Beignet, done that

“I’ve just been diagnosed with diabetes. But you know what I’m gonna eat when I get home? Ribs with mac and cheese and anythin’ else I want. Alrighty.” This, from a tour guide, was the first confirmation I had that people in New Orleans are serious about their food. It’s not just that the cuisine is utterly unique – a gumbo pot of a myriad of food heritages – it’s that the people themselves are proper foodies for whom the dinner plate is always the centrepiece of any interaction. In short, it sounded like my kind of place. And I think it’s fair to say I saved some of the best food ‘til last for this near-final blog post.

              While many places in the US have a distinctly British or Spanish cultural foundation, New Orleans was founded as a French colony - La Nouvelle-Orléans - in 1718, and it retains many of these influences to this day, including an appreciation and knowledge of good cuisine. Added to this culinary foundation is a strong Spanish slant; New Orleans was ceded to Spain in 1763 and it remained a Spanish colony until 1803 when it became a part of the US through the Louisiana Purchase (a trade in land that doubled the size of the United States at the time). Being a port in a young and ever-expanding economy, this was only the tip of the iceberg in terms of influences; its cultural heritage includes that of enslaved Africans, as well as immigrant groups from numerous countries such as the Philippines, China and Italy. It is this uniquely diverse make up, combined with its location at the mouth of the Mississippi River, that has resulted in a distinct and delicious cuisine. Settle in for some of the highlights. Alrighty.

From France to filé

Before New Orleans I would have associated Cajun cuisine with some vaguely spicy dishes involving rice and chicken. And while that’s not exactly wrong, there is an awful lot more to it than that. In fact, Cajun cuisine represents the centuries-old home cooking of a specific community along the banks of the Mississippi; Cajuns are the descendants of French-Canadians who arrived in rural Louisiana in the late 1700s from an area called Acadia (the word “Acadian” gradually softening into “Cajun”). Despite the French foundations, this is not a fancy cuisine. This is food made by the descendants of immigrants, people who would have to have been resourceful and learn to make use of the ingredients available to them in the Louisiana bayou. A dish that exemplifies this - and reflects the area’s myriad influences - is jambalaya, a spiced rice dish whose French roots are demonstrable. Its flavour base is a variation on mirepoix, the mix of diced onion, celery and carrot used in French cooking. However, Louisiana is low-lying swampland with watery soil that’s not suited to growing root vegetables, and so the original carrot was replaced by green pepper, the final ingredient in what is known as the “holy trinity” of Cajun cooking. Jambalaya’s next ingredients reflect the Spanish colonial influence: both the use of rice and spices were an attempt to create a form of paella using available ingredients in Louisiana (i.e. long grain rice and spices that were entering New Orleans from the nearby Caribbean, such as paprika). After these foundations the recipe is more variable, making use of available seafood or game meats. I tried a version with rabbit, chicken, shrimp and ham. Undeniably hearty and flavoursome, I was a little disappointed; I think I’d lost sight of the fact that this derives from humble home cooking, meaning I’ve made various versions of something similar over the years (albeit with less meat!) It was familiar without being amazingly delicious. Luckily, it was all uphill from here…

              More surprising was Louisianan gumbo. This is a soup I’d already researched for my trip to South Carolina (see my earlier post True Grits), specifically its links to West African cooking which was brought to the southern states by enslaved peoples. This is also true of the roots of Louisianan gumbo; huge numbers of enslaved Africans were forcibly brought through New Orleans’s port throughout the 18th century and by the time Louisiana became part of the US, half of the non-native population in the state were slaves. As with Charleston, it feels important to acknowledge the evidence of slavery that runs through much of the cuisine still enjoyed today; it would not be what it is without the labour and food heritage of these people. Indeed, as I mentioned in that previous blog, the word gumbo itself is a derivation of the West African word for okra, a popular gumbo component that originally came from West Africa. The reason okra was (and still is) used in this stew is that it acts as a natural thickener, and is one of three main options for providing the distinctive texture of gumbo, each of which reflects a different cultural heritage.

The second thickener is filé powder, a herb made from dried and ground sassafras, which was first used by the Choctaw: native peoples in the now-southern states of the US. Some argue that the word gumbo actually comes from the Choctaw word for filé, which is kombo (given gumbo is really just a type of stew, its origins are likely varied and endlessly debatable). Certainly, new settlers to the area owe a culinary debt to the native people they encountered there, and – as with the West African influence – it’s important to acknowledge the more sinister history that the modern cuisine alludes to: as part of the Louisiana Purchase, a huge number of native peoples were displaced and forcibly relocated (it led to what is known as the “trail of tears”). Nowadays, filé is often used as a seasoning that you can sprinkle on top of gumbo once it’s already been thickened with another ingredient. I tried some in this way at a cooking demo at The New Orleans School of Cookery and it added a nice zesty, earthy flavour… just be careful not to eat too slowly or it’ll start to turn the already thick gumbo gloopy.

The final traditional thickener for gumbo - and the one I saw most often in New Orleans - is of course French: a roux, which is a mixture of flour and butter (or other fat) which is used in many familiar sauces such as bechamél. In Cajun cuisine the roux is cooked much longer than is traditional in French cuisine; it’s common to cook it for around thirty minutes, past the stage where the flour is merely cooked through, and taken to a deep, dark brown liquid reminiscent of something like a German goulash. This gives the whole soup a deep, nutty flavour as well as its distinctive colour. From here, the other ingredients will be familiar: the holy trinity of onions, celery and green peppers with Cajun spices and seasonings including garlic, thyme, paprika and cayenne pepper. The version of gumbo I enjoyed at the cookery school was thickened with a dark roux and included chicken and andouille sausage, a smoked sausage that was originally imported from France via Acadia and which is ubiquitous in New Orleans cooking. It was absolutely delicious, and typified Cajun cuisine in its rustic yet deeply flavoured sauce that is a clear result of the area’s unique cultural history.

Cajun or Creole?

“Creole” and “Cajun” are sometimes used interchangeably but are distinct groups of people; while the Cajuns are descended from French-Canadians, the Creole are descendants of the original settlers in colonial Louisiana (including those of French, Spanish and West African heritage). Similarly, while much of the cuisine bears strong similarities to Cajun cooking (for example, they both have versions of jambalaya and gumbo), Creole food is a more refined reimagining of French cuisine, making use of lighter-coloured, richer sauces that are made with a roux which is cooked for only around five minutes. A good example of this is étouffée, a word that literally translates as “smothered” in French, and which involves cooking seafood within the sauce. I tried a version with crawfish, which I actually think was somewhere in between Cajun and Creole; it had a medium-brown colour but was a bit richer than the other Cajun food I’d tried, and with a more recognisably French influence. It was similar in many ways to the others dishes I’d already tried: lightly spiced with a thick and comforting sauce (and all served over the ubiquitous rice).

              Creole cooking also borrows from the more recent immigrant groups that have made New Orleans their home. After the civil war ended in 1865, there was mass emancipation of formerly enslaved people and a corresponding labour shortage, which brought various populations to New Orleans for cheap labour. Among the most influential were the Sicilians (who, as I have explored in a previous post, Bon Appititu, were escaping economic difficulties at home and came to the US in large numbers from the late 1800s). One of the legacies of this is the use of tomatoes in many dishes; for example, Creole versions of jambalaya and gumbo are extremely similar to the Cajun versions but differ mainly in their addition of tomatoes. The dishes of chicken creole and shrimp creole exemplify this specificity: they are very similar to the dishes I’ve described so far in that they start with a roux, followed by the holy trinity, light spices and a protein. But they also include crushed tomatoes… hence, they are Creole. I tried chicken creole at the cookery school and it was delicious, but really a more deeply flavoured version of something I have made at home before; all these dishes are familiar and variations of one another depending on their own specific origin story.

Water, water, everywhere

It’s impossible to talk about New Orleans cuisine without talking about seafood and shellfish. The city is located at the point that the Mississippi River flows into the Gulf of Mexico and much of the surrounding location is so swampy that it looks like a blurred line on Google Maps. This location mean its residents have always had access to an abundance of both saltwater and freshwater delicacies. One that is perhaps most strongly associated with New Orleans (and that I was most excited about trying) is crawfish, freshwater shellfish that are abundant in the slow-moving waters around southern Louisiana. Crawfish had long been enjoyed by local Native American tribes who supposedly would use reeds bated with deer meat to catch them. Given the original Acadians had come from maritime areas of Canada, they were already used to fishing and preparing shellfish, meaning they were easily adopted into the Acadian (and subsequently Cajun) diet. Perhaps given the abundance of crawfish (not to mention their rather unappetising nickname of “mud bugs”) they were stigmatised as a “poor man’s food” until fairly recently, when their potential began to be more widely appreciated. Along with the crawfish étouffée I’ve already mentioned, I enjoyed them as part of a crawfish boil where they were cooked up in a huge pot with Cajun seasonings such as cayenne and paprika, along with potatoes, corn and the aforementioned andouille sausage. They came in a great pile in the middle of the table, still hot and steaming, and ready to be shared with messy hands and generous dashes of hot sauce (after a lesson in how to peel them from our server… there’s a bit more of a knack to them than prawns). This was one of my favourite meals of the trip; the crawfish meat was like a cross between lobster and shrimp, and was perfectly perfumed from the cooking liquor which gave it a warm heat and complex flavour. They were notably fresher than any I’ve tried before and the whole centrepiece of enjoying them with someone else felt like a real New Orleans tradition. The only downside was that my clothes stunk of crawfish boil for about 48 hours afterwards…

              Another iconic New Orleans dish of humble origins is the po’boy. Yet another nod to the city’s colonial past, this sandwich is served on French-style bread and stuffed with various meats or seafood, before being dressed with mayonnaise, lettuce, tomato and pickles. Legend has it that they were first served by local chefs to the “poor boys” during the streetcar strike of 1929, who gave the sandwich its name, although – as with anything delicious – its origins are contested. I tried two seafood versions during the trip, one with fried catfish and the other with spicy fried shrimp (though I liked that they provided a “yankee” – i.e. mild – option). Despite being served from a fairly humble, out-of-the-way shop, both were some of the best-cooked seafood I’ve ever had, which I think in part was something to do with how fresh they were: the flesh was juicy, flavoursome and cooked to perfection. I’m not normally a fan of fish sandwiches but the simplicity of the crispy, tender seafood combined with the soft bread worked incredibly well here. In some ways, it’s not a particularly original sandwich (I’m still not quite sure what qualifies it as a po’boy compared to other similar sandwiches I’ve had elsewhere) but the quality of the seafood made them standout. New Orleanians truly know their seafood.

Sweet endings

I can’t finish an article about New Orleans food without mentioning beignets. First brought to the area by colonists in the 18th century, they are essentially deep-fried choux dough (like a French doughnut) which is served under a generous dousing of powdered sugar. While everything I’d read about New Orleans told me that our trip would not be complete without a visit to legendary beignet stall Café du Monde, I was a little sceptical. I don’t have a hugely sweet tooth so I wasn’t sure how good they could be. Oh, how wrong I was. The dough itself is served fresh out the fryer, hot and unsweetened with a beautifully fresh and almost yeasty flavour. It’s perfectly balanced out by the heroic amount of sweet powdered sugar on top… it’s hard to overstate how much there is: each bite sends a shower of the stuff whichever way the Mississippi breeze happens to blowing. One of the highlights of the holiday (and actually of our year in the US) was a late night trip to Café du Monde, holding the hot paper bags against our chests, and taking them to the foggy banks of the Mississippi to be enjoyed with the sound of jazz drifting through the air (along with clouds of powdered sugar). New Orleans is a magical place, a melting pot of people and flavours that has resulted in a cuisine that is strangely familiar; one that speaks to its colonial past but that has been reimagined by generations of successive groups of people who have called it home.

Jambalaya from Coops Place with rabbit, chicken, ham and shrimp.

Cajun gumbo with chicken and andouille sausage from The New Orleans School of Cooking.

Crawfish etouffee over rice, with sides of green beans and red beans (with more andouille), from Mother’s restaurant.

Chicken Creole over rice from The New Orleans School of Cooking.

Crawfish boil from the French Market Restaurant.

Spicy shrimp po’boy and catfish po’boy [title photo] both from NOLA Po’boys.

Eating a beignet from Café du Monde … notice the pile of powdered sugar on the sidewalk.