 
 "Eating, drinking and carrying on..." -- Adelaide Brennan
Li'l Dizzy's. Friday of Tales of the Cocktail was a light day for us, Tales-wise; we only had one seminar scheduled (although there at least two more I'd have loved to have gone to), but we wanted to make time to see friends today. My old college friends Shawn and Maggie were in town with their son Dillen for the summer, as Shawn was working on a film that was shooting down there, so we headed out for lunch around noon. The initial idea was to head to Willie Mae's Scotch House for a plate of fried chicken, but as Maggie isn't a van of chicken and Dillen had recently declared himself to be a vegetarian (a vegetarian in New Orleans? Ooh kid, you're gonna have a tough three months), Plan B was needed. Fortunately Plan B was a good one -- Li'l Dizzy's on Esplanade at the edge of the Tremé. It's a Bacquet family restaurant (their 12th), one of the first families of Creole cooking in New Orleans, and run by Wayne Bacquet, who used to run the beloved Zachary's on Oak Street. The food's great, and there's salad, greens and mac 'n cheese for Dillen. Perfect. It was packed but there was one table just waiting for us. The day's menu was written on a whiteboard near the door -- red beans, étouffé pot roast, the near-Platonic dish of Trout Bacquet (pan roasted trout topped with jumbo lump crabmeat and swimming in a pond of butter), fried chicken ... but the one that caught my eye was the 7th Ward Pork Chop. I was in a bit of a quandary, though. Creole-style roast beef, done in a slow braise with tons of debris, so tender you could cut it with a spoon, or my beloved pork! Well, maybe if the pork chop's fried I'll get the pot roast, as I wasn't in the mood for anything fried (and knew I'd be in for tons of it later that night). I'll use the Wesly Solution, I thought -- just ask the server that if he or she had a choice between two dishes, which one would it be? Our friendly, nurturing but sassy waitress arrived. "What can I get you, baby?" "Is the pork chop fried?" I asked." "Grilled to your order, boo," she replied. Ooooh. Still, I had to know. "If you had to choose between the pork chop and the pot roast, which one would you get?" Oh dear. Her face puckered to the kind of look you get from your third grade teacher if you're caught misbehaving in class. "Child, the flavor is 50-50," she said in a gently admonishing tone. "You want the pork chop, it takes 20 minutes to cook. You wanna eat now, get the pot roast." Well. That's tellin' me! I was being a huge pain so she skipped me and went on to Wes, who said, "Grilled pork chop, please!" Well, goddammit ...I couldn't very well sit there and watch him eat pork and not have any for myself. "Me too!" "Welll, there you go, that wasn't so hard now was it, baby?" No ma'am, not really. Pick your sides! Mac 'n cheese and vedge-a-tibbles, please! When the pork chop arrived my jaw dropped. 
Just ... look at that garlic! It's covered! Oh yeah! Sautéed just enough to give it some nuttiness but leaving a little of the garlic bite behind, and that chop was perfectly cooked. Just a bit of crisp crust and a rosy medium on the inside, tender and juicy. Great homestyle mac 'n cheese, although the veggies had been cooked to within an inch of their lives (not quite like being able to spread my mom's asparagus on a cracker with a butter knife), much to my and especially Dillen's consternation. "Oh well," Maggie said, "it is the South after all." Old school, I guess, where your veggies cook for a looooooong time. A minor quibble for me really (although not for our nascent vegetarian); I don't fault Mandina's for the green beans out of the big no. 10 can they serve with some of their dishes, I just ignore 'em. I had a few of the veggies, but I was more than happy with the pork chop. Li'l Dizzy's is about as down home as it gets. If you haven't tried them out, you need to. Aromatics and Their Uses in Cocktails. That was the title of the seminar we hit that afternoon after lunch, and one I'd really been looking forward to. "Libation Goddess" Audrey Saunders, of the Pegu Club in New York, and top mixologist Tony Conigliaro from the U.K., would be conducting this one. We'd been admiring Audrey from afar for years, had finally met her, and were very keen to hear some of her ideas about flavor and aroma. 
Audrey began the seminar talking about tinctures and essences. I had been fascinated with the idea of tinctures in cocktails, having heard the idea from her first (as I recall) on the DrinkBoy message board years ago, but that's another case of "everything old is new again" -- Prof. Jerry Thomas was talking about making spice tinctures in the first-ever cocktail book, which he wrote in 1862. What is a tincture? It's defined as "an alcoholic extract of a non-volatile substance," used in medicines (i.e., tincture of iodine, etc.) but can also be used for herbal and spice extracts. Audrey gives the following basic recipe for making a tincture: one cup vodka, one ounce herb or spice. You can heat or toast the spice slightly to help release some of the aromatics, then place the herb/spice in a jar with the vodka and let it steep for two weeks, agitating gently every day. No 151 or 190 proof Everclear is required, despite what some people say. "I use Stoli," she said. Once it's finished steeping you strain out the solids, place the resultant tincture in a dasher or dropper bottle, and what you basically have is a liquid spice, to be applied a drop or a dash at a time, depending on its potency. She also discussed essences, using examples from a perfume maker by
the name of Mandy Aftel, who has a book out entitled
Aroma: The Magic of Essential Oils in Foods and Fragrance
Following me so far? I know, this is all new to me too, and it's science, really. It's just a little scientific background to the materials, and an aid in understanding them and how they're made and where they come from, because once you have the materials at hand, you use them to make drinkable art. One of the things Audrey does is to use tinctures and diluted essences, dropped or sprayed onto the top of a cocktail, to layer the flavor and create aromas. The example she used was a classic New Orleans cocktail, the Ramos Gin Fizz. This Ramos Fizz was a little different, though ... on top of the creamy, foamy head formed by the egg whites in the drink, Audrey dropped two drops of a tincture of cardamom. You didn't get the flavor so much, as you sipped the drink through the creamy, foamy head, but that cardamom aroma went right up your nose and gave an extra dimension to the cocktail, made it even more exotic, and even fooled you into thinking you could taste the cardamom even if it was too soon for you to really be doing that. Also, instead of an eyedropped, you can put tinctures into an atomizer and spray them on the top of the cocktail for a similar effect. Truly amazing. She also asked, "Why do we garnish?" For looks, mostly, but in the form of twists you're getting the spray of lemon oil on the surface of the drink, a layering of flavor and an essential component of certain drinks like the Sazerac. But if you're just garnishing for looks why not use them as a flavor and aroma enhancer also? You can spray tinctures or diluted essences on an edible garnish -- "Try spraying that cardamom tincture on some mint," she said. You can also use these to scent wooden stirrers as well. A rack of essences and tinctures are the notes in your symphony. Pick some and start composing. The next mindboggle came from Tony Conigliaro, who besides working with numerous bars and restaurants to develop new drinks has also worked with perfumiers. He had as specific project in mind -- he wanted to get the help of an expert perfumier to help him isolate and combine essences of the primary aromatics in a famous perfume, Chanel No. 5, to use in a cocktail. The most distinctive aspect of Chanel No. 5's flavor is from the flowers of a tree called ylang-ylang, native to southern India, Java, Malaysia, the Philippines and other Pacific islands. Other of Chanel No. 5's primary components were jasmine, sandalwood, May rose and one other I forgot. He obtained edible, food-grade versions of these essences, combined them carefully to closely approximate the aroma of the perfume, then dropped the resultant mixture onto sugar cubes and used those aromaticized sugar cubes to make a Champagne cocktail -- the Champagne No. 5 Cocktail. 
When I saw that we'd actually be served this I got a little worried. I tend to despise most perfumes, and I'm not entirely sure why other than the fact that the monstrously mean and abusive principal of the first elementary school I went to wore so much perfume you could smell her coming before she got to your classroom, and I'm probably still traumatized by that. I think most people who wear perfume wear entirely too much of it. I shouldn't be able to smell it on you unless I'm really close to you; you're not a goddamn Lunar Moth, and I don't need to smell you from two miles away. That said, I'm willing to try just about anything. And if nothing else, the mechanics and physics of this cocktail were truly astonishing. The edible perfume essence on the sugar cubes were brought to the surface of the drink inside the myriad tiny little bubbles, which released them as they burst. Tony recommended straight-sided Riedel Champagne glasses to help release the aromas, as the typical Champagne flute with the receding lip tends to trap the aroma inside the glass. It smelled ... well, perfumey. But not the off-putting smell I'd associated with perfume abuse over the years. It actually smelled like something I'd want to taste, and I did. It tasted ... well, perfumey, but delicate and complex and floral, and there was so much going on in there. This type of drink would certainly be an acquired taste (and Wes mentioned that though he was fascinated by it it's not the kind of drink he'd want to have very often), but the mechanism of this cocktail is extendable to so many other flavors. Wes also noted, as did I, that the flavors of the floral and perfume components got more intense the more you drank, as the sugar cubes continued to break down with the action of the bubbles. Given the near-limitless range of flavors and flavor combinations you could make with essences and tinctures, you could take a cocktail like this anywhere you wanted. I enjoyed every single seminar we took at Tales of the Cocktail, but this is the one that filled more pages in my notebook than any other, and was the most eye-opening. This might be too esoteric for some, but in some ways the world of the cocktail is limited -- there are only so many ingredients, and so many ways to put them together. If we're going to continue to challenge ourselves and our taste buds by stretching the boundaries of taste and aroma in cocktails, this is the kind of stuff we need to be thinking about. I can't WAIT to drink at the Pegu Club. Jack Dempsey's. Friday night was also set aside for seeing friends, and after we left Audrey and Tony, excited and inspired (and still trying to take it all in a week and a half later), we walked to the Marigny to see our friends Michael and Louise, hang out, catch up and sip some Sazeracs. (I believe there were Beefeater Martinis and some jonge genever being sipped as well.) The skies looked threatening, and we wondered if this would put a crimp in our evening, but after a brief but intense deluge things calmed down a bit. Then Dean and Becky arrived and we caravanned to a great neighborhood joint in the Bywater called Jack Dempsey's 
Still alive and kicking on Poland Avenue between Royal and Dauphine and just and good and popular as ever, Jack Dempsey's is still a bit of a young-un compared to some other neighborhood joints like Mandina's or Liuzza's -- if I recally correctly they opened in the late 1970s -- and was named not for the famous boxer but for a local, a grizzled crime reporter for the now-defunct States-Item newspaper who was a New Orleans fixture. It's a survivor, that's for sure ... Jack Dempsey's and Restaurant Mandich ("the Galatoire's of the Ninth Ward") were THE two places to eat in the Bywater, but sadly Mandich didn't survive Katrina. Neither did Jack Dempsey's sign, but that seems to be the least of the restaurant's worries -- they're too busy making the best fried seafood in town. 
Now, remember what the late Neil Broyard of the Saturn Bar said about ordering "fancy" drinks in the Ninth Ward, "fancy" being a general euphemism for "something that's not a beer or a shot." He said, "You want a fancy drink, you go Uptown." I would have been perfectly happy with a huge frozen schooner of Abita beer, but Louise and I were both in the mood for Martinis and hoped that said craving would be satisfied. Despite the ominous appearance of foo-foo drinks containing numerous vile ingredients like Sour Pucker described on hand-written cards above the bar, Louise swears you can get a good Martini here, despite the bartender being a young guy in his early twenties who looked as if he might've thought a Martini was something made with vodka, if he'd even heard of it. Now now, we mustn't prejudice ourselves against bartenders based on their age or appearance, as you WELL know, so dammit, we're ordering Martinis. To the waitress Louise said she's like a Beefeater Martini, "very dry," with an olive, and I said I'd like a Beefeater Martini as well, but "I'd like mine old-school, with some vermouth in it." When the Martinis arrived, I sipped mine -- not as I had wanted, way too dry for me -- and I saw Louise sip hers and make a face. We swapped, took another taste ... big, big smiles all around. That kid had knocked both of those Martinis out of the park, and very quickly doubled his tip. Okay, one thing you need to know about Jack Dempsey's if you're going to eat there is that the portions are absolutely Gargantuan. This is good information with which to arm yourself, so you don't get embarrassed by shrieking "Oh, JESUS!!" when the plates are put in front of you. First off, appetizers -- we wanted onion rings. Why? Because these are pretty much the best in town, and we knew we'd have enough for the table. In fact ... we kinda had enough for two tables, but because poor Wesly suddenly started feeling poorly and decided he shouldn't eat anything, we managed. The serving was so large that Michael suggested we place something next to it to provide a sense of scale, and he kindly contributed his driver's license. 
For our mains we wanted seafood platters, hands down. There are two sections of the menu at Jack's -- fried seafood and broiled seafood. Presumably the broiled seafood is better for you, but if you order it "you'll be appropriately mocked," Michael said. The reason you come here is for fried seafood -- nobody does it better, even places that have greater reputations for it. The J.D. Platter is their gold standard, "for two" as it says on the menu, which is laughable because it's easily enough for four. 
This platter consisted of catfish, drum, shrimp, oysters, some little crawfish pies and some balls of crabmeat dressing, all perfectly, beautifully battered and deep-fried. Hot, crisp, and so un-greasy that you could have placed any of that fried seafood on a paper towel and it wouldn't have left a grease mark. (Well, hardly any, anyway.) The sides offered were a pretty good gumbo, lemon-yellow homestyle mac and cheese, and some really good French fries. Given the number of oyster fans at the table, we supplemented our J.D. with an extra fried oyster platter, and some more sides. 
Busy every night and worth a drive from anywhere in the city for this nearly Platonic fried seafood, Jack Dempsey's is as neighborhoody and unpretentious as it gets. The waitresses are embracing and enveloping and pure Ninth Ward, dawlin' ... so eat a light lunch, head to Jack's, order a Martini and don't worry about all the fried stuff. Just split everything and try not to think about the fact that "it ain't da seafood dat makes ya fat, it's da batta." [ Link to today's entries ]
Cocktail of the day. Yeah, I know, this was the one from The Cocktailian that I posted the link to yesterday, but we made them last night and they were fantastic and we took a nice picture, plus I want to encourage the use of this liqueur (plus it's a pretty bottle, so hush), not to mention using pisco in something other than the ubiquitous Pisco Sour, so here we go.
I'm gonna start playing with St. Germain and silver tequila next, but I'm sure someone's already thought of what I'll think up. Spirited Dinner at Commander's Palace. We'd really been looking forward to this. With a gentle sigh, we decided to forget about how great a time Paul and Darcy and everyone at The Delachaise would be having at the Lafcadio Hearn-themed Spirited Dinner (coverage of which I'll link to later on), and pledged to forge on to the Garden District without dwelling on it. We would be dining on the amazing food of Chef Tory McPhail, one of the best in the city (and anywhere), with drinks prepared by two heroes of ours, Dale DeGroff and Audrey Saunders. We were in for a treat no matter what. We were also in for an adventure. It's very difficult to pair cocktails with food, and much easier to do so with wine. There are some who don't believe it's possible to pair cocktail with food (Tom Fitzmorris was apparently pooh-poohing the whole idea on his radio show that day), but I disagree strongly. It can be done, it just has to be done with great care. Another exciting aspect of what Tory was doing was that, à la Rickey and G-Man at the (sadly) fictitious New Orleans restaurant Liquor, there's booze in every dish. The flavor of the spirit or liqueur is in the marinade or in the sauce, which should jump-start Dale and Audrey's work and make the cocktail matches heavenly. 
There was only one disaster for the evening, and fortunately it was over and done with before we even got to the restaurant. I was planning on wearing my seersucker suit to the dinner, and as we were getting dressed I was horrifed to see a gigantic stain on the front of the jacket, across the lapel and onto the jacket itself. I had no idea how that had gotten there, since I knew I hadn't spilled anything that huge on myself while wearing it. The flurry of cursing that burst from me was probably audible all the way down the hall, and now I was facing the prospect of entering Commander's Palace without a jacket on for the first time in my life. I managed to keep my head from exploding with the greatest effort (and I could already hear Ti saying, as she would later, "Oh, it's no big deal," but ... sheesh. It's in my blood. You wear a jacket to Commander's. We didn't have a car yet so we had arranged to meet Wendy and Dayne downstairs and share a cab, figuring that even if we did have a car, cabbing it back home after five cocktails would probably be the best thing to do. Turns out Dayne wasn't wearing a jacket either, so I didn't feel so bad. One cheap cab ride later and there we were, and the nice valet boys were kind enough to offer to take our picture. This was only my second time back at Commander's since they reopened in October, and it was great to be back. Actually I was wrong about the cocktail count; there weren't to be five cocktails that night, but six. As we were ushered into the dining room, we were presented with a "welcoming cocktail." 
This was a variation on the Mimosa that they simply called a Pineapple Champagne Cocktail, with pineapple juice standing in for the orange, but with a large pineapple chunk garnish, which had been impaled on a large sprig of fresh rosemary. We were instructed to drop the whole garnish into the drink, and as we sipped it the piney, woodsy aroma of the rosemary wafted into our noses. Although there was no time for the rosemary to actually infuse the drink, it was as if we could actually taste it. We were seated with Dayne and Wendy, and two other couples who were transplanted locals (one to Houston, and ... I forget where else), so there was some local bonding happening right away. I think we managed not to sing the Seafood City song too loud, but there was drinking going on, so you never know. We were greeted by Ti, Dale and Audrey, who spoke briefly and then kicked off the festivities with the serving of the first paired cocktail. 
This was a Cucumber Creole, containing, as I dimly recall, cachaça, cucumber, a hint of mint, lemon juice and I sadly don't remember what else. If any of y'all were at the dinner and can help with the details of some of these drinks, I'd really appreciate it. First course arrived, as is the Brennan style, simultaneously for every diner at the table. 
Cachaça Seafood Escabeche, with grilled octopus, mussels, clams, shrimp and blue crab with liquid parsley, lemon, bay leaf-infused olive oil and heirloom tomato salt. I was a tiny bit worried about this one, not being a huge fan of either octopus or mussels, but I trust Tory implicitly and will eat anything he puts in front of me. My trust was, as usual, well-placed. This was really good, and the pairing worked very well. "Escabeche" is a term for seafood marinated in an acidic mixture, and the lemon as well as the herbal elements in the dish and the cocktail played off one another just right. Cocktail number two came, and I was really excited about this one. 
This was one of the two best pairings of the evening, and a drink I'd definitely make again. I love coconut water (which is what sloshes around inside ripe and especially young coconuts, which we buy for a buck each at the nearby Filipino market, hacking off the top, drinking the glassful of water it contains and scooping out the tender, creamy flesh with a spoon), and I love to see it used in a cocktail instead of the thick, overly sweet cream of coconut you see all the time. The ginger's peppery counterpoint to that was wonderful, and the mysterious element added by muddling the ginger with agave nectar instead of sugar as the sweetener was genius. I was a little baffled by the use of vodka instead of rum, though, and I suspect it had to do with certain requirements that sponsors' products be used throughout the event. That's cool, I understand -- events like this could not take place without the support of the sponsoring liquor companies, and bartenders and consultants often make a big chunk of their living creating cocktails on commission from spirits companies. That said, my personal taste runs toward having little to no use for vodka in cocktails, I think I'd definitely use a nice white rum. The brilliance of this drink particularly came through once the course was served: 
Rum Butter-Poached Lobster Calaloo, with Caribbean curry, ginger, okra, taro, sweet potato and house-distilled roasted coconut liqueur. Oh my Gawd. Calaloo is sort of the Caribbean version of gumbo, often thickened with okra, usually containing a mixture of greens, and like gumbo can be done a zillion different ways. This one was a stew rather than a soup, featuring that beautiful, beautiful lobster. I learned the technique of poaching lobster in butter from Chef Thomas Keller of The French Laundry after reading his book (and eating the dish), and next time I do it you can be damned certain that I'll be adding rum to the butter, and serving this drink with it. Intermezzo time! 
The Green Goddess, a frozen shooter made with mint, some basil and other herbs and ... gaaah, I forgot everything else! Very refreshing and very palate-cleansing. Commander's has made a habit of serving a small refreshing cocktail by itself as an intermezzo rather than the somewhat clichéd sorbet, and I love that idea. This intermezzo didn't arrive alone, however. What the hell, let's serve a dish with it! 
Tequila-Flambéed Shrimp Piñata, with grilled cactus, corn, avocado, cilantro, hot chiles and citrus lime sauce presented in an edible coriander "piñata." This was fun and whimsical and delicious, taking the theme of a journey through cocktails and food up from the Caribbean into Mexico. The flavors were fantastic, bright and spicy with the calming flavors and textures of the avocado and the cactus, and the "piñata" was similar to a phyllo pastry, but a little chewier, and scented with coriander. I didn't get to beat the crap out of it with a stick, but here's what it looked like when opened: 
Y'know, from now on I think I want my piñatas to contain tequila, shrimp, cactus, corn, avocados and chiles rather than cheap little wrapped candies. Can we arrange that for my next birthday party? (Heavy on the tequila, please.) Then came what was probably my favorite combo of the entire evening. 
The Blood and Sand is a classic cocktail, and the only straight-ahead classic that was served at the meal. Usually it calls for a blended Scotch, and though I'm not sure what Scotch they used in this one, it did have a bit of smoke it it, which made it so perfect to go along with what was to come next. 
Our entrée was Sugarcane and Bourbon Smoked Duck, smoked over smoldering whiskey barrels with local figs, a sweet potato pone, BBQ'ed onions, vanilla bourbon syrup and foie gras ganache. Jesus Gawd. Let's just go through this again, shall we? Duck with Bourbon and sugarcane rub, smoked over smoldering wood from whiskey barrels. This is one reason why Tory McPhail is one of my favorite people on the planet. This dish was just fantastic; I think Wes and I had our eyes rolled up in our heads more than once while eating this dish. And the really fascinating thing is that the booze in the dish wasn't paired with the booze in the drink this time ... the smoke in the booze in the drink was paired with the smoke in the duck in the dish. (The vessel with the pestle has the pellet with the poison, the flagon with the dragon has the brew that is true. Um. Sorry, I digress.) I wanted thirds and fourths of this, and I'm going to cry next time I go to Commander's because this dish won't be on the menu. Maybe I'll luck out and it will, though. Fingers crossed. Time for dessert! 
The cocktail was the NOLA Fizz, made with Champagne and Absolut New Orleans vodka, a new limited edition release that was launched this week during Tales of the Cocktail. It's a mango and black pepper vodka, which is rather interesting, and the limited run of 35,000 cases will raise $2 million for charities on the Gulf Coast, aiding victims of Hurricane Katrina and the U.S. Government's flood caused by the failure of their levees. 
Champagne and Strawberries: Champagne- and Zinfandel-braised Ponchatoula strawberries with caramel genoise, double French vanilla ice cream and candied lavender sabayon. Lovely, lovely dessert ... I know there are those among us who say it's not dessert without chocolate, but you can serve me Ponchatoula strawberries anytime and I'll be very, very happy. A very successful Spirited Dinner! I can't wait for the next one! And if six cocktails weren't enough (and apparently they weren't), Wendy, Dayne, Wes and I had the cab bring us to the Swizzle Stick, where we proceeded to drink Sazeracs, Adelaide Swizzles and French 75s with bartenders Michael and Tommy until we closed the joint down. That's the way to spend an evening, and my hangover wasn't even too bad the next morning. The cocktail gods continue to smile on me. [ Link to today's entries ]
Cocktail of the day. We first tasted this one at a Tales of the Cocktail event called Cocktail Hour, filled with bartenders, mixologists, authors and you-name-'em, all mixing drinks for us to taste, signing books, etc. Dr. Cocktail offered this original concoction using the fabulous, delicious (fabulicious?) St. Germain Elderflower Liqueur. There's lots to love about this fascinating new addition to the liqueur lineup, first of which is that it's drier than most liqueurs. I was up until this point completely unfamiliar with elderflowers, and these are grown in France, gathered by hand only during a short season, making the liqueur show up in fairly limited quantities. The flavors that hit you first are fruity rather than purely floral -- I tasted pears, the loquats we grow in our backyard, and fresh lychees, with the floral notes mostly in the background. Wonderful stuff, and I was thinking, "This would make a great gin cocktail ... I've got to see if I can come up with something." Of course, Doc was way ahead of me! As a cinematography grad student in a previous life (well, in the that's-what-I-used-to-do sense, not the Shirley MacLaine sense), I find the name of this drink tremendously appealing.
No garnish was specified, but I'd drape a long curly lemon twist over the rim of the glass and into the drink. Ardent Spirits. Gary Regan's new newsletter is out, detailing among other things his first trip to N.O. for Tales of the Cocktail, including a picture of a very motley crew in which you might recognize a couple three faces. The Cocktailian: Peruvian Elder-Sour. Gary's most recent Chronicle column is out as well, with the Professor's substitute bartender Jake filling in. Jake gets an email from the Professor with the recipe for today's cocktail, a close relative of the Cocktail of the Day above. This sounds fantastic, and will be tonight's cocktail, no doubt! We sure love that St. Germain. [ Link to today's entries ]
Tales of the Cocktail, Day 2. Yeesh ... sorry for the delay, y'all. Ths was a long post to put together, and I was flat on my back sick all day Wednesday and Thursday, except when we were dealing with Tuesday evening's surprise of no hot water in the house. That ended up meaning a new water heater going in Wednesday evening. $1,515.40 later and we have hot water again. (I'm trying not to think of that amount as as six absinthe fountains.) My head's still throbbing a bit, but I'm better than I was yesterday. Onward! Last Thursday, our first full day at Tales, was our biggest one. Two morning seminars, then after lunch the Lost Ingredients seminar in which I was a participant, then (supposedly) the historical cocktail walking tour of the Quarter, then the Spirited Dinner at Commander's. Good thing we didn't knock back several cocktails at the opening reception and then walk over to the Swizzle Stick and knock back some more with Nurse and Doctor Cocktail. (Oh no, wait ... we did. Never mind.) 
Not quite as fuzzy as I thoguht I'd be, we headed to the first panel of the day: The Cocktail's Family Tree, a look at how the cocktail used to be just one kind of drink (specifically, it meant a spirit with water, sugar and bitters), not a catch-all term for all mixed alcoholic drinks. There were cobblers and daisys and fixes and flips and sangarees and punches and shrubs and lots more. Going through all this was moderator David Wondrich of Esquire magazine and many other publications (boy, what a gig he's got), bartender John Myers of The Thirstin' Howl (God, I love an awfu-- er, brilliant pun), bartender Jim Meehan of Food & Wine magazine and Ryan Magarian, mixologist and one of the developers of Aviaton Gin. The only drawback to a panel like this is that you can't possibly fit all the history into a 75-minute seminar; we'd need to spend a week drinking our way through the development of the cocktail with all its fellow drinks for the last couple of hundred years (and how much fun would that be?). The guys all did a great job though, and it was fun and fascinating. We also got to sample two drinks from the cocktail's family tree, one daisy and one fizz, the latter near and dear to the heart of New Orleanians. The daisy, a forerunner to drinks like the Sidecar or what Gary Regan classifies as a "New Orleans Sour," generally was a spirit with fresh lemon juice, sugar, a bit of Curaçao and sometimes grenadine. No grenadine in this one, and the Curaçao is a damned good one. Here's this version:
For comparison, here's Professor Jerry Thomas' version from his 1862 classic The Bartender's Guide, or How to Mix Drinks:
And of course, our beloved Fizz:
My first-ever cocktail seminar. Great job, guys! (By the way, Dave's got a front-cover feature in Esquire this month on The Best Bars in America ... check it out.)  An appropriately fuzzy iPhone pic of Wes, Gary Regan, me and Dave Wondrich. Next was a dilemma, one of several presented by Tales. They're just as maddening as Jazzfest in the scheduling department, putting a wonderful seminar on rum by Wayne Curtis (author of And a Botle of Rum: A History of the New World in 10 Cocktails, Jeff "Beachbum" Berry and Steve Remsburg, holder of perhaps the world's most extensive private rum collection. I was tearing my hair out over this one, but we ended up at Drinks and Dishes Born in New Orleans, led by Food Goddess Lorin Gaudin of New Orleans Magazine and "All Over Food" (on 99.5 FM, the former WRNO as I was growing up -- "We're the rock of New Orleans!" -- and now a bizarre right-wing Faux "News" affiliated station I'd ignore completely if it weren't for Lorin), Ti Adelaide Martin, co-proprietor of Commander's Palace and Café Adelaide, Poppy Tooker of Slow Food New Orleans and Chef Duke LoCicero of Café Giovanni on Decatur St. What followed was a delightful trip through the New Orleans food scene along with some of its classic cocktails old and new. One bit of exciting news was Ti's announcement that the book she wrote with her cousin Lally Brennan, In the Land of Cocktails, focusing on New Orleans' own cocktails and its vaunted status as "the birthplace of the cocktail" (well, that's the story we like to tell, anyway), will be out in October. I knew they had been working on it, but this was the first I'd heard of an actual publication date. Yay! Ti talked about the long history of cocktail drinking in New Orleans, how we like to drink cocktails in the morning (some people think that's weird; I don't get those people), drinks like the Brandy Milk Punch and Absinthe Suissesse, and then served the newest New Orleans classic, developed as the house cocktail for Café Adelaide -- The Adelaide Swizzle. 
This delicious, refreshing long drink consists of New Orleans Amber Rum (made right on Frenchmen Street!), fresh lime juice, Peychaud's bitters, soda and ... a Secret Ingredient. "We've been very free with every recipe for everything we've ever made at Commander's and Café Adelaide, if someone wanted it," Ti said, "But y'know ... I thought it was about time we had one that was secret." Fair enough! Shooting a bit of a look toward certain people in the audience, she added, "Although some of y'all cocktail geeks have figured it out." I'd say the best way for you to figure it out is to go to Café Adelaide and drink lots of Adelaide Swizzles. Me, I'll never tell. With this we had a Café Adelaide version of a classic New Orleans dish, Crabmeat Ravigote, with a nifty modern twist -- a Tabasco Spoon Cracker. 
The recipe is below, in the next post. Chef Duke talked about his own history in the New Orleans restaurant scene, and being Italian talked about the long history of Italian influence in New Orleans' cuisine -- "Creole Italian" being a recognized and well-loved subset of our cooking. That led to a talk on the history and development of the Muffuletta sandwich, and some eye-opening theories of its true origins. Chef Duke likes 'em warm, and served us some lovely warm muffuletta slices. I've always been a fan of the room-temperature muff myself, but he does have a point -- when you warm some thing it does release more flavor, and he likes the barely-melted cheese just beginning to ooze out of the side. We also got to try his little "cocktail muffulettas," a little bit bigger than a golf ball. 
Lunchtime, and we had about an hour and a half before I had to get back for the panel I'd actually be speaking on. (*gulp*) Actually, I was pretty confident about what I was talking about, and had received the good news that my Pimento Dram No. 3 had arrived and was being readied for pouring. With our new friends Dayne and Wendy Miller from Seattle (who get to drink at Vessel and Zig Zag all the time, lucky ducks) we dashed over to Johnny's Po-Boys on St. Louis St., just a few blocks away. One of our favorite poor boy joints, we knew we'd get something fast and good here, provided the line wasn't too long. It wasn't, and the two daily specials that day were perfect for us -- for Wes, Half a Soft Shell Crab Poor Boy with Gumbo (it might have been half a poor boy but it was a whole soft shell crab), and for me ... aaaaahhhhhhh ... Half a Hot Sausage Poor Boy with Red Beans and Rice. 
Boy, did that hit the spot. Great hot sausage too (although I still miss Gene's ... *sob*.) Now, the moment of truth ... the Lost Ingredients: Obtaining (or making) rare ingredients for even rarer cocktails. Moderated by Dr. Cocktail and featuring a few people I knew (well, since the night before, anyway, and for years online) and a couple of folks new to me. I was comforted a bit by the fact that Joe Fee of the fabulous Fee Brothers bitters, syrups and cordials company was more nervous than I was. Not helping my nervousness was this: 
It wasn't so bad, though. In fact, it was really great that all these folks showed up to hear about a bunch of wild, obscure stuff that we seven cocktail geeks up at the table were excited about, and they were all excited about it too. There was Wes, right up front, a comforting presence, and next to him was bartender extraordinaire Jamie Boudreau from Vessel, with whom I'd swapped some emails and who I was really looking forward to meeting, Dayne and Wendy behind them, Jim Meehan from the earlier seminar (who's a super nice guy) as well ... I was surprisingly relaxed. Previous public speaking engagements had me curled up in a ball in the corner at this point, growing a tumor. Not today. There was a disaster, though ... Paul Clarke's bottles of Falernum No. 9 that he'd made didn't show up at the room. I felt awful for him, but he did what needed to be done and although there was nothing of his to taste he did a great job describing his process for making this product that can be fairly difficult to find (especially if you live in a state with state-controlled liquor stores that don't see fit to stock it). Bravo, Paul! Then it was my turn ... 
Boy, did that eight (or so) minutes go by quickly. The crowd was great, and people really liked the Pimento Dram, which was fantastic. It's really gratifying, and a testament to how cocktail people are the coolest and nicest people in the world, that non-professional mixologists like myself are embraced and encouraged by the pros. My appreciation is endless ... thanks y'all. As an aside, in today's Times-Picayne there was an article about Tales which featured my recipe for Pimento Dram, in case y'all haven't come across it here, or in the current issue of Imbibe magazine. Our seminar also got some coverage a couple of days earlier. Hey Mom, I got my name in Da Papuh! (But will they ever learn to spell it properly? No. No, they won't. Sigh.) Joe Fee was next, talking about some of his family's newest products, some of which I'd gotten to taste earlier, and they're all very exciting -- a Whiskey Barrel-Aged Aromatic Bitters, a brand-new Grapefruit Bitters, both of which taste great (and thank Gawd, as my own experiment with grapefruit bitters had a good flavor that was crushed by its face-puckering, unrelenting biterness), plus a new spice syrup -- "Imagine pumpkin pie, without the pumpkin," said Joe. Gwydion Stone of The Wormwood Society talked a bit about the history of absinthe, the formation of his society of absinthe fanciers and how that led to the development of his own brand, Absinthe Marteau to be made in Switzerland as I recall. Oh, and by the way, it appears that absinthe is (kind of) legal now, not due to any change in the laws, but because the whole high-thujone-content thing about absinthe was exaggerated and overly mythologized, and it seems that currently made, high-quality, historically accurate absinthes actually do fall below the government's threshhold level for thujone (the chemical in wormwood) content in spirits. It's still a hazy legal grey area, but expect to see new absinthes available in this country soon, for the first time in almost a hundred years. Next came the amazing Eric Seed, who it was a pleasure to meet. He spoke of some of the spirits he'll be bringing into the country, including Batavia Arrack, distilled from sugar cane and fermented Indonesian red rice. It's an important component in Swedish punsch, which we also tasted and which should again be available soon. It's a key ingredient in several classic and "forgotten" cocktails and which has the amazing effect of being added to a cheap rum and making it taste like an expensive aged rum. (Eric said Batavia arrack is also getting big with pastry chefs, and told us to try adding it to a dark chocolate mousse sometime, and we'd have an amazing experience.) He also talked about the return of Crème de Violette (YAY!), the extremely difficult to find violet petal liqueur which I adore. This is all a lot to be excited about. Then the final panelist took his turn -- Rob Cooper, who's the owner of Charles Jacquin, the liqueur company who made the long-lost and lamented Forbidden Fruit and Crème Yvette liqueurs, announced that the latter will likely be back soon, working from the original recipe, and they're working on the former. There were lab sample bottles of each, and although I didn't get to try the Forbidden Fruit we all got to try the new, work-in-progress Créme Yvette. Talk about a bounty -- we had Eric Seed's crème de violette and Rob Cooper's Crème Yvette in front of us, and then Rob held up a vintage 1944 bottle of Yvette that he had brought along just for show (which you can see in front of me on the podium). The cork had crumbled in transit and it was now open ... so we might as well drink it. (Gotta love that mindset, the only proper one really.) THREE violet liqueurs sampled right next to each other! Rob's also the developer of St. Germain Elderflower Liqueur, a new product which was very popular among the Tales crowd (and is really great stuff -- more on that later). It was fantastic, and I thank everyone who organized, participated in and attended this seminar, and thanks for all the great feedback too, y'all. I'm glad you liked the Dram. :-) Okay, I'm tired. We cover Commander's tomorrow! Blue Crab Ravigote with Tabasco Crackers. A slightly updated version of a New Orleans classic.
I like the spoon shape idea, me. [ Link to today's entries ]
"Please, dear, your Auntie Mame is hung." Yep. Know how she feels. Actually, that's not my current problem, and I seemed to have not ... too many problems with the astonishing quantities of alcohol that were quaffed over the last five or so days. Today my head is filled with gunk and I'm groggy and achey and tired and want to do nothing more than nap, and read Harry Potter when I'm not napping. I blame a gaggle of Billy Bobs who flooded out of the front door of the Monteleone on Saturday as we were checking out and moving to Rendon -- late middle age, hair slicked back, pants hitched up to the bottom of their rib cages, voices twanging like the last remaining catgut string on a broken down guitar in a Lubbock pawn shop, one of whom actually did address another as "Billy Bob" -- when one of them coughed on me as we passed. He's undoubtedly one of those types who goes into the wonderful Carousel Bar in the hotel and orders a Jack and Diet Coke. I hardly know where to begin about Tales of the Cocktail, other than to say it was one of the most wonderful times I've had in recent memory. There was so much I learned, so many new things I tasted, such good, good times had. Best of all was getting the chance to meet so many wonderful people, some who were simply fellow cocktail geeks, and others who were people I had only known from their websites, from the DrinkBoy or eGullet message boards or by simply admiring them from afar, and even being able to call some of them friends now. We met and hung out with Paul Clarke of The Cocktail Chronicles, Darcy O'Neil of The Art of Drink, Rick Stutz of Kaiser Penguin and his wife Gretchen, Dayne and Wendy Miller, Eric Seed of Haus Alpenz, importer of fine spirits and liqueurs, Chris McMillian and his wife Laura (whom I'd met at an early Tales event during Jazzfest), Jamie Boudreau from Vessel in Seattle, Jim Meehan, John Myers, Jeff "Beachbum" Berry, Joe Fee of Fee Brothers ... and the list goes on and on and on. Finally got to meet Murray Stenson of Zig Zag, and finally got to meet Gary Regan, who enveloped Wes and me in as crushing a bear hug as he could manage. Hats off to Darcy and Rick for getting blog posts up on their respective sites already (I don't feel so bad seeing that as of this writing Paul hasn't quite recovered either!). Most of us weren't blogging from the event (except for Rick, who must have brought an extra suitcase of energy) -- we were generally either staying out way too late and/or collapsing into bed at the end of the day (sorry). Doubtless there will be myriad blog posts about all this, and I'll try to link to all of them. We arrived at the Monteleone Hotel at about 5:30pm on Wednesday, and I was still a bit boggled by the fact that after having been born and raised in New Orleans I'd never once stayed in a French Quarter hotel. This was gonna be great, I thought, and little did I know. We dropped off the bags and were starving, as all we'd had all day was a greasy airport breakfast in L.A. and had declined the opportunity to spend $5 on an insulting "snack box" full of packaged, processed crap that's all the airlines seem to offer these days. We dashed right across the street to Mr. B's, an old favorite of mine but which I'd never managed to get Wes to for some reason, and had a quick dinner. Sadly I had forgotten my camera's flash card, and I wasn't too happy with the low-light iPhone photos, so suffice to say there was a bowl of Seafood Gumbo, a trio of Soups 1-1-1 (Gumbo Ya-Ya, Turtle Soup and the Soup du Jour, a crawfish and corn bisque as I recall), a head of roasted garlic with French bread, a Pan-Seared Crab Cake with Ravigote Sauce, plus Wes' entrée of a marvelous crabmeat ravioli, with gigantic lumps of crab. Ahhhh. Now that we were well-fed, we wouldn't be tearing anyone's head off. We dashed upstairs for the opening night reception and grabbed a drink, which was the Official Cocktail of the event this year. It was invented by a bartender at GW Fins restaurant in the Quarter who, as someone mentioned, wasn't quite yet old enough to drink when she came up with it ... aah, New Orleans. )Actually, I think it's legal for you to serve at 18, but not drink at 18, which is silly, but I digress.) I thought it was lovely and refreshing; others we knew did not, not being big fans of long drinks. It's certainly worth a try, so give it a shot:
I do like drinks with tea in them, being a huge fan of Audrey Saunders' Earl Grey Marteani and the oolong tea-containing Columbian Exposition Punch. Worth further exploration. Big night for meeting people too -- finally met Paul Clarke after all this time, and got a chance to thank him for the fantastic article he wrote in Imbibe this month (it was the best experience I'd ever I've had with a print journalist, one of the only times if not THE only time that didn't leave me at least annoyed, at most pissed off -- he was perfect as was his piece). In quick succession we met Eric Seed and Lorin Gaudin of New Orleans Magazine and the legendary Audrey Saunders of The Pegu Club (I tried not to gush when I met her, and failed miserably). Food was good, and although we'd already eaten it was too nice to pass up, all from Todd English's new restaurant Riche in Harrah's Hotel on Poydras. We finally got to meet Robert "DrinkBoy" Hess, who was presented with an award for all his contributions to Tales and to the cocktail scene in general, and it turns out that the award -- a beautiful cast glass mask -- was made by my old friend Mitchell Gaudet of Studio Inferno in the Bywater, one of the best glass artists around. The evening ended with great revelry as we made it over to Café Adelaide and the Swizzle Stick Bar, one of THE best places to quaff in the Crescent City. There we found Doctor and Nurse Cocktail holding forth with the Swizzle's dynamite bar chef Lu Brow, and the two Michaels behind the stick. Many more drinks were had, then a wobbly walk back to the hotel (ah, the joys of being within stumbling distance of one's bed) and lights out. I'll try to do at least one daily post until I get all this covered, plus I want to backtrack to our astonishing Commander's Palace meal of two months ago, the pictures from which are already up on Flickr. Maybe I'll toss that in before the astonishing meal we had at Commander's five nights ago. Cheers! New Orleans' crippled health care system. Sadly, it's not all great food and cocktails, y'all. Hundreds of doctors have left, and more are leaving. Only one of New Orleans' seven major hospitals is operating at pre-K capacity. Some are closed permanently. Entire practices of physicians are gone. The New York Times looks at the crisis New Orleans faces in its recovery if it can't take care of its sick people.
The government, of course, seems to give even less of a crap about the state of health care in New Orleans as it does for the state of health care across the country, unsurprisingly. Oh yeah, we're gonna rebuild you, we're gonna fix you all right back up. Heckuva job. [ Link to today's entries ]
Sorry! I've been so insanely busy the last few days ... no time to post anything, including cocktail-related stuff, the fact that in a poll of Republican voters "none of the above" scored higher than McCain, Giuliani, Thompson and Romney (HAAAAAA!!!) and Vitter's wife joining him in the Incredible F*cking Hypocrites Club. Alas. We're gone as of today, until Monday, when we'll be tired and hung over. I won't be bringing my laptop with me to NOLA, so I'll see y'all on Tuesday! Tales of the Cocktail!
If you're planning to attend, let me remind you of the two seminars in which I'm participating:
Besides all the people I've admired for so long that I finally get to meet (and learn even more from), perhaps the event to which I'm looking forward the most is the Spirited Dinners, taking place at 20 restaurants around town, all on the same night (tomorrow). Each chef will serve a special four-course prix fixe menu ranging from $65-85, which will be accompanied by cocktail pairings presented by one or more bar chefs in each restaurant. The thing that drives me nuts is that I want to go to MANY of these dinners, but I have to pick just one! It was a tough call this time, but we finally settled on one. Tales printed a six-page advertisement in this month's issue of New Orleans Magazine listing all the restaurants, plus offering a one of the four or five cocktail recipes from each dinner along with the course it's accompanying. (See the full menus here.) So ... to kick off Tales for all y'all who couldn't make it, get ready for TWENTY cocktail recipes! You can probably tell that several of them cater to the event's sponsors; think of that what you may, but we're all grateful to the sponsors for doing a lot to make the event actually happen. 7 on Fulton, featuring bar chefs Bridget Albert and Lucy Brennan. Course: Chocolate bonbons, vanilla ice cream, extra virgin olive oil.
Anatole, featuring bar chefs Christine Sismondo and James Meehan. Course: Curly endive salad with Belgian goat cheese and vanilla-infused vinegar.
Antoine's, featuring bar chef Ted Breaux. Course: Oysters Rockefeller.
Arnaud's, featuring bar chefs Chris Hannah and Ted Haigh. Course: Asparagus and Brie Soup.
Bourbon House, featuring bar chefs David Wondrich and Gary Regan. Course: Broiled Snapper with Crushed Corn and Bourbon Butter.
Café Adelaide, featuring bar chefs Tony Abou-Ganim and Charlotte Voisey. Course: "Menage à foie," dirty duck calas, blackberry foie gras sandwich and foie gras fondue with bourbon fig jam and Bocage honeycomb.
Café Giovanni, featuring bar chefs Francesco LaFranconi, Allen Katz and H. Joseph Ehrmann. Course: Marinated lamb chops with polenta and goat cheese, also with a tomato-roasted garlic rosemary sauce.
Commander's Palace, featuring bar chefs Dale DeGroff and Audrey Saunders. Course: Rum Butter-Poached Lobster Callaloo Caribbean Curry with ginger, okra, taro, sweet potato and house-distilled roasted coconut liqueur.
This is the one we're going to. I can't. Friggin'. WAIT!! :-) GW Fins, featuring bar chef Eben Klemm. Course: Bourbon Pecan Pie with fresh peach ice cream.
House of Blues, featuring bar chef Cheryl Charming. Course: Lobster and Creamed Artichoke Risotto.
Rib Room, featuring bar chefs Christy Pope and Chad Solomon. Course: Seared porcini-crusted redfish filet with wilted spinach.
Bombay Club, featuring bar chefs Ryan Magarian and Junior Merino. Course: Veal and Goat Cheese Pansoti with Roasted Tomato and Vodka Cream, Garnished with spiced walnuts and English peas.
La Cote, featuring bar chefs Sasha Petraske and Jonathan Pogash. Course: Venison carpaccio with Champagne gelée.
Louis XVI, featuring bar chefs Simon Difford and Tony Conigliaro. Course: Gulf Shrimp Tabouleh with Harissa Roasted Red Pepper Dressing.
Mr. B's Bistro, featuring bar chefs Andrew Dornenberg, Karen Page and Paul Harrington. Course: Filet of Rib-Eye - an 8 ounce wood grilled filet of beef rib-eye with blue cheese butter and fried Vidalia onion rings.
NOLA, featuring bar chefs Robert Hess and Gwydion Stone. Course: Spicy Boiled Shrimp with Golden Tomato Gazpacho, Mashed Avocado and Shallot Crisps.
Palace Café, featuring bar chefs Jeff "Beachbum" Berry and Wayne Curtis. Course: Red Curry Glazed Duck with Avocado Corn Relish.
Pelican Club, featuring bar chefs Anistasia Miller and Jared Brown. Course: Maine Lobster and Louisiana Blue Crab Chopped Salad with Crispy Vidalia Onions, Paddlefish Caviar, Avocado and Crisp Greens.
The Delachaise, featuring bar chefs Paul Clarke and Darcy O'Neil. Course: Grilled Shrimp, Andouille and Baby Artichoke Skewer over Creamy Buckwheat Polenta with Spicy Salsa Verde.
This was a tough, tough call. I really, really wanted to go to this one, which is why having all these dinners on the same night kinda drives me nuts. Tujague's, featuring bar chef Chris McMillian. Course: Appetizer of brisket with horseradish sauce - a family style serving of Oysters Bordelaise, Chicken Bonne Femme and Filet Mignon.
Whew. If you're in the New Orleans area for the next five days don't forget to check the Tales of the Cocktail website to see if any of the seminars or Spirited Dinners are still available ... come eat and drink with us! [ Link to today's entries ]
New Orleans' best cocktails: The Sazerac. Master bartender Chris McMillian of the Library Lounge at the New Orleans Ritz-Carlton adds what's got to be THE episode of his regular series of mixological instruction via nola.com as we reach ... The Sazerac And thanks a million to Keith Marszalek at nola.com for linking back here, too! Vitter affair deepens. Today, in a front page story, a prostitutes describes her affair with Sen. David Vitter (R-LA), the family values man. More great coverage from Oyster is here, plus older coverage here, here, here, here (ick), here, here, here and here. [ Link to today's entries ]
Another Amer Picon substitute. So many classic cocktails call for the now-defunct Amer Picon, a bitter orange aperitif. But it's still made, you say. True enough, it is. However, it's nearly impossible to get in the United States, and the House of Picon has for some reason seen fit to cut the proof in half and change the flavor profile competely. The Amer Picon you can get today (if you can get it at all) is a pale shadow of what it once was. So far we've been using the excellent Torani Amer as a substitute -- it doesn't really match flavor profiles in a side-by-side tasting but works well in cocktails -- but now there's a new possibility, and one that might come closer to replicating the original Amer Picon flavor. In the new issue of Imbibe I mentioned yesterday there's a recipe I'm really looking forward to trying for an "Amer Replica," concocted by master cocktailian bartender Jamie Boudreau at Vessel in Seattle. It calls for Amaro Ramazzotti, an Italian bitters, supplemented by the addition of Stirrings Blood Orange Bitters and a homemade tincture of orange (dried orange peel soaked in strong vodka). As soon as I can get to the Middle Eastern market I'm going to pick up some dried Seville (bitter) orange peel and get the tincture going (it takes 2 months of maceration), and I've already got the Ramazzotti and the bitters at home. I'll let you know how it turns out. And no, I'm not reproducing the exact recipe here, because I want you to go out and buy the magazine! Cocktail of the day. The Random Recipe feature of CocktailDB comes through yet again. I don't know much history on this one, or if it has an association with New Orleans, but it seems to fit in, at least. We loved the spiciness and herbal notes of this one, so we made sure to use a spicy rye and a top-shelf vermouth. We also used the Torani Amer.
We'll definitely make this again. [ Link to today's entries ]
New Orleans' Best Cocktails: The Margarita.
I got a little bit behind, so this is from a week and a half ago. Master
cocktailian bartender Chris McMillian of the Library Lounge at the Ritz-Carlton New Orleans takes us through one
of the most popular cocktails, showing us both classic and frozen Margaritas. Note the presence of 100% pure agave tequila (which means never touch
that vile Cuervo Gold swill ever again), and also note the lack of any abomination called "margarita
mix.". Never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever use this
product. Ever. I keel you! Tequila, triple sec, fresh lime juice. How difficult is that? If you
ever serve me something made from Cuervo Gold and Cuervo Margarita Mix, I'll smile, wait 'til you're
looking the other way and dump it into the nearest potted plant. Then I'll say "Hey ... can I show you
how to make this drink in a way you'll like a million times better? It's really easy!" (I have to say I'd leave out the extra simple syrup; I like my
Margaritas tart.) Today's Vitter twitter: Why are we not surprised?
Turns out that Louisiana Republican Senator David "Family Values" Vitter didn't limit his "serious sin"
to the D.C. Madam; turns out he was allegedly a regular customer of New Orleans' infamous Canal Street Madam too. Jeanette Maier, the madam known for operating a high-end brothel with her mother and daughter, said Tuesday that U.S. Sen. David
Vitter made occasional visits to her business beginning in the mid-1990s after the two met at a fishing rodeo where she and her
prostitutes were hired to entertain local politicians.
After the initial meeting, Maier said she saw Vitter at the bordello and knew him as someone who patronized her call girls. She
denied having a personal relationship with him and said he had stopped visiting the establishment by the time it was raided by federal
agents in 2001. "Sometimes we'd cross paths," Maier said of their encounters at the house. "He was not a big regular client that he's so clear in my mind that I can remember every time he walked in the door." Vitter, a Republican, did not respond to numerous attempts to contact him for comment. Of course, we know poor David is not to blame for this? What's the real cause of his
infidelity and the impending destruction of his marriage? Why, gay marriage, of course! In 2004 when David Vitter was running for Senator in Louisiana, he warned of the terrible toll gay marriage would have on our
society. In statement on "Protecting the Sanctity of Marriage" he said,
"The Hollywood left is redefining the most basic institution in human history, and our two U.S. Senators won't do anything
about it. We need a U.S. Senator who will stand up for Louisiana values, not Massachusetts's values. I am the only Senate Candidate to
coauthor the Federal Marriage Amendment; the only one fighting for its passage." Vitter once compared the devastation of gay marriage
to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, which as someone from Louisiana should know is pretty destructive, and said during the debate on the
amendment, "I don't believe there's any issue that's more important than this one." Despite his efforts, however, the Federal Marriage Amendment failed to pass and Massachusetts did redefine marriage by legalizing
gay marriage. With the sanctity of marriage so severely degraded it was inevitable that Vitter's own marriage would suffer. Yesterday,
we learned of the terrible personal cost to
Vitter when it was
revealed that his
telephone number
appeared in the
records of the "DC Madam," Deborah
Jeane Palfrey, which were
released
online. [...]Though it is very magnanimous of Vitter to accept responsibility for his transgressions, is he really to blame? After the
Hollywood left redefined marriage, it must have been a very difficult and confusing time for him. The failure of the passage of the
Federal Marriage Amendment must have taken a severe toll on him as he struggled to figure out what marriage really is if even gays can
do it. As he grappled with the issue, is it any surprise that he found solace in the embrace of a disinterested paid companion? Rated 100% by the Christian Coalition for his pro-family voting
record and his support of such issues as
abstinence-only sex education,
Vitter first went to Congress in 1999 when he was elected to fill the seat
vacated by Speaker of the House Robert Livingston after it was revealed that Livingston, who had attacked Clinton for the Monica
Lewinsky affair, had himself had extramarital affairs. (In fact, Clinton's support of the Defense of Marriage Act may have been an
acknowledgment of the role gay marriage played in his own transgressions.) Vitter later had to scuttle plans to run for governor when
a newspaper planned to write a story about an affair he was having with a New Orleans prostitute. "Our [marriage] counseling sessions
have ... led us to the rather obvious conclusion that it's not time to run for governor," he
said. Already the insidious influence of
gay marriage was starting to weaken his own marriage. Hee hee! Read the rest of this one, it's a scream. Sounds like the Karma Cops are getting him for "I don't believe there's any issue that's
more important than this one."
Irene's Cuisine. We've been many times. Wes insists; it's an old favorite of ours, and especially his. I love getting that first whiff of garlic bread as you approach the corner of Chartres and St. Philip in the French Quarter; it give you an omen of what you're in for. 
Their signature appetizer, which I hadn't gotten in a while (I'm a big fan of their grilled shrimp and pannéed oysters with beurre blanc, spinach salad and raspberry vinaigrette starter). Oysters Irene are on the half shell and broiled with roasted red peppers, tomatoes, Romano cheese and pancetta. Very Italian, and very good (but I do still prefer the pannéed ones, which are definitely the appetizer to get if you haven't already). 
Both of the soups sounded great, so we went for them. Sweet Potato and Andouille Soup is a natural combination, and as this is a puréed soup, not a cream one, it was even almost good for me. Wes got the Turtle Soup, which held its own with the two other more famous turtle soups in the city -- Commander's Palace and Mandina's. The texture was a bit different here, larger pieces of meat and a chewier texture, with a bold turtle flavor, and they didn't overdo it on the sherry. Wes quite enjoyed it and said so to our server, who replied, "It's pretty good ... I prefer Mandina's myself." Well! Awfully honest. 
Being a big ol' cochon I decided to get a salad too, because it looked so good -- Insalata di Pomidoro with balsamic vinaigrette, blue cheese and crispy pancetta. A salad, how big could it be? Um, well ... really big, as it turned out. Huge, thick slices of Creole tomato, tons of cheese and an abundance of that lovely Italian bacon. I didn't quite finish it. There were two entrée specials that night, and as it was a Thursday it was osso buco night, served in the traditional manner with saffron risotto. That sounded really, really good, and I was having difficulty deciding between that and the other special. Our server made the decision for me: "We have osso buco every Thursday. We only rarely have ..." 
Crab Cakes. Columns of pure jumbo lump crabmeat, nearly all crab with very little binder, pan-seared and served atop battered, deep-fried mirliton "fritters" with corn maquechoux and a long-cooked tomato sauce. These were excellent, the crab cakes being second only to Commander's (whose crab cakes are a Platonic dish, the ultimate expression of crab cake in the Universe). The tomato sauce was a bit much, but the mirliton and maquechoux were very nice accompaniments. 
I'm trying to remembe the particulars of Wes' dish, and he may have to correct me later, but I do believe it was a broiled Trout Meunière with Lump Crabmeat and Whipped Sweet Potatoes, which looked lovely and, as I recall from the bit I got, tasted lovely as well. 
We split the dessert (thank GAWD), which was a variation on the old Italian dessert called tortino: Cinnamon-Almond Gelato with Grand Marnier-macerated Louisiana strawberries (and as you know, Louisiana strawberries are the best anywhere). Irene's is reliable and tasty and fun, and for us a great place for late-night eating. People go there earlier and wait in 2-hour lines, which I've never done. We show up for dinner after 9:30, usually more like 10, and get seated without much of a wait at all. Follow that strategy, get the shrimp and oyster appetizer, pay attention to the specials and listen to your server! You'll be in for a great (and extremely affordable) meal. Shameless plug alert. The new (July/August '07) issue of the most excellent Imbibe Magazine (which, in case you don't know it, specializes in cocktails but features drinking of all kinds, including spirits, wine, beer, coffee, tea, etc.) has a terrific feature article by Paul Clarke of The Cocktail Chronicles entitled "Gone But Not Forgotten: Obscure Vintage Ingredients Are A Cocktailian's Holy Grail." The article features lost, rare and homemade ingredients such as crème de violette, Batavia arrack, Amer Picon, falernum ... and this stuff you may have read about in these virtual pages, called pimento dram. Oh, um ... and the article begins thusly:
And it goes on from there. My initiation into this liqueur was, as you may recall, was, as with so much else, thanks to Dr. Cocktail. We talk a lot more about pimento dram, and the several other rare liqueurs mentioned above. Paul did a great job on this, and it's exciting to see these ingredients get some exposure (and especially to find sources for them). Paul and I will be speaking on a panel at Tales of the Cocktail, moderated by Ted "Dr. Cocktail" Haigh", entitled "Lost Ingredients: Obtaining (or making) rare ingredients for even rarer cocktails", which is sponsored by Imbibe and which also features Joe Fee of Fee Brothers (makers of orange, peach and lemon bitters among many others), Gwydion Stone, founder of The Wormwood Society. It'll be next Thursday, July 19, at 2:30pm. If you're in New Orleans, come see us! It'll be a blast, and we're going to have tastes of everything. Hypocrite. H-I-P-P-O-C-R-I-T. Hypocrite. Arch-conservative (and formerly squeaky clean) Republican Senator David Vitter of Louisiana seems to have gotten caught with his pants down, as do so very many of his holier-than-thou colleagues.
Boy, don't you just love how these guys immediately start slinging God around as soon as they get caught swinging their dicks around? Audrey put it well in email this morning: "He received forgiveness from God? How does he know that? Did God send him a telegram? God must be tired of all these morons apologizing to him." We were all in agreement that he sounde presumtuous rather than humble. His hypocrisy shines in light of this comment he made in 1998, via Think Progress. Vitter got his start in Congress after replacing Republican former Rep. Bob Livingston (who spoke at my college graduation ... God, what a bore) after Livingstong "abruptly resigned after disclosures of numerous affairs." At the time, Vitter argued that Livingston's infidelities were grounds for resignation:
The money quote, however, is from Vitter's wife Wendy. (Thanks, Steve!)
Ha! I wonder if he's still got his old fella. How much you wanna bet Vitter won't put his money where his mouth was, after all his comments about Livingston? [ Link to today's entries ]
New Orleans' best cocktails: The Ramos Gin Fizz. Master bartender Chris McMillian of the Library Lounge at the Ritz-Carlton in New Orleans offers up his next mixology lesson. Perhaps the most famous New Orleans cocktail after the Sazerac, this drink is legendary for the elbow grease required to make it properly (a LOT of shaking), and the tale of how Huey P. Long brought the Roosevelt Hotel bartender with him to New York so that he could have this drink, his favorite, made properly. It's getting tough to find people who can make these well, so become one of those people who can make a Ramos Gin Fizz. Watch: If you're concerned about using raw egg white, find pasteurized egg whites in cartons in the dairy section of your local supermarket. We did it ... we really finally did it. You MANIACS!! (Thank you, Chuckles Heston.) Yep, we actually made the "burgers" yesterday -- 100% hand-ground applewood-smoked bacon, cranked through an old cast-metal meat grinder. Sampling of photos below; full set of the madness here. (Of course I, being me, forgot to load my memory card in my camera. Fortunately my shiny new iPhone came to the rescue! Photos are in available light, and aren't half-bad.) 
 
 
 
They were ... not bad. Pretty good, actually. Very bacony, as you can imagine. The pepper jack cheese was a good additioin. Interesting texture, but the fact that they were so crumbly and fell apart so easily tells us that if we were to do it again we'd need some kind of binder to help hold the patty together. Mary didn't particularly care for them, Dave liked them a lot (and wants to add mayo and fried egg!) and I'd think they're a bit too fatty to eat a whole one on one's own. We took a few bites and passed 'em around. We all survived, and thanks for asking. I did suffer a few ill effects last night, but I think that was purely overindulgence. Besides the burgers we had our main course -- barbecued ribeyes and pork shortribs, plus a watermelon and arugula salad with balsamic dressing, dainty little Benedictine sandwiches, Wesly's famous bacon-wrapped, Parmigiano-stuffed dates, an antipasto platter with olives, cheese and prosciutto, a shrimp salad with (guess what) candied crumbled bacon, and desserts including raspberry-frosted chocolate brownies and Vosges Bacon Milk Chocolate bars. So yeah, a lot of food. It was a lot of fun, but I'm not sure we'd do the ground bacon burgers again. I think the thing to do is to make a mix of 80% ground beef and 20% ground bacon, which is what they call a "squealer." THAT'S gonna be quite the experiment! (Thanks for the inspiration, Barry! You nutcase. Actually, we're the nutcases for trying it ...) [ Link to today's entries ]
Quote of the day. From the man referred to as "The Father of the Bill of Rights:"
(Thanks, Rick!) Dare we? It's a true bacon burger -- i.e., no beef. *boggle* I sent this link to the Fat Pack, wiht the email subject line "Dare we?" The resultant conversation went like this:
And it will happen this Sunday. I love these people. (Thanks for the tip, Barry!) [ Link to today's entries ]
Plus ça change ... Two hundred thirty-one years ago today a document was signed, and these words from it ring truer than ever.
... plus c'est le même chose. (Thanks, Mary!) Hot dogs! What could be more American than that? (For better or for worse.) Dickie Brennan and some other Brennan restauranteurs are raising the hot dog bar this week. They'll be closed today, but you can still check this out tomorrow and Friday:
Oh my. Unfortuately we won't be stealing any of these ideas and doing any grilling tomorrow. Temperatures are going to be in the 90s tomorrow and the last thing I want to do is stand in front of a grill. We'll be seeking air-conditioned refuges, and will probably see two movies. Maybe we can get a dog or a burger at Pie 'n Burger or something. Libby's sentence "not unusually long." From the From the Los Angeles Times:
So, surprise ... he's full of shit. Amend the Constitution? I've already begun to hear talk about limiting the president's absolute power to issue clemency, commutations and pardons. Seth Gordon, writing in Making Light, proposed this idea for a constitutional amendment:
I have no problem with that whatsoever. However, I am not a lawyer, of course. Your thoughts? Olbermann: Bush, Cheney "perilous to our democracy .. resign." Keith Olbermann's greatest special commentary yet, on the commutation of Scooter Libby's prison sentence. Full transcript here; excerpts below. Read and watch it all.  Click picture for link to video
Happy Independence Day. Happy Fourth of July! Our president just flipped us off, people, and flipped off the rule of law. Don't you feel proud to be an American?! What's next? No one likes us How little has changed since that song was written. [ Link to today's entries ]
Disgrace. I was too angry and upset to post yesterday. I wonder which is greater -- the contempt I have for the president and vice president of the United States, their ghastly corruption and their entire corrupt government (greater than any contempt I've ever had for any aspect of government in my lifetime), or the complete and utter contempt and disdain for the Constitution, the rule of law, the American people and common decency that Richard Cheney and his marionette George W. Bush have embraced so thoroughly. It is, of course, the latter. That said, the president, vice president and administration of this nation are a disgrace. You know exactly what happened. Just as Scooter Libby was about to head to prison (where
he'd undoubtedly sing every song he knows, and flip on everyone he could, and probably let this be known), his sentence is commuted.
Cheney ordered this, because Libby is Cheney's This is on top of the vice president essentially declaring himself to be a fourth branch of government, answerable to no one, and the president and vice president refusing to comply with Congressional subpoenas. And now the president of the United States has used a constitutional power to commit what is quite probably an obstruction of justice. And because Cheney-via-Bush commuted Libby's sentence rather than pardoning him outright, the conviction stands and the case remains on appeal, which means that Libby can plead the Fifth and won't end up testifying about Cheney before Congress, either. If you've ever had any doubt (and if you have even up until this time, you're either blind or stupid or a sycophant), this should be your final confirmation that these men think they're above the law. Are we that beaten down? Are we that weary? Oh, and how did the White House respond to the outpouring of outrage from the vast majority of the Americna people over this? They shut off their public phone lines. They don't give a shit what you think, and don't want to hear it. Is this nation going to let them get away with it? Be very careful if you do, because God only knows what they'll get away with next. You think this country is unrecognizable now? (And it is.) Just you wait. There's an idea. From The Washington Post: " The following is from a report written and released by the Judiciary Committee in 1974 in the aftermath of the Watergate crisis."
Call and write your representatives today. Demand an investigation. French Quarter in greater danger than before Katrina. Just when you thought our pile-of-shit government couldn't get any worse ... it does. This isn't just putting themselves above the law -- this is their neglect and culpable malcompetence that puts human lives and 300 years of history in danger.
I really can't go on, because if I do I'm going to have a fucking stroke. A glimmer of hope in Gentilly. Some good news at least, small though it may be ... despite the fact that they've been almost completely abandoned by the government (local, state and especially federal), some of the people of Gentilly are getting up and doing what needs to be done -- themselves.
Oh, and just a reminder ... that speech Bush gave in Jackson Square? When he had it all lit up with government generators and floodlights while the entire Quarter was still without power for its remaining residents and businesses? When he promised to do whatever it took, as soon as he could, to recover and rebuild New Orleans for its citizens? Those were all lies. An uplifting opinion. Cokie Roberts, NPR news analyst and commentator, and daughter of Louisiana politicians Lindy and Hale Boggs, writes a guest opinion in, of all places, the Billings (Montana) Gazette that needed to be said. I haven't always been her biggest fan, but I'm glad she and her husband wrote this.
I keep emphasizing the dueling concepts in that last graf when I speak of the city. Yes, we're ready for you to come. The restaurant scene is booming, with more restaurants open now than before Katrina. The music scene, despite the diaspora of musicians around the country, is still rich enough to keep your soul in joy. The oaks are coming back along St. Charles. But yes, there are still people living in FEMA trailers. I have the greatest respect for everyone who's sticking it out. It's you who are the hope of the city. June Looka! entries have been permanently archived. [ Link to today's entries ]
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