Rouses Magazine - September October 2020

SEPTEMBER OCTOBER 2020

The Breakfast Issue FEATURING OUR FAVORITE

BREAKFAST FOOD & DRINK RECIPES

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THE BATTLE OVER BREAKFAST

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WAFFLES VS. PANCAKES

LOCALS HELPING LOCALS SINCE 1960 Feeding the community has been the foundation of our family's business for 60 years. When needs are urgent, like they are in Southwest Louisiana right now, we donate water and food, cleaning products, toiletries and emergency supplies to help our neighbors during times of disaster.

My family and I appreciate your support of our relief efforts, and the support of our great vendor partners like Tyson Foods, Del Monte and Sunkist. Every dollar, can, bottle and bag donated makes a difference to the families and communities devastated by Hurricane Laura.

Thank you.​ - Donny Rouse, CEO, 3rd Generation ROUSES

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Because We’re As Passionate About Coffee As You Are We use only the top 1% of specialty arabica beans, which are small batch roasted under the direction of Felton Jones, who has 25 years of experience with PJ’s Coffee.

www.rouses.com

Marketing & Advertising Director Tim Acosta Creative Director & Editor Marcy Nathan Art Director, Layout & Design Eliza Schulze Illustrator Kacie Galtier Production Manager McNally Sislo Corporate Chef Marc Ardoin Photo Director Romney Caruso

Table of Contents Cover photo by Romney Caruso / Cover recipe on page 44

IN EVERY ISSUE

UP AND DRINK ´EM

1

26

Note from Donny Rouse

Irish Coffee

5

27

Letter from the Editor

Bellini

7

Red Snapper

Lost Bread, Found Memories

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by Ali Rouse Royster

Bloody Mary

8 In Our Stores

Brandy Milk Punch

29 Frozen Absinthe Suissesse

Copy Editor Patti Stallard

STORIES

Advertising Amanda Kennedy Harley Breaux

Waffles vs. Pancakes:

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The Battle Over Breakfast

Gentilly Cream Pancakes

Marketing Stephanie Hopkins Robert Barrilleaux Nancy Besson Taryn Clement

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by David W. Brown

UP AND EAT ´EM

47

18

Flour Biscuits

Beignet All Day

Dozen-Up Biscuits

by David W. Brown

Drop Biscuit

25

48

More than Mimosas

Bette Coe’s Dutch Baby Pancake

by Sarah Baird

49

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Savory Dutch Baby Pancakes

Breakfast, It’s What's for Dinner

Buttermilk Waffles

by Brett Martin

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Classic French Toast

Breakfast du Jour

Pain Perdu

by David W. Brown

ROUSES

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SAME DAY DELIVERY & PICKUP

Visit www.rouses.com to check availability at your store.

Everyone but Stanley can agree that a hot roast beef poboy is still great cold and a day old. One of my favorite leftovers for breakfast is cold spaghetti — any pasta with red sauce tastes great cold. I will eat takeout Chinese, cold, out of the carton, by the forkful, when I wake up. I appreciate a good egg roll, hot or cold.

Letter From the Editor

By Marcy Nathan, Creative Director

This might come as a surprise to you, but breakfast doesn’t have to be breakfast food. My father, for example, has a special passion for corn, in part because we grew acres of it on our farm in Cotton Plant, Arkansas (population 649). Dad is perfectly happy to eat corn on the cob for breakfast, straight out of the fridge.

Last year, when a pizza-ordering platform polled their users, more than half said they would rather have a cold slice of pizza for breakfast than the usual bacon and eggs. I did a less formal poll on Facebook recently and got so hungry while I was reading the comments, I had to cook one of our wood-fired pizzas for dinner just so I could have a slice for breakfast.

If you’ve ever stood on the parade route early on Mardi Gras morning, I know you’ve eaten fried chicken for breakfast. To be fair, Rouses crispy fried chicken is just as good cold as it is hot, so it’s perfect for an alfresco Fat Tuesday breakfast.

We have a store director in New Orleans, Stanley Duplessis, who absolutely loves to go out to eat; we have that trait in common. But I’ve been known to wake and steak after dinner at Ruth’s Chris Steak House, and Stanley cringes if you mention leftovers. Sadly, he will never know the joy of having last night’s dinner for breakfast.

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Moo Shu Pork only gets better overnight, and you can’t really expect me to wait until lunchtime to eat it, can you? I draw the line at cold rice, though. I have an ex-boyfriend who is an amazing cook. He’s the one who taught me about breakfast rice, which is actually eaten all over the world. Breakfast rice is a great reuse for leftover fried rice. Start with a bit of oil in a nonstick skillet. Add the cold fried rice. Form a well in the rice and crack an egg directly into it. Cook until the egg is just set, then mix it all up and eat it. I’ve found this technique works just as well with plain, cold cooked rice and breakfast ingredients like eggs, bacon and sausage — just make sure the meat is fully cooked. I’ve also eaten it Hawaiian-style with bits of fresh pineapple and ham.

Before the pandemic I ate most of my meals out, or I got takeout. I’m still trying to do that a few times a week — our local restaurants need our support now more than ever; they are the backbone of our hospitality industry.

But with less leftover steak and spaghetti in the fridge these days, breakfast is too often just eggs.

If you find yourself eating the same thing for breakfast every single day, I invite you to try cold spaghetti, or the recipes on the following pages. When we cooked the pancakes you see on the cover in our Test Kitchen in Thibodaux, everyone went wild.

And if you’re Stanley, I invite you to ask for a doggy bag the next time you eat out — c’mon, live a little, Stanley. We all just want to know, can you take it with you?

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No Other Store Brand Stacks up to Rouses.

Each product has been personally taste-tested by the Rouse Family, and is guaranteed to deliver the best quality at the best price.

www.rouses.com

Contributors Sarah Baird Sarah Baird is the author of multiple books including New Orleans Cocktails and Flask, which was released in 2019.

A 2019 Knight Visiting Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, her work has been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, Saveur, Eater, Food & Wine and The Guardian, among others.

Previously, she served as restaurant critic for the New Orleans alt-weekly, Gambit Weekly, where she won Critic of the Year in 2015 for her dining reviews.

David W. Brown David is a regular contributor to The Atlantic, The Week and Mental Floss.

His work also appears in Vox, The New York Times, Writer’s Digest and Foreign Policy magazine. He is a regular commentator for television and radio.

Romney Caruso Romney is a Mandeville resident and has been a professional photographer for over 25 years. He has styled and photographed food for hundreds of local and national publications, and for several cookbooks. His portrait series of chefs and bartenders, titled “Shakers, Knives & Irons,” was displayed in New Orleans and Los Angeles.

Brett Martin Brett Martin is a correspondent and chief food critic for GQ Magazine, a two-time James Beard Award winner and a six-time selectee of the annual Best Food Writing anthology. His work has appeared in Vanity Fair, Bon Appétit, The New York Times and The New Yorker, among others, and on public radio’s This American Life. He is the author of Difficult Men: Behind the Scenes of a Creative Revolution, From The Sopranos and The Wire to Mad Men and Breaking Bad (2014).

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Granny before baths and before playing in what we called the “blue room” in the back, which was a guest room that contained the closet designated for our toys.

Lost Bread, Found Memories

By Ali Rouse Royster, 3rd Generation

If you were to take a poll of my Rouse cousins (and there are 17 of us, so make sure to bring a pen and paper to keep track of the tally), almost every one of us will tell you that our fondest memories of our grandparents include eating in their kitchen or on their back patio. Even more specifically, breakfast after a sleepover at Pa and Granny’s, which we did often, would be the resounding favorite.

My grandparents loved to have groups of their grandkids sleep over on Friday nights. I was in the “big girl” group with my cousins Ericka, Katie, Jennifer and Mandy — the five of us were all born within three years of each other.

We would play in the backyard, climbing the big oak tree, running around playing tag or whatever make-believe game we concocted with our overactive imaginations.

Around dusk we would eat dinner, sometimes BBQ or little pizzas on the patio if it wasn’t too hot, sometimes spaghetti or gumbo inside. After dinner, we would always play cards with Pa and

Saturday mornings, we would wake up to the chiming of the grandfather clock and the smell of Granny cooking what you might call French Toast, but what Granny always called Lost Bread (in French this is “pain perdu,” which is what her parents called it when she was growing up in Eunice, Louisiana — her parents spoke only French).

Granny loved to be in the kitchen, and on these Saturday mornings when our little nightgowned bodies would wander out of the bedrooms, still rubbing sleep out of our eyes, we would often find Granny over the stove, humming a tune and tapping her toes, already having had her first cup of coffee.

When she served up piles of Lost Bread for us, she would ask if we wanted milk or coffee (which was mostly milk but also a splash of coffee, served in a mug — that made it way more grown up), and she’d sit and have another cup with us as we chatted about what we wanted to do that morning before our parents came to pick us up.

Food has been shown in many studies to be strongly tied to memory, evoking not just thoughts of the food’s taste, texture and look, but also of the time and place you experienced it, and what you were feeling then. For this, I am so thankful, because the memory of Lost Bread and Coffee Milk always brings such joyful images to my mind of my beloved Granny, Joyce Rouse.

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STAY SAFE !

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Please follow signs and floor markers indicating how far apart to stand to maintain safe distances at checkout. We encourage you to join us in wearing masks or face coverings while in our stores to help prevent the spread of COVID-19.

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Shop the Aisles!

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The best prices on the items that you want now.

Rouses Team Members,

Many of you have gone out of your way to say thank you to our team members who are taking care of you during these difficult times. Thank you for taking time to recognize how remarkable they truly are. Over and over and over again, they have shown tremendous dedication to our company, our customers and each other.

If Rouses Markets is on the label, you know it’s good.

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Rouses isn’t just a great place to shop, it’s also a great place to work. You can apply in store today, or apply online anytime at www.rouses.com. We’ll give you everything you need to succeed.​

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DELIVERY & PICKUP Shop online at www.rouses.com and get everything on your list the same day.

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Creating uniquely delicious blends since 1969.

Sip and LIVE FLAVORFULLY.

Become a morning person.

If our name is on it, you know it’s good.

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Waffles vs. Pancakes: The Battle Over Breakfast

By David W. Brown Last year I wrote a story for this magazine about adding ranch dressing to pizza (my verdict: adding ranch to your pizza is like walking around barefoot in the mall) and, ever since then, every time I get in my car and turn the ignition, I expect a bomb to go off. People, I learned, have strong opinions about food — and they aren’t afraid to tell you about them. So when my editor assigned me to write “waffles vs. pancakes,” I immediately ordered a new home security system.

Some of you — I’m looking at you, waffle aficionados — are about to get your feelings hurt.

Waffle batter and pancake batter are basically the same thing. In a bowl, mix a cup of flour, two teaspoons baking powder, two tablespoons sugar and one teaspoon of salt. In a separate bowl, whisk together an egg, two tablespoons of butter and a cup of milk, and then add that blend to the flour mixture.

Mix until smooth. There are slight variations, of course: You could add vanilla extract to the mix, or you could use vegetable oil instead of butter but, ultimately, I’m willing to bet even your grandma’s secret family pancake and/or waffle recipe that she gave you on her deathbed uses those ingredients. (You might consider adding a little more sugar and butter to the waffle batter to give the waffles an extra kick of crispiness.)

When waffles were invented, I get the feeling that someone said, “How can we let the people make pancakes, but also make them buy something extra?” (Alternate joke: When waffles

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David’s recommendation: Add three tablespoons of mayonnaise to your batter to make a lighter, fluffier pancake.

were invented, I get the feeling that someone said, “How can we make a pancake, but with the pan on top?”)

Waffles, I will grant, are completely acceptable in four specific cases: 1. When they are small and in the shape of Mickey Mouse at Walt Disney World. This is the platonic ideal of the waffle, and don’t forget to waterboard that mouse with syrup. 2. When they are in the shape of the state of Texas. Personally, I have no particular affinity for Texas as such — I mean, it’s fine, and I remember the Alamo — but I love that every hotel in the entire state seems to have a Texas-shaped waffle iron. Is there some sort of local ordinance?

3. When they are in any shape (but generally round) at Waffle House. I mean, I’m not a complete monster. And 4. When they are small, thick, square-shaped and part of some sort of confectionary dessert at a nice restaurant and I am tipsy on good wine. Said waffles usually involve whipped cream and strawberries, but I leave the details to the chef.

I will also concede that waffles are the superior toaster breakfast, and Rouses Markets carries…all of ROUSES

them, I think. If somebody won’t L’eggo your Eggo, just buy another flavor of Eggo waffles. Homestyle? Check.

Buttermilk? Check. Chocolate chip? Check. Blueberry, strawberry, thick and fluffy, mini cinnamon toast, cinnamon brown sugar? Check, check, check, check, check. And that’s just Eggo. Best Choice, Van’s, Kashi, Kodiak Cakes — you could go the rest of your life never eating the same two types of toaster waffles, so collect them all!

But back to the superior, round and golden-brown breakfast staple that allows — nay, requires — you to experience the sublime high of flipping it halfway through. You now know what it takes to make a basic stack of pancakes that will satisfy even the pickiest eater.

There are some things you don’t know, though. Like, for example, you, too, can make pancakes at home that taste identical to those from IHOP, by adding a single extra ingredient to your batter. That ingredient? A cup of Sprite. (Yes, that Sprite.) Add it carefully to ensure the general thickness of the batter remains the same. I don’t know the mechanisms at work — pancake recipes are their own mysteries of faith — but the jolt of sugar

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can’t hurt. The result is a lighter, fluffier IHOP pancake doppelgänger, and if you have vanilla vodka, you can add it to the Sprite for a breakfast drink that tastes exactly like wedding cake. (You’re welcome.)

Want another insane one? (And I would never lie to you, dear reader.) Add three tablespoons of mayonnaise to your batter to make a lighter, fluffier pancake.

If you really want to go wild, add mayonnaise and some Sprite (eyeball it for batter consistency). This will give you a taller pancake with a more sponge-like consistency — perfect for soaking up the Mrs. Butterworth’s, or even better: Rouses Markets Original Syrup.

(If you see a Rouses label on a shelf item, grab it and don’t look back. Rouses sources only the best items on the market, from olive oil to coconut water, in order to provide you a better product at a lower price.)

The question I now pose is: Are you ready to take your pancake-making to the pro league? Wait…no. No, this is probably too much for you. It’s the sort of recipe from which there is no going back: Never again will your partner or children, or both, allow you to make pancakes any other way. So what I offer is not so much a recipe as a commitment; a new way of life. Are you in? Are you sure? OK, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.

This recipe is like staring into the Ark of the Covenant.

I present: Funfetti pancakes.

Take the standard recipe I offered at the start of this story, and use three eggs instead of one; two cups of milk instead of one; one-third cup of canola oil instead of butter; and a half-teaspoon of salt instead of a full one. The secret ingredient: one box of Pillsbury Funfetti cake mix. (Pick one up the next time you’re at Rouses.)

When you are mixing the dry ingredients, include the entire box of Funfetti mix. From there, follow the pancake recipe above as written. This will create a really thick batter, but don’t worry. You’ll get about two dozen good-sized pancakes from this mix. Top with syrup and enjoy your new life. Healthier? No. But way, way better.

If you’ve made it this far, you might be like me: Sure, reading about cooking is fun, but actually doing it? It’s a lot, and then there’s cleanup and, David, you ask: Is there an easier way? You bet there is, and it’s called Bisquick Shake ’n Pour. Step one: Buy Bisquick Shake ’n Pour. Step two: Add one-and-a-half cups of water to the bottle. Step three: Shake. Step four: Pour onto a hot pan. Step five: Drizzle with syrup and eat it. When the bottle is empty, throw it out. Total prep dishes to clean?

Two: the pan and the spatula. It’s even pretty good on calories, coming in at about 80 calories per pancake.

As you might have guessed, you can find this product at Rouses.

Under protest, I will add that yes, you can use any and all of these recipes with your waffle iron. But really, do you feel like fishing it out from the bottom of the cabinet? And afterward, is it worth the time and trouble of cleaning it? We’re only on this Earth for a short time, after all. Pancakes, though, are forever.

Did you know? You can add Funfetti cake mix to your pancake batter for a delicious twist on the classic recipe.

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NoPour OtherSome Store Brand Syrup on Me.up to Rouses.

Stacks Find thousands of our Each product has been great-tasting Rouses products personally taste-tested throughout our store. by the Rouse Family, and is guaranteed to deliver the best quality at the best price.

www.rouses.com

^Participating QUAKER CEREAL products include any Quaker Old Fashioned, Quick, or Instant Oats, Oatmeal Squares cereal, or Quaker Simply Granola. *For each participating QUAKER CEREAL product’s UPC code entered by a consumer at QuakerOats.com/NourishCommunities from September 14, 2020 through December 31, 2020, The Quaker Oats Company will donate $1.00 to Feeding America®. Guaranteed minimum donation: $50,000. Maximum donation: $250,000. $1 helps provide at least 10 meals secured by Feeding America® on behalf of local member food banks. Visit Campaign website for details.

TOPPINGS ADDED AS A SERVING SUGGESTION

©2020 TQOC

Beignet All Day

By David W. Brown

PHOTO BY ROMNEY CARUS0

Café du Monde is always a little confusing the nearer to the doorways you get. The line along Decatur is typically long, the sun is somehow always at high noon, and by the time you are near enough to the building to smell the sweet goodies inside, an organized disorder takes hold, with you focused on the food, the tourists staggering out (powdered white and slightly dazed at the delights they’ve experienced), and street musicians beating drums and blowing horns. The more mirthful are singing and dancing, and the whole thing is a sort of merry mayhem.

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I expect the usual when I visit one recent morning in July, and I do not find it. The magnificent band is still there, playing “When the Saints Go Marching In” for the 15 millionth time that day. Except for their music, however, it is quiet.

No one is dancing. The line is too short and it all feels somehow like a sweltering, woeful winter. Faces are wrapped with masks and everyone is spaced in six-foot intervals. This poses problems for the musicians — it’s hard to get a party started when every person is two yards apart, after all — and though the singer does his level best, he and his jazz trio manage only to get a few bottoms moving.

The line leading to Café du Monde takes guests not into the New Orleans landmark built a scant decade after the United States bought Louisiana, but rather, to tables blocking the entrance, behind which stands a server eager to take your order.

“One order of beignets, one water,” I say. (I know, I know: I should have ordered the café au lait, but I’d just walked from Mid-City, not a cloud in the sky but a bright, merciless sun overhead, and I wasn’t willing to risk a heat stroke and coronavirus for this article.)

“Seven dollars,” she says.

I give her the cash and drop a dollar in the cup, and she hands over a cold bottle and hot bag with three beignets inside. New Orleans to-go.

But not too far. The open-air patio was still open — seating, however, far fewer than was the norm during the Before Times — with the tables spaced carefully to account for the scourge of COVID-19. Looking around, Café du Monde is the same place it’s always been; the same place where I’ve had 10,000 beignets across 40 years. There are the same white-topped tables, the same green-backed chairs, and an awning to match both. Ceiling fans work heroically against levels of heat and humidity that defy explanation by modern meteorology. The same small signs are bolted to walls: PLEASE WATCH YOUR VALUABLES. Beneath my feet (where I got my shoes), is a black floor of stone tile that has had, for a century and a half, enough powdered sugar ground into it to create some new, delicious geologic stratigraphy.

Café du Monde, in other words, is the same. In particular, its signature menu item, the beignet, is the same, thank goodness — I tested them thoroughly — but in every other way, the whole world around us is different.

Culture, it has been said, is food plus time, which is why the ineffable experience of New Orleans is incomparable with any city in the world. We’ve had 300 years of cuisine from every corner of the Earth arrive and influence everything that came before. A few stand out above others as grand dames of the city’s characteristic cuisine. Red beans and rice. King cake. Gumbo.

Sno-balls. And yes, beignets. What I love most about

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that list is the egalitarianism of it: Princes would enjoy any of those dishes, but even paupers can afford them.

Of the foods most synonymous with New Orleans, the beignet is special, a sort of culinary Mardi Gras or Bourbon Street. Though the famed “French doughnut” came here from France, it was not born there, but rather, had its origins in ancient Rome. (See elsewhere in this magazine the story of French toast, with its similar non-French origins. Those guys get all the credit.) The word beignet is French, though, so that’ll have to do.

The dish made its way here in the 1700s by way of French settlers and the Acadians.

There’s more than one way to make a beignet. It is sometimes made with pâte à choux — a light pastry dough made of butter, water, eggs and flour (that is, by the way, the foundation of the classic éclair). The combo is deep fried and dusted — well, smothered — with powdered sugar. Café du Monde’s beignets — the platonic ideal of the Parisian pastry — are a bit more complex, made just so and resulting in a light, chewy texture unlike any other. The dough is said to use yeast, sugar, warm water, milk, eggs, flour, shortening and salt. The whole thing is rolled, sliced, fried and flipped like little pillows in hot LouAna Pure Cottonseed Oil. The big mountain of powdered sugar, though? That’s the same no matter how you make the dough.

For much of the history of the Café du Monde coffee stand (it’s right there on the awning — “coffee stand” — the modest name a quirk of history and nod to tradition, though the New Orleans institution is no more a coffee stand than Commander’s Palace is a bistro), beignets were described on the menu as “doughnuts.” But let’s face it: You’re in from Chicago on business, and you order a doughnut at this famous French Quarter haunt, and they give you this square thing heaped with sugar, and is there some sort of mistake here, ma’am?

I ordered a doughnut. It wasn’t until the 1950s that Café du Monde relented and described their staple item on the menu as a “beignet.” (The menus today go both ways, calling them “French doughnuts” under a beignet category.)

Sometimes, you just roll with the punches. When COVID came and the shelter-in-place was ordered,

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PHOTO BY ROMNEY CARUS0

Café du Monde did something it hadn’t done since Katrina: It locked its doors for weeks. In part because, like every other dining establishment in the city, they had to figure out how to go forward. How to safely serve patrons. When you’re open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, you rarely get an opportunity to step back and take stock of things, so the owners wasted no time.

While the business was closed, they also repaired some ancient plumbing, repainted the interior, and replaced wiring and lighting fixtures.

It reopened in May, but gone were the heavy ceramic cups and saucers, mitigating a vector of transmission that might infect staff and other patrons. Gone also were the round-the-clock hours of operation. Though they plan eventually to return to 24-hour days, they are presently open only from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. for understandable reasons: The tourists are gone and the locals (well, most of them) are too smart to risk hospitalization for a foolhardy night on the town.

And the sadness of this, the morose age in which we live, shows. As I leave Café du Monde and walk into Jackson Square, the drums and horns of street musicians

PHOTO BY ROMNEY CARUS0

fade in the distance. I reach St. Louis Cathedral, and I’m the only person in Jackson Square. The silence is louder than an air raid siren. It feels apocalyptic, and restaurants and storefronts that I didn’t even know had locks are bolted shut and sometimes chained. Some might never open again. Never before have I so needed a drink, and in this city, never before has it been so hard to find one.

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EY CARUS0

We’ve squeezed our low prices even lower.

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www.rouses.com

M ROUSES

MBy Sarah Baird S

And whether it’s the sleek nature of a martini glass, the twee charm of a floral-pattern tea cup or the bigger-is-better, neon-hued container for a Bourbon Street Hand Grenade, the glass a drink arrives in is as much a part of its DNA as a flamboyant garnish or floral aftertaste. Sure, you can technically drink any liquid out of any cup, but let’s face it: A Sazerac just doesn’t taste quite as satisfying if you stir it up in an old jam jar.

The importance of the drinking vessel itself is particularly crucial when it comes to breakfast drinks, where a small army of different types of ceramic, plastic and glass drinkware sits at attention in our cabinets just waiting for us to put them to good use. And if it’s a recovery morning that calls for a little hair of the dog, or an ultrarushed workday when you’re just hoping not to spill anything, the

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If the old adage “the clothes make the person” were to take liquid form, then it’s safe to say that the glass itself makes the drink. Not only does it (quite literally) give the drink a physical shape — liquids, after all, are a state of matter that cannot be hoisted on their own — but the glass provides the sort of baseline form-meetsfunction personality that can tell you a lot about what you’re about to sip before it even hits your lips.

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perfect breakfast drink, in the perfect drinking cup, is waiting for you.

Coffee Mug SPIKED: IRISH COFFEE When the term “Irish Coffee” is tossed about, different pictures crop up in people’s minds. Some might think it’s a green-tinged concoction rolled out on St. Patrick’s Day as a novelty bit for a party — but nope, no unnecessary coloration here.

Others might think it’s morning coffee that’s been spiked with a little bit of whatever liquor is left over from the night before. And while a nip of

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something in your mug is definitely pretty Irish (and if that’s your thing, do you!), the drink itself employees a little bit more heft to make it the kind of slow sipper that balances “pep me up!” with “but make it boozy!” perfectly.

Created by Joe Sheridan in 1943 at an air force base near Limerick, Ireland that saw its fair share of celebrities roll in on international flights, the Irish Coffee was an invention of necessity. The story goes that a group of passengers were left stranded at the base after their flight was turned around due to weather, and needed something to take off the chill. The Irish Coffee was the fortifying drink Sheridan whipped up — combining Irish whiskey, coffee, sugar and cream — and it quickly became a hit both in Ireland and abroad. This is a drink with staying power: It’s still the most popular cocktail at the Buena Vista Cafe in San Francisco, where bartenders serve a quarter-million a year.

The simple magic of the drink is that it’s sipped through the heavy whipping cream on top, creating a playful, milk-mustache-style experience and a buffer between the hot, liquored-up coffee and your tongue. (If you’re looking for a frozen version — which you can still, of course, sip for breakfast — the frozen Irish Coffee at Erin Rose in the French Quarter is the stuff of hangover legend.)

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Ah, a good ol’ cup of joe: Is there any more classic breakfast drink?

While I’m not here to tell you how to take your coffee — let’s save the mocha-frappa-whatever versus third-wave roastedorganically-in-a-boot argument for another day — I will say that a small step you can take toward having a little bit more fun as the sun is rising is by picking out coffee mugs that make you happy.

Are you a campfire-loving, bikingand-hiking kind of gal? Speckled ceramic coffee mugs give off the perfect outdoor vibe even if you’re trapped indoors. Retroobsessed? Fire King coffee mugs will be the TV Land throwback you crave. As for novelty mugs, eBay is your friend, offering weird Garfield mugs, mugs from places you want to visit, mugs that support your favorite cause and more. Think of your coffee mug as something that delivers a little bit of jump-starting joy each day (and also, uh, caffeine).

Fill a 6-ounce, heatproof glass with hot water to preheat it. Once glass is warm, empty the glass.

Add two sugar cubes to the glass.

Pour piping hot coffee over the cubes in the glass until it is ¾ full.

Stir thoroughly until the sugar is dissolved. Blend in the whiskey.

Top with a collar of whipped cream by pouring it over the back of a warm teaspoon held just above the coffee, and raising the spoon slowly as you pour.

THE RECIPE: IRISH COFFEE Makes 1 drink

If there were a cocktail that flashed the word “brunch” like a bright neon sign, it would be the Mimosa: that omnipresent combination of orange juice and sparkling wine that has been served, batched and spiked just about every single way known to man or beast. And, yes, Mimosas are delightful! It’s a drink that’s bubbly and citrusy and feels like sunshine in a glass.

WHAT YOU WILL NEED: 2 brown sugar cubes 4-6 ounces hot brewed coffee 1 ¹/₃ ounces Irish whiskey Heavy cream HOW TO PREP: Lightly whip cream in an upright blender. The cream should be pourable, but not too thin or too thick.

Champagne Flute SPIKED: BELLINI OR MIMOSA (DEALER’S CHOICE)

For my money, though, there’s a drink that embodies all the charm of the Mimosa with a little bit more substance: the Bellini. Made

from a combination of sparkling wine (traditionally Prosecco) and peach nectar (a fancy name for thicker peach juice), the Bellini feels like a down-to-earth, delicious cousin to the Mimosa that hasn’t quite hit a saturation point yet. Plus, the density of that sweet peach nectar requires a little bit more time to enjoy the mouthfeel, meaning you don’t blow through the drinks quite as fast as you do with the Mimosa (and end up out of commission for the rest of the day).

ALCOHOL FREE: SPARKLING JUICE

HOW TO PREP: Combine peach purée and Prosecco in a pitcher, and pour into a chilled champagne flute.

Highball Glass SPIKED: RED SNAPPER OR BLOODY MARY (DEALER’S CHOICE)

It might conjure up memories of New Year’s Eve as a kid, secretly coveting your parents’ champagne, but there’s actually a whole lot to love about sparkling juice. For starters, grape and apple aren’t the only games in town: There’s sparkling blood orange juice, sparkling raspberry juice, sparkling cranberry juice and pretty much every sparkling fruit juice in between. Served in a flute, it’s a gussied-up addition to any brunch table — or on a Monday morning, it’s a refreshing pick-me-up as you run out the door. After all, seltzer can’t be the only bubbles in our lives.

At its core, the Red Snapper is simply a Bloody Mary made with gin — an option I didn’t know existed until famously cantankerous New Orleans bartender Paul Gustings whipped one up for me in a true moment of morning-after need. The herbal gin — when compared with a more traditional vodka option — allows the spices and earthiness of the tomato juice to really bloom, creating the kind of drink that feels learned; no piling on of bacon strips and other extreme garnishes required.

THE RECIPE: BELLINI Makes 1 drink

ALCOHOL FREE: TOMATO JUICE — STRAIGHT

WHAT YOU WILL NEED: ¹/₈ cup chilled white peach purée ½ cup cold Prosecco

Now this is where you should go crazy with the add-ons. A highball glass is the perfect, sturdy vessel for supporting stuff

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piled on a stick, and there’s no better base than plain tomato juice for building a salad in a glass. Spice up your rim! Plop in some celery, carrots and a few olive orbs! Cheese cubes?

Fine, go for it! Without the booze, you’re essentially getting all your nutrients for the day, first thing in the day, in the most lighthearted way possible.

THE RECIPE: RED SNAPPER Makes 1 drink WHAT YOU WILL NEED: 1 teaspoon celery salt 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper ¼ lime, cut into two wedges 4 ounces tomato juice 2 ounces gin ½ ounce freshly squeezed lemon juice 6 dashes Tabasco 4 dashes Worcestershire sauce 1 celery stalk, for garnish HOW TO PREP: Mix celery salt and pepper in a shallow saucer. Rub rim of 12-ounce tumbler with the juicy side of 1 lime wedge and coat wet edge with salt and pepper by placing glass rim down in the saucer of salt and pepper. Place lime wedge on rim of glass. Fill glass with ice.

Add all the remaining ingredients to a shaker with ice, and shake until chilled.

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Strain into ice-filled, salt- and pepper-rimmed glass. Garnish with celery stalk and serve immediately.

THE RECIPE: BLOODY MARY Makes 1 drink WHAT YOU WILL NEED: 2 teaspoons celery salt ¼ lemon, cut into two wedges 1 teaspoon prepared horseradish ½ teaspoon Worcestershire sauce ¼ teaspoon hot sauce ¼ teaspoon soy sauce Dash freshly ground black pepper Dash cayenne pepper 2 ounces vodka 4 ounces tomato juice 1 stick celery, for garnish HOW TO PREP: Place celery salt in a shallow saucer. Rub rim of 12-ounce tumbler with the juicy side of 1 lemon wedge and coat wet edge with celery salt by placing glass rim down in the saucer of salt.

Place lemon wedge on rim of glass. Fill glass with ice.

Put horseradish, Worcestershire, hot sauce, soy sauce, black pepper and cayenne pepper in the bottom of a shaker. Fill shaker with ice and add vodka, tomato juice and juice of remaining lemon wedge. Shake vigorously.

Strain into ice-filled, salt-rimmed glass. Garnish with celery stalk and serve immediately.

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Rocks Glass SPIKED: BRANDY MILK PUNCH OR BOURBON MILK PUNCH (DEALER’S CHOICE) A staple of old-guard restaurants across New Orleans, the Brandy Milk Punch is just the right amount of wholesome-meets-naughty.

Typically made by combining brandy (or bourbon) with whole milk, powdered sugar, ice and a dusting of nutmeg, it’s a breakfast drink that’s a wintertime treat — particularly if you’re partial to eggnog.

Selecting bourbon versus brandy is a personal choice (and you can’t really lose either way!) but brandy is a bit smoother and more traditional, creating a creamier cocktail without the back-end bite of the bourbon.

Unlike many breakfast drinks — which are pretty easy come, easy go — this is a cocktail where you can’t fuss with the ratios: Cutting down on the milk and up on the brandy, or vice versa, is an invitation to some seriously out-of-whack tastes (and a stomachache).

ALCOHOL FREE: ORANGE JULIUS At first blush, an Orange Julius — the eponymous drink of the Orange Julius juice store where it

was created in Los Angeles in the 1920s — seems potentially too funky. Made when orange juice concentrate, milk, vanilla, sugar, egg whites and ice are swirled together like a brighter, frothier smoothie, an Orange Julius has the appearance of a mash-up of all childhood breakfast drinks into one that might not work.

Oh, but work it does. It tastes like a melted Creamsicle, and isn’t entirely bad for you (hello, Vitamin C, calcium and protein!)

Also, if you really feel like it, just drink a big glass of milk or your alternative milk of choice (oat, soy, almond — the sky’s the limit!) for breakfast. For some reason, drinking a cool glass of milk, straight up, has become relatively rare in our society, reserved only for school kids to do out of cartons or Marlon Brando to do in a movie from 70 years ago. Guess what, though?

It still tastes good! And, if you’ve eaten a ton of spicy or fried food the night before, it helps to settle your stomach more effectively than pretty much anything else.

(Trust me, I’ve experimented.)

THE RECIPE: BRANDY MILK PUNCH Makes 1 drink WHAT YOU WILL NEED: 2 ounces brandy 1½ ounces heavy cream 1 ounce simple syrup ½ teaspoon vanilla extract Freshly grated nutmeg, for serving

HOW TO PREP: Combine brandy, cream, simple syrup and vanilla extract in a cocktail shaker filled with ice, and shake vigorously. Strain into a rocks glass filled with ice and dust with nutmeg.

Goblet SPIKED: ABSINTHE SUISSESSE It’s a special kind of morning when you can blend your eggs into your cocktail, whether you’re shaking (and shaking, and shaking) a Ramos Gin Fizz or a couple of Amaretto Sours. There’s one drink, though, that’s singular enough to make devotees (myself included) keep it on reserve for the holiest of holy mornings: Mardi Gras Day. Enter: the Absinthe Suissesse.

The Absinthe Suissesse brings together ingredients that, until fairly recently, were either really rare or downright illegal.

Combining emerald-tinged, banned-from-1912-until-2007 absinthe with crème de menthe, egg white, half-and-half, Herbsaint and (the very recently revived) almond-flavored orgeat, this is a drink that’s blenderapproved but feels completely novel, as if the smoothing nutty ROUSES

notes and minty tingles were balancing “revved up” and “chilled out” as you venture out into the day. And while it might not have the ubiquity of a Mimosa or Irish Coffee, when you feel the urge to roll it out around 6 am, you'll know it’s needed.

1½ tablespoons almond orgeat syrup 1 egg white 1 dash orange flower water ¼ cup heavy cream or half-and-half ½ cup ice

ALCOHOL FREE: HERBAL TEA

HOW TO PREP: Blend absinthe, orgeat syrup, egg white, orange flower water, heavy cream or half-and-half, and ice cubes in a blender for 10 seconds.

Strain into chilled goblet and serve.

Liquors that taste like you’re chewing on a stick of wintergreen gum aren’t for everyone, but those who love the complexities of herbaceous booze (like absinthe) will also enjoy a morning spot of tea — no fancy china required.

Tea has been made out to be the fusty, dress-up-only sibling to coffee, but it offers a range of options for drinkers who are trying to cut down on their daily caffeine intake or simply want to explore the wide range of tasting notes that tea has to offer: floral, fruity, chocolatey, crisp, mellow — it’s truly a rainbow of piping hot (or iced down) flavors.

And if you find yourself drawn to the ritual of a morning tea, but think it might need a little bit more pick-me-up by way of a glug of bourbon: Don’t worry, your secret is safe with us.

THE RECIPE: FROZEN ABSINTHE SUISSESSE Makes 1 drink WHAT YOU WILL NEED: 1 ounce absinthe

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Breakfast, It’s What’s for Dinner

By Brett Martin

Me and breakfast have a problem. I don’t like it. I don’t think about it. And, for the most part, I don’t eat it.

It’s not breakfast’s fault — it’s mine. My whole life, I have wanted to be the kind of person who wakes up and sits down to a big, nutritious spread. I believe that breakfast is the Most Important Meal of the Day. Honest, I do. Over the years, I’ve tried developing a habit for cold cereal and hot oatmeal, waffles fresh and frozen, overnight oatmeal, yogurt, fruit, eggs in every preparation…anything to get something down my gullet and kick-start my day. None of it takes.

I have an old friend who wishes all his food could be delivered in the form of a pill; life, he believes, would be immeasurably easier if all his nutritional needs were met in one, simple, decision-free gulp. I come from the opposite camp; my family likes to say that we plan our next meal while in the middle of the current one — a line I’ve since learned is applied by most New Orleanians to themselves. Only on those late mornings when I find myself, empty-stomached and coffee-jangled, leaning over the sink to devour, without so much as a hint of pleasure, a hard-boiled egg or plain piece of ham or leftover pizza crust to keep myself from passing out…only then do I think of my friend’s imaginary pill, and think he may be onto something.

There is, however, one exception, one time when I absolutely love breakfast, and that is when it’s for dinner.

What could be better! More joyful? More deliciously transgressive! I bet you’re smiling just thinking about it.

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Let’s start by acknowledging that we have always played fast and loose with meal definitions.

You don’t have to look past the doughnut to see that dessert and breakfast, ostensibly meals that bookend the day, are, in actuality, secretly holding hands around the back. Is there any rational reason that a chocolate croissant is acceptable at 7:30 in the morning but an eclair must wait until after dinner? Or that ham, cheese and toast are a breakfast platter but, when assembled, they become a lunch sandwich? Let’s not even talk about syrup….

Still, there’s something special about Breakfast for Dinner. Its pleasures are universal, and examples of its infinite variety are entwined with all levels of New Orleans life. I’m thinking of fried chicken and cornbread waffles at the aptly named Ma Momma’s House of Cornbread, Chicken and Waffles in New Orleans East and the Pythian Market. Of the eggy pleasures of the Alligator “Cheesecake” — really much closer to a quiche — at Jacques-Imo’s. Of the grits soaking up gravy beneath veal grillades at Upperline. Of the oft-overlooked egg menu at Galatoire’s, from which a friend of mine likes to order eggs Benedict as his main course, with a petite filet mignon on the side. Of steamy bowls of pho, which is, of course, a breakfast dish for millions in Vietnam, even if, here, we’ve moved it to the dinner menu.

Then there is the category of late-night dining with the purpose of soaking up alcohol, a task for which breakfast foods are especially well-suited — or at least they always seem so at the time. I remember one evening, long past midnight, sitting at Camellia Grill W W W. R O U S E S . C O M 3 3

and watching with admiration as a solo young man meticulously devoured an entire plate of eggs, bacon, toast and grits, washing it all down with an enormous glass of cold milk and finishing with a look of blissed-out satisfaction that sticks with me to this day. As for home, the first Carnival that my partner and I lived together in our own home, we invited people over for pancakes and bacon on Mardi Gras morning. It was sort of a disaster, trying to cook and serve while also getting costumed and out the door. These days, we’ve made that classic combo our Lundi Gras dinner tradition, now shared with two daughters and far more civilized. (The Bloody Mary also makes a perfect evening cocktail, but that’s a cause for another day.)

The great Jacques Pépin, who for decades taught a special seminar just on cooking eggs at the French Culinary Institute, recently told me that his almost magic ability to spin pristine French omelettes, perfect poached eggs, deep-fried eggs and countless other wonders from the simplest of ingredients sprang out of his childhood amidst rationing and meat shortages in wartime France, when you ate eggs, no matter the time of day, because that was the most available protein.

A similar economic necessity is at the heart of Nicole Mackie’s memories of eating grits for supper while growing up in the Seventh Ward and New Orleans East. “Grits were a cheap, filling dish. It was what we had to make,” says the co-owner of Ma Momma’s House of Cornbread, Chicken and Waffles. Later, she and her husband and co-owner, Earl, would end dates at the Trolley Stop or Camellia Grill, where her regular order was grits, scrambled eggs and pork chops. That combo had a special place on the menu when they opened Ma Momma’s on Crowder Boulevard, in 2013. (The Pythian Market branch opened in July.) The restaurant’s namesake is probably the most famous example of Breakfast for Dinner, but it’s a concept that’s strangely underrepresented in New Orleans. “We had tried chicken and waffles on trips to New York and Los Angeles,” says Mackie, “and we thought, ‘This is something New Orleans needs!’”

The chicken, crisp and juicy, is made from Earl’s secret family recipe; Mackie says she has access to it

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in case of emergency but has never peeked, which is surely one indicator of a good marriage. The restaurant offers conventional waffles, but they pale next to the ones made with cornbread batter — a simple innovation of Mackie’s grandmother, who got tired of making her cornbread in an oven, that utterly changes the game. “It’s the family masterpiece,” Mackie says.

If chicken and waffles has a lesser-known twin, it’s grillades and grits, a staple at Queen Breakfasts held in the wee hours after Mardi Gras krewe balls and, tellingly, also called Queen Suppers. That’s where JoAnn Clevenger first heard of them, and they’ve been a staple under the tenures of multiple chefs at her Upperline Restaurant. Clevenger grows downright giddy at the mention of Breakfast for Dinner: “You’ve got eggs, you’ve got toasts. You’ve got cereals and crepes…and, oh! Hash browns are something people forget about!” She too grew up, in rural Louisiana, with the need to stretch meals with ingredients like grits — and with an eye to letting nothing go to waste. Leftovers in her house are destined to be eggified into omelettes and frittatas. French toast shows up on the dinner table, stuffed with spinach and mascarpone. She’ll even occasionally go with a full English breakfast: eggs, toast, bacon and andouille sausage — all more than she would ever eat in the morning. “I like to gussy things up just a little bit,” she says of her Breakfast for Dinner philosophy. “I want it to have a little more flavor, be a little more luxurious. That’s when it feels special.”

And that, really, is what we’re talking about. A feeling.

You could debate existential questions of when a plate of meat really becomes dinner rather than breakfast, or whether a frittata even counts as breakfast. The truth is, you know Breakfast for Dinner when you feel it: that sudden moment of joy and freedom that comes when you throw away whatever plans you may have had, utter whatever version of “_____ it” suits your temperament, and reach for the eggs or pancake batter (or head toward Waffle House). It may be silly that something so small can impart such a thrill, but why fight it? Everybody in the family suddenly relaxes. The world feels a little easier. The dinner battle is won for another day. And nobody would dream of taking it as a pill.

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Brett/Robinson getaways are as convenient and easy as shopping at Rouses. Our worry free booking policy makes sure you plan ahead for your vacation without any concern. When you visit the coast, we can help you select a property, entertainment, and activities that suite you and your guests best. 100% refunds guaranteed.

800.932.6759 . FoodiesLoveTheBeach.com

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Breakfast du Jour

By David W. Brown

Here is what you need to know about French toast: It’s not French, and it’s not toast. (Toast requires a toaster. I don’t make the rules.) Somehow we’ve welcomed this fraudulent food — this stranger — into our homes, and though I hate to be the one to unmask it, Scooby-Doo style, unmask it I will.

The thing about French toast — the English call it “eggy bread,” which is much worse — is that it has a special place in the hearts of every young cook in the world.

When you’re seven years old or so and just introduced to the wonders of that source of fire and magic in the kitchen, the stove, the first thing you learn to cook is probably a fried egg. The first fancy thing you learn to cook, though, is always French toast. The egg is still there, but now you need a bowl and a little milk, some sugar and cinnamon (the latter being the first real spice you reach for beyond the salt and pepper), and there’s mixing and whisking and the dipping of bread before a quiet, gentle fry in the pan. After the cooking, there are more steps yet, and you pull a bottle of syrup from the fridge like Arthur drawing Excalibur from the stone, and drown that fluffy not-French not-toast with Mrs. Butterworth’s (and then fill the plate for good measure).

French toast is a breakthrough moment for a child at the stove. And the minute you are old enough to think to sprinkle it with confectioners' sugar, you’re practically a grade school Gordon Ramsay, and I think you’re technically allowed to curse like he does, too.

If French toast is not French, though, where did it come from? Ancient Rome, as it turns out — about a hundred years before there was a France. It first appeared in a cookbook called Apicius, and its name, translated, is: “another sweet dish.” The recipe for another sweet dish, presented in its entirety: “Slice fine white bread, crust removed, into rather large pieces which soak in ROUSES

milk and beaten eggs, fry in oil, cover with honey and serve.”

For those of the blog generation, such brevity in recipes might seem unfamiliar. A modern adaptation of the recipe would look something like this: “When I was a young woman of 17, I joined my parents on a holiday to Belgium, where verdant fields of pink begonias were divided by the slim, steel, sun-warmed lines of railroad tracks on which our train, conducted by a stately gentleman of advanced age, with creases on his forehead and trim white locks beneath his uniform hat revealing a sagacity beyond even his considerable years...” Six hundred words later: “…As the kindly matron took away the plate, beams of sunlight slicing through the room, leaving little patterns dancing on the wainscoting as it struck the crystal chandelier above, I asked her: ‘Signora, what was it that you just served me?’

And she turned her head, gazed upward as though in prayer, but reader — she laughed! Such delight was in her voice, and she said: ‘My child, we call it another sweet thing, but you might evermore know it as French toast.’” And then you get the recipe.

But wait, my more astute readers are asking: If French toast was from ancient Rome, why do we call it French toast? Why not German toast or Bombay toast? Funny story — it actually has been called German toast and Bombay toast! Because we’re not exactly talking about the integrated circuit here. It’s a slice of bread dipped in an egg. People just sort of figured it out. (You might be wondering why no one calls it “English toast.” The reason: Eggy bread is sometimes served with ketchup, and no other country wanted to acknowledge that.)

What happened to make French toast French was this: pain perdu.

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Like the New Orleans dish? Sort of.

Pain perdu — literally “lost bread” — has a couple of different explanations.

The “pain” of the phrase refers to old, stale baguettes. You could throw them out or feed them to the birds — it’s lost!

—but if you want to play Dr. Frankenstein, you could raise those baguettes from the dead in an unnatural experiment. Take the hard bread, dip slices of it into a blend of beaten eggs and, behold, the bread softens before being pan-fried back to life (in butter). Serve with sugar.

Like all things French, pain perdu became quite the rage in Europe, until finally the dish and the presumed country of origin grew synonymous.

Thus was French toast born. Strangely, the very first recorded mention of a thing called “French toast” appeared in 1660, in a book called The Accomplisht Cook.

There’s a catch, though. (French toast is troublesome that way.) The recipe doesn’t mention eggs — kind of a big omission in a dish with basically two ingredients. Rather, the very first official French toast recipe uses orange juice, sugar and wine. Centuries would elapse before the first egg-based “French toast” would appear in print.

If you’ve had pain perdu and don’t live in France, you’ve probably had it in New Orleans. (In fact, you might not even have known that the dish came from France.) Where French toast is eggs and bread, the New Orleans variation uses a loaf of stale French bread.

Because there are no preservatives in New Orleansstyle French bread, it goes bad quickly, explaining why the city’s chefs would embrace a recipe to extend the lives of loaves a little. Slice it up and dip it in a custard made with eggs, sugar, heavy whipping cream, vanilla extract and cinnamon. Fry it lightly in butter and, afterward, lightly sprinkle it with confectioners’ sugar.

(Oh, who are we kidding? Go crazy with it.) You can also add Irish whiskey to the custard before whisking because, I mean, why not? Do you think you’re going to live forever?

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Pain perdu is one of those ubiquitous meals that everyone around here makes the local way. And that’s not even counting the sumptuous experience that is pain perdu at a Commander’s Palace jazz brunch, or Muriel’s Jackson Square, which has a pain perdu bread pudding, which is like making king cake with unicorn seasoning.

After all this, though, the twisty history of French toast and the lies on top of lies might have you reeling and too exhausted to contemplate preparing your own. If there are no nine-yearolds living with you, Rouses has you covered. There are Eggo French toaster sticks that you drop in a toaster before dousing in syrup. Farm Rich has French toast sticks that you heat in the microwave. But if you want your brain to melt and your soul to ascend straight to heaven, pick up a whisk and do it yourself — but instead of French bread, use a tin of King’s Hawaiian bread, sliced to form. Prepare the egg custard as described above, and soak it up with that foamy, cotton-candy-like King’s sweet bread. You’re welcome.

Start a day like that, and it’s all downhill. But, in one final twist, there’s one more thing you need to know about French toast: In France, it’s not served for breakfast. It’s served as a dessert there. (It’s just wheels inside of wheels with this wonderful syrupsoaked, cinnamon-sprinkled, egg-bread bonanza.)

Thus, with the approval of the breakfast staple’s fraudulent namesake, serve French toast after dinner, and end your day on a high note.

Flip to pages 50-51 for our favorite Classic French Toast and Pain Perdu recipes.

A Toast t0 butter prices.

We’ve taken our already low everyday prices even lower.

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Gentilly Cream Pancakes

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Gentilly Cream Pancakes Makes 6 servings WHAT YOU WILL NEED: FOR THE PANCAKES: 4 cups all-purpose flour 4 tablespoons sugar 2 teaspoons baking powder 1 teaspoon baking soda 1 teaspoon salt 4 cups buttermilk ½ cup sour cream 4 large eggs 6 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly 2-4 teaspoons vegetable oil FOR THE GENTILLY CREAM: 8-ounce container cream cheese, at room temperature 8-ounce container mascarpone cream cheese, at room temperature 1 cup confectioners’ sugar 2 cups heavy whipping cream 1 teaspoon almond extract FOR SERVING: Fresh strawberries, raspberries and blueberries Syrup HOW TO PREP: FOR THE PANCAKES Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 200°F. Set a wire rack inside a rimmed baking sheet. Spray with vegetable oil spray; place in oven.

As you cook, place each batch of cooked pancakes on baking sheet in oven to keep warm until all are cooked.

bowl, whisk buttermilk, sour cream, eggs and melted butter together. Make well in center of dry ingredients and pour in wet ingredients; gently stir until just combined. Let batter sit 10 minutes before cooking.

Heat 1 teaspoon oil in 12-inch nonstick skillet over medium heat until shimmering. Using paper towels, carefully wipe out oil, leaving thin film on bottom and sides of pan.

Using ¼-cup dry measuring cup, portion batter into pan in 4 places. Cook until edges of the 4 pancakes are set, first side is golden brown, and bubbles on surface are just beginning to break, 2 to 3 minutes.

Using thin, wide spatula, flip pancakes and continue to cook until second side is golden brown, 1 to 2 minutes longer. Repeat with remaining batter, using remaining oil as necessary.

FOR THE GENTILLY CREAM: Using a heavy-duty mixer, mix the cream cheese and mascarpone together. Add confectioners’ sugar until fully mixed. Add the whipping cream at low speed.

Add almond extract. Whip at medium-high speed until stiff peaks form.

TO ASSEMBLE: To stack your pancakes, spread a thick layer of Gentilly cream and berries between each pancake.

Top with Gentilly cream and berries, and serve with syrup.

Whisk flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt together in medium bowl. In a second medium Start the day with Gentilly Cream Pancakes, and end it with a fresh Gentilly Cake from your local Rouses Markets. No judgment here!

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Dozen-Up Biscuits

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Flour Biscuits

Dozen-Up Biscuits

Drop Biscuits

Makes 12 biscuits A last-minute milk wash adds a savory flavor.

Makes 12 biscuits

Makes 12 biscuits The secret ingredient in these biscuits is mayonnaise.

WHAT YOU WILL NEED: 2 cups flour, plus more for dusting 2 tablespoons baking powder 1 teaspoons kosher salt 7 tablespoons unsalted butter ¾ cup milk, plus more for the wash HOW TO PREP: Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 450°F. Coat a large cookie sheet with nonstick spray, or line with parchment paper or a nonstick silicone baking mat.

Whisk flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl. Using a dough blender, two forks, or your fingers, cut butter into flour mixture, forming pea-size crumbles.

Add milk; stir until dough just comes to together with visible flecks of butter. On a lightly dusted surface, roll dough 1" thick.

WHAT YOU WILL NEED: 4 cups Bisquick Pancake & Baking Mix 1 cup sour cream 1 cup 7UP 1/2 cup melted butter, plus more for brushing HOW TO PREP: Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 425°F. Mix Bisquick, sour cream and 7UP in a large bowl. The dough will be very soft. Knead and fold dough until ingredients are completely incorporated. Pat dough out and, using a small juice glass or a 2½" round cutter, cut out biscuits.

Melt the butter in the bottom of a 9" x 13" casserole dish. Place biscuits on top of melted butter and bake until golden brown, about 12-15 minutes.

Remove biscuits from the oven and cool for a couple of minutes, then brush each biscuit top with melted butter before serving.

WHAT YOU WILL NEED: 2 cups self-rising flour 1 cup whole milk ¹/₃ cup Blue Plate Mayonnaise HOW TO PREP: Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 425°F. Coat a large cookie sheet with nonstick spray, or line with parchment paper or a nonstick silicone baking mat.

Combine milk and mayonnaise with a whisk in a large bowl.

Whisk in flour slowly, whisking just enough to combine. Scrape down sides of bowl.

Using a spoon or an ice cream scoop, drop spoonfuls of the dough onto the prepared baking sheet. Bake until golden brown, 15 to 17 minutes. Remove from oven and transfer to a wire rack to cool slightly.

Using a small juice glass or a 2½" round cutter, cut out biscuits and transfer to a baking sheet; bake until just golden, 10-12 minutes.

Brush with milk and continue baking until golden brown.

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Dutch Baby Pancake

Bette Coe’s Dutch Baby Pancake Makes 1 large pancake A Dutch baby pancake, sometimes known as a “German pancake,” is an oversized, thin pancake cooked in a piping-hot cast-iron skillet. This recipe comes from a friend of our art director, Eliza.

WHAT YOU WILL NEED: 4 eggs 1 cup whole milk 1 cup all-purpose flour ¹/₃ cup butter 8 ounces cream cheese 1 cup marshmallow cream 1-2 cups fresh strawberries and blueberries, sliced

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HOW TO PREP: Preheat oven to 425°F. Whisk eggs until frothy, about 1 minute with a handheld mixer. (Eggs may also be whisked by hand.)

Slowly add milk, whisking to combine. Add flour in small portions. Blend until smooth.

Place butter in a heavy 10-inch skillet, and place skillet in the oven. As soon as the butter has melted, remove pan from oven and pour the batter into to the skillet. Return the skillet to the oven and bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until the pancake is puffed and golden.

Meanwhile, mix the cream cheese and marshmallow cream together.

Remove pancake from oven. Serve at once topped with cream cheese and marshmallow mixture and fresh fruit.

Savory Dutch Baby Pancake

Buttermilk Waffles

Makes 1 large pancake Kait’s Kitchen is a food blog specializing in easy to follow recipes and affordable meals. Food blogger Kaitlyn was raised in Thibodaux, Louisiana, but now lives in Denver, Colorado, with her husband, daughter, and their adorable husky, Kato. For more recipes, visit her blog at www.kaitskitchen.com.

Makes 4 waffles To make an easy substitute for buttermilk, mix 1 tablespoon white vinegar or lemon juice into 1 cup of milk for each cup of buttermilk a recipe calls for. Let the milk stand for 10 to 15 minutes, until it thickens very slightly and curdles.

WHAT YOU WILL NEED: ½ cup flour ½ cup whole milk (2% also works) at room temperature 2 eggs (separated between 1 egg + 1 egg white and then one yolk by itself) ¹/₈ teaspoon salt ¹/₈ teaspoon garlic powder 1 tablespoon salted butter, melted 1 tablespoon salted butter, cold or softened Coarse salt and pepper, to taste Shavings or shredded parmesan cheese, for topping Butter, for serving Optional: bacon HOW TO PREP: Preheat oven to 450°F. Add flour, milk, eggs (with 1 yolk removed), salt, garlic powder and melted butter to a small blender cup. Blend the mixture for 30 seconds until well mixed.

In an 8-inch ovenproof skillet, melt the tablespoon of butter over medium heat.

Once the butter is melted, pour the batter into the skillet and immediately place in the preheated oven.

No need to stir the mixture in the skillet!

WHAT YOU WILL NEED: 1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour 1 tablespoon cornmeal 1 teaspoon baking soda ½ teaspoon table salt 1 egg, separated ₇/₈ cup buttermilk 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted Butter, for serving Rouses Maple Syrup, for serving HOW TO PREP: Preheat waffle iron for at least 10 minutes.

Sift together the dry ingredients in a medium bowl.

In a separate bowl, whisk yolk with buttermilk and melted butter.

In a third bowl, beat egg white until stiff peaks form.

Add buttermilk mixture to the dry ingredients and mix well; gently fold egg white into batter.

Spray waffle iron with oil. Spread appropriate amount of batter onto waffle iron. Following manufacturer’s instructions, cook waffle until golden brown, 2 to 5 minutes.

Serve with butter and syrup.

Let bake for 12 minutes. Take pancake out and top with the remaining yolk, parmesan cheese and a little butter, and place back in oven for 2-3 minutes or until the yolk sets.

Add more coarse salt and pepper if you wish and slice into four pieces. Enjoy with some bacon!

ROUSES

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French Toast

5 0 S E P T E M B E R O C TO B E R 20 20

Classic French Toast

Pain Perdu

Makes 4-6 servings The real beauty of this recipe is that you can use old stale French bread — or any stale bread — that otherwise might be thrown out. When you have those leftover heels or a few slices that no one ate while it was fresh, you can put them in a gallon-size ziplock bag in the freezer. Whenever you have more stale bread, toss it in the bag in the freezer so you have plenty when you’re ready to make French toast.

Makes 4 servings

WHAT YOU WILL NEED: 12 slices of stale French bread 2-3 eggs ¾ cup of milk ¼ teaspoon vanilla extract ½ teaspoon cinnamon 1 teaspoon sugar, or to taste Dash nutmeg Butter or canola oil, just enough for frying Confectioners’ sugar, for sprinkling Maple syrup, to taste HOW TO PREP: Beat eggs in a shallow bowl. Add milk, vanilla, cinnamon, sugar and nutmeg, and mix well to incorporate.

Soak stale French bread slices in the egg mixture briefly, turning each slice over to ensure it is coated with the egg mixture on both sides.

Heat a skillet over medium-high heat and add just a bit of butter or canola oil (enough to grease the entire pan lightly). When butter is melted (or oil is shimmering) and pan is hot, add bread slices soaked in egg mixture to the pan and fry them for 2-4 minutes, or until browned on one side.

Turn bread slices over and cook the other side for 2-4 minutes, or until well browned. Remove from pan and serve with a sprinkling of confectioners’ sugar and some maple syrup.

ROUSES

WHAT YOU WILL NEED: ¼ teaspoon finely grated lime zest 1 tablespoon sugar 1 tablespoon lime juice 1 pint strawberries, hulled and halved 2 large eggs 2 tablespoons sugar 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract Pinch of salt ¾ cup whole milk Four ¾-inch-thick slices of brioche ½ cup blanched whole almonds, coarsely chopped 2 tablespoons unsalted butter Confectioners’ sugar Steen’s Syrup, to serve HOW TO PREP: In a medium bowl, rub the grated lime zest into the sugar. Stir in the lime juice. Toss strawberries in the sugar mixture and let stand for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

In a shallow dish large enough to hold the brioche in a single layer, whisk together the eggs, sugar, vanilla and salt, then whisk in the milk. Add the brioche and turn to coat, then let the brioche soak for 10 minutes.

Place the almonds in a shallow bowl. Melt the butter in a large nonstick skillet. Dip one side of each slice of brioche in the almonds and place in the skillet, nut side down. Cook over moderate heat until the almonds are nicely browned, about 3 minutes.

Flip the brioche slices and cook until browned on the second side, about 3 minutes longer. Transfer the pain perdu to 4 plates and sprinkle with confectioners’ sugar.

Spoon the strawberries on top and serve.

Pass the Steen’s Syrup at the table.

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QUICK, EASY &

SIMPLE. Grilled Chicken on Wild Rice 6 oz John Soules Foods Grilled Chicken Breast Strips, thawed 6 oz Wild Rice, cooked 6 oz Green Beans, blanched Preheat an oven to 375°F. Cook your favorite wild rice dish according to the instructions. Place the John Soules Foods Grilled Chicken Breast Strips on a cookie sheet and loosely cover with foil. Place in the oven for 7 to 10 minutes.

In a medium sauté pan heat 1 tablespoon butter and sauté the green beans for 4 to 5 minutes, or until heated through.

Place the rice on a serving plate, top with Grilled Chicken and arrange the green beans along side. Serve and enjoy!

A few minutes is all it takes to prepare a great meal with John Soules Foods Grilled Chicken Strips. Great taste and made with the best quality premium ingredients.From our kitchen to yours, enjoy!

For More Recipes... www.jsf4u.com/recipes ©2020 John Soules Foods, Inc.