A Beginning

I always thought it really odd that my mother had tons of cookbooks, because I'm pretty sure she's never cooked a thing in her life. Really. And I'm also pretty sure this absence from my early years is the kind I should be really grateful for, and not the kind to send me into therapy, since even by Southern standards she's on the "eccentric" side. There is something of the mad genius in her, and I've always thought had she been let loose in the kitchen she might have anticipated the craze for odd combinations--chocolate and zucchini or molecular gastronomie. The idea of my mom playing around with coagulants and mini-smokers, has the air of a lot of her craft projects, which were, more often than not, experiments gone way wrong (Needlepoint beanbag chair!). Thankfully we didn't have to eat them. But I digress.

I was lucky in that my father liked to eat (a lot) and since both he and my mother were native New Orleanians, they both had a passion for good food (a big one), so we had a cook. And not just any cook, but a woman who had magic in her hands. Dorothy wasn't "schooled," she learned to cook from her mother, who was also a cook, but she had a passion for good food of all kinds, and in a way that was pretty much renegade in the 1950s and 1960s. She insisted on scratch, so nothing from a box ever, and real cheese, and fresh meat and produce, preferably from a farm source and not from a store. She also read about food, constantly trying to add variety to her repertoire, while keeping a strong foundation in traditional Creole cooking.

And she taught me to cook. I was about 7 or 8 when I first started, chopping things for dinner after school or helping with whatever baking she was doing. My guess is she was worried that if anything happened to her we'd starve--she was pretty right about that. I suppose teaching me was one way of making sure we'd be taken care of. And, well, we really liked each other. Cooking with her was fun. By the time I reached 14 I was pretty accomplished. At least I thought I was. I could make a halfway decent gumbo, pies and red beans. And I could follow a recipe.

I thought I could follow a recipe. Dorothy was on vacation and I pulled down Deidre Stanforth's, The New Orleans Restaurant Cookbook from my mom's bookshelf. I'd eaten at Brennan's in the French Quarter. We liked Brennan's. I should cook something from Brennan's. Why not? I'd eaten at just about every restaurant in the city at that point, except for Arnaud's. Since my mom thought Germaine Wells, the owner of Arnaud's, was a drinker, it was off limits. But Masson's Beach House, Pittari's, The Caribbean Room, Commander's Palace, Central Grocery Store, Mosca's and Mother's all were a go. Like I said, my Dad really liked a good meal, and my mom didn't know about the private lives of the other restaurant owners I guess.


Since we'd eaten at Brennan's a lot, I figured those were the most reliable recipes to try, so I picked oysters Roffignac for a starter and chicken Rochambeau for an entree out of the cookbook. A small green salad with an easy vinaigrette and some fruit and cheese would complete the meal, and with just three courses, and one a salad, I wouldn't be out of my depth. Right.

Let's talk Roffignac. Its a dish similar to oysters Rockefeller, where the oysters are on the half-shell, slathered with a sauce piped over them from a pastry bag, and baked in pans filled with rock salt. The shells are sort of necessary, and I didn't have any. I was also pretty positive that the chances of getting a big bag of fresh oysters were dim, as I wasn't about to go ask my mom to go buy some. However, I was certain I could make-do with the jar of fresh oysters in their water I had on hand. I would just have to lay the oysters in a pan and spoon the sauce over them then run them under the broiler. Shells in a bed of rock salt? That's for pussies.

I fared no better with the Rochambeau. The recipe called for two 2 1/2 lb. boned chickens, Holland rusks and two sauces, one of which was a Bearnaise. I'd never made Bearnaise, I had one chicken of unknown weight, and hadn't a clue what Holland rusks were (It was only later that I learned the only connection to the Netherlands was in their taste--like wooden shoes). Did I mention that I'd never made a Bearnaise?

I knew, after the third hour or so that the night was a disaster. The sauce for the oysters turned a dull grey, since I overcooked the blond roux, and was as thick as wall paper paste. So thick in fact that the layer of oysters underneath it never really cooked under the broiler. Sounds yummy, right? The chicken was marginally better. I did have the sense to ask my dad what Holland rusks were, and he described them as a type of hard, round toast. Hm, not the corn husks I'd imagined. I improvised with some toasted pieces of day-old French bread. However, I'd never cut up a chicken before, much less boned one, so the the bird was beyond unorthodox. (I think I fractured the breast into 5 or 6 pieces!). The Bearnaise separated halfway throughout the cooking, and then thinned even more when the capers hit it at the end.

The meal became legend. Naturally, I blamed the fucking book.

Now that I'm older and living in Manhattan, (and can make a Bearnaise and bone a chicken with some facility) I realize how interesting a cookbook The New Orleans Restaurant Cookbook really is. Its a snapshot of a way of eating that has almost entirely disappeared, when cooking in New Orleans considered itself an extension of French haute cuisine, if not its new and improved progeny.

That's not to say the book is exactly, how to put this...well...its not exactly cook-able. I was fortunate in picking the two recipes I did on my first go round, even given the disastrous results, as the two I picked are some of the more easy to follow. Stanforth wasn't a chef, but rather a commercial artist, and while not expressly stated by the author, the recipes seem to have been dictated to her by the cooks and chefs of the restaurants included in the book. Most assume a pretty advanced skill set that the average home cook might not have. Moreover I think there were some things just lost in translation. Trout Eugene, from the Caribbean Room at the Pontchartrain Hotel, for example calls for one 7-8 pound trout fillet to serve one. Really? 7 lbs for one diner? And we complain about portion sizes today? Cooking times, especially for shrimp seem a bit off as well. Would I really want to saute one pound of shrimp in an oil sauce for more than 40 minutes? I think that's the highway to Gristleville.

I guess I've taken a long and circuitous route to get to this, but my idea for this blog is to use it as a way of charting my way through the cookbook. My plan is to cook each recipe in the book as best I can as written, and see how it goes. With the ones that need tweaking, I'll try to cook alternatives. I'll also try to clarify instructions in recipes that seem vague, for example, in places that read, "stir until done," I'll try to give a time. I'm going to let the cooking lead the updating, or so I'll try.

Since its Lent, I thought the first recipe I'd tackle is gumbo z'herbs from Corinne Dunbar's. Gumbo z'herbs is really unusual in the cannon of traditional gumbos, since it doesn't have a roux, its made almost entirely of greens, and doesn't have meat--at least not in my house. While Dorothy didn't use this particular recipe, we had her version of this every Friday evening during Lent.

The recipe follows...

Gumbo Z'Herbes
Dunbar's

1 bunch collard greens
1 bunch mustard greens
1 bunch turnip greens
1 bunch spinach
1 bunch watercress
1 bunch beet tops
1 bunch carrot tops
1 bunch parsley
1 bunch chicory
1 bunch radish tops
1 green cabbage
1/2 bunch shallots (green onions)
1 gallon water
1 lb. boiled ham, diced
1 lb. lean veal, diced
2 tbs. shortening
1 large white onion, chopped
1 tbs. chopped parsley
2 bay leaves
4 sprigs thyme
2 cloves
2 allspice
Salt, pepper, cayenne to taste
Paprika

Wash all greens thoroughly, removing all stems or hard centers of leaves; use only tender parts. Boil greens together in 1 gallon of water about 2 hours. Strain greens and reserve water. Chop greens finely. Simmer ham and veal in shortening about 10 minutes in a deep iron skillet. Add white onion and chipped parsley, cooking until onion is brown. Add greens and simmer 15 minutes. Add water from the greens, the contents of the skillet, plus bay, thyme, cloves, allspice, salt, pepper and cayenne. Bring to a boil and then turn down to a slow boil, cooking over a low flame about an hour. Serve in soup bowls, sprinkled with paprika. Serves 10-12.

Remember that vague thing I was talking about? And the whole Lenten-no-meat-on-Friday thing? And yes, veal counts as meat.