New Orleans Redux

As I digest the experiences of my recent week in New Orleans at the annual conference of the International Association of Culinary Professionals, many great moments come to mind. Here are a few:

Just being back on the streets of that lovely, exotic and historic city for the first time in 11 years. New Orleans is a place like no other, with its unique blend of cultures--European, Caribbean and African--and its history, customs, architecture, music and food.

Enjoying beignets and chicory coffee in Café du Monde. The place was packed like there was no tomorrow--or as if everyone thought beignets would be outlawed by midnight. So what if it looked like we’d been dusted for fingerprints? What’s a little powdered sugar when you get to enjoy freshly-made beignets, along with an attitudinous dark-as-sin coffee that’s stout enough to power a jet engine?!

Surely they must serve beignets in Heaven!

Hearing, “’scuse me, darlin’!” and “Sorry, Sweetheart!” countless times as I navigated crowded sidewalks and slipped past local men going about their business of setting up for the day’s activities. In most cities, there would have been (1) no apology for having bumped into me and (2) no term of endearment go to with it. There was nothing weird or predatory behind it--just good manners.

The kick of having Chef Paul Prudhomme himself serve me a bowl of amazingly tasty gumbo and give me the cheffly knuckle tap. Chef Paul is one-in-a-million, the real deal, an ultra-fine cook who never sought out fame and who wears his celebrity lightly and modestly. (And out of respect for this, I refrained from shoving a camera in his face.)

Most importantly—and Chef Paul is a part of this—the warmth and gratitude of those I bought from during my stay. New Orleans is one of the great welcoming cities in this country. Its citizens know how to have a roarin’ good time, and they love showing visitors a good time, too. No one’s a stranger there for long. And the food, as always, is top notch and memorable.



The Creole rabbit at Olivier's is succulent and flavorful.








Central Grocery on Decatur Street, birthplace of the muffuletta, still serves up its famous party-sized sandwich. This giant round of Italian bread filled with cured meats and cheese and zazzed up with garlic-and-olive relish is great to pick up on your way out of town—you can eat some now, and still have plenty to enjoy on the trip home.


New Orleans is a long, long way from being completely repaired and restored. There are people still living without electricity and phone service. There are people still living in tents. And many who have yet to return. The city is bloodied, by both the storm and by the federal government’s indifference to its plight, but New Orleanians are fighting to regain some sense of normalcy, to rebuild their homes and their lives.


You never know what--or who--you'll find in your wanderings about the city. Looks like double good fortune to me!



Some people seem to think the city is still under water. The water receded within a couple of days of Hurricane Katrina 2½ years ago, but the damage—both physical and psychological—left in its wake is taking a long time to erase. And perhaps it never completely will be.

This is where the water lives--

in the Mississippi River, not on top of the city!

It's impossible to stand still when the music cranks up. It's as vital a part of life in New Orleans as eating, drinking or even breathing . . .



But New Orleans is open for business, with its warmth and hospitality intact. To those who crave to travel abroad but who don’t have the money, I’ve always said, “Go to New Orleans—it’s the most foreign and exotic place you'll find on the North American continent.” With the dollar taking a clobbering against the euro and the English pound, why not visit—or revisit—this amazing city? Beauty, history, great food and a warm welcome await you. As the locals say, Y'all come, and

Laisse le bon temp rouler!

. . . and gumbo for all

During my recent visit to New Orleans, one thing that impressed me most as I learned about the city’s cultural and culinary evolution was the way in which a key element was introduced into the mix.
When the slave traders arrived in west Africa and rounded up the locals for “import” to the New World, they refused to allow the enslaved to carry anything with them. Because okra held a sacred place in African culture as both a food and a healing agent, the women being pressed into slavery hastily wove the dried vegetable pods into their hair in order to bring it to their new home. This is how we came to have okra in North America.

Ever since people began leaving home for points unknown (whether their journeys were voluntary or forced), they’ve brought their treasured comfort foods with them. There’s nothing that can take the edge off of illness or loneliness or anxiety quite like having a meal of what soothed us when we were young. Even now, when I return to Los Angeles from a trip home to Tennessee, my suitcase is tight with packages of country ham and bacon and, until they started being shipped to the West Coast, good ol' Goo Goo Clusters. If I could manage it, I’d include fried catfish in the trove. None of these foods are haute cuisine, but that’s not the point. This is why chefs sharing with each other what their last meal would be, were they ever to end up on death row, invariably list their favorite comfort foods.

The Bantu word for okra, “kigombo,” gave us the name of that quintessential New Orleans food, gumbo. As okra was a special food to the west Africans, so gumbo is to New Orleanians. We all have our own “gumbo,” even if we don’t eat it with a spoon.

Hog Wild

At Sunday night’s Epiphany party our group convened to cap off the Christmas season with a potluck and to catch up on everyone else’s holidays. My good pal, Chuck Taggart of Gumbo Pages fame, brought his amazing Pork & Pork & Pork & Beans to share. Have this even once, and you’ll never settle for mere pork and beans again. In fact, if I ever find myself on death row, that dish will be one of the components of my final meal.

As Chuck and I compared notes on the contents of our luggage when we returned to Los Angeles after Christmas, he from New Orleans and I from Memphis, we concurred that an awful lot of pork was involved. My suitcase was stuffed with packages of country ham and bacon and a big ol' hamhock. His haul was similar, but included tasso, the secret ingredient in many fine Cajun and Creole dishes, along with Zapps potato chips and lots of booze.

In case you’re wondering, yes, you can buy pork in Los Angeles, but those mass-produced packages of Uncle Tater’s or Little Willie’s bacon will be essentially flavorless and injected with water, which is why it shrinks to nothing when you cook it and tastes like nothing when you eat it.

As we cooed over our devotion to pork, I said, “There’s only one thing better than bacon.” Chuck looked at me as if I'd lost my marbles. I paused for effect, then said, “Bacon topped with bacon.” He sighed and said, “Thank God! I was about to ask, ‘Who are you and what have you done with my friend, Carol?’”

The challenge is in reconciling a love of pork with the need to eat more healthfully, and this is where the good stuff comes in. Andy and I refuse to cast out pork like some demon bent on our destruction. Instead, we hold to the wisdom of Pete Wells, who contends in the pages of Food and Wine magazine that bacon isn’t a meat but rather a condiment.

He certainly has a point, especially as it relates to good quality bacon. The flavor is distilled smoky, salty, sweet porkiness, which we savor as we would any fine wine or food: a tiny bit at a time, over a long period of time. In fact, since Christmas we've been sharing one strip of bacon about every other morning.

Half a strip?! That sounds rather spartan, but when you eat the really good stuff—like what Chuck and I packed back to Los Angeles from home—and enjoy it over the course of a meal, it's amazing how satisfying a mere half strip of bacon can be, how the flavor lingers and how the aroma and the memory goes with you. Truth be told, I enjoy a smaller portion much more, because I don’t mindlessly wolf it down.

According to Aesop, “Better beans and bacon in peace than cakes and ale in fear.” He must have been buying his bacon at a chain grocery.

There’s a fable in there somewhere, I’m sure.