My Five Favorite Cajun Dishes

I know that most of the stuff I have posted over the years has been political in nature. That's not what I originally started out to do, but here we are. Since I have been living in Louisiana for over six years now, I have eaten a ton of Cajun food, and gained about 35 pounds to show for it.

I certainly have my issues with Louisiana. Lousy infrastructure, anti-union politicians and assaults on reproductive rights. However, sometimes you just have to put the politics aside, and sit down for a meal with people you disagree with.

If you haven't been to Louisiana, or if you've just visited New Orleans, there is a lot you're missing in the culinary scene. The northern part of the state has some Cajun-influenced food, but it is more of a Southern food scene that is as much Cajun as Trump is a legitimate president. The southern part of state from Alexandria on down to the Gulf is a region divided by Cajun and Creole styles of food.

There is a difference between Cajun and Creole, even though there are similarities which aren't obvious to Louisiana food novices. New Orleans is predominately Creole, while Lafayette and areas west of the Mississippi are mostly Cajun. Creole is influenced by the Carribean, Africa, France, Spain, Italy and other places. Cajun is predominately...well...Cajun.

New Orleans has seen wave after wave of various influences on the culinary scene over the centuries. Cajun food in the Acadiana region has some Spanish and Native American additions, and it is also divided into "prairie Cajun" versus "swamp Cajun" subsets, as I like to refer to them as. An example of this is gumbo. In areas in the northern region of Acadiana, gumbo is primarly chicken and sausage based. As you go further towards Houma and the Gulf of Mexico, seafood-based gumbo is more common due to the proximity to the ocean.



It took me a little while to learn about these differences, and to choose which styles I liked the most. In case you're wondering, I settled on Creole, due to the fact they use more vegetables in their dishes, something Cajuns seem to be hesitant about.

With that explanation of local foods out of the way, here are my five favorite foods in Louisiana, specifically in Cajun country.

5. Gumbo: Gumbo is not an easy dish to make from scratch, and my years in the restaurant industry didn't prepare me for making the Louisiana version of roux. When I make it myself now, I make my own which requires constant stirring to keep it from burning. Many people here use roux out of a jar, or use vegetable oil and flour to make it, which isn't ideal to me. I use butter or bacon fat instead of oil, and my roux isn't the color of used motor oil either.

I prefer seafood gumbo, but you can make a good sausage and chicken gumbo with andouille sausage, and a rotissere chicken from a deli if you want to cut corners. The best gumbo has shrimp, crab and oysters - and I think mixing sausage with seafood overpowers the delicate taste of the ocean.

4. Boudin: There are many sources for boudin around Louisiana. My favorite comes from Charlie T's in Breaux Bridge, especially if they are served their smoked boudin. Some places load their boudin down with cayenne pepper and liver, which is just nasty in my opinion. On a cold winter morning, a link from your local gas station and a cup of coffee will make your day right.

3. Etouffee: Crawfish etouffee is a Louisana staple. It is a tomato-based sauce usually with crawfish or shrimp, and I prefer mine spicy. I make a roux, add a can of Rotel, as well as some ghost pepper, and a little bit of fish sauce. That's my little Asian flair to the dish, and most people here love that version of it. I also add my favorite Cajun seasoning, Beazell's, which is lower in sodium and has spices other local seasonings do not.

2. Fried pork chops: Pork chops are good, but have you ever eaten one fried and put on a sandwich? I don't eat this very often because of all the fat and cholesterol, but it is magically delicious. Take a pork chop, bread it and fry it, then remove the bone and put it on a sandwich bun with pickles, mustard and tomato slices. Eat one of these at breakfast and you won't be hungry until dinner.

1. Oyster Bar Trash: This is a dish I encountered when I worked at Landry's. It's shrimp and lump crab meat blackened on a grill, then served over rice with lemon butter. I like to add mushrooms, and you can also add scallops if you're feeling fancy.

These are just five of my favorite things to eat down here. There's is also fried alligator and crawfish boils, but you'll just have to come down here to try them for yourself. Bon appetit!

Racism Isn't Just A Southern Thing

The common stereotype of the South involves racism, the KKK, and segregation. It is a well-deserved piece of our history, and racism still exists across the South, including here in Louisiana. In the rural areas surrounding Lafayette, blacks and whites still go to separate churches, and willingly segregate themselves in various social settings.

In a national restaurant chain I once worked for, managers often sent black customers to the back of the restaurant, and were flabbergasted when I pointed that out. They would sometimes assign black servers to those sections, along with white servers they thought they could punish by making them wait on black guests.

That kind of prejudice is common across the South, but it isn't confined solely to the humid Bible Belt. I know that blue state liberals love to pretend the presumed progressive strongholds they live in are above that sort of thing, even though other forms of discrimination exist right in their backyards.

Portland has gentrification that is driving remaining black residents out, to be replaced by hipsters. San Francisco is pricing poor people, especially minorities, out of the area in favor of tech workers which tend to be white. New York has policing that unfairly targets minorities to meet police quotas, and Boston is known for its racism.

Obviously, I am not trying to apologize for racism in the South. My family's history on my mother's side includes people who fought for the Confederacy, slave owners, and even slave traders. The Montgomery family fled to Texas with their slaves when Union forces closed in, and the men enlisted in the Texas divisions to fight for their "states' rights" to own slaves.

Racism in many fashions continues to manifest itself across our country. We saw it with the hatred towards President Obama, and with the election of Donald Trump by voters in places like Ohio and Wisconsin.

Yes, the South is the easy target for accusations of racism, and it is well deserved. But let's not pretend it is a problem solely confined to the South.

A Virginian Ends Up In Louisiana

My adult life has been a long, strange trip. I was born in Virginia into a very conservative Catholic family, and ended up in Louisiana where I've been since 2010. Most of my new writing is now on Modern Liberals, but I wanted to put this here on the original blog where all of this began. This is a brief overview of the past decade since I moved to Florida, and then to Louisiana from Florida. It has been an interesting few years, and I'm glad that so many people have supported my writing since I began ranting online to save money on therapy. After getting divorced and wavering on the edge of bankruptcy nearly a decade ago, I've spent that time trying to rebuild everything I lost because of my ex-wife. Right now, I am better off financially than I have ever been, and I'm on the verge of getting full custody of my nine year old twins after years of fighting for them. I thought Louisiana would be a short layover in life. I figured that I could go back to working in restaurants get caught up on my bills, and then I would move on to bigger and better things in another state that wasn't as backwards as Louisiana. Writing started as a way to get out to the world the corruption that went on during my years working at Sprint, and it snowballed from there into politics and taking down political candidates like David Vitter. Obviously, the best-laid plans of mice and men don't always go the way we think they would. It wasn't long after I moved here that I found an unexpected love, and I'm not just talking about hockey or beer. Now we are on the verge of buying a house, combining our families, and I'm considering running for office as a progressive in an area that elected a wanna-be "street cop" to Congress last year. I want to thank everyone who has supported me in a variety of ways ever since I ended up in the last place I expected to be. All of this wouldn't have happened without you. There is no plan to quit political commentary or close any of my Facebook pages. I planned to take a break after the November elections, but Russian interference changed all of that. Maybe one day we will have a government that truly represents us, but until that time comes, I will be in the trenches.