Cajun Foodways

Foreword

Foreword During the 1980$, bigger-than-life chef Paul Prudhomme brought his native Cajun cooking to the attention of the nation by appearing on national television and cooking for heads of state and media celebrities. The excitementgenerated by his enthusiasm and spicy seasonings brought Cajun culture and its cuisine to the attention of the nation, fueling a fad which swept through restaurants across the country. Unfortunately, fads are usuallybased on trendy fascination instead of deep understanding, and many came to know only a caricature of Cajun cooking. Chefs everywhere copied Prudhomme's blackened redfish, and eventually blackened just about everything else. Cayenne peppers began to appear everywhere, including Prudhomme's Cajun martinis and "Original Cajun Flavored Beer" (brewed "in the time-honored Cajun tradition," in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.) Here in south Louisiana, many people have become self-conscious about the new popularity of things Cajun. Efforts to improveconnotation of the word Cajun date back only to the late 19605. Before that, Cajun in English usually referred to the poor, white, French-speaking underclass. Yet by the 1970$, the sports teams of the University of Southwestern Louisiana were called the Ragin* Cajuns. Soon after, many restaurant owners began including the all-important new key word in their messages , including Enola Prudhomme's Cajun Cafe, Lagneaux's Cajun Style Buffet, Prejean's Comfortable Cajun Dining, Don's Seafood Hut Serves a Good Cajun Meal, Blair House Traditional and Progressive Cajun Cuisine, RandoPs Restaurant and Cajun Dance Hall, and, of course, Mulate's, the World's Most Famous Cajun Restaurant. This burst of ethnic pride coincided with the appearance of the word vn viii Foreword Cajun on just about every commodity remotely associated with Louisiana French culture: one can now go fishing in a Cajun brand bass boat, using Cajun brand crickets for bait, keeping Cajun brand beer on Cajun brand ice in a Cajun brand cooler, and cook the catch later in a "Cajun microwave " (actually, a moist-heat smoker). A local portable toilet company calls itself K-Jon. It's almost as though we have been afraid of forgetting who we are. When local musician, accordion builder and sage, Marc Savoy, was asked recently, "Aren't you sorry the Cajuns have been discovered ?", he answered, "I'm even sorrier the Cajuns have discovered themselves," and went on to predict that Cajun society was in danger of dying of "acute cuteness." On the other hand, there has been an explosion of creativity in Cajun cooking. Beginning as far back as the turn of this century, newspaper recipes and new commodities such as stoves and refrigerators made new ingredients and new techniques available to housewives who were increasingly freed from outdoor farm duties to concentrate their efforts in their kitchens. Restaurant chefs experimented with the bounty of seafood available and introduced such delicacies as Oysters Rockefeller and Crabmeat au gratin to the local population. Crawfish, so closely associated now with Cajun identity, have not been widely eaten until recently. As late as the 19305, a USDA agent complained in a letter to his superiors that crawfish were plentiful and would be an excellent source of protein for poor Cajuns but that he could not convince them to eat the crawfish more frequently. A dish as seemingly definitive as crawfish etouffee only appeared as late as the 1950$ when a few entrepreneurs first made peeled crawfish tails commerciallyavailable. Since then crawfish tails have found their way into surprising new dishes. Today, there are crawfish egg rolls, crawfish enchiladas, and crawfish fettucini. Housewives and restaurant chefs continued to experiment with new Cajun foods, keeping the Cajun tradition not only alive, but ever changing. My own mother has developed a wonderful casserole with crawfish, Swiss Gruyere cheese, butter, cream, and mushrooms. Yet the Cajuns' now-celebrated cuisinewas once a source of embarrassment and self-deprecating humor: Q: Do you know the difference between an ordinary zoo and a Cajun zoo? Foreword ix A: A Cajun zoo has a recipe next to the name of the animal on each cage. And, this example: Q: Do you know what a Cajun seven-course meal is? A: A pound of boudin and a six-pack. But with the fad, Cajun music joined Cajun cooking as a rallying point for ethnic pride. A few years ago, a rash of bumper stickers boldly declared that "Cajuns make better lovers because they eat anything." Crawfish have become a cultural symbol, as...