New Orleans Learns to Eat All Over Again
OUR EYES ARE OPENED
A caller to my radio show one day demanded to know, “Just when did New Orleans become gourmet?” The way he said the word gourmet made it clear that he didn’t think of it as a positive thing.
“New Orleans has always been a gourmet town!” I told him.
“No, it hasn’t,” he insisted. “We always had good food. You go to anybody’s house or any corner joint, and you get good food. If you don’t get good food, you think there must be something wrong with the cook. But now people make a big deal about it and about all those restaurants that charge you an arm and a leg for a bowl of gumbo that I can make better than they do!”
It was a good point, and it fired up the rest of the show. Most people agreed that New Orleans food was at its best when it was its honest, unassuming self. When it posed as gourmet, it was suspect.
Few other places in the America of 1981 could have kept up that conversation for more than a few minutes. The people calling my show kept after it for days. Maybe weeks.
That’s because we had so much material. Unlike most American cities, New Orleans laid claim to a fully developed, distinctive regional cuisine at least a century old. In the 1880s, the first (and quite thick already) cookbooks about Creole cooking appeared. Those books didn’t start any trends. They simply reported on the unique cooking and eating that was already part of day-to-day life in New Orleans.
New Orleans, it has often been said, is the most European of American cities. That’s certainly true in the food department. As in Europe, pleasurable eating is assumed. When something has gone wrong and it’s not there, then it’s a subject of conversation. Or maybe when it’s time to compliment the cook—but sometimes not even then.
So here we were on the radio, trying to decide when we became consciously aware of just how good our food was. And whether this was a good or a bad thing.
Many theories were advanced. One of my favorites was this: “New Orleans went gourmet when Galatoire’s got rid of those tiny wine glasses that the waiters would fill to the top.” I knew exactly the glasses he was talking about. They were still in use in a few unreconstructed restaurants around town. He felt the change was an improvement. Others noted the opening of this or that restaurant as the dawning of the self-conscious gourmet era. A few pointed to the publication of The Underground Gourmet. One said the era began when the twenty-five-cent martini disappeared from Brennan’s. (If that’s what started it, then what are we to make of the widespread return of the two-bit martini in the 2000s?)
As for me, I know exactly when New Orleans stopped taking its food culture for granted and began instead to think about, talk about, and celebrate it all the time: July 17, 1979. On that hot evening, on my way to dinner somewhere in the French Quarter, I noticed activity inside a defunct restaurant on the corner of Royal and Iberville. I looked in and saw familiar faces. Ella and Dick Brennan and their executive chef Paul Prudhomme were standing inside a fully furnished dining room, checking things out. Ella saw my face and motioned me to the side door.
“You’ve got to see this!” she said, hustling me into the kitchen. “We’re opening a new restaurant here in three days. It’s going to be something different.”
I followed her through the kitchen, in the middle of which was a big open-pit grill. “We’re going to grill fish over burning hickory wood,” she said. “Steaks and whatever else the chef wants, too. Over there, we’re going to make our own pasta. The whole kitchen is wide open, so you can see what the chefs are up to. Good New Orleans food, good wine, and good service. No tablecloths. Fun. Casual. The longest bar in the French Quarter!”
The dining room was wide, long, and low. As big as any other in town. It looked nothing like the Brennan family’s other restaurants. Burning wood in the grill? No tablecloths? No walls between kitchen and dining room? Unheard of. Even empty, it had the look of a lively, social place. “This would be a great spot to do a regular live radio show,” I suggested.
“That’s a good idea!” said Ella. I told her I knew who the perfect host would be. In the end, she went with the idea, but with a different host.
Mr. B’s Bistro proved different, all right. And in more ways than even the forward-thinking Brennans expected. It was busy from its first day. Previously, nobody went to a brand-new restaurant until hearing about it from other people. But word of this place spread virally among restaurant-goers. After a week, you couldn’t get into the place without advance planning. The farther that day recedes into the past, the more the opening of Mr. B’s looks like the first day of a new epoch in New Orleans cooking and eating. It represented a sharp turn in local dining habits.
And it was a pivotal moment for the Brennans, who loomed very large in the development of the New Orleans restaurant scene and my coverage of it.
THE BRENNANS
In the last half of the twentieth century, the Brennan family was the most innovative, influential, and interesting force in the New Orleans restaurant world. They were major players on the entire American dining scene, too. A schematic diagram of the who, what, and how of New Orleans dining would show a dense network of lines extending from “The Brennans” to hundreds of now-famous chefs, restaurants, and dishes.
Owen E. Brennan was a Bourbon Street nightclub owner in 1946. His Absinthe House was across the street from Arnaud’s, the city’s leading gourmet restaurant. When “Count” Arnaud Cazenave came in for drinks at Brennan’s joint, Owen kidded the Frenchman about the complaints he was always hearing about the food at Arnaud’s. Arnaud told Owen that he had no room to talk, because it was well known that no Irishman could possibly understand haute cuisine, let alone operate a decent restaurant. Owen took that as a challenge.
He leased a defunct restaurant space across the street and reopened it as Brennan’s French Restaurant. He hired a talented Belgian chef, as well as all the members of his own family who were old enough to work. He then went beyond proving that he could indeed serve food as good as Arnaud’s; he made dining out so much more entertaining than the hidebound French-Creole restaurants of the day that Brennan’s was soon the talk of the town. He believed that going to a restaurant wasn’t just about enjoying good food—it had to leave you laughing. And that began with a personal and friendly greeting. A Brennan (Owen’s father, like as not) was always at the door, welcoming the regulars and then distributing blarney all night long in the dining rooms.
All the Brennans seem to have an inborn sense of what constitutes a good party. Some family members became notorious for their ability to continue celebrating when all the other guests were worn down. One of the Brennans’ favorite stories is that almost everyone in the family was born in late November or early December—meaning they were conceived around Mardi Gras, the most debauched time of the year in New Orleans. But the Brennans took the concept of unfettered restaurant festivity to new frontiers, managing to expand it into the unlikely breakfast hours, complete with special cocktails and wines. Breakfast at Brennan’s, which takes about two hours, and fifty or sixty dollars per person to do right, may be the only meal of its kind in the entire world.
After nine years on Bourbon Street, Brennan’s moved to its present location on Royal Street, a much larger, more atmospheric venue, with a classic French Quarter courtyard in the center. That transformed Brennan’s from merely a popular spot to one of the world’s most profitable restaurants. The hundreds of seats were full three meals a day, seven days a week, with diners paying top dollar at all hours.
Although Owen E. Brennan had died (suddenly, at age forty-five) right before the move to Royal Street, Owen’s sisters Ella and Adelaide, his younger brother Dick, and his oldest son Pip took over management. The spectacular success of the new Brennan’s inspired Ella and Dick to start thinking big. In the 1960s, they began opening or buying other restaurants around New Orleans, then in other cities. In the early 1970s, they were on the verge of starting a national chain of premium steakhouses, along the lines of what Ruth’s Chris, Morton’s, and Palm would build a decade later. By that time all three of Owen’s sons were active in the business; along with Owen’s widow, they owned a majority of Brennan’s. For the most part, though, they deferred to their Aunt Ella and Uncle Dick in management matters. But the steakhouse plan sounded risky to them. The debates that ensued led to an acrimonious split in the Brennan family in 1973. It has never healed; the two sides of the family still don’t speak to one another. Lawsuits between them continue to erupt, more than three decades later.
After the papers defining the schism were signed, Owen’s sons and their mother took full ownership of Brennan’s. All the other restaurants went to their aunts and uncles. Ella and Dick, with their siblings Adelaide, Dottie, and John Brennan, retreated to new headquarters at Commander’s Palace.
The Commander’s side of the family faced a big problem. Brennan’s on Royal Street was the cash cow, supporting most of the other restaurants. Commander’s, a century-old restaurant in an even older Garden District mansion, needed a lot of work. Brennan’s in Atlanta and Dallas chugged along, but they were hamstrung by the absence of the culture of eating and joie de vivre that energized New Orleans diners. The Houston restaurant did better, because of cross-pollination between that city and New Orleans on the part of the oil business. The steakhouse concept was stone-cold dead. During the next few years, the elder Brennans closed one restaurant after another, until the only ones remaining were Commander’s in New Orleans and Brennan’s in Houston.
Ella Brennan was particularly devastated by the split. She told me of a night not long after she got settled at Commander’s, when she sat in the stunning courtyard of the restaurant with her brothers. The chef prepared a large selection of the menu for them to inspect. “It was beautiful food!” she said. “But almost nobody was in the restaurant. I sat there and cried!”
THE BIG IDEA
Ella did not cry for long. Tough-minded, confident, and innovative, she quickly resumed forward motion.
Ella Brennan’s pronouncements have the ring of incontrovertible truth. Even top food authorities like James Beard, Craig Claiborne, James Villas, and Lucius Beebe—all of whom were her close personal friends—listened and believed. She soon convinced her staff and her customers that Commander’s would be one of the great restaurants in America.
Making that a reality was a battle, though. Making fundamental changes in a hundred-year-old restaurant isn’t easily done. Then Ella forged what she called “a marriage made in heaven.” She hired chef Paul Prudhomme.
Paul Prudhomme arrived in New Orleans in 1975 after growing up on a farm in Cajun country and cooking in the big Cajun town of Opelousas. His first big gig was as chef of a restaurant called La Bon Creole, in a French Quarter hotel. Almost as soon as he arrived, Chef Paul began spreading a new culinary faith. His take on the genuine flavors and ingredients of Louisiana sounded so good that hearing him talk about it made one ravenous.
Although the first thing you noticed about him was his famous girth, he was a handsome man with riveting eyes and a grabber of a smile. His personality was as engaging as his cooking. He appeared more frequently on television and radio shows (including mine) than any other local culinarian; it wasn’t long before most people could name Chef Paul—the only local chef they could. Restaurants and other chefs consulted with him to get that kind of energy into their kitchens.
Ella Brennan thought Paul had the answers to a lot of questions. She hired him in 1976 to be executive chef over all her restaurants. Between the two of them, they hatched the Big Idea:
“We threw out the interchangeable French menu every New Orleans restaurant had had for a million years,” Ella said. “We replaced it with local everything.” That drastically changed the food at Commander’s. For example, trout amandine—the restaurant’s most popular fish dish—got a makeover. “We don’t grow almonds in Louisiana!” Ella said. “Why not do it with pecans from our backyard?” Using not only pecans, but a well-seasoned, Cajun-influenced brown sauce, incomparably more robust and interesting than the old beurre noir, Chef Paul revised the dish. Out went crabmeat Imperial, a polite old standby; in came crabmeat and corn bisque, loaded with cream and Creole seasonings. The new menu was full of such transformations.
The timing was ideal. New Orleans classic restaurant cuisine had become motionless, and newspapers like Figaro had instigated a revival of interest in root-level New Orleans institutions, music, and tastes among people of my generation. We baby boomers were beginning to dine in real restaurants; the food Chef Paul was laying down was exactly the sort of thing we could sink our teeth into.
Commander’s Palace lifted off, and so did the fortunes of that side of the Brennan family. After having to shrink its empire for six years after the family split in 1973, they reversed the trend in 1979 with the opening of Mr. B’s Bistro. It incorporated all of the new ideas Ella and Paul used to retool the menu at Commander’s Palace, and then some. Mr. B’s nailed the tastes and lifestyles of all the young, self-conscious gourmets.
I was one of those, and I thought Mr. B’s was great. Its thick, dark-roux chicken-andouille gumbo was dramatically different from the lighter seafood gumbo served in most restaurants. Within a few years, most gumbos in hip restaurants around town were in the robust, new style. An early Mr. B’s dish called shrimp Chippewa evolved into the city’s best version of barbecue shrimp—that’s easily in the top five or six most delicious of the Creole standards. And the innovative hickory-grilled fish was as enormous a hit as the Brennans had expected. Fish cooked on an open grill was almost unheard of before Mr. B’s opened. Within a few years, it was the dominant fish dish on upscale menus all over town.
What really made inroads with customers, though, was that Mr. B’s was totally casual. White-tablecloth food without the tablecloth. Jacket-and-tie food for people who preferred jeans. Most first-class restaurants then relied on time-honored recipes, ceremonious service, auspicious surroundings, and, in the worst cases, sheer pretentiousness to persuade customers that the food was good. Mr. B’s dispensed with the formalities and put all the emphasis on the food.
It was brilliantly prescient. In my first review of Mr. B’s, in Figaro in late 1979, I called it the Restaurant of the Eighties. It was the most accurate prediction I ever made. During the next decade, dozens of spots a lot like Mr. B’s opened all over town—enough of them to create a whole new restaurant category: gourmet Creole bistros. It quickly became the most popular style of fine dining in New Orleans, and remains so.
THE GOURMET CREOLE BISTROS
The proliferation of the gourmet Creole bistros in the early eighties probably pleased Richard Collin. They satisfied two of his credos: Food is far more important than atmosphere and pretense, and the best flavors are local ones. But Collin gave up writing a restaurant column shortly after Mr. B’s opened. For the first of many times, I was the only active restaurant critic in town—and very active at that. By 1980, I was writing not one but two weekly restaurant review columns for different publications. Plus The New Orleans Menu monthly magazine. And hosting four hours of radio every day.
The bistros provided much to write about. Their food was not only delicious but innovative. On the other hand, it had a clear Louisiana flavor. It was new enough that it didn’t seem like our parents’ food, but still familiar enough to ring a bell. The young diners were always ready to try the latest and greatest place, then tell their friends that they’d found the best restaurant in town. When their friends said they’d never heard of it, the praise would grow even louder.
The chefs in the bistros made for good talk, too. They were generally young, well educated, attractive, and willing to have long conversations about their food. That was a big change from the previous generation. With the exception of a few Europeans (most of whom were in hotel restaurants and a few large, freestanding eateries), the typical New Orleans chef at the older spots was someone from a lower-income family who started working in kitchens as a busboy or dishwasher and learned on the job. Many major New Orleans institutions (Galatoire’s and Antoine’s, to name two) claimed not to have chefs at all, only cooks. I knew of two of these cooks who—despite being firmly in charge of large, famous kitchens—could not read or write. The bistro chefs, by contrast, were often from families at least as well-to-do as those of their customers, and just as well educated. Jason Clevenger, for instance. He came to prominence in the kitchen at Café Sbisa, then joined his mother JoAnn Clevenger in opening the Upperline, one of the first of the new bistros. He’s now a professor of philosophy. Jason’s successor at the Upperline, Tom Cowman, was a man of such sophistication that when I ran into him in other grand restaurants, I sometimes didn’t recognize him because of the richness of his suits.
These new chefs, borrowing from Commander’s and Mr. B’s and one another, created a new local menu. Everybody had grilled fish, with an emphatic crust of Creole seasoning. Everybody was incorporating pasta with seafood and Cajun-seasoned cream sauces (before the bistros came along, pasta was the exclusive property of the Italian and Chinese places). Everybody seemed to serve the same newfangled recipe for turtle soup, one easily identified by the presence of spinach. But along with these commonalities, there were plenty of original dishes coming out of the bistros, too.
The first wave of bistros washed across Uptown New Orleans, the neighborhood of the city’s most affluent and avid diners. Until then, Uptown had surprisingly few restaurants. The bistros redistributed the patronage, to the detriment of restaurants located far out in the suburbs. Even LeRuth’s—widely acclaimed as the best restaurant in the city for twenty years, but inconveniently located on the West Bank—saw its numbers dwindle. Within a few years, it closed. Restaurants in the French Quarter—the center of the restaurant business forever—were deserted by a lot of locals, who found parking for the latest alleged best new restaurant in town a lot easier Uptown. (Mr. B’s, in the Quarter, had presciently provided free parking in the garage next door, seemingly in anticipation of this trend.)
These same trends were in motion elsewhere in America, too. But in most other cities, the boomers’ growing demand for fancier restaurants was met by the restaurant chains. Starting as hamburger vendors, they moved upscale with their customers, creating the illusion of better dining, while still serving more hamburgers than anything else. Only in New Orleans was a distinctive, encyclopedic local cuisine reinvented, from the ground up, while holding on to the flavors and ingredients that made it unique in the first place. So when Creole and Cajun fever swept across the country in the mid-1980s, it came as no surprise to New Orleanians.
CHEF PAUL’S BIG SPLASH
Not long after Mr. B’s opened in July 1979, I had lunch there with Chef Paul, in the window seat closest to the bar. At the end of the bar stood John Brennan, sipping his cloudy, pale-green Pernod and water. John was the older brother of Ella and Dick Brennan, and his kids Ralph, Cindy, and Lally managed Mr. B’s. I remember all those details because of what Chef Paul told me that day. “I leased a little place on Chartres Street,” he confided. “Before I go to work at Commander’s, I get up real early. I go to the French Market and buy whatever looks great. Then I get lunch started over there. Just some simple Cajun food and some other things I’ve been thinking about.”
I had lunch at K-Paul’s Louisiana Kitchen not long after that. I remember eating something called “the po’ man’s filet,” a ground-beef steak with a serious slam of Cajun pepper and flavor; the whole platter, which was filled very amply with good sides, cost four dollars. I also had a Cajun martini, a Ball jar filled with vodka marinated with hot peppers. “It’s the only cocktail we have,” Chef Paul told me. “It’s so big and hot that’s it’s impossible to drink more than one.” Part of the reason for that may have been to discourage the building’s former customers; K-Paul’s was located in what was previously a bar, whose regulars could not be called upscale. Paul was after a more-culinarily-appreciative crowd.
He got it. Seemingly overnight, K-Paul’s (the K was for Chef Paul’s wife and partner, Kay Hinrichs) had a line running down the block every day at lunchtime. To fit more people in, “community seating” was established—you’d share your table with others. Most people liked that as much as they liked the food. And they were crazy about the food.
Then Chef Paul left the Brennans (who wished him well), opened K-Paul’s for dinner, let the prices rise to market levels, and presided over the most-discussed restaurant in New Orleans. Perhaps in America.
K-Paul’s had the hottest dish in town, too—in more ways than one. Blackened redfish was a large, vividly fresh fillet of red drum-fish, encrusted with a Cajun blend of seasonings. (Chef Paul would later bottle the stuff and do very well with it.) The fish was dipped in melted butter and slammed into a skillet so hot that flames and billows of smoke leapt up. In an amount of time best measured in seconds, it was dark and crunchy at the skin, but still juicy inside.
Prepared with the skill of Chef Paul, blackened redfish is as exciting a dish as I can imagine. It wasn’t long before chefs everywhere tried to cook it—usually without much luck, because they wouldn’t take it to the extremes Chef Paul did. What with the smoke and flames, you couldn’t really make it at home unless you did it outside. Or had a powerful exhaust system. When Chef Paul made appearances around the country, it wasn’t uncommon for the dish to kick off smoke alarms.
K-Paul’s continues to serve big-flavor food to this day. But in the long run Chef Paul’s next plan made an even more important contribution. He felt it important to inspire a new generation of young chefs. And because he was so charismatic, the profession soon swelled locally with new practitioners. These were the young chefs who, only a few years later, in the 1980s, created the buzz at the gourmet Creole bistros. Many went on to open their own restaurants, which always seemed to have a way of making it to best-of-the-best lists. Frank Brigtsen (Brigtsen’s), Greg Sonnier (Gabrielle), and Jack Leonardi (Jacques-Imo’s) had the biggest hits. New Orleans kitchens are full of K-Paul’s alumni, most of whom probably would never have gone into the business at all—let alone as far as they did—without the influence of Chef Paul.
K-Paul’s was a chef’s paradise. For a long time, the place was closed on Saturdays and Sundays; having the whole weekend off was unheard of for restaurant workers. Getting the food to the table at its peak took precedence over everything else, including the service standard that everybody should be served their course at the same time. Food came out when it was ready. Relatively little attention was paid to dining room comforts; for many years, K-Paul’s remained much the way Chef Paul found it. No tablecloths. Paper napkins. Very inexpensive utensils. On the other hand, nothing was spared in terms of food cost. K-Paul’s chefs had the best of everything to cook. It was the Mr. B’s idea (which Chef Paul had helped to create in 1979, of course) taken to an extreme.
Some diners, though, were unwilling to abandon the familiar restaurant creature comforts, no matter how good a chef was. On my radio shows, after a couple of years of hearing only from people who were thrilled by the K-Paul’s experience, I started to get callers who were put out by the inconveniences of dining there. Their perspective was the opposite of a chef’s.
Although I never gave K-Paul’s lower than a three-star rating (it currently has four), since I write for other diners rather than restaurateurs, these matters had to be noted. Especially after K-Paul’s had become rather expensive. Why paper napkins? Why just two wines? Why no reservations? These were not unreasonable questions for a customer to ask. So I asked them.
One spring day, I got a call from Steve Taylor, a friend of Chef Paul’s and the writer of a wine column during my tenure at New Orleans magazine. He invited me to take a ride on the Goodyear blimp. Chef Paul had planned to go, but he had a schedule conflict and couldn’t make it. Steve told me I could fill the open seat. Floating around in a blimp is a unique experience. It’s quiet; it moves on waves of air as a boat would; it tilts down during its descent at an angle that takes your breath away. But that’s not what I remember most about that day. After the flight, the crew and the other people on board went to K-Paul’s for dinner. I had crawfish étouffée. Not surprisingly, it was terrific. Dark roux, lots of fresh crawfish at the peak of the season, seasoning levels at that delicious edge between pleasure and pain. (It’s still the best version around.)
During the dinner, Chef Paul was at his usual table in the back of the restaurant, talking with—of all people—David Letterman. I never missed Letterman’s show then, and I had to meet him. I threw a few superlatives at Letterman regarding his show, and he reeled back in mock shock. Chef Paul said to me, “After you’re finished, I want to tell you something.”
What he wanted to tell me was that he didn’t want me in his restaurant anymore. I wasn’t the first to be banned. Richard Collin was definitely on the you-know-what list. So, for over a decade I didn’t dine at K-Paul’s. I have since gone back quite a few times—always recognized, but never asked to leave. I don’t really know what my status is there now. I also don’t know what brought his request on. I’ve asked lots of people who ought to know, but they don’t. Chef Paul and I have had brief, cordial conversations, but I haven’t felt comfortable enough to explore the matter.
I suppose it’s impossible for a restaurant critic who speaks frankly to avoid becoming persona non grata here and there. This wasn’t the only time it happened to me. But I wish it hadn’t happened at K-Paul’s. I missed eating that étouffée, blackened fish, and filet mignon with debris. And I miss the friendship I had with Chef Paul, who did more than anybody else to let everybody know how good Louisiana food is when it’s cooked right.
RECIPE
The Great New Orleans Trout Makeover
In the 1970s, trout amandine was without question the most popular fish dish on white-tablecloth restaurant menus throughout New Orleans. And then came the revolution. Ella Brennan and chef Paul Prudhomme at Commander’s Palace remade the dish with a Louisiana flavor—instead of almonds, they used local pecans. The sauce went from a toasty beurre noir to a darker, thicker, much more intense affair. The dish spread quickly to other restaurants. Except for a handful of older restaurants, trout with pecans has replaced trout amandine. The preparation below also works very well with fried soft-shell crabs.
Here are before and after recipes.
BEFORE
Trout Amandine Old Style
1 tsp. salt
¼ tsp. black pepper
1 cup flour
4 fillets speckled trout, about 8 oz. each
2 sticks butter
2 Tbs. lemon juice, strained
1 Tbs. Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp. red wine vinegar
1 cup slivered or sliced almonds
1. With a fork, stir the salt and pepper into the flour. Rinse the fish fillets, and pat them with a paper towel (but don’t dry completely). Dredge through the seasoned flour, shaking off the excess.
2. Melt one stick of the butter in a saucepan over medium-high heat. When it begins to bubble, sauté the fish fillets, two at a time, about three minutes on each side, or until golden brown. Allow excess butter to drain back into the pan. Keep the fish warm.
3. Add the other stick of butter to the pan, along with the lemon juice, Worcestershire, and vinegar. Whisk the pan ingredients to blend, and bring to bubbling again.
4. Add the almonds, and lower the heat a little. Cook almonds until they just begin to turn a little brown at the edges. Spoon the sauce and the almonds over trout fillets, and serve immediately.
SERVES FOUR.
AFTER
Trout with Pecans
Pecan Butter
3 Tbs. butter
2 Tbs. roasted pecans
3 Tbs. lemon juice
1½ tsp. Worcestershire sauce
Sauce
2 Tbs. flour
2 Tbs. water
½ cup shrimp or fish stock
½ cup Worcestershire sauce
3 Tbs. lemon juice
2 sticks butter, softened
Fish
3 Tbs. salt-free Creole seasoning
2 Tbs. salt
2 cups flour
2 eggs
½ cup milk
4 trout fillets, each about 8 oz.
1 cup clarified butter
8 oz. roasted pecan halves
1. PECAN BUTTER: Place all pecan butter ingredients into the container of a food processor or blender. Cover and process to a smooth puree. Set aside.
2. SAUCE: In a small bowl, combine flour and water to make a smooth paste. In a small saucepan, bring stock, Worcestershire sauce, and lemon juice to a light boil.
3. Whisk about ⅓ cup of the hot stock mixture into the flour paste. Then gradually pour the flour mixture back into the saucepan, stirring constantly with the whisk, and bring to a boil. Whisk in the softened butter, one tablespoon at a time. Keep sauce warm.
4. FISH: Blend the Creole seasoning and salt into the flour in a wide bowl. Beat the eggs with the milk in a second wide bowl.
5. Dust the trout fillets lightly with the seasoned flour, then pass them through the egg wash, and dredge through the seasoned flour.
6. In a large skillet, heat half of the clarified butter over medium-high heat until a sprinkling of flour sizzles in it. Add three fillets of trout and sauté three or four minutes, until golden brown, turning once. Transfer fillets to serving platter, and keep warm. Add the rest of the butter to the pan and sauté the remaining trout.
7. Spread pecan butter over trout, sprinkle with roasted pecans, top with the sauce, and serve immediately.
SERVES FOUR.
