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The Food, People, and Edible Culture
of Acadian Louisiana
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by Pableaux Johnson
Sometime during the mid-eighties, the Great American Publicity Machine discovered a little-known region of South Louisiana and milked that sucker for all it was worth. The mystique of a living French culture within US borders caught the public's collective imagination, and was fueled by images of massive, moss-draped oak trees, the sounds of high-energy accordion dance music and the lilt of a language similar to (and yet easily distinguishable from) modern French.
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Soon afterward, the traditional foods of Cajun Louisiana registered on our nationwide culinary radar, and since then American cooking hasn't been quite the same. Chefs from Seattle to Sioux City began adding cayenne pepper to their standard cream sauces and tagging on the adjective "CAJUN" to spice up their usual daily offerings. "Blackened" fish dishes surfaced on menus, to the confusion of diners almost everywhere. Slowly but surely, seafood gumbo appeared as soup of the day, and the telltale descriptor popped up on everything from fried shrimp to roasted rack of elk — anything coated with a thick crust of red pepper.
The basics of Cajun cuisine, however, have very little to do with either extreme heat or extreme haute. Traditional Cajun cooking has its roots in basic cooking techniques, flavor combinations, and spicing patterns. It's a rural cuisine based on fresh local ingredients available in the prairies and waterways of south Louisiana, and one of the hallmark cuisines of mainland America.
To put Cajun food into context, let's take a brief look at the history, techniques, and recipes behind Cajun food culture.
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