Line Cookin' Dogs

Po Boy Views

By

Phil LaMancusa

Line Cookin’ Dogs

Or

Standing the Heat

            We had fast hands, wet brains and wicked senses of humor; nothing was sacred except for the plate we were working on. We called ourselves ‘line cookin’ dogs’, uniquely ourselves and overly underqualified for any semblance of a normal job or lifestyle. Somewhere, at a point between insanity and uncertainty, we’d gravitated to the only places that would employ us: food service establishments. We had started at the bottom, busting suds, chopping prep and finally being trusted enough by Chef to hold down stations of chaos, heat and rhythmic madness of our own. We preferred working night shifts; we liked staying up late and sleeping through mornings. We came in, dodging sunlight, on the run with hangovers and wisecracks, ready to confront an unsuspecting world, we took and gave out abuse our entire shifts, then went out to claim our lustful places on our favorite barstools.      

This was before busy food; before ‘culinary politicians’ cooked on food networks and ‘celebrity chefs’ (that wouldn’t last a week in our clogs) created meals without breaking a sweat. Barring jail time, rehab or coming to our senses, it was expected that one day we would be in charge of our own kitchens. We looked up to our chefs or despised them, but never disrespected them (not to their faces); our chefs were in charge because they had stared death in the face, fought their demons, and emerged vertically.  Chefs held power over us; more master than manager.

            Wait staff was usually divided between lifers and those just passing through on their way to becoming actors, writers, musicians and/or people who looked forward to a more responsible lifestyle, getting married,  having kids. Their feet were held to the fire each lunch and dinner shift around crunch time--the infamous hour (or hours) of ‘the rush’. The rush was not a time for the faint of heart, slow of wit or weak of bladder, either in the kitchen or on ‘the floor’. The fragile were culled by their inability to handle busy times without becoming ‘weeded’ or ‘in the weeds’--the term used when someone is in over their head and hopelessly lost in their timing, organization and minds; have this situation occur a few times and the person is literally ready to throw in the towel. Rarely did us ‘dogs’ show mercy to the weak, it just wasn’t done. To be frank, kitchen work is hot, sweaty, low paying, thankless work. It’s work times ten and if you can’t cut the mustard, you’re left in the dust and kicked curbwise.

            Miraculously, along the way, a few of us caught the fever and food became our lives; we became defined by our work and that’s when the fires really started getting hotter. We trained with enthusiasm; we took and quit jobs that led nowhere, padded our resumes, found mentors, went to school, read books and emerged with attitude, passion and a thirst for power. We became gang leaders, plain and simple. Keith Richards would have made a great chef.

            Being in charge is a circle of hell all its own. As the person in charge of employees that call you Chef, you have to get the most out of every warm body while fending off the bean counters who judge the bottom line and not the béarnaise, paraphrasing Moses and the commandments:-- ‘thou shall make as much profit as humanly possible this month and then next month make more’-- all the while, you have minions who, albeit a tad shy on experience, have bills to pay and habits to support (laundry, rent). When it’s slow, you’re expected to cut someone’s hours; when it gets busy, you’re expected to work the line, shoulder to shoulder with someone who expects you to be able to do their job better than they can, and you do; and that’s the positive side.

I learned to cook a chicken two hundred different ways, filleted schools of fish, peeled fields of onions, shelled a ton of shrimp and opened a bed of oysters in my time. I have come to believe that there is no component of a meal that can possibly be made better by using a mix, except maybe Bisquick biscuits. I’ve kept and mastered cooking jobs in twenty nationalities and I haven’t scratched the surface of culinary knowledge. I’ve substituted ingredients from skate wings for scallops to pork tenderloin for veal cutlet. It’s hard to be humble once you’ve mastered lemon meringue pie, ciabatta and perfect sunny side up eggs.

            My mentor had a keg of beer in the walk-in refrigerator (PBR) just for the cooks, he made us listen to the Rolling Stones and Beethoven, he worked us twelve hours a day, six/seven days a week and we loved it. He would greet us each morning by promising: “today is the first day of the rest of your miserable f**king lives” and then fulfill that promise. We would do anything to out-cook him, and never could. He is a culinary monster, wherever he is. He taught me that before I could be a success as a leader, I would have to master the art of being a follower.

            Katrina put a hold on my kitchen career when my job as the Culinary Director of a small cooking school here did not resurface. I figured that maybe, after fifty years of blood, sweat and beers, it was time for me to concentrate on the cookbook shop that I co-own and work to make a success of. Still I cook every day—at home. I go into my kitchen, wash up, put on my apron and hone up my knife; I pick up an onion and go into my zone. Line cookin’ dog.

            Comment: “Chef, great stuff, but you made it way too romantic!! It needs the bleeding and oozing finger cuts tied off with butcher twine; the sear and hiss of your flesh as it gets pushed up against gray hot cast iron. It needs more breakdowns and flare-ups, burnouts and speed freaks. But other than that, I loved it” David Mahler, Chef of the Jungle

Satchmo Uncensored

Po Boy Views

By

Phil LaMancusa

Red Beans and Rice-ly Yours

Or

Satchmo Uncensored

“Of course Pops toms, but he toms from the heart!”  Billie Holiday

            I told a tourist the other day that St. Louis Street as well as the cathedral at Jackson Square are named for Louis Armstrong: “After all”, said I, “we have Armstrong Park, Armstrong Airport--- he is our City’s favorite son--- so, naturally we have canonized him!”

 Not really, but it’s not a stretch; we’ve literally put Saint Satchmo on a pedestal, too bad, even though he deserves it, he never wanted it. Let’s start at the beginning:  the grandson of slaves, the illegitimate son of a part time hooker and an absentee laborer, raised mostly by a local Jewish family when he wasn’t being shuffled from pillar to post for a pallet; reared in a dirt poor slum, selling buckets of coal to the Storyville prostitutes (and listening to his musical hero, Joe “King” Oliver), picking up scrap from the back of a drawn wagon and cacophonically blowing a tin horn—“he played it every day, all day”-- to attract business. It was while working and tootling “one of them long tin horns that they celebrate Christmas with” that he spotted a beat up cornet in Jake Fink’s Loan Office (Pawn Shop) on Perdido and South Rampart Street and Morris Karnofsky, the rag, bone, bottle and metal (junk) collector that he worked for, lent him the two Dollar down payment on the five dollar instrument. The rest he paid on time from his hard earned pay.

The Karnofsky family, Lithuanian Jewish immigrants, took little Louis in and even welcomed him at their table, what they called ‘cupboard love’ back then; ‘Mother Tillie’ would make sure that he was fed and even taught him Russian lullabies, because he also had a good voice. The Karnofskys were the first to encourage Louis’ playing and singing; nurturing him in his early life, this kid from a broken family. Louis forever wore a Star of David, relished Jewish food and praised his adopted traditions, giving full expression to this double helix of cultures-- Jewish and African American-- all of his days. The solidarity that he felt was well earned and given freely. It seems that New Orleans has perpetually had an element of haves and have-nots, and like it or not Africans and immigrants have generally had to go through periods of exclusion and prejudice until they come into their own; the Africans, the Irish, Germans, Sicilians and Eastern European Jews all were looked down upon and left to hard scrabble --basically because they were poor-- until they created a prosperity of their own making.

One of the things that united them was music. That music is called Jazz; Jazz is the people’s music, and at the time of Louis Armstrong’s childhood, Jazz was demanding attention.

Singing/scatting in street skiffle bands by age ten, Louis fit into music like a hand into a glove. A performer from an early age, he never tired of wanting, and getting, attention, eating it up like chicken on Sunday and, as we all know, is now called forward for his ‘prodigious virtuosity and extraordinary talent’. It is not enough to say that he got very very good on his horn; he was, simply put, a Musical God.  A god that was treated unfairly enough by his city from day one to the extent that he lived out his life away from here and is buried in Queens, New York not far from where his house that his wife bought in 1943 is and where he called ‘home’ until his death in 1971.

The fact is that Louis Armstrong grew up poor and powerless and he never forgot that. The neighborhood that he grew up in was called ‘the Battlefield’ (AKA Black Storyville) because of the gambling, drunkenness, whoring, fighting and shootings that occurred there. He dropped out of school in the fifth grade and started working; Louis had to hustle because he was the wage earner of his family that included his mother and his sister.  He was sent to the Waif’s Home at age eleven for firing his step father’s pistol on New Year’s Eve and spent three years locked up. It was there that the band director Peter Davis recognized his talent and potential-- as did Louis-- and when he was released, his musical muse called and he followed. He played in New Orleans bands in his early teens, riverboats at eighteen, up to Chicago, over to New York and back, bringing Jazz and Blues to appreciative audiences and making money before he was twenty-one. Between 1925 and 1928 Armstrong cut more than sixty records with his band The Hot Five. It was then that Armstrong, single-handedly transformed Jazz into a soloist’s art.

Louis Armstrong was married four times and was reputed to have taken many lovers, he regularly smoked marijuana and kept in good health (according to him) by taking routine intestinal purges. He publicly boycotted New Orleans since its banning of integrated bands in 1956. He was raised with prostitutes, pimps and prejudice and, with his immense musical ability, he escaped that and became an international celebrity only to find, whenever revisiting the South, not much had changed since his childhood, even into the 1960s. Segregation of restaurants, hotels, theaters and performing venues disgusted him; viciousness, discrimination and violence aimed at blacks by whites scared him. Explaining a resistance to demonstrate publically he explained: “they would beat Jesus if he was black and marched!” He had already been the target of a bombing in Knoxville at an integrated performance in 1957.He cancelled a trip to Russia in the same year protesting the Alabama guardsmen anti-integration military occupation of a Little Rock high school. “They’re going to ask me what’s wrong with my country and what am I supposed to tell them?” He spoke out against it and President Eisenhower’s inaction and was reviled by blacks and whites alike for his actions and words; as if stepping out of the role of an affable, jolly, horn playing minstrel was an affront.

In 1964 he won a Grammy in Beverly Hills, for best song (Hello Dolly!). The next year when he returned to New Orleans it was on the heels of the killing of Malcolm X on February 21^st and Bloody Sunday (March 7^th) when state troopers armed with tear gas, bull whips and billy clubs attacked nearly six hundred marchers in Selma who were protesting the police shooting of a voter registration activist. He was able to see different sides of our country’s prides and prejudices; because of his talent he was loved and revered, because of his color he was disparaged.

If Louis Armstrong was alive today, would he find New Orleans very much different than the New Orleans that he knew? Sure, the streets have been paved (kinda), most everybody has electricity and running water; there’s gentrification and the white washing and green washing of our city infrastructure, but have we really advanced? Why is it that the majority of successful African Americans leave their New Orleans neighborhoods and even the city to find security and peace for themselves and their loved ones elsewhere?

In Louisiana teen pregnancy, infant mortality, child poverty, violent crime, obesity, unemployment, and neglect of the environment are still among (if not) the highest in the country.  Add to this the bleak futures for the 73% of young blacks graduating high school (the lowest in the country), the income disparity and low paying jobs for our workforce minorities--it can be depressing and oppressing. It’s true that we have come a long way, but, things are far from perfect. Any person living here needs to prove their worth, same as everywhere else; it’s just that some segments of our population have to work harder than others to make that point or be beaten down by the powers that be that act, in their own interests, with impunity.

It was talent that let Louis escape and the hatred of Jim Crow that kept him away. There can be no doubt that he knew what it meant to miss New Orleans or the sleepy time down here in the South; and he knew what it was like to be black and blue in America.

Short Term Rentals

STR

To be sure, short term (housing) rentals (STRs) are an issue; proponents on both sides debate and argue, with logic and intelligence, for and against as well as those who complain: “I have more important things to think about—leave me in peace”

            STR is a way for people to make a little extra money while providing a service to visitors that want an opportunity to experience our city the way that a local does.

            Or; STR is a business that takes rental space out of commerce while paying no taxes on the income that is made and essentially depriving legitimate hospitality businesses from making an honest living.

            Or----- During special events, hotels and B&Bs charge exorbitant amounts of money, do not offer home-like amenities and generally are not as personable as a resident providing the same if not better living conditions for less money.

But: there are people that rent housing, buy property or own spaces that cater only to STR visitors who take away the flavor of our city by turning neighborhoods into stretches of STRs.

And--- then there’s the “I don’t give a flip about your local politics and concerns; me and my buddies (bachelorette group, family reunion, romantic getaway) just want to kick back, relax and have a good time. Should I care about legal or illegal? The guy’s renting the space, we want space, resolve your differences and stop making me the bad guy! I’m paying good money to be here! Deal with it!”
`           Truth be told, all this centers, rightly (or wrongly) around an organization named AIRBNB. Truth be told: there are at least a dozen other companies and communications that foster STRs (20,000+ reservations over Jazz Fest). Is it good for the economy? Yes and no. Visitors that experience’ life as a local’ still spend money and on a shop-small level they help independent businesspeople; they go to local restaurants and grocery stores, they frequent off the beaten path clubs and watering holes, they hang in our parks and on our porches. In short, they get the low down on the slowdown of our way of life from locals and avoid ‘tourist traps’. However, our service industry (28,000+) suffers when the ‘captive audience’ isn’t spending money on parking, room service, cookie cutter eating places and attractions aimed at “once in a blue moon” visitor.

            To be fair: the average STR guest doesn’t want to be held captive as a tourist; they want to have a holiday and immerse themselves in our culture, music, food and funk. Period. On the other hand, landlords that take housing out of commerce; creating timeshares; evicting tenants; have multiple houses set up as STRs or even locals that rent multiple spaces and ‘flip’ them for (untaxed) income are, in fact, giving STRs a bad name and some even opine that they are the scum of the earth. (And yes, there are these people living amongst us.)

            Consider that there are over 7,000 pieces of living places or living spaces available to the short term renter, 72% of which are entire residences (houses, apartments) as of this writing.  The majority of people renting those spaces do not live in them and in some cases don’t even live in this city.

            The result is that, as those spaces are taken out of commerce, other available spaces become more expensive to rent and harder to find—STRs have become a business that pushes people out of their homes and creates streets of strangers instead of neighbors. Fact is, at any given time someone from somewhere else can rent a couch to a castle in New Orleans, on a short term basis, while you and your constituents are finding it harder and harder to find places to live in or that you could afford to move into here. It’s also a fact that in many cases, existing rents are being raised out of the reach of long time residents to keep up with supply and demand.

            The original idea of AIRBNB was to rent a space in your house to a person or persons that wanted to be your friend and guest. We’ve lost that to greed and that is not good.

            I’m not sure how to opinionate on this complex subject and certainly no one is asking for my opinion and/or possible options and alternatives; however, when we have an equation that has homelessness on one side and a housing shortage on the other, it would question a thinking and caring person’s logic of ignoring the possibility of the relevance of that correlation to STRs. 

            Meanwhile, while neighbors differ with neighbors and attitudes escalate,and visitors start feeling alienated, our city officials appear complacent and nothing gets resolved. Ask opinions on the street and the word is that, in fact, the mayor himself wants the proliferation of STRs; I don’t know. Emails to AIRBNB have gone unanswered; City Hall doesn’t answer either. The best that I can tell you is to be aware that this is a real issue and concern to be examined and acted upon. One that is not about to go away.

writer's picks 2016

Writers Picks 2016 Phil LaMancusa

Most Puzzling Pork: Okay, we know that crossing town in any direction results in delay, frustrations and confusion; it seems like the city that care forgot wants you to forget why you’re out in traffic in the first place. Case in point: there are streetcar tracks that have been being laid for it seems like a year now starting at Canal and Rampart Streets; I’m sorry, it should never take this long to get a streetcar laid. Is it for locals who already have three buses on that route? Is it for visitors who are chaffing at the bit to tour St. Claude Avenue, perhaps to visit picturesque Elysian Fields Avenue? Or is it as we have been calling it: the laying of the tracks for The Streetcar Named To Nowhere? Will we ever know?

Best Food Tour: Destination Kitchen Tours offers a three hour walking/food tour in the French Quarter for groups of folks hungry for the tastes and tales of what makes this city a culinary paradise; your guide will walk you, talk you and get you tastes of local mainstays such as Muffulettas, gumbo, pralines, poboys and Pimms cups (and more!) the perfect opportunity to show out of towners and locals what’s gastronomically served and savored. Starting at the corner of Toulouse and Royal Streets with coffee and confections and finishing with gelato and macaroons with a side offerings of history, legend and lore. Unlike many tour groups that you witness crowding the streets of our city, these tours are kept small and personal; larger groups are generally broken up or have multiple guides. Destination Kitchen also does history, cocktail and Garden District forays.  Contact Julie@destination-kitchen.com

Best Kids Coral: Want to take the little dears to a place where they can run amok safely and work off their steam at the same time as expanding their intelligence? The Louisiana Children’s Museum at 420 Julia St. is the place for you. Recommended for kids zero to eight years old, there is more stuff to do here than a lot. Art, stories, talk and play centers, capes and masks, history and interactive play centers ranging from make-believe grocery store to café and optometrist. Educational, enlightening and engaging; there are three floors of activities and areas laid out to amaze and amuse. AND MORE!! There are healthy snacks available from vending machines and all you have to do as an adult is to keep up with the energetic mini-bipeds. Set them free, why doncha Babe? Summer hours: Mon-Sat 9:30-5:00 Sunday 12:30-5:00, also available for field trips and birthday parties. 504-523-1357

Kitchen Witch Red Beans

Kitchen Witch Red Beans

Thanks for asking; here’s what I do:

The day before, I put on a pound of Camellia brand dried red kidney beans (2 ½ cups) to soak 12 hours at least, preferably over night; I use 3 quarts of water at least for the soaking. After soaking, I throw the soaking water away and rinse the beans in a colander with cold water; then I put the beans in a heavy bottom pot on the stovetop, on medium heat with 6 cups of water and bring up  to a boil. When they reach the boiling point, I transfer them (and the hot hot water) to a Crockpot and let them cook, covered on the ‘low’ setting, all day while I’m at work, or all night while I’m asleep; what’s that, 6-8 hours? If the beans set up some foam in the ‘up to boiling’ stage, just skim the foam off and toss it; however make sure that you keep the 6 cups of hot hot water.

When I get back to the beans I give them a good good stir aiming to break some of them up to form that good good gravy. Meanwhile I sauté 2 cups of diced onion in 2 ounces of vegetable oil, up with 6 ounces of Field Roast brand chipotle sausage, also (a larger)diced; this product has the advantage of having enough sodium, spices and heat to where I virtually need no other seasonings.

When the onions are sautéed translucent and the sausage is well heated (it’s already at a cooked stage when you buy it), I mix them in with the beans and serve them with crusty French bread over cooked rice (I only use brown rice, but you can use whatever rice you like). AND don’t forget the hot pepper sauce on the side (we like Crystal or Louisiana brands). Serves 6-8, leftovers are yummy and the rest freezes well.

Now, you can gussy the dish up with other ingredients; but, to me that’s like putting a suit on a monkey: you can certainly do it, but why would you want to? Advice? Try it my way first before you decide to confuse the dish. Thank you, Philipe

Princess Pinky and the Flatbush Kid Chapter 1

Po Boy Views

By

Phil LaMancusa

 Princess Pinky and the Flatbush Kid

Or

Freedom’s Finale

            Almost as a punishment at the nursing home, the ‘Bingo no-shows’ are wheeled into the dining room to watch the cooking channel. The blind, the deaf, the frail of mind and the stubborn of spirit, handed melamine cups of weak, tepid coffee or plastic glasses of acidic juice/water complete with hinged straw. By coincidence, two mismatched miscreants were seated side by side facing the seventy-inch flat screen. Her hands were in her lap, neatly dressed and quite proper; her eyes were dim and unfocused. He was wearing a faded tee shirt emblazoned Brooklyn, jeans with the knees out, a three day growth of beard and a petulant attitude. Both were well past their prime in age.

            “The nerve of these guys” he opined, “just ‘cause you don’t wanna play some old lady’s game they tear you away from whadever ya doin’ and make you watch this crappola-- no offense--pardon my French, Lady.

            “Christ on a crutch!” he erupted “They feed us slop that makes MacDonald’s look like a friggin’ celebrity joint and then they make us watch goor-met stuff being hatched just outside of our reach! Sadism is what I calls it!

            “Say, you’re new here ar’ntcha? Well, ya better learn the ropes quick if you don’t wanna ‘game over’, if you get my drift….. whatcha name Honey?”

            The not quite elderly, trim and neat woman turned and said quietly “I am M-M-Missus. P-P-P-Prinella P-Pinkers and I am p-pleased to m-meet you, I’m sure,M-M-Mister……”

            “Oh, hey, the name’s Billy Macula but everybody around here calls me Flatbush ‘cause that’s where I’m from, you know Flatbush? Brooklyn? Nostrand Avenue? You know it? Close to the bridge, it’s changed, sure, but Jeeze, I had some swell times comin’ up there. I miss them times too, ya know?

            “So Pinky, you mind if I call you Pinky? Swell- listen- I ain’t kidding when I’m tellin’ you that smart money gets the layout before they opens their mouth, see; and it’s good to have a friend on the inside what’s gonna give you the lowdown before there’s a showdown, capeesh?”

            “T-Thank you, I’m sure M-Mister Bush b-but…….”

            “Ah, don’t mention it, glad to do it, glad to do it; say, you’re all right with me Pinky!” Here he turned and winked as a more than conspiratory connection was established, at least in his mind. “Okay, there are five floors in this bird house: bottom floor: offices, laundry, break rooms and dining room, where we sit which doubles as a TV room, bingo and Sunday church go to meeting -- if one is so inclined. And I, for one, ain’t.

            “Second and third floor is our living hell quarters and the fourth floor is the infirmary. The fifth floor is for the loonies and anyone who gives them trouble: you speak outa line and Bam!, they jab a needle in you and poof, you do a Houdini. You don’t want to go to the fifth floor—one: nobody hears from you again and – two: the cigarettes are more pricey; down here, they’re four for a buck, up there you only get three. Ya gotta conserve your money here-- they only give you thirty eight bucks a month as you well know-- stick with me kid, I’ll keep you on the straight and narrow.

            “Next: there are three workin’ stiff shifts that you have to watch out for; the first is the Monday through Friday day shift, that’s the best one where there’s some kind of human milk of kindness, plus the bosses are around. Second: the night shift where you’re totally ignored unless you’re havin’ the epilepsy, bleedin’ to death or takin’ a leak in the hallway. And then there’s the worse and worser: weekend shifts AND the night shift on the weekends. Here’s where you could die of thirst, strangulation or a broken heart and nobody would notice till rigger-mautis sets in.

Now pinky, see that big guy over there pickin’ his bazoo ? Well that’s……….”

The Flatbush Kid talked for hours not slowing, waiting for a response or contribution to the conversation and ‘Princess Pinky’ (as she became to him) sat enthralled as the Kid wove tall tales, gossip, hearsay, rumor and conjecture around her consciousness like gossamer clouds; his memory, imagination and articulation astounded her, and when at times she rose to the occasion to question his information, he would grin lopsidedly, give her that wink and “hadja that time, didn’t I Pinky?” or “Hard to believe, ain’t it, Princess?” Needless to say, they became inseparable…..

            One day the Kid turns to the Princess and says, “Ya know what Pinky, the other night after you went back to your room, I was thinking, ya know?

            “I was thinking how what the whole point of livin’ this long is, see? Yer friends, family, loved ones, they die; you survive being poor, being rich, sickness, health--- you wake up in the morning with pains----being old hurts!-- you lose your freedom, your strength leaves you and all you have to show for making it this far is a single bed in a ‘facility’ with nothing more exciting than Bingo on Thursday night and The Golden Girls on TV, if you can stay awake long enough; sheesh, if I didn’t have my choppers, they’d be giving me baby food for dinner!

            “And then I come down to breakfast and I see you waiting at ‘our’ table, smellin’ fresh and looking real fine. I swear Pinky, I don’t know what you see in this old wreck, but you…. you make my life worthwhile and, and, what I’m trying to say Pinky is that you’re the most important person in the world to me now, and I’m thankful for all the crappola that I been through just to sit here with you”

            At that point the Princess’ eyes cleared and she looked at The Kid, as if into his soul. “Why Sir”, she said with a shy smile “are you flirting with me?”

Stormy Weather

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.