In Search of Haute Cuisine...

I recently returned from New Orleans, aka NOLA, aka N'Awlins, aka The Big Easy, etc. Although I'm generally leaning toward featuring my own cooking endeavors on this blog, I feel that I must at least give a nod to some delightful meals I had there, not the least of which included fabulous eats at Acme, Delachaise, Emeril's Delmonico and a five-course wine pairing dinner at La Cote Brasserie.

That being said, today is my first day home. I'm happy to be back, don't get me wrong, but I've been standing in my kitchen for hours waiting for someone to bring me something magnificent to eat. I'm not having much luck with that, in case you're wondering. To make matters worse, I was gone for almost a week, so there are no groceries to speak of in the fridge. My husband is infinitely happy with abominations like canned tuna melts, so he rarely bothers to grocery shop if I'm not here.

Since the only ingredients I seem to have on hand for dinner are eggs, spinach, a half-eaten tomato, and some wheat bread, I've decided to take the fallback position and poach again. Not all that exciting, you might think, especially since I just posted about poaching in my last blog. I, too, was somewhat uninspired by those four sad little ingredients until I came across the oil of gods as I was reaching into my icebox.

Let me explain. A few months back, my husband, who can be surprisingly adventurous in the kitchen for someone who is so fond of white trash cuisine, decided to concoct a hot pepper oil. He started with an entire package of dried Thai chilies which he proceeded to grind up in the Cuisinart. He then heated up a large quantity of peanut oil to around 165 degrees in a deep pot (and the deep pot is important because there must be plenty of room to accommodate the violent flare-up that will result from adding the chilies to the hot oil). Once he added the chilies to the oil, he cooked it for about one or two minutes and then cooled it before bottling it.

Now you'd never suspect that anything so simple could be so good or so addictive, but just a touch of this stuff can make even the most mundane food worth eating. I have to add here that a SMIDGEN of this oil is all you need unless you have a titanium gastric system. Unlike what you'd suspect, however, the first sensation you get from this oil is NOT heat, per se. The first kiss leaves you tingling from the tip of your tongue all the way down into your stomach. After the second kiss, you begin to appreciate a little of the actual heat. On the third kiss, as you're really starting to fall in love (and feel your tongue again), you are rewarded with the most pleasant smoky aftertaste - and this, my friends, is the point at which you become utterly and irreversibly addicted.

So giving nods where nods are due, my hat is off to my husband for this simple, yet brilliant, additive. In fact, I have warned him that he must never, ever allow us to run out of this oil. I have cautioned him that, on days like today, when times are hard and in-house haute cuisine just can't be found, this oil may actually save my life (not to mention his).