The New Skills Part Two (and full disclosure about timing)

The New Skills, part 2, Oysters Katheryn

Hello, and welcome to the second installment of the series in which I learn a new dish every week for a year. For this week's installment, in celebration of Mardi Gras, I am showcasing a New Orleans dish I have always enjoyed, Oysters Katheryn.

But wait, you say, it isn't Mardi Gras at all! True, you got me on that one. When I started this project, it was the end of February. I spent two months learning and photographing dishes without blogging them, to create a back-log of material. That way, the project's oppressive schedule can't become too much of a burden if I need to take a week off or something. Most of them I can just sneak in, as needed, but this one was at our annual Mardi Gras dinner, so its time-stamped.

So anyway, Oysters Kathryn. It is one of New Orleans' signature oyster dishes. NO is definitely an oyster town. From plates of shitty raw Gulf Selects at the Acme to buttery heaps of fake-garlicky awesomeness at Drago's, to cyclopean po'boys at Crabby Jack's, oysters are one of the first southern city's absolute favorite things.

One of the most popular styles of oyster dish in Creole cuisine is what I'm calling the 'pop, top, and broil' style. The oysters are popped open raw, topped with a filling, and then broiled (or baked) until the topping is browned and bubbly.

The grandaddy of them all is Oysters Rockefeller. Originating at Antoine's, these oysters are topped with a mixture of watercress, Herbsaint, garlic, breadcrumbs, and butter (or something like that, the actual recipe is a closely guarded secred). This is the dish that has been imitated, copied, and spun off in a thousand different ways. (I have seen Fried Oysters 'Rockefeller Style,' and have actually eaten Oysters Rockefeller Soup. Side note: in NO back-of-house restaurant parlance, the dish is charmingly referred to as O-Roc.)

Down the street from Antoine's is Arnaud's, another of the New Orleans Dinosaurs (along with Broussards, Tujague's, and Galatoire's). Not to be outdone, their signature pop-top-and-broil is the Oyster Bienville, named for the street Arnaud's is on. This one is topped with a sherry cream sauce studded with mushrooms and shrimp, and I thought it was my favorite. Then, at Arnaud's one evening, I ordered a sampler, which had many different oysters to try, and my clear, new favorite was Oysters Kathryn.

Named for one of the restaurant's owners kids (the blond and kinda hot Katy Casbarian) in 1979, this oyster is popped and topped with a mixture of artichokes, butter, breadcrumbs, and tomato. (Or so I thought, more on that later.) It was absolutely fantastic! I asked the waiter, and this one (unlike the Rockefeller and Bienville, which had been imitated all over town) was an Arnaud's exclusive. I liked it so much I bought the cookbook a year later, just to get at the recipe.

This was where I ran into trouble. The recipe in the book doesn't match what I remembered having. It contained parmesan cheese, which I try to keep away from my mollusks as a matter of course (I belong to the Nate Whiting school of thought on this topic, that is, no cheese with fish unless that fish happens to be an anchovy). Also, there was no tomato component to be found. I distinctly remembered tomato. Lastly, the cookbook used canned artichokes, which I disapprove of, but was not surprised by. Fresh artichokes are hellaciously labor-intensive.

SIDEBAR- Artichokes and me, an obsession: Artichokes are one of my favorite vegetables. They are expensive, so I don't use them a whole lot. A case of two dozen can run almost a hundred bucks! When I clean them, I use the method outlined in the French Laundry cookbook. This is the standard method in high-end kitchens. When you are done, all that's left is the heart, smooth and round and spotless, and whatever section of the stem is tender enough to eat. It is a difficult job, but when I was at Woodlands I set out to be the fastest artichoke cleaner in the world. (This was a natural response to having to clean a case of the bastards daily, may as well have some fun with it.) In the beginning, a case of 24 would take me like 40 minutes. After a little work, I got beneath the 1-minute-per-choke mark, and after a month I could do it in 17 minutes. My record for a case was 14 minutes. After that one, the chef, Tarver 'SuperKing' King, took a look, and looked at me very solemnly and said:

“Jesse, I am impressed. You are now, confirmed, the fastest artichoke cleaner in the world. You did a case in under fifteen minutes, and that is a hell of an accomplishment. Next time, do you mind taking twenty, and maybe doing a little bit better of a job?”

So anyway, I had this book, and I had this vision of what the dish was in my head, and they didn't match. I could explain away the cheese. Despite my philosophical objection, there was cheese in several of my favorite oyster dishes (most notably the amazing chargrilled oysters at Drago's), and I like them just the same. I could handle the canned artichokes. I mean, everyone uses them. But the lack of a tomato component, that was such an important part of the chord that I remembered, and it wasn't there! I even checked Arnaud's website, reasoning that they may have added some later, after the book was published, but nothing doing.

Mardi Gras was approaching fast, and I had to make a decision. Did I make Oysters Kathryn from the book, or did I try to truly express the dish as I thought appropriate? I decided to do both. I would faithfully recreate the recipe from the book, and I would also make my own spin on the dish, and call it Oysters Kathy Peterson, after a friend of mine (who happens to be a super-villain).

The Raw Materials: For oysters, I spent $54 on a bushel of Seaside Salts, from Virginia. (The appropriate oyster for this dish would really be Louisiana Gulf Selects, but they are not locally available in South Carolina, and also kind of shitty.) They were briny, plump, extremely fresh, and exquisite. I can't understand why they were so cheap, except that maybe they were sized really inconsistently, but for a broiler, that's really no big deal. They were definitely good enough to serve raw, which is a good barometer for oyster quality.

The Kathryn Topping (15 minutes): From the Arnaud's Cookbook (which I honestly can't recommend, its a little lightweight), the filling is made by mixing minced canned artichoke hearts, breadcrumbs, egg, heavy cream, fresh basil, parmesan, and lemon juice. Its really easy, no cooking necessary. Its easy to work with, and it browns up nicely.

The Kathy Peterson Topping (45 minutes): I cleaned artichokes by hand, and cooked them in salted water with lemon. I then diced them up and mixed them with an equal quantity of room temperature whole butter. I sprinkled in some chiffonade basil. For a tomato component, I mixed 50/50 canned crushed tomatoes and Heinz Chilli Sauce (a condiment I don't completely understand and am kind of intrigued by) and put it into a Clairol tint bottle, which is the squeeze bottle preferred by the real pros (you can buy them at Sally Beauty Supply). Every oyster got a spoon full of the artichoke butter, a drizzle of the tomato spoo, and a sprinkling of breadcrumbs.

All these went onto a tray of rock salt and into a 450F oven until they were starting to brown. My oven isn't very badass, so this took a while.

The verdict: Well, I liked my spin better. Obviously. It was a split decision. One partygoer said he marginally preferred mine, and qualified that with the statement that he would have said that, even if I hadn't recently threatened him with physical violence if he expressed a preference for the canned, cheesey version. But other people liked the restaurant ones better, and I had to admit, they were pretty good. I think mine came out on top. People were too drunk to just be being polite, and I only threatened that one guy.

Professional Application: Limited. These are amazing, and they would sell, but they are also the signature dish of another restaurant, and copying a signature dish, even in a different market, can be a sticky wicket. On the other hand, now that I have brilliantly and effectively introduced tomato into the mix, perhaps I can sell it at will...

Beverage Pairing: Jesus, it was Mardi Gras. We were drinking EVERYTHING. But I think a nice glass of very, very dry champagne (to combat the odd taste-warping effects of the oxalic acid in the artichokes) would have been just the ting.

Final Thought: Well, memory can be a funny thing. I was SURE there was a tomato component on the Kathryns. And I was wrong. My other takeaway is that parmesan cheese, while gauche, is not NECESSARILY disgusting on shellfish. Don't tell Nate Whiting.

How Not to Suck at Cooking

How can cooking go wrong?

There aren’t many cardinal sins. Not seasoning, using rotten ingredients, not tasting as you go, not giving a shit about the outcome, these are the big ones. Instead, I offer a list of rules I try not to break, to make sure my work is as good as I can make it.

1. Avoid the gratuitous overuse of cheese. This is a huge issue in the USA. Cheese on everything, all the time. This is an incomplete list of things that do not need cheese: tacos, hamburgers, french fries, steak, seafood, chicken sandwiches, green salad, and most importantly, SCRAMBLED EGGS! If you need cheese to enjoy scrambled eggs, you are scrambling your eggs wrong.
2. No letting fried things get soggy before they get to the customer. If you can’t fry right, find another method.
3. Avoid pre-mixed seasoning packets. This was a problem when I worked in New Orleans. They love their creole seasoning. And it has its place, but they put it in EVERYTHING, so everything tastes kinda the same. And real Indian cooks don’t use curry powder. They will make their own masalas out of whole spices, and use different ones for different purposes.
4. Avoid dry herbs. No exceptions. You haven’t smelled a bay leaf until you’ve smelled a fresh one. Get a big bag and keep them in your freezer.
5. Never skip brining meat that needs brining. Certain meats run dry. Chicken and lean pork are the biggest offenders. Once you grill a brined pork chop, you will never go back.
6. This is for all my chefs out there: never include an ingredient just because it adds color. Every component must contribute flavor, aroma, or texture. Micro-greens can be awesome. Micro-greens for their own sake are lame.
7. No mirepoix in stocks. If a sauce needs onion, celery, and carrot, add them. If a sauce needs shallot, star anise, and pink peppercorn, add that. The flavors of vegetables and herbs take minutes to infuse, so why not keep your base stocks neutral? If your stock tastes like Dinty Moore beef stew, so will your demiglace. (Hat tip to Paul Bertolli, who destroyed conventional wisdom on this one.)
8. No salads with dressing on side. All salads must be tossed. The light touch of dressing on lettuce is what makes a salad. Also, with the dressing on the side, the salt won’t stick. Salad, literally translated, means salted. If its not dressed, its not a salad.
9. No fake balsamic vinegar. If it cost less than 30 bucks, it isn’t balsamic vinegar, its regular vinegar with sugar and caramel color added. Real balsamic vinegar is trebbiano grape must, allowed to reduce and oxidize for hours and hours over a very low flame, and then aged in a series of progressively smaller barrels to pick up sap from the wood. Its an expensive process. Cheap knock-offs do not belong in fine cuisine, any more than American cheese does.
10. Do not overdress plates! Exhibit restraint! Often, chefs will get high on their own farts and want to put 25 components on a plate. For certain chefs (Achatz, Gagnaire), that is a component of their style, and it works, and they have the stars to prove it. But for most, it makes for a confusing mess and your line cooks will hate you. Remember what Coco Chanel said. Before you go to a party, look in the mirror and take one thing off! Every element on a dish should positively need to be there.

Okay, I'm getting off my soap box.

The New Skills

The New Skills- Breakfast Noodles

Okay, so I had an idea. My job is boring. I mean, like, the most interesting thing I've done at work for the last couple of weeks is tighten up employee evaluation policy. I'm not complaining, its good work, and it needs doing, but my creative muscles are atrophying. My solution? Embark on an insane project. My insane project is that in the next calendar year, I will learn one new dish a week, and write it up here. 

These dishes are going to come from everywhere. I read lots of food periodicals, and constantly skim cookbooks. I have friends that cook, and there are a certain number of dishes I have always wanted to try, and just never had a reason.

This is the first installment.

The Dish: Yunnan Breakfast Noodles (Chinese: mi xian, or mi gan, “depending on the type of noodles used,” more on why that means nothing to me later)

The Source: Saveur #187 (2017)

Cultural Overview: This dish is a normal breakfast item in Yunnan provence, Southwestern China, a mountainous region bordering on Laos and Burma. It was presented in the context of being a dish that tea-gatherers snacked on before sallying out into the hills to harvest poo-erh, which is some trendy aged tea. Don't care about tea.

Technical Overview: This dish is all about assembly. The base dish is simply rice noodles, simmered and served in a rich but mild porky broth. It is white on white, and is bland and neutral by design. The fun comes in when you add all the condiments, of which there are many. The article had quite a list of condiments, which I faithfully recreated, and it was a totally rewarding experience. I am not normally a fan of the aesthetic of “build-your-own,” but this was just calling my name.

Step 1: Procurement

I got every single component for this dish at the incredible H&L Supermarket on Rivers Ave, which is the greater Charleston region's finest Asian market. In fact, it is the best specialty grocery in the region. I spent $66, which is hard to do, but my pantry is swollen with weird, spicy goodies. The only snag I hit was the noodles. The recipe called for fresh rice noodles, which are unattainable. I just grabbed a bag of rice noodles that looked like it was going to be close enough, and then when I opened it, I saw that the noodles weren't the translucent white pappardelle I was expecting. Instead, they were ragged, all different shapes and sizes. The only English words on the package were “Rice Slice,” slice of what, I couldn't say. They looked weird, but they cooked up just fine.

Step 2: Broth (3 hours duration/5 minutes work time)

The dish calls for white pork stock. It called for 5# pork bones, covered with 18 cups of water, and cooked down to 8 cups. I used 2.5# pork feet, three quarters of a pound of ground pork, and about half a pound of cracklings I had in my freezer. Add cold water to cover, simmer three hours. It yielded a nicely gelatinous broth. At first, I was a bit concerned, because the cracklings I was using quickly bled off a very deep-fried kind of aroma, and it was all the broth tasted of. However, over time, that blew off and what was left was really intense porky goodness. The broth was seasoned only with a pinch of salt.

Note: A problem with recipes. As said before, the recipe called for 18 cups of stock cooked down to 8. The recipe reads “Simmer until broth is flavorful and reduced, about three hours. Strain through a fine meshed strainer and discard the solids. You should have 8 cups broth.” Nothing at all on what to do if you don't have 8 cups broth, but the yield is important. My broth cooked down to a quart. I let it out with water. A home cook may not realize how easily fixed that problem is. Shitty copy-editing. Then again, this is why when I write a recipe, its goddamn three pages long. So maybe I'm wrong.

Step 3: The Meats (20 minutes)

The recipe called for 2 kinds of meat, ground pork and pork loin. It had you simmer the meats in water, which then had the noodles cooked in it. This has the effect of giving the noodles some porky flavor, but simmering is a needlessly messy and time-consuming way of cooking ground pork. I wish I had just sauteed it. Instead of pork loin, I used belly, which I simmered for 3 minutes and then dressed in doubanjiang, which is a fermented chile-bean paste used in Sichuan cooking. (I had some on hand, as part of my emergency ma-po tofu kit.)

Step 4: The Garni (20 minutes)

Building the garnish tray was fun. The challenge for most cooks will be finding enough ramekins to attractively present the spread, but my mom compulsively shops at Crate and Barrel, so every Christmas I get more ceramic knick-knacks. I never want for ramekins. The garni were:

Black Vinegar (Chinese rice vinegar, aged, kind of like cheap, ghetto balsamic)

Chile Oil (another Asian market product, just a bright red, mildly spicy oil)

Sambal (not exactly Chinese, but I'm sure they have an analogue)

Mint (lots of it)

Garlic Chives (Asian market)

Pickled Mustard Greens (Asian market, surprisingly mild, provided a great textural note)

Pickled Red Chiles (I found a brand at the Asian market that look like bird chiles, but are not nearly so hot)

Scallions

Sesame Seeds

Kosher Salt

MSG

Step 5: The finish: Rewarm the meats and set them next to the garnish tray. Simmer the noodles in the pork broth (or in the pork cooking liquid, if you followed the convoluted and unnecessary step of simmering the pork in separate liquid), and ladel them into bowls, along with a healthy slosh of the broth. Take a look at your creation, and marvel at its bland, blank, whiteness. Then, hit the condiment tray and go crazy! The broth ends up seasoned almost like hot and sour soup, the mustard greens provided a great texture and sauerkraut-like flavor, and the mint was the difference maker. Just terrific. I love this dish, and am making it again tomorrow with all the leftover prep I still have.

                                                         before.

                                                                       AFTER!!!

Beverage Pairing: Goose Island Pre-Season Lager, cause why not, and also cause Go Cubs.

Why I Love This Dish: This is what I wanted pho to be. I love pho, don't get me wrong, but I am stressed out by the garnish tray. I mean, first off, who needs the cup and a half of bean sprouts they always give you. Also, the broth is so good on its own, why do I need hoisin and Sriracha? Also, isn't Sriracha Thai anyway? What am I supposed to do?

I'm always torn. I like the broth basically unadorned, with its subtle, meaty, spice character taking the lead (although I will sneak in a slice of jalapeno). But if I'm given condiments, I want to use them, and so I'm tempted to load in the lime, basil, hot sauce, and sprouts. But then the pho no longer tastes like meat and anise, it tastes like lime, basil, hot sauce, and sprouts. (My proclivities were vindicated by an article on pho that I read in the Lucky Peach pho issue. Apparently, pho was a Hanoi dish, and then, when Hanoi fell on hard times, the cooks fled south to Saigon. Once there, they didn't have access to the meat that was necessary to make a great broth, so they started covering up with chiles and herbs and shit. Prosperity returned, but the garnish tray never went away.)

But this dish makes it easy. The only ingredients in the base noodles are pork bones, water, rice, and salt. Its a no-brainer that it needs to be dressed up. There is no stress, and no guilt, about going for the gusto.

Professional application: This would be hard. You could dress the noodles up for them, but the fun of the dish is in the customization. Yet there are so many garni, that to do this a la carte would be too expensive, and time- and space-consuming. I suppose you could do it if it was your main dish. You could have a garnish bar set up like a salad bar. Or, it could be something you sold to a whole table. It would be a tough sell, though.

Final thought: The main thing this dish reminded me of was Hot Mustard, the crappy Chinese delivery that I live off of a lot of the time. It is a prototypical ghetto Chinese restaurant, and their fried stuff and rib tips are sublime, but their stir-fries and soups are always bland and awful. They are really cheap and fast, though, so I order it all the time anyway. I keep a pretty good pantry, so I am ready to dress up the offerings as needed. This dish was that, except by design, instead of being due to wild, mind-bending kitchen incompetence.

No offense, Hot Mustard. I want you to know I still love you!

About the Author

                                                                  (Not the author...)

To tell you the story of the genesis of this blog, I have to tell you about Sarah. To tell you about Sarah, I need to tell you a little about myself.

        My name is Jesse Sutton, and I am a chef in Charleston, SC. I initially started cooking because my then-girlfriend, Christine, wouldn't loan me twenty bucks. I was a waste of space, I had no job, and I asked her to spot me some cash. That day, her roommate was hanging out with the KM of a local dive bar, and he intervened, as I was being berated, with the offer of a job, despite my total lack of credentials. Fast-forward 19 years, and I have cooked in diners, red-sauce Italian joints, 5-star hotels, and once did a 6-month apprenticeship with a Michelin 3-Star badass.

        I got my first (and to date, only) executive chef job at age 33. It was a wine bar with a wood fired pizza oven. My job was to make food that was elegant enough to go with their serious wine program (for instance, they had a 5-year vertical of Vega Sicilia Unico) but also bring in a Charleston bar crowd. It was irritating, trying to get large crowds of smoking hot 23-year-old chicks (less exciting than you would think) to get into serious food and wine, but I loved it. I gave that place everything I had and then some. It didn't last (more on that later), but I went down swinging.

        Before that, I worked at the badly misunderstood and never lucrative Tristan, right hand man to the intense, talented, and taciturn Nate Whiting. His food was beyond impressive. We got great reviews, and why we didn't make great money is something I'm not gonna touch right now. But it was during my time of playing Leo McGarry to his President Bartlet that I met Sarah.

        We needed a cook, and I saw that one applicant was from Louisiana, where I spent some time. Her resume wasn't all that well put-together, but it included a run at Bayona, where my wife worked post-Katrina. Susan Spicer is a really respectable chef, but more than that, she is a goddamn hardass, so I knew that this girl was at least worth talking to. I gave her a call. She was quiet and reserved on the phone, with a thick small-town Louisiana accent, and I didn't get much of an impression. We set up a stage for the following Tuesday.

That Monday, Nate was off so I was running the show. It was slow as balls, so when I saw Sarah's name on the reservation book, it jumped out. The girl was coming in for dinner the day before a stage. Very, very smart. Good sign. When she showed up (as part of a deuce, dining with a friend), I asked the hostess which one was Sarah.

“The pretty one!” the hostess replied.

        Sure enough, Sarah was a doll. Small, slightly built, pale skin and gorgeous dark hair, and a 1000 watt smile. Damn.  I hadn't counted on that. I used to get nervous talking to pretty girls. (Dealing with the wait staff at the wine bar cured me of that. All girls, all lookers! Our pastry chef called it 'the Hooters of wine.')

I went up to the table and introduced myself. I apoligized for Nate's absence, and asked if we could cook for them. I remember saying something about how we would see what she was all about the next day, so now was time for us to show her what we are all about. I don't rememer the wording, but it was a good line. To be honest, the real reason I went above and beyond was that Tristan didn't pay very well, and we really needed people, so I wanted to put our best food forward.

We cooked for them, she had a great time, total success. Even better was that she turned out to be an absolute sweet heart. Ken, the manager, said “She's never gonna make it. Way too pretty, way too nice.”

I went and saw them again at the end and she said,

“Now I'm terrified. That was the best food I ever had and now I'm so scared.”

“Don't be scared, be excited,” I replied. She took that advice to heart.

        The next day I was out fishing, and I got a call from Nate. He said “Dude, this girl you cooked for is awesome, I really want to hire her. Do you mind if I just do it?”

        I reminded him that he was the executive chef, and could do whatever, but that I appreciated him asking. And so little Sarah joined the team. She was very green, but wanted to learn so bad. And she had an ingenuity to her that belied her short-ass resume. One day, she was blanching asparagus, and she had them all laid out all over her cutting board. I asked what she was doing, and she said she was putting all the fat ones together, all the medium ones, and all the skinny ones, for even cooking. She did this without being told. It was a remarkable moment.

Sarah and I bonded almost instantly. I saw a little of twenty-year-old me in her, with the insatiable curiosity and analytical mind. But she was like a better version of twenty-me, because she lacked the arrogance, the swagger, and the devotion to partying above all other things. She had a fresh enthusiasm about her craft that was (and is) a constant source of inspiration to me, up until this day. During my last year at Tristan, I put a lot of energy into her. Nate and I loved her like a baby sister. I taught her as much as I could, and my wife and I befriended her on a personal level. I took her fishing, I took her to interesting restaurants (including her first tapas bar, which her stodgy and conservative father misheard as topless bar, leading to an awkward but hilarious conversation), we made family dinner together on holidays.

        When I left Tristan to take over the wine bar, she became my biggest fan. She would walk over after her shift (the restaurants were neighbors), sit at the bar, and try new dishes. She would accompany me to events when I didn't have enough help. She ran the kitchen for our staff holiday party. One of our bartenders fell in love with her, and was absolutely CRUSHED when I revealed her sexual orientation, and thus, his lack of a chance. (Oh, yeah, Sarah is gay, btw.) I offered her a sous-chef job something like 150 times.

        Sarah took to Tristan like a fish to water, but sadly, didn't do the same to Charleston. Her time here was marked by traumatic personal-life issues, and she was deeply lonely. She had moved to town following the dissolution of a relationship, and she never fully recovered from that. I tried as best as I could to be a good big brother to her, but there were wounds I could not heal.

        The situation was, she wanted her old girlfriend back. At first, I thought this was insane. I am of the opinion that when relationships end, its usually for a reason. And besides, they no longer lived in the same state. Well, long story short, the more I heard about the situation, the more I began to realize that she may have ended the relationship for the wrong reasons. And little by little, they started to thaw the ice. First, they texted. Then there were little weekend trips. Eventually, they were back together, and are to this day. I was over the moon to see the veil of melancholy leave my young friend, but I also knew this meant a very real chance of her moving away.

         Rachel, for that is her girlfriend's name, was planning to go to grad school. Her choices were U of South Carolina (two hours away in Columbia) or LSU (16 hours away in Baton Rouge). The plan was, if she went to USC, that they would live in Charleston, and she would commute (brutal but technically possible). However, unfortunately for me, LSU won out, which meant little Sarah was moving away. I was crushed.

        Don't get me wrong, I was, and am, absolutely overjoyed that she is in a committed relationship with a girl who is smart, pretty, funny, talented, and amazingly nerdy. (I'm a sucker for nerdy girls.) But I was losing my fishing buddy, protege, little sister, and source of endless inspiration. Who was I going to have gumbo contests on Fat Tuesday with now? There was going to be a void in my life and I needed to make sure we stayed in contact.

        That's where this blog came in. It was a medium for us to remain connected. A place where we could share ideas, learn together, challenge each other. We did it for about three years. I don't know why we let it die. I think partially it was Sarah's move away from the culinary world. There wasn't much in the way of good hospitality work in Thibodaux, LA, and besides, she needed to be a bread winner, due to Rachel's grad school. So she got a corporate yet blue collar job (she drives a forklift at a hardware store) and doesn't cook anymore. Which is a shame, because her experience never had a chance to catch up with her natural talent. I still fantasize about her getting back into the game, but I respect her choice. As for the two of them, they bought a house, they are doing great. They are my family and I love them. But that is how I came to have a defunct food blog, named after the chef-aliens from Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

        Meanwhile, my job status was also changing. The wine bar was a labor of love, but the space was too large and too high-rent to actually turn a decent profit. There was no day-time business whatsoever, and a shift in neighborhood demographics had curtailed our late-night business most nights. The place had limited daylight appeal. It was too dark, too clubby. The space needed to be busy for lunch and dinner every day in order to pull the kind of numbers we had to pull, so the owner (who also loved that place like a baby) pulled the plug.

        I kept my job in the company. They converted it into a barbecue restaurant, that I am perfectly proud of. I don't write the menu, but I develop recipes, and my job description hovers in that gray area between prep chef and systems analyst. I like the people I work with, and I have to say, the amount of success we have had is terrific. We just finished our first year and we are dominating the wine bar's numbers, which was a bitter pill to swallow at first, but it would be petty of me to complain about success, so I got over it.

        The problem is, I like making food. I like writing menus, I like technical challenges. Every once and a while, I get to fine-tune a recipe, but for the most part, my job doesn't include much actual cooking. I have always enjoyed food writing, but never taken it particularly seriously. I was banging my head on how I could get some ideas out, and I remembered this blog. I got Sarah's permission to change the direction a bit, and thus, The Dentrassi is reborn.

The name, by the way, referrs to the aliens in Hitchhiker's Guide that are chefs to the evil Vogons.

“The Dentrassi...let us on board.”

“Who are the Dentrassi?”

“THE best cooks, and THE best drinks mixers, and they don't give a wet slap about anything else.”

Beer on the Mind

Hey Jesse! Here is a few ideas for a menu I am working on. It isn't a complete menu by any means but I know with a little guidance from you it is a great first step. The beers listed are made by Bill Mungai who is a home brewer in LC.

Snack: Charcuterie
          Serrano ham, mortadella, corned beef, pastrami w/ whole grain mustard, cornichons, garlic                 aioli, spent grain flat bread or crackers
Pairing: Dry Stout, 4.7% ABV

Snack: Spicy Jerk Wings
         Jerk seasoned grilled wings w/ molasses lime sauce
Pairing: Pilsner Shade Tree, 4.5% ABV

App: Duck Confit
         Black pepper crepe, mushroom, spinach, onion & Dubbel Blueberry Sauce
Pairing: 500 Dubbel, 7.3% ABV

Salad: Chop Salad
          Romaine, blue cheese, bacon, eggs, cucumber, avocado, tomato w/ citrus vin.
Pairing: Kolsch, 5.6% ABV

Sandwich: Classic Reuben
         Spent Grain Rye Bread, 1000 island, Sauerkraut, corned beef (would love to use tongue but I              think it would scare LC people), swiss cheese
Pairing: 500 Dubbel, 7.3% ABV

Burger: Loaded Burger
         Brioche bun, lettuce, tomato, onion, gruyere cheese, Dusseldorf mustard
Pairing: Altbier Dusseldorf, 5.2% ABV

Pizza or Pasta: Carbonara
         Spent grain pizza dough w/ parm sauce, bacon, garlic, parsley, mozz, and sunny side up egg

or

         Spaghetti, pork belly, egg, parm, olive oil, black pepper, parsley
Pairing: 80/- Scottish, 6.1% ABV


Main: Roasted Prime Rib
         Prime rib roasted w/ herbs, spices, & coffee, gouda mashed potatoes, glazed carrots, Quad demi
Pairing: Quad, 11.5% ABV

Dessert: Brie Apple Pie
         Brie crust apple pie w/ vanilla ice cream and Kolsch caramel sauce
Pairing: Kolsch, 5.6% ABV

Miss you and hope to hear from you soon!

Louisiana Lessons

Ok, so I have a co-worker named Andy.  His nicknames are Eye-Candy Andy and Sexual Harassment Panda.  Anyway, he is interested in Louisiana cuisine, so I have been showing him a few dishes during down time.  I promised to teach him a new Louisiana dish every week till the end of the year.  This is great for me, too, because I need a refresher, and it helps you tighten technique to teach it to someone else.

First we did Etoufee.  In this case, we used shrimp, because that's what we had access to.  This allowed me to show the brown roux technique (along with my secret hack trick, which I will not state here, but it rhymes with Bitchin' Croquet).  So many cajun and creole stews use this formula, I had to say 'To be honest, it can be hard to say where etoufee stops and gumbo starts.'  It came out really nice.

Next up, we tackled Blackened Fish.  Our blackening seasoning wasn't totally authentic, just because I don't keep that many dry herbs and spices on hand, but we faked it nicely.  Smoked paprika, salt, sugar, pepper, cayenne, and oregano.  The sugar is a controversial ingredient, but I like it.  It just burns black, but it helps the crust really stick on and gives it a bitter edge that really accentuates the sear and plays well with the heat.  To complete the dish, we did Brabant Potatoes (another NOLA original), and Hot-Sauce-Honey-Butter, which is cliche, but also delicious.  The fish we used was flounder, which I acknowledge is not the authentic choice, but its what we had.

Lastly, this sloppy mess is Barbecue Shrimp, in the style of Pascal's Manale on Napoleon.  Really came out amazing.  I never understood why it is called Barbecue Shrimp, but New Orleans cuisine has always had things with really odd, esoteric names, so why not?  Are you familiar with this one?  I sort of reverse-engineered the dish, using a couple of online recipes and my personal experiences.  You should try it.  You need:

Half a pound of head-on shrimp
Olive Oil
2 lemons, cut into wedges
6 cloves of garlic, chopped
2 branches of rosemary, chopped
1 beer
1 T. worcestershire
1 stick butter, diced
Salt, black pepper, cayenne, parsley
Toasted French Bread

Heat the olive oil in a skillet.
Add the lemons and let them caramelize a little bit.  This will spit and fuss, but the depth it gives to the broth is outstanding.
Drop in the garlic and rosemary, shaking the pan well.
A blast of aroma should hit you in the face.
At this point, drop in the shrimp, deglaze with the worcestershire and half of the beer, and season heavily with the salt and 2 peppers.
Slam the rest of the beer for me, boo.  Or share it with an attractive young librarian and try to get her into a festive temperament.  And remember, beer comes in six-packs, so you can apply more if necessary (for the librarian, not the shrimp.)
Swirl in the butter and check seasoning.  Sprinkle parsley over.  This is window-dressing only, but its a pretty ugly dish, so it needs help.

The way you eat a shrimp is to peel it (still hot and totally greasy, do not wear white for this one), dip the tail meat into the spicy buttery beer jus (holding it by the head), and then eat it in one bite, slurping at the head juices.  Then dip some bread into the jus, soak it up and consume.

This might be the best way in the universe to eat shrimp.

Carving of the Fruit

My outlet at work is the fruit display and so far watching YouTube videos while I eat breakfast has served me very well. At first it was hard for me to see what I wanted to carve by just looking at the fruit. I had to see someone else do it first VIA YouTube before I could understand it. I am slowly getting better at visualizing and kinda doing my own thing based on the fruit I have available to me. I hope to be able to manipulate colors soon. Honeydew, cantaloupe, and watermelon especially because if I can use the three colors they naturally possess to my advantage then the only limitation is my imagination! X D

FoodHack: Vietnamese Ramen @ CO

THE PROBLEM:  With certain noodle bowl dishes, I find the broth the most interesting, the goodies, the second most interesting, and the noodles the least interesting.  I realize this is hypocritical, due to my conviction that quality of pasta outstrips quality of sauce in importance, or that the tortilla makes the taco, or that good pizza is impossible with mediocre crust, but its true.  When I order the Pho at Pho #1 on Rivers Ave., I invariably have a half pound of noodle sitting at the bottom of my bowl.  My beloved XO ramen at Co shares the same fate.  I realize that the proper noodle texture is paramount, but that doesn't stop me from ignoring the noodles once I've had a bite or two.  I have said on multiple occasions that if Co was out of noodles, pork, fried shallots, and eggs, I would still be happy to pay my $13 for a big cup of XO ramen broth and a straw.

THE HACK:  Consider the great French classic, pot-au-feu.  It is a boiled meat dish served in several courses.  First, the grilled tranches of bread, smeared with the marrow simmered from the soup bones, sprinkled with course salt.  Then, the broth, clear, glistening with beef fat, and, if you're lucky, given the golden color and complex perfume that including a slice of spleen will yield (or so I've read, its damn hard to find cow spleen in this town).  Lastly, a plate of the assorted boiled meats, along with the tender vegetables, accented with pickles and mustard.

I took a similar course the other day with my Vietnamese Ramen at Co.  The bowl arrived steaming in front of me.  First, I stole a few jalapeno slices from my neighbor's garnish tray to give the broth a little zing.  Then, I ate the broth, rapidly and appreciatively, along with the scallions and fried shallots that dress the surface of the soup, along with the soft poached egg, of course.  I may have had a bite or two of the firm noodles or yielding pork belly during this onslaught, but I couldn't swear it.  So there I was, satisfied with my Vietnamese Ramen experience, but still guilt-stricken about the large pile of rapidly cooling noodles in front of me, mingled with limp strands of bok choy and bits of braised pork, all insipid and weak without their dance partner, the bewitchingly subtle and powerful Vietnamese Ramen broth.

The solution?  Have a second course.  Now that I had consumed my beloved Vietnamese Ramen/Egg Broth Soup, I was going to have Spicy Noodle Salad.  I took the bottle of Co housemade Singapore Hot sauce (full of black sesame seeds and other fascinating little bits) and poured a generous amount over my noodles and tossed them well.  The hot, chunky condiment glazed the bok choy, the cool noodles, and the pork, which had already given much of its life to the broth and was now just an excercise in texture, with acidic, fiery pizazz.

You can have your noodle bowl.  I will settle into a Two Course Degustation of Savory Broth followed by Spicy Congealed Noodle Salad.

The waiter looked at me like I was crazy.

Nouveau Creole-Italian Shrimp Dish

Shrimp a la Nage 'Barbecue,' Baby Potatoes, Baby Artichokes, Rosemary

Of the two great cuisines of South Louisiana, this dish typifies Creole.  I'm here defining Creole as New Orleans fusion, big city cuisine, classical European-inflected elegance.  Specifically, this calls to mind the tradition of Italian cooking in New Orleans.  After all, the first Italian and Sicilian immigrants that came to the US in the 19th century came to Louisiana.

This dish is a spin on BBQ shrimp the way they do it at Pascal's Manale on Napoleon Ave.  However, I lightened the sauce, added some actual vegetables, and serve it in the broth.

For the broth:
Shell 2# of shrimp
Saute the shells with olive oil
Pour 2 beers over the shells and add 1 lemon, cut in half, 1 head of garlic, cut in half, and 2 branches of rosemary.
Add a whole stick of butter to this mess.
Add water to cover, about an ounce of worcestershire, and season to taste with Slap Ya Mama shrimp boil and salt.  The broth is actually eaten with a spoon, so go easy on the boil, watch the spicy.

Simmer this 35 minutes and strain.  You will want to press the shells in the strainer.

Trim and halve 1 dozen baby artichokes.  Cook these in the flavorful shrimp-beer-butter broth.  When they are tender, strain and let them hang out in the cooler.

Add 1 pound of baby potatoes to the broth.  Simmer until they are just tender and then let them soak up the broth's flavors while they cool.  They are like little sponges.  Remove them when the broth is cool.

Ok, so now you have:
1) 2# raw shrimp
2) 24 little pieces of shrimp and rosemary-flavored baby artichoke
3) 1# of little tiny shrimp and rosemary-flavored potatoes
4) An amazing shrimp/artichoke/butter/garlic/rosemary/worcestershire/beer broth

Heat the broth back to a boil, rewarm the veg in the broth, correct the seasoning (with lemon, worcestershire, Slap ya Mama boil, and salt, as needed) and poach the shrimp.  When the shrimp are cooked, sprinkle the whole thing with a tiny amount of chopped rosemary and ladle into bowls.


D, D's mom, Lynn and her girlfriend Alisha, and I, had this for dinner the other night and it was great.

The Missing Booklet

Hello, dearie!  I finally got around to opening the secret envelope in the Lucky Peach.  Inside is this little booklet.  I haven't gotten to read it yet, but it is a journal covering MAD, which is a culinary symposium hosted by Rene Redzepi of NOMA.

There are reports of what the speakers had to say, but a lot of that is probably available as on-line videos anyway.  There are some recipes, but not enough to justify the cost of re-buying the magazine in the first place.

At any rate, I propose that when I am finished with the little booklet, I will xerox anything that I want to save and just mail it to you.  I would be happy to share.  You brought me my first Lucky Peach, and for that I owe you.  And if I ever need to look at it again, that would just give me a great excuse to get together with you, perhaps for some fish-ass-kicking.  BTW, if you would please move the fuck back to Charleston, I would appreciate it.

As regards your review so far, I have the following reactions.

Over Easy: First I say, don't knock Daniel's 20 minute scrambled eggs till you've tried it.  In my experience, eggs are one of those things that you can go overboard with technique, and be handsomely rewarded.  I have seen several chefs do some pretty over-the-top things with eggs, and sometimes too much is just enough.

Cases in point:
Bernard L'Ouiseau used to crack an egg white into a buttered pan, and then cook it till it was almost set in a medium-low oven.  Then, he would gently set the yolk in the middle of the white and put it back in the oven until the yolk was just warm.  This was how he did sunny-side up eggs, because he was frustrated with the bottom of the yolk overcooking while he waited for the top of the white.  Oh BTW, Bernard L'Ouiseau, La Cote d'Or, 3 Michelin stars.

Patrick O'Connel has a method for scrambling eggs that Tarver taught me.  He cracks the eggs whole into a steel bowl and gently stirs them over a double boiler, not breaking the yolks (or at least as few as possible), so the whites cook into curds.  Then, when the whites are set, he turns off the heat and stirs vigorously while adding whole butter and salt.  The yolks all break, and warm through from the heat of the whites, but this way you can stop the cooking while they are still kinda liquidy.  Its over-easy scrambled eggs.  By the way, Patrick O'Connel, AKA the Notorious P.O.C., isn't in the Michelin guide, but he has 5 stars, 5 diamonds.

Having said all that, I think I would prefer someone make that omelet for me, rather than me making it myself.  And the ban xeo does look really good.

The Imaginary Dinner was indeed a downer, but sometimes sad things happen.  Maybe telling the story made the cook feel better...  Who can say?


All the World's a Stage
This one made me think of you, and of my first stage.  I don't think we would have been friends if we had met when we were both 22.  I was a little partied-up piece of shit.  But I did work really hard, I guess.  I wish I could have been there for your stage.  All this aside, you make an interesting point about cooking school.  My feeling is this: cooking school is hugely expensive and wasteful.  You can learn a lot more, faster, by staging.  However, its during cooking school that most of us develop the confidence to go out and stage.  The act of enrolling in school means you have jackets, and a decent set of knives, and it kind of demystifies the whole chef-cook relationship.  I feel like by the time a lot of us realize cooking school wasn't necessary, we are already graduated.  Obviously, I feel like staging is the second-best way to learn, but I'll go you one better.  I absolutely believe in the power of mentoring.  Find someone whose skills you admire that cares about you.  I heard an MIT graduation ceremony on the radio, and one of the things the guy said was this:

"There is a three-step road map to success.  1, find a good mentor.  2, surround yourself with people that know more than you.   3, bend over backwards making yourself useful to these people.


So that's my thoughts on that.  I'll send you the booklet when I'm finished reading it.

Love you sis

Lucky Peach: Cooks and Chef Issue (Part 1)

So far I have read the first three articles in this issue. Here they are with a a few thoughts.

Over Easy
It is about eggs so I  was already intrigued! I loved learning about the different styles of omelets. I have to say that Jimmy Tu's Vietnamese style know as Bánh Xèo sounded the most delicious. Omelet + Crepe = Happy Belly. I think I may try this out soon. I may be a little harsh in saying this but Daniel Boulud needs to go somewhere with his 20 MIN!? omelet. Seriously?

The Imaginary Dinner (SPOILER ALERT)
I really loved about 3/4 of this article till it ruined my mood in the last 1/4. Its a good story about two people loving food and having the common goal of finding the best ingredient locally. They have a great friendship that picks up right where it left off after long endeavors apart. When one takes ill the other dreams of a dinner as sort of the last mean type scenario that he wants to make for his dying friend. I like this concept. We hear the question asked "What would you eat at your last meal?" But even as a cook I don't think I have ever asked myself what I would cook for someone for their last meal. I guess this question never gets asked because it is usually irrelevant. You don't choose what someone eats for their last meal THEY DO. Still I liked the idea. BUT THEN instead of a grand dinner full of food flavored by memories. The cook makes jell-o for his friend, the friend dies while the cook is at work, and then he just sighs and goes back into the kitchen to hide in his work?! LAME LAME LAME! It a true story but still! Why tell that story then?

All The World's A Stage (CUTE TITLE)
I really enjoyed this one! I have technically only been through one stage in my career and that was at Tristan. I was scared, frazzled, and excited all at the same time. I really enjoyed my stage even though the WHOLE time I was saying to myself. "Enjoy tonight Sarah cause there is NO WAY you are getting this job." Still one of the best experiences of my life. This article rang true with my own feelings about stages. I liked hearing the Chef's perspective as well. I have to say that after reading this article I am on the fence about whether or not school is important compared to just staging. I think it is doable to just stage and not go for the formal education but finding the right kitchens and being self disciplined is also needed to succeed this way. Does that mean culinary school is for the less focused?

All and all good stuff so far! One sad thing though you will have to fill me in on. When Rachel got the magazine it wasn't in a plastic casing as usual. I didn't think anything of it until I started reading. Do you remember in one of the issues there was a page that looked like a stomach with stitches? It had a booklet inside about intestines. Well this issue as the same thing except someone took my little booklet! BOOOOOOOOO! SO let me know what it is and if it is worth it to go buy another copy so I can have the full issue. Hope you are well and restaurant 10 days is buzzing along nicely!    

Ok, lets close this review up

Final stretch...

Four meals in the Toughest Strip Club in LA is just what it sounds like.  Honestly, not that much about food here, but I did learn a new cocktail.  The ingeniously-named "Adios, Motherfucker", a long island with blue curucao instead of triple sec and 7up instead of coke.  According to one of the dancers, its 'all the rage in Paris.'  That was the single best thing I read in this mag.

The Breast Giveth- Is a discussion of milk and food that comes from it, with recipes.  Forgettable, but there is a cool frozen yogurt version of Key Lime Pie i'd like to try.

Make Yourself Useful- is a kind of unsettling story about a trek through the jungle killing and stuffing exotic birds.  Not really for me, but you might find it interesting.

Meat Maids is a nasty photo-essay of some butcher women in Ho Chi Mihn's Chinatown.  They must not like ice or refrigerators there.

Amaranth is a short story about a girl in an awful situation taking control of it in a very negative way.  A good read, but frankly disturbing.  Don't see what it was doing in Lucky Peach, but I read it and I'm glad I did.

Then, a couple of mom's meatloaf recipes.  Pretty standard, but I love the way they are written.  Real cooks talking to real cooks.  You should check this one out.  Ignore the photo of the dude in red trunks.

Then a really, really weird article about sexual reproduction from Harold McGhee.  A little too technical for me, but it raised some interesting points about the future of genetically modified produce.

And lastly, a bizarre little piece about turtle scrotum tea, which Jamaicans (apparently) drink for enhanced sexual male performance.  Should have been on the man side.



That's all babe.  Some of it was a little silly, but there was good in there.  I can't wait to talk about the next issue.

Lucky Peach Gender Issue Review Part II

Ok, we continue.

Next feature (continuing on the male side): The First Cut is the Deepest
-Okay, this one is a little gross, but culinarily, it is the most interesting of the issue so far.  It discusses the capon industry.  (A capon is a rooster that is castrated as a chick.  They grow big, mild, and tender.)  The article talks about what to do with all of the extra testicles.  This is a little nasty, but I sincerely believe that as custodians of meat, we need to understand the nasty parts of the business, too.  And after that, there is a food feature with a chef from Quebec, and I am really, really into Quebecoise cuisine these days.  Good recipes, even if one of them is rooster-testicle cassoulet.


-Food Ain't Nothing but Sex Misspelled- This is a series of vaguely pornographic drawings featuring food and sex.  Kind of a waste of paper.


And then, the feature that bridges the gap between the male and female sides, appropriately, an article about sea creatures that spontaneously change sex.  Not interesting in the slightest, once you get past the initial shock of the concept.

And then I started the female side:

-As Alice Sees It- A short piece on Alice Waters and being a woman running a restaurant.  Not that cool. I feel like it would have been better to interview a woman who is in the kitchen NOW, not the 1970s.  Her story has already been told.

-Great Chefs Around the World- By Naomi Duguid (one of the all-time great cookbook authors OF THE WORLD), a short piece celebrating the accomplishments of Burmese housewives, who make literally everything from scratch, every day, with no gadgets or anything.  Makes one feel great respect for women, but the sexism is a little hard to swallow.  Not that that is the fault of the article, she is just reporting the way it is.

Then a piece on the Haenyo Divers, Korean old women who dive for abalone.  Not super interesting, but it is cool to read about such a roughneck job that is traditionally girls-only.

Next, Pussy Rules- An interview with a big bad black lady that works the night shift at The Wiener's Circle in Chicago.   This was cool to read, because these girls are LEGENDARY.  Being from Chicago, I have heard all about this place, its been around forever.

And I will end on this one,

Dick Soup, by Fuchsia Dunlop.  She is an authority on regional Chinese cooking (she is British, but whatever).  I like her writing and have a bit of a crush.  Anyway, she wrote a long article about eating soup made from animal penis, which the Chinese are into.  Kind of a funny article, with a recipe that starts out by calling for Stag Penis.

NEWSFLASH!!!!!  In deference to you, I have been scouring this magazine for anything actually insulting or offensive, and this is the first I have found.  The article itself was well-written and respectful, but I protest it going onto the women's side.  Penis soup is made of male parts, and traditionally eaten by men.  And yet, they put in on the female side of the issue, presumably because female readers are more interested in having dicks in their mouths?  Which is, admittedly, heterocentric.  So I admit, darlin, I did find one thing that was actually disrespectful for gays, lesbians, and anyone else who might have a non-traditional stance on dick-sucking.

Thats all for now.

Lucky Peach, Gender Issue Part 1

Okay, so here is the deal.  Lucky Peach has always meant a lot to me, and not in the least because I was turned on to it by my sweet little sister.  And now, my sweet little sister, playing to stereotype as the easily offended gay woman, has gotten her little tail-feathers in a ruffle and I must defend the Lucky Peach.  It is too emblematic of our friendship to be dismissed so easily...

So what I'm doing is reading each article, and letting you know what you just can't miss.  A lot of it is silly, kinda shoe-horned in to fit the theme, but some of it is cool and so far, none of it has been offensive in the slightest.

Do I think the concept on the whole was kind of dumb?  Yes, of course.  But I think they just got the idea for the cover and went for it.  And as far as you not wanting to see naked men or whatever, please remember that 90% of the population is totally at peace with encountering both sets of equipment throughout our lives.  So lets not be homocentric, my darlin' dear...  :-)

I started with the male side (because I am a chauvinist, of course)

1) The Ten Manliest Meals In America- Tony Bourdain writes an essay about the futility of discovering the 'Manliest' food in the country.  Cute, but skippable.  Interestingly, it sort of makes the point that gender-fueled food journalism is silly by definition.  An intriguing way to start a collection of gender fueled journalism...

2)Dad #1- A long, boring piece on how an Australian chef is able to balance home life and work.  Dullsville.  Don't read this one, not because its offensive, but because you could be reading something engaging instead.

3)America, Your Food is So Gay- A fun little essay about how American cuisine was shaped by 3 gay food writers, Craig Clairborne, James Beard, and Richard Olney.  Read this, and then consider reading some of those guys' works.  Clairborne's stuff is kind of dated, a lot of New York Times cookbooks, not a lot of soul.  However, Richard Olney's stuff is great in that it shows real attitude about the French country gastronomic way of life, kind of like Elizabeth David, who you should also check out.  And James Beard's American Cuisine is THE definitive work on the subject, from the era of the founding fathers up until the gastronomic revolution of the 1970's.

4) In Bloom- A piece about cooking with flowers (which is on the male side because flowers are plant penises...I think).  Interesting.  Nothing earth-shattering about flowers, but they do touch on some cool techniques in practice.  Worth reading, if only to drive home the point that flowers don't taste like much, and require flavorful dishes behind them to highlight them.

5) Wow, this Guy Can Really Cook-  A kind of pointless essay on how John Ritter's character on Three's Company helped push the image of the male chef in America.  I'm too young to remember Three's Company, so I can't imagine you'd get much out of it, plus you and I have grown up in an era where male chefs are the norm.  A historical footnote, nothing more.

6)Horseradish: A Gentleman's Condiment- Fluff piece about a guy that makes handmade horseradish at a market stall.  Inspirational in a do-it-your-self kinda way, but hardly fits the theme.  Good pictures.

7)Deliverance- A collection of interviews with Chinese food deliverers.  Nothing unexpected here.  Just tales of bad tippers, low wages, and long hours.  I was expecting something crazier.  Kinda boring.

8)Hieronymous Beef a la Orange, Christmas Pudding, and the Supernatural Food of Bachelor Mountain Ascents- A trippy piece about mountain climbing.  I don't know why this went on the male side.  Im sure there are female climbers, too, and their camp cooking is just as rough.  The recipes were kind of fun.  Recipes for orange beef and christmas pudding using only trail supplies...  If that grabs you, check it out.

AAAAAAAAAaaaaand, thats as far as I've gotten.  Let me know if you read any of these, and I will post again in a couple of days.

The Ten Commandments of Nouvelle Cuisine, Louisiana Edition (MENU COMPARISON)

Ok...so I FINALLY found the menu that you and I did together for a "Fine Dining" experience with traditional Louisiana Cuisine. I think the best way to do it is to discuss what rules the item follows best and also what rules it doesn't follow at all.   Here goes....

Apps...

Sausage Patter w/ Homemade Pickles and Toast
Follows #10 & #3 (Part 2): I feel like this is a unique way to present a charcuterie platter. Its not your expected cured meats but an assortment of fresh housemade sausage that shows off the many varieties of wild game that can be found in the area.
Disregards #6: The use of pickles was to cut the fat of the sausage but this rule would not like any part of pickles or sausage and certainly not together.

Crawfish Etouffe Dip w/ Rice Crackers
Follows #3 (Kind of), #3 (Part 2), #4 (Part 3), & #5 (Part 2): This Étouffée showcases one of of the most 'famous' creatures of the area...the crawfish. It also slightly lightens the menu by using rice crackers. This plays on the traditional dish usually served over rice making it easily shareable and fun.
Disregards #7: Roux is used as a thickener in the dish.

Oysters on the 1/2 Shell
Follows #1, #2, #3, #3 (Part 2), & #8: This dish is served raw, the ingredients are fresh out of the Gulf, and it is served with a citrus mignonette to brighten the dish. Oysters eaten in moderation are very healthy source of protein.
Disregards #10: This dish is not inventive at all but a great classic.

BBQ Gator w/ Mirliton Slaw
Follows #2 & #3 (Part 2): Fresh local mirlitons and Louisiana gator would make a perfect sweet and savory dish.
Disregards #6.1 (Kind of): Mainly because of the BBQ sauce.

Crab Beignets w/ Remoulade Sauce
Follows #3 & #10: It is a lighter and inventive way to serve crab as appose to crab royal with lots of cream and cheese or crab cakes with lots of butter and bread.
Disregards #8: Still not a very 'healthy' dish.

Ok I am going to stop here for the night and will continue soon. Let me know what you think! I am excited about the discussion this menu is going to bring. Hope you are well.