LEGENDARY PO’ BOY TAKES CARE OF YOUR LEFTOVERS
Holiday eating traditions are precious for many of us. We wait all year long to eat that certain dish with our favorite people.
One of my Thanksgiving traditions has been to join the long line at Parkway Bakery & Tavern in my hometown of New Orleans to get my once-a-year Thanksgiving po’ boy. The locally famous overstuffed sandwich, sold only in November, is straightforward: French bread is layered with fresh-roasted turkey, hot cornbread dressing and wholeberry cranberry relish and then drenched in brown gravy.
Rather than using leftovers, Parkway cooks everything fresh, expanding its operation to roast the whole turkey, something not normally served. Extra hands make pans and pans of cornbread dressing, gravy and big batches of wholeberry cranberry relish that are doctored up in-house — all of which is layered onto hundreds of feet of Leidenheimer French bread loaves.
“It’s a big sandwich,” says general manager Justin Kennedy.
Because I cannot order one, I decided to re-create it. If building a po’ boy at home, Kennedy recommends at least 7 ounces of turkey, 12 ounces of stuffing, 4 ounces of gravy and 4 ounces of cranberry sauce on an 11-inch loaf of New Orleans-style French bread.
And there is the rub: I can make a good facsimile of the roasted turkey, gravy, cornbread dressing and cranberry sauce, but the Leidenheimer bread is elusive when I’m not in my hometown.
Leidenheimer is light, with thin, crunchy exterior crust and an airy, fluffy interior. This makes the bread a perfect partner for overstuffed sandwiches.
To approximate New Orleansstyle French bread, I buy the lightest French-style long loaf that I can find. Or I bake a frozen one, such as Pillsbury French bread. If the bread is dense, I pull out some of the soft interior and save it for making breadcrumbs. To get the crunch, I lightly toast the partially hollowed-out loaf until crisp.
Then, I follow Parkway’s lead, using hot traditional Thanksgiving meal leftovers, but I scale mine down a bit from Kennedy’s proportions.
What to serve on the side? At
Parkway, I get the sweet potato french fries, of course.
I got close to Kennedy’s creation, but it still left me longing for the day when I’ll be home for the holidays and back at Parkway eating that po’ boy.