New Orleans Cuisine

My Creole & Cajun Recipe Page

This is my blog dedicated to New Orleans & Louisiana cooking! I'll give links to great Creole & Cajun recipes and sites, as well as some of my own recipes. I love talkin' New Orleans, food and otherwise! Incidentally, I'm from Detroit. Go Figure. Lets just say I figured out "what it means, to miss New Orleans" and this site helps ease the pain.

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"Leaving New Orleans also frightened me considerably. Outside of the city limits the heart of darkness, the true wasteland begins."
-Ignatius J. Reilly from A Confederacy of Dunces
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Monday, May 30, 2005

New Orleans Coffee and Chicory

New Orleans is a coffee town, they take their coffee very seriously, so for my post I decided to ask the good folks at Mr. Lake's NonPompous New Orleans Food Forum, most of which are locals, how they like their Coffee and Chicory. It seems the local brands of choice are Community, Union, and Cafe du Monde (CDM). As far as Coffee Stands, although everyone likes Cafe du Monde, the real fondness and nostalgia seems to be for the Morning Call coffee stands. My friends M.A. and S.A. over at The Wreckroom drink Community Coffee and prefer Morning Call as well. Morning Call is no longer in the French Quarter, but they have 2 locations in Metarie. Here is the info:

MORNING CALL COFFEE STAND
3325 Severn Ave., Metairie 885-4068
4436 Veterans Memorial Blvd. (Clearview Mall), Metairie 779-5348


If you've never been to New Orleans, they love their coffee strong! Real strong. JDM from Mr. Lake's describes the coffee best with a traditional Cajun French rhyme:

Noir comme le Diable;
Fort comme la Mort;
Doux comme l'Amour;
Et chaud comme l'Enfer.

English Translation:

Black as the Devil;
Strong as Death;
Sweet as Love;
And hot as Hell.

Thanks to everyone at Mr. Lakes for sharing all of the great info! Here is a link to the thread.

The classic way to make a good cup of Coffee and Chicory, or Cafe Noir, is with an Old- Fashioned drip Coffee pot, or Biggin. The object is to get all of the flavor out of the beans and Chicory, and into the coffee. Here is how I make Cafe Noir.

Cafe Noir

Here is the ratio I use, I think it's pretty standard, if I'm wrong please say so in the comment section:

For every 1 Cup of water
1 Heaping Tablespoon of drip ground Coffee and Chicory
(Mr. Lake suggests adding a pinch of salt to the ground coffee)

Place the coffee in a drip style coffee pot, lined with a filter. Starting with cold water, bring the water just to a boil. Pour a small amount over the grounds, just enough to moisten them. Add about 1/2 cup of or so of water at a time, do not add more until the previous addition has completely dripped through. Continue until you've used the remaining water. Serve.
You can keep the coffee hot in a Carafe or in a Bain Marie on the stove.

Now that you have a nice cup or pot of Cafe Noir, you can either add milk or half & half, and or sugar, or you can make Cafe au Lait.

Cafe au Lait

Cafe au Lait
is nothing more than equal parts of scalded milk (Milk brought just to a boil) and Cafe Noir, sugar optional. The classic presentation is two pots, one with coffee, one with milk, poured into the cup at the same time in one long stream.

Serve Cafe au Lait with the classic accompaniment Beignets.

Side note - Don't try to order a Cafe au Lait outside of New Orleans. Chuck Taggart's rant on Coffee house Cafe au Lait at The Gumbo Pages is right on the money.

Future coffee post....the show stopping Cafe Brulot.

7 Comments:

Blogger True Jersey Girl said...

Thanks for visiting me today...and N'Awlins is one of my absolute FAVORITE places on earth.

9:10 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

C'est se bon mon chier Cafe a la New Orleans eci tres bon

12:37 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

When I was young, my aunts and grandmothers used to make the best tasting coffee. No bitterness, smooth and creamy. I hadn't been able to recreate that taste until I went to New Orleans a couple of weeks ago. OMG it brought back memories. I had given up on coffee and/or cafe au laits as they tasted like something burnt mixed with milk.

1:06 PM  
Blogger Uriel said...

My wife and I make coffee on the stove in an aluminum french drip pot. To keep it hot it sits on the stove in an old cake pan with water in it. There is no electric pot in our home. During Gustav, we did just fine in the mornings(and afternoons) with our old pot and the camp stove.
Our pot holds about two mugs of coffee; we use about 7 HEAPING tablespoons of Community Dark Roast to one of our lil' pots.
However, the years have caught up with the old pot. The downside of the aluminum pot is that it pits and eventually a hole develops. Can you tell us where we can find a replacement?

Thanks for your help and have a great day!

6:12 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Check out www.frenchdrip.com for your french drip coffee pot.

11:43 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

LOL

You need to add a little background to that french rhyme! there are a few different variations (I'll include my favorite below), but you have to preface it with: "I Like my coffee as I like my women!"

"Black as the devil,
hot as hell,
pure as an angel,
sweet as love."

(en français: "Noir comme le diable,
chaud comme l'enfer,
pur comme un ange,
doux comme l'amour.")

4:33 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I grew up using a drip pot. Mine is enamel and I recently found a really cool one, but it has 2 holes .. I found the repair patches they used on pots (oh so many years ago) at Lehman's store in Ohio. I'm a coffee pot collector/fanatic, but with all the different drip pots I've acquired, I keep going back to my red enamel. My favorite pot I've been using for so long is beat up enough that I'm sure I'll be using one of those patches to keep her going! She's perfectly seasoned and loves to pour out a perfect cuppa CDM!

10:30 AM  

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