BIBS ARE A GOOD IDEA Eating this dish is a messy, delicious experience. If you use unsalted Barbecued butter, Shrimp add some salt to the recipe. 1 Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Add 4 pounds large heads-on shrimp, 1 pound CRESCENT salted butter, 3 tablespoons freshly-ground black pepper, 1 tablespoon ORIGIN STORY Worcestershire CITY sauce and 4 cloves minced There are many different recipes for barbecued shrimp, garlic to a large but all of them contain lots of butter and black pepper. roasting pan. 2 Bake in preheated CLASSICS THE MOST WELL-knOWN oven for 10 In fact, there is a complex minutes, then stir New Orleans dish made mythology that has grown ingredients. Return with heads-on shrimp is up around barbecued to oven and bake the barbecued shrimp shrimp, perpetuated by until shrimp are that originated at Pascal’s story and legend that no cooked through, Manale restaurant. It is a doubt change with each about another delicious and wonderfully retelling. Indicative of this 10 minutes. messy concoction that is the following yarn: Years is a misnomer since it ago, a friend told me that 3 Divide shrimp doesn’t have anything a friend of his (you see how and sauce among to do with barbecue. this works) got soused one 4 large shallow Instead, it is made with night with a member of the bowls and serve gargantuan amounts of family that owns Pascal’s with plenty of butter and black pepper Manale, who, in the course crusty French that combine with the “fat” of their revelry, revealed the bread to soak in the shrimp heads to secret recipe. The problem New Orleans dishes to master for any occasion up the sauce. make a toothsome sauce. was that my friend’s Recipes for the dish always friend had been so drunk MAKES 4 SERVINGS concur on those points, but that the next morning The repertoire of classic New Orleans dishes is so enormous that it would take a book to enumerate beyond that there is little he couldn’t remember them all. Some of the city’s fabled creations are extremely complex and should be left to professional agreement on what other what he had been told, chefs. Others, such as the following, are eminently doable at home. ingredients go into the dish. so the secret was safe. By Stanley Dry Photographs by Eugenia Uhl MAKE THIS taSty treat PRALINE HISTORY at HOME In early New Orleans, pralines took many forms; they were made with sesame seeds, coconut, almonds, peanuts or pecans. But it is the pecan praline that won out and I like these made has become inextricably linked with New Orleans. about the size of a silver dollar. Pecan Pralines “THE PICAyune’s CrEOLE a more democratic note Cook Book,” published in by specifying either “a 1 Place 1 cup 1900, references pralines greased marble slab or pecan halves going back 150 years in greased porcelain-top and 1 cup pecan New Orleans. The book table.” pieces on a notes that pralines were baking sheet and sold by old Creole black Contemporary recipes toast in a 325 women, called Praliniéres, include a wide range of degree oven for on the streets of the French ingredients. Milk, buttermilk, 10 minutes. Quarter or in the school half-and-half, light cream, yards during the “noon heavy cream, evaporated 2 In a recess.” Today, pralines are milk, sweetened condensed saucepan, available all over town. milk, butter, margarine, bring 1 cup white sugar, brown sugar heavy cream, New Orleans undoubtedly (both light and dark), 1½ cups produces more praline molasses, cane syrup, corn granulated sugar candies than any city in syrup (both light and dark), Because of and pecans the heavy the world, but the rich, simple syrup, caramelized to a boil and cream and crunchy and creamy sugar, and vanilla are used cook until the butter, these confection has undergone today, though (thankfully) mixture reaches pralines are considerable evolution not all in the same recipe. 234 degrees exceptionally rich, though over the centuries. Even In addition, recipes abound on a candy not as sweet today, the praline is made for chocolate pralines and thermometer. as some in a number of variations. versions with a variety of versions. As with so many Louisiana flavorings, such as orange 3 Remove specialties, there is no one or maple. from heat, add master recipe. Preferences 4 tablespoons vary from cook to cook. There is a certain mystique unsalted butter attached to making and 1 tablespoon Many early Louisiana pralines, but the process pure vanilla recipes for pralines isn’t really all that difficult. extract. Beat called for forming the If you own a copper pot, until candy candies on a marble you can go to the head of thickens. Drop slab, the assumption the class, but expensive by teaspoonfuls being, I suppose, that equipment isn’t required. on buttered wax everyone had marble in All you really need is a paper. their kitchen. Perhaps heavy pot of manageable reflecting the hard times of size, a candy thermometer, MAKES ABOUT 30 the Great Depression, the a long-handled spoon and SMALL PRALINES New Orleans City Guide, a good attention span. published in 1938, injected typeS OF REMOUlade SAUCE ANOTHER FAMOUS NEW Orleans dish for which there are different versions is shrimp remoulade. In all of the variations, the shrimp are boiled, combined with the sauce and served cold on a bed of lettuce. It is the sauce SHRIMP remoulade itself that appears in different REMOULADE guises. One version is a white sauce with mayonnaise as its Shrimp comes first in the name, but it’s all about the sauce when it comes to which base, and the other version of this dish you decide to tackle. principal type is a red sauce enlivened with Creole mustard, horseradish and other ingredients. 1 2 PREP PREPARE Various claims of Combine ¼ Add 1 pound authenticity are cup ketchup, boiled, peeled and made for each type 2 tablespoons deveined medium of shrimp remoulade, Creole mustard, shrimp to sauce but that issue is 2 tablespoons and stir so shrimp largely academic. prepared are covered in As has happened so horseradish, sauce. Cover and often with Louisiana 2 teaspoons refrigerate several dishes that bear Worcestershire hours until chilled. French names, our sauce, 2 tablespoons versions have evolved white wine vinegar, 3 from the original ½ cup olive oil, 1 PLATE and are noticeably teaspoon Creole To serve, place a changed. None of seasoning, 1 bed of shredded the New Orleans teaspoon grated lettuce on 4 plates remoulade sauces lemon zest, 2 and divide shrimp conform exactly to tablespoons finely among them. the French sauce chopped green Spoon additional remoulade, although onion tops, and sauce over shrimp, the white version is the 2 tablespoons if desired. closest, but so what? minced celery An outlander could in a mixing bowl MAKES 4 SERVINGS AS AN APPETIZER understandably be and whisk. Adjust totally perplexed by seasonings to suit encountering so many your personal taste. variations going by the same name, but I bet he would find each one delicious in its own way. This is a version of the red remoulade sauce ORIGINS OF EGGS SARDOU CREATED BY JULES Alciatore at Antoine’s, Eggs Sardou were named in honor of the French playwright Victorien Sardou and served to him at Antoine’s in 1908. Originally, the dish included anchovies and truffles. Today, Eggs Sardou shows up in a variety of guises, but often it is composed of poached eggs in artichoke bottoms resting on a bed of spinach, finished with hollandaise sauce spooned over the eggs. This is one of the rich EGGS SARDOU egg dishes popular at breakfasts, brunches and This dish is assembled from several components that are prepared individually: spinach, luncheons in New artichoke bottoms, hollandaise sauce and poached eggs. Prepare each component and Orleans restaurants. keep it warm, then put them together and bask in the admiration of your guests.The Hollandaise sauce calls for unsalted butter. If you use salted butter, omit the coarse salt. Trouble? Frozen artichoke bottoms work 1 2 3 perfectly well in this Place recipe, but they PREP HOLLANDAISE SAUCE PLATE a small strainer are difficult to find. Steam 4 cups In a stainless-steel mixing bowl, whisk to Divide spinach Middle eastern food over a bowl packed baby combine 3 egg yolks, 1 tablespoon lemon juice, among 4 plates and and break stores are your best spinach until 1 tablespoon water and ¹⁄8 teaspoon coarse place an artichoke an egg bet. You can also softened. Season salt. Place the bowl over low heat and whisk bottom on top of the into it. The start from scratch with Coarse salt and constantly, rotating the bowl at the same time spinach. thin liquid in the egg and cook fresh freshly ground black until the egg yolks thicken and the whisk leaves artichokes. If you will drain pepper. Keep warm. tracks in the bowl. Begin adding 8 tablespoons Poach 4 eggs off. Slide love anchovies, one Prepare 4 artichoke unsalted butter (softened), a spoonful at and place one egg the egg into or two filets can be bottoms and keep a time, whisking after each addition. As in each artichoke simmering salted draped over each warm. you work, lift bowl away from the heat or bottom. Spoon artichoke bottom. water on the heat, as needed to create a smooth hollandaise sauce and poach The dish is so rich emulsion. Continue until all the butter has been over the poached until the that one egg per incorporated.