It’s no oversimplification to say that until my twenties, there was no concept of gumbo in my life other than what my mom made. This is not a pointed literary exaggeration, it’s a fact of life shared by pretty much every gumbo eater across Louisiana. Gumbo is what your momma made, a definition that…
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Some time in 1960s, businessmen with the Japanese electronics company Hitachi flew to southwest Louisiana, specifically, we are told, to Ville Platte. Of interest to them were the curiously high sales marks of their rice-cookers across a region otherwise alien to their products. At the time…
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On a culinary spectrum that is typically understood to vary between brown and darker brown, gumbo z’herbes stands out as the lone shade of green. Generally associated with Lent in heavily Catholic southern Louisiana, the so-called “green gumbo” breaks most of the rules generally associated with…
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Whether or not you agree that okra should go in gumbo, the vegetable is inextricably linked to gumbo’s birth in the cultural stews of New Orleans. Slaves arriving at port in the 18th century brought with them the slimy, seedy, furry, rich and hardy vegetable from West Africa, which they called…
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Three weeks into starting a gluten free diet, Mandy Migues knew she had to get creative to keep eating what she loved. The limitations imposed by a strict gluten-free diet denied her the joys of her grandma’s Cajun cooking, an oral history of recipes she used to make a home menu of Louisiana…
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During Acadiana’s winter gumbo season, it’s not uncommon to get party invitations that sound something like: “Come on over Saturday. I’m making a gumbo.” Making a gumbo, in this sense, is less about simmering seafood, chicken, or sausage in a roux-thickened stock, as it is spending an evening with…
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Preserve the Pig, Preserve the Man So much of my chat with folklorist Barry Ancelet feels like unraveling strings of history coiled around nostalgia. He takes long pauses as he scrolls through pictures of a pig roast populated with grandchildren, godchildren, friends’ children, nieces and nephews. A…
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There’s a ritualistic and sacred alchemy to the entire process of boiling crawfish. The table is the altar, the newspaper the vestments, and the crawfish the succulent sacrifice. Boil seasoning spices the air like incense, and the acolytes gather around the ruby red pile, imbibing their heady drinks…
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Counting the ways crawfish can be prepared can read like Bubba Blue’s monologue from Forrest Gump. Personally, I prefer to think of Harlan Pepper naming nuts in Best In Show, but the effect is more or less the same: There are a lot of ways to make crawfish. It’s a crustacean, after all, so most of…
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Dickie Breaux has probably told the story a thousand times. But with each retelling there remains something mysterious about the origin of crawfish étouffée. As a Breaux Bridge culinary legend, and owner of storied Cajun restaurant Café Des Amis, he’s often called upon as a keeper of crawfish lore…
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