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From: martin@plaza.ds.adp.com
To: Northwest Bikers Social Mailing List
Subject: Re: New Orleans food?
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In-Reply-To: <19980115171929.6314.qmail@hotmail.com> from "angela barkes" at Jan 15, 98 09:36:40 am
Status: ROr
[Extensive food technoblither with diatribes follows. Grab a cuppa coffee
and settle in comfy for a long read, or hit delete now.]
Angela wondered:
> OK, I'm going to get a food thread going here
I always claim that Wetleather is a culinary society on motorcycles.
Have dinner, will travel.
> Is there a French Quarter in New Orleans?
The French quarter is the original settlement.
When what was to become the Louisiana purchase was swapping back and
forth between the French and the Spanish, the residents got along
famously, all being highly cultured Creoles.
Creole means, approximately, "born in the colony". It's a legal term,
that conferred (or distinguished, I'm not up on 15th c. European law)
citizenship on those born of European parents in the New World. Creole
society was thoroughly European until the time between the Wars; French
was spoken, the young men and women were finished in European schools,
and the Creoles held themselves apart from the uncouth Americans.
Which is the cause of the so-called French quarter. After the Louisiana
purchase, Americans started moving in. They were, unfortunately, mostly
Southern Baptists. As a lovely Creole lady put it, "They don't drink,
they don't dance, they don't play cards; they're unfit for civilized
society". So the Creoles did their level best to keep the Americans
out of the French quarter. The Americans responded by building lavish
mansions outside the quarter, producing what is now the garden district.
I find it fairly amusing that the American term is "French quarter",
but the French term for that area translates roughly "OLD quarter".
> Is the food spicy or bland?
There are two important food cultures in southern Louisiana, Creole
and Cajun.
Creole food is aristocratic, developed in homes with cooks and servants,
and in restaurants. Creole food is the highest development of continental,
with native American and African influences. (In the first known cooking
school in the Americas, a native American taught French women to use
local ingredients. Creole is often, but not necessarily, spicy, and it
is _necessarily_ upscale. Most of the Very Old and Snooty restaurants
in New Orleans are Creole, and it could be argued that Creole food is
precisely that food served in the Very Old and Snooty restaurants.
Cajun food is the Louisiana peasant food, developed in the swamps and
marshes by hardworking people who grew or caught much of their own food
and did their own cooking. It's more vegetables and fish than meat, and
made interesting by spicing.
First Diatribe:
Cajun food should be _exciting_, but not painful. The fucking tourists
have _ruined_ good New Orleans restaurants by demanding spicier food,
thinking that what they'd been served wasn't "authentic". (Yuppies,
having no taste of their own, cannot distinguish between Thailand and
Louisiana. But I'm not bitter.) Anybody who thinks eating Cajun food is
supposed to be challenging has missed the premise.
> The reason for my questions is that I had dinner at a restaurant in
> Sunnyvale called The French Quarter which claimed to have New Orleans
> style food.
At an ABSOLUTE MINIMUM, New Orleans style food is _good_. Bad restaurants
simply cannot survive. Good Italian is more New Oreleans style than bad
Southern.
> The menu, on one side of an 8.5"x5.5" card stock, consists of 6 or so
> entrees (Red Snapper, Shrimp Scampi, Rib Eye, Catfish, to name a few)
> most of which could be blackened, grilled, or Cajun style and came with
> either corn bread, hush puppies, or (?). Each entree came with two
> sides you could choose from 6 (Collard greens, black beans and rice,
> candied yams, French fries, cole slaw, (?)). There was also gumbo and
> jumbalia(?).
Jambalaya. Jambalaya is legitimate New Orleans, but I suspect they'd have
fobbed you off with an okra gumbo.
> It seemed to suggest a good variety of New Orleans cuisine
> at a reasonable price (no dish was over 10$)
Shrimp scampi is certainly not Cajun, and, as it's redundant in French,
unlikely to be Creole. Collard greens, black beans, and hush puppies
aren't New Orleans food, they're Southern (southern Louisiana is Cajun
and Creole, northern Lousiana is Southern). The two alternatives for
"Cajun style" catfish are deep fried and simmered in a tomato sauce,
wanna bet whether that's what they meant?
Second diatribe.
Blackened is a tourist invention. While Paul Prudhomme was working for
one of the famous Creole restaurants, he invented a nouvelle cuisine
approximation for trout almondine, a lovely old New Orleans dish that's
approximately crispy deep fried trout with an almond butter sauce. His
version kept the spicing, but forwent both the frying and the sauce.
Not an unreasonable thing to do, but touristy nonetheless.
When he opened his own restaurant, lack of capital plus the oppressive
fire regulations in the French quarter prevented him from putting in
a grill. (The fire regulations were put in place after the BIG fire
which leveled New Orleans. I'm sure you all recall it, early 1700's?)
He put his spices on the cheapest available fish (redfish used to be a
_trash_ fish), and, lacking a grill, tossed it into a superheated frying
pan. Voila, blackened. Damned tourist food. Prudhomme has singlehandedly
wreaked pseudo-Cajun on most of North America. Badly overspiced burnt
stale redfish is sine qua non at restaurants all over America (because
yuppies, lacking taste of their own, insist on _authenticity_, which
means old redfish is trucked for days across the country to substitute
for the _real_ ingredient, whatever's fresh and cheap. The same thing
that's ruined coffee, wine, and BMW cars).
OTH, and Credit where Credit is due. Prudhomme is certainly a Master
of his craft, his restaurant is _always_ full, and who else among us
can claim to have singlehandedly endangered a species?
> I orded the red snapper grilled, beans and rice, collard greens and hush
> puppies. Now I should know better, because every hush puppy I've tried
> _after_ Martin's hush puppies _pales_ in comparison.
There are two interesting points to that. The first is that it's a _trick_.
All published hushpuppy recipes are bland and boring. You have to cosy up
to a genuine Southerner to find out that, well, for themselves they
might add a jalapeno or two, but that's not _really_ hushpuppies.
I think southern-food-as-cooked-outside-the-south is a grand conspiracy
to take revenge for the Civil War. How else to explain the tastelessness
of grits? My hushpuppy recipe was developed with Carl's able assistance.
The second point should tickle your funny bone. The ONLY bad food we
encountered in our trip to Louisiana was hushpuppies. Hushpuppies are
Southern. Cajuns make _lousy_ hushpuppies. So one could argue that
your hushpuppies were authentic ;-)
> The snapper was salty (more than I remember) but moist, the
> beans were _exactly_ navy beans and ham, the collard greens tasted like
> swiss chard that had some meat stuff that looked like ham in them and
> sprinkling lemon juice on them made them palatable, and the hush puppies
> were no more than deep fried corn meal; no spice, no corn.
Sadly, despite the claim that you were eating poor New Orleans food, all
you got was bad Southern food. I remember the collard greens and hush
puppies in Vicksburg (pause, reminisce, wipe drool off keyboard). You
have to have dry cured ham to make good collard greens, the cook was
either lazy or inexperienced.
> Now you want great beans and rice! For those of you in the Portland
> area, check out Czabas BBQ on Lombard in North Portland; I believe he is
> cajun style BBQ.
No such thing. All BBQ styles are Southern, except for Texas, which is
at least foreign, if not entirely alien (Texas, not the BBQ style).
> Those beans (from my memory) will bring sweat to your brow
Red beans and rice are not, classically, particularly hot. Not that
that's ipso facto a bad thing, but it's not Authentic.
> Maybe I'm missing something about New Orleans cuisine or I just happened
> into a bland part of New Orleans (if that's even possible).
I'll be there in a couple of weeks. If I find any bland and boring
food I'll be sure to let you know. Right.
Next time we have a ham flown in, we could do a Louisiana five pound
weekend. Dinner, breakfast, dinner, breakfast, lessee, jambalaya, grits
scrambled eggs and fried ham, trout almondine, grillades and grits.
Anybody hungry?
Martin
Martin Golding | If you haven't had Cajun food in Cajun country,
DoD #236 | you haven't had Cajun food.
martin@plaza.ds.adp.com Portland, OR
From wetleather@micapeak.com Fri Jan 16 13:42:22 1998
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To: Northwest Bikers Social Mailing List
Subject: Re: New Orleans food?
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In-Reply-To: <19980116205701.16065.qmail@hotmail.com> from "angela barkes" at Jan 16, 98 01:10:37 pm
Status: RO
I said:
> >Creole food is the highest development of continental,
Angela wondered:
> So what is your opinion on Cooking with Emeril? He calls some of his
> dishes Creole and Tom has a cookbook with the recipe for Emeril's spice.
INteresting you should ask that question. His TV program _stinks_,
I can only occasionally stand to watch it. But I do. "WHY?", you're
all eager to ask. So I'll tell you.
Emeril's TV personality is a put on (IMHO. I haven't asked the great
man himself), it won't surprise anybody who's watched him to know he
spent time in New York. I suspect that a cooking show where the chef
does nothing but cook is too boring for the plebes; what to do? Spice
it up a notch! BLAM! Earlier Emerils have much less BLAM and much
more sautee and simmer. His cookbooks, which don't have to impress a
live audience, are well written, thoroughly researched, and full of
Really Good Stuff. (I recommend Louisiana Real and Rustic.)
If one can get past the acting to the cooking, he cooks a number
of really good dishes very well, and is honest enough to distinguish
between traditional dishes and his own inventions. A great deal of
culinary mayhem would have been avoided had Paul Prudhomme done
the same. (Maybe without the Cajun Stamp of Authenticity, he couldn't
get the yuppies'd to buy into it.)
I recall, for instance, the day Emeril did foie gras. He said where
he got it, described the background of the recipe, detailed the
procedures so any mere amateur could follow it (at least, any
mere amateur that could afford a full grade A duck breast), and
when he wasn't BLAMming, did excellent just plain cooking. ('scuse
while I wipe my chin, I have a particular fondness for foie gras.)
We made a mushroom bread pudding of his invention a while back. MMMM.
I am ABSOLUTELY going to one of his restaurants when I'm in New
Orleans, I've already pulled the menus off the web.
> Cajun sounds like it might have a really good flavor if you can get past
> the hot spice. And since it's hard to find 'authentic' Cajun from your
> understanding, I should still be leary when ordering a Cajun dish?
Yes. Be VERY suspicious. But be happy, as it's precisely the Cajun
dishes that aren't too hot to eat that are likely to be authentic.
So if it hurts too much to taste, it probably didn't taste that
good anyway.
> I have to be in the mood for Thai food. ;->
We manage Thai and Vietnamese without warning, but we have to plan
for _days_ to be ready for Korean food. Not because it's hotter than
Thai, but because it's so much more... um... interesting.
> the "Cajun style" rib eye
> steak that was ordered came w/o sauce and looked 'blackened' and dry.
> The report on the steak was that it tasted too salty.
Three strikes, and they're out.
1. It AIN'T CAJUN.
2. _Properly_ blackened, prime rib should be juicily underdone. The
method was invented for fish; prime rib is thicker and beef takes
longer to set.
3. Even if the chef insists on burning the spices, they should still be
properly balanced. If it was too salty post-burn, it went into the pan
too salty, which ought not to be beyond the abilities of the most
inexperienced cook to determine and correct.
> >The same thing that's ruined coffee, wine, and BMW cars).
> Oh, Martin, whatever to you mean?! ;-)
Burnt coffee, oak wine, and overpriced cars. But I'm STILL not bitter
(even though the same can't be said for the coffee OR the wine).
Ten days to Louisiana food, but who's counting?
Martin
Martin Golding | Forty pounds of crawfish will feed 16 normal people
DoD #236 | or six Cajuns.
martin@plaza.ds.adp.com Portland, OR
From wetleather@micapeak.com Fri Jan 16 09:54:08 1998
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To: Northwest Bikers Social Mailing List
Subject: Re: Cajun food
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In-Reply-To: <199801160241.SAA14655@shell9.ba.best.com> from "Leigh Ann Hussey" at Jan 15, 98 06:59:54 pm
Status: RO
> PatLo proposes:
> > I suggest we place this article on the Web page, under Traditions. Second?
I thought you'd all be bored. I'm sure many of you have noticed
that food is one of the subjects on which I'm likely to wax effusive.
EC remarks:
> Seconded! Along with Martin's sig about "It's Creole, not Cajun, it's
> grilled not blackened and redfish is an endangered species" or however
> it goes [...]
Et voila:
Martin Golding | It's not Cajun, it's Creole,
DoD #236 | it's not blackened, it's broiled,
martin@plaza.ds.adp.com | and redfish is an endangered species.