In celebration of Mardi Gras, which is this Tuesday (March
4), we ate a New Orleans- inspired Sunday night dinner in Oxford at Spencer
House. One of my favorite New Orleans
main dishes is stuffed eggplant (stuffed with crab and shrimp), but I knew at
least one of my crew didn’t like seafood, so I nixed that as the entree. I also thought about trying to replicate
dishes of some of New Orleans’ fancy restaurants: Antoine’s (pommes de terre or
eggs Sardou), Commander’s (turtle soup) or the long-gone Corinne Dunbar’s on
St. Charles Avenue (Daube Creole). But,
in the end I opted for a much more practical approach and chose a truly-iconic
New Orleans restaurant as my model:
Popeye's!
For our menu we had a traditional Popeye’s menu: red beans and rice, with some fried chicken
on the side (both mild and spicy). Red
beans and rice is a New Orleans staple; in the old days it was always made on
Monday, which was wash day. To this day,
many New Orleans restaurants and schools served red beans and rice on Monday as
the special.
To make New Orleans red beans, ideally you should have
Camellia Red Beans. Last time I came to Oxford, I brought two
bags of Camellia Red Beans with me. This
time I had to settle for dried, waxed red kidney beans from the Co-op – not quite
the same, but a worthy substitute. Of
course, you have to soak them in a bowl of water overnight to soften them up.
Another key ingredient for New Orleans red beans and rice is
pickle meat. Well of course, no butcher
or meat market in Oxford carries pickle meat, which is basically pickled pork –
so I had to make my own. There are
recipes on the web that show how to do this. However, I devised my own. I bought a fresh ham hock from the butcher in
the Covered Market, and on Saturday I boiled the hell out of it – in a broth of
water and vinegar, with salt and pepper and bay leaves thrown in the pot. Then I took a tea ball (all English kitchens
have one of those little mesh balls laying around) and filled it with pickling
spices and hung it over the rim of the pot, so it floated in the bubbling broth. I boiled the mixture (low boil after a while)
for about 5 hours. When I pulled the
meat out, it just fell off the bone, and the color was deep red like the
delicious pickle meat of New Orleans.
And, it actually tasted a bit like pickle meat!
I fixed the beans on Sunday. They had soaked overnight –
rinsed them and then started frying up some smoked sausage. I could have purchased chorizo, but I opted
for something milder for the students. I
used a bit of the fat from the ham hock (of which there was a-plenty) to create
a bit of seasoned grease, to which I added a bit of olive oil. Once the sausage was browned, I removed it
and sautéed the famous trinity – chopped onion, celery and bell pepper – with a
couple of cloves of minced garlic thrown in at the end. When that was done, I dumped everything into
a large pot (along with bay leaves, salt and pepper, oregano and a small bit of
Cajun seasoning) – and brought it to a boil; then I let it simmer for about 6
hours – making sure to stir occasionally, to be sure no beans were sticking to
the bottom of the pot.
Fixing the chicken was time-consuming, but well worth
it. I’d bought a whole chicken and 7
drumsticks for our party of 6. The way I
cut up the chicken, I get 11 pieces (no backs – which I love, but they take up
too much room in the pan). I had 2 large
pans of vegetable oil which I got very hot (hot enough to completely brown a
square of bread in 60 seconds). Then I
divided the chicken in half and floured it in 2 batches – mild and spicy. The mild just had salt and pepper in the
flour; the spicy had Cajun seasoning thrown in.
Next came the frying of the chicken, which took about 30
minutes altogether. Now here’s the
secret for perfectly fried chicken: You have to divide your 30 minutes into 4
segments. First, put the chicken in the
hot oil and put a lid on the pan, and cook it for 6 minutes. After 6 minutes, take the lid off and
continue frying for 9 more minutes. Then
turn the chicken over and repeat the process:
6 minutes covered and 9 minutes uncovered. At the end of that, take the chicken out and
drain on paper towels. I had two pans of
chicken frying at once – 18 pieces in all.
It was a major success – only 2 wings left after our dinner for six!
With the red beans, of course, I fixed rice. We also had a
salad, reminiscent of the simple salad that my mother used to fix: lettuce, tomatoes, and hard-boiled egg, mixed
up with mayonnaise. Two of the students
fixed the salad; in addition to the basic ingredients, they added peas and
cheese. Instead of mayo, they used “salad
crème,” which is a British product that resembles salad dressing. It was a fabulous salad!
Missing from the meal was some crusty New Orleans French
bread. The student responsible for the
bread made an error in judgment – well, a couple of errors, actually. First, he didn’t buy French bread. What he
bought looked kind of like French bread, but it was called “Malted Grain”
bread. It would have worked, but his
second mistake was he bought it too early – on Friday. About an hour before we were scheduled to
eat, we took the bread out of the wrapper and it was like a baseball bat! Even when we broke it open, it was hard and
dry inside. However, not to worry! The student put on his rain gear and dash out
into the stormy night, down to Summertown, to retrieve a precious loaf of French
bread. Alas, on a Sunday evening, there
was not one French bread loaf to be found, so he settled for buttery croissants
(they ARE French!). They were quite
good, and were a very good substitute under the circumstances…
Well, then we had dessert.
For this, we left our Popeye’s menu (passing on Mardi Gras cheese cake
or cream cheese and fruit-filled fried pies) and went the classy route: Mile High Ice Cream Pie – a la Pontchartrain
Hotel. Basically, you make a pie shell
and fill it with 3 layers of iced cream (which you have let soften). We used vanilla, strawberry and chocolate;
the Pontchartrain uses peppermint ice cream instead of strawberry, but I was
not about to try my hand at mixing up vanilla ice cream and crushed
peppermints. By the way, the strawberry
was good, but I usually use coffee ice cream as my third choice.
You freeze the ice cream pie, while you make
the meringue, which requires the whites of 8 large eggs, ½ cup of sugar, along
with a bit of vanilla and cream of tarter.
Whip it up until it’s stiff and literally “pile” it onto the frozen
pie. It ends up being about 8 inches
high – spectacular! Bake it in at 450F
oven for 3 to 5 minutes – don’t let it get too brown.
It’s difficult to cut (use a warm knife). Then, over this decadent masterpiece, you
drizzle a bit of rich hot fudge sauce.
Here is where I compromised. You
are supposed to make the sauce out of heavy cream and sweet chocolate – I opted
for M&S store-bought chocolate sauce in a squeeze bottle. It didn’t seem to matter! Everyone gobbled up the pie – one of the guys
even had seconds!
So that’s what we ate for our Mardi Gras meal in Oxord. It was a delicious meal and it was nice that
we had company (2 guests). While we ate,
we could occasionally glance up at the monitors and have a look at
Mardi Gras Cam, watching the Krewe of Thoth parade – live!
I regretted not bringing Mardi Gras beads to throw to our
diners from behind the monitor. When I
was a teenager, my brother and I used to do this to my father, who, by that
that time, had sworn off carnival parades.
We’d crouch behind the massive TV console in the living room while a
parade was being shown, holler “Throw me something, Mister,” and hurl beads at Papa Cuckoo (terms of endearment). He was never much impressed...
