New Orleans Saints Super Bowl Celebration at Copeland’s Atlanta

Living in New Orleans, The Saints have permeated every aspect of life from the time I can remember. In 1980, as a sophomore in High School, I watched every game that was on TV and listened to the others on radio, even as the Saints plunged to 0-14.  It is amazing the detail that I can remember.

Saints vs. Jets, the only national TV game the Saints would play that year. As I watched the snow falling on the TV my father just shook his head that I was living and dying with every play of an 0-14 team. Truth be told, he was watching and pulling as hard as I was for the Saints to win at least one game in the horrible season, he just wouldn’t admit it.

I didn’t understand at the time how being responsible for a family, having a job (he was on the New Orleans Police Department) tempers the degree that you can feel hurt or feel joy with your sports team, but my Father was as happy as I was after that game. We loved to watch the games together. The first and only argument I can remember my parents having in front of me was about me staying up late to watch Monday Night Football. My Mom wanted me in bed for 9:00pm, My Father wanted me to stay up and watch whatever game was on that week.

The highlight of the game was the halftime show, where week after week we were vindicated in our hate of Howard Cosell as he would either not show the Saints highlights or show them with slanted commentary against the Saints. If you have no idea what I am talking about you are under 40!! (This was before ESPN, NFL Network and Direct TV NFL Package)

The argument that my Mom and Dad had over my bedtime led to the first Man to Man talk with my Father. He told me that I could stay up as late as I wanted but I had to be ready for school and couldn’t miss even if I had a 110F fever. I thought it was a fair deal, and usually went to bed after my Father and I yelled at Howard Cossell during halftime anyway!!

My Father died in 1986 and he never got to see the Saints in a playoff game much less a Super Bowl. I don’t know how he would have reacted to last season outwardly, but what I do know is that he would have enjoyed it and I would have enjoyed sharing it with him.

We went to a ton of games together, he was in charge of the Traffic Division of the NOPD and he had access to tickets on a pretty regular basis. Going to the games was magical for me, it still is to this day.

As I entered college, and my brother became family men, it was harder for the entire family to spend time together. Watching the Saints play was the one thing that we all did together, My Mom, Dad, 2 Brothers and 2 Sisters. The Saints still bond us together

My wife and kids got sucked up into the season last year due in large part to Copeland’s in Cumberland showing the games in the 120” big screen TV and several hundred other Who Dat’s going crazy. My 7 year old Daughter Grace wrote in her journal after one of the first games about the Who Dat chant, she didn’t understand it but she understood that it was done out of pure exuberance and joy!!

As the final seconds of the clock ticked off during the last Superbowl at least half of the Saints fans at Copeland’s were in tears. Its hard to control 40+ years of pent up frustration, disappointment, and at times bafflement. The Saints didn’t just lose a lot of games during those 40 years, but they found numerous ways to snatch defeat out of Victories jaws.

On that wonderful Super Bowl night it all changed as the Saints snatched victory this time. One of the biggest plays was the call to start the second half off with an onside kick. A move that was more likely to turn sour instead came up sweet thanks to the tenacious efforts of Chris Reiss, an Atlanta native. The rest is history that Saints fans will relish. Say what you want about the Saint’s first 40 years, but the second 40 will include the words Super Bowl Champions.

We are going to relive The 2009 New Orleans Saints Championship Season on Saturday June 26th at 1:00pm. We will be joined by Chris Reis from the Saints, whose parents were regulars at our Cumberland location every Sunday last year. I can’t wait to see everyone who shared last year with us, to relive the highlights and look forward to the 2010 Saints.

I wish My Dad was still alive to see us replaying Saints games, because I bet the gruff old Policeman, who was very jaded, would still have a tear in his eye every time he saw Tracy Porter get to the end zone pointing to the Who Dats loosing their minds in the stands!!

What is your favorite Saints Moment? …Who Dat!

Glen Helmstetter is a partner in Copeland’s Atlanta and a native of New Orleans where he was raised on shrimp, crawfish, and the New Orleans Saints.

The Martini, The Coolest Drink Ever Mixed Behind the Bar

Sean Connery ordering the drink that conveys the perfect blend of glamour, style and wit in one of the coolest scenes in cinema. The martini glass is cool, the olive or onion sitting in the clear concoction is cool. The martini, hands down is the coolest drink ever mixed behind any bar. There is not a ton about alcohol that is All American but the martini is, even though the British want to lay claim to the drink, I think it is fair to say this is an American creation with all due respect to James Bond!!

The modern day martini is one part gin and one part dry vermouth, but the origins and different recipes are varied indeed. Martinez California is believed by some to be the birthplace of the martini, a miner came into the bar of Julio Richelieu in 1870 with a bag full of gold and a taste for something other than whisky. As any good bartender would do Julio mixed up a blend of gin, vermouth orange and bitters along with an olive, voila the Martinez!! If you are in New York the story is a little different, John D. Rockefeller would frequent the Knickerbocker Hotel and wanted something a little different so the bartender (looking for a tip from Mr. Rockefeller I suspect) Martini di Arma di Taggia came up with his version, London Dry Gin, dry vermouth, bitters, lemon peel and one olive. Whether or not this is the true origin of the martini one thing I feel confident of is that this wass the beginning of the 3 martini lunch!!

Where congress has killed the 3 martini lunch no one can stop the evolution of the martini and the fact that it is still the coolest drink going!! A quick look at the martini menu at Copeland’s in Atlanta shows this evolution in a major way- just a sampling of our offerings are the Cosmopolitan (my wife’s favorite), First Kiss, Lemon Head, Woo Woo, and the Orangina. We even have dessert martinis Banana Banchee, The Mochatini and The Key Lime Pie. I almost forgot, The Copeland’s Classic Martini with your choice shaken or stirred, dirty or dry, perfect or sweet!! Come in any Friday and enjoy our $5.00 Martini Menu at any Atlanta area Copeland’s along with $5.00 appetizers and great Jazz Music. (another American invention!!)

What is your favorite Martini?

Tis The Season For Eating on a Patio

Atlanta is a GREAT weather city – sure in the summer we are HOTLANTA and we can have ice storms in January that can mess up a Super Bowl but the spring and fall, well I defy you to find better weather than right here.

Growing up in New Orleans our seasons were defined by what seafood was in season –  late fall through winter, oysters, spring time was crawfish, when the weather got real hot it was time for boiled crabs. That was the only time we ever ate outside – after we boiled seafood.

Very few restaurants in New Orleans even go through the trouble of having an outside dining area because the seasons change so quickly, your window is about a week in the spring and a week in the fall. Atlanta is a different story.

It is 7:00pm on a breezy late April evening as I type this and I am sitting in our new courtyard at our Cumberland location watching the traffic go by and enjoying my Monday staple, Red Beans and Rice (you can take the boy out of New Orleans but you can’t take New Orleans out of the boy!!) and amazed at how relaxing it is to eat outside.

I have two kids, one 7 and one 9 and they are the ones who have lead me to the land of eating outside. When we are picking a restaurant, if the weather is nice, what kind of patio tops both of their lists as to where to go eat dinner. Eating outside is different in so many ways than dining inside a restaurant. The biggest difference is that you have a level of relaxation on a patio that is hard to match in a restaurant dining room.

I look around our courtyard and I see one couple sharing a bottle of white wine, 2 young ladies sipping on large flavored martinis and a family of 5 just finishing up (very well behaved youngsters). No one is rushed, no one is anxious at all, everyone is just savoring the weather and ambiance.

I am excited by how nice our courtyard turned out at our Cumberland location and equally excited by the fact that our new Courtyard will be ready by the first week in May at our Kennesaw location. We would like to extend an invitation to all of our friends to come out and spend a little time in our courtyard, listen to the gently running fountain, enjoy a nice cold cocktail, and of course the best New Orleans food this side of Slidell!!

Rouxing the Day: Lessons from a cranky old German woman who scared the hell out of me

It is always interesting what things cross your mind when you have been driving for 7 hours by yourself. I was heading down to New Orleans on business and my mind wondered to of all things where a good roux fits into the grand scheme of life.

I guess the first thing to do is to just lay out what a roux is:

Roux
The most classic Cajun creation made by cooking flour and oil together. The popular phrase, “First you make a roux” is used to create dishes such as gumbo, fricassee stews, courtbouillion, and sauce piquant, even spaghetti sauce and other dishes

As I crossed the Louisiana state line, I rolled down my window, the air was cleansed by a ton of rain compliments of Tropical Strom Claudette. The smell of the brackish water from Lake Pontchatrain was as sweet as any I can remember.

I thought back to the times I spent with my brothers and sisters at the Jolly Green Giant- My Grandparents fishing camp on Chef Menteur Highway in the Ricolets between Lake Pontchatrain and Lake Catherine. One of my most vivid memories is my Grandma Bella yelling at me because I didn’t stir the roux for her crab stew evenly and it burned.

I tried to hide my indiscretion by adding flour to the burned mixture to no avail. Bella had the nose of a bomb sniffing dog and knew what happened long before I realized I had messed up. At 8 years of age I had to sit through a detailed lesson on why a roux is important and why people who don’t have patience to make a roux or people who don’t see the importance of a properly executed roux ought to eat hamburgers their whole life.

It was one of those moments that in hindsight shape your life, your opinion of food and your opinion of a cranky old German woman who scared the hell out of you but I couldn’t get enough of her advice and stories!!

I guess Grandma Bella’s lecture came to mind because of a conversation I had with a gentleman (from North of the Mason dixon line) the afternoon I left for New Orleans. Rev. Jerry came in for a late lunch that day. He and I got to discussing the Laboucherie sauce that we use in the Steak Laboucherie that is on our small plate menu. I was giving him the readers digest version of how it was made and when I mentioned a roux, he sat up and said what is that.

I tried to explain but he was perplexed as to why we just wouldn’t use corn starch to thicken the sauce. I wanted to give him the lecture that I received 37 years earlier but decided against it because he is older than dirt and he is from the North and deserves to eat plain hamburgers the rest of his life unless he comes into Copeland’s and orders one of our wonderful roux based sauces!

My favorite roux based recipe is the Etouffee Sauce at Copeland’s. It was developed over 25 years ago but could have been developed 125 years ago. It has all of the ingredients of the classic Cajun sauce, slow cooked with onions, garlic and bell peppers. The smell of the roux cooking is unbelievable, the only problem is that when a roux is cooking you know that you are hours away from tasting the dish. The best advice I can give when cooking a roux is to not be in a hurry and don’t be afraid to start over. It sounds easy and is once you have made a roux a few times.

This is copied directly from a great website http://www.realcajunrecipes.com.  A universal recipe for a roux

• ½ cup All Purpose Flour
• ½ cup of Vegetable Oil

Heat the oil and slowly incorporate the flour. Cook over a very low heat, stirring often. You will notice a wonderful nutty smell permeates the entire house. The roux will brown as it cooks, if you see specs throw it out and start again- if you used a burnt roux it will give an off taste to your dish. Brown the roux as dark as you like. As long as you stir and cook over a very low heat you can get the roux very dark without burning.

A Jumbeaux Tale of Shrimp

It is one of the most iconic scenes in American Movies this side of the Godfather. Bubba telling Forrest Gump about all of the shrimp dishes that they can eat when they get into the Shrimpin business together. Shrimp Etouffee, Shrimp Creole, BBQ Shrimp, Shrimp and Grits and on and on for what seems like days. It is great movie making and also very true, with all do apologies to Jessica Simpson and Charlie the Tuna- The real chicken of the sea is the shrimp.

My brother Roy and his Family were up to visit on his way to see my Nephew Bobby who is about to make his 3rd trip overseas as a guest of the United States Marine Corps. Bobby lives in North Carolina which makes Atlanta about ½ way in between the two.

This is one of the best shrimp seasons for consumers (not so great for the shrimpers, but we can talk about that another day) and Roy graced us with 20lbs of beautiful white gulf shrimp that he bought at the Westwego Seafood Market on the Westbank of New Orleans.

I could spend the entire blog talking about the market but suffice it to say that you get quite an eclectic mix of characters when you have 20 or so individual seafood purveyors all in the same gravel parking lot, trying to sell their catch from the day before. I get mesmerized by the experience and have to take a walk around the whole lot before I choose who I want to buy from. Roy on the other hand has his favorites (The girls as he call them) who he uses whenever he is in need of great seafood.

We were boiling the seafood and talking about how the shrimp season is this year. It dawned on me how many dishes we use shrimp in at Copeland’s. On our current menu we use shrimp in over ?? dishes. People always ask what are Copeland’s signature dishes and I always go to the shrimp dishes.

The Shrimp Etouffee is the best Etouffee around. I think that the Shrimp and Crabcakes Alfredeaux and Shrimp and Grits are the two best dishes that Chef Chuck and Chef Geoff (Copeland’s Chef’s) have come up with in the last few years.

Shrimp has been the protein of choice for both Creole and Cajun cooks for hundreds of years. It is no wonder, shrimp harvesting started in South Louisiana in the 17th Century. It was done the old fashion way for a couple of hundred years (cast nets) until the early 20th Century and the development of the mechanized trawl net.

It’s amazing to me that the US harvests over 650 million lbs of shrimp a year and still needs to import over 200 million lbs to satisfy this country’s appetite for the tasty little creature. I have tried shrimp from all over the world and the best shrimp hands down are the Gulf White Shrimp harvested off of the coast of Louisiana. Shrimp from other parts of the world take on the flavors of the foods that the shrimp eat. I am not sure if it is the brackish water but the shrimp from south Louisiana are the best and all we use at Copeland’s in Atlanta.

Shrimp have been an integral part of the diets of everyone from the Greeks and Romans to the Chinese. If you want to know the best way to eat shrimp do it the Creole Cajun way and listen to Bubba.. Shrimp Scampi, Shirmp Gumbo, Stewed Shrimp, Stuffed Shrimp, Shrimp Dressing, Shrimp Po-Boy, Boiled Shrimp……….

The Great Steak Taste Test of 2010: The Difference Between Prime, Choice, and Select

I should never go to a grocery store with my wife. She hates the whole experience of the grocery store, I love it, she would prefer to get a months worth of groceries at one time, I would prefer to go every time I cook dinner.

I was going to grill steaks for dinner and was pleasantly surprised when I saw Ribeyes with the USDA Shield on them, they were beautiful. I am not a steak snob, but after several years of selling only USDA Prime 28 Day aged beef at Copeland’s in Atlanta I jumped at the opportunity to prepare one for my bride of 17 years (and myself of course!!)

As I studied the steaks to get the best marbled, most textured piece of Prime Ribeye available, Amanda started to look at the prices and was taken aback by the fact that I was going to pay over $2.00 per lb more for the Prime than the beleaguered choice steak in the next row over.

After a few minutes of back and forth about me being taken in by the marketing folks in the meat industry we decided to do a taste test between the USDA Prime, a Choice steak and a select steak.

As I prepared my grill for the great taste test of 2010 I was surprised by the difference in the look of the 3 steaks. The Prime Steak had beautiful marbling throughout the entire steak, the Choice Steak had some marbling but was fairly devoid of fat marbling in the center. The Select Steak had a lip of fat on the outside but was solid red and had no marbling at all near the center of the steak.

I had never tasted different cuts of meat side by side and was amazed at how much better the Prime Steaks were than the other two. It was much more tender and had a juicy almost butter like taste that was delicious. The choice steak was good but paled in comparison to it’s Prime Cousin. The Select steak, despite the nice gold label by the grocery store was not very good. I think it would be fine if you were cooking it in a gravy or as a stew, but was not tender or juicy grilled on its own merits.

At Copeland’s we get our all of our Prime Steaks from the Premier Butcher of Prime Steaks in the Eastern part of the Untied States, Buckhead Beef Company. I love to go over to their plant in North East Atlanta and take a look at the Copeland’s room- Where our prime steaks are aged for 28 days before they are shipped to each of the Copeland’s stores for you to enjoy.

It is a pretty meticulous process that the USDA goes through to grade beef. Only 2% of all of the beef in the United States is deemed to be USDA Prime, the rest goes into one of 4 other categories Choice, Select , Cutter and Canner. The latter two are used in frozen dinners or other processed food products.

If you have never had a Prime Steak or if you have had a Prime Steak and want to experience the best 2% of steaks in the country cooked in an 1800F broiler at the best price in town, I would invite you to come out to our new Prime Steak and Premium Wine Night every Wednesday at Copeland’s in Atlanta.

We will be selling all of our steaks for $19.99 and our premium wines will be half price by the bottle. My wife has never had a steak at Copeland’s, she loves the Hickory Grilled Fish and Salads to much, but now she is a believer in the quality of the “USDA Shield”