New Orleans Cuisine: Fourteen Signature Dishes and Their Histories

MIRLITON AND SHRIMP

140 mirliton and shrimp Susan Tucker and Sara Roahen STUFFED MIRLITON 2 [to 8] medium mirlitons 11⁄2 lbs. shrimp, peeled, deveined, and diced 1⁄3 lb. ham, diced 1⁄2 lb. crabmeat 2 cups onions, finely chopped 1⁄3 cup parsley, finely chopped 1⁄3 cup green peppers, finely chopped 3 toes garlic, finely chopped 1 tsp. thyme 2 bay leaves 2 eggs, beaten 2 sticks butter 2 cups bread crumbs Salt, pepper, and hot sauce to taste Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Boil mirliton for 15 minutes. [The authors suggest using about 8 mirlitons.] Halve, remove pit and scoop out all of the mirliton meat. Dice mirliton meat and set aside. Sauté onions, parsley, green pepper, garlic, thyme, and bay leaves in butter for 10 minutes. Next, add shrimp, ham, [crabmeat], salt, pepper, hot sauce, and mirliton meat. Mix and sauté gently for 30 minutes. Remove from heat and vigorously stir in beaten eggs. Add enough bread crumbs to bind. Divide stuffing between mirliton halves, sprinkle [remaining ] bread crumbs on top, and dot with butter. Bake in 350 degree oven, until crust is golden brown. Serves 4. mirliton and shrimp 141 ThelateCreolechef AustinLeslieincludedtheaboverecipeinhiscookbook published in 2000 with the note,“Here’s what happens when Caribbean squash meets with pure Creole-Soul!”In many ways, his description is an apt one. Historically , mirlitons have a strong connection to the Caribbean, and emotionally , they evoke the memory of countless simple home gardens in New Orleans neighborhoods. This history, and especially this evocation, make the mirliton a sort of enchanted vegetable, ready in the minds of so many, passionately recalled for its pairing with shellfish, its usually pale green color, its darker green leaves,and its effusive growth.Almost any New Orleanian born before 1960 will tell you about mirliton vines in yards of mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles, grandmothers and grandfathers,and neighbors.As Sylvia Cureau wrote to us in a 2007 e-mail after Hurricane Katrina,“We lived in the Upper Ninth Ward off St. Claude and Gallier and my grandfather would have a mirliton bush that we children could get lost in.” Such memories serve as a small but important buffer against all the sadness that grew from the levee failure in that area. Known most often in other parts of the United States by its Spanish name, chayote, or by those more inclined to choose an English name, vegetable pear, the mirliton has graced the tables of this city since the 1870s or 1880s. In this chronological placement, it arrived later than other vegetables. Even from the early 1900s, there are no memories of the mirliton in the calls of the vegetable vendors—I got your Creole tomatoes; I got turnip greens picked yesterday. There are no songs to the mirliton in blues or jazz. Still, alongside red beans and rice, New Orleans French bread, and bread pudding, stuffed mirliton is a favored dish of the family table. Only in the very late twentieth century did it become occasionally visible in the high cuisine of the city. In 1718, when Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, sieur de Bienville, established New Orleans as the capital of Louisiana and somehow convinced a few others that this place might become a fortress from which to control the wealth of the North American interior, richness of any kind was relative. Most critically, food was hard to come by and the soil of the new capital was,for the most part,muck. What could grow here and who would have the stamina to try? Bienville found his little band of French and French Canadian men not so industrious when it came to farming, and Native Americans of the area proved not subservient or plentiful enough. The first African slaves were captured in battle with the Spanish in 1710; importation by the French began in 1719, with some one thousand mirliton and shrimp 142 slaves arriving before 1720.The slave traders were instructed to bring slaves with experience in rice growing, and rice was grown here shortly after that. But problems persisted. Neither did the importation of France’s undesirables—many from debtors’ prisons—help the food crisis much. Thus, when John Law sought to protect this French investment in the New World in 1720, one of his first acts was to sponsor the arrival of two thousand Rhinelanders. These colonists eventually settled above New Orleans in...