Has Cajun Cuisine Recovered?

[Gifted Gourmet]

article from Slate

There is a rule for eating well in southwestern Louisiana: When you see a house or shack with a hand-written sign, stop and eat. The worse the handwriting, the more compelling the need to visit. In this part of the world, lax health regulators are the gourmet's best friend. The ingredients will be fresh, and your cook will have spent years perfecting one or two dishes. The boiled crawfish (the locals say "mudbugs") and the boudin blanc are my favorites. The latter, sausage stuffed with pork, rice, and peppers, is for this foodie the best in the United States.

These foods are known as "Cajun" ...After Katrina and Rita, there was plenty of hand-wringing about the fate of Louisiana cuisine, but since then much of the publicity has focused on the reopening of the renowned Creole places ...  the region's food heart—and some would argue its best meals—can be found in the countryside

A highly interesting article ...

[saturnbar]

I think Mr. Cowen needs a better fact checker. Katrina effected southeast Louisiana, not southwest Louisana. Hurricane Rita devasted Cameron, La. but the heart of cajun country, Breaux Bridge, Carencro, Scott, Opealousas, New Iberia, were largely unaffected. So I am not sure there was too much handwringing over the fate of Louisiana cuisine in the heart of Acadia, and I as far as coming back strong, from what?

And I am not sure that I would start talking about chaos just becuase the price of crawfish was a little high. First of all, its always high at the begining of the season, and it always comes down. I don't think anyone was really fretting too much about that. I really thought the whole article was just a basketful of generalizations. And the buisness about cooking for tourists being an attractive option. Outside of Prejean's, Des Amis and few other places in Lafayette, there is not alot of cooking for tourists going on. My guess is that's becuase there are no tourists in Southwest, La. And believe me, Joe's Dreyfus is not counting on tourists to make ends meet. Neither are the guys at JD's Market and Deli, Touchet's Specialty and Meats, or Dehotel's Supermarket in Ville Platte.

Mr. Cowen needs to be complimented though on making the astute distinction betwwen live crawfish and crawfish tails which are dead and usaully cooked in larger dishes such as "jamabalya." Not. No one puts crawfish in jambalaya.

Finally, I am not sure this guy has ever been to Louisiana, or that he actually set off on his second tour. He sure was light on specifics, and whenever I start reading stuff like "some locals believe" and "many of the people in Cajun country" think, I really start to wonder. Anyhoo. Charlie

[Jason Perlow]

No one puts crawfish in jambalaya.

At the Plaquemines Parish Heritage Seafood Festival in 2005 they did:

http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=68441

[saturnbar]

That's an abomination, but it looks good. ch

[HungryC]

The article wasn't SO bad; he makes good points about finding good food in places frequented by locals, but he did sort of misse the point that you don't cook dead crawfish. That curled tail is not a mark of "freshness" but an indicator of edibility. Throw away the dead ones, no matter what. Blech.

And regarding the previous posts on crawfish in jambalaya, here's my $.02:

--Plaquemines Parish isn't in Acadiana. Plaquemines has lots of isleno, croatian, african-american, mixed-up-french-spanish-etc generally "creole" people, but it isn't especially cajun. You could probably, pre-Katrina, find a few cajun french speakers, but not a critical mass of them like in most of Acadiana proper (see the nifty color coding on the LA state highway map if you're unsure on the geographic area). So I wouldn't consider use of crawfish in a jambalaya in Plaquemines as cultural evidence of anything other than the contemporary LA tendency to stick crawfish in damn near everything, regardless of the ethnicity of the cook or dish in question (hence, crawfish egg rolls, crawfish boudin, crawfish phyllo puffs, crawfish cornbread dressing, crawfish risotto, various crawfish pastas, crawfish hot tamales, etc)

--where I grew up in Acadiana, crawfish were most definitely NOT a traditional ingredient in jambalaya. Some cooks in this area will tell you that crawfish taste too "muddy" to be used in a jambalaya or gumbo...in part because it's a coastal area with year-round access to the some of the most delicious, beautiful shrimp on the planet. Today, you could probably find a crawfish jambalaya or two in that locale, but today imported, peeled tails are sold in polybags at Wal-Mart. So you can't get all caught up in the right-wrong, traditional vs nontraditional issues. Food changes every time somebody chops an onion or stirs the pot.

[Gifted Gourmet]

Today, you could probably find a crawfish jambalaya or two in that locale, but today imported, peeled tails are sold in polybags at Wal-Mart.  So you can't get all caught up in the right-wrong, traditional vs nontraditional issues.  Food changes every time somebody chops an onion or stirs the pot.

←

Thanks for this information .. and I have to agree with you on your comments at the end of your post ...food does indeed change ...