farewell to nola

It has been a joy writing these posts. And also apparently folks are appreciating them, since I got a text from my vegetarian best friend begging me to road trip again to New Orleans, with her, and that she would definitely eat seafood (!).

But lest we forget, I wasn’t in New Orleans solely to binge eat on seafood. I mean, I did a lot of that. But the main reason for my presence (and that of my mom and boyfriend) was to celebrate my sister Malindi’s graduation. She worked hard for four years, getting straight A’s her last semester (!!! It’s hard enough to get straight A’s in college- I never did- and particularly your LAST SEMESTER OF SENIOR YEAR) and we were excited to honor her accomplishments.

Reason #982375982379835 that going to my own college was a stupid decision: we never got free anything. By “free”, of course, I don’t mean “free”, I mean “recouping even a tiny percentage of the extraordinary amounts of money the school received from our family”.

Anyway, Tulane excelled at this, particularly at the form of their epic Wave Goodbye party. (Tulane is the Green Wave. Get it?! Get it?!)

All around the beautiful, oak-tree-lined quad, there were little stands that looked like this:

Doesn’t it look like we were at some epic food and wine festival?! They had a DAZZLING, all-you-can eat selection of virtually every New Orleans favorite that could possibly occur to you. Best of all, in miniature portions, so you can eat more. Because obviously one regular meal is equivalent to like… sixteen miniature meals. Right? Right? Hello?

Having tasted a lot of New Orleans specialties already (see above, re: seafood binge eating), I sought out the things I hadn’t tried yet.

Top on my list was the muffaletta. That is because a few months prior, I had tasted one for the first time at my pal Grace's Mardi Gras dinner. And it had kind of made my eyes roll back in my head.

So this happened:

 

It wasn’t as good as Grace’s (I mean, cmon, she made her own rolls; this one was mass produced and a little sloppy) but I think many many things in this world would be enhanced with a slather of zesty-olive chunkiness.

Next on the agenda was crawfish, in the form of crawfish pies (foreground) and crawfish balls (back right). The pies were not dissimilar to empanadas, with a pretty zesty filling. The balls were a feat of nature, managing to be crispy on the outside and utterly soft and dense on the inside, not dissimilar to Spanish croquetas, if you’ve ever had those. My one complaint is that I wish there were LESS on the plate! Steve  and I split the two crawfish plates and there were still leftovers. (Any of you who know Steve in real life or even read this blog regularly will understand that is shocking. In his defense, New Orleans in general was kind of a food O.D., and we were all at this point just trying to keep our bellies from exploding. While still tasting everything, obviously).

There was corn soup and everyone was all “Whoop de doo, corn soup”. Until Malindi actually got it. She took a bite, and her eyes got all wide, and she gave us a taste. And then we all booked it to get creamy creamy buttery buttery ever so slightly spicy corn soup. Plus, in a weak nod to health, a cucumber-watermelon-heirloom tomato-mint salad. Nice, although unevenly distributed between cups. I didn’t get any cute little heirloom tomatoes :(

We were in an epic line for the next item (oh, just wait) so we got some spiced nuts to keep up our strength. You know the sweet, spiced, crunchy, addictive nuts at baseball games? Yeah. Those. Dangerous. Crack-like.

The epic line was for… barbecued oysters! Mega mega amazing amazing enormous barbecued oysters. Drenched in cheese and an herby vinaigrette sort of thing. Who knew, right?! Grilled oysters and parmesan are a very very good thing.

Then we had to make a visit to the dessert department. Another epic line for ice cream.

I opted for the strawberry sorbet and the creme brulee (I didn’t finish these. I feel pathetic having to defend myself about this extraordinary quantity of food. But for the record, I didn’t finish these. But I did have to try my sister’s chocolate, and that one was the best of all and I should’ve just gone for it and gotten three).

Oh and then a slight ADHD moment, where I noticed that the red beans and rice line was really short and I hadn’t had those yet in New Orleans and well…

WORTH IT. So rich and smoky. This is (spoiler alert) the first item I have recreated since coming home from Nola. And, yknow, a complete protein. So there you go.

Shockingly out of character for me, the other desserts struck me as uninteresting. Steve like them okay, but I only had a bite of each (strawberry shortcake and lemon cheesecake. Eh.)

 

But the night was young. In a hilarious turn of events, Erin, our buddy from Americorps, was also in town! What are the odds that two people currently living in Virginia and another person currently living in Texas will randomly be in New Orleans on the exact same night?! So cool. While Steve and I waited for Erin and her buddies to arrive, we sipped sangria.

(love this pic with the moon in the background, Steve!)

And then we were off to Frenchman Street! Also in the French quarter, hopefully slightly less touristy than Bourbon Street. We dipped into a nifty jazz club and got drinks, and then went outside and wandered (getting drinks to go, yet again. Ridiculous).

We stepped into this cool little alleyway, ablaze with Christmas lights, and browsed the wares of local artists. I bought myself a fleur de lis headband for the simple reason that it was $5 and I wanted to remember this lovely night in New Orleans. Then Erin saw it and loved it and wanted one too. Then we were twinsies! Posing with my apparently inebriated boyfriend.

Good times. Thanks for the picture, Erin!

Another crappy night’s sleep ensued. Got home late, were woken up at six am by Malindi’s roommates shouting about curling irons (…)

We went to pick up Malindi and Mom, and motored off to the Superdome. On the way this wretched, wretched cop wrote me a ticket for running a red light because there are BS intersections in New Orleans where you are supposed to somehow know that when turning left, you can’t just turn left because that would be too easy. No, you have to turn left and stop immediately and wait on the median until the cross street has a green light. There is no sign warning you of this. The officer did not care that I had an out of state license plate and my sister was sitting in the backseat in her cap and gown. Ugh. So Steve drove the rest of the way to the Superdome and I sobbed in the backseat.

Graduation was amazing. In lieu of Pomp and Circumstance, a jazz band played wonderfully exuberant New Orleans jazz. The speaker was the Dalai Lama!!!! One point that really struck me from his conversation was that education was a wonderful opportunity but it was important not to isolate yourself as a result of it, and to reach out to the people in the world with less. And to always attempt to form friendships, both as individuals and groups, because with the trust that comes from that, solving all of the world’s problems will be done more collaboratively and more easily too.

A photoshoot with my glamazon sister ensued.

She is second from the left. Fun fact: her pal, furthest left, had been drinking since 6 am!

Then we were off to a VERY exciting lunch. We were pretty certain in advance that it would be amazing, since my mother had been at the dentist and read about them in Food and Wine (!). The name? Cochon. The word for “pig” in French, FYI.

Inside was lovely (sorry, backlight…)

Like seemingly everywhere in New Orleans, they had a great, intriguing cocktail menu.

What would you get?!

Being a celebratory occasion, we were cool with day drinking. Being day, we opted to share. My mom and Malindi split the Honeysuckle Rose, which was great. And Steve and I split The Swinekiller. I mean, rhubarb bitters?!

It was tangy and refreshing. Have no idea what that thing floating in it was, but I dug it.

Mostly small plates happened at lunch (have I adequately given you the impression that we had already eaten A LOT?!)

Steve got two soups. His first gumbo (which he loved, and we all got to taste and admire for its intense smokiness). And another corn soup, since he’d loved the one the previous night so much. This one was chilled, and different, but just as good.

My mom, demonstrating what a balanced, non-neurotic individual she is about food got a virtuous and tasty beet and arugula salad… and fried pork cheek terrine! I had a bite of the cheeks and they were good; nice and crisp on top. Not at all what you’d expect when you hear terrine (or at least we didn’t, we’d all been imagining pate) but unique and very good.

Malindi had a hard time deciding what to order but ultimately just wanted to get something Cochon was famous for. So she got the cochon! It came with little bits of pickled turnips and pork rinds atop. And wow, turns out pork rinds can be really gourmet and delicious!

I was kind of ridiculous with what I got. I knew I wanted small plates, and I knew the crawfish and green tomato gratin was calling my name (I mean come on!)

It arrived and was thoroughly delicious and satisfying. Creamy, flavorful, interesting textures.

And, not thinking all that clearly about all the creamy cheesiness a gratin would entail and still sad and wanting something comforting after getting my stupid ticket I also ordered the macaroni and cheese.

It was delicious, but I was much more interested in my gratin. Fortunately, my mom fell in love with it in a serious (SERIOUS) way. So I passed it over to her end of the table most of the time and a good time was had by all.

We saw some epic slices of pie go past us during the meal, and we knew dessert was a foregone conclusion. Like at every point in this meal, the menu was dazzling and we wanted it all.

But we ultimately opted to share two. The chocolate peanut butter pie was a foregone conclusion, and boy was it great. The crust seemed to have chunks of nuts embedded in it, and was amazing; crunchy and salty and just a little crumbly. The filling was creamy and perfect.

However, no less delicious, and simply categorically different was the pineapple upside down cake. Malindi ultimately opted to order it (we gave the graduate dessert decision making power) because she was intrigued by the presence of cornmeal. And gosh darn it, it was a great choice. The cake had the most wonderfully caramelized outside, and a wonderful, slightly toothsome texture throughout from the presence of the cornmeal. Its sweetness, and the sticky pineapple on top, was perfectly complemented by the slightly tangy ice cream. A unique and lovely spin on a traditional dessert. We all want to make this at home!

We took a bit of time to wander in the area around the restaurant, taking more pictures of Malindi. We returned to The Chimes and hung out in their lovely garden, then went inside for a quick marathon of My Cat from Hell episodes (I completely blame the graduate for this).

And then it was time to go to the ROCK AND BOWL! Malindi’s best friend Sarah had a HUGE contingent of family in town, and they planned to celebrate at this sports spot/music venue. They invited us along, their treat. So nice! So fun!

Aside from being a magnificent bowling alley, it had a bar! Open for party guests. I know beer is a traditional bowling alley beverage, but I don’t like it. So I got a white wine spritzer, which looked a lot like it, so there you go.

 

Rock and bowl has everything you could want from a bowling alley, but also so much more. For example, they cater. They cater AMAZING NEW ORLEANS FOOD. This was my first taste of etouffee on the trip and Lord. Have. Mercy. The big fat crawfish chunks were amazing, and the rich and butter soaked sauce was amazing. I’d never really want to see how it’s made, but it sure went down easy.

Unpictured, there was also tasty jambalaya and salad.

And then, of course, it was time to get our bowl on.

Due to a quirk in putting our information into our alley’s computer, Malindi accidentally played twice. Also Malindi was a dominant force in the game, and did a lot of trash talking about the obviously inferior Malindi.

(Things like this are my family’s lifeblood. We have such bizarre senses of humor. Oh and also we are not good at bowling. Clearly.)

Yet another display of the friendly New Orleans spirit: also having a party at the Rock and Bowl that day was a girl who’d graduated from LSU. She had the most ENORMOUS cake, and when her family barely made a dent in it, started offering it to us.

We politely accepted a slice of our cake, figuring it would be mass-produced and shortening-y. Well, not so! It had the most rich, crumbly, subtly almond-infused vanilla cake, and creamy and delicious frosting. We ate it with gusto!

And then we spent several hours cleaning my sister’s room, and an exhausting 18 hour day driving back to Virginia!

Au revoir, Nouvelle Orleans. It was a blast!

six months

I am going to do a not-very-impressive job of describing Thursday, just because my mind is so… boggled by it.

Post is entitled “6 months” because that is the length of time I’ve been rather extraordinarily fortunate enough to have Steve around, in the whole “boyfriend” capacity rather than just “coworker”. It’s been a… really really super awesome six months, and the six months celebration was just as exuberant, unpredictable, crazy, exciting, romantic, etc. as everything else has been these six months.

I showed up at Steve’s at lunchtime expecting our usual lunch. He announces we’re going for a picnic. Here:

Yep, drove into DC on our lunch hour. Just cause.

So we’re digging into our picnic and then Steve tells me I have to hurry up… because we’re about to go to the top of the monument.

Back story: to go to the top of the monument, you have to stand in a line to pre-buy tickets first thing in the morning. So Steve had gotten up at 6:15 to do so. So that was nice enough. But, in fact, Steve had done that once before; on the October day that we went kayaking.

It ended up not happening that day, but that day was nonetheless special. We kayaked with Erin (and a complete stranger we got to go with us), but then Erin left for a date and Steve and I wandered the city together, got dinner, tipsily fought over the check and, both of us admit in hindsight, totally fell in like.

SO in reminiscence of that day; and just because I had, despite having lived here since I was 8, never been to the top of the monument (the elevators were perpetually being repaired throughout my childhood); and cause it’s just an incredible view of the city, he took me.

<3<3<3

Oh, and the picnic was pretty great too.

I had brought stuff anticipating our usual Thursday lunch collaboration. I totally ignored it. My stuff was boring. Steve’s was smashing.

He made AWESOME sweet potato peanut soup. Back story: Steve is a conservationist to the point of being a bit of a hoarder. At work, we receive some food bank food which is definitely sometimes on the bizarre side. At their site, they got a huge shipment of individual serving cups of peanut butter which smelled and tasted pretty odd and had weird ingredients. His coworkers were all set to toss them… so Steve took them home. He has like three pounds of peanut butter in his room. SO, trying to be helpful, I sent some peanut recipes that way, and as a result was the lucky recipient of a spicy, peanutty, utterly addictive African-flavored soup! He also made glorious asparagus. I asked him how he got such blistery flavorful goodness without a grill and he said, “Oh, about four tablespoons of olive oil.” The Izze sodas are an obsession of his. I rarely drink sodas but dang that clementine flavor is good. Hadn’t had one since freshman year of college. Hit. The. Spot.

Back to work for a pretty forgettable afternoon. We met up after work and took a leisurely walk in the park. He gave me a piece of succulent homemade taco he’d saved me from Cultural Cooking, an activity we do with parents at both of our jobs.

And then followed a series of elaborate deceptions involving a blindfold, several unnecessary uturns, and other ruses to try and keep me from guessing my surprise.

I drew the line at walking blind in heels, and discovered myself in Georgetown. Still, I had no idea where I was going. We strolled down M, looking at the usual Georgetown prettiness around us, and then we turn the corner… and I see the entrance to… Citronelle.

Ho. Ly. Crap.

People who’ve lived in this area will maybe recognize the name (or, in general, food aficionados), but Michel Richard, chef at Citronelle, is one of the greatest chefs in the country (world?). He’s known for his creativity and wit in the kitchen (something you’ll see in this meal!) and seriously, for me, with the amount of fame he has in my head, eating at his restaurant was akin to a backstage pass at a Lady Gaga concert.

We sat down to absolute elegance and Spanish wine.

The sommelier just APPEARED at our table and showed us our wine as if it was a foregone conclusion. She gave us tastings first, and I swirled it and giggled. I drank it. It was red. It was yummy. All I can tell you!

An open kitchen makes for an amazing view. Steve was cracking up watching me. I told him that me watching this was like him watching a Cubs game. Watching them saute. Watching them grill. Watching them drizzle sauces on things. So cool!

Steve is adorable and called the restaurant in advance to see if the chef would be in that night (but he apparently was celebrating Cinco de Mayo by visiting… Mexico!). Watching the methodical frenzy of the chefs in the kitchen, I had absolutely no doubts that I was in great hands for the evening.

There was lots of toasting and staring at each other and stuff, plus me just gaping a lot, but eventually we cracked the menu and decided on our orders. And then the parade of food began to arrive.

It started with bread, warm from the oven, delivered by sober faced waiters with tongs. The outside was quite crisp and made an unbelievably satisfying and loud crunch as you bit through it to the hot, fluffy, luscious interior. Plus butter, natch.

Then the amuse bouche! There was an amuse bouche! God, my life is like Top Chef now!

So the idea of this is that it is appetizer, entree, and dessert, all in tiny form.

Starting on your right is a deviled egg- but it was a teeny tiny delicious quail egg, deviled and topped with fat beads of caviar that popped into your mouth, filling it with rich and salty flavor.

In the center is a “taco”. The outside was the thinnest slice of cucumber, and the filling was a heavenly tuna tartare. Holding it together was the tiniest clothespin I have ever seen!

Finally, furthest left, the “cupcake”. The unbelievably detailed base (when you looked at it up close, it looked like it had been baked in a crinkly cupcake holder!) was actually pumpernickel bread, and the “frosting” was smoked salmon mousse.

All were delicious. Steve and I had a horribly difficult time trying to figure out which bite was our favorite.

Let me take this pause in the service to mention the service. In that: it was absolutely unbelievable. All of the waiters were somber men who appeared in an instant the second my water glass was low, knew the second I had to run to the bathroom to show me the way there, and could answer any of my numerous questions as well as just give fun details about the items as they were served, particularly after they figured out that I was blogging about all of it. They clearly got a kick out of us since we were pretty much decades younger than most of the patrons. Probably had kids our age!

Anyway, this picture nicely sums up the absolute grandeur of the whole thing:

Knife holder. No knife should ever have to sit on the table. The minute it appeared to, they’d come and quickly return it to its proper place. Wowsa.

So the meal was a price fixe type thing. So you got appetizer, entree, and dessert. Everything sounded magnificent, and the menu descriptions were more like teasers, annoyingly brief (just 2 or 3 words). BUT, I just cannot turn down foie gras.

So I got the deceptively simply named “foie gras salad.”

SUUUUUUUUUUUCH BEAUUUUUUUUUUTY!

The foie gras on top I’m thinking was seared just on the outside with some sort of outer coating, then sliced wonderfully paper thin. It is SO rich and glorious. Passed off a lot to Steve, who’d never had it and is all about the fat. Along with that, there were stunning and oh-so-delicate mustard greens, thinly sliced radishes, strips of salty and rich proscuitto, avocado that was sliced into unbelievably thin swirlies, and Asian pear that had been sliced into perfectly precise and tiny squares.

Not only was it absolutely delicious, with every flavor perfectly matched, it was basically a masterpiece.

Steve, meanwhile, got this!

Craziness, right?!

They called it lobster “beluga” pasta. What came out looked like beluga caviar but was actually little circles of pasta; not dissimilar to Israeli couscous. However, once you dug underneath you found chunks of lobster and- wait for it- a WARM RUNNY FRIED EGG. So so perfect for Steve.

As for the entrees, I decided to go for something I’d never tried before and ordered a recommendation from the waiter, the Silver Hake. I’d never had hake before but he compared it to halibut with the meatiness, but with a bit more flavor. It was served with “ginger emulsion” and “trofie-lobster gratin”.

This arrived.

Old. School. Classy. Wow.

But seriously, then they unveiled it to reveal this:

First of all, the perspective is off on this picture; it was a BIG FAT PIECE of fish. As promised, meaty and firm. That sauce it was on? Insane. Totally insane. The waiter said it was a lobster ginger reduction (you tasted it and went BUTTER!) and when, mystified, I waved him down and asked what gave it the beautiful red color, he said roasted red pepper. Those trumpet mushrooms on top were yummy too.

As for the gratin.

It turned out the trofie is a cute little curly pasta. The gratin had chunks of lobster and addictive buttered breadcrumbs.

Half my fish and a few bites of the utterly rich gratin already had me feeling full, so I passed some off to Steve. Which is good, cause, yknow, the food was great but he’s used to eating three times as much as I do, so I try to do my part when we go out to eat at pre-portioned restaurants.

Still, lucky me, I got a taste of his :D He got the lamb, “rack, tarbais beans, jalapeno cumin sauce”.

Let’s deconstruct this thing.

First of all, the lamb melted. in. your. mouth. He got it cooked medium (I am a medium rare girl, but this was on the medium rare side of medium, which I adore :D) and it was just sooooooooooo succulent. That puff at the edge of the shot? The outside was crunchylicious, but the inside was a potato whip that was the most GARLICLICIOUS thing I have ever tasted. It was SO good. The fancy beans mentioned in the description tasted basically like black beans, which is hilariously appropriate for Steve. And the green sauce? Blissssssssssss.

Mmm mmm mm. Happy bellies, for sure.

Then came pre dessert. Um, can all of my meals have pre dessert?

The contents of that little cup were a wonderful light whippy mousse on the bottom layer (perhaps made with egg whites?), a wonderful caramel sauce on top, little pieces of caramelized pineapple, and bites of what I SWEAR tasted like cocoa puffs.

Seriously, the wit!

When it came to ordering actual dessert, the meal, once again, was so VAGUE! ARGH!

I was torn between the top three desserts. Steve ordered the first, and I asked the waiter which he preferred, and ordered it.

First arrived Steve’s “extraordinary eggs”. This is one of the dishes for which Michel Richard is justifiably famous.

Brilliance. The “shells” were white chocolate. “Soft boiled egg”? Mousse, topped with a “yolk” of lemon curd. “Hard boiled egg” was coconut sorbet. The “fried egg” was a meringue, topped with more lemon curd.

Glory.

I got the pear vacherin. The outer dome (a construction marvel) was a solid baked meringue. Inside were caramelized yet still crispy pears and pear sorbet, that melted into that bittersweet chocolate base to create… awesome.

Dessert was a hilarious and adorable circus of presentation. Our waiter took our pictures, looking like kids in a candy store.

Happy anniversary!

Well, actually, on our petit fours it first said “Happy birthday”. They quickly replaced it with an anniversary plaque. Which was edible. Pros!

In conclusion, Steve is the best. And you cannot have him because he is MINE.