Du côté de chez Pontchartrain

How funny that my Madeleine of memory has shrimp in it. I picked the recipe for Shrimp Madeleine because it seemed simple, and just enough for one, since I still haven't quite recovered from the 20 servings of gumbo. I had no idea just how evocative a choice it would be in remembering my own temps perdu.

I think we ate at The Caribbean Room, where this recipe originates, more than any other of the major restaurants--Easter lunch every year, a party after my confirmation, and my Dad's 60th birthday, with a single candle sitting in an entire mile-high pie (the restaurants signature desert--sort of like an overgrown baked Alaska with three pints of ice-cream). It had these great Charles Reineke murals of local landscapes, big booths, but it was pretty intimate in size--certainly tiny when compared to other hotel restaurants.

And unlike most of the other major restaurants, It wasn't in the French Quarter, but in the Garden District, where I grew up, and the menu had a more expansive feel. It seemed connected to the larger world of food in a way that the other restaurants in the city weren't. Of course it had all the New Orleans classics--arguably having the best red beans and rice in the city--but the menu wasn't just Creole. I had my first Jerusalem artichoke there in the 1970s, and that was mad exotic! And one of the hotel's big p.r. stunts was a pot-roast cook-off between the executive chef, Louis Evans and James Beard. (Pot roast?) In a small way it offered a little window into the culinary trends in the rest of America.

Evans, the chef, was also different. First off, he looked different--he was the only African-American chef at any of the major restaurants in the city. Originally from Mississippi, he got his start at an Italian Restaurant, Sclafani's, and then moved to The Caribbean Room as a line cook. The owner of the hotel, Lysle Aschaffenburg, paid for him to go to the Culinary Institute of America, and returned to The Caribbean Room, where he worked his way up to executive chef.

Its also one of the last memories I have of New Orelans. A year after Hurricane Katrina, I realized that my mom wouldn't be able to return there to live. Even after all that time, there still wasn't a grocery store operating in her neighborhood, nor were there working stop lights, and half of her doctors had relocated. It was still an unbelievable mess. I'd been down about a month after Katrina, and I was surprised by how little progress had been made a year later, especially in my Mom's neighborhood near City Park, where she moved after my Dad died. Blocks and blocks of flooded houses, some under renovation, but more in a muddy, moldering limbo.

Luckily my mom's place escaped the worst. Some crazy mold, but no major flooding to deal with. So I came down to pack up what I could and move it out. It was August and typical for August in New Orleans it was just jungle hot; temps in the 90s with crazy humidity. It never seemed to cool off, not even at night. The air conditioner at my mom's was one of the casualties of the storm, which I found out on my first day there. I tried to tough it out, but I just couldn't do it. I was basically soaking wet from the moment I started packing and I just stayed that way the entire day. I looked online for a hotel room, and I got a deal at the Pontchartrain for $40 a night. Wow, I thought, this has suddenly become more than bearable. I'll get some good food, and some nice drinks and this will turn out all right.

The hotel was pretty much empty, there couldn't have been more than 5 or 6 registered guests.
My $40 got me the Carol Channing suite, (funny, right?) which despite the mold, peeling paint and crazy antiques never looked better to me. The coffee shop was doing a booming breakfast and lunch business, since it was one of the few restaurants up and running, and the hotel's bar also had a nice complement of locals in the evening. But after 8 pm it was a ghost town. The Caribbean room was shuttered, but one night after a couple of old fashioneds, I walked back into the restaurant. The hotel had been looted and there was some damage, most of the tables had been removed, and the murals had been defaced. And back at the bar, the stories started coming from the staff--how nobody was coming to stay, about the woman who made the mile-high pies. She'd survived the storm but accidentally killed herself when she mixed ammonia and bleach together in trying to clean mold out of her house. It was all so overwhelmingly sad. The hotel closed, slated for demolition, a week after I left.

The intersection between food and memory isn't exactly under-explored territory. And after all, isn't that what every Thanksgiving is about? We serve foods that nobody really likes, in an attempt to define a family and a national identity. A collective memory uniting the past and the present in the form of green jello, dry turkey and sweet potatoes with mini-marsh mellows. In some sense, aren't we eating to remember?

There is, however, a happy ending. Apparently, there was someone with some sense, who rethought the idea of tearing the building down, and its set to reopen as an assisted living facility. The Caribbean Room will become the dining room for the residents, with all the murals restored, and the Bayou Bar will remain open to the public. How New Orleans. It has to be the only Assisted Living facility in the US with a bar in the lobby.

Wow, that was maudlin. What's not maudlin is Shrimp Madeleine. Its fucking fantastic!

I didn't realize until I started making it, that its essentially a backwards beurre blanc. And you could put beurre blanc on some dirt and it would still taste good. Not only is this recipe easy and inexpensive, but its damn good.The cooking times in the recipe printed in The Cookbook are a little whack, but that's the only revision I'm making. I keep thinking that this would be excellent as a sauce on thin-gauge pasta like capellini.



Shrimp Madeleine
Pontchartrain
1 dozen large raw shrimp or 24 medium raw shrimp, peeled and cleaned
1/2 stick unsalted butter
1 Tbs. chopped green onions
1 Tbs. chopped celery
1 Tbs. chopped bell pepper
1 Tbs. chopped parsley
2 Tbs. lemon juice
1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
1/4 tsp. cayenne
salt to taste

1. Finely chop green onions, celery, bell pepper and parsley.

2. Melt the butter in a small skillet over a medium-low heat.

3. When butter begins to foam, add onions, celery, bell pepper, lemon juice, and Worcestershire and saute for 3 minutes.

4. Add shrimp and cook 3 to 4 minutes, stirring frequently. Allow the shrimp to rest in the pan for one minute before serving. Serves 2


Not really sure what I'm going to do next. I'm thinking stuffed eggplant from Galatoire's, but I'll let you know later.