Fairbanks, Nancy Read online

  The trip home was very pleasant as the sidewalks were neither so crowded as to be troublesome nor so deserted as to make us uneasy. My moisture-deprived skin was sucking in the precipitation as we passed under streetlights that glis­tened on wet pavement. Even the sounds of revelry seemed muted in the fine rain. Or perhaps the visitors were just qui­eter; I didn't notice as many go cups in festive hands. But then why buy a drink to go when raindrops would quickly water it down?

  The hotel glowed warmth into the wet darkness as we ap­proached on Chartres Street. Three flags, of which I recog­nized only that of the United States, dripped from poles that slanted out above the cream columns in front. What were the others? French and Spanish? Louisiana and New Orleans? I'd have to ask. At my insistence, we turned left into the small lobby with its antiques and its somnolent desk clerk to ask after Julienne.

  "Haven't seen a lady in a red dress pass by," he answered. "Sure didn't notice one comin' in here. You all want me to -buzz her room?"

  I thought of Nils, with his disgruntled attitude toward Julienne. He would take such a call amiss. Therefore, I shook my head unhappily, and Jason and I went off to bed. Our lights were out within fifteen minutes. Inspired by our exotic surroundings, we had had a romantic interlude that afternoon, which sufficed for our first day in New Orleans.

  I will never again speak slightingly of bread pudding after having it in New Orleans. What a treat! The fol­lowing recipe is actually that of Chef Frank Brigtsen but produces results close to the marvelous dessert I had at Etienne's. Try it if you are long on time and desire for a wonderful final course to some special meal.

  Banana. Bread Pudding with Banana-Rum Sauce and Whipped Cream.

  Preheat the oven to 300° F.

  Put 6 cups bite-sized pieces of day-old French bread in a 9 X 12 x 2-in. baking pan and set aside.

  In a blender or food processor, blend 3 large eggs, 3 cups milk, 2/3cup sugar, 2 large very ripe bananas, 1 tbs. ground cinnamon, 1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg, 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract until smooth.

  Pour mixture over French bread pieces; fold in 1/2 cup ea. seedless raisins and roasted pecans and let mixture set for 20 minutes.

  Top with 3 tbs. unsalted butter cut in small pieces.

  Cover pudding with aluminium foil and place pan into larger pan. Add warm water to depth of 1" in larger pan. Bake 1 hour. Remove foil and bake un­covered for 15 minutes or until set.

  In a deep, medium bowl, whisk3/4 cup heavy whip­ping cream just until it begins to thicken. Add 1 tbs. sugar and 1/4 tsp. vanilla. Continue whisking until soft peaks form. Cover and chill.

  Sauce:

  Heat a large saute pan over low heat. Add2/3 cup un-salted butter at room temperature, 1/2 cup packed light brown sugar, 6 large ripe bananas quartered, 1 tsp. ground cinnamon, and 1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg.

  Moving skillet back and forth, cook until butter and sugar become creamy and bananas begin to soften, about 1 minute.

  Remove skillet from heat and add 3 tbs. dark rum and 2 tbs. banana liqueur (optional). Return pan to heat, tilt, avert face, light liquid with long match, and shake skillet until flames subside. Add 1/2 tsp. vanilla, remove from heat, and keep warm.

  Serve:

  Place a large scoop of bread pudding in the middle of each plate or bowl.

  Place 2 slices of banana on each plate and top with about 3 tbs. of sauce.

  Spoon whipped cream over pudding and serve im­mediately. Serves 12.

  Carolyn Blue, Eating Out in the Big Easy

  5

  Soul Food

  On Sunday morning, while Jason went to buy a newspa­per, I called the Magnussens' room in search of Julienne. No answer. Surely Nils hadn't disappeared as well. This was not the reunion of old friends I had looked forward to. Worried and tired after a restless night, I began the slow process of getting dressed for the gospel-brunch excursion planned the night before. Did one dress up as for a church service or opt for casual clothing like the tourists who were already crowd­ing the streets below my window?

  Some were even carrying go cups and sipping liquor at ten A.M. This was the Big Easy indeed, and I wasn't sure I approved of street drinking, especially on Sunday morning. Had he known what I was thinking, Jason would have laughed and remarked on the vestiges of a ftotestant Mid­west background that clung to my psyche like crumbs of Styrofoam to a wool dress.

  I chose casual and pulled on beige slacks and a brown turtleneck sweater with a bit of gold jewelry and an autum­nal print scarf to tie my hair back. Before I could complete my toilette, a stocky black woman with powerful arms and a gold tooth that winked at me from an amiable smile knocked at my door and entered the room.

  Black? Or African-American? I seem to have lost track of which is currently the politically correct designation. Before the Civil War, black was the term used to refer to slaves in New Orleans, while free Negroes were men and women of color. Of course, colored would now be considered old-fashioned, if not downright insulting. It is, no doubt, a sign of encroaching middle age that I am behind the times on modern racial terminology but knowledgeable about the rel­evant linguistic history.

  At any rate, the maid's accent was so Southern as to make me think I might need an electronic translator. One thing I can say for El Paso: the natives do not have South­ern accents, although many have Hispanic accents, but those aren't at all hard to decipher, unless, of course, said native is actually speaking Spanish. Maybe I should get an electronic translator to aid in communication with Ip-polita. Or maybe not. I have the suspicion that she can un­derstand me perfectly in either language if she chooses to, but perhaps I do her an injustice or give myself more credit than I deserve in my use of the phrase book for communicating with my Hispanic housekeeper. And is Hispanic preferable to Chicano or Mexican-American! I have no idea.

  "Please do stay," I said to the maid, hoping that I'd un­derstood correctly her presumed offer to come back when we were gone if that would be more convenient. She began immediately on the bed while I brushed my hair back and tied the scarf. Was she responsible for the Magnussens' room as well? I wondered.

  "Excuse me." I had finished fastening conservative gold button earrings to my ears. "Do you make up this whole floor?"

  "Mostly, yes, ma'am." She finished the bed and headed for the bathroom with an armload of fresh towels.

  I followed to stand in the doorway. "I have friends on this floor, the Magnussens."

  "Miz Julienne you mean? An' her husband? Don' know his name. He didn' introduce hisself like dat nice Miz Juli­enne. Dem as had such a terrible fight yesterday afternoon.

  Cain't say as I blame her, not comin' home to da likes a him last night."

  "She didn't sleep in her bed at all?" I asked, thoroughly ,alarmed. Then it occurred to me that the maid could hardly know that for certain. If the room had one king or queen-sized bed, they would have shared it, and Julienne might have fluffed her pillow up when she rose. If the room had separate beds, they were probably full or queen-sized, and they might have made up their differences and shared one. "You can't be sure of that," I pointed out anx­iously.

  "Oh, Ah be sure," said the maid. She stopped work and put both hands on ample hips. "One bed been slept in an' got his 'jamas layin' on de sheets. Other bed ain' even got de spread rumpled. An' dey be twin beds, only twin-bed room on da floor. Hafta ask fo' dem twin beds. Folks do dat don' wanna be sharin' a pi Ha. Course it ain' none a mah business." She went back to work, but I could see that the woman was beginning to regret having spoken so freely.

  "Julienne's been my friend since we were little children," I hastened to explain. "I'm so worried—"

  "Yo'all don' sound like you from N'Awlins," said the maid suspiciously. She had turned from cleaning the tub.

  "I'm not. Julienne moved to Michigan when she was little."

  "Po' chile," the woman commiserated. "Mus' be terrible cold up dere."

  "Julienne shivered for three years," I agreed. "Even in the summer." How had we moved from Julienne's fr
ightening disappearance to her childhood intolerance of Michigan weather? "I'm so terribly worried about her," I said to the maid, who was now swishing a brush around the toilet bowl. "She left the dinner party last night, and it seems that no one has seen her since."

  "Well, likely she run off, or he done sumpthin' to her. He was a-yellin' so bad Ah couldn' hardly git no one to answer da door when Ah come to deliver dem extra towels Miz Juli­enne wanted fo' washin' her hair with."

  Oh lord, I thought, more worried than ever; Nils and Juli­enne had been quarreling even before the dinner party. By the time the maid had finished the room and I had prepared to go out, Jason returned with a rumpled copy of the New Orleans Times-Picayune under his arm. He couldn't say enough about the delights of having a morning cafe au lait and a beignet at the Cafe du Monde on Jackson Square. How could I have forgotten? Julienne had said last night that we would meet every morning for breakfast at Cafe du Monde, and I had missed the meeting.

  "Did you see Julienne?" I asked.

  " 'Fraid not," said Jason absently.

  "Didn't you look for her?"

  "Carolyn, why would I? She's probably just getting up. We are, after all, going out to brunch shortly."

  "Then why were you eating breakfast?" I couldn't resist teasing my husband for having eaten immediately before our eleven-to-one seating at the Praline Connection.

  "New Orleans is for stuffing oneself with the local cui­sine," Jason replied. "Isn't that the gist of your book?"

  I could hardly argue with his logic, but then I wasn't in­terested in logic; I was interested in the whereabouts of my missing friend. "Julienne didn't come back to the hotel last night,"

  Jason looked surprised. "Really? Then it would appear that the problems between her and Nils are serious," he said thoughtfully. Then he smiled. "But she'll show up. I imag­ine she's giving Nils something to worry about, and I must say, he was pretty unpleasant to her last night."

  "He was beastly," I agreed furiously. "I'll never forgive him for the things he said and for driving her away. I just hope she's safe."

  "Now, Caro. Of course, she's safe. She's probably stay­ing with friends or relatives in New Orleans."

  Was she? I don't remember her mentioning friends or relatives here, not since her great aunt died several years ago. Julienne and her brother Philippe had come down for the funeral of Beatrice Delacroix, a jazz funeral, which Julienne arranged, over the objections of her brother, and later described in detail to me, along with the cemetery in which her aunt was interred. She had said I'd have to see it. Did she still want to go? I'm not a devotee of cemeter­ies, although they can be a useful tool for historic re­search.

  I rushed Jason out before he could suggest that we call the Magnussens' room and meet Nils in the lobby. I was so irritated with Julienne's husband that I didn't care to walk however many blocks with him.

  Jason obtained a map from the front desk showing the route from Hotel de la Poste to the Praline Connection. How glad I was that I never wear heels; it looked to be a good dis­tance and proved to be worse than I expected. We turned left and walked several blocks on Chartres to Canal, where we turned left again and walked two and a half very long blocks to the confusing five-way intersection that led us to South Peters and the Warehouse District, where the blocks were even longer. The area gave me an eerie feeling. Once we had left the bustle of the French Quarter, we passed one feature­less warehouse after another and in a neighborhood where few people were on the streets. Under gray skies, heavy with the threat of impending rain, I found myself glancing appre­hensively into alleys and down cross streets, as if some threat lurked there.

  Unable to secure a cab, had Julienne been snatched off the street as she walked home through the rain to the hotel? I shuddered to think of how terrified she must have been, perhaps calling for help and ignored by hurrying passersby, or unable to call out because a dirty hand was clamped over her mouth. Or had her abductors used an ether-soaked rag so that they could drag her, unconscious, into a waiting car?

  As my imagination ran amok, I clutched my husband's arm in a death grip, but Jason only glanced at me, briefly puzzled, and patted my hand. He seemed immune to my low spirits. Having met, at the Cafe" du Monde, a fellow scientist whose conversation had lured him away from the sports page of the newspaper, Jason was intent on telling me about an exciting new compound the fellow had synthesized and planned to talk about at the ACS meeting.

  "It's a dilemma," Jason confessed. "His paper and Juli­enne's are scheduled for the same hour on Wednesday."

  "Julienne's missing," I reminded him gloomily.

  "Believe me, Caro, she won't skip her own paper!" Jason laughed and, having previously disengaged my clutching hand, now took my arm as we crossed the last street and approached the Praline Connection. Miranda and Lester arrived at the same time but from a different direc­tion. They were staying, as Miranda had pointed out last night, at an expensive, high-rise hotel on the riverfront, conveniently situated near the convention center. Person­ally, I preferred the exotic ambiance of the French Quarter. Why, if one had a choice, would one elect to stay else­where? Unless it was because the walk to the meeting would be shorter. When Jason pointed out that we were only a few blocks from the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center ("Dutch" Morial was the first black mayor of New Orleans), I realized what a long walk Jason would have every morning, possibly in the rain. The one umbrella we had brought was not going to suffice when we parted com­pany in the morning.

  While giving half an ear to Broder McAvee, who was seven or eight places behind us in the line and complaining audibly about the cost of admission, we paid for our tickets, then claimed a table for eight. Ours wasn't near the stage; those tables had already been taken, mostly by black women dressed as if for church, which made me somewhat embar­rassed over my choice of casual, touristy clothes. We were near the soul-food buffet. I am, personally, unfamiliar with soul food, but I was prepared to write about it and even like it, although I had heard that collard greens are somewhat bit­ter. On the other hand, they are supposed to be very health­ful. As it turned out, I found that I prefer spinach to collards in the dark-green, antioxidant-rich, healthful-vegetable cat­egory.

  Oh, for the days when we knew less about the benefits, beyond simple sustenance, of the food we were eating. What would a medieval European peasant make of the advice that one should choose chicken and fish over red meat or suffer the cholesterol consequences? Since medieval peasants rarely had any meat in their diets, they would, no doubt, have been quite indifferent to any diet consideration other than the benefits of having a full stomach.

  There was a second buffet with more ordinary offer­ings—bacon, eggs, sausage—but I decided that it was my duty as a newly minted food reviewer to sample and write about the more exotic, more regional cuisine. The food was just then being set out by platoons of young African-American waiters and waitresses, all wearing black hats that made them look as if they expected to desert the ser­vice industry and join jazz bands momentarily. Some of them frowned at me, probably thinking that I wanted to fill a plate before the lines were officially open. A third, and rather well hidden, buffet offered coffee, orange juice, and desserts: cake, pralines, peach cobbler. The room itself was very large with metal rafters in the dark loft space over­head and tiny white Christmas lights twinkling every­where. It was also very noisy and becoming more so as it filled up.

  During my investigations, Carlene and Broder joined the table, Broder still complaining, and as I sat down next to Jason, Nils straggled in, looking as sulky as ever.

  "Where's Julienne?" Carlene demanded, even before he could take his chair. The unoccupied seat beside him re­minded me, rather terrifyingly, of Banquo's empty chair at MacBeth's banquet.

  "Gone," Nils snapped. "I haven't heard from her since she walked out last night."

  Before I could quiz him further, the opening of the buf­fet tables was announced, and the throng in the cavernous warehouse stampeded toward t
he food. Miranda and Lester refused to try soul food; they opted for eggs and sausage, as did Nils. Jason had some of everything; my husband has a healthy appetite and an appreciation for whatever is put in front of him. When we order something particularly memorable during our travels, Jason will even join me in trying to reconcoct the dish in our own kitchen, although I suspect that he sees the effort as akin to a lab experiment.

  Broder and Carlene accompanied me to the soul-food buffet, and we helped ourselves to red beans and rice, which was a traditional Monday dish in New Orleans, slow-cooked on the fire all day while the wife and/or servants did the weekly washing. At home I make a Caribbean recipe that in­cludes not only rice and beans but green onions, salt pork, olives, and various other delicious ingredients. Although I prefer my own recipe, the Praline Connection served a tasty and, I suspect, lard-rich version. Best of all, I didn't have to spend my time cooking it.

  Their barbecued beef proved so tender that it disinte­grated between the teeth in a swirl of tangy sauce. The jam-balaya was packed with chicken, ham, and sausage and left the flavors of thyme, garlic, and chili powder dancing on the tongue. The peppers were so lavishly stuffed that the filling squeezed from the ends and even burst from the side veins. Then there were the bitter greens: perhaps they are so popu­lar with soul-food lovers because they cut the taste of grease, or perhaps some instinct for survival shows itself in the popularity of collards, which the body believes will chase plaque from the arteries and dread oxidants from the cells. Grits completed the menu.

  I have had grits before and have never been a fan. I consider them even more detestable than Cream of Wheat, which my mother served on freezing mornings to protect us from frostbite of the fingers and toes by warming us in advance from the stomach outward. Does that make sense? I never thought so. At Praline Connection I was tempted to seek out their chef and suggest a more inter­esting recipe. My next door neighbor at home, a seventy-five-year-old Hispanic matron whose husband's company built her house, my house, and hundreds of others, intro­duced me to a local hominy dish that is easy to prepare and quite delicious.