New Orleans – Days Three, Orientation

We were still needing to get caught up from being gone for a week, so Labor Day was just a work day at Almost Heaven South. Of course it could be argued that every day is a holiday when retired and it would hard to dispute. And now back to NOLA.

The hard rain continued on Saturday, but fortunately, I like to spend my first day in an area getting oriented. We drove around and located some of the places we wanted to visit, eat, shop, and buy seafood. We found several DDD places in the garden district, located spots in the French Quarter and found Willie Maes Restaurant.


It was featured on a food show, which we saw, as the best chicken in America and since it was 12:30, we decided to give it a try. It used to be called Willie Maes Scotch House and is now being run by the founder’s granddaughter, who was working in the kitchen.

We had to wait a few minutes for a seat and according to our waiter, their business is out the roof since the TV show aired. As for the chicken, it was delicious and lived up to it’s billing – which seems to be unusual. Here’s my plates – 3 pieces of chicken sided with some red beans and rice.


While we got right in, this is what we found upon exiting and they’re standing in the rain.


As you can see it’s not in a very prosperous area and seemed to be the only business around.


Actually, I’ve been surprised at the condition of most of the structures I saw while driving around. While there are many big old homes in the Garden District, most were in dire need of a good painting and the real shocker was the closeness of the homes as seen here. And if you live here, it would be hard not to know your neighbor – this is typical house spacing.



A little further out, St. Charles Street, near Tulane and Loyola, there are some truly big fine homes and I can almost imagine their owners of antebellum times, sitting on the porch, drinking mint juleps and contemplating the state of things.

There were very few tall structures in the Garden District so at 12 stories our condo building may have been the tallest around.


The building had a roof deck and this is a shot of the Central Business District with the Superdome on the left.


For dinner, we walked down the street to Copeland's Cheesecake Bistro and I had a crab and crawfish bake appetizer and Bev had a popcorn crawfish salad and both were good. We weren't very hungry and had to pass on their famous cheesecake dessert.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by.

Larry

Our Stuff From New Orleans And Shrimp Stock

We interrupt our trip to New Orleans, LA (NOLA hereafter) for some current events. But first, Happy Labor Day.

We brought home a few things from our trip to Louisiana (another good reason to drive), much of which we couldn’t get around here and some I’ve seen used by Mary, at Deep South Dish and Katherine, at Smoky Mountain Cafe. From a dry standpoint, we got this assortment that contains Zatarains Pro Boil, Tabasco bloody mary mix (which I've already tried and liked), Steens pure cane syrup for use in BBQ sauces, a quart of Central Grocery's Olive Salad for muffulettas, Zatarains Creole seasoning, Slap Ya Mama seasoning, a Tabasco gift pack for our friend David who carries his bottle of Tabasco sauce with him at all times, a Tabasco tabletop assortment for us, plus a couple more bottles of chipotle sauce and a bag of wood chips made from the barrels in which the Tabasco mash is fermented. Since they use the barrels for about 20 years, the chips should bring some interesting flavors to the BBQ pit.


For meat, we brought back some boudin (which we’ve never tasted), andouille (I intended to get it from Bailey’s in LaPlace, a Katherine’s suggestion, but didn’t make it there), alligator sausage (same as what they served me at Rivershack Tavern – more about it on Day 5), and some green onion sausage (recommended by Katherine).






And for frozen items, it was these two little goodies – I have a recipe for gator bites I’d been wanting to try and had almost decided I’d have to use chicken, but I’m ready now.



An of course we brought back some whole (head on) shrimp - we got 5 lb each of medium, large, and extra large. From these, we ended up with just over 9# of shell-on tails of various sizes and 6# of heads and shells for stock. I loved the freshness of the shrimp, but would have fired the sorter from this business as we ended up with a bunch of salad sized shrimp, even in the extra large. Also, I didn’t think about it while I was standing there, but the girl weighing out the extra large ones was getting most of them out by the feelers and I ended up with a lot of extra heads without tails – I wouldn’t let them get them out that way again – live and learn. Maybe she got to keep all of the headless tails left at the end of the day and knew I wouldn’t be around to complain. Here’s the first 5#’s.



For the stock, I found a variety of recipes using various amounts of water for the amount of shrimp shells. Since most of them started with the heads and shells from 2# of whole shrimp, the first thing I needed to determine was the weight of those shells and heads. I cleaned 2# for dinner and it turned out to be just shy of 1# of heads and shells. After considering the many recipes I looked at, I decided on using 1 gallon of water for each 2# of heads and tails and since I ended up with 6# of mostly heads (I only peeled the first 2# batch), I used 3 gallons of water. My final recipe, which is close to one from Emeril, was:

2# heads and shells
1 gal water
½ cup chopped onion
¼ cup diced carrot
¼ cup diced celery
1 tbsp minced garlic

Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for one hour with a cracked lid on and the hood fan running. I let it cool until it wasn’t steaming when I took the lid off and passed it trough a colander. I then planned to use a fine mesh strainer but the colander seemed to get everything out. Of course I tripled the recipe for my 6# of heads and shells, so with 3 gallons of water, we should have more than enough for our uses – I’ll have do some serious Cajun and seafood cooking and clam chowder making to use it all. I froze eight quart bags and the rest in 1/4 cup molds for those times when only a little is needed. A while back, Mary at Deep South Dish posted a recipe for Shrimp Sauce Piquqnt and the first ingredient was shells and heads from 2# of shrimp to which I jokingly posted a comment that this may be a little hard for me to come by at the Greenback convenient store – but I believe I now have everything on hand to make the dish. After doing the shrimp, I decided I’d rather have the de-heading job than the de-shelling job as it’s much faster.


Here’s part of the finished product and it either looks like rich stock or muddy water. Having never made it, I hope it’s supposed to look like this – it tastes fine.


The leftover solids will go on the compost pile.


For the shrimp, I cleaned 2# for immediate cooking, provided some to friends and froze the rest by adding one pound of tails to a quart freezer bag, covering with water, squeezing out the air, and laying on a jelly roll pan to get nice flat packages. I think I feel some jambalaya and low country boil coming on.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by.

Larry

Day Two Heading Toward New Orleans

For those of you who’ve read this blog from near the beginning, you may recall that as an ex-engineer, I’m pretty anal about many things and having a plan has always been one of them. But I continue to get better and we started this trip with only a route plan and decided what to do as we went. I did come equipped with some gulf coast suggestions from southern Mississippi resident, Mary at Deep Dish South Dish and ex New Orleans area resident Katherine at Smoky Mountain Cafe and a map of Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives (DDD) places along the route and in lower La.

When we got up Friday morning and knowing we couldn’t check into New Orleans (N.O.) before 4pm, we decided to hit the Mississippi gulf coast. Just before Mobile, it began raining hard, so any pictures are in the rain and it made beach pictures worthless. We like to do a little entertainment gambling, so we put that on the afternoon’s agenda. We got off of I-10 west and drove to the beachfront road in Biloxi and headed west - the road runs between the beach and the ocean front property. It was unbelievable the amount of vacant land for sale where fine homes stood 5 years ago (pre Katrina) and there doesn’t seem to be any new building going on – which I sure wouldn’t do either. I can only imagine the sadness felt by the residents as they drive through the area.

We got to the area about lunchtime and decided to try a DDD place called the Blow Fly Inn – which has also been rebuilt since Katrina. Here's the outside and inside.



It was located at the end of the road in a not very prosperous residential area – odd place for a restaurant I thought. I had the chef’s special of fried soft shell crab (a first) atop angel hair pasta. I forgot the camera until half way through it.


Bev had fried green tomatoes topped with jumbo lump crabmeat and creole hollandaise. Since the server said the whole fried crab was an acquired taste, I was expecting a flavor explosion, but found very little flavor, especially when pared with the tangy pasta sauce. I’d have to say the meal was good but nothing special, except I really liked the remoulade salad dressing. Bev’s was just ok as well – I think we were both expecting much more flavor. In hind site, I should have done my normal and asked about the house specialty or the most requested item on the menu.

After lunch, it was off to the casino in Gulfport for a couple of hours of penny slots – of course by the time you play a penny or two on all 30 lines, a dollar only gives you three pulls. I was lucky and Bev not, but we had about 2 ½ hours of fun for $30 – about the same as two movie tickets and popcorn.

We rolled into N.O. about 6pm and the interstate became a parking lot. Little did we know we had to pass the Superdome where the Saints were playing a 7pm football game. But we were settled into our room on St Charles Street, in the Garden district, by 7:30 and set about relaxing.

Tune in tomorrow for more and thanks for stopping by.

Larry

A Little Trip To The Big Easy

It was down right cool when I went out to get the paper today - it felt wonderful. Now that we’re home after yesterdays 9 1/2 hour uneventful drive, I’ll post about our week long trip to New Orleans.

Bev and I have a time share that we bought for trading to go other places, with the problem that after we bank it, we don’t get around to using it. We had a week that expired last February and we extended it until the end of August and after searching, Bev found a place in the Garden District in New Orleans were we could go. We waited until the last minute, checking in on August 27. This is the first of eight posts about our trip and I'll try to throw in some new stuff to break the monotony.

We decided to take two leisurely days to drive down rather than a tiring single day to cover the 650 miles. We took our little Honda Hybrid and got 50 MPG out on the interstate. It was nice to fill up at the end of day one and only need 7 gallons. I wanted to drive for two reasons. First was that I like to go exploring and knew a couple of days doing the in-town things via public transportation would be plenty for me (I wanted to also see some of southern La.). The second reason is that air travel is almost always aggravating. Seems as though we hardly have a flight where the planes and luggage do what I’ve paid for them to do. Maybe I just feel more in control when I’m driving and not at the mercy of the increasingly unreliable airlines.

Steph, over at Plain Chicken, had sent us a list of possible eating places in the Birmingham area, but we ended up going through there at between meal times. Thanks for the effort Steph and I’ll save the list for next time. We ended up staying in Greenville, Al, because we’d seen a restaurant sign advertising great smoked turkey. So we checked in at a motel 200 yards away and the desk clerk confirmed it was good, so off we went. On arrival we were surprised to find one car in the lot and soon discovered why – closed.

We went back to the motel clerk and he advised they had all of the chain places but the only other local place he knew of was a BBQ joint just around the corner. I’m spoiled by my own BBQ and rarely eat it out unless I have heard from several folks whose opinions I trust that it is good – Dead End BBQ in Knoxville for example. I’d still rather go to the local BBQ than a chain place and when I drove into the parking lot to find 25 motorcycles, my spirits were lifted. On talking to the pit master, he advised his ribs were killer, so I ordered a ribs and chicken combo and Bev got a pulled pork plate. The easiest thing to start with was the wing of the breast quarter. I was pleasantly surprised, it was moist, tender, smoky, and with a nice rub. It was all down hill from there as the ribs and breast were both way over cooked and dry and while tasty, they weren’t even helped by a generous addition sauce which I had ordered on the side – I know the trick of hiding mediocre meat under sauce. Bev’s pulled pork came already sauced and it too was very dry. I believe one of the keys to a great BBQ restaurant is being able to keep the meat hot without drying out and it seems few have mastered it. Oh well, at least it was filling with the one other good thing being the sweet potato fries. Turns out the cyclist seemed to be a group of older locals trying to recapture their youth and were meeting at the local joint - they probably went to the ice cream parlor next.

I’ll have pictures or tomorrows adventure – thanks for stopping by.

Larry

Smoked Salmon Pizza Inspiration

I had a piece of cold smoked salmon and Naan bread in the fridge both looking for a dish to be used in. I spent some time the other day browsing thru Sam Hofer’s “My Carolina Kitchen” blog and, much to my pleasure, came across a recipe for a pizza using these very ingredients. Since Bev doesn’t eat raw fish, I decided to make it for lunch as we often eat different things for breakfast and lunch anyway. I didn’t get a picture, but it looked like the one on Sam’s site.

Since I still had all of the ingredients, I decided to try it for breakfast as an omelet, but Bev suggested we wait for dinner to match her schedule for the day. I made a 3 egg omelet and stuffed it with the salmon, capers and onions, then topped it with a sour cream horseradish sauce. Sorry the shot is a little blurry.


Sided it with some home fries made from potatoes Bev and boiled the other day, with a little added onion and sweet pepper.


Here’s my plate.



It was good, but not as good as the pizza, which I thought was great. I think the slight cooking of the stuffing ingredients that occurred after the omelet was flipped muted the flavors somewhat.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping in.

Larry

Shrimp And Fish Hoagie, Sub, Po’ Boy

If you’re watching your figure, skip this post.

It’s funny that in the same country a 6-8” oblong sandwich can have so many names. In the areas I’ve lived, they’ve either been hoagies or subs and I remember when I first heard of po’ boys I thought there was something about what went on them that led to the different name. Then a place in Maryville began selling pizza and grinders and I was confused again. So not to long ago, I did a search on hoagie and Wikipedia came back with this first sentence: “A submarine sandwich, also known as a sub, grinder, hero, hoagie, Italian sandwich, po' boy, wedge, zep, torpedo, bocadillo or roll, is a sandwich that consists of an oblong roll, often of Italian, Spanish or French bread, split lengthwise either into two pieces or opened in a "V" on one side, and filled with various meats, cheeses, vegetables, seasonings, and sauces.” Confusion gone – it is the English language in multi-cultured America after all, except I’ve always considered a sub to be twice as long as a hoagie.

Since we had the rolls on hand, and enough fish left from last nights dinner, it had to be po’ boys for supper – the po’ boy name seems to fit fish better than the other names. Since we only had enough crappie for two sandwichs, we got out some frozen shrimp to supplement and ended up making each sandwich two thirds fish and one third shrimp. This was going to be a good test as the leftover fish was already battered from the night before and the batter we used on the shrimp was also left over.

The toppings/condiments available to select from were cheddar cheese, shredded lettuce, sliced tomato, onion, tarter sauce, mustard, and mayo.


Since we had plenty of batter, Bev decided to try it on some onion rings. Here’s a shot of everything ready to eat.


This is my plate and the sandwich was crazy good. We’re heading off to New Orleans in the near future so it will be interesting how these compare to theirs.


I couldn’t tell any difference in the fish from the night before and the shrimp was great as well, but the onion rings shed a lot of their breading. I’m thinking for them it’s just a soak in buttermilk then seasoned coating blend – please send me the recipe that you like.

Have a great day and thans for stopping by.

Larry

Fried Crappie With Green Tomato Ragout And Trash Bag Potatoes

Well, three days of posting nothing is all I can stand, so I asked coach to put me back in the game. I saw this recipe in the newspaper the other day except it was for catfish. As I’ve said many times before, we have friends who keep us supplied with crappie filets, so most recipes calling for mild fish are made with them. Since it was the ragout that caught my attention, I ignored their fish breading and used our usual. We rolled the fish in rice flour, then dunked in the batter, then rolled in Panko for the extra crunch they provide. Our batter recipe is:

1 cup Flour, self rising
¾ can Beer - add slowly til right consistency
1 ea Egg
1 tsp Salt
1 tsp Old Bay (2 tsp next time)

Mix everything together and, according to a local chef on TV recently, store in the fridge for at least 2 hours prior to using. Deep fry a few at a time in 365* oil. I kept them warm on the grill while the potatoes were cooking.



The ragout recipe came from Chef Jason Hill of Wisteria Restaurant, Atlanta, Ga.

2 tbsp Butter
4 ea Green tomatoes, diced
1 med Onion, diced
2 lge Beefsteak tomatoes, diced
2 ea Red bell peppers, diced
2 ea Poblano peppers, seeded and diced
2 tsp Old Bay
pinch Red pepper flakes
pinch Kosher salt
pinch White pepper
2 tbsp Minced garlic
2 tbsp Minced fresh herbs (parsley, sage, thyme, rosemary-equal amounts)
1/3 lb Cleaned crawfish tails, shrimp, or catfish

To prepare ragout, heat oil and butter in large saucepan over medium-high heat. Add green tomatoes, onion, beefsteak tomatoes, bell pepper and poblano pepper. Saute 4-5 minute or until onions are translucent. Add Old Bay Seasoning, red pepper flakes, salt, white pepper, herbs, garlic and shallot. When onions are translucent, add catfish (I used shrimp) and simmer until warmed, about 3 minutes. Yield: 4 servings.

The trash bag potato recipe came from No Excuses BBQ and is as follows:

· 6-8 large (bigger is better) Yukon Gold, Yellow, or White Rose potatoes
· 1/3 cup minced garlic (feel free to use more if you like garlic)
· 4 tbs olive oil
· 2 tbs lemon pepper
· 2 tbs dried oregano
· 1 tsp salt (optional)

Slice potatoes in half and then into 1/4 inch slices (you can also cut them into wedges if you prefer). Put the potatoes into a plastic bag (I use leftover vegetable bags from the store and throw them out afterward) and pour the olive oil over them. Pour the rest of the ingredients over the potatoes, twist the top of the bag a few times, and mix everything up real good.

Spread the potatoes over the grill using indirect heat for the majority of the cooking time. Cover the grill and let cook for about 15 minutes. Turn the potatoes and cook for another 15 minutes or so. At this point you can choose to move the potatoes directly over the coals long enough to brown them up.

Cooking times will vary depending on the heat of your fire, the thickness of the potatoes, and how close you have them to the coals. (I cooked them on the gasser over direct low heat and it worked fine). Pop over to his site for an explanation of the recipe name.

One final recipe was for tarter sauce courtesy of Cathy over at Wives With Knives, which I'd been wanting to make for a while. When I first made it, I thought it might be too salty or tangy, but after sitting in the fridge for a few hours, as she specified, the flavors married up well and it was outstanding on the fish. Check it out at her site.

Here's my plate.


All told a good meal. I believe we have the fish breading nailed and other than getting a little more salt and spices in it, I don't plan any changes. I will definitely use Cathy's tarter sauce recipe some more. I thought the ragout was pretty good but it didn't inspire me to make it again. Daughter, Wende liked it and took the leftovers home. I liked the flavors on the potatoes, but I've decided that other than baked potatoes I prefer vegetables cooked in a moist, or greasy, environment rather than grilled or baked. I know they're really popular and many folks love the concentration of flavors, etc, and I've tried to love them, but I guess I'm a victim of my up bringing.

Have a great day and sorry for such a long post.

Larry