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26
MY
ROUSES
EVERYDAY
JANUARY | FEBRUARY 2016
Taking a local favorite on the road.
by
Pableaux Johnson
I
t’s a balmy October night in Washington DC — clear, quiet
and about 65 degrees. Folks tell me they feel the winter coming
and that snow will come soon enough.The early guests started
showing up at about 6pm, coming straight from work, and I’m in
the kitchen at Johnny’s Half Shell doing cornbread math.
“Four skillets per batch, we need 10 ... maybe 12 to be safe?”
I’m watching the heavy black iron skillets for signs of smoking oil
as I whip up a quadruple batch of my grandfather’s cornbread batter
with an oversized whisk. Clackclackclack. Sizzlesizzlesizzle. And
the oven door closes with a solid THUNK.
It’s the inaugural run of the Red Beans Road Show — a Louisiana-
themed pop-up that brings a local culinary tradition to cities outside
south Louisiana. Like the home-style Monday night tradition, the
Roadshow showcases a simple dish and brings folks to the table for
a night of good conversation and everyday revelry.
Anyone who’s been to my house on a red beans Monday would
recognize the setup — casual table for 8-10 folks, set up family style
with minimal fuss, muss or bother. Except tonight,
at Johnny’s Half Shell on Capitol Hill,
we’re setting 10 tables instead of one
and the dining room is a stone’s
throw from the iconic, brightly lit
Capitol dome. 80 folks — many
friends or friends of friends,
Louisiana expats or other
interested parties — circulate
with a glass of wine, taking an
occasional deviled egg from
a passed tray and relax a bit.
Ann Cashion, a native of Jackson,
Mississippi, and long-time lover of
the Crescent City, plays the hard-working
host and civilizing influence — turning over
a chunk of her busy restaurant to a single-
seating culinary experiment.
It’s our first attempt at translating the
weekly New Orleans tradition to a usually
fancy-dress restaurant context, and once
we get the cornbread cooked and cut (four
skillets time three batches equals twelve),
we’ll see if we can pull this off.
How did I end up in a commercial kitchen
1500 miles from home, cutting hot
cornbread for a hungry crowd? Funny story
…or, actually, several in a row.
Early Days:
The One-Box Travel Kitchen
Like a lot of South Louisiana folks, I grew
up in the kitchen breathing onion fumes
and knowing that there’s no such thing as
a “quick roux.” Simple one-pot cooking
ended up being a practical second language, an ingrained survival
skill that only really blossomed when I got my first real post-
dormitory apartment kitchen. I learned how to make the simple,
filling dishes that are the backbone of any Louisiana repertoire —
red sauce, gumbo, smothered steak and (of course) red beans.
The historical joy of red beans is that the dish makes it easy to
feed a table full of hungry people for (as the commercials put it)
“pennies on the dollar.”With a little good sausage and a few hours
of cooking time, I could feed 10 folks in a way that would make my
mama proud. The whole event took a little sauté time, a long slow
cook and a loaf of French bread.
In 1991, after a couple of years in California, I lit out on a year-long
road trip in my first actual vehicle — a dirt-colored, 1979 Datsun
pickup truck with no AC and a copious amount of body corrosion.
Its name was Bootsy BLT (named after Mr. Collins of Funkadelic
fame and its tagline “Built Like a Tank”). During the yearlong trip,
this trusty steed would carry me on a 30,000-mile mosey through
39 of the 48 contiguous states.
During this long-form road trip, I essentially couch-surfed my way
across the country — visiting friends and relations for a few nights
at a shot — so I decided to pack a little kitchen crate inside the
cab of my truck. Just the hardware fundamentals — a big
pot, good knife, cast iron skillet, cutting board and small
rice cooker — all of which fit nicely in a double-width
plastic milk crate. With this bare-bones kit, I
could roll into just about ANY friend’s kitchen
and whip up dinner (as it turns out, one of the
most appreciated Cabana Boy skills of all).
During that year, I honed my few on-demand
dishes that my hosts repeatedly requested. I did
a gumbo for 20 in a Brooklyn apartment that was
basically a shoebox with a fire escape. I learned the value
of checking pilot-light status after triggering a VERY
MINOR gas explosion in my cousin’s grad school apartment.
ROAD BEANS
& RICE
the
Around the World
issue