A cup of pistachio gelato from Gelato Pazzo (8115 Oak Street, New Orleans, 504.304.6808): a vivid, roasted-nut flavor justifies my childhood belief that pistachio is the best ice cream flavor.
November 8, 2009
November 6, 2009
A coffee geek lives at my house, and for once, the geek is not me. Here’s the latest coffee toy, a Bodum Santos vacuum pot, acquired by the Geek.
While the vacuum pot does make delicious coffee without a trace of sediment, it isn’t fast and has multiple parts to clean. Give me the immediacy and jolt of an espresso any day over a cup of drip coffee.
If I have to drink drip coffee, Imy 79-cent aluminum cup-top Vietnamese ca phe phin makes the best coffee of any coffee appliance we own.
November 5, 2009
Hanger steak (ongelet in French, or lombatello in Italian) is my favorite cut of beef. Part of the diaphragm, hanger can be hard to find at retail butchers, as each animal has just one such muscle. While not meltingly tender, it has a deep, mineral flavor, similar to flank steak (which is cut from the same muscle as hanger). It is a dense, distinctively grained cut of meat, usually divided into two to remove the band of connective tissue running down its center. Best cooked to rare or medium-rare, hanger turns to rubber if well-done. Cochon Butcher stocks hanger steak–I’m so happy to have, at last, a regular source for it.
To ensure that the hanger steak (dried with paper towels, sprinkled with just salt & ground pepper) gets a nice sear without overcooking, I like to cook it in a cast iron skillet heated to 550 degrees atop my Big Green Egg grill (with the lid open). After the inital sear, the steak cooks on the grill while I deglaze the skillet with a lump of butter, a few glugs of red wine, thinly sliced shallots, and sliced mushrooms. A dab of butter melting atop the steak adds to the char and flavor.
By the time the wine reduces to a syrupy consistency, the steak is an ideal medium rare inside. The whole process takes about 10-12 minutes. A side of thin-cut french fries completes the steak-frites of my dreams…
November 4, 2009
High gluten flour for New York-style pizza crust
Posted by Celeste under cookbooks, recipes, techniques[6] Comments
A good calzone is hard to find. For some reason, the calzones turned out by local pizzerias suffer from severe bloat; the last one I ordered in a restaurant could easily feed a family of four. I set out to make a reasonably-sized calzone (pictured), with the help of Peter Reinhart’s New York-style pizza crust recipe (from his book American Pie: My Search for the Perfect Pizza) and some high-gluten Sir Lancelot flour from King Arthur. The high-gluten flour is key. It yields a dough sturdy enough for vigorous handling (like spinning in the air, though I haven’t mastered the toss myself).
Reinhart’s recipe (p. 114) calls for 5 cups of high-gluten flour, 1-1/2 T sugar, 3-1/2 tsp kosher salt, 1-1/2 tsp instant yeast, 3 T olive oil, and 1-3/4 cups room-temperature water. Mix all together in a stand mixer; knead with a dough hook at medium low speed until the dough passes the windowpane test. Next, divide the dough into three balls, coat with olive oil, and rest at room temp for 15 minutes. Place each oiled dough blob into a resealable plastic bag and refrigerate for at least 2 hours. Remove it from the refrigerator a couple of hours before use. The dough will keep, refrigerated, for two to three days; it can be frozen after the 2-hour cold rest.
The high-gluten dough feels alive in your hands, resisting gentle tugs and pats. I rolled the heck out of it with a wooden pin, worried a bit that my rough handling would lead to flat, lifeless crust. My fears were unfounded; it stretched beautifully aroun
d a filling of ricotta, chopped spinach, a tiny bit of tomato sauce, and fresh basil. The oil-enriched dough browned evenly and crisped up–even the pizza crust under a mound of fresh-veggie toppings–something that a pizza napoletana vera (my usual pizza-crust choice) crust just won’t do.
Best of all, the crust reheated exceptionally well, gaining a crisp snap on its second trip through the oven.
Check out more yeast baking over at Wild Yeast’s weekly feature, “YeastSpotting.”
November 3, 2009
Blue Cypress books (8126 Oak Street, between Carrollton & Dante, New Orleans, LA) has a nice selection of used food books. I picked up the Galatoire’s cookbook, one of Tony Chachere’s original cookbooks, and some other odds & ends last week; a whole bag of books cost just $20. Even better, Blue Cypress’s Elizabeth Ahlquist buys books on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. She’ll pay cash, or give you slightly better value in store credit. I unloaded a whole stack of gently used food non-fiction & cookbooks. If the food books at Blue Cypress don’t satisfy your appetite, you can pop across the street to Gelato Pazzo for a hazelnut/white chocolate gelato….or swing next door for a snowball at Queen of the Ball. Can you tell that I’m all about Oak Street these days?
November 2, 2009
True cassoulet, the southern French dish of beans, duck confit, sausages, pork, etc., is a monumental kitchen undertaking. I’m not always up for a monumental undertaking, so I’ve devised a short-cut version. A couple times a year, I cook batches of seasoned white beans, simmered with lots of celery, bay leaf, thyme, black pepper, and a little chopped tomato& bacon fat, and I freeze the cooked beans in batches (that’s the first part of the shortcut).
Here’s the second shortcut–I grill fresh pork sausages until nicely charred, but not done through, and then nestle the sausages into an enameled cast iron skillet, and sprinkle the whole shebang with garlic bread crumbs. Tightly covered, the skillet goes back onto the grill (the Big Green Egg, I mean) to bubble away for 45 minutes to an hour….enough time for the pork sausages’ fat to permeate the beans, the crumbs to brown nicely, and for the dish to begin to approach the sublime perfection of true cassoulet. No, it’s not exactly quick, nor is it a slavish reproduction of the Toulouse or Carcassonne versions…but it is damn delicious.
November 1, 2009
I drive past Joe Sepie’s Cafe (4402 Jefferson Hwy, 504.324.5613) in old Jefferson nearly every work day, and I usually see the Leidenheimer’s delivery man propping up a tall brown bag of po-boy loaves on the doorstep each morning. I finally ventured inside last week and discovered an old-school sandwich shop with a few twists. Po-boys share a menu with tamales, panini, a few Italian pasta dishes, and diner-style “splat” burgers.
The roast beef poboy, available in regular, ultimate, and Cajun variations, is a fine example of the genre. As it turns out, Joe Sepie’s proprietor Pete Theriot hails from Raceland, the hometown of po-boy originators Benny & Clovis Martin. House-made roast beef is slow-cooked until it shreds under its own weight, and Theriot loads it into toasted Leidenheimer’s bread (always a nice touch). The resulting sandwich is juicy without dissolving into beef bread pudding. Almost as good as the roast beef: fresh-cut shoestring french fries.
Tucked inside paper wrappers, the tamales are a homogenous mix of masa, beef, & spices. While they won’t replace Isabel Mendez’s bean & jalapeno tamales (sold on Tuesdays & Saturdays at the Crescent City Farmers’ Market) in my personal-best list, these New Orleans-style tamales are satisfying and savory.
Moral of the story: don’t let years pass by before you check out a new place…
October 31, 2009
Strawberry marshmallows + Hershey’s Special Dark minatures + Teddy Grahams + fire = Happy Halloween
October 30, 2009
Camellia brand microwavable red beans and rice
Posted by Celeste under food shoppingLeave a Comment
Now available in a go-cup: Louisiana’s favorite brand of red beans, Camellia. Head down to your nearest Rouse’s Supermarket to check out Camellia’s shelf-stable beans-n-rice in plain & sausage flavors. I admit that I won’t actually buy these, but it’s a nice brand extension for one of my favorite local food companies.
October 29, 2009
Late October is sugarcane harvest time in south Louisiana’s coastal parishes. Cane cutting tractors clog rural roads, and truckloads of chopped cane head for the sugar refineries. The breeze smells like burnt marshmallows, or the sweet-sour tang of fermenting sugar chaff in a cut-over field. All those visual and olfactory suggestions make me crave the taste of Steen’s Cane syrup. The syrup’s flavors hold a whiff of the sweetly burning fields, with the green, earthy tang missing from refined sugar’s pure sweetness. I can smell fall, condensed, when I uncap the amber glass bottle.
Steen’s syrup is the key ingredient for an excellent homemade Halloween treat: pecan popcorn balls (see the Steen’s website for a detailed recipe). In a nutshell: boil together 2 cups of Steen’s, 2 T butter, and a little salt until brittle when dropped into cold water, then combine with popped corn and toasted pecans in a large, buttered bowl. With buttered hands, shape into balls and allow to cool before wrapping each ball individually.
