Jim Bradshaw: Cooking sets south Louisiana apart

Our good cooking is one of the greatest things that sets south Louisiana apart from other places. Visitors are amazed when they get their first taste of what we can do with a big black pot and a pinch of this and dash of that. They discover that we eat better every day than most of them do when they put on a family feast for Thanksgiving.
A lot of people think what is known as “Cajun cuisine” came whole, or almost so, when the Acadians settled in Louisiana, and that our good eats can be traced to old Acadie. In fact, many cultures have helped to shape and season our famous cuisine. Native Americans, Africans, Frenchmen of many ilks, Spaniards, Germans, Italians, people from the Caribbean, and from practically every European country invented or added to the recipes that now up the “traditional” food we serve.
Folklife authority Ulysse Richard put it this way: “The influence of the many peoples and cultures that came to Louisiana, the cooking traditions and methods of these people, the natural richness of Louisiana’s soil, and its abundant supply of seafood have all had a part in creating the native culinary richness that Louisiana offers and that cannot be matched in any other state or region in the United States.”
In fact, we can fill our tables, on Thanksgiving or any other day, with nothing but home-grown foods and eat like royalty.
After the mapmaker William Darby visited southwest Louisiana 200 years ago, he wrote that “few spots on the globe of equal extent exhibit more diversity … or a greater variety of soil and vegetable production.”
Early planters on the Mississippi brought plants from around the world to Louisiana. It is said that Valcour Aimé, one of the most important of them, won a $10,000 bet by serving a complete and perfect dinner, including the coffee, wine, and cigars, using only products grown on his St. James Parish plantation. (He was also the subject of a long-told tale, that may or may not be true, that he served up a banquet on solid gold dishes when French Prince Louis-Philippe visited in 1798. After the feast, according to the tale, Aimé threw the gold dishes into the Mississippi River to impress the prince with his wealth. Aimé didn’t tell the prince that he’d stretched a net beneath the water and pulled the plates back to the bank after the prince was gone.)
Their dishes may not have been made of gold, but practically all of the early settlers in south Louisiana could eat well from what they grew on their land, shot in the woods, or fished from the bayou.
On New Year’s Day of 1786, Louis Judice, commandant of the Lafourche district, wrote that corn was the settlers’ principal crop, but also lima beans and English peas. He said they planted orchards that included peaches, apricots, plums, pears, three types of figs, pecans, pomegranates, and several varieties of grapes.
Then and for years to come families planted large gardens that, thanks to our climate, supplied fresh vegetables practically all year long. Most families also kept chickens, both for meat and for eggs that were important not only as food but because they could be bartered for flour, coffee, and other things, and also kept a hog or two, from which they harvested meat, lard, sausage, cracklins, and “everything but the squeal.” The boucherie each fall was an early institution in south Louisiana.
Whatever they cooked, they cooked “low and slow” in their black pots or skillets. It’s a technique that is still important in south Louisiana cooking. It’s part of what makes today’s cooking so tasty, but it probably began as a necessity. The old hens, wild game, and aging cattle that were turned into supper were usually either tough or stringy or both; they had to be cooked for a long time.
In more recent times, a lot of the visitors who have come to sample our cuisine, and have tried to imitate to imitate it, don’t realize that you can’t cook like we do in a microwave. It takes time, patience, and a well-seasoned old pot. Simply creating some sort of spicy abomination doesn’t cut it, even if they tell unsuspecting diners in far-off places that it is “authentic Cajun.”
While I was searching the internet a while back for “authentic” dishes, I was stopped by a recipe for a “Cajun corndog.”
I’m pretty sure that is a stretch for “authentic,” and I’m absolutely sure that wasn’t part of my Grandma’s repertoire.
Happy Thanksgiving.
A collection of Jim Bradshaw’s columns, "Cajuns and Other Characters," is now available from Pelican Publishing. You can contact him at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.