If you’re in the New Orleans area, there’s no other place for you to be on Sunday of this weekend, May 16, than at Mardi Gras World‘s River City Plaza for Gulf Aid, a benefit concert to raise funds to stop the oil from destroying our wetlands and provide financial aid to affected fishermen and their families. It’s a presentation of WWOZ 90.7 FM New Orleans in conjunction with Mardi Gras World, SDT Waste and Debris, Rehage Entertainment and others, and the lineup of talent will be stellar.

NASA photo from the International Space Station, showing the giant oil slick approaching the Mississippi Delta (top right)

An aerial view of the oil leaked from the Deepwater Horizon wellhead, May 6, 2010.

Unemployed commercial fishermen and their families wait in line to receive charity handouts in Hopedale, La. (via the Boston Globe)

See all 40 photos at the Boston Globe.

As David Torkanowsky said on ‘OZ yesterday, this is to raise money to support people who, along with our musicians, are the mainstay of our culture — the people who provide our seafood. A lot of them are out of work right now, and we need to make sure they can feed their families — families that comprise multiple generations of fishermen from Texas to Florida. (Aside from that, we can hope and pray that there’ll still be safe seafood for them to catch after the disaster in the Gulf.) Beside the impacted seafood fishing families, the benefit is for the families of those who lost their lives in the explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon rig, and also to provide for wetlands protection and restoration.

If you can’t attend the concert, you have two other things to do. First, donate online to the Gulf Relief Foundation — it’s important. Every single penny of your contribution will go to where it’s needed. Next, the entire concert will be broadcast on WWOZ, at 90.7 FM locally and online to the planet, from 12 noon to 10pm Central Time.

Here’s the lineup of musicians: Shamarr Allen & the Underdawgs, MyNameIsJohnMichael, Irvin Mayfield’s Playhouse Revue, Big Sam’s Funky Nation, Honey Island Swamp Band, Beausoleil, Kermit Ruffins & the Barbecue Swingers with Jeremy Davenport, ReBirth Brass Band, Steve Riley & the Mamou Playboys, Soul Rebels Brass Band, Ivan Neville’s Dumpstaphunk, Zachary Richard, Happy Jack Frequency, Allen Toussaint, Voices of the Wetlands All-Stars (featuring Tab Benoit, Dr. John, Cyril Neville, George Porter Jr., Waylon Thibodeaux, Big Chief Monk Boudreaux, Johnny Sansone, Johnny Vidacovich and Marcia Ball), Ani DiFranco, The Preservation Hall Jazz Band with Mos Def and Terence Blanchard, John Legend and Lenny Kravitz.

It’s amazing that this whole festival was planned and put together in about a week’s time — an awesome effort on the part of all concerned. Help make sure it succeeds and gets the job done. Go, donate and listen.

Just in time for the final day of World Cocktail Week is another new one from Chris McMillian in New Orleans.

This is one Chris had initially concieved for a cocktail contest. He wanted to start with a Bourbon base and did lots of trial versions until he came up with something that clicked for him. After all that (as I recall the story), he never got around to actually entering it in the contest, and from what one of the judges said afterward, it probably would have won! Ah well, at least we still have this gorgeous drink, which isn’t nearly as sweet as it sounds.

The key to keeping control over the sweetness is by choosing the right crème de cacao. Marie Brizard is the only one you want — it has a rich chocolate flavor but reins in the sweetness that inevitably dominates cheaper brands. The extra bit of spice you get from a couple of dashes of Bénédictine is the secret ingredient to this prescription … wish my childhood allergy medicine had tasted like this, rather than like green mold with a dash of Fernet. (C’mon, I hadn’t developed a palate for Fernet yet when I was a kid.)

And yes, the photo below actually depicts a cocktail that’s been consumed by 2/3 of its initial volume. After the first sip all I wanted to do is drink it, all other thoughts more or less swept to the side, until I realized, “Crap … if I want to write about this drink at this bar, I’d better take a picture.” Better late than never.

DOCTOR’S ORDERS
by Chris McMillian, Bar UnCommon, New Orleans

2 ounces Bourbon
1/2 ounce white crème de cacao (Marie Brizard)
2 dashes Bénédictine

Combine with ice in a mixing glass, stir for 30 seconds, strain into chilled cocktail glass. No garnish.

Yes, it’s a very obscure ingredient. Don’t blame me, blame Dr. Cocktail! It’s his fault! He’s the one who gets me to fall in love with all this stuff that’s impossible to find!

(A brief digression … other than truly vintage items like Abbott’s bitters and 13-year-old bonded Old Overholt rye distilled before Prohibition, hidden during and then bottled afterward, a fair bit of the impossible-to-get stuff he’s turned me on to way back when is now available, like allspice dram, Crème Yvette, falernum and more. Life in the cocktail world is really good these days.)

The idea to post this drink this week came from my having bought a bottle of ruby port to make the St. Charles Punch the other day. It was a Warre’s Warrior Port — a perfectly nice, respectable everyday port, about $14 at the corner market. It’s not one I’d rhapsodize about, but it’s perfect for mixing in cocktails. (The Dow’s 1994 Vintage Porto I got Wesly for his birthday is most decidedly not for mixing, but for sipping, savoring and rhapsodizing.) This’ll probably spark several port-based cocktail posts over the next week or so, so stay tuned.

The key ingredient in this drink is Amaro Cora — ahh, I so do dearly love amari — an Italian digestivo (and light enough to work as an aperitivo as well) from Turin in Piemonte, sweeter than most amari, with flavors of orange, cinnamon and other spices. This is a really good entry-level amaro, and probably the one I should have tried first instead of the one which I did, which was Fernet Branca, which at the time scared the crap out of me.

Better yet, Amaro Cora isn’t impossible to find — it’s still made, but it’s a mother to track it down in this country. In the July/August 2007 issue of Imbibe magazine Doc describes how he stumbled across the ingredient in the most excellent 1937 tome The Café Royal Cocktail Book from the UK and describes his reaction to it (something along the lines of “Aha … what is this? It’s still made?! What does it taste like? I don’t care, I must have it!”) and an amusing tale of Argentinean internet auctions, second-hand translations and losing money.

But you can still get it! It just takes a bit of effort, easily done. The only place I currently find it is via Mount Carmel Wines and Spirits in the Bronx, for the princely sum of $9.99. It’s lovely stuff. If you’re interested in Italian bitters you must have it. You can order it over the Internetsss and it’s cheap. So what are you waiting for?

The first drink Doc tried it in was a vintage cocktail from Café Royal called the Amarosa (for which he adapted the proportions for modern tastes and balance), then came up with this original, which he served to Wesly and me at a soirée chez lui several years ago.

This is a wonderful drink … one of the best Doc has ever come up with, I think. With the rich, spicy base of a rye whiskey underneath, the fruity notes of the port explode with ripe cherries and blackberries, and the Cora provides a hint of bitterness but marvelous citrus and cinnamon spice to accent the fruit, and the Regans’ give a perfect little boost to both the bitter and citrus notes. So much going on in here, and it’s all fun.

Even though he doesn’t mention it in his Imbibe piece, I could swear that when Doc first served this to us it was garnished with a cinnamon stick, a perfectly logical garnish given the spice notes in the drink. (Caveat — I was undoubtedly hammered at the time, an occupational hazard everlastingly delightful side-effect of being a houseguest of Doctor and Nurse Cocktail.) If one is not handy, an orange peel would not be at all inappropriate.

THE CURARI COCKTAIL
(by Ted “Dr. Cocktail” Haigh)

2 ounces rye whiskey
3/4 ounce ruby port
3/4 ounce Amaro Cora
2 dashes Regans’ Orange Bitters No. 6

Combine in a mixing glass with ice, stir for 30 seconds and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a proper cherry on a cocktail pick.

You really should pick up some Amaro Cora. Did I mention that it was cheap? (Well, I mean inexpensive, of course.)

Let’s put one thing on the table straight away — Jazzfest is great and always will be, and I had a great time. So much fantastic music and food, how can you not?

There were a few things I wanted to single out as being particularly good, though, plus the disappointments, plus something that makes me growl. I’ll throw in another few tidbits about the visit itself, not necessarily Jazzfest-related, because I’m a great big cheatin’ bastard.

The Good

Almost every single musical act we saw the entire time at the Fair Grounds (with a few quibbly exceptions). The Bester Singers, Chocolate Milk, the New Orleans Nightcrawlers, Theresa Andersson, Susan Cowsill (who’s always been good, but with her maturation as an artist in the last 2-3 years she’s become great), Sunpie & the Louisiana Sunspots, Paul Sanchez, Elvis Costello and his marvelous acoustic arrangements of his older material, nifty covers and his new stuff with the Sugarcanes, the Fleur de Ladies Brass Band (who kicked MAJOR ass), the astonishing New Orleans Spiritualettes, John Boutté, The Mardi Gras Indian Orchestra, The New Leviathan Oriental Foxtrot Orchestra, Henry Butler, Band of Horses, Sonny Landreth, Anders Osborne, Charmaine Neville, Clarence “Frogman” Henry (still got it!), Feufollet, my old schoolmate Tim Laughlin, Trombone Shorty (with special guest Mystikal), the Neville Brothers (still at it), and Big Chief Bo Dollis and the Wild Magnolias to take us out.

One thing that surely belongs in “The Good” was something I only heard about second-hand, unfortunately — Earth, Wind & Fire’s last-minute substitution for the missing Aretha Franklin. From all accounts they really tore it up, and although I wouldn’t have thought to go see them had they been scheduled, Wes and I both wish now that we’d made it over there to hear them.

Finally, in the music department, we were frequently very moved and touched by all the musicians who dedicated songs and shows to our friend Mary, who passed away on Mardi Gras Day this year. Paul Sanchez, Susan Cowsill, Tim Laughlin, Dave Alvin and more … although we miss her very much we felt good to see and hear how far and wide was her impact on people’s lives. We had a very, very special cochon de lait po-boy for her and our friend Dave, who left us last July. Jazzfest wasn’t the same without them but there were still there with us the whole time nonetheless. As Paul Sanchez said, “We celebrate life by releasing what’s in us. We celebrate life by remembering those who can’t celebrate life with us right now.”

Two great new additions to the Jazzfest food lineup made us very happy this year. The standout dish: Shrimp & Grits, by Fireman Mike. A truly amazing dish — plump shrimp in a creamy, slightly spicy gravy over cheesy stone-ground grits. Simple yet full of flavor and nicely filling, this was the only savory dish we went back for twice.

The other standout — La Divina Gelateria, open in New Orleans since mid-2005, made their debut appearance at the Fair Grounds this year, and if you ask me it was long overdue. Sure, we all love Angelo Brocato’s and their ices, spumoni and biscotti, but La Divina kept it exciting with a special feature, the Flavor of the Day — each day, something different. The first Friday’s flavor was Abinsthe Sorbetto, made with Lucid Absinthe and absolutely stellar. It was wonderfully creamy, with the alcohol content of the absinthe making smaller ice crystals leading to the creamier texture but with no cream content, a nice anise flavor and the broad herbal undertone holding it all up. Magnificent. The other flavors of the day were strawberry balsamico sorbetto, Bananas Foster, sweet potato, Creole cream cheese, pineapple-mint sorbetto and finally the amazing Coco Thai sorbetto, made from a coconut milk base with coconut, lime and Thai pandan leaf, very unusual and very delicious. Of the regular flavors, they offered café au lait, crème brulée, stracciatella and my favorite, Chocolate Azteca … rich and creamy dark chocolate gelato spiked with cinnamon, almond and hot chile. (Um, I had that three times. I ate a LOT of gelato and sorbetto at the Fest.) And on top of all that, we made friends with Carmelo and Katrina, the couple who co-own the gelateria, and they are super-nice folks.

Then there were the perennials, food-wise … the stuff that’s always there, and always good. We got our pheasant, quail and andouille gumbo from Prejean’s, the marvelous cochon de lait, soft shell crabs, Vaucresson’s sausages. But as happy as all that food makes me, the thing that’s kept me the happiest the longest, and has been a thread of food connection going back for more years than I realized, is the single most underrated and almost criminally under-noticed food item at Jazzfest: Creole’s Stuffed Bread, from Creole’s Lunch House in Lafayette.

For more years than I could remember (at least as I entered the Fair Grounds for Jazzfest for the first time this year), the first thing I’d do is head to the Creole’s Stuffed Bread booth, just to the left of the Crawfish Monica booth, where all the long lines are. Crawfish Monica is good, but I can make that at home. That simple-sounding but magical combination of ground beef and pork fresh sausage, slices of smoked sausage, spices, minced jalapeños and just enough cheese to hold it all together, inside a thin, crisp bread shell is just one of the best things I’ve ever had. They kick the everlovin’ ass of Natchitoches meat pies, which I find bland in comparison. I eat at least one Creole’s Stuffed Bread every day at Jazzfest and have been for many years.

I love them. And I adore the nice lady who makes them and sells them from that booth every year, Mrs. Merlene Herbert, who remembers me by face (if not by name) every year. The year after the storm and the Federal Flood, the very important and emotional Jazzfest of 2006, I made a beeline to her booth only to find out that it wasn’t there. I was horrified, and hoped that it wasn’t hurricane-related; Hurricane Rita, which slammed southwest Louisiana less than a month after Katrina devasted the Gulf Coast further east, largely spared the city of Lafayette. The news was bad, though — Miss Merlene’s husband had passed a few months earlier, and she couldn’t bring herself to do the months of work required to bake and freeze the large quantity the stuffed breads she needed to prepare for Jazzfest. I missed her and her food too much, so in the midweek between Jazzfest weekends as we headed to the annual crawfish boil we attend in Eunice, I made a detour to the Lunch House in Lafayette to see her and enjoy her food. She was astonished by our visit, and I wish we had had more time to spend with her, but unfortunately we had to take our breads to go in order to make it to the crawfish boil. (I was so hell-bent on Stuffed Bread that I passed right by a sign at a gas station in Opelousas that said “tasso sandwiches,” and I didn’t hear the end of that for about two years, but that’s another story.)

I was trying to remember exactly how many years it had been that I’d been happily gobbling down Creole’s Stuffed Bread at Jazzfest, and I asked Miss Merlene how long she had been vending at Jazzfest. “1989, honey … it’s been 21 years.” Wow. And although I don’t remember exactly how I stumbled across her dish, I know I was there in ’89, and have been enjoying them ever since.

I’ll tell a little secret, which I hope doesn’t get me in trouble. One day during Fest this year we went to see Miss Merlene as usual, money already in hand to pay for my Stuffed Bread. “Put that away, dawlin’,” she said. “This one’s on me.” Holy bejeebies … that was a first! It may have been a first-ever, as the younger man who was working in the booth with her did a double-take worthy of a Tex Avery cartoon, and the look on his face said, “She’s never done THAT before!” Well, folks, all I can say is … eat one every Fest day for 21 years and you might get a free one some day too.

Twenty-one years of Creole’s Stuffed Bread was very notable for me in “The Good” this year. May there be many more.

Finally … the rain. Rather, the relative lack thereof. Sure, we got a little soaked the first day, but it wasn’t too bad. Actually, the mud the next couple of days was worse, but the weather on the first Saturday and Sunday couldn’t have been more comfortable. This kept up until the second Sunday, last day of the Fest, when it did sprinkle a little bit but nothing remotely daunting. I don’t know what kind of deal Quint Davis made (not, one would hope, with the guy with the horns and the cape), but whatever he did, he did it right. No sooner had the Nevilles, the Radiators, the Wild Magnolias and all the other finishing acts played their last note when the weather started looking seriously threatening, giving us just enough time to walk back to our car and get inside before the rain, as Wesly put it, started “pounding down like a fucking monsoon.” Talk about timing.

Continue reading …

This coming Saturday, May 15, as part of World Cocktail Week, Cure in New Orleans (one of my favorite bars anywhere) is holding an event called “Bartending by the Book” which will benefit the Museum of the American Cocktail and the New Orleans Culinary and Cultural Preservation Society. This’ll be an interesting event, because the Cure bartenders are holding themselves to follow classic recipes from one of the city’s most venerable imbibing tomes, Stanley Clisby Arthur’s Famous New Orleans Drinks and How to Mix ‘Em, as difficult as that may be given the differences in ingredients between then and now.

Doubly interesting, as the creative bartenders at Cure tend to use the old recipes as jumping-off points rather than hew faithfully to them. At this event you’ll be in a bit of a cocktail time machine, sipping history as closely as we can get it.

The four drinks they’ve chosen for this event include the familiar — the Daiquiri, the Stinger and the Vieux Carré — and one that might not be so familiar, although it’s local. That one’s the St. Charles Punch, named not for the grand streetcar- and oak-lined avenue stretching from Canal Street to the Riverbend, but for the grand hotel which once existed there. Or one of them, at least.

The St. Charles Hotel actually had three incarnations. The first one was designed by the architect James Gallier, whose name was given to Gallier Hall on St. Charles Avenue, New Orleans’ city hall from 1853 to 1958. It was the first truly grand hotel in the city, which was up until then not known for luxurious accommodations (nor for well-built ones, like the Planters Hotel, which collapsed into the soft soil in 1835, burying sixty people and killing a third of them)¹.

According to Mary Cable’s book Lost New Orleans, it was quite a sight:

The St. Charles was certainly no common structure. It was taller than any building in New Orleans — six stories, surmounted by a gleaming white dome that could be seen for miles up and down the river. According to Norman’s 1845 guidebook, “The effect of the dome upon the sight of the visitor, as he approaches the city, is similar to that of St. Paul’s in London.” Mr. Norman, beside himself with admiration, went on to speak of the “indescribable effect of the sublime and matchless proportions of this building upon all spectators — even the stoical Indian and the cold and strange backwoodsman, when they first view it, are struck with wonder and delight.”²

The St. Charles Hotel, 1836-1851, from Lost New Orleans, by Mary Cable

It wasn’t around long; “[t]his spendid pile lasted a bare fifteen years. In the spring of 1851 a fire that started in the kitchen spread through defective chimney flues and within three hours the entire hotel was in ashes.” Miraculously, no one was killed. Perhaps it was for the best; “according to a contemporary architect (not Gallier) the foundations had settled at least 28 inches, the external walls were cracked and the floors were ‘very undulating.’”³

A second hotel went up in the same spot, designed by Isaiah Rogers and George Purvis, very much like Gallier’s Greek revival original but without the great dome. It opened a mere two years later and was itself burned to the ground in 1894.

The 2nd St. Charles Hotel, 1853-1894

Third time’s a charm … the third St. Charles Hotel went up on the same site two years later in 1896 and was quite a nice hotel, albeit without the grandeur of its predecessors.

The 3rd St. Charles Hotel, 1896-1974

For about sixty years it was a New Orleans favorite for Mardi Gras balls, coming-out parties, high-level political meetings and as a rendezvous for the elite, to whom it was the equivalent of New York’s old Ritz-Carlton. For no imperative reason, the third St. Charles was demolished in 1974. The ghosts of three memorable buildings now hover above a parking lot.⁴

According to Arthur this punch was a specialty of the bar at the St. Charles Hotel (presumably the third) and was in great demand among its patrons. I’m not sure it’s technically a punch, as the proportions are nowhere near the classic “1 of sour, 2 of sweet, 3 of strong and 4 of weak, plus spice.” There’s not much weak in here, no spice and it’s a very tart punch.

That said, it’s a delightful punch and goes down … dangerously quickly.

THE ST. CHARLES PUNCH
(adapted from Stanley Clisby Arthur’s
Famous New Orleans Drinks and How to Mix ‘Em)

1 teaspoon rich simple syrup (2:1)
1/3 teaspoon orange curaçao (1 dash)
1-1/2 ounces fresh lemon juice
1-1/2 ounces ruby port
1 ounce Cognac

Arthur’s original instructions: “Dissolve the sugar with a little water in a mixing glass. Add the lemon juice, the port wine, the Cognac, and last the curaçao. Fill the glass with fine ice and jiggle with the barspoon. Pour into a long thin glass, garnish with fruit, and serve with a straw. [...] Don’t omit the straw; this drink demands long and deliberate sipping for consummate enjoyment.”

I loved Anita‘s comment from the photo’s Flickr page: “Any drink that looks that good can demand pretty much anything it likes.”

I did without the original teaspoon of granulated sugar and splash of water, and substituted a rich simple syrup for ease of use. I also upped the curaçao to a teaspoon so it wouldn’t get lost — I am a fan of dashes of ingredients in cocktails, but I wanted the orange flavor to be a bit more there, and a tad more sweetness to counter the lemon. I also used cubed ice in the photo because I’m a lazy bastard. Don’t be like me — crush your ice!

1. Mary Cable, Lost New Orleans (New York; American Legacy Press, 1980), pp. 108-109.

2. Ibid., p. 109.

3. Ibid., p. 111.

4. Ibid., p. 114.