It’s Carnival Time!

The coming of carnival each year is a time I anticipate more than Christmas. Perhaps because it happens right after the holidays, in the dead of winter when there isn’t a whole lot else going on.
For some carnival is synonymous with Mardi Gras.

Mardi Gras is French for Fat Tuesday and refers to the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. This year, Mardi Gras falls on February 24. The date can occur on any Tuesday between February 3 and March 9 and is always 47 days preceding Easter. So, like Easter the date changes from year to year.

Carnival comes from the Latin carnivale and loosely translated means farewell to flesh. It is the season of merriment preceding its single-day culmination, Mardi Gras. In New Orleans, Carnival begins every year on January 6, the Twelfth Night or Feast of the Epiphany and ends at midnight on Fat Tuesday.

Dozens of carnival clubs in New Orleans celebrate the season by hosting numerous balls, social events and parades. These carnival clubs called krewes are chartered as nonprofit entities and financed by dues and fund-raising projects throughout the year. They take their name from the Mystick Krewe of Comus, New Orleans’ first carnival club established in 1857. Madison has its very own krewe, the Krewe of Madison.

The food most associated with the carnival season is the king cake. In France the king cake or gâteau de roi was a rich brioche or puff pastry served on the eve of Twelfth Night. Baked inside was a bean or coin to represent the Christ child. Whoever got the bean was crowned king with a paper crown.

In New Orleans, king cake is a round or oval coffee cake and almost always comes from a bakery or grocery. It is gaudily decorated with lots of green, purple and gold sugar to represent a jeweled crown. Recently, the filled king cake—cream cheese being the filling of choice—has become favored. Whatever the variety, all contain a small, plastic baby hidden inside. The person who finds the baby has the dubious distinction of buying the next king cake … and in Louisiana during carnival, life is an endless parade of king cakes.

You can actually buy a king cake in Madison at Scott’s Pastry Shoppe in Middleton or Bab’s French Quarter Café (though you do need to order it in advance). You can also have one shipped by overnight air from numerous bakeries in New Orleans (Manny Randazzo’s and Gambino’s are popular with locals). The idea of making your own king cake in New Orleans would be akin to making your own bread in Paris. However, here is a recipe. You can find the prerequisite purple, green and gold—the official colors of Mardi Gras—sugar crystals at Vanilla Bean (6805 Odana Road).

There is always a lot of eating and drinking—especially drinking—going on in New Orleans but even more so during carnival. Beside the many balls and parities, parades are an important part of the celebration. Two local snacks inevitably show up along the parade route: Popeye Fried Chicken and Frito Pie—a bag of corn chips split open and filled with chili and topped with cheese.

If none of this puts you in the carnival mood, perhaps the following will. Laissez le bon temps rouler!

Hurricane

Pat O’Brien’s bar in the French Quarter invented the Hurricane in the 1940s, naming it after its glass that’s shaped like a hurricane lamp. Supposedly, a local distributor forced the bar to buy cases of rum before they would sell them other liquor that they actually wanted. Pat O’Brien concocted the now famous drink which he actually gave away to sailors and soldiers who frequented the bar during World War II.

2 ounces light rum
2 ounces dark rum
3 ounces frozen Hawaiian Punch® concentrate (defrosted but not reconstituted)
1 ounce fresh orange juice
½ ounce fresh lime juice

Garnish:
Orange slice and cherry

Shake all the ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice and strain into a hurricane glass. Garnish with a cherry and an orange slice.

Make 1 drink.

Missing in New Orleans

Another shock and another loss came later in the week. My friend Mary Erpenbach sent me an email to let me know the Maison de Ville and Audubon Cottages—a boutique hotel in New Orleans—had closed on Monday. This was the perfect place to stay in the French Quarter, an historic hostelry where fittingly Tennessee Williams once lived. It’s where he completed A Streetcar Named Desire. Dick Cavett interviewed him for his TV show in its dreamy courtyard complete with gurgling fountain, lush foliage and lazy banana trees. Originally the place was built as a residence in the late 18th Century. It was the home of Amedée Peychaud, the pharmacist who concocted the bitters named after him, an essential ingredient in the Sazerac cocktail.

The hotel also nurtured a wonderful little restaurant called the Bistro at the Maison de Ville. The ambiance of this cozy room was as much Left Bank Paris as French Quarter New Orleans. The late John Neal and Susan Spicer, both acclaimed chefs , got their start in the kitchen here. Its amiable maitre d’ Patrick Van Hoornebeek made all his guests feel welcome and is a local legend. On a good night, the food here was second to none and that’s saying a lot in this town with so many great restaurants.

Most of all I loved the Audubon Cottages located a couple of blocks away from the main hotel. Seven sequestered cottages, each with its own private courtyard, encircle a central patio and swimming pool. Every time I came here I always anticipated opening the gate … walking down the long passage with its canopy of jacaranda trees … entering this hidden bijou of a place. It never lost its magic.

Most of all I loved the Audubon Cottages because they were the venue for my 50th birthday party, a grand celebration with more than 50 of my friends the weekend before Mardi Gras. I stayed in Cottage Number 1 that year with my friend Mike Verveer. It was where John James Audubon had lived in 1821 and 1822 while he worked on his Birds of America series. The cottages and courtyards were the epicenter of that weekend culminating in a jazz funeral parade from there to breakfast at Brennans.

I returned year after year—usually for Mardi Gras—so many times that it felt like coming home. It was an oasis from the frenzy of Carnival that is enticing but sometime overwhelming. I liked it because very little ever changed, least of all the kind people who worked there. In the aftermath of Katrina I was gladdened to learn all the employees had weathered the storm and happier still when the hotel finally reopened. Yet, It now appears Katrina has claimed yet another victim.

Whenever I think of “The City That Care Forgot” I cannot forget the Maison de Ville.

“In New Orleans I have noticed that people are happiest when they are going to funerals, making money, taking care of the dead, or putting on masks at Mardi Gras so nobody knows who they are.” –Walker Percy, Lancelot