Last one, I swear

It’s been over a week since returning to NYC, but I’m still coming down from my New Orleans/volunteering high. So much so that I dragged Eric with me to volunteer with NY Cares this past week. We ended up planting trees in Fort Tryon park in Inwood for a few hours on Saturday (with perfect weather for such an activity). We also walked up to The Cloisters after gardening (but in a sign of how incredibly out of shape I am, we had to take a five-minute break after making it up halfway).

Anyway, despite being home and jumping right back into work and the million other things I tend to get wrapped up in, I find my mind constantly wandering back to New Orleans: the experiences, the people, and the food.

The twelve volunteers represented a fairly diverse group in terms of experience, age and geography. Excluding myself and a lawyer (who interns at a restaurant a few nights a week), almost everyone is actively working in the industry in some regard – a few restaurant chefs, two people previously owned their own restaurant/bakery, a handful of personal chefs/caterers and some involved with culinary education. One volunteer even wrote a cookbook – the beautiful Brownie Lover’s Bible (we got to sample some of her creatioins…amazing!). I was clearly the least qualified person there. It was a little humbling, but great in that I definitely learned a lot from my fellow volunteers. Especially informative was my work with the two pastry chefs – they helped me figure out why I have to chisel my French macarons off the parchment paper and inevitably look like turds and why my chocolate cake sometimes rises beautifully and other times deflates into itself (both ways taste delicious, however).

But despite our differences, everyone is passionate about food, cooking, teaching, and especially eating. Nothing illustrates this better than our last night in New Orleans. We had just spent that entire morning and early afternoon reigning in third-graders at the Edible Schoolyard where most of us exerted significantly more energy trying to keep the students from running off than we did cooking. So, to end a successful day and trip, Christine - the CulinaryCorps leader - had arranged dinner at Cochon that would be preceded by a tour of the new Butcher Shop.

When we walked into Butcher Shop, the twelve of us immediately scattered – poking into everything – the salumi, the jars of pickles and pepper jelly, the t-shirts, the menus, the cookbooks – asking questions to the cooks and bartender, and causing general chaos in the small space. We turned into third-graders. Our excitement grew even more when we got to see what I like to refer to as heaven.

This tour was followed by the most amazing meal at Cochon. We feasted on:

• Crawfish pie
• Fried rabbit livers with pepper jelly toast
• Wood-fired oyster roast
• Fried alligator with chili garlic aioli
• Boucherie plate (head cheese)
• Fried boudin with pickled peppers
• Pork cracklins with cane syrup
• Ham hock with sweet potatoes, pickled greens and black eye pea ham broth
• Rabbit and dumplings
• Oven-roasted gulf fish "fisherman's style"
• Green tomato & crawfish casserole
• Creamy grits
• Eggplant and shrimp dressing
• Lane cake (layer cake soaked in bourbon)
• Pineapple upside-down cake

The next day, most of us headed to the airport early. However, since my flight wasn’t until 1:40pm, I decided to check my suitcase, grab two of my fellow volunteers who also had later flights and head back downtown for one final meal at Butcher Shop (adding in the meal at Herbsaint my first night in New Orleans, I had four meals at Donald Link restaurants in one week...no, I don't see that as a problem). One of my favorite things about eating with chefs is that they like to try and share everything. So between the three of us, we ate:

• Cuban sandwich with cochon du lait
• Pastrami with sauerkraut on rye
• Pork belly on white bread with mint and cucumber
• Duck pastrami with bechamel
• Foie gras on toast with Louisiana strawberry jam (our dessert)

I also walked out of there with two pounds of andouille, a huge chunk of capicola and some tasso. Before heading back to the airport, we made a little detour to Central Grocery so I could grab a muffuletta to take back home for Eric.

In addition to the Donald Link restaurants, I also had an incredible sandwich at Susan Spicer's Bayona. Smoked duck with chunky cashew butter, pepper jelly, and caramelized onions on toasted whole grain bread with an apple and celery salad. This dish hit the full spectrum of textures and flavors: spicy peppers, sweet red caramelized onion, smoky and meaty duck breast, tart crisp apples, creamy cashew butter and chewy bread. My fellow volunteers heard about this sandwich all week long.

All in all, an amazing, exhausting and delicious week. This was my fourth trip to New Orleans, and despite my usual aversion to going to the same place multiple times, I can’t wait to get down there again (fortunately, our friends will be moving there at the end of the summer, so we have another excuse to get down there soon…but we’ll wait until late fall). Until then, I will dream about pork cheeks, smoked duck sandwiches and gumbo…