Creole Feast

 

I loved in New Orleans for a year and gained 40 pounds!   I am holding this guy personally responsible.  He and a host of others who made literally EVERYTHING on the plate great.  Recently, Saveur compiled a list of great New Orleans cookbooks and Creole Feast made their list.  

The book was published in the late 1970's and featured some of the most iconic chefs and restaurants of the day.  Some, like Leah Chase from Dookey Chase are still cooking.  Some restaurants, like Corinne Dunbar's are long since closed.  Flipping through the photos, one finds that all the featured master chefs are African-American.   Nathanial Burton lists one of the attributes of Creole cooking as, "The Black hand in the pot." 

There have been many Creole cookbooks written and many of them translate into an overdone "chefyness" of long lists of hard to find ingredients.  This may come from a profound lack of authenticity in the cook.  Recently, Leah Chase was on television showing a classically trained chef how to make Gumbo z'Herbes.   She was throwing ingredients into the pot and he stopped and asked her an exact amount and she just laughed.

I was pleasantly surprised at how simple most of the recipes are in Creole Feast.  This may indeed be because each of these chefs know exactly how make the dish with the careful finesse that the general public just might not have.  

Speaking of Leah Chase, here is a recipe for one of my most favorite things, crawfish étouffée.  As much as I cook, I never make crawfish étouffée because the recipes seem way to complicated.  But his one seems right up my alley.

Crawfish Étouffée

1 cup butter

5 cups crawfish tails, cleaned

1 tablespoon fat from head of crawfish

Salt and pepper to taste

Water as necessary

Melt butter in a saucepan and add crawfish. Let cook until all the juices have evaporated.  Add fat from crawfish heads.  Add the salt and pepper and just enough water to make a thick but soupy mixture.  Cook slowly for half an hour.  Serve over steamed rice.

We can make that! 

Creole Feast has gotten to be a rather pricey book these days, so I you find a reasonably cheap copy, grab it.

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Real Cajun

We have been on a bit of New Orleans kick as of late.  No that that is a bad thing.  (Actually, it can be a bad thing. Spending just under one year in New Orleans, I managed to gain 40 pounds.  I had to leave while I could still fit in the car, but I digress...)

Reading Donald Link's Real Cajun:Rustic Home Cooking for Donald Link's Louisiana, it is not hard to fathom gaining 40 pounds!  Unlike some chefs who end up in a place, or move to an area, of like the climate and choose to open a restaurant, Donal Link grew up in Louisiana.

"My two sets of grandparents lived a quarter mile from one another, and we settled about a mile from them. Between my mother and father , I have thirty-four aunts and uncles. That's ten brothers and sisters on Mom's side and seven on Dad's."

A truly inconceivable fact to grasp for an only child!

During a particularly popular wave of Cajun cooking, fish got blackened to the point of extinction, and over-bearing spices removed and distinction between flavors.  That was not the food Donald Link grew up eating.  It is no surprise that he titled his book "real" Cajun.  Link wanted to convey the joy and flavors and love he tasted from his family who truly lived off the land.

When that land was devastated by Katrina, Donald Link lied, snuck, and cajoled his way back into the city that he loved.  Nothing, not floods, National Guard, nor walk-in freezers full of rotting food was going to keep him from cooking.   All he wanted was to get his restaurant, Herbsaint, open for those people who were determined to re-build.  Re-build they did, as Link knew they would.  Heck, in the midst of the turmoil he opened another restaurant, Cochon, and he still had time to write a cookbook!


Recently, I was craving fried shrimp, but alas, the only shrimp I could find in West Virginia had been frozen for about a decade, maybe less, but i am guessing at least a decade.  Since I couldn't make my own fried shrimp, the next best thing was read Donald Link and live vicariously.

Southern-Fried Shrimp 

2 dozen large shrimp, peeled
1/2 teaspoon plus 1 1/2 tablespoons salt
1/4 teaspoon plus 1 tablespoon ground black pepper
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons cayenne pepper
Peanut oil, for frying
1 cup well-shaken buttermilk
2 teaspoons Creole (or whole-grain) mustard (optional–if you want your shrimp tangier)

Place the shrimp in a medium bowl and season with 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon black pepper.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour with the remaining salt, pepper, and the cayenne.

Heat 3-4 inches of oil in a large pot until very hot, about 350 degrees F.

Pour the buttermilk (and mustard, if using) over the seasoned shrimp and combine. Working in batches, use a slotted spoon to remove the shrimp from the buttermilk and transfer to the seasoned flour. Using a separate dry spoon or your fingers, toss to evenly coat. Carefully slip the battered shrimp into the fryer and fry until golden brown and crisp, about 5 minutes; drain on paper towels. (Don’t overcrowd the fryer with too many shrimp, as this will lower the temperature of the oil and the shrimp won’t crisp up as quickly or nicely as they should.)

When I was a kid, fried shrimp were my go-to restaurant food.  I refused to eat cocktail sauce and demanded French dressing for dunking.  Not, perhaps, real Cajun, but a memory just the same.

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True Blood

Back with some television tie-ins!  After the finally of this season’s True Blood, with Bill all bad and evil and no resolution till next season…

We have been given a True Blood booster with the True Bloodcookbook.   True Blood: Eats, Drinks, and Bites from Bon Temps features a menu from Merlotte’s filled with so much more than an a glass of Tru Blood. (As you know, vampires don’t eat.  I would be seriously bummed if I were a vampire!) 

Yes, Virginia, this is a kitschy and blatant attempt at wooing the True Blood fan, but as far as these things go, it is a pretty good cookbook.  Alan Ball and a couple of co-producers get the bulk of the credit for “writing” the cookbook, but you have to hand it to them, where the actual recipes are concerned, they called upon Marcelle Bienvenu.  Bienvenu is a famed expert on Cajun and Creole cooking.   After the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, one of the first things that residents tried to rebuild was their recipe box.  Family recipes were lost and there was an outpouring of requests at The Times-Picayune of New Orleans for reprints of classic New Orleans recipes.  Marcelle Bienvenu wrote Cooking Up a Storm, filled requested recipes and stories behind them.

So don’t be terribly dissuaded by the cheesy essays by “Sookie Stackhouse” about Gran’s kitchen.  Of course the recipes are purported to be from the culinary collections of various characters, and they have appropriately wacky names like Confederate Ambrosia, Burning Love BLT and Candied Sweet Jesus Potatoes.  If you are a True Blood fan AND you cook, who could want more?

Here is a recipe from Sookie.  She says:

“I drive all the way to Shreveport to see Alcide, and there’s Debbie, with a tray full of hostess snacks?  As if crawfish dip is gonna make up for trying to kill me – twice!”

It might just make up for trying to kill someone – once!

Crawfish Dip

1/2 cup unsalted butter

1 cup chopped yellow onion

½ cup chopped green pepper

1 teaspoon minced garlic

3 tablespoons mince fresh flat-leaf parsley

1 pound peeled crawfish tales

One 8-ounce package cream cheese at room temperature

Salt

Cayenne Pepper

Tabasco sauce

Melt the butter in a large skillet over medium heat.  Add the onion and bell pepper and cook, stirring, until the vegetables are soft and golden, 6 to8 minutes.  Add the garlic, parsley, and crawfish tails.  Cook, stirring, until the crawfish throw off some of their moisture, 3 to4 minutes.

Add the cream cheese and reduce the heat to medium-low.  Cook, stirring, until the mixture is smooth and heated through.  Season with salt, cayenne and Tabasco.

As a true, True Blood fan, I can tell you this is not only a fun and fan-filled little book, but the recipes are well worth the effort.  If you are a vampire, you are sadly missing out.  Seriously, what is the point of living forever if you can’t eat!

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