Mayhaw Man

If he had hair he would be 6'1". Edited to say that if my local Lumber Liquidators (there is one in New Orleans) has a chunk of that countertop, I am there. I can work around some things at that price. Also, to agree with Flheat-if you shop carefully and use what you can find with some style you can get much done in the kitchen remodel dept. without breaking the bank. I looks like we are far enough under budget with ours that I am going to be able to get a new oven, and I thought that I would have to wait awhile. But, of course, at the pace I am progressing I have to wait a while anyway.

Lump crab meat (blue crab) for me. Not for a special occasion or a party. Just a pound of lump, some decent butter, and some finely chopped onion, and a sautee pan. I can be in heaven in about 5 minutes.

So does a nice even coating of Louisiana Hot Sauce. Especially on seafood like fish filets or shrimp. The effect is very nice, and not overwhelming at all. Try it some time.

I understand completely. I am only saying, that in terms of scope and interest to a large cross culture of the world populace, that there is really no comparison. And just for the record, with the exception of an appreciation for his effect on popular culture and his Sun recordings made before he went into the Army, I am not even much of a fan. Although I will be the first to say that Graceland is one of the more surreal touring experiences available on Planet Earth.

Elvis. I think not. No matter what one thinks of the popular culture phenomenon that is "The Cult of Elvis", there are no comparisons to be made along those lines (not any valid ones, anyway). Elvis Presley was, for an entire generation of young people, the guy who provided the catalyst to explore and expand American music by making the music of Black America available to everyone else in a way that if not favored or understood, was at least palatable to their parents. Elvis was, in fact, from a hard scrabble background-unlike Jamie Oliver. Born in a row house in Mississippi and later moving to Memphis, at town which at that point was just a large Delta farming community. Hardly a center of culture that, in any way, is comparable to London-where Jamie Oliver has, among other things, access to all the world press coverage he could ever want. Elvis Presley and the music that he presented to the world over a very short period of time, became someone who had worldwide impact on both music and music related popular culture- no Elvis, no Beatles. Jamie runs a couple of nice places in London and is moderately popular on some cable channels with small audiences and foodies who follow this sort of story like an important sports match. Elvis was, undeniably, someone who in a short period of time gained a notoriety and justified fame that Jamie Oliver can only dream of in his wildest dreams. And, just to keep it on food, Elvis though that haute cuisine was Grilled Banana and Peanut Butter Sandwiches. Jamie Oliver is eons away from that goop. The guy can really cook, apparently.

Can't be any stranger than fried Pimento Cheese Balls. I am still trying to wrap my pea brain around that one.

New Orleans was a dining destination long before those guys ever showed up (in fact, not that it makes them any less relevant, because they are, neither of them are from New Orleans). We have at least 1/2 dozen places that are over or close to a hundred years old, including two-Tujaques and Antoines-that have basically not even admitted that the 19th century is over yet. Their menus remain essentially unchanged from 1900 or so. Food and travel writers have been writing about them for a very long time. Some of the most interesting food writing about New Orleans ever done is from the 19th century- Lafcadio Hearne wrote thousands and thousands of words about Creole Cookery and the Restaurants of New Orleans. Twain wrote a fair amount about dining in New Orleans and there were many, many others. The Madame Begue's Cookbook was printed at the end of the 19th Century and is still in print. The Original Picayune cookbook was printed over a 100 years ago, as well. The relationship between a recognized cuisine and New Orleans is much older than PP and EL, although there is no denying that they have heightened the level of fine dining here by leaps and bounds. Prudhomme opened his place on Chartres 25 years ago and it is still going strong, serving honest and interesting food every night. I highly reccomend it to those that are looking for the roots of the "real deal".

First of all welcome to eGullet, davidberis. I hope to see more of you. You clearly have some strong opinions about New Orleans cuisine and I look forward to hearing more of them. Now to the matter at hand. I'm not sure that I would agree that New Orleans cuisine aspires to anything other than what it is. Certainly, with the notable exception the Fat Guy mentioned involving the Creole/Cajun craze that swept the country 15 or twenty years ago, there have not been a large number of restaurants seling New Orleans cuisine that have had long and happy lives in other cities. This one fact, to me, means that whether these placed were opened out of noble aspiration or whether they were opened to cash in on a craze, that the food of New Orleans does not even approach the acceptance of other "cuisines" such as French and Italian. I think that davebr was closer to the mark. New Orleans food, even our finest traditional dining, has always been about value and perhaps, even more importantly, familiarity. When guys like Paul Prudhomme, Jamie Shannon, Emeril Legasse, Susan Spicer, Ann Kearney, etc, set out to change and improve the native food here-they set out with the notion that what we are eating everyday is already damned good, and only try to improve or put a new spin on the old dishes. While many of these dishes are highly creative, it is still pretty easy to see the roots of the dish shining through. Even our Super Fine Dining catagory here ends up in that boat. For example, John Besh's fabulous (imo) place, Restaurant August, while doing a few other worldly dishes in the vein of Trotter, Boloud, Keller, etc, is still working from a tool box that runs to redfish, crabmeat, shrimp, and all of the other common items that are seen up and down the line in New Orleans and there are, and have been in the past, many other examples like this. Diners here are, generally, looking for familiarity, I think, rather than off the wall experimentation. It's not that the average diner in New Orleans suffers from arrested development, it's just that most of them believe, and I think rightly so, that when your native ingredients have been turned into a native cuisine as developed and tasty as the one that exists in New Orleans, there only need to be small changes occasionally to keep it interesting. Nothing huge, nothing sweeping, just a little at a time. As for New Orleans seceding for the US, there is the issue of where to go? Not to mention the other issue of who would have us (after all, we would be bringing the Saints with us-a bad bargain mo matter the price)? I have always agreed with those that thought that New Orleans would exist happily as a small archipeligo type republic, something like Gibraltar. We are, after all, probably as Caribbean as we are Southern-more or less an island (you have to cross a bridge or in the case of 90, a raised rd., no matter what, to get into Orleans Parish). Our architecture is much more akin to something that you might see in Central America (Spanish Colonial for many of our older governmental buildings, some French Colonial, and tons of high ceilinged, well ventilated houses designed for the weather in the tropics). So I would say that if you are going to lead us on a new path, I would think that we should be looking South, rather than North.

We all did, Dave. We all did. Being a Saints Fan is a tough row to hoe.

I used to do it all the time back in dot com days (along with all travel at first or business, whichever was available, luxury cars for rentals, and rediculously nice hotels for usual stays). Of course, the company that I worked for went bust and all of the investors lost their money. I found out that things were bad, in fact, when my company AMEX got rejected when I was taking some clients out to dinner in San Diego. Bingo! You're out of work! Hope you have a round trip ticket home (I didn't)

Decent Food and Yankees Two things that I rarely, if ever, associate in the same thought or sentence.

Smith's had a website for a while, but I don't seem to be able to find it. Here is an article that appeared last year concerning Smith's.

Not only is Smith's great butter, but it's not any higher priced than regular store brand butter. It comes in 2 lb. rolls, so bakers will need a scale, but they should have one anyway. Their other dairy products are really good as well. Whole creamline milk (unhomogenized is the scientific term for the dairy phrase "creamline", 2%, great heavy cream, and apparently "soon to be at a store near you" ice cream is on the way. I am pleased that they are getting their due. But don't forget Mauthe's Dairy in Folsom, LA (near Smith's in Mt Hermon). They make a great line of products including old school creole cream cheese. Congratulations to Smith's. They are doing great work up in the Dairy Belt of the Gulf South.

Actually, part of the point that was being made during the talk being referenced in the last few posts was not about just the affluent set. Virtually anyone in the middle class-mill workers, clerks, bank tellers, and schoolteachers could afford, and had, domestic help well up into the Fifties and beyond. The wage paid out to these workers was so low that anyone could afford at least part time, and more often than not, full time help. I assure you that a few may have saved for a bit of college, but that was certainly not the norm. I know that, after Diane McWhorton's Pulitzer Prize winning book, Carry Me Home-Birmingham, AL-The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution came out, I asked my mother what the wage was in the early sixties for a full time maid (incidentally, for you of the politically correct set-this is the term that is commonly used for that type of domestic and the term that was accepted by the conference this weekend without objection by anyone-black or white) and she said that it was somewhere around $20 per week. This would be for a 4 1/2 day week (Thursdays off and off at noon on Saturday). Even in 1963 it would have been difficult to save for anything at $20 a week. And to top it all off, most of the employers gave no real thought to asking them to serve on Sunday lunch if there were guests coming and even less about asking them to bring someone extra to tend bar or help in the kitchen. Wrong? Without a doubt. But that's the way it was. What we discussed this weekend, from many and often totally differing directions, was what and how this situation related and continues to relate to the predominant cuisine of the South. This discussion was at once, heartbreaking, informative, angry, sad, and also often hysterically funny. SFA is providing transcripts of the talks given at the conference and as soon as they are available I hope to post them here to let everyone get some idea of the depth and gravity of the discussions held in Oxford, MS last weekend. I'm glad that I was there.

I, a man who makes lots and lots of dishes that begin with the words, "first you make a roux" , was taught to BEGIN with equal amounts, regardless of whether the measurement is by volume or weight. Notice I said begin. Often times I will adjust one ingredient or the other to get the consistency that I desire. Sometimes I want a very thick, less oily roux (ettoufee, for example) , and sometimes I want it the other way round (gumbo is something that needs a more viscous roux, for some reason). Now these are my personal preferences and in fact may not have much more importance to the dish other than that's the way that I learned how to make them. Oily, thin rouxs are much easier to keep from burning and with gumbo I am, generally (there are exceptions-like gumbo z'herbes) going for a darker colored roux. Oily roux in ettoufee causes the dish to be oily, but this probably has more to do with the total volume of the dish vs. the amount of oil in it than anything else.

It was Uncle Tai's. Exactly. Thanks, Really good food, although really expensive. T

Those egg rolls were bad ass. No recipe, but here is basically what they were-thinly sliced and chopped brisket with some finely chopped peppers-both multi colored bell and hot, some onion (I think) and the meat had been marinated in something reasonably spicy. All of this was wrapped in an egg roll wrapper and served with a spicy mustard type sauce. These things were awesome. Really good. Bob's a really nice guy and he reads eGullet, he swears he is going to start posting (we heard those two things about a couple of hundred times over the weekend) so maybe he will give us the recipe if we ask nicely.

There was an upscale chinese place on Post Oak (I think-it was near the Galleria anyway) called Uncle........ The food was great and the place was packed all the time. Hell, it may still be there for all I know-but I think it's long gone. What am I talking about? It's bugging me.

For those of you that don't know, Dean has 4 children under the age of 11 (he never mentions this, so I thought that you should know ). Dean is a very brave man. Very brave. You would have a great time.

I awoke on Sunday morning to the warbling tunes of the fine quality alarm clock at the Alumni Hotel in Oxford. Dean and I gathered our stuff and headed out, as he had a 10 a.m. flight to catch in Memphis. My intention was to make it back for breakfast and the rest of the morning's festivities in Oxford, but the weather was crummy and traffic was slow. Time for a new plan. I swung down Elvis Presley Blvd. and restocked my supply of Elvis nail clippers (you can never-ever-have too many around). Once that was done I drove down the street to I was the first customer of the day. I got a few ribs to go and headed down As I headed down out of Memphis I remembered, once again, just how much I like driving through miles and miles of cotton at picking time. I grew up in the Delta on the other side of the river and there are few things that can calm me like fields full of white gold. Even on a rainy day, that ride qualifies as one of the few "sure pleasures" I know of. It was awfully wet and the only thing in the Delta ready to be picked Sunday morning were the pockets of the casino goers that pretty much consitituted the only cars on the road Sunday a.m. I drove for about an hour or so past very wet fields in various stages of picking, (the farmers with luck are done-the ones who still have cotton hanging are going to have a long week-they got about 3 inches of rain today. You can't pick wet cotton) old abandoned houses, churches, graveyards, and long closed gins. My first stop of the day was at the Crossroads in Clarksdale for a little Abe's BBQ. Robert Johnson supposedly made his deal with the devil at the Crossroads and Abe Dickinson made a deal with The Lord. Man is better off as a result of both negotiations. Both of them, in their own way, could really cook. I ordered two pork sandwiches and a tamale plate (comes with slaw). The sandwiches were really good. Thinly sliced butt with slaw and a tangy/spicy thin red sauce. Been eating them a long time. Damn good sandwich. But ohhh the tamales. I know that everybody has their favorites, but I love the ones at Abe's. They have a really thick layer of masa, and that, to me, makes the tamale. They are spicy as hell with a nice slow burn. No sauce on the side needed here. After I left Abe's the rains really started to come down. I had a bunch of plans, so I forged on, but no more food pictures as I was concerned about my camera. Sorry. I'm going back at Thanksgiving, so I can fill in later. Anyway, one last shot of the Delta for now. These are modules of pressed cotton. They are hydraulically crushed and this saves the need ot keeping around a zillion trailers that only get used once a year. It is a great idea and saves farmers both time and money. Right now there are, literally, probably ten or 15 thousand of these things in fields that are too muddy to drive in, just waiting to be picked up. Modularized Cotton waiting to be ginned A sign in front of a Catfish House near Greenville. Great sign. I don't know about the catfish, as it was closed. Things are still closed on Sunday in the Delta, mostly. Except the casinos. They never close. Great poster in the men's room at Abe's in Clarksdale. So as I pulled into Greenville I had a bit of trouble deciding my next move. Drive on tho Vicksburg and hope that Solly's is open (it wasn't) or stop in Greenville and drop some serious cake on a steak and a few more Tamales at Does. That decision took about two seconds. I enjoyed one of the world's finest pieces of beef (go there if you don't believe me, Luger's wishes they could cook like that Properly stuffed, I drove on in a pouring rain. Later, as I was on Hwy 27 near Utica (that's the town where Eudora Welty took those wonderful cemetary photos back in the 30's and also where the Henry S Jacobs Camp is-HSJ Camp is a very old line summer camp for Southern Jewish Kids. It is on a beautiful piece of property) and I passes a large garage sale that had been moved, literally, into the garage. They had some pretty cool stuff, but the best thing that they had was a homemade lemon/poppyseed poundcake. Lord that cake was good. And that's that. I have a few more photos to add, which I will do in the morning. It was a great trip and I hope to do it again soon. Mississippi has much to offer the hungry diner who is willing to look around a bit.

And the clear winner is: http://forums.egullet.org/uploads/10973659..._1097367934.jpg

I was fast asleep this morning when Dean posted all of those photos. First of all, let me say what a boon companion Dean is. Easy to travel with, as long as his caloric intake is not threatened. I have done my best to keep him well fed, but it's a big job. Next year, there may need to be more than one person involved in this effort. It is fairly exhausting. Dinner at Jaquesimo's was, well, dinner at Jaquesimo's. I did not vary from my usual app., as I love those sauteed chicken livers and some things are just too good to skip. I was the guy eating the softshell. It was great. Perfectly fried and laid on top of bed of crabmeat stuffing that was on top of a thick slice of fried green tomato. The thing about crabmeat stuffing in South Louisiana is this-sometimes it has more crabmeat than bread, sometimes not. The stuff here is fairly swimming in crabmeat with the bread being a binder, sort of like a well ground crabcake. It's really spicy and extra delicious. Dean ordered the double cut porkchop stuffed with, well, more meat. Pig meets cow with sauce! What a concept. Dean had been warning me for weeks that he could eat-really eat-but he couldn't work his way through that thing. I beleive that he was somewhat shocked that he had to send it back (although 2 or 3 beers at the Maple Leaf Bar next door probably added to the problem. The Maple Leaf is sort of like the waiting room for J's and the hostess will sweep through every once in a while calling out names, so it's a great place to wait and generally not nearly as crowded as the bar in Jacquimo's during the dinner hour-and as an added bonus, if you are having a very early dinner and have to wait, you can go next door and watch Jeopardy with some of the more entertaining people you will ever meet as they scream out the answers (in the form of questions only, mind you-no cheating tolerated and no quarter given). It can be a nice predinner diversion and a great way to watch true New Orleans characters in action.) We woke up at the Apt on Royal St and I walked with Dean down to CC's Coffee and got a couple of much needed cups. After an all too brief stroll around the Quarter and a few steps over the levee to see the river, we loaded up the car in a light rain (first one in weeks-much needed) and started on our way out of town. We drove through uptown and I gave a running monologue on history, politics, architecure, music, cops, food, and whatever else came blasting out of my non stop mouth. I get that way with first time visitors and I am sure that some of them hit the airport reeling from the blasts and quite pleased that they are finally going to get some peace and quiet. We stopped at Boulangerie (on the river side of Magazine St between Napoleon and Valmont) and we were off. An hour later, starving, I suprised Dean by saying that here, in the middle of this swamp, right off the side of the bridge and hard on the side of the Illinois Central RR track, was a monument to Catfish like no other that I know about. I pulled off into Manchac (which consists-entirely-of Middendorf's Rest, a Sheriff's Dept. Substation in a small trailer, and some hunting and fishing camps. We ordered a "snack" which you see above. I think Dean was pretty blown away. That catfish is amazing. Totally greaseless. You can lay it on a napkin and it will be dry when you take it away. Crispy, thin and golden. Perfect. It comes with some really good UNSWEET hushpuppies that are garlicky and have lots of green onions in the batter. A sweet little cup of oniony coleslaw with a very thin vinegar type dressing. We also got a bowl of their excellent crab and shrimp gumbo. It is VERY dark and redolent of onions, bell peppers, and celery with lots of meat and a hunk (1/4) of a crab thrown in to top it off. After that, we thought we were running very late and bombed it up I 55 to Oxford, only to find out that we were early and could have made many more stops-well, there's always next time. And there will be one. This is one of the best operations of this kind that I have ever attended. We will post much, much more on the SFA COnference thread and hpefully many other attendees will, as well. They promised. I have their email addresses. I will harrass them. Gotta go eat lunch. More later. Brooks

Help! I'm trapped in a dormlike hotel room with a guy named Varmint who has been eating whole hog BBQ and drinking Jack Daniels like they were soon going to stop making the stuff and it was going to be his last chance to have any. Why didn't someone tell me what I was getting into? What's up with this guy? Now, for the serious stuff. Dean's right. All of the hog was good, or as the late, great Boozoo Chavis once proclaimed, " All parts of the pig are GOOD!" And Boozoo was right. There was some fine hog coming off those grills. I will also say, once again, that chopped pork, before the vinegar and stuff gets put on it, is TO ME, a better dish than what everyone seems to love. I just like the meat. No need to do much to it. There were some excellent side dishes tonight, other than the traditional items that were provided by Mitchells. There were lima beans, spinach madeline (very spicy-nice touch), sweet potato casserole (complete with little tiny marshmallows on top), and some bread pudding for a bit of dessert. As Dean mentioned above, there was plenty of stuff to drink-Jack Daniels, beer, lemonade, sweet tea (no unsweet dammit-there should be a law ). We were running a bit late leaving New Orleans this morning and after breakfast at the Bluebird, a stop at Boulangerie for some EXCELLENT pastry, and then a late morning snack (or an early lunch -it all depends on your point of view) at Middendorf's in beautiful, downtown Manchac, LA. we had to kinda drive fast. No more stops worthy of mention until we checked into our palatial suite in Oxford. Hopefully we will get our phot situation straight in the morning. We both have cameras but we don't exactly get the prize for showing up with the peripherals needed for doing anything with the photos. Off to Radio Shack we go.

Knockouts from electrical boxes when they were still made of reasonably heavy gauge steel was a pretty common source for them, I believe.

Fifi shows her limited imagination. She should get out more. If you like okra in your chili, then of course okra can go in your chili. Fusion cooking at it's most adventuresome.