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How to Cook dishes from Cajun and Creole tradition
The Cajun and Creole people most live in the state of
Louisiana,
especially southern
Louisiana.
Cajun people tend to be descended from French Acadians (French settlers in the
Canadian maritime provinces and the state of
Maine),
whereas Creole are often descended from French and Spanish settlers in Louisiana
who
arrived prior the region becoming part of the
United States as a result of
the 1803 Louisiana Purchase.
Intermarriage, and perceived social differences between Cajun and Creole people, has
of course blurred the distinctions between the two groups, and many people choose to define
their own identity in the way that they feel describes themselves best.
Outside of
Louisiana,
the difference between Cajun and Creole cuisine is somewhat blurred. However, in the state itself,
there are distinct differences. Cajun food tends to spicy, hearty, based on local produce, including
agricultural produce and wild game. Creole cuisine is sometimes perceived as more sophisticated, and
tends to make more use of seafood.
Some popular Cajun and Creole recipes and dishes include:
- Boudin - Pork sausages containing milk and rice. There are two varieties
boudin blanc and boudin rouge, which principally differ whether they include pig's
blood.
- Creole Omelette - A plain omelette served
with a spicy vegetable sauce.
- Cracklins - A snack made from fried pork skins.
- Gumbo - A soup made from meat or shellfish stock, bell peppers, celery, onion and a thickener.
The thickener used is usually okra or filé powder (a spice made from dried ground
sassafras leaves), sometimes with roux (a mix of wheat flour and fat).
The soup also usually contains poultry, smoked pork, and local shellfish
such as crab,
crawfish or
shrimp. Andouille (a sausage made from smoked pork, chitterlings, onions, wine
and seasoning) and tasso (smoked pork shoulder) are often added to the recipe,
giving it a smokey flavor.
Gumbo has become popular throughout the Gulf Coast, and even in Northern
Soul Food restaurants, and
Gumbo is traditionally served over rice.
- Étouffée - A dish of shellfish or chicken over rice, similar to gumbo,
but with a thicker consistency,
- Jambalaya - This dish has been described as a New World version of
Spanish cuisine's paella - although it
usually tomatoes instead of saffron, and various local meat and seafood,
depending on the recipe and what ingredients were available in the area.
Jambalaya is prepared in a single pot, and contains meat, seafood, vegetables,
rice and stock.
- Oysters en Brochette - Raw oysters are placed on a skewer with partly cooked bacon. The whole
thing is then breaded and deep-fried. The skewer is then removed, and the dish is then served on
top of triangles of toast with Meuniere sauce (a local sauce made from flour, butter, parsley and lemon).
- Oysters Rockefeller - A dish invented by the
New Orleans
chef, Jules Alciatore. The dish is made from oysters, parsley and parmesan cheese topped with a
rich sauce. The dish was named after the richest American of the time, John D. Rockefeller,
and was created as an alternative to escargot at Antoine's restaurant in
New Orleans.
- Pompano en Papillote - A dish made by cooking a fillet of pompano fish in a parchment envelope
with a sauce of wine,
crab and
shrimp. During the cooking process, the envelope usually puffes up
to resemble a balloon - which is appropriate since the dish was originally created by
Jules Alciatore, in honor of the Brazilian balloonist, Alberto Santos-Dumont.
- Shrimp Creole - Shrimp in a sauce made from tomatoes, celery, onion, and bell peppers, flavored
with pepper sauce. It is usually served on top of steamed rice.
On this page, you will find a selection of Cajun and Creole cookbooks.
These web sites may also be of interest:
Related pages on this web site:
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By John Besh
Andrews McMeel Publishing
Hardcover (384 pages)
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My New Orleans will change the way you look at New Orleans cooking and the way you see World-famous chef John Besh. It's 16 chapters of culture, history, essay and insight, and pure goodness. Besh tells us the story of his New Orleans by the season and by the dish. Archival, four-color, location photography along with ingredient information make the Big Easy easy to tackle in home kitchens. Cooks will salivate over the 200 recipes that honor and celebrate everything New Orleans. Bite by bite John Besh brings us New Orleans cooking like we've never tasted before. It's the perfect blend of contemporary French techniques with indigenous Southern Louisiana products and know-how. His amazing new offering is exclusively brought to fans and foodies everywhere by Andrews McMeel. From Mardi Gras, to the shrimp season, to the urban garden, to gumbo weather, boucherie (the season of the pig), and everything tasty in between, Besh gives a sampling of New Orleans that will have us all craving for more. The boy from the Bayou isn't just an acclaimed chef with an exceptional pallet. Besh is a chef with a heart. The ex-marine's passion for the Crescent City, its people, and its livelihood are main courses making him a leader of the city's culinary recovery and resilience after the wrath of Hurricane Katrina. |
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By Susan Spicer
Knopf
Released: 2007-10-23
Hardcover (416 pages)
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One of New Orleans’s brightest culinary stars, Susan Spicer has been indulging Crescent City diners at her highly acclaimed restaurants, Bayona and Herbsaint, for years. Now, in her long-awaited cookbook, Spicer—an expert at knocking cuisine off its pedestal with a healthy dash of hot sauce, and at elevating comfort food to the level of the sublime—brings her signature dishes to the home cook’s table.
Crescent City Cooking includes all the recipes that have made Susan Spicer, and her restaurants, famous. Spicer marries traditional Southern cooking with culinary influences from around the world, and the result is New Orleans cooking with gusto and flair. Each of her familiar yet unique recipes is easy to make and wonderfully memorable.
Inside you’ll find :
• More than 170 recipes, ranging from traditional New Orleans dishes (Cornmeal-Crusted Crayfish Pies and Cajun-Spiced Pecans) to Susan’s very own twists on down-home cuisine (Smoked Duck Hash in Puff Pastry with Apple Cider Sauce; Grilled Shrimp with Black Bean Cakes and Coriander Sauce) and, of course, a recipe for the best gumbo you’ve ever tasted
• Over 90 photographs by Times-Picayune photographer Chris Granger, which display the vibrant city of New Orleans as much as Spicer’s wonderfully offbeat yet classy way of presenting her dishes
• Instructions that make Spicer’s down-to-earth but extraordinarily creative recipes easy to prepare. Spicer, who cooks for two picky preteens and packs lunch every day for her husband, knows how precious time can be and understands just how much is enough
There is something else of New Orleans—its spirit—that imbues this book’s every useful tip and anecdote. The strong culinary traditions of New Orleans are revived in Crescent City Cooking, with recipes that are guaranteed to comfort and surprise. This is some of the best food you’ll ever taste, in what is certain to become the essential New Orleans cookbook. |
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By Paul Prudhomme
William Morrow Cookbooks
Released: 1984-04-17
Hardcover (352 pages)
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Product Description:
Here for the first time the famous food of Louisiana is presented in a cookbook written by a great creative chef who is himself world-famous. The extraordinary Cajun and Creole cooking of South Louisiana has roots going back over two hundred years, and today it is the one really vital, growing regional cuisine in America. No one is more responsible than Paul Prudhomme for preserving and expanding the Louisiana tradition, which he inherited from his own Cajun background. Chef Prudhomme's incredibly good food has brought people from all over America and the world to his restaurant, K-Paul's Louisiana Kitchen, in New Orleans. To set down his recipes for home cooks, however, he did not work in the restaurant. In a small test kitchen, equipped with a home-size stove and utensils normal for a home kitchen, he retested every recipe two and three times to get exactly the results he wanted. Logical though this is, it was an unprecedented way for a chef to write a cookbook. But Paul Prudhomme started cooking in his mother's kitchen when he was a youngster. To him, the difference between home and restaurant procedures is obvious and had to be taken into account. So here, in explicit detail, are recipes for the great traditional dishes--gumbos and jambalayas, Shrimp Creole, Turtle Soup, Cajun "Popcorn," Crawfish Etouffee, Pecan Pie, and dozens more--each refined by the skill and genius of Chef Prudhomme so that they are at once authentic and modern in their methods. Chef Paul Prudhomme's Louisiana Kitchen is also full of surprises, for he is unique in the way he has enlarged the repertoire of Cajun and Creole food, creating new dishes and variations within the old traditions. Seafood Stuffed Zucchini with Seafood Cream Sauce, Panted Chicken and Fettucini, Veal and Oyster Crepes, Artichoke Prudhomme--these and many others are newly conceived recipes, but they could have been created only by a Louisiana cook. The most famous of Paul Prudhomme's original recipes is Blackened Redfish, a daringly simple dish of fiery Cajun flavor that is often singled out by food writers as an example of the best of new American regional cooking. For Louisianians and for cooks everywhere in the country, this is the most exciting cookbook to be published in many years. |
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By Donald Link
Clarkson Potter
Released: 2009-04-21
Hardcover (256 pages)
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Product Description:
An untamed region teeming with snakes, alligators, and snapping turtles, with sausage and cracklins sold at every gas station, Cajun Country is a world unto itself. The heart of this area—the Acadiana region of Louisiana—is a tough land that funnels its spirit into the local cuisine. You can’t find more delicious, rustic, and satisfying country cooking than the dirty rice, spicy sausage, and fresh crawfish that this area is known for. It takes a homegrown guide to show us around the back roads of this particularly unique region, and in Real Cajun, James Beard Award–winning chef Donald Link shares his own rough-and-tumble stories of living, cooking, and eating in Cajun Country.
Link takes us on an expedition to the swamps and smokehouses and the music festivals, funerals, and holiday celebrations, but, more important, reveals the fish fries, étouffées, and pots of Granny’s seafood gumbo that always accompany them. The food now famous at Link’s New Orleans–based restaurants, Cochon and Herbsaint, has roots in the family dishes and traditions that he shares in this book. You’ll find recipes for Seafood Gumbo, Smothered Pork Roast over Rice, Baked Oysters with Herbsaint Hollandaise, Louisiana Crawfish Boudin, quick and easy Flaky Buttermilk Biscuits with Fig-Ginger Preserves, Bourbon-Soaked Bread Pudding with White and Dark Chocolate, and Blueberry Ice Cream made with fresh summer berries. Link throws in a few lagniappes to give you an idea of life in the bayou, such as strategies for a great trip to Jazz Fest, a what-not-to-do instructional on catching turtles, and all you ever (or never) wanted to know about boudin sausage. Colorful personal essays enrich every recipe and introduce his grandfather and friends as they fish, shrimp, hunt, and dance.
From the backyards where crawfish boils reign as the greatest of outdoor events to the white tablecloths of Link’s famed restaurants, Real Cajun takes you on a rollicking and inspiring tour of this wild part of America and shares the soulful recipes that capture its irrepressible spirit. |
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By Neal Bertrand
Cypress Cove Publishing
Paperback (96 pages)
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Rice Cooker Meals: Fast Home Cooking for Busy People contains 60 quick and easy meals you can make in a rice cooker, most in 30 minutes or less. Enjoy delicious, multicultural recipes that are less expensive and healthier than fast food. Includes Mexican, Italian, Tex-Mex and Cajun recipes! And one-pot cooking means less mess to clean up! You'll see how easy it is to cook jambalayas, seafood dishes, pastas, "casseroles", soups, rice side dishes, and various vegetable recipes including potatoes, cabbage, and sweet potatoes. "IN A RICE COOKER?" Yes, they're all cooked in a rice cooker. Here are a few recipes from the book: Easy Chili, Mexican Rice, Tex-Mex Pasta, Shrimp Jambalaya, Cabbage Casserole, Cajun Pepper Steak, Chicken Fried Rice, Rice & Shrimp Pilaf, Chicken & Sausage Gumbo, Chicken Fajita Stuffed Potato, Black-eyed Pea & Sausage Soup, Candied Yams with Marshmallows, Easy Smothered Potatoes & Sausage, and Black-eyed Pea & Sausage Jambalaya. The cookbook also has two indexes so the recipes are easier to find: indexed by chapter and indexed in alphabetical order. It has numerous testimonials from good cooks affiliated with the LSU AgCenter Homemaker Clubs. They tested the recipes and gave their honest opinions. It includes short articles about time-saving tips on food preparation, how a rice cooker knows when the food is cooked, how to teach children to safely cook with a rice cooker, how to brown meat in a rice cooker, plus many more. |
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By Sara Roahen
W. W. Norton & Company
Paperback (304 pages)
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“Makes you want to spend a week—immediately—in New Orleans.” —Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg, Wall Street Journal . |
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By Rima Collin
Alfred A. Knopf
Released: 1987-03-12
Paperback (254 pages)
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Two hundred eighty-eight delicious recipes carefully worked out so that you can reproduce, in your own kitchen, the true flavors of Cajun and Creole dishes. The New Orleans cookbook whose authenticity dependability, and wealth of information have made it a classic. |
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By Marcelle Bienvenu
Acadian House Publishing
Hardcover (159 pages)
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A 160-page hardcover book containing more than 200 Cajun and Creole recipes, plus old photos and interesting stories about the author s growing up in the Cajun country of south Louisiana. Recipes include Pain Perdu, Couche Couche, Chicken Fricassee Stuffed Mirliton, Shrimp Stew, Grillades, Red Beans & Rice, Shrimp Creole, Bouillabaisse, Pralines. |
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By Justin Wilson
Wiley
Hardcover (288 pages)
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Welcome to Louisiana! & Welcome to Homegrown! Let Justin Wilson introduce you to the bounty of Louisiana and the food of friendship and family. In Justin Wilson's Homegrown Louisiana Cookin' Justin serves up all the recipes from his "Homegrown" television series in addition to hundreds more for:- Appetizers
- Salads and Dressings Gumbos and Soups
- Sauces and Gravies Rice, Pasta, and Stuffings
- Seafood Poultry and Eggs
- Meats
- Game Vegetables
- Breads
- Desserts Beverages
- Preserves
So, come to Louisiana and enjoy some good cookin' and eatin' —I garontee! |
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By Junior League of Baton Rouge
The Cookbook Marketplace
Spiral-bound (262 pages)
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Celebrating it's 50th year in print, this community cookbook, with over 1.2 million copies sold, is considered by most to be the textbook of Louisiana cuisine. Cajun, Creole, and Deep South flavors are richly preserved in authentic gumbos, jambalayas, courts-bouillons, pralines, and more. Inducted into the McIlhenny Hall of Fame, an award given for book sales that exceed 100,000 copies. |
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