Richard Collin, the city’s first restaurant critic and a former history professor of mine, said, “If someone dies in New Orleans of cirrhosis of the liver, it’s considered natural causes.” That certainly has a ring of truth. Consider this: The only business in New Orleans that never closed during or after Hurricane Katrina was a bar.
New Orleans has a wide array of distinctive beverages, alcoholic and not. We begin with coffee. Long before gourmet coffee swept across America, New Orleans coffee was in a class by itself. It still is. The classic version is a blend of very dark roast coffee and chicory, brewed so intense that when you swirl it, the sides of the cup stay brown for a few seconds. It’s cut with an equal amount of hot milk for café au lait. Chicory is the root of a variety of endive, roasted and ground. It doesn’t really taste like coffee, but the flavor it adds is complementary. The use of chicory in coffee dates back to a coffee shortage in France during the Napoleonic era. The practice spread to New Orleans, where it remained in vogue long after it died out in France.
New Orleans is also the birthplace of the cocktail. Its inventor, a druggist named Antoine Peychaud, formulated the original bitters (still made under his name and much liked around New Orleans) and added it to Cognac from Sazerac, France, along with a little sugar and absinthe. At his drugstore on Royal Street, Peychaud served up this concoction (for alleged health benefits) in a coquetier—a French name for an egg cup, whose mispronunciation resulted in the word cocktail. Peychaud’s original drink, now called a Sazerac, is made with rye whiskey these days and is still quite popular. A recipe for one of its offshoots, the old-fashioned, is included here.
The two cups of café au lait I have every morning are a wonderful addiction. I make them with Union coffee and chicory, brewed so dark that it leaves the side of the cup deep brown for a moment when I swirl it. I mix that with an equal amount of milk, and the pleasure begins.
Serious purists insist that great coffee and chicory can only be brewed in an enamel coffee biggin (an old-fashioned pot that requires one to slowly drip small amounts of water through the grounds manually). However, I find that a good drip coffeemaker—especially the kind with cone-shaped filters—does just as fine a job as long as you use enough coffee. Err on the side of too much ground coffee and step it back if it’s too strong.
Union coffee and chicory, in its distinctive soft green bag, can be hard to find even in New Orleans. Other good brands include CDM, French Market, and the widely distributed but relatively light Community New Orleans Blend.
½ cup ground coffee and chicory blend
8 cups water
6 cups milk
Sugar
Brew the coffee with the water normally in a drip coffeemaker. Fill mugs half-full with milk and heat in a microwave until steaming. Add sugar to your taste and stir. Pour the coffee in and observe the pleasant light foam of the milk on the coffee. MAKES EIGHT CUPS.
Café brulot is the grandest ending to a major New Orleans dinner—especially if it’s made and served in the traditional café brulot bowl and cups. The show at the table is spectacular, and the aroma is wonderful. If you make it at home, look for oranges with a thick, flawless skin. (California oranges are best.)
This is a flamed dish. So make sure you have nothing above the burning bowl that could catch fire. Do not use any spirit higher than 80 proof. If you feel ill at ease about flaming dishes, skip the flaming part.
1 lemon
1 orange
12–15 cloves
5 Tbsp. brandy
5 Tbsp. Cointreau, triple sec, or Grand Marnier
2 cinnamon sticks, broken in half
½ tsp. vanilla extract
1 Tbsp. sugar
3 cups freshly brewed very dark coffee, preferably coffee-and-chicory blend
1. Wash the lemon and the orange. Peel the lemon and cut the peel into strips about 1 inch long and ½ inch wide. Stud the skin of the orange with the cloves, inserting the cloves in a spiral pattern from top to bottom. Then cut the peel from the orange in one continuous spiral with the cloves in the center of the strip.
2. In a metal bowl set over a small burner, combine the brandy and the Cointreau with the lemon peel, studded orange peel, and cinnamon sticks. Bring to a light boil and hold it there for a minute. Carefully touch a flame to the mixture and flame it, stirring it around.
3. With a long fork, spear the orange peel and hold it up above the bowl. Pour some of the flaming liquid over the orange and let it flow down the spiral of the skin.
4. Add the vanilla, sugar, and coffee, and swirl it all around until the flames die out. Pour the café brulot into demitasse cups and serve hot. It’s okay for pieces of lemon or orange peel to go into the cup. SERVES SIX TO EIGHT.
The mint julep is considered a cliché Old South drink by some. But a good one is about as refreshing a cocktail as ever slaked a midsummer night’s thirst. It is best served in the classic metal cups, which get frosty on the outside if you make it right. I use those great small-batch bourbons in my mint juleps; Knob Creek or Blanton’s are particularly good.
About 20 fresh mint leaves, plus more sprigs for garnish
8 oz. Simple Syrup (see recipe, this page)
8 oz. bourbon
1. Combine the mint leaves and the simple syrup in a cocktail shaker. Crush the leaves with a muddler or a blunt-end wooden stick. (The back end of a honey server works perfectly.)
2. Add the bourbon and fill the shaker with crushed ice. Put the top on the shaker and shake vigorously until the outside is frosty.
3. Strain the mint juleps into 4 old-fashioned glasses (or silver julep cups) filled about three-quarters full with crushed ice. Garnish each with a sprig of mint. SERVES FOUR.
The old-fashioned has indeed been around a long time. It dates almost to the dawn of the cocktail, which occurred in New Orleans. An old-fashioned is similar in many ways to a Sazerac, which lays claim to being the very first cocktail of them all. You can obtain Peychaud’s bitters from the Sazerac Company (www.sazerac.com/bitters.html).
6 oz. Simple Syrup (see recipe below)
1 tsp. Angostura bitters
1 tsp. Peychaud’s bitters
8 oz. bourbon
Crushed ice
Club soda
1 orange, cut into 8 half-moon slices
8 stemmed maraschino cherries
1. Combine the syrup, both bitters, and bourbon in a shaker filled with crushed ice.
2. Strain the mixture into old-fashioned glasses filled about two-thirds full with crushed ice. Top with club soda and stir 2–3 strokes. Garnish each glass with an orange slice and 2 cherries. SERVES FOUR.
Simple syrup is essential for making mint juleps, old-fashioneds, and other great cocktails. It’s also nice to have on hand to sweeten iced tea without the endless, clanky stirring.
2 cups sugar
1 cup water
Combine the sugar and water in a very clean saucepan and bring to a light boil for 5 minutes. Brush any granules of sugar that may stick to the sides of the pan down into the syrup, or the syrup may regranulate. Refrigerate. MAKES ABOUT ONE CUP.
The best egg nog, frankly, is uncooked. But so many people are concerned about the health risks of eating raw eggs that I’ve come up with an egg nog recipe cooked just long enough to eliminate most possible problems. It does produce a difficulty, though: You have to be very careful to keep the mixture from setting as you cook it.
1 dozen egg yolks
1½ cups sugar
2 Tbsp. vanilla extract
½ tsp. nutmeg, plus more to taste
2 cups heavy whipping cream
4 cups half-and-half
1. Whisk the egg yolks with the sugar, vanilla, and nutmeg together in a saucepan until creamy-looking. Add the cream and 2 cups of the half-and-half, and whisk until blended.
2. Cook over very low heat while stirring. Look for a temperature reading of 175 degrees F on a meat thermometer. Don’t overheat or cook longer than needed to reach this temperature.
3. Remove from the heat. Strain the egg nog into the container you will store it in and add the remaining half-and-half. Refrigerate.
4. If you’d like to add something interesting (i.e., brandy, bourbon, or dark rum), a cup of the stuff should be about right. Serve with some more nutmeg (freshly grated, if possible) over the top. SERVES TWELVE TO SIXTEEN.
The origin of the name ping pong is unknown, but in the riverlands between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, many people know what it is: a pink, frozen drink that has the flavor of nectar. Nectar, in turn, is universally recognized among Orleanians as a distinctive flavor, a blend of almond and vanilla. Nectar was one of the most popular flavors for ice-cream sodas in the days when drugstores still made such things. Now nectar is an essential flavor in the vast array of syrups poured over finely shaved ice for sno-balls.
I learned about ping pong from Mark Hymel, whose family has raised sugarcane and run a fine seafood restaurant in St. James Parish for generations. He handed it to me at a party at his home and challenged me to guess what it was. I recognized the nectar flavor instantly but was astonished to learn how it was derived. I mentioned it on the radio the next day, and from that time until the day Hurricane Katrina shut us down, I’ve repeated the unlikely recipe hundreds of times on the air and on the Internet.
The original recipe is so sweet that you can’t drink much of it (although you’ll very much like those few sips). Lately I’ve lightened up the sugar content by replacing the sweetened condensed milk with half-and-half.
ORIGINAL RECIPE
1 can sweetened condensed milk
1 liter Barq’s Red Creme Soda
NOT-SO-SWEET VERSION
1 cup half-and-half
1 liter Barq’s Red Creme Soda
1. For either formula, mix the 2 ingredients in an ice-cream maker and freeze. It will probably not get hard, but it will have the texture of a frozen daiquiri. You can solidify it by freezing it further, but it’s better as a drink, really. In fact, you can add a shot of vodka to it for something a bit more potent.
2. If you don’t have an ice-cream maker, mix the ingredients in a gallon-size plastic food-storage bag and freeze that until it starts to set. Squinch the bag every now and then, until it has a slushy consistency. SERVES TWELVE TO SIXTEEN.
