Southerners in Spain part I

I have been thinking about Spain, as in San Sebastien, lately. Reason being is that I am working for a client who pays me in room and board at her house in France. What you say, France? You’re thinking Spain but your writing France. Thing is her house is in the Basque region of France, on the Spanish boarder. The Basque region stretches through both France and Spain. Her home is in the foothills of the Pyrenees mountains, where the hills meet the Atlantic Ocean. It is a beautiful rugged part of the world, we really enjoyed our first visit and can’t wait to go again.

My friends house is in a village called Soca. It is very close to St. Jean de Luz, which is a vacation town on the French side of the Pyrenees. It is also very close to San Sebastian, which is on the other side of the Pyrenees. And if you have ever been to San Sebastian you know what a good thing that is. Especially if you like to eat, there is no other place on earth like San Sebastian when it comes to food.

I think I will back it up and take a few days to tell you how we came to visit this ancient city I had hardly ever heard of. It was years ago, maybe seven or eight, when a friend in the wine business invited us to meet him in Bordeaux, France for Vin Expo. Vin Expo is the largest wine gathering in the world. Wine makers come from all over the world come to show off their wines for the world. We just went along for fun and it was fun indeed.

As we planed the trip we split into two groups and each found a place to rent in or around Bordeaux. Our group was smaller than the other, it was just Stacey and I and friends who were in the wine business in Alabama. We found a place to stay in the Graves region, at Chateau Lacoste.

So this is the first leg of this trip and man was it a trip. The nearest to Bordeaux we could fly direct from Atlanta was Barcelona, Spain. Another city I really, really love, but we had no plans to visit this trip. We were gonna land, take a cab to the train depot and get a train to Bordeaux. No problem, yea right. We flew first class, get to Barcelona and because we flew first class I was probably drunk. They just don’t know how to say no in first class when it comes to more wine , please. I usually drink all night on these trips and pay for it for a few days. Anyway we land, get the cab and he rips us off for about $30.00 on the fare. That never happens now that we are savvy travelers. Inside the train depot we realize that we calculated the time change wrong and we have like twelve hours to wait for the train. Then we have the ride to Bordeaux and then we have to get to our rental house. We decide to rent a car and drive. The car rental is at the airport, so back in a cab and it only cost half as much to get back to the airport, go figure. We rent a car and get a map and hit the road. Now at this point we have not slept for more than twenty four hours and we are gonna try and drive about four hours to Bordeaux. NOT. We hit the brick wall about an hour on the road. I didn’t see any Holiday Inns or Motel 6 or 5 or whatever. We did figure out that the gas stations/restaurant/truck stop was the place to get a room, so we pulled over for the next one and got the one person running the whole operation to show us a room. Clean, small, warm and dry, we’ll take it. We lay down and of course can’t sleep. We go downstairs to the restaurant and eat a little food, still can’t sleep. So we get in the car and go for a little ride. We are in a small village, there seems to be no commerce of any kind until we find a small bar. We go in and it’s just us and the guy running the place and neither of us can speak the others language. We manage to order something to drink, we drink, get tired and go back to truck stop and fall asleep.

Next morning we head out and have a lovely drive through the Pyrenees, into France from Spain. We stop at a roadside produce stand somewhere in France and buy a few things as we are to cook dinner for the whole group the first night and them the next night. We find the largest figs I have ever seen in my life, they are a purplish black and about the size of a baseball. We continue on and find our rental without much problem. We are staying at a Chateau that has converted the horse stables to a carriage house and it’s right nice, if not a bit musty.

Tortas, taco, goat and oxtail on the southside

Chef is without a job momentarily so we have been trying to get together for lunch once a week. Understand that lunch with Chef is not a normal lunch outing. It’s probably that way with most chefs. They are never happy unless they have tried about three or four items from the menu and they want you to have three or four thing from the menu so they can try those dishes as well.

So Chef shows up at my house with some food he has already picked up. We had talked about doing a taco crawl. We were gonna hit two or three taco joints in the neighborhood and than we wanted to check out this place I had found that looked like a cross between a used car lot and a Bar B Que shack. The sign out front read Tootsie Produce and Pig Grill, how could we go wrong?

Well like I said Chef shows up and he had a sandwich, four tacos and one tamale. The sandwich or torta if you will, was made with al pastor, beef marinated with pineapple. Tortas always seem to be on the large side and usually the bun is steamed. This one had all these qualities and was very good.

The tacos are the thing, I could eat a million of these and at the usual price of $1.50 per, you can afford to have as many as you like. We had one pork, one chorizo, one carne asada and one tongue. They were all good but I do have a problem with the texture of the tongue, it’s to chewy for me.

The tamale was great, it was typical of Mexican tamales except this one had a red gravy on it. I have seen this in Mississippi but not in Atlanta. Tamales are good and I could eat them like tacos if they were not so filling, all that corn ya know.

We had planned to hit another taco joint but decided we had had enough Mexican food so we got in the truck and headed for Tootsie Pig Grill. We get there and I go in the place for the first time ever. It’s a convenience store and the guy running the place tells us he has Bar B Que almost everyday except Fridays. That’s when he has to work and can’t get someone to look after the grill. And that’s today damn it. So I get some info from him and tell him I will see him soon to try his Que.

So Chef and I decide to try a place we passed that had a sign in the window offering curry dishes. Goat, oxtail, and chicken curry, sounds good. So we tell the little man with the Caribbean accent, working the counter, that we would like a goat and a oxtail. The soup Chef ask for is not available today, maybe next time. The place is cold so we get the food to go and in typical island style they are in no hurry. So about 20 minutes later we are on our way back to my house to eat.

Both dishes are good, they both come with rice and black-beans and a couple slices of plantains. The goat is the best and not greasy or gamey as I have had before. The oxtails are small and not what I am used to getting from the local soul-food restaurant. We both agree that our lunch was a success and make a plan for next week.

bunch a paintings and cigar box cabinet

I got a lot of work to do these days. Usually I would have to be out in the streets, doing markets on the weekend to stay this busy. Maybe after ten years I won’t have to do so many markets, the phone rings and rings. I get a call almost everyday about work. It’s nice to pick and choose a little. I have been turning down furniture jobs that don’t interest me, that’s nice. Used to be I said yes before a person could get the question out of their mouth. I said yes to most any furniture job, not so much anymore. I want to do more painting and less furniture, seems it’s gonna work out for me.

Right now I’m doing about five paintings, some are orders, some are for events. Tomorrow some friends are part of a wine event at their doggie boutique. That’s right wine at the doggie boutique. I have a couple of pieces hanging there and will hang more for this event. They tell me they sell a thousand tickets for this “wine crawl” so maybe I’ll sell something.

I am also working on a cabinet for the crazy client that had me make a coffee table from a old pickup truck tail gate. This time I have built a cabinet that is 40″ wide and 30″ tall and 24″ deep. I have finished the building of this project and am now covering the whole thing in cigar box lids. It looks great. This lady has collected about a million cigar boxes and didn’t know what to do with them. I like it, think it’s a good idea.

Even with all this hard work to do I will make time today to have lunch with Chef. Our plan is to hit 2 or 3 taco joints in my hood and then head a little further south and check out a place I have spied lately. It has a sign out front that says something like “tropical market and pig grill”. Sometimes I see a lady cooking at an outdoor grill, sometimes I see no one. I got to check it out and Chef is just the guy to do it with. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Dinner in NYC without leaving the South

The other night Stacey and I had dinner in NYC and never left Atlanta. We joined some friends for an early evening of music and then started looking for a place to eat. Chef had told me of a new place in midtown and we were in the area so let’s try it.

Top FLR is located in an elevator shaft with a kitchen the size of a walk in closet. I am constantly amazed at the food that can come out of a place this size. It is not unusual to find a place like this in NYC, they’re a dime a dozen. And for some reason most of the time they are really good. I don’t know if it’s because of the size and that allows for the chefs to focus on each dish more than usual or maybe, and this is what I like to think, but maybe it’s small because of the start up budget, that this is all they could afford. What I’m trying to say is, that a group or a chef or whoever, opened such a tiny space and made it work, it is a mark of their passion for the restaurant business.

Top Flr is tiny but has it all, a nice size bar, with three 2 toppers on the ground floor. To get to the restroom one must walk between the bar and the kitchen. The kitchen looks to be about 15′ square. The dining room is upstairs which we never made it to because we had no reservation. It’s Saturday night about nine o’clock, the three small tables in the front window have a couple sitting at the middle table. So we start moving tables and chairs, sit down and realize we are blocking the waitrons path from the kitchen to the rest of the restaurant. The four of us kinda act like we don’t know what to do, which was easy for us. Finally the couple said they would move to one side and lets us sit together. He wasn’t real pleased at first, she was cool. We bought him a glass of wine and he chilled out. We even got to talking to them, she was from NYC so I ask her write down some of her favorite restaurants in the city. Which she did, which was nice of her.

Anyway we settled in, ordered and watched people come in the front door, go up the stairs and come right back down and leave. The place was full and no one was going anywhere fast. There was a really nice pace about the place and the meal.

So the food? It’s real good, it’s not to expensive and it’s fresh. Free form ravioli was prepared with shrimp that night, corn and other vegetables were added. Stacey had a pizza I can’t remember the details, but it was very good. I remember there was mac and cheese and it was baked and it was good. Someone had a hanger steak that I had a bite of, perfect, I will order that next time.

They are open really late, 1 a.m. and 2 a.m. weekends, that’s so NYC ya know. That’s about as much as I can remember, I wasn’t driving so………….

Goat chz stuffed Mardi Gras Peppers.

The official photographer for the Mystic Fish always does a great job and we thank him very much. Thank you very much. This year his lovely wife joined us on that beautiful Sunday afternoon in beautiful downtown Mobile, Alabama. She brought along with her a huge chunk of goat cheese with dried tomatos for all to enjoy after the parade. Well there was a lot of food that day and everything did not get eaten. Stacey split up the leftovers between her folks, my folks and us. We brought home a lot of good food, including some of that goat cheese. One night Stacey did this with some of the cheese.

I cried when I saw her take them out of the oven, wouldn’t you? They were so beautiful, sweet peppers stuffed with some of that goat cheese. We ate them with a steak off the grill. They were so good we had two more the next night.

How to Raise Money, Southern Style.

I met a young lady who approached me about donating a piece of my art work, a pig was her request, it’s was for the High Museum’s annual fund raiser. No problem I told her I would be happy to help the cause.

Well one thing led to another and the next thing I know I’m working with some of the people I have written about on this here blog.

What I doing is donating a piece of art for a fund raiser, but this ain’t no common fund raiser, it’s the 16th annual for the High Museum of Art. It’s all about art, food, wine and the good things in life. It draws folks from all over the country because of the wines offered for auction. From what I’m told it is some of the best wines from California and some you just can’t get otherwise.

It seems they have focused on wine as a theme for this event for years. You can bid on one bottle of wine or a case of wine. You can bid on a wine dinner for two or a pork pull for thirty. That’s the lot I’m involved with, “Cork and Pork”.

Cork and Pork is split into two parts. The first is a seminar at Restaurant Eugene. Of course it will focus on pork and the king of bacon will be there to share his product and knowledge. Allan Benton is considered to be the best bacon man in the South. In today’s age of fresh and local all the best chefs in the Southeast turn to him to fulfill their need for bacon and other pork products.

Chef Linton Hopkins, owner and operator of Restaurant Eugene, along with his wife Gina, will prepare the meal. Crispy black-eyed peas with pigtails, Deep South Salumi and pork belly with fixin’s are just part of the fare to be enjoyed.

John T. Edge will be on hand to answer questions and wax poetic on the virtues of pork and all things Southern. Edge is the Director of the Southern Foodways Alliance and the author of many books on Southern food. I have written about his book, A Southern Belly, on this blog more then once.

I get to work with the wine maker providing the wine for the seminar and the auction the next day. Tuck Beckstoffer helps run his family vineyards in Napa Ca. He also has his own labels and 75 Wine Company will be represented for this event. Tuck will blend a special wine for the seminar and auction and the piece of art I have donated for the auction will be used for the label on this special blend. The wine will be called Hog Wash. Ain’t that cool?

Then the next day at the silent auction Chef Hopkins, Tuck Beckstoffer and myself will team up again and make a lot available to the winner which will consist of a pig pull for thirty, lessons on cooking the pig and a special box to cook pigs in. There will also be more wine, Hog Wash that is and a large pig painting by yours truly.

This has all come together because of a really neat lady, Elizabeth McDonald. Elizabeth saw my paintings at a Christmas Market, contacted me the next day and one thing has led to another.

Southern Commerce

You call this work? I guess if you can get a paycheck out of it……

I just did finished the job for Alons Bakery before heading to Mobile for Mardi Gras. I had finished the bread racks and bread service counter (above) and needed to build a table 9′x 3′ for display. It ended up in the middle of the store, the first thing you see when you walk in. I built this table with antique pine boards that were 3″ thick. I had to join three pieces of 7′ long wood to make the table. I would usually have used biscuits to do this task but with 3″ thick, 7′ long pieces it called for something more substantial to hold it together. So I used 1 and 1/4″diameter, 5″ long wooden dowels to join the top. Check out these photos, one showing the old wood I was using and the photo on the top showing how I used the dowels to join them.

I know I said the table was 9′ long. I used a piece on each end to make a breadboard table top. Each of these ends were 1′ x 3′ and that added 2′ to the table. Check it out!

Open Invitation to Anthony Bourdian

If you watch this guy’s show ya know how he always goes someplace, meets an old friend and they partake in the local history and then chow down. He goes on to tell this great story of the people and the food of this place.

So I’m thinking he should head south to Mobile and focus on Mardi Gras. Focus on how the regular folk celebrate Mardi Gras. Everyone knows about the old Mystic Societies that one must be born ( or married) into, not so many know about Crewes like the Mystic Fish.

Bourdian could come down and spend about 3 or 4 days with us. We could fill him in on a little Mardi Gras history. Tell him a little about the history of Mobile, like how Mobile was under the rule of 3 different countries in the 18th century. Tell him about how important Mardi Gras is and was to Mobile. Tell him about how Joe Cain was the guy that really revived Mardi Gras after the civil war tore the country apart. Mobile Mardi Gras is what it is today because of Joe Cain.

Then you could spend the other three and a half days showing him how it works, the food, the parties, the parades, the Mystic Fish Parade and the golf tournament. You could take him to a few float barns, if you knew someone who could get you in. You could show him the most beautiful floats, all sculpted from paper mache.

Then you could talk food. Do we want to roast a pig again, do we want to buy a sack of oysters and do some on the grill? How much shrimp will we need for the weekend, 25, 30 pounds? Some for the shrimp boil Saturday night, some for shrimp and grits Sunday morning. We need mudbugs, we need beer, we need gumbo. Five gallons, with shrimp please. Bloody Marys, Mimosa, whatever.

We could then show him how we have been celebrating Mardi Gras for the last 16 years. We could teach him to build a fish float on a bicycle. We could show him good spots to see the parade from. We could teach him about Joe Cain, stuff like that. Oh yea, then there’s the food. I bet he would like the food just fine. We could tell him about the G.D. Marching Society. One of the first renegade Mardi Gras organization in Mobile.

Anyway if anyone runs into Anthony, let him know there’s an open invite for he and his Crew down in beautiful downtown Mobile, Alabama, for Mardi Gras 2009.

TY Pennington, not So Southern or smart

So here I am minding my own business, building a Mardi Float, shucking oysters, boiling shrimp and taters, drinking beers, busting the nail off my big toe, then drinking vodka and eating pain pills, you know what I mean, just minding my own business. And along comes Ty.

I don’t even know the guy. I think Chef must have known him. See we had one of, if not the top Chef in Atlanta flown in to party and cook with us Saturday night in beautiful downtown Mobile, Alabama. Man did we, I mean did he cook. I don’t remember any of it but I heard it was great. The former School-board Superintendent and his lovely wife said it was some of the best food they had ever eaten and those two have done some eating.

Anyway, like I said here comes Ty and he’s got some other guy with him and they are shooting video of Ty talking, about gods know what. So they come in the front yard, where the party has gathered and the cooking is happening. No one really noticed him, if they did no one said anything. Now he’s chatting me and the Chef up while we’re trying to cook, but he must want a little more attention than we can give him, cause he heads over to the front porch, where all the chicks are, to talk to everyone. Evidently still not enough attention cause next he ask if anyone would like to take his picture. Well this is my family and friends and they are nice people, so a few take out their cameras and snap a few shots. A few folks use their cell phones to take a photo. I bet most didn’t really take a photo, just being nice ya know.

Next thing ya know he ask my Aunt if she would like her picture taken with him and her daughter, seems she hangs out with Ty in NYC sometimes. So they humor him and have their picture taken with him. click here for photo.

Now I ain’t saying nothing, but Ty is not really that smart. Sure he has his own hit TV show, a couple of sponsors like Sears, Bayer Aspirin and some other small companies, but he just doesn’t come across as all that bright. Like I don’t think he can drive, cause he’s got this guy driving him around. He can’t even ride a bike very well and it was a 3 wheeler. Sure, the bike had a 13′ paper mache Mystic Fish attached to it, but he struggled. Click here for photo of Ty trying to ride a bike.

He was also trying to put the moves on my wife, and I think little lady was having a little to much fun. I had to say something to Ty, I didn’t want to be rude but he can’t just walk in and start hitting on my wife. Click here to see Ty trying to pickup my wife.

And I don’t think he knows how to use a phone. Same guy that had to drive him around, also had to answer and dial the phone for him, I swear. But the stupidest thing he did was to up and leave. He standing right there, looking at shrimp boiling, the oysters being shucked, the Tur-duckling and the pork shoulder were in the oven and the chicks are on the front porch and the guys gets in his car, the one he can’t even drive, and has himself driven away.

Now that wasn’t real smart.

southern sculpting

How to build a bicycle powered fish float from cardboard, butcher paper and contact cement.

1.a Take as much horseradish as you like and a decent vodka and prepare 2 Bloody Mary’s

1.b Give one to your wife, toast the 2008 Mardi Gras season and start sculpting.

All you gotta do is paint the cardboard with the green contact cement. Let that dry and then start shaping it on the wooden armature that you’ve attached to your three wheel bike.

You can shape it like a trout, you can make the head bobble, you can use all kinds of stuff. Just make it look like a FISH. Coat it twice more with butcher paper. Using wallpaper paste with the second coat. Then paint it.

That’s all you really need to do, it’s that easy. At least that’s the way Stacey and I have been doing for the last 16 years. At first we used newspaper, chicken wire and liquid starch, that was tough, hard to make it look the way you wanted it to. Then about 3 years ago the Master float builder Mr. S. Mussell gave us a few tips and helped us get the contact cement that is vital to the process. That’s when we started producing floats like this one.

We are back and in questionable condition…

Movie-stars, video tapes and large paper mache fish. Some of it’s true, some of it’s not.

Sorry we haven’t been posting in awhile. Been busy with Mardi Gras and work. Both Stacey and I had a heavy work load up until about 10 days before Mardi Gras. Being the responsible adults we are, we worked through it. So we missed a few parades and we were pressed for time on the Fish Float building, but we got through it. With the help of Chef, flown in just for the Saturday night shrimp boil and the Sunday morning brunch, we were able to pull off the food in a spectacular fashion.

Hope to get back to a regular schedule as of tomorrow. Got a lot to tell about. We had great weather and only a few lives were lost. It was a small price to pay for so much fun. If it wasn’t for the video tape situation no one would have had to die, but ya do what ya got to do. I bet no one makes the mistake of showing up with a video camera next year.

Trying to get married at the Osiris Ball

It is hard picking up chicks at the Osiris Ball. It’s not because they are not there. I guess they think all the guys are gay so they didn’t take me serious. Like the young lady in the beautiful red, backless dress. As I was waiting in the line at the bar she stood right in front of me. I noticed she was either alone or her date was ignoring her. Any way the guys behind me spoke up and told her how lovely her dress was. That was all she needed to hear, next thing ya know she is telling us all about how her date didn’t pick her up, she had to go get him and what a hard time she had getting her breast to fit in her dress. She said she had no idea they had gotten so large til she went to put the red dress on. The front of her dress was almost as front-less as it was backless and I could see what she was talking about. Those babies were squeezed in there tighter then a gants ass. She went on for a while about how she didn’t know what happened, her breast had just blown up. She said you would think her date would be happy to go with her to the ball, but she stated again how she had to go pick him up. That’s when I made my move and ask her to marry me. She didn’t respond, I guess she thought I was kidding, or gay, or something.