Cajun food

In My Humble Opinion
21

Fair enough! I, myself, hate making most kinds of Asian food…not because it doesn’t taste good when I do it, but I don’t really feel I have any great aptitude as a Vietnamese or Thai cook.

Veb: Here’s John Thorne’s master recipe for red beans & rice from SERIOUS PIG, a volume I recommend whole-heartedly to anyone who consumes food:

1 pound small red beans, soaked overnight
One ham bone with plenty of meat and fat still clinging to it, sawed in half or cracked
1 pound smoked Creole sausages or the same amount of some spicy, garlicky cured sausage, like chorizo or kielbasa (optional but recommended)
2 medium onions, coarsely chopped
1 small bunch flat-leafed parsley, minced
1 bunch (6 to 8) scallions, minced, including the green tops, 1/2 cup of which reserve, uncooked
2 large bell peppers, one red, one green, both cored seeded, and chopped (optional but recommended_
2 medium carrots, peeled and finely diced
2 celery stalks, finely diced
4 cloves of garlic, monced (amount optional)
Generous pinch of dried thyme, or a spring of fresh
1 or 2 bay leaves
At least i small hot red pepper, cored, seeded, and chopped fine, or a generous hand with the Tabasco bottle
Salt & pepper to taste
Sufficient rice to feed all eater.

Put the prepared beans in a large, heavy pot with a cover. Pour over 2 quarts of water, bring to a boil and let the beans cook in the roiling water for at least 10 minutes. Then lower the flame and simmer for 1 hour.

Add all ingredients except for the rice. Bring the cooking liquid back to a simmer and taste for seasoning. the beans should be done in another 1 1/2 hours.

Check the amount of liquid occasionally, adding more if necessary to keep the beans swimming. As they begin to soften, mash some of them against the side of the pot and stir this pulp into the liquid to make a thick, creamy sauce.

When the end of the cooking hoves into sight (the beans are soft and savory, the sauce thick and richly flavored) cook the rice. Let it sit covered for 5 minutes on the stove after it’s done to dry out a little, then fluff it up with a fork and put it onto the plates first, covering with a generous amount of the red beans and their gravy. Serve and pass around the following:

TOPPINGS: The matter of what to put on the beans at the table is strictly personal. Madatory are the reserved scallion tops (remember them?), but other options (not all recommended) include vinegar, hot sauce, sweet relish, ketchup, cane syrup, chopped raw onion, and hot peppers marinated in vinegar.

22

I’m from Louisiana, but I’m not actually Cajun–I’m from the piney woods in the northern half of the state, where the backwater only floods the roads every two or three years. Cajun cooking was the rule in my family, though–my Dad learned it from his mother, and she from hers. The first thing he ever taught me about cooking is the Cajun mantra: “First, you make a roux.”

I’m disgusted by the crud that gets passed off as “Cajun” outside of Louisiana (and even inside it, sometimes). Real Cajun cooking is rich, not just hot.

On a side note, I was 16 before I found out that some people pour white flour paste over rice or biscuits and call it “gravy”. Yuck!

23

[Homer Simpson Voice On and Corresponding Drool]

Huhhhh…Cajun Food…

[/Homer Simpson Voice and Drool Off]

Best Cajun seafood I ever had was at Benno’s in Galveston, Texas - the dirty rice was to die for.

Memmories…

24

Hey, Balance where ya from? I went to college in Natchitoches, and dated a girl who had family around the Ringgold area.

By the by, you nailed it:

:slight_smile:

I didn’t discover the white crud they call gravy until college. Yeech! Gravy is brown people! I never could find a place that served decent catfish in Natchitoches either.

25

I can’t watch people here in Dallas eat biscuits or mashed potatoes. That white stuff just looks wrong to me–take it back to the kitchen and threaten to burn it! I provided my quick brown gravy recipe in one of Zenster’s old recipe threads (you were there, Andyman). Please, people, in the name of humanity use it. If I go into one more allegedly Cajun place, and the staff tries to serve me library paste…well, you remember Harrison Ford in “Falling Down”? Wimp.

Andyman, I’m from a hick town called Jonesville, about an hour’s drive east of Alexandria. I agree–Natchitoches is not the place for catfish. You can get a good meat pie there, though–at least you could when I was in high school. The best part about marching in the Festival of Lights parade around Christmas was hanging out afterward, stuffing ourselves on meat pies and drinking whatever illicit booze we could get our hands on–it was a bonding experience, especially carrying the less robust individuals back to the bus. Seventy-five of us once got suspended for drinking on a band trip after one of those festivals. That’s over a quarter of the enrollment of the school at the time, and all the loudest people–the place was like a ghost town for the next three days (I didn’t get caught :smiley: ). Even the principal’s daughter was out, much to his embarrassment.

26

Okay, I’ve been letting the gravy comments pass; but I feel I have to raise a voice in support of white gravy! Come one! Brown gravy is good with some things, but white gravy is good too! I like white gravy with my biscuits, thankyouverymuch. Maybe Cajun gravy is brown. That’s okay. But there is a place for white gravy in non-Cajun cooking.

FTR, here’s how I make white gravy:

Cook half a dozen slices of bacon. Remove the bacon and crumble it. Add flour to the bacon grease and stir it up. Add milk and cook it until it just starts to thicken. Add the bacon, and salt and pepper to taste. Cook until it’s a little thicker.

And if you don’t like it, then there’s just that much more for me. :stuck_out_tongue:

27

[sub]That’s what I get for not checking threads I post to…[/sub]

I’ll make the Bananas Foster – not Cajun, but definitely New Orleans! And, of course, I’ll bring Cafe du Monde coffee. ::sighs:: Nectar of the Gods.

28

Which is why I avoid non-Cajun cooking whenever feasible. :smiley:

Sorry Johnny, that still looks like paste to me–greasy paste, but still paste (not that I can say anything about grease, with the stuff I cook). You’re fully welcome to my share.

29

Cajun food . . . dat’s good eatin’, cher! :smiley:

30

In addition to Zenster’s Recipie Thread, you can find many more Cajun/Creole concoctions (including the infamous Turducken) at The Gumbo Pages. Whooo-eee!!!