Corsicana Texas is 503 miles from New
Orleans Louisiana. Meandering through the Mississippi Delta, you pass through hundreds of
sleepy towns on your way to the city that never sleeps The Big Easy New Orleans!
Being a seaport, this Southern citys cuisine was flavored
by people from many lands. African slaves, Native Americans, and Caribbean seamen added their
flavors to the cuisine of the melting pot that became New Orleans.
The first settlers were French, usually the second born
sons of aristocrats who left France to seek adventure in the New World.
They brought their traditional style of cooking from the continent, and being rich aristocrats, they also brought along their
chefs as well! These Frenchmen came to be called Creoles, and made up
the upper crust of New Orleans. Their descendents can still be found in the French
Quarter today.
The next group was displaced French speaking people from the
Acadia reagon of Nova Scotia. The Acadians who were called Cajuns
by the local Native American tribes. Both groups mixed their traditional dishes with the cuisines
of African slaves and Caribbean seamon to form the Cajun
and Creole dishes that New Orleans and Louisiana is famous for.
Cajun vs. Creole Cooking:
In
general, Cajun dishes are the country cooking of Louisiana, highlighted
by dirty rice, gumbos, jambalaya, andouille (pronounced ahnd-wee or ahn-do-wee, its a spicy smoked sausage)
and simple foods such as fried catfish. Cajun cooking traditionally uses pork fat and simpler
ingredients.
Creole is the food of the city, a more refined
cuisine represented by Oysters Rockefeller, Shrimp Remoulade and Bananas Foster. It traditionally used the butter available
to the wealthy Creoles, and more expensive ingredients.
Some people will tell you that if a dish has tomatoes, its Creole,
not Cajun. That isn't always true. Tomatoes have been known to turn up in jambalaya or gumbo,
which are both Cajun.
Both Cajun and Creole use the Holy Trinity
of New Orleans cooking: green peppers, onions and celery. They both also rely on the roux (pronounced Roo) as the base of the dish. A Roux is simply flour cooked in fat, either pork fat or butter,
until it browns. This adds flavor and thickness to the dish.
There has been a trend lately that started when some hapless cook burned a piece
of meat, then to cover up his mistake, smothered it in pepper and tried to pass it off as "Cajun Blackened
Moose" or whatever. If you serve this mess to a Cajun, hell laugh in your face, smack you
upside the head, and tell you to get back into the kitchen and cook him some real food. There is no such thing as blackened
anything in real Cajun cuisine.Don't be fooled.
Carnival Fever!
The most popular time to visit New Orleans is during Mardi Gras, which
is called Carnival by the natives of Louisiana.
It runs from Epiphane (Jan. 6th.) until Shrove Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday. But no matter when you go, you'll never meet a stranger and you'll never go to bed hungry. As they say in New Orleans, "Laissez les bon temps rouler" (Let the good times roll).
