"New orleans" news and stories

"Fat Tuesday" may be tomorrow, but Mardi Gras celebrations are already in full swing, from Rio to New Orleans to New York. On this Fat Monday the Hurricanes are flowing, the King Cakes are being baked and frosted, and gumbo is simmering in more than a few pots. (For more on the history of the day, see "Mardi Gras 2011: Fat Tuesday and Carnival Explained," at AOL News.) Take some ideas from these cooks, and get your own Cajun-Creole party started.

Louisiana native (and KitchenDaily contributor) Alexis Touchet lays out all the essentials for Mardi Gras, including quintessentially southern recipes for Creole Chicken Fricassee, Crawfish Pie, Chicken-and-Shrimp File Gumbo, Shrimp Remoulade Garlic Toasts, and Coconut Rum Cream Tarts. No New Orleans Mardi Gras feast would be complete without a big old dish of red beans and rice. Alexis adds spicy andouille sausage to her recipe to amp up the flavor.

In New Orleans, so popular are red beans and rice that now there's a Redbeans Parade (held today), with 60 members of a krewe that has honored the dish by spending months creating their costumes using the legumes (uncooked, natch).

A weekly look at the draft selections in beer-friendly bars across the country.

New Orleans is a city that is known for its parties and its drinking. But for a place that loves alcoholic beverages, craft beer has been conspicuously underrepresented in their landscape of libations.

Polly Watts, owner of New Orleans' The Avenue Pub, pointed to people's preference for other drinks. "Louisiana is a big liquor consumer," she explains. "Lots of vodka and rum." It makes sense: Bourbon Street is more than just a catchy name. And The Big Easy's penchant for fine dining plays a role as well. "We're a really big wine state too," she told us.

Not to say that beer didn't exist. It just wasn't always the drink of choice. And it was rarely ever craft. "For decades, the only beer you'd see was generic macrobrews," said Watts, before adding, "maybe an occasional Abita," referencing one of Louisiana's few well-known craft breweries.

Many people dream of living in a paradise of sand, sea, and sun, sipping cold cocktails. Our bar, Casa Cóctel, is in just such a paradise in Baja California Sur, Mexico, where we get about 360 days a year of sunshine. However, we are about to head into hurricane season so we're busy preparing the arsenal of emergency lights, big jugs of water, and the fixings for stormy-weather drinks.

It's hard to beat a classic Dark and Stormy, a highball in the "mule" family of drinks. A mule (also known as a buck) is a highball made with spirit, ginger beer or ale, and citrus, such as the Moscow Mule made famous by Smirnoff vodka. Often described as the national drink of Bermuda, the Dark and Stormy is a mule with a registered trademark by Gosling's rum. We love the Dark and Stormy made simply with 1.5 ounces of Gosling's Black Seal Rum over ice and topped with ginger beer and a squeeze of lime.

One of New Orleans' famous restaurants turned traumatic storms into one of the city's most well known cocktails, the Hurricane. Pat O'Brien survived as a speakeasy owner during Prohibition with his eponymous joint. During the Second World War, wholesalers forced bars to order many cases of rum in order to get other desired spirits that were in short supply. Pat O'Brien's served a crowd-pleasing cocktail with a hefty amount of rum in a glass shaped like a hurricane lamp, thus, the name. Sadly the original recipe seems to be lost. Pat O'Brien's now serves their drink made with a commercially bottled pre-mix. Their signature glasses are one of the most sought after souvenirs by visitors. (We hear that the glasses hold about $10 in pennies if you don't serve Hurricanes at home and are trying to figure out what to do with that souvenir.)

Five years after Hurricane Katrina, eating in New Orleans is definitely not the same. Quite possibly, it's better. "I'd argue that our restaurants are better today than before," says Brett Anderson, restaurant critic for the city's paper, the Times Picayune. "It has a lot to do with the remarkable number and quality of new places that were unimaginable before September or October [of 2005]."

Eating in New Orleans is geographically specific like in no other American city. And where there is eating, there is passion -- passion about the food, passion about the region, and passion about the neighborhood. "We have a tradition of eating in neighborhood restaurants," notes Anderson. Willie Mae's Scotch House, famous for its fried chicken, could only exist within the fabled streets of Treme, just as the Creole stronghold Antoine's is unimaginable anywhere but among the genteel blocks of the French Quarter.

Since Hurricane Katrina, only a handful of the best neighborhood spots haven't reopened, and it seems that for every one shuttered, two or three new ones have moved in. Among those Anderson names as the best are Coquette, an Uptown wine bar and bistro; the nationally renowned pork paradise Cochon; Mahoney's, a new po' boy shop ("It's not easy to make po' boys in this town and get noticed," attests Anderson); and Boucherie, a crew of young chefs reinventing Southern food (think Krispy Kreme bread pudding). "It's also the small things," Anderson says, "now, New Orleans is a better place to get Italian. You can get really high quality meats and better sandwiches."

The New Orleans Saints visited the White House earlier this week for a special ceremony honoring the Super Bowl champs. And the big guys didn't come empty handed -- they brought Gulf seafood, recipes and serious cooking skills. "While they're here today, several Saints players are going to spend some time teaching our staff their favorite Gulf seafood recipes," said President Obama. "So ... who's cooking?"

The White House put together a video featuring several members of the team cooking in the kitchen with White House chef Sam Kass. Tackle Zach Strief, Defensive End Bobby McCray, Center Nick Lecky and Kicker Garrett Harley rolled up the sleeves on their three-piece suits and showed the staff how to prepare a recipe from Streif's cookbook, When You're the Biggest Guy on the Team -- andouille sausage and Gulf shrimp marinated in Creole mustard, bourbon, honey and a little Tabasco Chipotle Pepper Sauce.

"Put this in some French bread and you've got yourself a good po' boy," says Bobby McCray. Strief adds, "They've done a ton of testing [on the shrimp] and it's all been cleared. It's the best in the country."

Later they surprised Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, journalists and visitors in the White House briefing room with portions of the dish -- an edible tribute to New Orleans.

After the jump, an exclusive behind-the-scenes video of the Saints cooking with Sam Kass in the White House kitchen.