FOOD | Julianne Glatz
I’m just back from what has become an annual trip to southwestern Louisiana, a.k.a. Acadiana or Cajun Country. This time, we didn’t stay at Lafayette’s Blue Moon Saloon, a music venue cum guesthouse. Instead, we were in Eunice, a small town 30 minutes away, at Black Pot Camp, a three-day event with Cajun music and dance workshops. Sessions dealt with traditional songs and singing and individual classes for fiddles, accordions and guitars, as well as for combined bands. During breaks, small groups gathered to play and sing, scattered around the campground or in the big ancient barn.
Of course there was food. Lindzay Young, leader of the one of Acadiana’s best known bands, the Redstick Ramblers, is as good a cook as a musician. “I just love feeding people,” he said. Young’s cooking class was loosely organized; we students acting as prep cooks, slicing and dicing mounds of peppers, onions, tomatoes, sausage and chicken for Piquant, a classic Cajun spicy-hot stew served over rice for the campers’ dinner. Another supper featured Young’s fantastic grilled chicken with oniony BBQ sauce. Curtis, a Eunice native now living in Alaska, made hearty breakfasts (eggs, bacon, grits, and biscuits with peppery gravy) as well as Cajun specialties with Alaskan ingredients: halibut, reindeer sausage and moose pot roast.
Non-natives usually think of Cajun, Creole and New Orleans cuisine as a single category, but locals see things differently. Sure, there are common threads, even common dishes, but there are definite regional differences. Prairie Cajun cookery (the north part of Acadiana) is distinct from that closer to the Gulf.
And individual cooks have their own takes. Should boudin (a ubiquitous rice and pork sausage) contain liver? How much? Mutiple locally-made spice mixtures each have their fans. Some cooks make their own.
The biggest culinary divide is between New Orleans and rural Cajun country. Cajuns may wholeheartedly root for the football Saints, but they view New Orleans “fancy” restaurants and cookery as distinctly apart from theirs. Perhaps it’s that New Orleans’ elegant Creole dishes have roots in Spanish as well as French and African – although not all Creole dishes are fancy. I’m just glad we outsiders can enjoy – and cook – both.
Contact Julianne Glatz at [email protected].
