NYE

As we at Ye Olde Eat Drink Nola are with child, NYE 2009 will most likely involve the couch, ginger ale, a block of boring pasteurized cheese, and a mu-mu. You best believe me when I say we know how to party, and if you ain’t on the list, you ain’t gettin in.

Rewind to several months ago to when I was blissfully unaware of my condition, and I would have told you I was going to the NYE party at Green Goddess. When I learned of the festivities, I was told that it was going to be a vintage madeira party, at which point I realized they’d read my mind and I could die a happy woman come Jan. 1.

I looked on the website today and it looks like the festivities are still a go (see the clip from Chris Debarr’s blog below). While I don’t see mention of madeira, it might be worth calling about.

About NYE, we have finally been able to confirm that we will indeed be hosting our New Year's Eve Gala on the 4th floor apartment above The Green Goddess. This will be something that we strongly urge folks to make reservations to attend, as there will be limited space available. The view of the fireworks from the apartment's balcony at midnight will be terrific and you won't have to be in the thronging masses to enjoy the sight! I'll drop more details about our plans for NYE, but in a nutshell it will be a fantastic bargain at $44 per person for a banquet of ever-changing sumptuous dishes and groovy snacks, with a "cash bar" (we can run tabs for folks on their cards, so no worries there) to drink whatever your heart desires ... and your liver permits! For our vegetarian diners, we will have quite a few appropriate options that should be tempting enough that you may have to battle with the omnivores over those dishes.

What are your NYE plans?

Oops I did it again

Second pasta making endeavor: bowtie pasta with broccoli rabe and sausage (recipe from my favorite cookbook). Turns out pasta making is time consuming, and once I got in there I realized I could spend my last hour before people arrived either:

1) completing my bowties, or
2) using a contractor vacuum to suck up our doghair carpet.

Alas, I had to supplement my homemade pasta with store bought fusilli, but it was still good.

Putting the “mas” back in Christmas

We at Chez Eat Drink are off to the city of angels, where we’ll spend Christmas with my brother, most likely at the bar he tends. No big eating plans, other than hopefully being reunited with a past love – cancer magister (aka the Dungeness crab). Merry Christmas!

Breaking News

Did you know Café Atchafalaya has a DIY bloody mary bar? Why was this not shared with me? Why was I forced to learn of it on my own accord? Why so secretive, readers?

It is the DIY part of this bar that is really important, where “DIY” means “make ten consecutive trips with a little plate to retrieve unseemly amounts of pickled okra and green beans.”

I asked the proprieter if the veggies were house pickled. He laughed at me but then admitted that they’re planning on adding housemade items such as pickled watermelon rind. I advised that he do so quickly before other restaurants pick up on the idea and outdo him.

Cafe Atchafalaya, 901 Louisiana Avenue, New Orleans, (504) 891-9626

On an unrelated note, is James Leeming no longer the chef at Fuel? Anyone know?

Hump Day Zen

In between Santiago and my friend’s farm lies a peculiar stretch of highway. On one side lies the fanciest bathroom in Latin America. On the other lies a glorious gallimaufry of mobile sandwich stands.

To use the bathroom, you first go to a cashier and pay the equivalent of fifty cents for a ticket. Then you take your ticket to the ticket agent, who gives you a receipt in return. Once you have your receipt you pass through a turnstyle and visit the toilet paper agent. You do your business and are escorted to a separate exit door where you pass through another turnstyle. Should you commit the error of bypassing any of these steps, you will be promptly redirected. It’s a highly sophisticated affair.

On the opposite side of the highway (look both ways!) is El Sanguchon, which translates to “Giant Sandwich Guy” (look it up). It is here that you can find delicacies such as this:

The Lomito: bbq pork with avocado and tomato, served on bread made in a clay oven. Man I miss Chilean highway food. We need to institute such sandwich malls alongside our highways. In fact, I will reserve my mayoral vote for he or she who proposes such a measure.

On Baking

Third failed baking attempt in as many weeks. I’ll admit the brown butter custard pie was overly ambitious. Sweet jesus I wish I’d taken a picture of the ridiculous specimen I produced, but I was too busy drowning my incompetence in pisco sours. Warning, if your custard is not thickening as promised, DO NOT attempt to amend the problem by adding another packet of gelatin. My so-called friends admitted to me later that they’d poked it to see how it jiggled.


But this time I used a brownie box mix, and I STILL managed to screw it up. What you’re viewing is my offering for the office pot luck Thanksgiving. The process of unsticking the brownies from the pan was proving very time consuming, so I had to bring it into the office, knife and spatula in tow, in order to continue the transfer. Better than being late, right?

You might recognize my work from other baking disasters, such as the cat’s tongue cookies I made for Thanksgiving.

Max called them cow’s tongues. They were the size of my face.

Here’s what they are supposed to look like:

A lot of weird shit comes up when you google “cat’s tongue.”

Maybe it’s that I like the way brightly colored bakeware looks, or maybe I’m drawn to failure. The truth is, I can’t seem to resist the temptation to see if it's going to be just as bad with each subsequent attempt, and then when it turns out to be, I feel inexplicably vindicated.

Green Goddess

Rarely do I have a dining experience that sends me into euphoria, but such was the case last weekend when Max and I went to Green Goddess. Holy Bejeesus y’all. Have you been there? I count on you to report such findings. It was divinity in a dining experience.

Mayhaps I’m getting carried away, but seldom do you find a combination of eclectic & delicious food, attentive & informed service, and a unique & intimate atmosphere. Oh, and a KILLER drinks list, which is always very high on my priorities list, where “drinks list” equals original cocktails, wine, flights, beer, after dinner drinks, and dessert drinks. And you won’t find any Miller Lite or Korbel up in there. As our waiter put it: “Keeping things small means we don’t have to stock the mainstream items.” And small it is. A diminutive five tables (four and a half, really) and a teeny bar co-exist in an oblong dwelling tucked away in Exchange Alley.

What blew me away is that EVERY detail is thoughtfully considered. From the hearts of palm from Ecuador, to the chestnut flour from Italy, to the rye and peppercorn beer from Montreal, to the Vietnamese pressed coffee that graced my after dinner cocktail. NOTHING is an afterthought. It’s how we would cook for our friends if we had oodles of time and money. Yet, it’s not terribly expensive, and the staff is not snobby, and we did not have to wait for a table.

DO YOU UNDERSTAND HOW RAD THAT IS?

Foodwise, I’d sum up their cuisine as “go big or go home.” I’ll admit when I read the menu online I thought, “I cannot sign off on this. A wedge salad with shrimp, crabmeat, radishes, cucumber, hearts of palm, romaine, eggs, bacon, romano cheese and green goddess dressing? WHAT IS WRONG WITH ICEBERG, BLUE CHEESE, AND BACON? WHY WOULD YOU CORRUPT THE PERFECT SIMPLICITY OF SUCH A TRIFECTA? WHAT ARE YOU SMOKING?”

To my surprise the ingredient-laden wedge was…..light….and refreshing. Paired with our sparkling wine from New Mexico (you read that right) it was the perfect beginning. Next we had an order of the chestnut tagliatelle with smoked duck and wild mushrooms. I was vexed over which of the wines to drink in cahoots, but the chef suggested we try it with the Stone Brewing Co. smoked porter. The pairing was genius—a carbicide totally worth committing—and I’ve made it a goal to a) try every single beer Stone Brewing produces and b) start making pasta with chestnut flour. For dessert we had the sticky black rice pudding and a tawny port. I was floored to see I didn’t recognize a single port on the list…..always a good sign in my book.

I apologize profusely for not including photographs of food so perfectly suited for the glossy pages. My only excuse was that I was blinded by euphoria. I am lobbying to go back this weekend for lunch to try more items and take pictures, but in the meantime, you can get a glimpse here or here or here.

Oh, It’s On. It Is Sooooo On.

I’ve spent years obsessing over fresh pasta and months surfing EBay looking for a deal on the pasta rollers to match my favorite appliance. I even took a pasta making class earlier this year, but alas, could not afford the required rollers. However, thanks to my very generous kitchen godmother, I am in business with not just the pasta roller, and fettucini and spaghetti attachments, BUT ALSO the ravioli maker.

Behold, my first attempt:

Because my misguided M.O. is to never start with the simple, I dove right in and tried my man hand at ravioli.

Here lie the fruits of my labor, the bedraggled but optimistic ravioli (spinach and ricotta ravioli with a brown butter sage sauce):

However foul in appearance the ravioli may be, I subscribe to the school of thought that the combination of butter, parmesan, and pasta is delicious, regardless of what it looks like. But maybe that’s one of those things I allow myself to believe, such as living under the illusion that I don’t have to shave my legs because my leg hair is blond.

While I’m trying to puzzle out what went wrong with the ravioli, I’m going to give orrechiette a shot this eve. In the meantime, if any of you have any fresh pasta recipes, please send them hither.

Hump Day Zen

I’m a failed baker, a disastrous public speaker (or, rather, a disastrous speaker), and a horrific dancer (although that doesn’t stop me from trying). But one thing I am good at is matchmaking. I’m hoping at my funeral they’ll roll credits of all the couples I’ve either directly or indirectly been responsible for (I’ll leave a list).

So when I met Cochon Butcher’s muffaletta:


I knew exactly who it should be joined with:


Another success to add to the credits: Mom + Butcher Muffaletta. You’re welcome.

Domenica

My apologies for the lack of photos; I left my camera at Chloe’s and it was nighttime.

To summarize my feelings about Domenica:

Menu: love
Wine list: Sorted by region and full of lesser known varietals (LOVE!)
Prices: Moderate; much appreciated and, frankly, long overdue in Nola
Ingredients: Intrepid, and I love love love them
Dishes: Meh

I do not know why I obsess over obscure Italian ingredients to such a ridiculous degree. I just know that I do. It might be because of the many years I’ve spent toiling at the hem A-16, ever since my first glorious encounter with the elusive burrata. Really, it doesn’t matter; all that does matter is that each time I spied a desirable ingredient on Domenica's menu, it was sung to the tune of Handel’s Messiah in my mind:

“Bottarga!”
“Burrata!”
“Brodo!”
“Brunet!”

What’s with the Italians and the letter B?

Thus, I salute what Domenica is bringing to Nola, conceptually. But what looked so heavenly on paper turned out to fall a bit short in practice in the realm of the entree.

However, I must take a moment to pay homage to the house cured meats, which were displayed amongst two meat slicers at the bar. It’s the carnivore’s equivalent of the red light district, and if that doesn't get a girl in the mood to wear a jumper made entirely from prosciutto, I don't know WHAT does. Having spent a considerable amount of time with a meat slicer in my glory days, I know that there is indeed something magical about freshly sliced prosciutto. Try it even just ten minutes later and it’s different. So when you get it that fresh, you've got something special.

The cheese and charcuterie plate was exceptional, complete with all kinds of Italian curios. The peperonata pizza (roasted peppers and goat cheese) was light and lovely. I felt compelled to order the octopus carpaccio because so many have raved about it. While I got excited about the addition of marinated fennel, I thought the octopus itself was somewhat flavorless.

As for the mains, I ordered the trofie (twisted pasta) with crab, tomatoes, mint, and bottarga, which caused me to conclude that bottarga (dried fish roe) should not be paired with other seafood. EVER. Can anyone prove me wrong on this? It made the fishiness of the crab so strong that it drowned out any other flavor. I thought the veal was absurdly salty. The only winner in terms of entrees was Max with the special of the day: braised wild boar with homemade tagliatelle. It was decided that night that braised meats and homemade pasta are a match made in paradiso.

Domenica has all the elements of a great restaurant, so I think it's only a matter of time before it all comes together. Until then, I'm happy to go back again to check on its progress.