Dear Friends This promises to be an exciting year for SOFAB. We already have plans to exhibit the photography of Amy Evans, and the exhibit, Come Hell or High Water is scheduled for late June. More plans are in the works, and we will be revealing them as they develop.
The Southern Foodways Alliance is working to rebuild Willie Mae Seaton’s Scotch House, an award-winning restaurant that reflects the heritage of the city of New Orleans. More information about this project can be found at www.southernfoodways.com.
This month we inaugurate a regular column that spotlights a restaurant in the South and brings you a recipe. We would love for you to nominate a restaurant that you love, that you think we all need to know about, or that you think is just plain terrific. We’ll follow-up from there. Send us your suggestions to info@southernfood.org.
| Chef John Besh and the Buster Crab “BLT” |  | Since 2002 Chef John Besh, owner and executive chef of Restaurant August, has been dazzling palates in New Orleans and beyond. Besh’s tireless efforts to assist in the rebuilding of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina by feeding relief workers is yet another testament to this chef’s commitment not only to food but to his community. Besh and Restaurant August are featured in the current issue of Gourmet Magazine, and you can catch him Sunday, Feb. 26 battling Mario Batali on Food TV's Iron Chef America.
Restaurant August is located in New Orleans’ Central Business District at 301 Tchoupitoulas Street. Dinner is served Tuesday through Saturday 5:30-10 pm, and Friday lunch is served from 11 am to 2 pm. Reservations are recommended and can be made at (504) 299-9777.
Following is one of Chef Besh’s most famous recipes. It is August’s version of a classic New Orleans po’boy. “BLT” Buster Crab, Lettuce and Tomato Sandwich
Serves 1, Time: 15 minutes
Ingredients:
1 each buster crab, cleaned
2 tsp. aioli
1 pinch micro greens
1 slice brioche, toasted
¼ c mixed red, yellow and green grape tomatoes, peeled
1 tsp. extra virgin olive oil
1 dash 25-year-old balsamic vinegar
1 pinch minced chive
¼ c cornmeal
¼ c seasoned flour
¼ c canola oil
Salt and pepper to taste
Method:
In a sauté pan heat the canola oil over a medium high flame. Season the buster crab with salt and pepper. Toss into a mixture of seasoned flour and cornmeal. Place the crab into the hot canola oil and allow cooking for one minute on each side. Season the tomatoes with salt, pepper, vinegar, chive and extra virgin olive oil. Place the tomatoes over a well- toasted brioche crouton and place onto a serving plate. After cooking the buster crab, remove and allow it to drain over some absorbent towels for a moment. Place the crab over the tomatoes and top it with a dollop of aioli, which you in turn cover with a pinch of micro greens or any lettuce sprout.
To Serve:
Garnish the plate with additional chopped chives, chive oil and beet juice if you please.
~ Compiled by Addie King |
| Southern Food, Photos and Festivities | |  The Krewe de Food, sponsored by the Southern Food and Beverage Museum, welcomes the general public to its inaugural parties at The Savvy Gourmet on Sat., Feb. 18 and Sat. Feb. 25 . The Krewe celebrates The Three B’s of Carnival Bliss: Beer, Buffet and Bathrooms.
Food and beverage costumes are highly encouraged, with local chefs judging a costume contest in the afternoon. SoFaB will also be selling copies of the reprinted version of Red Beans and Ricely Yours (See below for details). The Savvy Gourmet is one block from the parade route and tickets allow “Three B” access from 11 am to 5 pm. Chef Corbin Evans will provide the buffet. Proceeds benefit the Southern Food and Beverage Museum. Tickets are $30 in advance, $35 at the door. To purchase tickets or for more information, visit savvygourmet.com or call (504) 895-2665.
The Southern Food and Beverage Museum, in conjunction with the Savvy Gourmet and the Southern Foodways Alliance, is pleased to present a photography exhibit by Amy Evans, featuring photographs of food signs from around the South. These images draw our attention to the beauty and pleasure found in the commonplace and ubiquitous, while also serving to document part of a landscape vanishing in an increasingly manufactured world. The exhibit opens Feb. 18 at the Savvy Gourmet 4519 Magazine St., New Orleans. |
| Red Beans Book to Debut -- Again | | The Southern Food and Beverage Museum is publishing a facsimile of Christopher Blake's Red Beans and Ricely Yours, a short cookbook from 1982 containing classic New Orleans recipes from red beans and rice to fabulous shrimp Creole.
The book should be available by Feb. 15 at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art and the SOFAB website, www.southernfood.org. The price will be less than $10 |
| Southern Food in History, Literature and Film | | The 17th Annual Natchez Literary and Cinema Celebration will focus this year on Southern Food and Drink in History, Literature and Film. The events at the Natchez Convention Center, 211 Main St., run Feb. 23-26. |
| Review of Matzoh Ball Gumbo | | By Marcie Cohen Ferris
The depth, insight and breadth of exploration in Matzoh Ball Gumbo: Culinary Tales of the Jewish South is astonishing. If anyone every doubted that the study of food and foodways is the key to the study of all things human, this book will make that doubter a believer. The dinner table and the kitchen are a microcosm of the greater world.
Marcie Cohen Ferris manages to capture the nuances of the Jewish experience in different times and in different geographic areas of the South. The difference between New Orleans and Memphis and Atlanta reflects not only nature of the people who settled there, but also the personalities of each different place. The difference in food from place to place – oysters, shrimp, crabs and sausage in New Orleans, fried chicken and biscuits in Atlanta and barbecue in Memphis contributed to different reactions in the community of Jews to the community at large.
The complex identity of the Southern Jew – their Southern and their Jewish components – is fully explored in this book. This exploration can be seen in the kitchen, in the dining room, at social gatherings, at the deli, at the farm and anywhere else that food was prepared and eaten.
To me the Southern love affair with Coca-Cola and the kosher pedigree of that soda is a recurring theme, which came to symbolize the universality of the balance of retaining identity and becoming assimilated, a balance that is required of all immigrants.
The book left me clamoring for more recipes to satisfy my own curiosity about the tantalizing dishes. This book is a delight.
~Review by Liz Williams
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