Cajun Foodways

1. What Goes into Cajun Food

I. What Goes into Cajun Food How do Cajuns describe "Cajun food"? Not all the foods Cajuns eat are labeled "Cajun." For instance, Cajuns eat steak and baked potatoes, pizza, packaged breakfast cereals, hamburgers, ice cream, and bananas, but none of these is ever described as Cajun food. The fact that a group of people eats a certain food does not make it "ethnic." When asked to identify Cajun food, Cajuns often answer by listing various local dishes, such as gumbo, £touffte, boudin, sauce picquante, and chicken fricassee, to name a few. These are all cooked foods, and they are prepared according to a Cajun style or aesthetic. For example, many Cajuns note that Cajun food is highly seasoned or strong in flavor—a reference to the aesthetics of cooking. Some people point directly to the importance of aesthetics, or style. For example, one man says that "anything we cook is Cajun—it's the way you cook it that matters." Similarly, a young woman says that "any food can be Cajun food if it's cooked by a Cajun; it will come out Cajun, no matter what." Cajun dishes and cooking aesthetics are described in detail in later chapters. Cajuns sometimes describe Cajun food by referring to certain ingredients , such as crawfish, seafood, game, okra, rice, red pepper, and dark roast coffee. These ingredients are considered Cajun because they are produced locally (or distributed locally, in the case of dark roast coffee) 34 What Goes into Cajun Food 35 and because Cajuns consume them frequently and in great quantities.1 However, when asked about the significance of specific ingredients, people often conclude that cooking style is more important than the use of a particular ingredient. For example, one man who had referred to game as a Cajun food had second thoughts after recalling that he had once eaten Brunswick stew in Georgia. That stew was made from game, but it was definitely not Cajun. In addition, some frequently eaten and locally produced ingredients are described as Cajun only if they are cooked in a particular way. For example, pork and chicken are not necessarily Cajun foods, but boudin (a pork and rice sausage), pork backbone stew, and chicken gumbo or jambalaya are Cajun foods. This chapter focuses on ingredients commonly used in preparing Cajun food. Whether they are referring to specific ingredients or to cooking styles, Cajuns say that Cajun foods are "old-fashioned" or "old-timey." One elderly woman says, "Cajun food is just the kind of food we had when we were young. It's not much different today." An elderly man claims that "Cajun food today is the same as it was fifty or sixty years ago. The only difference is that now you can buy what you need in a grocery store." Younger people, who cannot remember the old days, nonetheless associate Cajun food with the past. They refer to their grandparents or other elders as the best Cajun cooks, and saythat they are the people to talk to in order to learn about Cajun food. The young people evaluate their own cooking in terms of old standards. For example, one young woman says that she has been trying for years to make gumbo as good as her mother's. Both young and old describe Cajun food as "part of the Cajun heritage ." The publication of chef Paul Prudhomme's Louisiana Kitchen and the New Orleans Worlds Fair, both in 1984, brought a great deal of attention to Cajun food and were accompanied by a flowering of Cajun haute cuisine, often prepared by trained chefs and served in restaurants, or dissiminated through cookbooks and videos. New dishes have been added to the menus of both professional and domestic cooks. In addition, health concerns have prompted the publication of Cajun cookbooks featuring low fat, low calorie, and low salt versions of traditional recipes. The i. The foodways of non-Cajun south Louisianans are similar to those described in this book. Cajuns recognize this similarity, but they nonetheless describe these foods as "Cajun." 36 Cajun Foodways descriptions of Cajun foodways in this book pre-date both these developments . Moreover, these descriptions refer to traditional domestic and community cooking rather than to professional restaurant cuisine. Outsiders are sometimes confused by the coexistence in south Louisiana of the terms Cajun food and Creole food. Tourist-oriented restaurants in both Acadiana and New Orleans increasingly advertise their foods...