Chris Hennes
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Posts posted by Chris Hennes
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5 hours ago, heidih said:
So on the gumbo sampling - do you just really like it or are you looking for your "this is tthe one" moment?
I just really like gumbo
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5 hours ago, heidih said:On that roast pork are those frizzled onions or some cool pork skin thing?
Just fried onions.
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Last meal of this trip was lunch at Palace Cafe. Gumbo (shock!):
Pecan salad:
Moules Frites:
Pecan-Crusted Catfish:
All good: the gumbo was among the better I've had, and my wife reports that the pecan crust was delicious. Despite the hyper-touristy location, I think it's still worth eating here.
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For dinner that evening we went to Le Chat Noir, which is a bit of a departure from our previous destinations -- it's not really cajun, more "New American with some Cajun Influence" (if that's a thing...). At any rate, this was a communal dining, order-many-things sort of experience. I may have gotten distracted by eating and failed to take photos before I started in...
"Bread Royale": Bone marrow and chicken liver mousse (with toast, not pictured
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Roasted carrots:
Blackened summer squash:
Tomato salad:
Roast pork:
Roasted potatoes:
This meal was fantastic: we enjoyed everything, but standouts were the tomato salad, the chicken liver mousse, and the squash (which was very spicy).
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Next up was Redfish Grill. You will be shocked to know I started with the gumbo:
And my wife with tomato bisque:
Then I had the shrimp and grits:
And my wife the Cochon de Lait & Eggs:
Everything here was very good: the gumbo was both rich in flavor and light in texture, the andouille in it excellent, and the relish on the shrimp and grits was a great accent to what can otherwise be a sort of overwhelmingly rich dish. The shrimp and grits also had "beef debris" under it, which was good but probably unnecessary, IMO.
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Last year I was in NOLA for the first time, and did a short foodblog about it. In that trip I ate at Luke, Herbsaint, GW Fins, Willie May's, Cochon, Galatoire's, Pêche, and the MSY airport location of Leah's Cafe.
I was back again this past weekend, so figured I'd keep on documenting...
First up is Trenasse, where we'd intended to eat last time and been forced to divert due to construction that ended up closing the restaurant. I started with the gumbo:
My wife with the tomato bisque:
They were out of shrimp enough to do the shrimp and grits, but could do the "Taste of Trenasse" which consisted of smaller portions of three different entrees, including the shrimp and grits. So I went with that (Louisiana Crawfish Pie, Pan Fried Redfish Meunière, Shrimp & Grits):
And my wife went with blackened redfish:
Nothing was bad, but it was pretty forgettable. The Crawfish Pie was probably the highlight, but unless that's really what you're craving I'm not sure there's a lot of reason to seek this place out. Then again, it's attached to the Intercontinental, so if you happen to be staying there you could do worse.
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You are right about the garlic on the marinara as well, but I found it less offensive than the oregano (there was just so much of it!). That said, the garlic was so undercooked I question whether it was actually added after the bake instead of before.
Regarding the aesthetic of the margherita, I see what you mean, but from a flavor and texture standpoint I personally prefer smaller, more well-distributed chunks of mozzarella, and was happy with this one (recall also that the pizza above is huge, so so size of the chunks is a little deceptive in that photo). Then again, no one has ever accused me of being a "purist"!
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It was not shredded, just torn into strips.
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On 1/4/2023 at 7:35 AM, weinoo said:
This a current review of a new Neapolitan pizza place which just opened in Greenwich Village. It's a spinoff of DaMichele in Naples. Posting it here because I thought what you said above is related and interesting.
This New Branch of a Historic Pizzeria Is as Good as Naples if You Keep It Simple
This gives you another place to try next time you head east, @Chris Hennes
I ate there tonight and overall it was quite good. I had a marinara and a margherita:
I was surprised by the basil and dried oregano on the marinara: I won’t go so far as to say they “ruined” the pie, which was fine, but Bianco’s was far superior. The margherita, though? Perfection. I’m not sure what sort of mozzarella it was (cow’s milk I’d guess), but it was perfectly salted, flavorful, well-distributed, and basically as good as margherita can get.
ETA: I should point out that these pizzas were enormous compared to the Neapolitan I am used to: 14” maybe? The waiter was pretty surprised we wanted two.
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Pre-orders just opened for the Spinzall 2.0 -- it sounds like they did a lot of work to address common user issues with the first model.
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I've made basically every base dough in Modernist Pizza (not New Haven yet...), and it's really only the Neapolitan that absolutely requires Ludicrous Speed baking (as @scott123 points out, and whose Ooni Koda 16 recommendation I wholeheartedly agree with). For the majority of the pizzas you're looking at ~5 minutes at 480°F, though the truly thick crust variants do take longer than that.
ETA: On a steel pizza "stone" that is.
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Another "deep dish pizza" -- based on a Cook's Illustrated Vegetable Torta. I think I've gotten pretty far afield from "pizza" here, even by Chicago-style Deep Dish standards.
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Tonight's pizza combined ideas from the previous two nights: I made the smoked oyster sauce from the first pizza, baked an artisan crust with shallots and olive oil like the second, and topped it after baking with what started out as a pound and a half of mushrooms (I used king trumpet, maitake, and shiitake, and roasted with olive oil and salt). And a "little bit" of black truffle for good measure.
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5 hours ago, Robenco15 said:
What’s your Jabugo story?
Just that it's hard to find: the place I ended up buying from was very sketchy-looking, with a circa-2005 website and not much said about them online. Considering the price of the stuff, I was a little nervous that the whole place was a scam. I was almost surprised when the package showed up and the product was legitimate.
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Smoked Salmon and Caviar Pizza (KM p. 219)
Last night's pizza "only" used about 1/3 of the 1oz jar of caviar, and obviously you can't let such a thing go to waste. So tonight's pizza continued on the theme of "food my wife won't like so I eat it when she's gone" and featured flavors from Wolfgang Puck. You bake an artisan crust with just olive oil and red onions, then spread a sauce of sour cream, shallots, lemon juice, and dill over it (still hot). Top that with smoked salmon and finish with dollops of caviar. Obviously a totally classic flavor combination, just a bit unexpected on a pizza. Still, hard to go wrong with smoked salmon and caviar for dinner!
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Just now, Robenco15 said:
As an elementary school teacher, I may prefer the cafeteria pizza over this (not a judgement on you, just the style).
You are practically a connoisseur then! Does your cafeteria have thick crust or thin?
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Pizza Gourmet with Oyster Cream, Ham, and Caviar (KM p. 255)
I have never made the "Pizza Gourmet" crust before: it's basically a bao that's first steamed and then browned in the oven, allowed to cool, and then topped with whatever you are topping it with. Honestly, I didn't really have high hopes for this crust. And the toppings in the first assembly recipe are insane.
The sauce is made from mascarpone, ricotta, and smoked oysters. It's then topped with Jabugo ham, caviar, and black truffles. Black truffles are actually in season right now, so that's the real deal on there, bought from Alma Gourmet. The caviar is American White Sturgeon (also from Alma) and I managed to track down actual Jabugo ham, which was a bit of an adventure (I'd never had it before... good lord it is incredible).
So anyway, you know how this goes: some chef, probably in Las Vegas, decides that if you just dump enough expensive ingredients on a thing it will taste good, and that's never really true. Except. Sometimes it is true. Honestly the crust was so-so: not a lot of flavor, just slightly sweet, firm, and very obviously a vehicle for the toppings. Which were absolutely f'ing stellar. I probably can't afford to ever make this again, but it tasted incredible.
I will point out that the sauce (50g mascarpone, 50g ricotta, 30g smoked oysters, 1g salt) was delicious in its own right, and would be a great sauce for any mushroom pizza that has a crust baked ahead.
The first slice:
\
An attempt to get the toppings more evenly distributed when eating it:
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Continuing with the Deep Dish, but trying to make it somewhat less ridiculous, last night's entry had much less cheese, and much more vegetation. It's again the Modernist crust variant, which I think is very good, and then filled with braised collards, sausage crumbles, roasted tomatoes, roasted red peppers, and roasted green peppers. The bottom cheese is a sliced sharp cheddar of indeterminate brand (Imperfect Foods), and the top cheese is pizza cheese. I used about half as much cheese as the standard recipe called for, and probably went a bit over the filling. I also added the tomato sauce to the top midway through baking in an attempt to get it to thicken just a bit to give a nicer slice presentation. My best deep dish entry so far.
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Exactly. I mean, I think the sauce here was better than in my school days, but overall, just not a great pizza. But I am as happy about pizza day now as I was then...
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I finally got around to making a couple of "Old Forge" pizzas last week. This is not a style that MC is enamored with, though they give a recipe anyway, calling it "our take" on Old Forge pizza. It's basically the Wonder Bread of pizza: a bland, slightly sweet, overly thick crust. The basic recipe only has a scattering of onions as a topping. Don't get me wrong, I stand by my belief that even bad pizza is still good. But this is sort of bottom of the barrel for a homemade pizza, in my opinion. No reason to make it again...
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2 hours ago, Duvel said:
Forgive my ignorance, but what is pizza cheese ?
Preshredded low-moisture mozzarella.
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I actually hauled the full Volume 3 off the shelf last week to look at the section on deep dish pizzas (I normally just use the kitchen manual), and in looking at the pictures they have, a lot of them fall into the theme of "vegetable medley baked in cheese and crust and topped with tomato sauce". So tonight I had another go at deep dish pizza: this time I used the Modernist crust variant (which adds freeze dried butter and freeze dried cheddar cheese to the crust), and made a purple potato confit and sautéed kale filling. The base cheese was provolone, the first topping cheese was gruyere, and the final topping cheese was pizza cheese.
The filling:
Pre-baking:
Baked:
Unmolded:
Sliced:
And served:
It was delicious -- the Modernist crust is very good here.
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May is a mess for me, I probably can’t add any more mess
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And look who made the 2023 James Beard Foundation Best Chef Midwest semi-finalist list... https://www.jamesbeard.org/blog/the-2023-james-beard-awards-semifinalists
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Swinging back to the other end of the pizza spectrum, I'm again on a research expedition, this time in Phoenix. It's been something like 15 years since my last visit to Pizzeria Bianco, so I was definitely looking forward to going again, this time with significantly more pizza knowledge (and experience) under my belt.
The pizzas:
Marinara:
Margherita:
Rosa (you saw me make this one up-topic a ways: Red Onion, Parmigiano Reggiano, Rosemary, Pistachios):
Biancoverde (Fresh Mozzarella, Parmigiano Reggiano, Ricotta, Arugula):
Wise Guy (Wood-Roasted Onion, House Smoked Mozzarella, Fennel Sausage):
Marinara again (because good lord it is spectacular):
The most striking thing about all of these pizza was how crispy the crust was, and how crispy it stayed while eating the pizzas. This was true even of the marinara, despite its heavy tomato topping.
In my opinion the marinara is the best pizza on the menu. I actually planned on getting all six pizzas over the course of the two meals I ate there, but I couldn't resist getting the marinara a second time for lunch today, so I have not yet had the "Sonny Boy" (olives and salami).
I also stand by my original impression of the Rosa: the first slice is great, but it does not hold up to time well at all, so by the second slice I'm much less impressed. I'm not saying we didn't eat the whole thing, mind you
. I also wish they spent a few more seconds getting the toppings on it more evenly distributed. This pizza in particular suffered a bit from lopsided topping application.
Though last night we waited over three hours, today for lunch we arrived at 10:30am and were the third group in line, so got in on the first seating at 11:00. Clearly if time is an issue, lunch is your best option!
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New Orleans 2022 - present
in Louisiana: Dining
Posted
Nope, there for a dance competition.