Breakfast at Parrain’s

Food has lately been at the forefront of conversations and gatherings, probably a characteristic true of many people celebrating Thanksgiving around the country this week. For the more fortunate it’s been a blitzkrieg of eating that has us still groaning with the abundance of it all. Lots of remembered favorites, new recipes and flavors that linger on the palate for a day or two, and a refrigerator half full of leftovers. “Do you want a turkey sandwich?…Hey, how about a piece of mince pie?” Had to answer no this time and confess that I’m full of turkey and dressing. “But hey, let’s jump in the car, take a drive and find a place to have a bite to eat.”

At the risk of overkill, today’s post again features Louisiana food, or the type served at Parrain’s seafood restaurant on Perkins Road in Baton Rouge. Not that old, Parrain’s opened in September of 2001. The waiter offered an interesting tidbit of information about that: The opening was originally planned for September 11, but a slight complication in New York City that morning put a stop to most things, including restaurant openings. In the nine years since then, Parrain’s has become a Baton Rouge favorite for Cajun seafood dishes. The name of the restaurant comes from the Creole-French word parrain for ‘father.’

Sunday brunch at Parrain’s is a popular time, but we got there early enough to get a comfortable table beside a window half full of banana leaves. The restaurant isn’t small, but some sections give the impression of being busier than others, with a loud clatter of dishes and voices. Our table was in a quieter corner. The brunch menu for today offered five special dishes, with the alternative of ordering from the regular menu. The five specials looked pretty good, and we ordered the first choice, something called Eggs Grace. Here is a description straight from the menu: French bread toasted and topped with grilled tomatoes, fried catfish filets and poached eggs smothered with crawfish etouffée and served with grits. It’s a tempting plateful, but maybe more the thing for someone with an appetite. First look makes one wonder if all those flavors are going to work together, and for the purist they might not. Eggs smothered in crawfish etouffée is a combination I first had last Monday in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, one that I was eager to try again. As for the catfish, it fits right in as long as you eat it still crisp and not drenched in etouffée. The way it is served at Parrain’s makes that easy, with most of the etouffée soaking into the French bread.

But others may opt for the Boudin omelette—a three egg omelette with boudin sausage and pepper jack cheese topped with white gravy and served with grits and a biscuit. Or the soft shell poach—a bed of spicy hash browns topped with a fried soft-shell crab and poached eggs, finished with hollandaise sauce and served with a biscuit.

It might be hard for anyone to eat like this every day, and I can’t imagine many do and still keep a healthy heart, but for a different kind of brunch or breakfast, these Creole recipes are a delicious alternative. I will miss them when I return to Florida in a few days.

Catfish

Went wandering yesterday around southeast Baton Rouge and somewhere along the way bumped into a Barnes & Noble bookstore. Very probably my car sniffed it out all by itself, a skill picked up from other wanderings. The Toyota has reminded me on more than one occasion that its favorite place for resting is the parking lot in front of a bookstore. Who am I to argue?

For a list of reasons, the Barnes & Noble I browsed yesterday was more inviting than my usual B&N in Daytona. The arrangement of books is easier to follow, there are more armchairs for reading in a mush of comfortable cushions and the shelves holding new fiction are fuller with more titles. Not sure I understand why that would be, but it could be because this store is designated as a superstore. Whatever the reason, there were three or four titles I wanted to buy, but managed some often absent control and in the end bought only one.

Dog Stories, from Everyman’s Pocket Classics is a handsome little volume of stories from an impressive list of writers who include Anton Chekhov, G.K. Chesterton, Rudyard Kipling, Jonathan Lethem, Doris Lessing and fifteen others. As the title implies, the stories all revolve around dogs. After reading Lethem’s story of Ava, the three-legged and full of love pit bull, I knew the book had been a good buy. “Garm—A Hostage” by Rudyard Kipling is a gem of a tale set in colonial India and about a bull terrier of extraordinary intelligence. Some will call Kipling an acquired taste, but this story is fueled by a bond of love and trust that would affect the most dour of readers. In another story by Patricia Highsmith, we meet an aged dog living with a cruel and uncaring master in a New York penthouse. Highsmith is famous for her fiendish characters, but this time the ending is happy.

Good collection. Give it a look next time at the bookstore. Dog Stories, edited by Diana Secker Tesdell; Everyman’s Pocket Classics 2010.

For dinner last night we went to the Acme Oyster Bar for a grand feast of grilled oysters, fried catfish stuffed with crabmeat, crawfish etouffee, red beans and rice and gumbo. Let no one tell you that Louisiana is without a classic cuisine. This Creole-Cajun style of cooking has its origins in the old dirt floor kitchens of poor people from south Louisiana, but its rich and earthy flavors have tamed giants. If ever the question arises, ‘Why should I go to Louisiana?’ the answer is simple: Go for the food.

Raymond’s lagniappe…

‘That first real 35mm camera, a Topcon D-1, black, about the size of an open hand, carried everywhere when young, plenty of film to shoot the dark water of the Mississippi reflecting blue sky and green trees along willow-choked banks. Those black and white negatives from the Topcon show river traffic from the levee in Baton Rouge, crowded Third Street, the Sears store, Walgreen’s Drug Store, the Paramount Theatre, Piccadilly Cafeteria where black men in white shirts carried food trays to the tables for tips, the Istrouma Hotel, Liggett’s Drug Store, H.J. Kress with toy-filled windows, the City Pawn Shop, and Claitor’s Bookstore in the hot summer stillness, the sagging shelves crammed with adventures, the memory of them like a photograph.’ —excerpt from Southern Snapshots