The Best Tastes of New Orleans

New Orleans, Louisiana (April 2016)

We visited New Orleans few weeks ago only for a weekend. Well, New Orleans is a heaven for food lovers. In such a short time, we had to manage getting all good flavors that we can find nowhere else. With the help of some friends who have been there before and lived there and with some help from websites, we accomplished our mission. Following are the flavors; I would like to suggest any one who is looking for what to have in New Orleans during a short visit.

Étouffée:

There are many varieties of Étouffée. It is basically cajun or creole dish of seafood or any meat cooked in thick gravy made with vegetables and/or meat stock and is eaten as it is or with rice or bread. If you are in New Orleans, you better get seafood Étouffée. I was very excited for Crawfish Étouffée. It was not hard to find a place, which serve this food. Each and every other restaurant in New Orleans has Étouffée on their menu. We got one on the Bourbon Street in the French Quarter called Olde Nola Cookery. I was totally satisfied with the taste, though I had to get help to pronounce it right; pronounced as AY-TOO-FAY. It’s French word, which means 'smothered' as the food looks like. It is spicy and full-of-flavor kind of food.   

Beignets: 

Beignets are deep fried bread dusted with powdered sugar. There is an unbreakable link about New Orleans and Beignets. On my first thought, its just fried little breads dusted with sugar. However, when we went to get Beignets in Caf'e du Monde, the most famous place to get it, I was surprised to see the place so much crowded and the line so long outside the cafe. After waiting for about 30 minutes, we literally squeezed ourselves on a small table because we wanted to sit down there and eat it there. The menu didn't have much variety. It was only and only Beignets and coffees simply. The taste was great of course, after all people are not crazy to wait in line for so long just to get a bite. Well, at the end, I understood that the cafe and the tradition, and Beignets make it a must have experience if you go to New Orleans.  Beignet is also a french word pronounced as BEN-YEY which literally means 'bumps'. They are synonymous to English fritters.

Jumbo Oysters:

Nowhere I have seen such huge oysters as in New Orleans. There were great oysters bars and oyster houses where you can get great oysters raw or prepared. The one we got our char-grilled jumbo oysters was in Iberville Street in the French Quarter called Acme Oyster House. Each of the oysters were mouthful and tasted heavenly. This place also happened to be the best place to get oyster. Here also, we waited in line for an hour before we could be guided to our table. The wait was totally worth it.

Banana Foster Bread Pudding: 

I have a huge sweet tooth. I guess the whole world knows about it. It was impossible for me to miss this desert when I am in New Orleans. We actually found it in a food stall in Mississippi River-walk Market. You can find it in any restaurant as well. Its basically banana bread pudding and comes in different varieties. Some comes with banana sautéed in butter or with bread pudding sauce or just sugar powder or with ice-cream on the top or with any of these combinations. The one I got was banana pudding bread split into halves like a hot dog bun and sautéed-banana on it with vanilla ice-cream. It was really really sweet but so addictive in taste. You can ask not to put sauce on the top, if you don't want it be as sweet as I had.

Shrimp and Grit:

I love shrimps and shrimp-flavors. Grilled jumbo shrimps are always great. They are even better with grit. You might have shrimp and grit before or have just grit in meat stock or just water and salt. That’s what I normally know how to eat grit. 'Shrimp and grit' the combination you cannot miss when you go to try southern food. Hence, we thought of trying the best-made shrimp and grit in Dickie Brennan's Steakhouse in French Quarter again. Jumbo shrimps were grilled and served with bbq sauce. Grit was made into jalapeño cheddar cake. It was not like regular grit-taste at all. It was creamy, spicy and melted in my mouth. I could describe it as savory, warm cheesecake. Well, you see I am not finding good way to describe it. You will know when you try it.

Steaks:

Steaks are not the specialty of only New Orleans. We have some great places for steaks in Texas too. However, it will not be fair at all if I do not mention steaks we had there. Since I cannot finish all 32 Oz of steak, I prefer 4-6 Oz steak with a glass of semi dry red wine. It was the best piece of medium rare steak I had in a long time. This was in again Brennan's Steakhouse. It was totally worth the price. It was totally flavorful, the Louisiana flavor, and juicy.

Drinks:

If you like to drink, I need not to tell you can drink from the morning to the evening while strolling at Bourbon Street. It gets wild all the time. As we were told, weekends start on Bourbon Street from Wednesday and end on Monday morning. So it is less crowded on Mondays. We were not there on Monday to witness what we heard.

If you are a beer lover, like all the places, Louisiana has its own local breweries. Abita brewery is the signature for the state. One another beer we tried that was unique was Louisiana spicy beer. We could taste paprika kind of spiciness in that beer. It is a different thing to try if you are adventurous. I cannot fit a lot of liquid in my tommy. Since we had so many options for drink all the time, more of the potions of drinks were cocktails than beer. Grenade and Hurricane apparently were the most popular drinks on Bourbon Street.

Homemade Yoghurt

If you are a yoghurt fan, I don't hesitate a bit to recommend you to make homemade yoghurt. When you make yoghurt at home, you will save 5-6 times of money as well as get flavor of your choice. I personally love the taste of homemade yoghurt like none other in the market. You cannot go wrong if you know to provide an optimal condition for bacteria to grow in your house. I know I sound creepy here. To understand what I am talking about, let me first give you the background on how milk is converted to yoghurt.


Biochemistry of milk to yoghurt conversion
Milk consists of carbohydrate called lactose and protein called casein. Like our digestive system convert carbohydrate to simpler sugar for our energy and protein to simpler form so that it can be absorbed and utilized for maintenance of normal physiology, bacteria feed on milk carbohydrates and protein for their growth, multiplication and survival. Bacteria utilize lactose to convert o lactic acid, which coagulates milk protein casein, which gives yoghurt its texture. Thus, yoghurt is also good for lactose intolerant people, as it does not have lactose anymore. Usually bacteria that are used in making yoghurt are Lactobacillus species, which are rod shaped bacteria. Some examples of yoghurt forming bacteria are Lactobacillus acidophilus,Streptococcus thermophilus, Bifidobacterium sps. 

Key points to keep in mind: Bacteria used for making yoghurt grow at normal human physiological temperature. If you use high temperature, bacteria will die and if you use low temperature, no reaction will take place or slow reaction will take place. 

Nutritional values:
Serving size : 1 cup 
Servings: 8
Calories: 122 Kcal
Carbohydrates:12 g
Sugar: 12 g (with no added sugar)
Protein: 8 g
Fat: 5 g

Ingredients:
Mother culture; 1/4 cup -1/2 cup of yoghurt (fresh or frozen)
Half gallon of organic milk (2% fat) 
Couple tablespoon of sugar (optional) 
5 pods of cardamom
1/3 cup of coconut (unsweetened grated or powder) 

Note on the ingredients: You can use full fat milk or skimmed milk or non-organic milk. 
Protocol: 
Boil milk at low to medium heat making sure not to burn the bottom of your pot. You can use full fat milk based on your preference. Put crushed cardamon, sugar and coconut. You can try adding other condiments as your preference but keep in mind something like chunky nuts may not give good texture to the end product. Keep stirring to reduce burning at the bottom and also if you want to concentrate milk to make it creamier. Take it off the heat and let it cool normally or keeping the pot in cold water. Make sure to reach the temperature to about 37- 40 degree C (about 104-114 degree F). Now it is time to add mother culture. If you have frozen yoghurt, thaw it first. Do it when you are cooling down your milk. Add few tablespoon of milk to the mother culture, mix and add to the milk. Stir gently. Turn on your oven to warm or 250 F for 5-7 minutes. Keep the milk with mother culture in the oven and turn the oven off. Check after 4 hours. Yeahhhppyy yoghurt is done. If it is still ziggly, keep for more hours or overnight. 

Keep the yoghurt in refrigerator for few hours to chill it and also to make it firmer. The tastiest yoghurt I have ever had is from Bhaktapur city in Kathmandu valley of Nepal. Those are made in clay pots. In addition to keeping yoghurt cool for long time, clay pots absorb water from yoghurt as well making it even creamier. I have saved one clay pot for myself, which I reuse over and over again unlike in Nepal.  However, glassware, steel wares, ironware are all good for making yoghurt.

Yoghurt made in clay pot as traditionally made in Nepal. 

Yoghurt made in glassware.

Homemade Tortilla (Naan bread)

Only a bread-lover will know how amazing does a fresh homemade warm tortilla tastes like. It is really easy to make too. The beauty lies in its simplicity. If you have never tried making one at home, try this recipe. There is very less change of going wrong. I cannot guarantee the shape though. You will get some workout for your arms as well when you knead. Yes, you have to be honest while kneading if you really want your tortilla to inflate into a steam-ball.

Nutritional values:

Serving size: 2 tortillas

Servings: 5

Calories: 200 Cal

Carbohydrates: 38 g

Fats: 0.5 g

Sugar: <1 g

Protein: 5.2 g

Fiber: 1.5 g

Ingredients:

Wheat or white flour 2 cups

Water 1 cup 

Pinch of salt (optional)

Other materials:

Flat surface for kneading and rolling tortilla and a rolling pin. 

The way I am making it, needs an flat iron pan that you can keep in the oven. You can also make it on an flat pan on a stove.

Protocol:

I can imagine you asking me how much water should I add and how do I press dough into flat shapes. This is what the most people find mysterious about making tortilla. Add water little by little to flour (white or wheat) and keep kneading until all the flour bind together into a big ball of dough. It has to be soft enough so that you can knead but not too watery that it sticks all over your hand. After 5 minutes of kneading all the flour should come off your hand. If you plan to use the kneaded dough later, keep it covered with clean cloth or moist paper towel or plastic wrap. 

Divide the big ball of dough into 10-12 small parts.

I use wooden board and wooden roller pin. Dash some flour on the surface. Now take one of the small dough balls and press it with a roller pin and roll, round and round or back and forth, into the shape of a tortilla. Do not worry about the shape. I make maps of different countries all the time. Just make it about less than 5 millimeters thin.

Bring your oven to 475-degree F. Place an iron pan inside the oven. Place the rolled tortilla on it carefully and close the oven-door for 1 min. You can see what happens, in the picture. Yes, it inflates with hot air inside. Just take it out carefully with tongs or wearing gloves, making sure hot steam coming out from the tortilla if you poke a hole in it at this moment, does not burn you. I have learnt this the first hand.

You can rub butter on it as soon as you take it out or just eat with curry or jam or any sauce or just like that. Enjoy!

2 year-old donut

My 2 year old donut. All is well.  May 31, 2016

Hi! Meet my two-year-old donut. This lives in my office drawer on a paper towel exactly like you can see in the pictures. I do not know when this donut was born. However, I do remember the moment I met it. I got it on April 30th, 2014, Thursday at 9 am in my lab- meeting. The fact that I barely keep donuts to eat later unless I have couple of them, makes it possible that I had one during the meeting and I got this one as my second and I stored it in my drawer for my afternoon snack. The purpose of keeping it inside the drawer was to hide it from myself until I really want it. I was successful! Surprisingly! I forgot about it for 4 days.

On the following Monday, I suddenly remembered and looked at it all around, up and down to have a good look at it before I trash it. Amazingly, nothing had happened to it besides that it was little harder. Then it was the moment when I decided to pursue this experiment to keep it until it gets mold or until it crumbles into pieces after it desiccates and to record how many days will it take to happen so. Since then, I give it a good look every week. It’s been quite steady; no molds and no cracks. It has gotten stronger though. I can knock on it and it sounds like I am knocking on a hard surface like on a desk or on a door.

I have shown it to people in my office, lab-members and even to some visitors. Different people have different opinion about the idea to keep it for so long. Most people get detest for donuts when they see a real edible donut turning into a toy-donut. They become skeptical if it is a real food. I am sure that detest is only for few days. This old, veteran, survivor donut gets forgotten when they see fresh and soft new donut. Some people think it is creepy to keep donut as if it is your pet. Hmm.. not a bad idea. I started calling it my pet donut. Now people around me know what I am talking about when I say my 'pet donut'. I have not found a good name for it though. Mold or any organism apparently cannot survive on this donut. It is pretty much desiccated by now. My pet donut has to go long way until it starts to break into pieces. This is the most likely way it may die.

This was totally serendipity but people have done real and intentional project on how long do fast food last. You have probably heard about McDonald's fries or Taco-bell meal not getting rotten for couple years (http://www.businessinsider.com/fast-food-doesnt-rot-after-2-years-2015-1). Visually they are pretty bad but for my donut, you cannot tell from the picture if it is just bought from the donut shop or been in my drawer for 2 years. Well, it is different category of food. I am not saying I am proud of it or I have worked hard on it. I have no contribution for this amusement besides giving it a space. Whatever has happened, it is all due to the ingredients of the food and the way it is made. Donut is fried bread and sugar coated on the top. Frying food is done at 350-375 degree F. During this process, food absorbs fat in which it is fried and gets dehydrated. Water is essential for any life to survive. All pores are filled with fat, which leaves no space for re-absorbtion of water. The icing is made up of confectionary sugar and some fats. It is also just shrinking, loosing moisture and is not absorbing any moisture. So I have not observed any mold on it as well. It is a desert not a dessert right now for life. However, I may be able to grow some fungi and bacteria if you take swab from this donut and grow them in Yeast media-plates or LB agar plates.

I will keep updating on this in the future.