“You’ll Shoot Your Eye Out!”

In the second half of the last century, a young filmmaker named Bob Clark was struggling to bring his visions of children and Christmastime to the silver screen.  His first effort, as you may not have guessed from the title of this post, was Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things.  It was my first zombie movie and it left me emotionally scarred for years.  But he moved on to make a hit Christmas movie with an all-star cast.  That movie was Black Christmas, considered by many to be the first slasher film.  He then chose to branch out into humor and, dipping into the nostalgic memories of his youth, he made the immortal Porky’s, followed immediately by Porky’s II.

Then he made A Christmas Story, and was forever redeemed in the eyes of history.

Thanks to a bolt of serendipity from the blue, Nan and I were given tickets to A Christmas Story by one of our neighbors who was going to be out of town the night of the performance.  When Nan told me about the tickets, I had no idea we were going to a “performance.”  I assumed we were going to see the movie in some sort of theatrical or holiday setting.  But, no, this was a live performance of the Repertory Theater of St. Louis at the Virginia Jackson Browning Mainstage on the Webster University campus.

We loved it!  All the classic moments from the movie were there; the Triple-Dog-Dare, the Major Award, the FUDGE! (“Only I didn’t say ‘fudge.’”), the Little Orphan Annie Secret Society Decoder Pin, the Soap Poisoning, the Theme Paper, the Deranged Easter Bunny, the Bumpus Hounds, and, of course, the Official Red Ryder Carbine Action Two-Hundred Shot Range Model Air Rifle With A Compass In the Stock And This Thing Which Tells Time.  But this wasn’t a slavish retelling of the movie.  There were a few pleasant surprises; some lines, characters, and bits that weren’t in the film.  I’m pretty sure they were references to the original source material, Jean Shepherd’s pseudoautobiographical short stories, the ones I used to read in Playboy in the sixties.*

The narration was wonderfully performed by a grown-up Ralph (Jeff Talbot), who roamed all over the stage and theater but was invisible to the cast.  The actors all did their jobs well, especially the young second grader Caden Self, who played Ralphie’s little brother Randy, and The Old Man, played by Jeff Gurner.

The director of the movie, Bob Clark, went on to direct one OK movie (Murder by Decree) but was also responsible for such woofers as Rhinestone, Turk 182!, Loose Cannons, Baby Geniuses, Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2, and The Karate Dog,  In retrospect, the magic of A Christmas Story (the movie) was all Jean Shepherd, the author and narrator, and the cast, Melinda Dillon, Darren McGavin, Peter Billingsley, and all the unknowns who were flawless.  The stage play captures all the magic.

I will take this opportunity to point out that a little over a year ago, I predicted in this blog that someday, A Christmas Story would be made into a ballet.  I didn’t know this play existed when I wrote that, but we’re only one step away.  Someone needs to make it into a musical.  The inevitability is inevitable.

- Poppa

* I just bought Playboy to “read the articles” (a spurious sixties excuse on a par with “I didn’t inhale!” and “I was only helping that sheep over the fence!”).

Segways Over Forest Park – 2009

From Tokyo to Paris by way of Persia: Wasabi, Café Natasha, and Stone Soup Cottage

Another glorious weekend started at Wasabi Friday night.

Gyōza – Fried dumplings (the Japanese version of the potsticker)

Seaweed Salad

Nigiri Sushi – Spicy Scallop and Yellowfin tuna

Maki Sushi – Front to Back
Yasai Roll – Vegi Paper outside, Deep Fried Shrimp & Scallop Mix with Spicy Mayo, cucumber, avocado, massago
Washington Ave Roll - Crab, Cucumber, Avocado, Massago, Wasabi mayo
Wasabi Special Roll – Crab, Cucumber, Avocado, Massago, spicy crunch, spicy mayo

Saturday for lunch, we returned to Café Natasha to try my first Falafel sandwich, three deep fried croquettes of ground chickpeas, parsley, garlic, cumin and other spices with homemade tahini sauce served in a pita with fresh lettuce, light mayonnaise, mild pepperoncini, red onion, tomato, cucumber and homemade yogurt dressing.  I had no idea chickpeas could taste so good.  The sandwich was the perfect delivery system.  Nan had Chicken Shawarma Kabob on a bed of rice, and we finished the meal with Persian Ice Cream, three scoops of vanilla ice cream hand mixed with pistachio pieces, saffron and rose water.

Sunday morning, it was Brunch at Stone Soup Cottage.  I’m happy to say the Brunch was every bit as enjoyable as our dinner several weeks ago.  As with dinner, there is a prix-fixe Chef’s tasting menu with two choices for most of the courses.  The First Course was seasonal fresh fruit served with Honey Yogurt Sorbet.

Faced with our first choice, we went with Eggs Benedict.  The Course Not Traveled was a petite omelet with garden basil, tomatoes, and house-made fresh mozzarella.

The Third Course was either a Buttermilk Crepe with Missouri peaches, fresh raspberries, and Chantilly cream (Nan’s choice), or Custard French Toast paired with cinnamon fig butter and maple syrup (mine, pictured above).

The Forth Course was either snowy-white Poached Cod with Dill Beurre Blanc garnished with Micro-Greens (Nan’s choice). . . .

. . . .or a Beef Tenderloin Medallion with Burgundy Wine and Chanterelles (it cut like butter).

The Fifth Course was Crème Brûlée, hand-torched at your table and served with fresh Missouri Strawberries.

Another great meal at Stone Soup Cottage.

- Poppa

The Sublime: Big Fun at Stone Soup Cottage

Our friend Roger invited us to join him at what he described as “a legal underground restaurant” last Friday night.  It’s a place run by two friends of his and is barely three weeks old.  Stone Soup Cottage is a very special place.  It’s open three nights per week (Sunday morning for brunch) and only has seven tables seating a maximum of about 22 people.  There is one evening seating at 6:30 PM and a chef’s prix fixe tasting menu with a choice of either a four or six course dinner.  Wines are paired with four of the courses.  The menu changes from week to week with the focus primarily on French and Italian cuisine.

The restaurant is in a tiny 150 year-old house in Cottleville, MO.  The house has been beautifully restored and provides an atmosphere both charming and intimate.  We were met at the door by Chef Carl and his wife Nancy, handed flutes containing a crisp, fruity Portuguese sparkling wine, and escorted to our table.

The tables were beautifully laid.  After everyone was seated, the dinner was launched with an amuse-bouche, French for “party in your mouth.”  (Actually, “mouth amuser.”)  The amuse-bouche Friday night was a tiny puff pastry filled with finely chopped tomato mixed with bits of cheese and topped with what might have been crème fraîche.  Superb!  Then, the courses started to come out.

First Course
Mixed Rocket Greens and Baby Herbs Dressed with Sweet Sherry Vinaigrette
garnished with a Petite Chèvre Croquette and Toast
Wine Pairing Option: 2006 Mason Sauvignon Blanc

Second Course
Escargot with Plugrá Butter and Garlic
Wine Pairing Option: 2007 Ambroise Bourgogne Rouge

 Third Course
Wild Sea Scallop en Papillote
infused with Fresh Fennel and Pernod
Wine Pairing Option: 2007 Nugan Chardonnay

 

 Fourth Course
Gratin Dauphinois
finished with Shaved Black Truffles
Wine Pairing Option: 2007 Spellbound Petite Sirah

 Fifth Course
Petite Chateaubriand
accompanied by Farmers Market Vegetables
Wine Pairing Option: 2006 Titus Zinfandel

Imaginary photo of my Grand Marnier Soufflé

 Sixth Course
Grand Marnier Soufflés
served directly from the oven with Orange Crème Anglaise
or
Fromage Plate
garnished with Dried Fruit and Toast

Where is the sixth course picture, you might ask?  When they put the Grand Marnier Soufflé down in front of me, I was beyond thinking about the camera and just dug in.  At some point between the courses, there was a Limoncello Sorbet palate cleanser and a wine substitution as well, though I don’t recall what was substituted for what.  We finished the meal with a cup of excellent coffee, which I of course ruined with cream and sugar.

Was it a great meal?  By the third course, I’d run out of superlatives and started to repeat myself.  The food was wonderful, the presentation was beautiful, the staff was attentive without being intrusive, and our dinner companions were a lot of fun.  This is one of the best, most memorable meals of my life, right up there with Sea Scallops with Black Truffles, fettuccine with morel mushrooms, Steak Diavola, and Arancini at Tony’s, my first Rueben, my Mother’s Swiss Steak, and mostly-raw ground beef and vegetables on my first Boy Scout campout (appetite is truly the best sauce).

- Poppa

 

Pork Steaks, Beans, Bacon, Peanut Butter, and Corn. And Little Nan. And Cats.

You know it’s Spring in St Louis when the Pork Steaks can be seen in back yards around the city.  They’re usually be found where Cole Slaw, Pea Salad, and Baked Beans are also emerging into the sunlight.  This one was captured at the home of Joe and Marie last weekend.

For several years, we’ve been trying to replicate the  Unwritten Corn-on-the-Cob Recipe of H. Earle Moore.  Earle was the Moore Family Patriarch and the Maternal Grandfather of Leah and Erin.  At one memorable back yard barbecue in the mid-seventies, he grilled corn-on-the cob using a method I’ve never heard of before or since.

 He smeared peanut butter on a raw ear of sweet corn. . . .

. . . .wrapped it with raw bacon, rolled it in aluminium foil, and cooked it on the grill for X amount of minutes.  When he judged it to be done, the bacon was cooked, the peanut butter was melty and delicious, and the corn was perfect.  We haven’t quite recreated it yet.  We may be using too much peanut butter, or maybe we need to blend it with regular butter.  But we’ll keep trying. 

The post-Pork Steak entertainment was sorting through boxes of old 3-D slides from the Moore 1950s and 1960s.  We only got through about 5% of the total.  They were divvied up based on who was striking the cutest or most embarrassing pose.  This is Nan in the foreground, stealing the scene at Mary-Jo’s 4th birthday party.  Our flatbed scanner doesn’t do the slides justice.  We’ll either need to get a new scanner, one equipped with a back-light to handle slides, or have them digitized professionally.

It’s been a while since I posted a Cute Cat © picture.  Here’s Rufus, looking very sly and devil-may-care, like a real bon vivant.  He’s actually just so blissed out he’s about to drool on me.

And last, proof of McGregor’s full recovery from his spinal injury.  Rufus is cuddling him again.  While he was still sick, Rufus wouldn’t have anything to do with him, probably because McGregor smelled like a cat box.

- Poppa

I Wish I Were the Model of a Modern Major-General

Friday night we went to see a performance of The Pirates of Penzance at the Touhill.  We signed up for it on a lark; I’ve had a little exposure to Gilbert and Sullivan over the years and I expected to be mildly amused.  Instead, I was enthralled.

I’m sure part of the enthrallment was the seats.  We were sitting in the third row, right behind the Orchestra pit (great live music, too).  From the third row, we were close enough to see every twitch of an eyebrow, every flare of a nostril.

And it was a great cast.  The performance was a presentation of NYGASP, the New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players.  The performers were all outstanding, especially the Pirate King and Major-General Stanley; I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General just about had me in tears.

There were a few topical references sprinkled throughout the performance; “Customs House” became “Department of Homeland Security,” much to the amusement of the audience.  I’ve always thought of Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas as silly frippery.  This performance made me appreciate that they may be silly, but they’re not just frippery.  G & S were lampooning Victorian society much the same way the Pythons were poking holes in sacred cows 100 years later.

If/when NYGASP comes back to St. Louis, we’ll be there.

Saturday night we took our friend Jan to a new place, Mia Rosa, to celebrate her birthday.  Mia Rosa is an Italian tapas-like restaurant.  We had pasta e fagioli, warm mussel and scallop salad with garlic basil vinaigrette, warm beet salad with goat cheese on spinach, beef braciole with fontina, salame (salami) and sautéed spinach, gnocchi with mushrooms and asparagus, grilled tilapia with tomatoes and onions, artichoke heart, basil & goat cheese flat bread pizza, eggplant gratin, asparagus with pancetta and citronette, all washed down with two bottles of A-Mano Primitivo Zinfandel.  Desert was a strawberry-port sorbet, tiramisu, and panna cotta.

mmmm…

The gnocchi and beet salad were my favorite things.  The pasta e fagioli and braciole were my least favorite; the pasta e fagioli was bland and garnished with what tasted like pine needles (maybe I wasn’t supposed to eat them) and the braciole wasn’t as tender as I would have liked.

The décor was great; our server was informative and attentive.  There was a classical guitar player, someone Jan knew, accompanying the meal beautifully (on his guitar, not as a side dish).  There were a couple of delays between the courses, but if you didn’t need to be somewhere, it wasn’t a problem.  If you have a time-sensitive event after dinner, a tapas place probably isn’t where you should be eating, anyway.  You want to have time to admire the artful presentation.

And you want to be able to order the asparagus with pancetta and citronette on the spur of the moment.

- Poppa

Oysters Bienville, They May Just Change Your Life

I’m not sure, but “Oysters Bienville” must be French for ”Oysters so good they’ll make you slap yer Granma.”  These oysters can convert the most extreme oysterphobe into a ravening oysterphile.  Of course, as in so many things, the secret is in the sauce.

Erin eating oysters and liking it!

I post this recipe, not because I ever expect to make this myself, or expect anyone reading this to make it, but so the reader will appreciate the effort required to put a dozen of these Half-Shells of Heaven in front of me when I go to the Broadway Oyster Bar and plunk down my credit card.

Recipe as published in Sauce Magazine , courtesy of the Broadway Oyster Bar’s John Johnson

Makes 1 Dozen Oysters

1 cup heavy cream
2 oz. fresh shrimp shells
4 Tbsp. butter, divided
4 Tbsp. diced onion or shallot
2 Tbsp. freshly chopped garlic
2 ½ tsp. Marsala wine
3/4 cup diced mushrooms
1/3 cup diced fresh shrimp
1 ½ tsp. Cajun spice
1 ½ tsp. paprika
1 tsp. sea salt (preferably sel gris)
2 Tbsp. flour
12 oysters, preferably Blue Point
Grated Parmesan cheese

For the sauce:

• Heat the cream, pour it over the shrimp shells and let steep for 30 minutes.
• Strain and discard the shells, keeping the cream warm.
• Melt 2 Tbsp. of butter in a saucepan.  Add the onion or shallot and cook until slightly tan.  Add the garlic and cook until aromatic.
• Deglaze the pan with the Marsala.  Add the mushrooms, shrimp, Cajun spice, paprika and sea salt and cook until the mushrooms are soft and the flavors are well developed, about 4 to 6 minutes.
• Create a blond roux by cooking the flour and remaining 2 Tbsp. of butter for about 4 or 5 minutes until it is golden. 
• Add the reserved cream to the mushroom mixture and bring to a boil.  Add the blond roux, mix well and cook for 1 minute.

For the oysters:

• Preheat the broiler.
• Shuck the oysters, placing them on the half-shell face up under the hot broiler.
• Once the oysters start to curl on the sides (about 1 minute), remove from the broiler and spoon the sauce over the oysters.
• Place the oysters back under the broiler and cook until the sauce bubbles.
• Remove from the broiler and sprinkle with Parmesan cheese.  Place the oysters back under the broiler for a minute or two until the cheese is browned.

I’m pretty sure they’re good for you, too.

- Poppa