I was right about the coleslaw. It is the same not sweet not vinegary slaw they serve at Eliza. The shrimp and grits comes with a 4 oz cup of slaw and a couple of slices of french bread. The shrimp is lightly seasoned and grilled in butter on the flattop while the garlic grits are dressed up with bacon and cheddar and green onions. It’s a lot to eat and perfect for a chilly day. Now that I know about the slaw, I’m looking forward to trying one of the two poboys that are dressed with slaw. There’s a fried catfish and a pulled pork. I still need to try the smoked alligator poboy an the old school oyster loaf as well. I guess you can tell I like Jed’s Local a lot. It will definitely be part of my regular rotation. And I need to stop back by Eliza soon. So many great places to eat; so little time.
Ham and bread and mustard. One of the most basic food groups ever. I know everyone has heard the tale of the Earl of Sandwich, and maybe that is how society at the time relearned casual card table dining, but it is hard to believe that ham and bread did not naturally come together as soon baked bread and cured meat were both available. There are a lot of other ways to buy ham than the ham steak. I love it because it is the thickest cut you will get without committing to a whole picnic. There are reasons and seasons to buy a whole picnic ham, not the least of which is that you get to keep and freeze the ham bone.
ham and eggs
One of the most important things my father ever taught me was to season my fried eggs with black pepper. He also showed me how to bust the yoke with the pointy end of my buttered toast before cutting the eggs up and to always save a triangle to mop up the last of the yolk left on the plate. And because my mother loved to buy whole picnic hams to make her famous white beans, we often had some pan seared ham to go with.
fig and pig biscuits
My father also highly valued fig preserves, and they would often be a part of breakfast as well. Maybe that is where I first paired fig and pig, but what really cemented that grouping for me was a day out on Pointe Coupee Road at my buddy Chris Morrison’s place. I had brought a classmate from grad school to meet Chris and enjoy a day out in the sticks. Joey was from Little Rock and everything in Pointe Coupee Parish was a revelation to him. The river, the borrow pits, the endless fields of cane being hacked and burned and harvested at the time. During an afternoon old-Ford-pickup tour of the levee, we stopped at Mr. JP Hotard’s place right down the road from Morrison’s for more beer and something to cook for dinner. JP sold us on pork roast since he had a fresh hind quarter in the cooler. He pulled it out and threw it on the table saw and cut us a four inch thick roast that reminded me of an oversized ham steak, though this meat was fresh, not cured. It immediately got me thinking of rubbing it down with honey, so when we got back to the house I dug through the pantry looking for fresh garlic and honey and instead ran across a jar of fig preserves. I had made the switch to Jack Daniels by then so I poked holes and stuffed the roast with garlic and green onions then mashed some fig preserves and Jack together and slathered it all over the pork before finishing with salt and pepper and wrapping it in foil and tossing it in the Chambers oven low and slow. When I went back outside, Chris had Joey up on the tractor riding the fallow fields right behind the house. We cranked a pecan fire as the sun headed down and dug some new potatoes from the garden to mash and Chris had some left over green beans and soon we were all set to head to the table when I pulled the roast out of the oven and set it on the stove top. It smelled so damn good we immediately started picking at it and we never made it to the table, just had our dinner straight from the stove top. Getting back to ham steak, another friend, the late, great Big Frank Finucane, used to toss a ham steak on the grill as an appetizer before the chicken or steaks or whatever was the main item of the day, much like leading with smoked or hot sausage or even bacon wrapped chicken livers. Another example of not making it to the table. Ham steak sliced up on a cutting board passed around among the lawn chairs and finally landing on a picnic table. Here’s something I wrote in Frank’ memory after we lost him.
This grouping has recently become one of my favorite sides for shrimp and fish. The bok choy texturally is like having a celery/spinach plant. I always save the leafier greens for the last minute of stir fry. Everything else can hit the pan at the same time, but you might want to stagger them to fit your ideals of crispness or doneness. I usually go one of two ways with the seasoning, and that is totally influenced by what I’m thinking for the shrimp or fish that will be joining it on the plate. The Far East treatment starts with roasted garlic olive oil, soy sauce, and sesame oil. The soy brings enough salt for me, so I will follow with five spice powder and wasabi and occasionally, if I am feeling teriyaki-ish, more garlic and ginger. The Right Here Right Now treatment also starts with roasted garlic olive oil then Lea & Perrins, Tony’s and black pepper. Sometimes I will switch out the Tony’s for another creole seasoning, say Zatarain’s or Slap Ya Mama, or back way off and go basic with just some salt, butter, and white pepper. Obviously I like this dish enough to continue to play around with it and research all its possibilities.
On this occasion I paired it with some previously frozen halibut that was on sale for Prime Members at Whole Foods. It is a fish I love fresh, and the industry does flash frozen so well now that you don’t lose everything to the process. Halibut is the same sweet firm white category as fluke and flounder and sole and it responds really well to “blackening” an old cast iron technique that Prudhomme exploited all those many years ago. But he did not invent the process. When I was in grad school I wanted to write a coffee table book (i.e. physical blog) called Catching ‘Em and Cooking ‘Em and I’d already lined up the independent study to get it started when my advisor made me rewrite my thesis which sucked up what little time I would have had available for the project. I did get best thesis that year and it still sits on a shelf somewhere in Middleton and I am finally getting around to writing the food stories I wanted to write back then. That book was going to concentrate on Louisiana’s freshwater lakes. Old River, False River, Lake Verret–how to fish them and the best ways to prepare the fish, both old school and more recent techniques. The story I was going to lead with was told to me by Miss Jo, an older neighbor of my parents who lived a few camps down Island Road from them in Ventress. Miss Jo liked to come down to our pier late at night to fish for bass with plastic worms. She was quite good at it too. At any rate, she told me that her daddy would take fresh caught sac-a-lait, scale and score them, then soak them in salt water for an hour or so before dumping the water and starting over with another salt water soak. When he was ready to cook the fish, he would heat a cast iron pan until it smoked then throw the fish straight in the pan for a quick turn and burn. I had never heard of brining fish, and to tell you the truth, I’ve yet to try it that way, but the story does illustrate that “blackening” fish was around well before Prudhomme and Lagasse capitalized on our way of life.Â
This little 8″ cast iron skillet is also good for roasting whole garlic
Blackening is a very effective technique for sealing the fish quickly and keeping it moist inside. It’s not that different from cooking over a mesquite hard wood fire like I did at the Fish Company on Kinney Street in Santa Monica. We had exhibition grills and the fires were super hot and we cooked halibut and trout and sturdier fish like shark and swordfish as well. The same thing applied. Let the fish finish on the plate. You are going to get a really good sear and then the fish will keep cooking after you remove it from the heat. It does take practice to get it right, but it is well worth the effort. As to seasonings, you don’t really need to use all the cayenne and paprika that commercial blackened seasonings use. In fact, once when I was up in Maine at Christmas with my ex (before we married and she could even qualify for ex status) we got some fresh halibut from a fabulous market that was right over the water in Portland and took it back to her mother’s house to cook. I “blackened” the fish with a touch of extra virgin olive oil and a healthy dusting of salt and herbs de provence. She and her mother were macro-biotic at the time, so I’m sure there were also fresh greens involved. It might have even looked something like this dish turned out.
I don’t always eat at Saltgrass Steakhouse, but when I do, it is always at lunch and either the Beef Tips with Mushrooms or the Chicken Fried Steak. And it is usually chilly outside. They do a great job with both of these lunch offerings and I really like their Mac & Cheese and Herbed Rice and the garlic mashed potatoes that come with both dishes. The Shiner Bock Beer Bread with honey butter is a great start to any lunch. I can’t say anything about the rest of the menu because I’ve only eaten lunch there and I always go by myself and sit at the bar. It is hard to go there without missing the Blue Coyote which I did visit with friends for impromptu margarita nights with chips, salsa, tacos and tamales. Superior Grill fills that space now, but those were some very good times and the two story wall of tequila bottles behind the bar was always an impressive sight. To me there is always a lingering nostalgia when one restaurant concept replaces another. Round the Corner/Pizza Hut/Serrano’s/Barcadia on Highland Road at the south gates of LSU is a good example of tenants passing through. The Colonel’s Club/Trinity’s/Chelsea’s/Kalurah Street Grill is another venue haunted by it’s past.Â
I would like to say that duck eggs are so much richer and creamier than chicken eggs, but that just hasn’t been my experience. They are larger and milder and it feels really cool to use them instead of your regular eggs, but that’s about it. I find the cracker cut cheeses that are showing up in some markets are perfect for omelets. They keep better than shredded cheese and offer that same convenience of one less step at breakfast. Breakfast is one of the easiest meals to settle for eating crap foods and I think it is worth a little planning to have whole food or at least not-as-bad-for-you options in place. Also, it may be time to address the elephant in the kitchen. Eggs and cheese are excellent vehicles for delivering protein, and that is paramount when you are doing radiation and chemo. We are all going to encounter cancer at some point, whether it is one of us or someone close to us. And one of the hardest and most important battles is eating enough to fuel the fight. Chemo and radiation can deeply effect your sense of taste, but also texture. I loved my morning omelets, and like my nutritionist at the time told me, a cheese omelet cooked in real butter and paired with fruit was almost a perfect meal as it hit the necessary triad of protein, fat, and fiber, but during my treatment of combined chemo and radiation, the omelets were just too dry. Luckily, I was fine with sunny up eggs and started to combine them with instant grits and cracker cut sharp cheddar and that was an okay, if temporary solution. Eventually I was down to smoothies only, but I think every real meal I was able to power down before that point was a win. And I am still here. I am very sorry for all of us who know someone who isn’t.Â
So it’s easy to see how even more protein can be added to these eggs. Fully cooked link and patty sausages are readily available now and are perfectly fine after a one minute nuke. This is also a place for both meal prep and leftovers. A pound of your favorite sliced mushrooms sauteed in butter and white pepper with bit of salt will keep for several days and can be added to omelets, grits, and the remainder can join an onion gravy for a lunch or dinner side later in the week. This is also a good place to incorporate any left over veggies or pico de gallo. Recently I’v been boosting instant oatmeal with fried eggs and green onions. And there is always the old stand by, the fried egg sandwich on white or wheat with ketchup. Back to the elephant in the kitchen: we haven’t addressed all the different ways to cook eggs, fried, scrambled, coddled, poached, hard and soft boiled, but it is very much worth your while to experiment with all of these. Just in case.
I can hear all the pro cooks coughing into their fists *Cayards* and *Ducotes* and *Why would you buy any brand but Dexter-Russell or Forschner/Victorinox?* and I would say to each of them that work is work. Cooking at home can and should be something entirely different from powering out in a commercial kitchen. You aren’t doing 800 covers a night at your house–you are entertaining friends and family and most importantly, yourself. Those cooks might still argue that they can’t see paying that much for a knife but my answer would be go to Sur La Table and pick one up and play with it a little while and you’ll see why. And the beauty of Sur La Table is you can do just that. They even keep a basket of potatoes right there for you to slice and dice. They have a number of different brands (including Shun for all you lefties out there) and they are more than happy to let you handle them. Sur La Table also has your sharpening steel, your high end cutting boards, the mineral oil for your high end cutting board, and Mark Bitterman’s gourmet salts. I like the fine grain Pink Himalayan myself. They carry the whole line of OXO Good Grips utensils and containers, and they have plates and cups and glasses and barware out the wazoo. They aren’t giving anything away, but they do have frequent sales, and I take it back. Right now they are practically giving away Le Creuset enameled cast iron cookware. But going back to the knives, even if you don’t buy from Sur La Table, it is invaluable to actually lay hands on the knife to find exactly what you want and then go online to try to find it at a better price. To me, Sur La Table is the Christmas store, and it is so conveniently located right by Fresh Market and Cinemark–so one parking lot, two or even three destinations.Â
It was just starting to warm up a bit after a 36 degree start to the day when I parked at White Star and ambled over to the Chow Yum Phat counter. Only my second visit to the market. The first was to visit Gov’t Taco and that was quite rewarding. More on that another time, but the nature of the place–order at the different counters, communal food court seating, encourages mix and match. Not necessarily food groups, because of the differences in timing, but I certainly could have stopped at Gov’t Taco for a Mexican coke before or after I ordered my Pork Phat Bao and June’s Veggie ramen from Chow Yum Phat. Both were as exotic tasting as they look. Crisp, bright flavors surrounded the pork belly in the perfectly executed bun. And the veggie ramen was both mild and very umami in orientation. I picked veggie over the other options both because I knew the pork belly would be plenty of work for my digestive tract and also because I wanted to maximize the mushrooms. Shiitake, woodear, and enoki. While we are talking enoki I have to interrupt this broadcast to pitch the smoked enoki nigiri at Umami Sushi on Burbank. A must if you’ve not yet tried it. Back to this ramen. The egg was perfection, perfectly soft boiled so that the yolk ranged from bright yellow and slightly runny through semi-soft orange to semi-firm sunny. I’m always a fan of green onion with my noodles and best for last these homemade noodles were delicious. Both taste and texture are outstanding. I will have to go back to try the other ramens they offer and the pho dumplings that I wanted to try but they had run out of. Like the rest of the menu, they are house made and apparently very popular and hard to keep stocked. I will definitely keep trying though. Haven’t tried MJ’s or Dat’z Italian Wood Fired Pizzas yet either, and Chow Yum Phat is opening a sushi/poke counter there soon as well. Parking isn’t bad and you can easily right turn, right turn away from Government onto Capital Heights then Acadian to catch the light if you need to head back downtown. Never try to turn left onto Government without a light. You will frustrate and embarrass yourself and anger anyone behind you.Â
It is still so new, but they do know what they are doing. Beware pescatarians: the seafood gumbo is a shrimp and okra with alligator sausage. While alligator might fall on that meat/not meat border like rattlesnake and iguana, every gator sausage I’ve ever encountered was cut with pork and pork fat. They go different directions, some lean heavily towards an Italian sausage, this one seemed aimed more towards alligator andouille, but they need the animal fat because believe me, alligator fat is something you do not want in your mouth. Even if you have already dressed tail meat delivered to your restaurant, it has to be inspected carefully while prepping to remove any fat the supplier might have missed. This sausage, however, helped create the harvest style gumbo where meat and seafood swim merrily together for your pleasure. True to their New Orleans roots, Jed’s Local pushes that roux just a little darker than other joints, resulting in a thinner gumbo. The poboy shrimp as you can see were plentiful and cornmeal battered. I would say Baton Rouge is pretty evenly split on cornmeal and all purpose white flour treatments for shrimp. I do think I’m going to ask for a mustard batter next time I get the shrimp poboy here though. I think Jed’s is small enough and eager enough to please to consider that special request. My momma used to fry her shrimp that way, coated in yellow mustard then seasoned cornmeal then straight into the hot grease. And like Andy Griffith selling crisp Ritz crackers, they were mmm…mmm… good! Again the staff was bright and friendly and the place spotless. You get the same clean and friendly vibe at Eliza as well. I still want to try the root beer glazed ham and cheese, the shrimp and fried green tomato, and the catfish and coleslaw poboys and the oyster loaf, but I might have to check out one of the daily specials first. It is 36 degrees this morning so I’m already thinking of trying the ramen or bao or both at Chow Yum Phat in White Star Market on Government or coming back here to check out the spaghetti and meatballs. Decisions, decisions!
I find myself throwing together a picnic type supper more and more often these days. The one pictured is fresh creole tomatoes with three different cheeses from the sample basket at Whole Foods and some crackers. A lot of times I will sub hard boiled eggs and artisan or fresh baked bread for the tomatoes and crackers respectively. And I think a lot of this is inspired by the sample basket at the Whole Foods cheese counter. Under a quarter ounce chunks left over from portioning whole wheels end up in the basket and make it easy to try different varieties without a huge investment. I’m a Gouda fan and I like to try other semi-soft cheeses when I come across them. Just one of the many improvements since Jeff Bezos bought the place. If you are single and comfortable and all in with Amazon Prime and the Prime credit card, Whole Foods just fits. You get 5% back on anything you buy there with your Prime credit card which makes the pricing a little more bearable, plus there’s an app for your phone that gets scanned at checkout to give you more specials. Obviously if you are married with four teenage sons you’d be better off at Costco or Sam’s, but for quality me-time treats and entertaining it is hard to beat Whole Foods. Their fresh produce and meats and seafoods are very high quality (which of course you pay a premium for) and the selection is expansive. I’m attached to the extra large brown eggs and, since I live alone, I very much like being to pick out a couple of chicken thighs to take home and bake and they will cut your fish to order. They also stock lamb regularly, which can’t be said of every local grocer. All in all probably my number one place to shop.
I usually wait a month or two before I check out a new place, but these guys have Eliza down the street on Jefferson as well and I trusted them to have it together even though they opened Friday and I’m heading in on Monday. I saw one of the workers put coffee in the tea machine to start the day, but other than that one incident, they certainly looked like they knew what they were doing and the roast beef was all that which is what my main concern was. I might just hit the place for lunch every day this week, and that won’t be nearly enough time to try everything I see that I want on their menu. The roast beef was tender, very intense flavor, and just wet with gravy rather than soaking in it. That allowed them to maintain the integrity of the Leidenheimer bread. I ordered the small, and it was a normal size poboy so be forewarned the large is probably gigantic. The crinkle fries were good. I ordered them because I didn’t want to be distracted by the side order. I’m pretty sure I’m going to do the shrimp poboy with a cup of seafood gumbo at some point this week, and maybe I will try the alligator sausage poboy with the coleslaw. I am hoping it’s the same slaw they serve at Eliza which is very umami as opposed to the sweet or vinegary or mustard tangent so many places take their slaw to. The barkeep was friendly. We started talking about sweet vs unsweet tea and headed into saving sugar points by drinking unsweet so we could spend them all on Barq’s or Abita root beers or better yet Mexican coke and found ourselves all the way over at Blue Corn Tequila and Tacos in Ichiban Square which neither of us have tried yet before she had to break off and help another customer.Â
So the owners share a Commander’s Palace background, not kitchen but catering and special events is what I’ve heard, and you can definitely feel the New Orleans vibe at Eliza and I’ve already picked up a good bit of it here at Jed’s Local. The Leidenheimer bread is a dead giveaway. Starting the week day specials with red beans and rice on Monday and ending with crawfish etoufee on Friday is another indicator as is the shrimp and fried green tomato poboy with remoulade and the surf and turf combining roast beef and fried oysters. Can’t wait for tomorrow and the next visit.
