"Blow Your Mind with Sausage"

Top photo by Cheryl Geber. Bottom photo by renee b. photography.

Anticipation is at an all time high this week in preparation for an annual fall classic. After months of preparation, fifty of the most talented craftsmen will ply their trade for thousands to experience. Blood will be shed. Bones will be broken. And with the first cold snap descending upon South Louisiana, you can literally feel the excitement in the air.

Plus, LSU plays Alabama on Saturday night in Death Valley.

Last year the inaugural Boudin & Beer exploded onto the culinary calendar as the prelude to Carnivale du Vin, the top dollar wine auction and gala benefiting the Emeril Lagasse Foundation. But as detailed in our write up in the November issue of OffBeat Magazine, Boudin & Beer has quickly involved into its own feature event. Co-chairs Emeril Lagasse, Mario Batali, and Donald Link have had no trouble convincing their chef friends to join in on the greatest pork liver party that the Warehouse District has ever seen. As Rene puts it, "If a bomb goes off on Tchoupitoulas on Friday night, American cooking will be set back 100 years."

Tickets to Boudin & Beer are available for purchase online through Thursday. The $85 price of admission entitles you to 4 hours of all you can eat sausage, and you can expect a wide arrange of boudin interpretations ranging from the classic boudin noir to original creations stuffed with alligator and ostrich. Abita will be pouring nearly every beer in its portfolio, plus there will be wines from Au Bon Climat and bourbon from Buffalo Trace. Louisiana's own Feufollet, the Red Stick Ramblers, and the St. Claude Serenaders will share the stage with feature performer Drake White, whom we will give a free pass as an Alabama native for this one night only.

Boudin, beer, bourbon and Batali. What more can you ask for? It's one of our favorite events of the year, and we hope to see you there.

Boudin & Beer
Friday November 2nd
7:00-11:00pm
The Foundry
333 St. Joseph Street

Emeril's: Is It Worth It?

New Orleans is restaurant obsessed with the very old and the very new, but we aren't too keen on the newly old or the older new restaurant. This is a shame because one of the city's best restaurants does not get nearly the local love that it should. Ask yourself this, when was the last time you went to Emeril's? Ok, now when was the last time you had a beyond lackluster, expensive meal at one of the city's grand dames or new gastrotapas spots?

Emeril's turned twenty-two years old this year and is showing no signs of being a lazy, jobless college graduate. Prices have remained a downright bargain by fine dining standards with appetizers hovering around ten dollars and entrees in the high twenties. The front of the house's youthful exuberance syncs with the menu's mix of classic dishes and new favorites. The smart staff has your best interest in mind, which is an attitude other restaurants should note. Witness a downsell (!) on a bottle of wine, "That one is not drinking very well right now. I'd go with the Radio-Coteau Alberigi, plus it is a better value."

Our first course was the only one with a slight bummer. A mussel dish's description of an Asian ingredient infused broth was bland. Too bad, as the plump mussels were perfectly cooked and a shot of heat would have been most welcome. On the other hand, Shrimp Louis was as spectacular an excuse to eat lettuce as any reason in the city. Halfway between a remoulade and a salad, the dressing had an undercurrent of truffle which tied together the chopped egg and asparagus. The petite dice of bacon were a left-hook of flavor from a welterweight, elevating the dish to a heft rarely seen in the salad kingdom. 

Next up a pasta course that would have inspired the ancients into song. Thick, double-helixed strands of tender pasta draped in a white bolognese made with lamb, veal, and pancetta and topped with a shaving of truffle. This dish will haunt your dreams making you wish for one more bite of the silken sauce. 

The kitchen shows a deft hand with scallops. Marked with a sturdy crust and a sweet interior, this must be what would happen if the sea decided to churn butter. Coarse ground rice grits hold a palette of flavors. Chunks of shrimp, mushrooms, and watercress bring a sophistication to the Low Country's most famous export. The braised veal breast is hearty and smoky. The kind of dish you want to eat before retiring in front of a fire to drink bourbon. To keep the dish light enough to do so, a mango chow chow cuts through the richness.

Dessert was a wedge of peanut butter and chocolate gilded with caramel and sitting atop an Oreo crust. Throughout the meal, service remained sharp with a fleet of waiters, captains, and backwaiters moving briskly through the dining room. The handsome dining room is a spot to see and be seen as plaintiff's attorneys mingle with publishers. There are young families and couples celebrating an anniversary with a Jeroboam of Champagne. Laughter peels through the room like the end of school bell. "We haven't had a meal this good this year in New Orleans in a long time," Lindsay mentioned on the way out.

Truth be told we didn't want to leave.

Emeril's: Is It Worth It? Absolutely.
800 Tchoupitoulas St.
(504) 528-9393
Lunch M-F; Dinner nightly. 

Winner, Winner Boudin Dinner

Wow. You folks sure know how to turn a Boudin Haiku Contest into a Boudin Haiku Contest. While we enjoyed all of the entries, like cream some rose to the top. Just a reminder tickets are still available for Boudin and Beer presented By Abita Beer. In addition to pork and beer, there will also be wine from Presqu'ile Winery. We just hope there is enough boudin, beer, and wine for you after we get done with our raid. See you there. PS In case we don't see you time to point out Robert Peyton, look for the creepy guy, wearing a turtleneck, and a million watt scowl.

Honorable Mention

Greg
Carnivorous treat
Delectable temptation
How much shall I eat?

Third Runner Up

John
Boudin, Beer, Boudin
I want to stuff my face with
Boudin, Beer, Boudin

Second Runner Up

Blair (who gets all e.e. cummings up in this piece)
out of gas and cash
boudin or fuel at station?
need pork, walking home

Runner Up

Joshua
Here piggy, piggy
You taste like heaven to me
Boudin afterlife

Winner Winner Boudin Dinner

Crack (Perhaps channeling William Blake's The Tyger)
Transcendant food bite
Your rice and liver shine bright
Beer will pair just right

Congrats Crack, please contact us at your earliest convenience. Thanks to all who competed.

Boudin and Beer Giveaway

As we mentioned last week, Emeril Lagasse brings his traveling trope of toques into town this weekend for his Carnivale du Vin charity event. While the main event - a black tie Gala, Dinner, and Wine Auction - is out of our price range, there is a more accessible and casual event Friday night called Boudin & Beer. We are fairly certain you can figure out what the event entails. The other day, Alon Shaya refused to reveal what sort of goodies he had in store for Boudin & Beer. You should take this to mean, Boudin & Beer will be one of the best grazing events of the eating season. Plus, all the Abita you can drink.

In honor of someone else figuring out the unbeatable combination of pork, beer, and music is one hell of a good way to raise money, we are giving away two (2) tickets to the event. Also, if you go to Boudin & Beer we will gladly point out Robert Peyton to you, so you know who to avoid. We bantered about a few contest ideas. First, we thought, "Why not do boudin trivia?" But the only trivia questions we could come up with all had the same answers: pork liver, rice, beer. Then we thought about doing one of those cute Twitter hashtag things like adding "with boudin" to the end of a movie title. We nixed that idea after we figured out the best answer was going to be "Riding in Cars With Boys With Boudin."

So we decided to challenge your tenth grade English self. In order to win the two tickets to Boudin & Beer, we want your best Boudin Haiku. You remember those, right? 3 lines of poetry; the first and third with 5 syllables and the second with 7. You can leave your haikus in the comments, tweet them to us, or send them by email. The best one wins. Enjoy.

Delicious photos courtesy of renee b. aka Peanut.

Making Boudin

Otto von Bismarck is oft misquoted with perhaps one of the most untrue statements of all time. (If you are scoring at home, that means he did not say something false.) The great German statesmen reportedly said, "Laws are like sausages- it is best not to watch either being made." While the theory behind this statement is that both are messy processes, a recent attempt at making boudin revealed that such a process is in fact a beautiful way to spend the afternoon.

The quest to make boudin at home began as a way to get geeked up for Boudin & Beer. This event, in conjunction with Emeril Lagasse's Carnivale du Vin will turn The Foundry into a Bastille of Boudin on November 11th. 27 Chefs will ply their interpretations of this most holy marriage of pork and rice all savored next to beer from Abita. We will be there with open stomachs and inappropriate innuendos

Back to the boudin. It began as most forays into cooking new things with well-placed emails to Cochon Butcher and Rare Cuts. The latter would supply me with 30 pounds of frozen pork liver. The former with enough sausage casings to circle a portly child 450 times (approximate). The pork liver defrosted, I carved away two massive livers from the bulk of organ meat sitting in the fridge. A pig's liver, if you have never seen it, is tremendously large. Three main flanks are joined by some connective tissue, it has a deep maroon color, and is shiny as a new coin. Also, it makes you wonder what the hell your liver could possibly look like.

I used as my guide through boudin the recipes encapsulated in Donald Link's Real Cajun and Emeril's Real and Rustic. Like Girl Talk, I mashed them up into a recipe of my liking which looked like this: for every two pounds of pork liver, I added 5 pounds of pork shoulder and 6 cups of rice, along with seasonings. Where Emeril called for green peppers, I subbed in Link's instruction to use jalapenos. The cubed liver, pork shoulder, onions, cayenne, jalapenos, green onions, salt, and pepper went into a large pot. I covered the mix with water and allowed it to simmer for about two hours, all the while skimming the foam that rose to the top.

While that simmered, we rinsed the sausage casing free of the salt they came packed in and dried them. My attempts at threading them onto the sausage stuffing attachment resulting in screaming and tearing of the thin membrane. Eventually, Lindsay had to step in and save the day. (I am setting up Bloggle for a sexually inappropriate joke here).

We ground the meat, liver, and seasoning mixture once through a wide dye on the meat grinder. Then we combined this mixture with the rice and a few too many scoops of the liquid the mixture had cooked in. While I liked the flavor of the boudin - it was rich, livery, hearty, and had a mean streak of spice - it came out a little too soft in the casing. This may also be because I didn't remove the dye when we stuffed it into the casing. Or I added to much boudin stock to the mixture. Or we drank too much beer. But irregardless, as they say in Boudin;s homeland, that is a lesson learned the hard, but delicious way. I'd rather make boudin any day of the week, than even pretend to care about politics.

Winesday

Rene: Rich spice on the nose; get some coffee and dark berry flavors. The tannins are tight and restricted, wound up like a kid on Halloween. This wine screams out for something like rich duck with crispy skin or maybe lamb braised. Let's split the difference and go with the roast quail with steamed buns from Nine Roses. They also have it at Tan Dinh if you cross the bridge today and find Nine Roses closed.

Peter: This baby needs to open up for a bit to let the peppery flavors mellow out. Not much dryness going down the throat from the tannins. I'm thinking something gamey like venison. How about the wood fired goat at Domenica or the lamb neck from Herbsaint.

Joe the Wine Guy: The Numanthia 2007 is made from 100% Tinta de Toro and is both intense and complex with several layers of aromatics in the lively nose: red and black fruits first, then sweet spices like cinnamon and nutmeg, and then vanilla and toasted black pepper. On the palate, this wine is expresses dark fruits with concentrated and velvety tannins. This full bodied wine shows exceptional acidity revealing some chocolate, toasted, and spicy notes. The juice was aged in new French oak Bordelaise barrels for 18 months. The 2007 Numanthia retails for $59.99 and you can find it at Emeril's and Cork & Bottle.

NOLA

Considering the impact that Emeril Lagasse has had on the New Orleans dining scene, Blackened Out has directed an impressively low amount of attention to the food at his three restaurants in the city. And by "an impressively low amount" I mean "none."

Have we locals shunned one of our homegrown talents simply because it's become vogue to hate on TV stars who "aren't real chefs"? Nevermind that Emeril started at the bottom, built his empire from nothing, and was one of the forerunners of the Food Network before pinky rings ruled the world. (For more discussion on this topic, read this.) But I hardly ever hear anyone recommend - much less talk about - any of Emeril's restaurants. And I spend a lot of time talking with people about restaurants.

The rub on NOLA has always been that it's training ground for the next generation of Emeril employees. As the story goes, the multi-level, atriumesque restaurant on St. Louis Street is where new recipes are tested and where cooks and managers make their bones. But every dish and every general manager has to start somewhere, so why not here?

The focus of the downstairs dining room is the wood burning oven, from which comes the above pictured duck confit and fried egg pizza, whose soft, bready crust has the texture of naan. The same dough is used to bake pocket bread drizzled with garlic oil and showered with grated parm. The most well known starter at NOLA is Miss Hay's stuffed chicken wings, and rightfully so. A trio of chicken wings are deboned, stuffed with ground ground pork and green onions, and then deep fried. Legend has it that when Miss Hay makes her yearly pilgrimage back to Vietnam, the restaurant is without wings for 4 weeks.

An interesting addition to the regular menu this summer is the "On the Road" daily specials, which feature ingredients from local purveyors. Two weeks ago, the salad course was a tangle arugula scattered with a dice of roasted beets from Covey Rise Farms and nubs of goat cheese from Belle Ecorce in St. Martinville. In the appetizer round, soft, pillow-like gnocchi were matched with a sautee of crawfish tails and woodsy mushrooms that was unfortunately too greasy.

Entree choices include enough bells and whistles to excite (maybe one too many on each dish) but are not so far out of reach as to alienate picky eaters. Hickory-roasted duck pulled easily off the bone, but the caveman pork chop had been left on the grill for about 45 seconds too long. The accompanying brown sugar glazed sweet potatoes were the standout component of the latter dish; a shining beacon of hope in the face of mashed sweet potatoes which bring back haunting memories of the sugar buster days. A filet mignon (above) looks and sounds impressive with a pile of melting Maytag blue cheese and crown of fried shallots, but the quality of the beef itself was disappointing. I would have opted instead for the ribeye with patatas bravas and chimichurri, but what The Folk Singer wants The Folk Singer gets.

My favorite seat in the restaurant is at the food bar in front of the wood burning oven, where one can watch the loaves of pocket bread rise before your very eyes. This station also produces my favorite entree - the garlic crusted drum served atop a mixture of brabant potatoes and haricot verts in a pool of lemony sauce rouge. There is one problem with sitting at the food bar though: You are forced to watch the chef heap ungodly amounts of compound butter atop each filet of fish that goes in the oven. Now in my defense, I did not notice this cooking method until after I had placed my order. But once I did, it was like I could watch myself getting fatter in the reflection of the mountain of butter melting away with each flicker of the flame. But my God does that fish taste good.

In order to avoid a coronary, I passed up dessert on my last meal here. But I have had success with warm ooey gooey cake (which is chocolate), drunken monkey ice cream, and peanut butter cheesecake. On the other hand, a pecan pie with the shape and consistency of a cylindrical brownie was overcooked and dry around the edges.

Granted, the food at NOLA is neither avant garde nor as well executed as some of the other restaurants in the city at this price point. The waiters may not be brushed up on the wine list (which, by the way, is extensive and has a few hidden values if you look long enough), but each one has always been wearing a smile and keeps my bread plate full with jalapeno cornbread and onion focaccia. Like the waitstaff, the crowd tends to the younger side, which makes for a livelier dining room.

Call me crazy, I actually like the place.

NOLA Restaurant - Par/Birdie
534 St. Louis Street
522-6652
Dinner 7 Days; Lunch: Thur-Sun

Emeril Gives Back to the Kids

Seated (from left to right): Leah Chase, Joel Dondis, and Poppy Tooker. Standing: the three finalists in the "A Dish Makes a Difference" recipe contest and Chef Emeril Lagasse.

A lot of people have a lot of strong opinions about Emeril, whether based on his cooking acumen, television persona, quality of his restaurants, or post-Katrina quotes on the state of the city. (For evidence of those opinions, see the comments to Rene's defense of Emeril posted earlier this year.) Regardless of one's personal views on the man or his work, one cannot deny the enormous influence Emeril has had on chefs of a younger generation from both his media presence and his charitable works, both of which were on display last Friday at the final awards of the "A Dish to Make a Difference" recipe contest.

The contest was held in conjunction with NOCCA's Culinary Arts summer program which, with the help of sponsors such as the Emeril Lagasse Foundation, offers young people an opportunity to enhance their cooking skills. This year the students were challenged to create an original recipe based on Creole traditions, and the dish voted best would be featured on Emeril's menu. But Emeril had a surprise up his sleeve when he announced that all three finalists' dishes, which were judged by Leah Chase, Joel Dondis, and Poppy Tooker, were deemed winners and thus would be served as specials at Emeril's for the entire month of October. In addition to the individual recognition, Emeril decided to kick in another $100k to fund the development of a four year culinary program at NOCCA. By the way, that is in addition to the $400k that he has already given to the program.

While money is both greatly appreciated and necessary to establish and perpetuate such programs, we both agreed that Emeril's true legacy can be found in the downright zeal of the students. Someone in the crowd poignantly commented on the level of sophistication of the dishes: "Why are the kids so advanced? Because they are part of a generation who grew up watching the Food Network." This in fact was the Emeril generation, who before our eyes had grown from throwing salt and pepper around the kitchen while screaming, "Bam!" to now cooking creole rabbit with roasted butternut squash and spicy corn cakes.

After the ceremony we had a chance to talk with two of the finalists while recording the newest segment of Table Talk with Lorin Gaudin. When asked if they watched cooking shows, both responded with excitement and rattled off their favorite TV food personalities as if they were modern day comic book heroes.

And maybe they are? But my question is this: How many kids actually grew up to be Superman compared to the number that will eventually find a career in the culinary arts? Imitation is the highest form of flattery.

In Defense of Emeril

Not because he needs it, but because the vitriol spewed at him by these elitist, East coast shoemakers needs to stop. First some background. The other evening while watching another painfully boring, self-important and faux psychological No Reservations some little precocious junior Neurologist on the Hudson Valley show perks up, "My dad hates Emeril."

Her dad is Michael Pardus a chef instructor at the world renowned Culinary Institute of America. No doubt Chef Pardus is a very good teacher and I am sure the man can cook. But you know what they say about why people teach.

Now Emeril did not go to the CIA, he went to Johnson & Wales. One suspects some of the jealousy fueled hatred directed towards Emeril by the Ruhlmans, Parduses and others is little more than Harvard grads mocking Thornton Melon's success. If so, grow up jerks.

In the early 90's, Emeril Lagasse took a corner warehouse in an abandoned part of town and turned it into a global empire. He also went on an unknown and struggling television network and turned it into the media force (for good and bad) that is now the Food Network. Sure, some people found the catchphrases slightly annoying, but the fact is Emeril did more to get people excited about cooking, eating, and restaurants than any other chef in history.

Emeril out Juliaed, Julia. And sorry but Emeril did not give rise to the Rachel Ray's, Sandra Lee's etc... on the Food Network. A series of market studies, advertiser driven shows, and focus groups gave us 30 Minutes From Can to Table. Essence of Emeril is also one of the best cooking shows on television. On Essence, Emeril is much calmer, more instructive, and delivers much more than just a final dish.

Bourdain's entire career would have festered out in a French-american version of TGI McFunsters had Emeril not come on the scene in the early 90's. Who would he have railed against? He bounced, by his own admission, from one dead end cooking job to another as culinary superstars rose around him in New York City. It is time to move away from the morose, introspective bullshit. You are boring everyone.

To be fair, Ruhlman addresses some of the celebrity-chef backlash in The Reach of a Chef. However, ever notice no one ever says, "I hate Emeril because the food in his restaurants sucks"? It is because the food by and large is excellent. Granted, I've had some average meals at NOLA where it always seems to be spring training, but at Emeril's and Delmonico's, I've experienced nothing but fantastic food and service.

Besides his professional success, the man has always been at the forefront of philanthropic activities both in New Orleans and across the country. People will argue he didn't react to Katrina fast enough. And maybe so, but those days after Katrina were very confusing and we all seem to have forgiven the Mr. Benson.

End Rant.

See you Wednesday. We are going to see the Mardi Gras.