Saturday was Youth Day, an annual celebration in Winters since 1933. The day starts with the Rotary Club Pancake Breakfast, and then everyone collects their parade-viewing beverages and stakes out a good spot on Main Street. It’s a great hometown show—handmade floats, marching and mariachi bands, old tractors and 50s hot rods, dancing horses, pre-teen baton twirlers, and the Shriners with their zany Go-kart routine.

We tried our hand at Ramos Gin Fizzes, which were as lovely as I remembered them from last week at Tujague’s. We followed Chris McMillian’s recipe:

Combine 1 and ½ oz dry gin, ½ oz each fresh lemon and lime juice, 1 oz simple syrup, 2 oz heavy cream, a few drops of orange flower water, a few drops of vanilla, and an egg white in a cocktail shaker. Shake the dickens out of it, add ice, and shake again until it’s thick and foamy. Strain into a glass and top off with club soda.

They were delicious. I wouldn’t change a thing, other than to experiment to get a stiffer foam. I taunted my shaker boys and girls, but they wouldn’t rally for the epic 12-minute shake. I didn’t have any better luck with the food processor, but I think a whisk–by hand or stand mixer–might do the trick.

Gin hounds

Eating pancakes is your civic duty

Here I am with Louie Lipps, who runs a seafood biz in Frenier, LA, near LaPlace, on the southwest bank of Lake Pontchartrain, about 30 miles outside of New Orleans. I’d never been to The Crab Trap before, which I think they’d call a boiling point just a little further into Cajun country. Louie opened his place in 2007, underneath Lakeview Snoballs, which he also owns, and he’s only there Friday-Sunday, and only during crawfish season (February or March through October.)

Louie doesn’t just deal in crawfish, he buys crabs and shrimp from area fisherman, and runs a few traps of his own. The shrimp are the best I’ve ever eaten–firm, plump, and exceptionally sweet. I’m assuming these are brown shrimp out of the local estuaries, but I didn’t ask. They have nothing in common with the ocean-caught and farm-raised (often imported, usually frozen, and always beheaded) shrimp I’m used to.

The goal was to decompress after three days of intense po-boy research and French Quarter Fest-ing. And to eat crawfish, which is how The Crab Trap came recommended. Louie’s crawfish are usually wild-caught in the Atchafalaya River basin, although he occasionally supplements with some farmed in Opelousas. The crabs come out of Lake Pontchartrain, and he keeps shedding tanks so he can harvest them at perfect soft-shell stage and sell them to restaurants in New Orleans and beyond.

The rain started just as we headed out I-10 for the two-story shack on Peavine Road, near a boat landing and a bigger, fancier seafood restaurant. (We nosed around, and then turned up our noses, because it partially blocks the view from The Crab Trap and the bathrooms had those cascading waterfall features for sinks.) Louie’s place is open to the air, the menu is a few trays tacked to the wall, and the crawfish come out of a freestanding industrial kettle and into a stack of plastic totes. The choices are boiled seafood, barbecue shrimp and crab, and portions of the corn, potatoes, and sausage from the boil. There’s a place to mix your sauce, a place to wash your hands, and a cooler of drinks. You can sit out back with a few trays of hot seafood and a couple cold beers, and you can shuck away the afternoon listening to the rain scamper on the tin roof (and Jimmy Buffet’s greatest hits.)

After a few such perfect hours, once we’d sucked and slurped every last crustacean down to its pink husk and tiny jagged legs, Louie gave us a tour. The two sheds adjacent to the restaurant are full of tanks where the crawfish are purged and the crabs shed their shells. He says the clear, sweet taste of his crawfish is due to a 24-hour cleansing in the tanks, which are plumbed so that fresh water keeps running through the system, and through the crawfish’s system, too.

He showed us a faint red stripe that appears on a crab’s second leg, called the fiddler, as it gets ready to molt. When it’s time, Louie checks the tanks every few hours, even throughout the night. It only takes a few minutes for the crab to back out of its shell, and then it swells up with water to stretch the new cuticle.  Soon it begins to mineralize and replace the water with muscle and other tissue.  A new shell starts to harden within two hours, so he has to pull them quickly for crabs that are soft instead of crunchy, the quality on which his reputation is built. He says you can harvest crawfish at the same stage, when their shells are thin as tissue, a delicate treat but a lot of work.

Last lesson from Louie Lipps: nutria are smart and affectionate pets. He throws his stale French bread out behind his house, right next to The Crab Trap, and once the nutria find it, he moves it closer and closer until it’s on his porch. He had one that he used to sit in his lap and eat out of his hand, until it was poisoned by some Katrina-contaminated water or debris. Not everyone finds them as companionable as Louie—there’s a bounty on them because they’ve destroyed thousands of acres of wetlands. Through the years there have been unsuccessful campaigns to market nutria meat, but really now, who’s craving a pan-fried swimming rodent with bright orange teeth?

Aftermath with exoskeletons and studly shellfish-eating reputation intact

Not much of a cocktail person, I make exceptions for holidays, like Mint Juleps on Derby Day and Margaritas on Monday, and local tradition, including Mojitos in Key West and Sazeracs in New Orleans. The Sazerac, which is the most beautiful-sounding drink in the world (can I name my daughter this?) is reddish-brown and sweet and full of rye whiskey and carries the not entirely lovable anise-tarragon tang of Herbsaint. (And I’m a black jelly bean kind of girl.) Among the three great historic New Orleans cocktails, I’d put it in third place, way after a Pimm’s Cup, which I adore. For my money, cucumber is a better funny flavor than licorice in a beverage. But only now can I can rank the full triumvirate, and there’s no contest for the top slot, because Saturday night I had my very first Ramos Gin Fizz.

Henry C. Ramos moved his saloon business from Baton Rouge to Gravier and Carondelet Streets in 1888, in what’s now New Orleans’ Central Business District. He began whipping up fizzes at the Imperial Cabinet, but it wasn’t until he opened the Stag, a second bar opposite the famous St. Charles Hotel, that they became the city’s drink phenom. Histories of the cocktail never fail to mention the “32 (or 34, or 36) shaker boys” kept busy at the Stag by relentless demand during Mardi Gras. An enchanting mixture of gin, cream, sugar, fresh orange and lemon juices, orange flower water, vanilla (sometimes), seltzer, and egg white, it must be heartily and patiently shaken until it reaches a thick soft meringue. Tradition calls for a vigorous 12 or 14 minute shake (Slow Food darling potential here) to fully aerate and give the drink its proper body. The vision itself is delicious: dozens of muscular young men sweating in bow ties and shirt sleeves under palm fans in a dark tiled bar, ice clattering in frosty tin shakers, glass after glass of the pearly elixir handed off into the drooping crowds on a humid April carnival morning. Undoubtedly, bartenders and recipes less taken with that romantic legacy now turn to a blender.

the standing-only bar at Tujague's

I was on a mission to have a Gin Fizz that local cocktail purists stand by, so I read the boards and studied the recipes and even watched this video. Chris McMillian is the beloved bartender from the Library Lounge, who changed stations after Katrina, and is now at the Renaissance Pere Marquette Hotel, where he continues to be considered the final word on the RGF. But after a stroll down the stomping, swinging sidewalks of Frenchman’s music row, midnight had us on Decatur Street near Tujague’s, the second-oldest restaurant in the city. It’s an antebellum beauty, with the original French mirror running the length of the room, no stools at the ambered cypress bar, and a crusty cocky bartender of the old school.

Paul Gustings had closed down the bar when we snuck in, but he couldn’t resist the chance to edify non-natives on the beau ideal of the Ramos Gin Fizz, complete with a “don’t you worry what went in it or how much, I’m the damn bartender” clarification on the finer points. All I can tell you is he used powdered sugar, not sugar syrup, I’m pretty sure he’s of the vanilla-espousing camp, and that is a lay-down-your-life-or-at-least-a-couple-of-years-of-it drink if I ever had one.

Paul Gustings' RGF

Why did I wait so long to sample a cocktail that is not only a pastry chef’s fantasy, but also speaks to my deep affection for and intestinal dependence on carbonation? How could I have spent so many nights in New Orleans without this obvious hangover balm in the morning recovery regimen? Among all the city’s restaurants and bars in which I’ve passed the time, why hasn’t one tempted me to try what is said to be “like drinking a flower?”

I’m sprung for the Ramos Gin Fizz. At first, it does sound more like a confection than a libation. But it’s not custardy like eggnog, or heavy and cloying like milk punch, or ingratiatingly sweet like a White Russian. The beaten egg white, fresh citrus juice, and soda put it an entirely different drink family–sparkling rather than creamy, frothy and fluffy rather than thick, refreshing rather than rich and filling. On a steamy New Orleans morning, when you’ve already downed three cups of coffee and chicory, when you feel like you’re swimming over the sodden sidewalks and under dripping balconies, when you’re lost in the city’s stagnation and sentiment, when the mold and garbage and jasmine and honeysuckle are a stifling vapor in your nostrils and lungs, it’s what you need. It may be what Chris McMillian calls an “eye-opener,” but really, it’s more like stealing a nap under a crisp white sheet, hiding away in a breezy palm-shaded courtyard, slipping into a fresh, tender, midsummer dream.

I cannot say that the Ramos Gin Fizz is unlike a drunken genius’ take on the Orange Julius, but as far as non-alchoholic quenchers go, there is no substitute for a New Orleans sno-ball. Don’t think chips of ice packed into a hard, tooth-tingling rock with syrup on the bottom. The retro steel ice chippers used for sno-balls flake the ice so fine the flavoring permeates it completely. The result is like cold silk. You can get recognizable flavors like orange and root beer, and “secret” flavors like Wedding Cake, and cream flavors, and any of these with condensed milk. Ice cream in the middle is also a possibility. Even though it’s not my favorite (coffee of course,) how can a girl resist that pinkest, only-in-New Orleans fairy-tale flavor, Nectar Cream?

Wanda Walker's cochon de lait po-boy

softshell crab po-boy at Casamento's

Back to rest up from these. Which sounds reasonable if you don’t mention the gumbo and red beans and sausage and snoballs…

It’s been a while, so yesterday we had to audit the muffaletta at Central Grocery, half-and-half po-boys at Ye Olde College Inn, the straight up oyster loaf at Domilise’s, a couple dozen raw at Pascal’s Manale (still the coldest oysters and most charming shucker anywhere,) and alligator pie and oysters en brochette at Jacque-Imo’s.  As the auditors say, no material weaknesses identified.

The sky is smudged, the oleander is whipping the windows, and the French Quarter Festival people are worried. We walked the river last night (until we were hospitably run off) behind the sound and light tents and mountains of Abita kegs and gater fry and crawfish pie stands (better than the Macy’s float walk the night before Thanksgiving.) The event brings in close to 500,000 people, and the local acquaintances we ran into at Cochon last night said it’s ALWAYS beautiful for FQF.

It’s Friday! Gumbo Day! No time to dilly-dally! So quickly, here’s what we ate at Cochon last night. Honestly, it wasn’t quite as exciting as the memory wrung from my first meal there three years ago, but then it was a rough-edged little start-up on a desolate stretch of Tchoupitoulas. In the sea of classical Creole restaurants and soulful sandwich joints, it was a new idea: a not-too-expensive, simple-plate take on rural South Louisiana dishes like rabbit and dumplings, catfish stew, and a slew of beautiful pork parts–a hock on grits (now sweet potatoes,) black-eyed peas, and pickled greens, cochon du lait with turnips and cracklins, and deep-fried boudin balls, among others. Maybe because now “we cure our own charcuterie from a local farm-raised pig” has become standard waiter’s intro to the house special, it seems a little less special. Maybe it’s the line of cabs dumping beaded tourists at the curb (ok, we’re tourists, but enlightened tourists–see, no beads! And honestly, it’s good to see the warehouse district thriving.) Or the lazy waitress who didn’t want to fix our wobbly table. Or the andouille’s slight toughness–it had a great smoky flavor but didn’t measure up in succulence to what we’ve had at some at the country stores out on the Cajun prairie.

But the boudin balls had that perfect crispy/creamy equity and were just dirty (liver-y) enough (more pepper please though, peeps), the salty hock was falling off the bone, and the sides–baked eggplant casserole and a green tomato/shrimp casserole–were delicious, the kind of thing I always want to make at home when the garden is loaded with late summer vegetables and savory herbs, when everything should go without too much thought into one little buttered gratin dish, with maybe some bread cubes and a sprinkle of cheese, and come out a rich, crispy-topped, soft-and-stewy-underneath, much-more-than-its-parts melange.

ham hock with sweet potatoes, pickled greens, and black-eyed pea ham broth

fried boudin ball with spicy mustard and pickled peppers

housemade andouille with grits and lima beans

shrimp and green tomatoes, eggplant casserole

I’ve been off my blog game due to a heavy workload, a crowd for Seder, and preparations for a trip to one of the few cities of my heart, home to the most soulful food in the world. But now, having downed the first beignets and cafe au lait of the visit, having taken in the morning’s fog-veiled view of the muddy river, having caught those first trumpet strains drifting over from Frenchman Street, here’s a quick dispatch. We arrived late last night, hopped in a cab, dropped the bags, and walked a few blocks to Acme (touristy but a line out the door means too busy to pre-shuck) to kick off the four-day Festival of Our Most Beloved Creatures Who Swim in the Gulf of Mexico, Lake Pontchartrain, the Atchafalaya River Basin, and the Various Saltwater Swamps and Marshes of Southern Louisiana’s Mississippi River. Oh, and the French Quarter Music Festival, of course.

Forget how you’ve heard it sung–Paris is gray and cold and wet in April. But in that most French, most heartbreaking of American cities, this is perfect timing. Not only are the oysters as salty and cold and abundant as ever, but the soft-shell crab season has begun and we’re still in the heart of the crawfish months. How sweet it is to be back in New Orleans, where every menu carries a deathly warning. Friends, it’s probably true, that “if you have chronic illness of the liver, stomach, or blood” you shouldn’t touch that glistening filter feeder to your lips without the benefit of cooking. But, here in the Land of Dreamy Dreams, for those of us with strong livers and briny blood, there is no pleasure without at least a bit of peril.

I’ll report on the Seder-under-the-stars soon, but before I get completely swept away by all this funky trayfe (you know, an oy-ster is also a person who uses Yiddish expressions in everyday speech,) here’s a quick pic of this year’s Passover project. Just because I chicken-fried the gefilte fish doesn’t mean I’m above my raisin’, by the way. I have nothing against the Vienna Sausage of the seafood world, sweet, soft, and basking in its own jelly. Tender memories are summoned by the pop of that vacuum seal, and I’m still comforted knowing that when I arrive near midnight at my childhood home, there will be a “fresh” jar and a sleeve of crackers at the ready. And I’ve heard it whispered that the occasional crabcake made its way into the otherwise strict kosher kitchen of my Grandma Elsie (of legendary gefilte fish-making talents) in her later years, so none of that turning over in her grave business, either.

Pain au chocolat, pastry of my heart. I would renounce all the omelets and sausages and waffles (but maybe not KY country ham) in the world to spend each morning with you. I search the sidewalks in every city I travel to, hoping to meet your humble brown visage, resting quietly among the cheese danish and the blueberry scones. I shudder when your creators believe you should be huge and puffy and cake-like. I am saddened if your crisp crackly surface is drizzled or sprinkled or powdered or otherwise corrupted. When I find you, the real you, I know that beneath your small simple square surface lies a long, rich story. You were born of butter swaddled in soft yeasted dough, patiently turned and rolled, turned and rolled, turned and rolled, until you became dense with layers. Beneath those salty leaves you were given a tiny mystery, a bittersweet core. You were left to slowly gather breath, and then hurried into the heat, where you burst open, weeping ever so slightly as you darkened. Your secret was revealed, and like everything else beautiful, you became unique in your flaws.

And when we, the pain au chocolat pilgrims, find you, modest in appearance and number, crowded out by trays of airy palmiers, dripping éclairs, and ascetic bran muffins, we are moved by your quiet singular story and delighted with the beauty of your imperfection.

I stowed away a few from the last batch in the freezer. They are petits, so they don’t take too long to proof in their frozen state. Also they were rolled too thin in the heat of the day. And they don’t rise as much as after they are first cut. But off we go to the MU, my imperfect pain and I, for sweet company and strong coffee…

It's a long way from Santa Cruz

Better not be thinking they're special with them blue eggs

Damn, that's some fresh product

Welcome Fennel, Paprika, and Peppercorn, ladies from Santa Cruz whose owner moved on to less green pastures. We hope the rest of the flock accepts you with open wings, or at least they don’t peck you to pieces. We heard you were living in one of those intentional housing situations down there. With herbal tea and chore charts and solstice circles. And organic scratch and gender-neutral dust bathing stations, and underwater hatching, and stay-at-nest dads…

Well hellooo ladies

Frankly, it’s gonna be an adjustment. Winters is still a frontier town, where lone roosters roam the dusty streets looking for a fight, a cold drink, and a little female companionship. The women here–Mad Dog, Thunderbird, Night Train, Black Betty, Woodford, Pimm, and Juice (RIP Gin)– have been around the block a few times. Mostly with the same sweet-talking roo. By now you’ve met Romney, right?  Barrel-chested, shiny green backside? Wait, don’t tell me y’all thought that McLovin ID he showed you was real?

FWB

Girls, girls, girls. I’m warning you, it ain’t his first rodeo. He’s broken many a hen heart in his day. He’s got a million stories, and that manly strut, and a fine set of spurs, and he’ll chase you around the yard, and he’ll crow like it’s just for you, and he’ll show you where the good worm spots are, and then just like that, he’ll have found someone new. He’ll keep coming round, but you’ll be just another cute chick, another feather in his cap. Come sunset, he’ll hitch up and stagger back home to his bachelor tree down the block. He’s just not the settlin’ down type. Why buy the hen when all you want’s a juicy thigh or two?

You probably won’t listen to me, but the rest of the broads will tell you it’s no kind of life running after that one. You’re better off sticking with them. You could teach them about the movement  down in Santa Cruz, you know, bring a little female empowerment to this backwater. What kind of man wakes you up in the morning like that anyway? Jeez, how bout a little peace and quiet and a hot cup of coffee? And he thinks he’s such a cowboy, but he’s not all that in the sack either. All that wing flapping and kicking up dust and it’s over in two seconds– no subtlety, no finesse. After all, why buy the rooster when all’s you want’s a little… oh, never mind. But don’t say I didn’t try to tell you.

Fennel

Paprika

Peppercorn