there.
The author of the Many 2 Many piece (Clay Shirky) seems to think that these articles are the NYT’s way of defending itself, or explaining how its reviewer could have given the Grocery a rating so different from the Zagat guide’s. Shirky argues that Fabricant’s piece is not so much criticism of the Zagat method, as an ineffective attempt at damage control.

This is not to say that Fabricant

The last two nights, I’ve cooked pasta for dinner. There are a lot of ways to make an improvised meal from things you have on hand, but I find that using pasta is the easiest. There’s very little you can’t use to make a sauce for pasta; in a pinch, a couple cloves of garlic, some cheese, and olive oil will do. But I’ve generally got enough in my pantry and fridge to make things more interesting.
Thursday night I had a social function (so many parties, so little time) after work, and ended up getting home relatively late. My wife and son had already eaten, so I was cooking for myself. I had purchased some arugula at the farmer’s market last weekend, so I thought I’d use that, along with a little bacon.
The sauce is very simple: I chopped a slice of bacon cross-ways into thin strips, and cooked it until it rendered most of its fat in a saucepan. I added some finely diced shallot (though onion would have worked) and some sliced garlicl, and sauteed it until softened. I added some thyme, pepper, some red pepper flakes, a little salt, and then some chicken stock and let it simmer while the water for the pasta boiled.
Where dried pasta is concerned, I like to use imported Italian products that have been pressed through bronze dies; the advertising angle on this kind of pasta is that the dies impart a roughness to the surface of the pasta that helps it hold the sauce. I believe it. I like Rustichella D’Abruzzo, but lately Whole Foods has been selling a similar pasta, organic no less, for a few bucks cheaper, and I’ve enjoyed it.
When I cook pasta, I use a pot I bought at Williams-Sonoma for a song. I was told at the time that the pot was produced in Korea, and that due to upcoming steel tarrifs, they were not expecting new shipments. Whether that was true or not, for somewhere around $40, I bought a pot that rivals All-Clad in construction – a tall, narrow pot that holds 12 quarts of water, with a draining insert, a heavy disk of aluminum sandwiched between stainless steel, and a tempered glass top. If I cook pasta for more than 2 people, I generally use my big-ass Piazza stock pot (18 quarts) but that’s rare.
While the pasta cooked, I tasted the sauce, and added a little sherry vinegar to balance the richness. Just as the pasta was done, I added the arugula to the pan, and let it barely cook before adding the pasta. Finished with some parmesan, it was pretty good.
Tonight, I made pasta again. This time I went to the freezer, where I usually have some tomato sauce on hand. I thought about using some leftover roast chicken, but decided against it, and we ate vegetarian.
I started by sauteeing some minced onion (1/2) and one stalk of finely chopped celery in olive oil, then added a couple cloves of garlic. When the vegetables had softened, I added some sliced kalamata olives, and around a tablespoon of chopped capers, along with some salt and pepper. I let it cook for a few minutes, then added the tomato sauce, and let it simmer while the water came to a boil, and the pasta (sort of large, ribbed ziti) cooked.
To finish, I added the almost-done pasta to the sauce to finish cooking, and splashed on some olive oil. Once again, I topped it with some parmesan.
It was very good, and luckily my son enjoyed it, because I’ve got a good bit left.
For what it’s worth, my standard tomato sauce is very simple. I roast a bunch of halved roma tomatoes for around 30 minutes at 350. While the tomatoes roast, I sautee finely minced onion, celery, and carrot in some olive oil until they’re very, very soft. When the tomatoes have cooked down, I put them and any liquid that’s accumulated in the pan through a food mill, so that I get all the juice and the pulp, but no seeds or skins. I cook the sauce for 10 minutes or so, and season as necessary with salt, pepper, and depending on the time of the year, balsamic vinegar. I try to make this sauce in very large batches, because it’s useful for a lot of things. I also don’t season it with garlic, or herbs, because I can always add those flavors when I use the sauce.

Lunch today at Muriel’s. I’ve walked past it a number of times, but had never eaten there until today. I’m still not overly impressed by their lunch menu, which is a bit too tourist-oriented for my tastes, but the meal was pretty good.
I started with the house salad, which featured fresh greens (frisee, baby romaine, beet leaves, and other assorted winter greens), a few slices of onion, a disk of goat cheese that was warmed, and crusted in bread crumbs, and dressed with an olive-oil sherry vinaigrette. Nothing spectacular, but a good, simple salad. ($4.5)
The only thing on the lunch menu that really caught my eye was the wood-grilled drum, but then my server told me the special: seared sirloin steak with smoked mashed potatoes and zucchini. ($11) The good news first: the steak was cooked perfectly, with a seared exterior, but a medium rare middle. It came with a red wine sauce, which if not daring, is appropriate. The potatoes badly needed some cream, or butter, or something. There was a subtle smoked flavor, but it really didn’t make up for the overall blandness. The zucchini were grilled, and otherwise untouched, which left them inert. Both the potatoes and the zucchini got to the table slightly above room temperature.
The restaurant itself is a pleasant enough space. It’s located right off Jackson Square, across from both the Cabildo and the Pontalba appartments. The dining room in which I sat had red walls and drapery, narrow white columns, and burgundy leather chairs. The service was very good. Attentive, but not a bother.
The mis-fires aside, the meal was good enough to warrant a second visit. Though the next time I go, I may try and shoot for dinner, as that menu looks more interesting.

Lunch today at Muriel’s. I’ve walked past it a number of times, but had never eaten there until today. I’m still not overly impressed by their lunch menu, which is a bit too tourist-oriented for my tastes, but the meal was pretty good.
I started with the house salad, which featured fresh greens (frisee, baby romaine, beet leaves, and other assorted winter greens), a few slices of onion, a disk of goat cheese that was warmed, and crusted in bread crumbs, and dressed with an olive-oil sherry vinaigrette. Nothing spectacular, but a good, simple salad. ($4.5)
The only thing on the lunch menu that really caught my eye was the wood-grilled drum, but then my server told me the special: seared sirloin steak with smoked mashed potatoes and zucchini. ($11) The good news first: the steak was cooked perfectly, with a seared exterior, but a medium rare middle. It came with a red wine sauce, which if not daring, is appropriate. The potatoes badly needed some cream, or butter, or something. There was a subtle smoked flavor, but it really didn’t make up for the overall blandness. The zucchini were grilled, and otherwise untouched, which left them inert. Both the potatoes and the zucchini got to the table slightly above room temperature.
The restaurant itself is a pleasant enough space. It’s located right off Jackson Square, across from both the Cabildo and the Pontalba appartments. The dining room in which I sat had red walls and drapery, narrow white columns, and burgundy leather chairs. The service was very good. Attentive, but not a bother.
The mis-fires aside, the meal was good enough to warrant a second visit. Though the next time I go, I may try and shoot for dinner, as that menu looks more interesting.

When I was a kid I didn’t like red beans, or any beans for that matter. It’s only been later in life that I’ve grown to appreciate what most generations of New Orleanians, rich and poor, have known. That red beans and rice (with sausage, of course) is a good meal at a good price. It’s a Monday tradition in New Orleans, and it’s a good one.
When I cook red beans, I do a couple of things differently than some people. First, I’ve been using poblano chiles rather than green bell peppers for the last few years. It’s in this dish that I really started noticing the difference in flavor between poblanos and green bell peppers; the bell peppers – even organic – just seemed to have no flavor. Whereas the poblanos have a lot of flavor without too much heat.
The second thing I do a bit differently is that I add a couple of sliced, smoked ham hocks to the beans during the entire cooking period, and I add the (smoked) sausage during the last 45 minutes. I do this so that the hocks wil give up some flavor and gelatin to the dish, and to avoid over-cooking the sausage.
For one pound of dried red kidney beans, you will want:
1 onion, diced
1-2 stalks celery, diced
2 poblano chiles, seeded and diced (or 1-2 green bell peppers)
3-8 cloves garlic, chopped (depends on the size of the cloves, and how much you like garlic)
2 1″ slices of smoked ham hock (around 1/3 pound with bone, blanched for 10 minutes in boiling water)
1 lb. or so of smoked sausage (or andouille, etc.)
salt/pepper
1 tsp dried thyme
1 tsp. oil (peanut, corn, etc.)
water
Sort and rinse the beans.
Heat the oil in a large pot, then saute the vegetables until softened (10 minutes) on medium-low heat. Add the ham hocks, and continue cooking for 5 minutes or so, flip the ham hocks, and cook another 5 minutes.
Add the beans and thyme to the pot, then cover by one inch with water. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to low and simmer for 45 minutes. Add the sausage, cutting it into 6″ pieces. Continue to cook on low heat for 30 minutes, then start testing the beans. Continue cooking until the beans are tender, (likely around 1 and 1/2 hours total), then season with salt and pepper, and use a wooden spoon to stir some of the cooked beans into the pot liquor to thicken it.
Serve with (real) rice.
I tend to overdo the sausage, but then again, the real joy of red beans and rice with sausage is the sausage, so…

I took some work to Bayona this week for lunch. The weather has been tolerable lately, and I always seem to get a great deal of work done when dining alone, so I took the opportunity to walk into the Quarter on Tuesday. I considered a few other places, some closer than Bayona (a 10 minute walk from my office) but I had a craving for a particular dish that’s always on the menu at Bayona.
That dish is an appetizer, the goat cheese crouton with mushrooms in Madeira cream ($6.5). Chef Spicer has a bakery that provides bread to, as far as I know, all of the restaurants with which she’s associated. One of the breads is a multigrain, with sunflower seeds on the crust. The crouton is comprised of this multigrain bread, cut into triangles, and toasted with goat cheese on top. The croutons are topped with a sauce of “wild” mushrooms in a Madeira cream sauce, and the combination is fantastic. The coarse textured bread stands up to the richness of the sauce, and contrasts to the silky texture of the mushrooms (shiitake, and oyster this time, I think). The tartness of the goat cheese also balances the cream in the sauce. It’s one of those menu items that you just can’t seem to not order. Or, at least, one that I can’t seem to not order.
Bayona always has at least three daily specials: an omelete, a pasta, and a fish preparation. The fish this time was a roasted mahi mahi, with a truffled buerre blanc, roasted fingerling potatoes, haricots vert and an herb salad ($13).
Given that Chef Spicer rarely lets me down when it comes to fish, I went with the mahi mahi, and I wasn’t disappointed. The fish, a large, rectangular cut, was perfectly cooked. Barely seared on the outside, and still rare in the very interior. The “herb salad” was a small portion of mixed herbs (dill, chervil, parsley, and oregano) seasoned with lemon, and placed atop the fish. I could have used a larger portion of the herbs, but that’s a minor gripe. The whole dish came to the table smelling of truffles, which in my book is a good thing. The sauce wasn’t as sharp as I expected, but it was rich, and that worked well with the fish.
What really stood out were the roasted fingerling potatoes. The potatoes were on the small side as “new” potatoes go, and were split, then roasted with the skins on, and obviously at a high temperature. The result was a brown, crisp crust where the potatoes had been cut in half, and a paper-thin skin covering sweet, waxy potato flesh. With the truffle sauce, they were really delicious.
My wife has decided to go on a diet. And to that end, she has requested that I cook chicken for her. So over the weekend, I poached a whole, small frying chicken with a couple stalks of celery, a large carrot, an onion, and a turnip. In addition to the chicken meat that resulted, I got around 2 quarts of chicken broth. Because the chicken only cooked for around an hour, and at a very, very low temperature, and because I only continued to cook the broth with the carcass and bones (after removing the meat from the chicken) for another hour, the broth was very light in texture. But it did still have a pretty good flavor.
Last night, I used some of the dark meat from the chicken to make something of a cross between a jambalaya and a pulao. What I did was pretty simple. I sauteed one half of an onion, diced, with three cloves of chopped garlic, and a diced poblano chile in some olive oil until softened. I added some thyme, cumin, and a bit of ground coriander seed, along with a good bit of hungarian paprika, then a half cup of rice. I stirred the mixture for a bit, then added around 2/3 cup of chopped, cooked dark meat chicken, and one cup of the chicken broth. I let it cook on very low heat for twenty minutes, then let it rest for another 10.
The result turned out pretty well. The poblano really added something peppery to the dish, though it wasn’t really spicy at all. I’ve really turned to using poblanos in place of green bell peppers where I can, because I’m finding more and more that bell peppers just don’t have as much flavor. And now that we’re apparently breeding spiciness out of peppers like the poblano and the jalapeno, it seems like a good idea to take advantage of what flavor remains in those peppers – which is considerable.
As for rice in general, I have been using Ellis Stansel’s Rice for the last decade or so. The rice, which I presume is a variety of basmati, is called “popcorn rice” and I’ve had it since I was a child at my Grandparents’ home in Amite, Louisiana. The rice really does smell like popcorn when it’s cooking, and when it’s done, it’s like very little else I’ve ever tasted where rice is concerned. The beauty of it is that the aroma really doesn’t interfere with any other component of your meal. It’s just good.
I have written about cooking rice before, but it’s something that’s really near to my heart, and I figure it won’t kill anyone if I write a bit more about the subject. If I’m mistaken, and you’re tired of reading about rice, then the rest of this post is probably not for you.
For as long as I can remember, rice was the starch of choice in my house. My fondest memories of food were from my Grandmother Ruth’s kitchen in the aforementioned metropolis of Amite. She was an incredible cook; the kind of person who’d cooked good food so long that it was second nature to her. And she, too, served rice with just about every meal that I can remember.
And the rice was good, too. Nothing like the “rice” that passes in most cafeterias, and even some restaurants these days. If all you’ve ever had is “converted” rice, or “instant” rice, then you’ve never had rice, let me tell you. What really chaps my ass about these “shortcut” rices is that the “shortcut” is all of about 5 minutes. If you really can’t spare the extra five minutes or so that cooking real rice takes, then I feel sorry for you.
Start to finish, cooking real rice takes about 27 minutes. Here’s how it goes. You measure the rice. You measure the water. (2 parts water or other liquid to 1 part rice) You boil the water in a heavy saucepan with a tight-fitting lid. You add the rice, and a pinch of salt, swirl once, cover, then reduce the heat to the lowest setting possible, and let it cook, undisturbed for 20 minutes. Turn the heat off, let the rice rest for 5 minutes, and fluff it with a fork.
That’s it. The resulting rice will be a little sticky, but that’s exactly what you want, as far as I’m concerned. I absolutely can’t stand those “converted” rices that come out with each individual rice grain separate and apart from the rest, with a bit of what I guess can be charitably described as al dente bite. To me, that texture is just wrong, and the taste of those “instant” rices is just off.
If you prefer that the individual grains of rice be separate, there’s a very simple method to achieve that result. Start by melting some butter or heating some oil in the pot in which you’ll cook the rice. Add the rice and stir it until each grain is coated with the fat. Add the water, bring it to a boil, season with a pinch of salt, swirl, then cover. Cook on low heat for 20 minutes; let it rest, and then fluff it with a fork. That simple, additional step will give you rice that’s not sticky, but that still puffs up enough to give you the texture of real rice.
As for the rice you should use, go for long grain. It doesn’t have to be “popcorn” rice by any means. It doesn’t have to be basmati, and it doesn’t have to be expensive.
I have a healthy dose of skepticism about the “slow food” movement’s application to everyday life for average people, even if I tend to follow its tenets myself. But I guess where rice is concerned, I don’t see any utility to the “shortcuts” promised by Uncle Ben. Damn his black heart to hell.
Or something.