Ambrosia. Far from an immortaility-inducing elixir of the gods, it’s a relic from the era in which “salad” was a loosely-defined term encompassing molded things made of gelatin and canned fruit. But Cat Cora makes it sing. Her version of it, which she acknowledged as that Southern dish “you only see at weddings and funerals,” gets much-needed revisions with fresh Bing cherries, grapefruit, watermelon and a honey-vanilla whipped cream topped with roasted coconut flakes. She gives a similar treatment to coleslaw — sometimes a soggy, mayonnaise-y mess resembling the “grass” you find in Easter baskets — by subbing out cabbage for julienned broccoli that stays crunchy even under a spicy vinaigrette (the secret ingredient? Tabasco sauce).

It’s this mix of Southern flavors with a modern, margarine-free consciousness that informs Cora’s new cookbook, Classics With a Twist: Fresh Takes on Favorite Dishes, which she promoted in an event at the Lakeside Mall Macy’s on Thursday. This is the third cookbook for the supremely busy chef, who splits time as a restauranteur, appearing on television, working as a spokesperson for charities and product lines and of course, battling in Kitchen Stadium on Food Network’s Iron Chef America, on which she has the distinction of being the only woman to earn the show’s coveted title.

Cora took a few minutes to talk to Gambit before signing cookbooks and whipping up the aforementioned ambrosia and broccoli slaw, as well as flank steak tacos with pineapple salsa, before an audience on the department store’s third floor.

Is this your first time in New Orleans?
No. I grew up in Jackson, Miss. and I went to college at USM, so I was in New Orleans a lot. I kinda grew up in this city. So even though I’m from Jackson, I kind of think of New Orleans as a second home, a second Southern home, because I spent so much time here.

Do you have a favorite New Orleans restaurant?
A lot of my friends have restaurants here. Donald (Link) has Cochon, and that’s great. But I also like some of the old classics — especially because I don’t get down here often — like going to Galatoire’s, Brennan’s for brunch, or whatever, and doing some of the classic places. Central Grocery for a muffaletta and cold beer, that kind of thing. A friend of mine, Scott (Boswell) owns Stella! I went to culinary school with him. I have a few newer ones I like, but I also like the old classics, as well.

Will you be dining when you’re here?
I’m only here for the night … my sons are with me, so we’re going to go down to the French Quarter and show them around, because they’ve never been here before. So, like I said, we’ll hit some of the classic places.

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Anne Rice, the New Orleans novelist who famously feuded with Al Copeland, famously rededicated her life to the Church to write only about the life of Christ, famously moved out of the Garden District and to La Jolla, Calif. a few years back, famously stopped writing books about sexy vampires and started writing books about sober Saviors (then left the door open for maybe one more sexy vampire book), has announced a new chapter in her life. Via her Facebook page:

For those who care, and I understand if you don’t: Today I quit being a Christian. I’m out. I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being “Christian” or to being part of Christianity. It’s simply impossible for me to “belong” to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten …years, I’ve tried. I’ve failed. I’m an outsider.

Why? Rice elaborates:

In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of …Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.

For English majors and Southern lit fans, this all may sound a bit familiar; it was 1952 when the Southern author Flannery O’Connor wrote Wise Blood, in which one of the characters forms the “Holy Church of Christ Without Christ.” The difference here seems to be that O’Connor didn’t have Facebook, and God only knows what she would’ve thought of the late lamented Straya (now Copeland’s Cheesecake Bistro).

Harvey Pekar, the cartoonist behind American Splendor, died this morning at his Cleveland home at the age of 70. Memories of Pekar are already flooding the Web, along with official obits (The New York Times, The Washington Post).

In the early 2000s, Pekar was coaxed into being a sometimes-Gambit contributor by former editor Michael Tisserand, who was a huge fan of the man and his work. In 2003, Tisserand even wrote his own American Splendor-type comic about his interactions with Pekar and had it illustrated by Rhett Thiel.

Today, in honor of Harvey Pekar, we’re running that comic again (download the whole thing here), and presenting Michael Tisserand’s remembrance of his cantankerous friend:

Lonnie Johnson, Fats Domino, Dennis McGee, Clifton Chenier, Kid Ory. Thanks to Harvey Pekar, these aren’t just Louisiana music legends. They were comic heroes in the pages of Gambit Weekly.

Pekar is known to most people for his American Splendor comic book, his memorable appearances with David Letterman, and the acclaimed movie American Splendor, in which he appeared as himself. For a few years in the early 2000s, he also became an occasional Gambit contributor. His masterful portraits of local musicians managed to convey essential biographical information, Pekar’s own opinions, and a dash of wry wit in just a few words and images. It was a great honor to work with him.

Shortly after Katrina, I wrote in an essay that I returned to my Gambit office shortly after the waters went down and salvaged my Harvey Pekar bobblehead, a gift from arts editor David Lee Simmons. The essay was picked up by the alt weekly in Harvey’s home town of Cleveland, and the next day I received an email from Joyce Brabner, Pekar’s wife. “Interesting priorities,” she wrote. “Until reading this I believed that I would be the only one thinking to grab and save Harvey Pekar in the event of a catastrophe.”

That was the last contact I had with either Harvey or Joyce … almost. A couple years back, Harvey was appearing in Chicago to promote a comics anthology that he had edited. I was living there at the time and when we met up, I was feeling pretty forlorn about missing New Orleans and the chain of events that had brought me north. Harvey certainly recognized self-pity when he saw it. “You’re writing and your wife’s got a good job,” he said. “What have you got to complain about?”

I started to answer him, but then stopped. What did I expect? A soft shoulder from the man who made timeless art out of a decades-long drudge job as a hospital file clerk? When Pekar scoffed, it was like being serenaded by a master soloist. As he explained in the film American Splendor: “If you’re the kind of person looking for romance or escapism or some fantasy figure to save the day, guess what? You’ve got the wrong movie.”

By Jennifer J. Kilbourne

Poetry isn’t usually a family business, but it has been for Peter and Nicole Cooley (pictured). In honor of Father’s Day, they will give a joint reading at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, June 16, at Octavia Books (513 Octavia Street).

The father-daughter pair has read together in the past, but their influence on each other’s work goes back much further. They share memories from Nicole’s childhood growing in New Orleans when they went on “mall writing” excursions, which involved writing in bustling public places. When Nicole attended the creative writing program at NOCCA, Peter, who leads guest workshops there, was extra hard on her. “I think I called one of her poems ‘unsalvageable,’” he says. “I didn’t want the other kids to think I was favoring her. She came home and slammed the door to her room.” She remembers the day vividly as well, laughing, “I was totally devastated!”

Nicole recovered and went on to win a Walt Whitman award for her first collection of poems, Resurrection, which she followed up with two more books of poetry and a novel. She currently lives in New York, where she directs the MFA writing program at Queens College.

On Wednesday she will read from her latest book, Breach, which came out in April. The poems in Breach revolve around the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina. Along with detailing experiences from visits she made later, Nicole recounts the difficulty of waiting to hear from her parents in the days immediately following the storm.

“She presents me as the insane father in the book,” says Peter, referring to poems like “Evacuation,” which deals with his refusal to leave the city as the storm approached.

Peter directs the creative writing program at Tulane, where he has taught since 1975. He is the former poetry editor of the North American Review, and his work has been featured in The New Yorker and Atlantic Monthly. On Wednesday, he will read from his seventh book of poetry, Divine Margins, in which he reflects on the death of his parents.

Juxtaposing the pair’s most recent work provides an interesting window into their relationship. While Breach explores the wreckage of the author’s hometown, the speaker in Divine Margins focuses the eternal aspects of a relationship. Nicole writes, “back as always to the other city, where a girl / stands at the levee’s edge alone.” And Peter reminds his children “I’ll be right here.”

They’ll both read from their most recent works. “We’re still working out the details,” says Nicole, “but we’re planning on mixing it up a little. It won’t be a typical poetry reading.”

It’s not quite “Tennessee Williams Slept Here,” but Walker Percy — chronicler of Gentilly, resident of the Northshore, rescuer of A Confederacy of Dunces — now has his own Louisiana state historical marker on Hwy. 21 in Covington. Percy wrote six novels (the most famous of which, The Moviegoer, won the National Book Award), many essays and short stories, and was a regular at the local Waffle House in the years before his death in 1990. (Using these markers to honor authors is a lovely idea; imagine all the writers, famous and infamous, who could be plaque-d up all over New Orleans. We’d have hundreds.)