More Diners, Drive-ins and Dives Page 10
MAKES 16 SERVINGS
5 pounds smoked chicken, whole or parts
1 gallon (16 cups) water
2 (14.5-ounce) cans diced tomatoes, with juice
1 large onion, chopped
¼ cup dry mustard
¼ cup white vinegar
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
2 tablespoons freshly ground black pepper
2 (14.5-ounce) cans creamed corn
¼ cup ketchup
¼ cup of your favorite barbecue sauce
Hot sauce, to taste
Kosher salt, to taste
1. Remove and reserve the chicken skin and pull the meat off the bones. Chop the skin and meat very fine. Put the bones and the water in a large pot and simmer for 30 minutes. Remove and discard the bones, then add the skin, tomatoes, onion, mustard, vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, and black pepper and simmer for 30 minutes.
2. Stir in the chicken, corn, ketchup, barbecue sauce, and the hot sauce to taste, and bring just back to a simmer. Simmer for another 30 minutes, stirring often so that the stew doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pot. Taste and season with salt. Refrigerate the stew overnight, reheat, and enjoy.
SOUTH
THE HIGHLANDER
EST. 1992 SERVIN’ UP SCRATCH BAR FOOD
You know, finding great bar food is way more than just a menu, it’s a whole experience. Like here in Atlanta at this joint called the Highlander. It’s a dive bar in a strip mall, where they’re heavy on tattoos and serious about scratch cooking.
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TRACK IT DOWN
931 Monroe Drive NE
Atlanta, Georgia 30308
404-872-0060
www.thehighlanderatlanta.com
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The food here is so much better than it needs to be. It’s a neighborhood place where Jeff Merback and his partners decided to take a chance and open in a strip mall. They set out to be the place that was still open at the end of the night. That meant their clientele was going to be bartenders and waiters and chefs, so they couldn’t just throw out your typical grub. The dude running the kitchen’s got it down. Ice Jahumpa is from West Africa, and he’s loading the specials board with some head-turners like oxtail soup and curried goat. And their chili is done with a twist—a jerk twist. It starts with ground beef and spicy sausage, red onion, colorful bell peppers, red and black beans, and peeled tomato, and that pot is mixed with a puree that’s got a veggie and chicken stock base with roasted garlic, habañero, Ice’s own jerk seasoning, spiced rum, and tomato paste. Then he throws in some brown sugar, black pepper, thyme, onion powder, dried mustard, bay leaves, Maggi sauce, cilantro, chile flakes, celery seed, allspice, white pepper, cumin, and chili powder and rounds it out with cayenne. It simmers for a couple hours, and it’s got chunks of meat, great spice and color. It is legit chili.
Their corn fritters are golf ball–size and are served up with their roasted red pepper rémoulade. He does fish-night specials, caprese salad, sliders, Jamaican jerk chicken wings, marinated lime chicken, and potato skins. He even does the bar staple, mozzarella sticks. Here, however, they’re wrapped in pasta. First comes the all-egg-yolk egg wash, and he makes bread crumbs with Italian seasoning. After rolling the mozzarella in a pasta sheet, sealed on the edge with the yolk, he trims it, pinches the ends, rolls it again in the egg wash, then the bread crumbs, and fries it. These are served with marinara sauce that’s made with roasted garlic, onions, peppers, red wine, herbs, and spices. The pasta sheet around the cheese holds it together and gives it a great texture. Whatever the hour, you’ve got comfort food. Come and get it.
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[GUY ASIDE]
Here are some dudes who wanted a place that’s open when they get off work in the restaurant biz, so they got together to create the Highlander, and it works. There’s some crazy ink and artwork on the ceilings, and it kinda feels like home. The stereotype is that a wild bar won’t have good food or the food will have been frozen. But I met Ice, the chef, and he made some bomb fried mozzarella for me. Ninety percent of the places you go in the country, fried cheese is a preprocessed, frozen, fried, funky little log. But I’m telling you, these guys make it themselves—
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From mohawks to yuppies, this place is the place to hang out.
GUIDO AND THE HIGHLANDERS WILL BE ON TOUR THIS SUMMER.
Pasta-Rella Highlander Style
ADAPTED FROM A RECIPE COURTESY OF BRANNON AMTOWER OF THE HIGHLANDER
You’ll never go back to the frozen, funky little mozzarella sticks.
MAKES 18 CHEESE STICKS
1 egg yolk
1/3 cup cold water
2 cups plain dried bread crumbs
2 teaspoons Italian seasoning
Fresh 10 by 15-inch egg pasta sheets, for wrapping
1 pound block part-skim mozzarella, cut into ½ by ½ by 4-inch sticks
Vegetable oil, for frying
Grated Parmesan cheese, for garnish
Marinara sauce, hot, for dipping
1. Whisk the yolk and water in a small bowl. Mix the bread crumbs and seasoning in a shallow dish. Slice the pasta sheets in half lengthwise. (Keep the pasta sheets covered with plastic wrap or a towel so they don’t dry out.) Place a cheese stick on a short edge of one sheet of pasta, roll to enclose the cheese with a slight overlap, and cut. Fold the ends of the pasta as you would wrap a present. Dip the entire stick in the egg wash and roll in the bread crumbs. Repeat with the remaining cheese sticks and pasta.
2. Heat oil in a deep-fryer or heat a few inches of oil in a heavy-bottomed pan until a deep-fry thermometer reads 350°F. Add the sticks a few at a time and fry for approximately 1½ minutes or until deep golden brown. Don’t move them around too much and don’t overcook or the cheese will spill out. Drain on a rack. Repeat with all of the cheese sticks.
3. Sprinkle Parmesan cheese over the hot marinara sauce and sticks and serve.
SOUTH
CASAMENTO’S RESTAURANT
EST. 1919 HOME OF THE OYSTER LOAF AND CHAMPION SHUCKERS
Here in New Orleans, everybody knows Magazine Street. It’s full of history and restaurants. You’ll find the best of both at this place, where they’ve been doing it old-school for close to ninety years.
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TRACK IT DOWN
4330 Magazine Street
New Orleans, Louisiana 70115
504-895-9761
www.casamentosrestaurant.com
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This place has been busting at the seams since 1919, when Joe Casamento shucked his first oyster. And third-generation owner C.J. Gerdes is still shucking ’em like Grandpa did. Mike Rogers is his five-time-champion number one shucker. (He showed me how to do it so that mine didn’t look like a frog in a blender; you’ve got to get your thumb working for you.) They give you all the condiments on the table and you mix your sauce yourself—horseradish, hot sauce, lemon, ketchup—and down it goes, fresh, vibrant, nice and smooth. On the average Friday they go through twenty-five sacks—that’s 120 oysters per sack. A lot of the regulars can’t wait to come back, which makes it pretty tough in the summertime, when they close up shop for three months.
They also serve an oyster loaf, which is a mess of fresh fried oysters on two slabs of fresh-baked white bread toasted with butter and dressed with lettuce, tomato, and mayo—and a lot of people hit it with a little Tabasco. C.J. drops the oysters straight into corn flour and fries them in hot boiling lard in pots on the stove. I felt the Philly Hunch coming on. It doesn’t get any fresher tasting. And I’ll send anybody who says they don’t like oyster sandwiches over for a chat with C.J. I like the way they loaf.
They’ll “loaf” fried trout and serve some of the best fried shrimp in the city, and fried crabs that are dunked in egg wash, then salted corn flour, and fried up. (Be sure to cover the top with a screen when you fry these, as the moisture in them makes them splatter.) That’s some great crab flavor, and it’s been one of the staples since C.J.’s gran
dpa’s time.
Mike expertly tossed me some oysters from across the room, straight into my mouth. Yep, I’ll be performing here again.
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[GUY ASIDE]
Casamento’s is lined with wall-to-wall white tile, and as soon as you make it in the door you find a dude who’s a champion in oyster shucking.
I found myself on a ladder in this place rummaging around in the attic and looking at the old equipment their grandfather used. It felt
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HE DID ALL THESE IN LIKE…TWO SECONDS AND HAD TIME TO
TWITTER A FRIEND.
Photograph by Eugenia Uhl
Oyster Stew Casamento’s
ADAPTED FROM A RECIPE COURTESY OF C.J. GERDES OF CASAMENTO’S RESTAURANT
Check out this delicately seasoned stew that’s yet another of their fine fresh oyster conduits.
MAKES ABOUT 3 QUARTS, 8 TO 12 SERVINGS
5 ounces (10 tablespoons) unsalted butter
1 medium onion, finely chopped
½ cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley leaves
1 tablespoon kosher salt
4 to 6 dozen shucked raw oysters, with their liquor, about 2 quarts
5 cups milk
HANDS DOWN, AN OYSTER INSTITUTION.
Photograph by Eugenia Uhl
1. Put the butter and onion in a large pot over medium heat and cook, stirring occasionally, until the butter starts to simmer and the onion softens a bit. Add the parsley and salt and simmer for another minute or so. Stir in the oysters and their liquor and bring to a simmer for a minute or two.
2. Add the milk and cook until it starts to rise in the pot. Do not let it come to a full boil and overflow. Serve immediately.
SOUTH
PARASOL’S
EST. 1952 HOME OF BEEF PO’BOYS AND HOT MUFFULETTA
On Triple D, we love to go to the places our fans send us, and this time it’s New Orleans, where e-mailer Ross Liner goes nuts for the po’boys.
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TRACK IT DOWN
2533 Constance Street
New Orleans, Louisiana 70130
504-897-5413
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The roast beef po’boy is the one that made Parasol’s the local legend it is. It’s served with lots of TLC by Jeff Carreras, who bought this place more than ten years ago and kept it the way it’s always been. The recipe was handed down. He trims the meat and boils it for about an hour and a half, unseasoned, but don’t worry; he’ll get your taste buds dancing in a little bit. He uses the water from the beef to make the gravy, which is made with flour, oil, black pepper, garlic powder, salt, and Kitchen Bouquet for color. He makes that gravy every day. Wow, I wouldn’t kick that out of a sandwich. He slices the beef thin once it’s cold (suspiciously like jerky at this point, but hold on), pours the gravy on top, and bakes it, covered, for about an hour. He spreads the bread with mayo, lettuce, tomatoes, sliced pickles, beef, and gravy, then toasts the whole thing for a couple of minutes. Yes, with the lettuce and all. And that roast beef is capital-T tender, juicy, nice and sloppy.
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[GUY ASIDE]
Parasol’s is known for doing one of the biggest Saint Patrick’s Day parties in New Orleans, four blocks wide, and this is the center of it, in a great old building from the 1800s—an awesome joint that’s famous locally.
So we were in the middle of the shoot here in this hot kitchen, making the beef po’boy, and all of a sudden this girl comes in and interrupts the shoot. She’s nice enough, big fan of the show, okay. I assume she knows the owner, and the owner thinks she knows me, and he’s thinking he’s doing the right thing by letting her interrupt us. It takes us fifteen minutes to figure out neither of us knows her. Why is she here? So funny, and totally perplexing.
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Tradition matters here. I could get busy on their gumbo and their boudin balls, which is a pork, rice, and herb sausage rolled up in a ball and fried. Another New Orleans classic is the muffuletta, done their way. He grills the prosciutto (I think that’s illegal in Italy), the ham, the salami. He butters the bun, layers up the meat, then tops it with the olive salad (carrot, cauliflower, green and black olives, and red pepper in a vinaigrette) and cheese and toasts the whole sandwich for a couple of minutes. First warm muffuletta I’ve ever had, and it is ridiculously good. Jeff is a designated flavor hitter.
GO, GO, GO!
BEFORE THERE WAS “WHERE’S WALDO,” THERE WAS “WHERE’S GUIDO” (COME ON, PLAY ALONG…)
Chicken and Andouille Gumbo
RECIPE COURTESY OF JEFFREY CARERRAS, CHEF AND OWNER OF PARASOL’S
Dive into a pot of this New Orleans classic.
MAKES 6 TO 8 SERVINGS
½ cup vegetable oil
1 (3½ to 4 pound) chicken, cut into 10 pieces
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 cup all-purpose flour
3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
2 celery ribs, coarsely chopped
1 medium Vidalia or yellow onion, coarsely chopped
1 green bell pepper, stemmed, seeded, and coarsely chopped
8 bay leaves
1 pound sliced andouille sausage or pepperoni
1 quart (4 cups) chicken stock or low-sodium chicken broth
½ cup chopped green onions
¼ cup finely chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley leaves
1. Heat a 6-quart pot over medium-high heat. Add the oil. Season the chicken with salt and pepper and fry until golden brown on both sides and cooked through, 20 to 25 minutes. Remove and set aside, leaving the oil in the pot.
2. To make the roux, reduce the heat to medium and stir the flour into the hot oil, making a thick paste. Cook, stirring, until the roux is the color of dark peanut butter, about 20 minutes. Watch closely and stir constantly because roux are easily burned.
3. Stir in the garlic, celery, onion, bell pepper, and bay leaves and let them sweat until the vegetables are soft. Add the andouille, chicken stock, and salt and pepper to taste and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to low and simmer for 1½ hours, stirring occasionally to keep the roux from sticking to the bottom of the pot and burning.
4. While the gumbo simmers, pull the meat from the chicken. Stir it into the gumbo the last 30 minutes or so of cooking.
5. Remove the gumbo from the heat, discard the bay leaves, and stir in the green onions and parsley. Serve over rice.
RANDOM THOUGHTS FROM THE ’67: “I’D DRIVE RIGHT IN IF I COULD!”
SOUTH
DARWELL’S CAFE
EST. 2005 THE TASTE OF THE SOUTH, COMPLETE WITH A FLOOR SHOW
One of my favorite places to live was Long Beach, California, so you’ve gotta know I was stoked when I found out there was a Long Beach, Mississippi. Now, if you find yourself here you have to check out this crazy shack. People around here say they’re turning out some top-notch food.
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TRACK IT DOWN
127 E. First Street
Long Beach, Mississippi 39560
228-868-8946
www.darwellscafe.com
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From barbecue to Cajun and Creole, Darwell Yeager III—the locals call him “D”—has been serving it up just right since he opened the joint a few years back. And he’s got a little front-of-the-house help from his dad, who’s hard to miss, goggles, paint-splattered overalls, and all. Darwell started in the food business when he was fifteen, then did some moonlighting as a professional wrestler in his twenties. But his dad told him to get out of the ring and back into the kitchen to do what he does best. He was trained by some of the top chefs in the area on how to put it out and make it taste good.
Like his classic shrimp Creole: he takes chopped celery and sautés it in a quarter pound of butter with blanched, chopped green bell pepper, blanched sautéed onion (the blanching just makes it cook faster, says Darwell), Creole seasoning, Old Bay Seasoning, minced garlic, bay leaves, and sliced smoked sausages. He makes the roux in the pot with flour, adds some
homemade shrimp stock and tomato sauce, and cooks it for forty-five minutes to an hour. Then he heats the shrimp to order, to keep them perfect and tender, and serves it all up with long-grain basmati rice, ’cause it’s a flavorful rice that holds the sauces and makes for a nice presentation. He makes blackened shrimp with his own blackening seasoning: paprika (the dominant spice—three parts paprika to one part of everything else), cayenne, oregano, garlic powder, and black pepper. It’s not so hot that you can’t enjoy the flavor of the shrimp. And he serves grits with spicy tasso that’s been sautéed in butter with chopped green onion, and tops it all with sharp Cheddar cheese. Wow, that’s on point; I could put that whole pot away.
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[GUY ASIDE]
Darwell Yeager the third. What can I say, the dude is a character. Halfway through the experience of frying some Creole- and Cajun-based dishes, he let me know he’d been a wrestler—they called him the Wizard—and I just about fell on the floor. I thought I was going to lose it, but that was just the beginning of how unique the guy is. His dad works with him and is the craziest cat, wearing goggles and dancing around, and there’s a smoker out front. Darwell opened this place a month before Katrina hit, so he spent the bulk of his time feeding people for free. He’s a cool, hard-working guy doing great food in a funny little joint with a real sense of community.