Wanted:Frycook

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. 

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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. 

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.

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First Visit–Roast Beef Poboy and Fries

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. 

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.  

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Found these U/4 prawns at the new Rouse’s Market at Burbank and Lee. Knew immediately I had to throw a pair on the grill. Gave them the usual pre-grill treatment of Lucina Robust Garlic EVO, Lea&Perrins, Tony’s, and black pepper, but I could also see bacon wrapped with a bbq/Tiger sauce mix. And just looking at them you can tell they are prime for cast iron blackening. The new Rouse’s, along with Whole Foods, Fresh Market, and even Calandro’s have such a better seafood selection than I ever saw as a kid. Shipping and logistics are so much better than the good old days and demand is much more sophisticated as well. The new Rouse’s had fresh clams and mussels and Gulf oysters, jumbo lump crabmeat and crabfingers along with claw meat, live lobster and a nice variety of whole fish and fillets. You can get scallops just about everywhere now and most places have some already prepped, skewered, and wrapped in bacon, ready for a dusting of seasoning and a quick toss on the grill or into a skillet. This is, perhaps, the second best thing about this new, modern age we live in. The first of course is getting to listen to any music you want anytime anywhere for just ten dollars a month. When I was a kid, that ten dollars bought you one album, so other than what was playing on the radio at the time, you had to pick and choose your music very carefully. It is the reason why I was so late to the Allman Brothers and Gov’t Mule who I love now. Back then my southern rock dollars went to Lynyrd Skynyrd and Doobie Brothers. And you had to buy albums and later eight tracks or tapes if you wanted to listen to anything but hits. You could only catch one or two George Benson tracks on the airways if you were lucky and it’s not really Frank Zappa’s Apostrophe or Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon or Willie Nelson’s Red Headed Stranger if you don’t listen to the whole album straight through.  A lot of people would make the same argument about Traffic, Led Zep, Bowie or the Beatles as well. Until You Tube and Wiki I had no idea the reason ZZ Top covered Hendrix so well was because Billy Gibbons band the Moving Sidewalks used to open for Jimi back in ’68. There will always be a segment of the population that embraces the nostalgia of “the good old days” but don’t count me among them. Food that is better sourced, access to all music ever recorded, much less industrial pollution (even though it is still way too much) and a much greater population of those who have survived cancer are just a few of the available points of evidence that life is better in 2018 than in 1968. I’m not saying there aren’t arguments available to the half empty side, there are plenty, but I like to choose positive whenever I can. Here’s to the half full crowd. 

Don’t really know whether to call this a review or a pitch since I know the owner, Paul Dupre, and have previously worked with him and a number of his current employees including rising star Alaric Fricke of Quarx fame. There are parallels in how they launched the restaurant and band respectively. Paul won me over early on talking about a menu that didn’t quite fit in the box, featuring pies, both sweet and savory, many of which are based on his grandmother Elsie Marie Campeau Rupe’s original recipes. Alaric won me over when the first set I ever heard him play with the band included covers of both Dire Straits and Cat Stevens along with a number of great tunes he had written himself. There is something about having someone with passion and purpose leading the way that the corporate world just can’t duplicate, no matter how hard they try. We all know this on some level, whether we vocalize it or not. We admire and believe in people who believe in themselves enough to take financial and professional risks to pursue something they love. Starting your own business or band is a tremendous undertaking and success is never guaranteed. I am very happy for the success both of my friends are having. On to the review/pitch for Elsie’s Plate and Pie.

I was worried about the space when Paul first walked me through while the remodeling/construction was still in progress. It turned out to be a much more intimate space than I had envisioned but at the same time very open and inviting as well. When you first go to check it out, you should probably focus on the small plates first so you will have room to finish with one of the sweet pies. Fried okra paired with chocolate cream pie, or Cajun crawfish queso with pork skins and a S’Mores pie for example. Are you starting to get my drift that Paul didn’t follow Baton Rouge rules when setting up his menu? One menu item I have never seen anywhere before is the Avocado Sandwich which has avocado slices, a fried egg sunny up, mayo, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, and roasted garlic vinaigrette on whole wheat. Paul is such a believer in the power of fried eggs that you can add one to anything. The sandwiches are a real strength on this menu. He has all the fried poboys, along with a smoked chicken thigh sandwich, an oyster BLT with blue cheese dressing, a boudin sandwich, a boudin burger, a pimento cheeseburger, and a crawfish cake sandwich. There’s a red bean hummus and a pesto melt and the entire menu feels like each dish is a one of a kind offering. I was really impressed with what Paul put together and it totally supports my belief that when you are putting a menu together you have to remember that no one is really going to try everything on your menu (they may want to, but realistically, there are so many places to try that there is just no way you are going to try everything anyone offers which is why so many people these days like to group eat and share as many things as they can) but if you are a true foodie, even if you aren’t going to order everything on the menu, you are going to consume the whole menu as a statement of passion and intent.  I could go on and on, and I really wish I knew how to embed Elsie’s menu in this post, but I don’t, so you will just have to go check it out for yourself. Elsie’s Plate and Pie 3145 Government St.

I had the whole fried catfish for lunch today at Parrain’s on Perkins. Can’t tell you how many of these I’ve dropped in the grease myself over the years. I learned to fry at Mike Anderson’s original restaurant on Highland Road. Tim Hood and Mike Ryan, future owners of The Chimes and Parrain’s, were already there when Kevin Smith and I wandered in looking for work and Glenn Juban hired us, telling us how much we would appreciate the “artistry and camaraderie” of Mike Anderson’s Seafood Restaurant. We didn’t have a whole lot of choice in jobs at the time. My VW bug had bitten the dust before we could even start the BREC jobs we had lined up (we were roommates at the time) so we had to be in walking distance of Ivanhoe St. I was in and out of LSU and the Reagan administration had capped the limit on student loans at the same time the university deregulated tuition. The restaurant industry ended up with a whole lot of over educated cooks and bartenders and servers right around that time. Kevin was done with school and Mike’s is where we ended up. My last semester of undergrad I carried twelve hours of coursework and fried fifty hours a week at Mike’s. I had a seven am French class that I drug myself to with a huge cup of coffee and white flour dingleberries from the night before still clinging to my forearms. I would hide behind my wraparound shades and snooze through most of class. Barely got by with a D even though I was very close friends with the instructor. An hour before closing the bar staff would start bringing rounds of Bud and Miller in 9 oz plastic cups to the kitchen so we could start winding down and getting ready to clean up. Most of the time we would end the night at the Bayou “you don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here” and depending on who was closing we might stay on after the doors were shut for a few more brews and games of pool. Graduation day Mom and Pops took me out to lunch at Pinetta’s after the trek across the stage, but as soon as we were done I had to go back to Mike’s to get ready for the dinner rush. I remember filleting a thirty pound case of collarbone catfish in just under nine minutes when I got there that afternoon before setting up a hundred seafood platters. One frogleg, one Metompkin softshell crab, two catfish fillets, three shrimp, and five crabfingers wrapped in foil so we could pull them out of the cooler and add a stuffed shrimp and four oysters, two hushpuppies, fries, and onion rings. We served icy fishbowls of beer back then as well, and the ribeyes were 16 oz but two or three inches thick because the cattle weren’t hormone inflated. And the lump crabmeat cocktail was 4 oz of real jumbo lump. You’d have to charge better than twenty dollars to put that on the table today. The whole catfish at Parrain’s was delicious. I’m convinced that when you cook fish on the bone the marrow seeps out into the fish and gives it that clean sharp taste that you just don’t get from fillets alone. 

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So tacos are a lot like ramen noodles in that you can stay very minimalist or add as many bells and whistles as you want as long as you get the basics right. I have a couple of points to make about cooking Mexican. First, all you really need for seasoning is salt, chili powder, and cumin because all the rest of the flavors come from fresh vegetables and herbs. Second, just like Italian cuisine, Mexican cuisine gets attacked by Wisconsin as soon as it crosses the border and is smothered in cheese. Authentic Mexican and Italian dishes aren’t nearly as cheese heavy as their americanized versions. That said, tacos are super easy weeknight meals now that every grocery offers all the ingredients you need. Choose your tortillas, choose your protein, pick up some store prepped pico de gallo and some sour cream and you are good to go. The store made pico has gotten better and better. Look for containers with the least liquid in the bottom for the freshest product. And now you can buy flavored sour creams at most stores as well. So for me the size of the shrimp and the weather determines how I will cook my tacos. Larger shrimp and nice weather moves everything to the grill. Skewer and season the shrimp, toss on the grill, toast the tortillas on the grill as well and maybe add some fresh corn. Now you can cheat with packaged taco seasonings if you have one you really like, or dial it in yourself with the salt, chili powder and cumin I mentioned earlier. For the corn I put down some foil and a couple of pats of butter for each ear then season the corn pretty heavily before wrapping it and throwing it on the grill or in the oven. Leave yourself about fifteen minutes either way to get a little char going. Some char releases even more of the corn’s sweetness. Some folks like to smear the corn with sour cream after it comes off the grill or out of the oven and then dust it with cotija cheese and call it street corn. Whatever floats your boat. Smaller shrimp and nasty weather have me moving inside to the stove top to saute the shrimp in a little butter or garlic olive oil and seasonings before putting the tacos together. The one thing the store bought pico is always light on is cilantro, so if you want to dress the tacos up a bit, that’s the place to start. Fresh jalapenos, serranos, and poblanos are available almost everywhere as well. Now you can go beer or margaritas with your tacos if you want, but I prefer to hunt down a bottle or two of Mexican Coca-Cola made with real sugar. Far superior to what we make here in the states. 

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I know, I know. Jerry Lee’s is all about the boudin. And the headcheese. And cracklins. And a very fine jerky. But it is impossible for me to think of Jerry Lee’s and not also think about boiling crawfish for a living with Carlton LeGrange. We were based out of his parents’ place in Watson. That’s where the propane tank was and the boiling rigs were kept and repaired and the crawfish and beer coolers were located. And when we would load up early in the morning to go do a job somewhere our first stop was always Jerry Lee’s on Greenwell Springs Road. Breakfast of champions. A cup of black coffee or a Schlitz tallboy and a couple of links of hot boudin to start a long, long day. Lot of guys milling around waiting to order or just shooting the shit. Boots and jeans and the mingled smoke of wood fire and cigarettes and everyone knew there was work to do. Red was still alive then and he’d yell his greetings as he was pushing the boudin into links. Jerry Lee was there a lot, shaking hands, smiling, putting orders together. We worked a balloon fest one time out at the fairgrounds and that was where the boudin omelet was born. We had to get out there and set up for the dawn firing and lift off and although we sold poboys later in the day, we had to come up with a breakfast offering and boudin omelets filled that spot. You can get one anytime now at The Chimes on Highland Road and it’s evolved. Topped with white sausage gravy and stuffed with boudin and pepperjack cheese. Jerry Lee’s still has a hot deli box with boudin poboys inside. He uses that hot dog bun style poboy bread with boudin and pepperjack or American cheese. They are so good. So the photo on the left is the real secret to boiling crawfish. That is when you cut the fire off and let them soak on their own for 30 or forty minutes. No ice, no pulling them out and throwing them in an ice chest with butter and Old Bay, just let them cool slowly and sink as the tail meat shrinks away from the shell and the seasoned water gets inside and works its magic with the fat in the head and the bugs fill with flavor while you down another beer. No point in rushing the crawfish with ice. You are diluting the water and inhibiting the interaction of hot water and crawfish fat. When you get three quarters foam across the pot, cut them off and wait.