From Canned to Frozen

Taking the leap from canned peas to frozen spinach. I guess I'm covering every old-school vegetable preservation method, save for drying. But sadly, Tomatoes Florentine lacks the transformational power of Chicken Clemenceau. Don't get me wrong. They taste just fine, they're good even, and don't taste like frozen spinach at all. And if I had frozen spinach laying about, which I don't usually, this would definitely be a go-to recipe. The tomato part was also nice, especially since tomatoes this time of year are usually awful, and I don't buy them. So I guess what I'm saying is that this is a nice recipe for crap vegetables.


Tomatoes Florentine
Masson's


1 medium -sized onion, chopped fine
1/2 stick butter
1/2 pound frozen spinach
salt and pepper
4 medium-sized tomatoes
Grated Romano cheese

1. Melt butter in a skillet over medium heat, and when it begins to foam, add onion. Saute until onions begin to brown, 6 or 7 minutes.


2. Microwave spinach following the instructions on the package. Add to onions and cook for one minute, mixing well. Season with salt and pepper.




3.Cut top off of the tomatoes and scoop out to one half of depth, making sure not to puncture the skin along the sides of the tomatoes.



4. Fill the cavity with spinach and onion mixture.



5. Top with grated cheese


6. bake 20-25 minutes at 375 degrees. Serves 4.




Hmmm...the whole time I was cooking this I kept wondering what they would taste like with nicer tomatoes, and baby spinach that was wilted in a little bit of bacon grease. I couldn't figure out if there would be too much water in the spinach so they'd get soggy when baked or not. Its worth a try.

I sort of liked the whole baked tomato thing, so I thought I'd try the other recipe in the cookbook which looks really interesting....

Okra Evangeline
Brennan's

1 lb. fresh okra, sliced
2 sticks butter
1/2 cup chopped onion
1/2 cup chopped ham
1 cup fluffy cooked rice
salt and pepper
4 medium-sized (preferably Creole) Tomatoes

Smother sliced okra in melted butter with onion and ham. When cooked through add fluffy cooked rice. Season to taste and stuff into hollowed out tomatoes. Bake 10 minutes at 400 degrees. Serves 4

This looks way more like a Cajun recipe than a Creole one, so I'm really interested in how they'll turn out.

I Like it Dirty....And You Should Too

What can I say about Chicken Clemenceau? I suppose its like really good sex. Full of variety, intense, with an touch of the illicit that makes you wonder what time the first confession is in the morning. And what really blows my mind is that I'm comparing a recipe that calls for canned peas to sex. I suppose stranger things have happened, but I would have imagined a comparison to something, well, something sexier. I dunno, like truffles or oysters or even canned tuna from some exotic Mediterranean locale. But Del Monte canned peas? Yep.

I have to say that canned peas are pretty necessary for the success of dish. That odd, mushy, metallic taste stands in counterbalance to the sweetness of the butter (and there's a lot of butter to stand up against) and the earthiness of the mushrooms. Shrimp Victoria was just a toe in the kiddie pool compared to the richness of Clemenceau.

I think the dish was named for the French Prime Minister during World War I, Georges Clemenceau. I tried to find out the exact origins of its creation, but struck out. I don't know if it was named in his honor because he visited the city or if it was just general post-war patriotic fervor. Clemenceau's grandson lived in New Orleans, having married a local, so maybe the dish is named after the local Clemenceau? I also tried to find out what restaurant invented the dish, but I haven't had any luck there either. If anyone knows, please enlighten me.

I'm pretty sure Arnaud's didn't invent the recipe, even though its their recipe I'm cooking. All of the major restaurants in New Orleans stole from each other. Oyster's Rockefeller is a good example of this. Antoine's invented it, and the recipe continues to be a closely guarded secret, but Galatoire's and Arnaud's both offered versions of the dish, which, according to Antoine's completely miss the mark. The imitators almost always call for spinach as major ingredient, but Antoine's continues to insist that there is no spinach in the recipe. The New Orleans Restaurant Cookbook has Arnaud's version of Rockefeller, not Antoine's, and I think that's typical--the imitation recipe is the one included in the book not the original.

So to begin...Its a typical Arnaud's recipe, so it doesn't really offer much in the way of instruction:


Chicken Clemenceau
Arnaud's

1 (1 1/2 lb.) spring chicken
1 stick butter
1 small can of green peas
2 medium-sized potatoes diced and fried
6 mushrooms, diced
1 clove garlic minced
1 sprig parsley minced

Cut chicken into 8 pieces. Saute slowly in butter until well browned and cooked through. Add remaining ingredients and saute 5-10 minutes.
Serves 2

So, in the interest of full disclosure, I have to admit to never having deep fried anything before. Really. Ever. Oh, I've pan fried chicken in a little oil, and fish too, but I've always been hesitant about learning how to deep fry, figuring that it would be like heroin. One hit and I'd be hooked for life, meeting a sad but inevitable end, toothless under an overpass. I remember watching a Paula Dean episode once (Shudder! That woman is the devil) where she offered tips, but the only one I could remember was "keep your fat hot, sugah." (Gag!) I put off thinking about frying stuff by concentrating on carving up the chicken.

The recipe calls for a 1 1/2 lb. chicken. Do you know how impossible it is to find a chicken that small? I went to three stores. The Cornish hens I looked at were nearly a pound. Most of the recipes in the book call for a half of chicken as 1 serving, which makes sense if that's one pound or under. But if you're cooking a 5 or 6 pound bird, then that's a lot of chicken for one person. I know this is part of the battery chicken problem, but even free-range organic, while smaller than the Purdue frankenchicken's , are still larger than what most of the recipes in the cookbook call for.

I opted to use half a chicken that came out to be only slightly larger than 1 1/2 lb. I carved it up my usual way. And stuck it in the fridge to rest.


Next up was the first foray into frying. I looked online and some sites were recommending using a gallon (gasp!) of oil. I just had two diced potatoes, so a gallon definitely seemed like overkill. I looked at the can of Crisco (gag!) that I bought when trying out the Gumbo Z'herbes recipe. I was going to go ahead and use it, until I read the warning label on the can. Did you even know that Crisco had a warning label? It does. And its not one about eating it--its a caution about using it. Scared the crap out of me, with its talk of "catching on fire" and what to do "in case of a fire." The last thing I need to do is burn the kitchen down on my first attempt at deep frying, so I settled on a pint of peanut oil, figuring that a whole pint was enough, and there was no warning label attached. Whew!

I got the fat really hot, Sugah, but not smoking, and dropped in the diced potatoes.

They sank immediately to the bottom of the pan, then floated to the top. I wasn't sure how long they were going to take to get done, but it seemed like they were a nice golden color after 5 minutes, so I took them out.

Not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but they seemed okay. A lot soggier than I would have liked, but they'd do. I added some sea salt and moved on.

I decided that raw mushrooms wouldn't cook properly the way the original recipe was written, so I quartered them and sauteed them in butter, then added them at the end of the cooking. I dressed them up with a little fresh thyme, salt and cayenne.

It was now time to move on to the chicken. The recipe calls for it to be pan fried in a stick of butter.
After about 25 minutes, the juices ran clear and the chicken was done. And the rest is all very fast. I threw in the potatoes and the mushrooms into the pot with the chicken and gave it a gentle stir, trying not to break up the potatoes. I stirred in the peas, covered the pan, and turned off the fire. I know the recipe said to cook for 5 minutes, but that just seemed too much. You're just trying to heat the peas through, so actually cooking the peas seemed to me would just make them even mushier.

Using a slotted spoon, I dished it up. Damn. I forgot all about the garlic and the chopped parsley. Crap! The whole deep frying thing threw me off my game.

I know it doesn't look like much on the plate, but damn that is some good eatin', even minus the garlic and parsley. And my friend Jen who had lunch with me agreed.

We had some of my new favorite white wine, Chateau Lamothe Bordeaux Blanc, but I have to say the dish completely overpowered it. I think this needs, as my friend Annabel would say, a big, slutty red. Something from Southwestern France would be ideal; big, bold and a bit harsh. Maybe a Cahors or Madiran?

I definitely want to cook this again. I need to refine the whole potato step and make that better and include the garlic and parsley. It also needs more of the Clemenceau--I'd double the amount of potatoes, mushrooms and peas. I also wonder how it would do if instead of cooking the chicken with a full stick of butter, I used a half a stick instead? Am I just being a butter wus? I also wanted to try the dish where the chicken was baked instead of fried, then added to the vegetables which have been lightly sauteed with a little butter--maybe 2 Tbs. Does that make me a super butter wus? I'm going to, however, put off re-doing this recipe for a bit to give my cholesterol a chance to drop a few points.

Since tomorrow is one of the last Friday's in Lent, I thought I'd do something meatless. The only restaurant featured in the Cookbook that I haven't cooked a recipe from has been Masson's Beach House, and I hope to make up for that tomorrow with their Tomatoes Florentine. It seems like something light and relatively sin-less, penance for today's culinary butter fest! (You know, I think Emeril might have gotten it wrong, the real "holy trinity" of Louisiana cooking isn't so much onions, bell peppers and celery, but rather the intersection between food, sex and religion. Bam!)


Tomatoes Florentine
Masson's


1 medium -sized onion, chopped fine
1/2 stick butter
1/2 pound frozen spinach
salt and pepper
4 medium-sized tomatoes
Grated Romano cheese

Saute' onion in butter and add cooked, seasoned spinach. Cut top and bottom off tomatoes and scoop out to one half of depth. Fill the cavity with spinach and onion mixture. Top with grated cheese and bake 20-25 minutes at 375 degrees. Serves 4.

Wow. There's an oven temperature. That's a first!

Chicken Creole Redux

When I told my mom that I was cooking Antoine's recipe for Chicken Creole, she said, "Oh, I like dark meat, preferably a thigh, but a leg will do." Um...Okay. When I asked if she'd like me to bring her some for lunch she said, "Oh, no, I've got a nice lunch here." Which in old-lady-from-New-Orleans-speak means "Hells yes, dumb ass." When I got to the home, she acted surprised to see me, even though we'd only spoken an hour before and I told her I was bringing her lunch. Ah, old Southern habits die hard.

Lunch was indeed a hit. So much so, Mom decided to give me cooking tips, always a sign that she really enjoyed her meal. She would have liked the chicken cooked in the sauce a bit longer, not much longer, say 5 minutes or so. She was right, I think, but c'mon. How the woman knows food without ever having cooked is beyond me.

So here's the revised recipe. I like to carve up my own chickens, its a whole lot cheaper and I find it kinda fun, so I've left that in the recipe. I also think bone-in chicken makes for a better dish. When I disjoint a chicken, I wash the pieces and let them sit uncovered on a plate in the fridge for 3o minutes before drying them. Its something Dorothy did, and I'm not sure why or what purpose it serves, but I do it too.

Chicken Creole
Antoine's

1 (3 1/2 lb.) frying chicken
1/4 cup olive oil
1 20 oz. can of whole tomatoes, chopped with juice from the can
2 Tbs. butter
1 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. cayenne
Several grinds of fresh black pepper
2 sprigs thyme
1 Tbs. minced parsley
1 large bay leaf or 2 small
3 minced cloves garlic
1 Tbs. flour
6 chopped shallots (green onions) or 1/2 cup minced white onion
5 Tbs. chopped bell pepper
1/2 cup white wine

1. Disjoint chicken, wash and dry.

2. Add olive oil to a large skillet or Dutch oven. Heat over high heat and add chicken. Saute, browning on both sides. Roughly 8 to 10 minutes. You may have to do this in batches.

3. When brown, remove the chicken and set aside.

4. In another large skillet, simmer tomatoes and 1 Tbs. of butter together 10 minutes over low heat, stirring occasionally.

5. Add salt, pepper and cayenne to the tomatoes and simmer 10 more minutes.

6. Add thyme, parsley, bay leaf, and garlic and cook 15 minutes, or until sauce is thick. The sauce will have thickened considerably by this point. Remove from heat.

7. Pour out any oil left in the Dutch oven or large skillet used to cook the chicken, making sure not to disturb any of the brown bits stuck to the bottom of the pan.

8. Add 1 Tbs. butter to pan and heat over high heat, stirring to break up what has browned on the bottom of the pan. When the butter begins to foam, blend in flour, and cook until brown. This is usually very quick, a minute or two.

9. Add shallots or onion and bell pepper and brown slightly, about 2 minutes. Add wine, stirring constantly until slightly thickened, about 1 minute.

10. Combine wine and tomato mixtures and add chicken. Cover and simmer over low heat for 45 to 55 minutes, or until chicken is tender. Stir occasionally, especially in the beginning of the cooking, as it can stick a bit. Serve with steamed rice.
Serves 4-6.

Up next is another chicken classic--Chicken Clemenceau. Its an Arnaud's recipe, and its a bit of a mystery, as you'll see.

Chicken Clemenceau
Arnaud's

1 (1 1/2 lb.) spring chicken
1 stick butter
1 small can of green peas
2 medium-sized potatoes diced and fried
6 mushrooms, diced
1 clove garlic minced
1 sprig parsley minced

Cut chicken into 8 pieces. Saute slowly in butter until well browned and cooked through. Add remaining ingredients and saute 5-10 minutes.
Serves 2

Just a couple of observations. First...Huh? Saute the chicken in butter? Slowly? How about a little help with that. A time maybe or a fire height? And the uncooked mushrooms are going to cook enough in 5 minutes? Hmm....And this is one of the more sensible and easy-to-follow of the Arnaud's recipes.

I'm not sure Mom's going to be asking for a thigh from this one!

Dinner from Antoine's

I haven't cooked any of the Antoine's recipes yet, so their Chicken Creole is a first. And its not because these recipes sound whack-a-doody like those from Arnaud's, but quite the reverse. A lot of them sound really yummy. But I find Antoine's really intimidating for a whole bunch of reasons. Its the granddaddy of all the New Orleans restaurants, with a menu largely unchanged for 165 years. Its been in open for business, except for a Katrina blip, since 1840, and is the oldest continuously operating restaurant run by the same family in the nation.

Its quite a beautiful space, especially some of the smaller dining rooms. But the last time I ate there, sometime in the early 1990s, everything seemed a bit ossified. The menu was essentially the same menu as before the civil war, entirely in French and all a la carte. I remember starting with Huites a la Foch, fried oysters and fois gras on toast points covered with a Colbert sauce. The dish was named for Marshall Foch, leader of French forces in World War I, and you could just taste the history. This was followed by Pompano en Papillote, pompano (a firm gulf fish) baked in paper with shrimp and crab in a veloute sauce enriched by wine. Steam from cooking is supposed to puff up the paper, suggesting a balloon, and the paper top is dramatically cut open at the table by the waiter. Dramatic, but not light fare. The dinner ended with an enormous Omlette Alaska Antoine, the restaurant's version of baked Alaska--with sponge cake, ice cream, covered in a dense meringue, elaborately decorated with meringue swans. Big on drama. A lot less wow on taste.

The experience of dining at Antoine's is like no other, at least no other I've had. There is such a sense of history in both the surroundings and on the plate. And while that appeals to the antiquarian in me, I'm not so sure about its appeal to the epicurean. But onward and upward with Chicken Creole, which is another of those dishes that seems to be everywhere, featured on just about every type of New Orleans restaurants' menus, from the lowest mom-and-pop to the biggest of the big. I chose this recipe because I was intrigued to see what such a venerable institution as Antoine's had done with it.

Chicken Creole
Antoine's

1 (3 1/2 lb.) frying chicken
1/4 cup olive oil
1 (#2) can tomatoes
2 Tbs. butter
1 tsp. salt
Pepper and cayenne
1 sprig thyme
1 Tbs. minced parsley
1 bay leaf
3 minced cloves garlic
1 Tbs. flour
6 chopped shallots (green onions) or 1/2 cup minced onion
5 Tbs. bell pepper
1/2 cup white wine

Disjoint chicken and clean well. Saute in oil, browning on both sides. Simmer tomatoes and 1 Tbs. of butter together 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add salt and a few grains of pepper and cayenne and simmer 10 minutes. Add thyme, parsley, bay leaf, and garlic and cook 15 minutes, or until sauce is thick. Melt 1 Tbs. butter, blend in flour, and cook until brown. Add shallots or onion and bell pepper and brown slightly. Add wine , stirring constantly until slightly thickened. Combine wine and tomato mixtures and add chicken. Cover and simmer for 45 minutes, or until chicken is tender. Serve with steamed rice.
Serves 4-6.

Um...What's a # 2 can of tomatoes? And while its great there are some times listed in the instructions, really unusual for the Cookbook, what happens to the chicken after its first browned? It sort of disappears until the end, right? Or does it get cook with the tomatoes? I'm not so sure.

The first thing I did was disjoint the chicken. I know this is ghoulish, but I love carving up chickens. I'm not all that keen on chicken, but it makes me so happy to chop them up.

I washed and dried the chicken pieces and began to brown them in a Dutch oven with 1/4 cup of the olive oil over a medium-high heat.

I was only doing a half of chicken, so it took about 12 minutes to brown everything.

I looked online to find out what in the hell a #2 can of tomatoes was exactly. It looks as though it was an old system of can sizes, which hasn't been used for more than 40 years. What I didn't find out was exactly what size that can was. One site said 18 oz. and another said 20 oz. and one said 22 oz. I decided to compromise with 20 oz. of whole tomatoes, which worked out to a little more than half of a 35 oz. can. I chopped the tomatoes and began to saute them in butter.

I've never actually sauteed tomatoes in butter before I don't think. I probably would have remembered because they smell f-ing fantastic. Really super good. I simmered the tomatoes over very low heat for 10 minutes. I then added 1 tsp. of salt, 1/4 tsp. of cayenne, and a couple of turns from the black pepper grinder. I continued simmering for another 10 minutes.



I then added thyme, parsley, bay, garlic and cooked for an additional 15 minutes. The sauce thickened up considerably.

I don't have a picture of this because I was working very quickly. I poured out the grease leftover from browning the chicken and wiped out the Dutch oven, making sure to leave the brown bits stuck to the bottom of the pan. Over high heat, I threw in 1 Tbs. of butter and when foaming, blended in the flour, stirring constantly. After 1 minute or so, I added the green onions and bell peppers, stirring constantly, scraping the bottom of the pan. After 2 minutes, I added the wine and de-glazed the pan, stirring constantly until thickened. I took the pan off of heat and added the tomato mixture.

I then added the chicken and returned to a very low fire.

I covered the pan, stirring a bit in the beginning, as it seemed to be sticking. I simmered for 45 minutes.

The cooking times in the recipe were dead on. A first for the Cookbook. And it was really yum. Again, it was a lot lighter than what I traditionally know as Chicken Creole, but incredibly flavorful. It also has the added bonus of being practically dietetic, since it only has 2 Tbs. of butter and not multiple sticks, as several of the other recipes I've cooked have called for.

I served it with the Chateau Lamothe Bordeaux blanc, but it probably could have used something even more robust. I'll put up the tweaked recipe tomorrow.

Clothes sometimes do make the man

So far, I've tried to cook at least one recipe from each of the restaurants in the cookbook, but one restaurant is giving me a bit of trouble. I've been going through, looking for something that I want to cook from Arnaud's and it just seems to elude me. Eventually I'll have cooked everything in the book, but there are a bunch of recipes I'm putting off for awhile. Most of those seem to involve canned fruit or pineapple (gag!), and most of them happen to be from Arnauds. (Was there some craze for pineapple in the 1940s or 1950s that I am completely unaware of? )

A couple of times I thought I'd found something of Arnaud's to cook, only to be foiled by either crazy instructions or strange ingredients. At first glance, the recipe will read okay, but when I start to think about how to put it together or imagine what those flavor combinations would taste like, I'll realize that its completely whack-a-doodie. Chicken Bostonian, for example, is a half-chicken that sits on a bed of Lima beans, pimentos and string beans. I don't have anything against Lima beans or string beans, but I'm just not sure that they belong together or paired with chicken and pimentos. Pimentos? Really?

Arnaud's was the largest of all the restaurants featured in the cookbook, and for many years was the largest restaurant in New Orleans. I think it still has the largest kitchen in the entire city. Afterall, it covers nearly an entire block in the French Quarter. At its peak, it could seat 1600 and had a staff of 150. Founded by "Count" Arnaud Cazenave in 1920, by 1967 when the cookbook was published, the restaurant was being run by his daughter Germaine, and was in the middle stages of its very, very long decline.

Count Arnaud, it seems, wasn't really a Count nor was he a chef, but he was brilliant at marketing, and by the 1940s he'd built Arnaud's into the city's premier restaurant. At this point it was more important than Antioine's, its older and more venerated competitor and Galatoire's was still a small family restaurant. He had some vision and a whole lot of style and was the first to exploit the potential that tourism had for the restaurant business in New Orleans, and he aggressively advertised both the city and the restaurant to the outside world.

He also liked to drink. He started the day with a pint of Champagne and ended the day with countless cups of coffee laced with 50% Bourbon, with Sazarac's rounding out the middle and cocktail hours. Arnaud's has one of the most beautiful bars in the city, The Richelieu Bar, housed in one of the oldest parts of the restaurant (1799). And while the Volstead Act caused a minor speed bump, Arnaud's continued to serve hooch in coffee cups both in the bar and in the restaurant. Arnaud was eventually arrested and the restaurant shuttered, but luckily he'd evaded arrest until 1931, and he was released and the building re-opened after the repeal of Prohibition.

Germaine took over when her father died in 1948 and ran the restaurant until 1980. Theatrical and over-the-top even for a city where over-the-top wasn't really a big deal, she continued her father's foray's into p.r. She set up a mini-museum in the restaurant to house her collection of Mardi Gras costumes and examples of her mother's needlework, and if you go to the restaurant today, you'll still find them there. She also instituted a version of New York's Easter Parade through the French Quarter.

She also liked more than the occasional cocktail, so I suggested to Christie that we might start with some of the cocktail recipes from Arnaud's. One in particular caught my eye, because, well, it seemed a little crazy. Named after Germaine, it boasts a combination of gin, bourbon, triple sec and champagne. Crazy, right? I couldn't even begin to imagine what that would taste like. Even thinking about it sort of made my tongue hurt.

Germaine Special
Arnaud's

2 dashes orange juice
1 oz. gin
1/2 oz. bourbon
1/2 oz. Triple Sec
Champagne

Shake juice, gin, bourbon, and Triple Sec with ice and strain into a champagne glass. Top with Champagne.

I laid out the ingredients first. It was quite the line-up.

Christie said no to Triple Sec, so we used Cointreau. I measured out the gin, bourbon, Cointreau and orange juice and gave it a good shake over ice. I poured it into Champagne glasses. I did pause for a moment. There seemed a lot of room at the top for Champagne, which scared me. I never know how much to use when a recipe says just "to top," and there just seemed room for sooooo much in that glass. Too much. I compromised and gave it a couple of splashes.

On first glance, it was a bit urinal in color. Never my go-to color in a cocktail. And the taste? Well, it wasn't awful. It didn't taste like gin nor bourbon nor was it too sweet. Its honestly hard to say what it tasted like. And do you know how hard it is to come up with a gin recipe that completely erases the taste of the gin or a Cointreau recipe that isn't too sweet? The second one went down a whole lot easier, helped along by some Regan's Orange bitters.

I tried to find something on the net that was similar to this cocktail and I couldn't. (If anyone knows of anything, please let me know). The cocktail, like its namesake seems pretty singular.

Just one aside before I wrap up. I think I've written before that my mom absolutely refused to let us go to Arnaud's. My mom thought, that Germaine was...how to put this...relying on the kindness of strangers. A lot of strangers, and usually fueled by a lot of booze. My dad thought the ban was ridiculous, but my mom was adamant. She felt it just wasn't a place for us. So I didn't get to experience Arnaud's growing up. However, my mom's attitude softened a bit after Germaine's death. Her family held an enormous estate sale, and like a lot of things in New Orleans, the auction had an air of Carnival about it. She lived in a 23 room mansion on Esplanade Ave., and it seemed the entire contents of the house was up for auction--including her collection of hats, gloves, and evening gowns. She was an outrageous lady, and she had the wardrobe to match.

My mom later found out that a group of drag queens bought most of Germaine's clothes, and were producing a show using them. She was horrified, repeating over and over, "that poor woman." Moral of the story: You can be a total 'ho in life, but having a bunch of drag queens buy all your clothes when you're gone is a fate worse than death. I love my mom's priorities!

Coxtales

It wouldn't be much of a New Orleans Cookbook if there weren't a section on drinks, right? And I gotta say, the cookbook is very comprehensive on the New Orleans standard libations, although I pretty sure I'm going to have some trouble conjuring up Jero's Passion Fruit Cocktail Mix, which seems to be a necessary component for almost all of the Pat O'Brien's concoctions. I'll keep you posted

A lot of the drink recipes seem really interesting, so interesting that I'm not sure I'd want to drink them. For example, one drink called for both gin and Bourbon? Hmmm....sounds like something you'd mix up at a frat party. I'd never heard of the Half and Half from Brennan's, and in fact I couldn't even imagine what it was going to taste like...

Half and Half
Brennan's

1 1/2 oz. dry vermouth
1 1/2 oz. sweet vermouth
Lemon peel

Put dry and sweet vermouth in an old-fashioned glass with 2 ice cubes. Stir gently and serve with a lemon peel.

So Christie grabbed a couple of old fashioned glasses and whipped them up, and I have to say they made up a really nice looking drink, with a really woody nose.

The first sip was a little odd, I must admit. There were a whole range of flavors I wasn't expecting and not really sure how to process. However, about half-way through I really started to enjoy it. I thought it could use something though to brighten it up a bit and Christie agreed. I thought about using a slice of lemon, instead of the peel, but Christie had a much, much better idea...

Regan's Orange Bitters! And what an improvement the bitters make. Score one for Christie! A couple of dashes adds a bright top note and counters all of the woody, herbal flavors of the vermouth.

I did find a similar drinks recipe (the amounts are different) on the Internet, with the name, "French Kiss." That's a bit of marketing overstatement if you ask me, 'cause this drink doesn't really make you think about kissing. Cigars maybe, a roaring fire, but canoodling, uh, no. A better name for this drink, in my opinion, would be "The Desperation" cocktail, because the only time you're going to make it, is when you're desperate for a drink and all that's left are the mixers for Manhattan's and Martini's. With only Vermouth left, you've got yourself a drink.

Stuffed--Lenten-Style

Stuffed eggplant seems ubiquitous during Lent in New Orleans. They were served at lunch at school, and it seemed that every Maw-Maw trotted out these footballs of bread and cheese on Friday night. Usually having only a passing acquaintance with some sort of seafood, and even eggplant, the cooked eggplant shells mainly served as a conduit for dishing up seasoned breadcrumbs, Progresso Seasoned Breadcrumbs to be more exact. This isn't a dish I look back on with unmitigated fondness, with fuzzy warm feelings of bonhomie and luv. Indeed, I had some misgivings about attempting this, but I figured it only served two, so if it stank, I wouldn't be wasting too much. Its also a recipe from Galatoire's, so just how bad could it be?

At first glance, this recipe looks like a breeze.

Stuffed Eggplant
Galatoire's

1 large eggplant
2 Tbs. chopped green onion
1 tsp. parsley
4 Tbs. butter
salt and pepper
1/2 cup lump crab meat
1/2 cup cooked shrimp (or 1 cup of either)
Bread crumbs
Grated Parmesan cheese

Cut eggplant lengthwise, put in a pan with a little water and bake in oven until tender. Scoop out pulp, being careful to keep skin intact for re-stuffing. In a skillet, brown green onions and parsley in butter. Season and add pulp of eggplant and shrimp and or crab meat. Stir together and cook for a few minutes, then stuff into eggplant shells. Sprinkle with bread crumbs and grated cheese., and bake in a moderate oven until brown. Serves 2.

Oh, New Orleans Restaurant Cookbook, you get me every time. A breeze?....Let's see...Cooking times? Nope. An oven temperature perhaps? Nada. How about some amounts? How many breadcrumbs? How much cheese? Argh! Is it me or does this recipe read more like a series of suggestions rather than instructions on how to cook something?

I didn't know exactly how many shrimp would make up a cup, so I used 24 small shrimp, which I boiled, chilled and peeled, and that worked out to be the right amount. I sliced the eggplants in half and set them in a pan with 1 1/3 cups water. I put them in a 375 degree oven and baked for 50 minutes. I started them out cut side up.


But I flipped them over about half-way through the cooking, since they seemed to be getting a little too brown.


I scooped out the pulp from the eggplants, being careful not to break the skins, and removed to a small bowl. I then melted the 4 Tbs. of butter in a small skillet, and when it began to foam, I added the green onions and parsley and sauteed over a medium-low heat for 2 minutes. I added the eggplant and shrimp and cooked for two more minutes, mixing well.



I added 1 tsp. salt, 1/2 tsp. black pepper and 1/2 tsp. cayenne, mixing well then I stuffed the eggplant shells.


I thought it might be more interesting to make some fresh breadcrumbs to put on top, so I popped a day-old baguette into the food processor and presto!

I used 1/2 cup breadcrumbs and 1/4 cup grated Parmesan for the tops of the eggplant. I put them in a 350 degree oven and baked for 25 minutes, until the top got golden brown.

So the good: Not even close to being a bread football, in fact not really bready at all. I really liked the lightness of the dish, and thats despite having 4 Tbs. of butter. It also wasn't loaded with too much seasoning, so the flavor of the shrimp and the eggplant really shone through. I feel like this is some sort of ur-recipe on which the bastard stuffed eggplants of later ages are based.

Now the bad: It had 4 Tbs. of butter! Yowza! And it didn't really need that much. I think you could halve that amount and it would still taste good. It did need something else, however, but I'm not sure what. Some acid I think. Lemon? Wine? Stay tuned for the revised recipe.