A Southern ReviewBy Todd A. Price
Is Southern food just the way we eat in the South? Or is it the way we used to eat? In the lively Southern Belly (Algonquin), first published in 2000 and revised this year, John T. Edge tries to define Southern food by collecting the stories of the people who put the pork, grits, barbecue and fried chicken on our plates.
Edge is a culinary preservationist, so his idea of Southern food is deeply rooted in decades long past.
When he comes to New Orleans, what Edge describes sounds like home. What New Orleanian goes a week without a slice of Leidenheimer bread? And people don't pack into Casamento's for the retro vibe rather than for the best oysters in town. New Orleans, for better and for worse, is stuck in the past.
Foodways, volume seven of the New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture (University of North Carolina), rounds up a team of writers and scholars—with Edge again leading the charge as editor—to define Southern food. The tone sometimes wobbles as academics can be dry and writers often try too hard to entertain. The info, which ranges from Appalachian home cooking to the commercial empire of Coca-Cola, is solid. Familiar names, like former Times-Picayune food critic Gene Bourg and Susan Tucker of the Newcomb Institute, deftly handle our quirky corner of Southern cuisine. Foodways is a book for anyone whose interest in Southern food is really an obsession. It's also a source of obscure and curious facts. For example, you can amaze your friends with the true story of Duncan Hines (hint: he wasn't a baker).
Reading the late Craig Claiborne's Southern Cooking (University of Georgia), originally published in 1987 and reissued this year, is as good as a semester's worth of advanced classes on Southern food. Claiborne, a Mississippi native who revolutionized food writing as the editor for the New York Times' dining section, writes with a deep knowledge of classical French cooking and a lifetime of study. In a few nimble sentences, he explains the difference between French and New Orleans rémoulade sauces or traces the name of the benne wafer, a Charleston specialty, back to West Africa. Claiborne is learned, but never pedantic. He sprinkles the lessons with anecdotes from his Southern childhood. And his tastes are broad. Claiborne declares, for example, that blackened redfish and Buffalo wings are the two greatest additions to modern American cuisine. Southern Cooking is the work of a master teacher and a rare cookbook that's worth reading cover to cover.
Is Susan Spicer of Bayona a Southern chef? I doubt that she'll ever earn an entry in the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, but after cooking in our city for 28 years, she is certainly a New Orleans chef. Spicer doesn't shout like some of her generation, but she's had a broad impact on the way we eat. More than once, a chef has told me that a meal at Bayona convinced him to move to New Orleans or to come back home.
Spicer has finally collected her recipes into Crescent City Cooking (Knopf). It's a personal, idiosyncratic book that matches the style of a chef as comfortable with tasso as Asian chile paste. At times, the beginners tips scattered throughout seem misdirected in a work aimed at more experienced home cooks. Unlike many cookbooks by professional chefs, however, Crescent City Cooking is filled with enticing recipes that won't require a week of vacation to pull off. And yes, both the sweetbreads with sherry mustard butter and the goat cheese crouton with mushrooms and Madeira cream sauce—two Bayona staples—are included in Crescent City Cooking.
More BooksSpicer, along with 85 other local chefs, also contributed a recipe to 86 Recipes: New Orleans (Savannah Productions), edited by Lorin Gaudin. Instead of a cookbook, it's a collection of recipe cards, each one featuring a dish from a different restaurant. It's a great stocking stuffer or a gift for a friend who can't get back to New Orleans for dinner.
Other cookbooks worth checking out are Joe Simmer's Healthy Slow Cookin' (2 Martini) by Michael Ledet and Richard Stewart. The cheeky book of crock-pot creations is silly fun but packed with seriously good recipes. And Dominique Macquet, the Mauritius-native and chef of Dominque's at the Maison Dupuy, explores his island roots in the lushly photographed Tropical Latitudes (Bright Sky).
Cocktail ChroniclesWhat's a meal without a drink? Mixing New Orleans (Philbeau Publishing) by designer Phillip Collier documents the barrooms and cocktails of our city. As I first paged through the book of recipes, old images and drinks photographed by Michael Terranova with the care usually reserved for the supermodels, I had the sneaking suspicious that Mixing New Orleans was trying to sell me something. After finding no sign of corporate sponsors, I realized that I'm not used to such high quality design and photography outside of magazine ads. I raise a sazerac to the team behind Mixing New Orleans for putting such fine effort into this great book that simply celebrates drinking.
Ti Adelaide Martin and Lally Brennan of Commander's Palace learned to appreciate a well-made cocktail at a young age, judging by the tales that fill their In the Land of Cocktails (William Morrow). The slim volume hides a serious mission beneath its whimsical façade of colorful drawings and more colorful stories. Across the country, a growing number of awkwardly named "cocktailians" are trying to reintroduce long forgotten cocktails and raise the quality of drinks. In their book, Martin and Brennan have done a fine job popularizing the tenets of the cocktailian. They realize that drinking, no matter how much craft and research goes into the glass, should always be fun.
Other NewsAlberta has closed, but Vizard's on the Avenue will take over its Magazine Street space. Chef Kevin Vizard hopes to have his restaurant reopened Uptown by New Year's Eve….Slade Rushing and Alison Vines-Rushing, who ran the shuttered Longbranch, have a new home in the CBD at MiLa….RioMar has opened a new tapas bar next door to the restaurant….Ask author Wayne Curtis (And a Bottle of Rum) everything that you've ever wanted to know about rum at a seminar on December 8. The $150 course includes a spirit-paired lunch at Café Adelaide and a tour of Celebration Distillery. Visit www.talesofthecocktail.com for more information…. Through the end of February, the Rib Room has a special menu from Argentina….Every Saturday through Christmas, Savvy Gourmet offers free classes at 10 a.m….
Café Adelaide: 300 Poydras St., 595-3305
Dining Out: Café FreretCafé Freret makes an imposing muffuletta. The massive round loaf, studded with sesame seeds and dusted with Parmesan cheese, sits on the plate like a land mass. It's split down the middle to reveal layers of cold cuts and cheese—ham, salami, mortadella and provolone—alternating between three strata of olive salad.
Before I take a bite, I'm hit with the pungent smell of olives and vinegar. And with the first taste, I realize that Café Freret has struck a near perfect balance of meat, bread and moist olive salad. Café Freret might make the best muffuletta in New Orleans.
After the muffuletta, I had high expectations for the rest of the menu at this little café a few blocks from Tulane. Everything else that I tried was pretty good, and had I not tasted the muffuletta first, I might have been more satisfied with my other choices. The messy New Orleans Steakbomb, sliced steak with Swiss cheese, onions, mushrooms and bell peppers, was a good take on a Philly cheese steak. With a little more cheese, it could have been an absolute winner. The comically large Voodoo burger arrives with a steak knife stabbed through the middle and strips of bacon and the jagged edges of lettuce spilling out from the bun. It looks like the result of a malicious act. The patty weighs a half-pound, so you'd be wise to take part home if you can manage to resist.
The neighborhood restaurant attracts many university students and faculty. Oddly, I'm not sure that I've seen anyone else with a muffuletta on their plate. Maybe they know something that I don't. Maybe they've found even better options on the long menu of sandwiches, entrees and breakfast platters. I know that when I don't order the muffuletta, I always wish I had. And when I do order it, I walk away satisfied.
7329 Freret St., 861-7890, Fri-Wed 9am-7pm. Subscribe to offBeat and receive a FREE JazzFest CD! |
