New Orleans cuisine combines the best of its French ancestry (i.e. butter) with the best local ingredients (i.e. fish, shellfish and spices) to create what is arguably the most distinctive American regional cuisine. Sure lots of places have a dish they are known for, but think about it. You could open a restaurant called New Orleans Kitchen halfway around the world and most people would be able to guess at least five or six dishes they'd expect to find on the menu: gumbo, jambalaya, red beans and rice, crawfish (etouffe, or just plain boiled), oysters, anything blackened, from fish to filet mignon. Can you think of any other US city that can say that? I can't.
On Superbowl Sunday, kitchens across the country were turning out cajun and creole specialties in honor of the Saints. On CNN, James Carville and Mary Matalin were debating the proper way to make gumbo (not surprisingly, I agreed with James. The darker the better!) The game broke a 27-year record for TV audience (previously held by the finale of M.A.S.H.), and I'd guess it was likely a record day for national catfish sales as well.
Years ago, I got a tiny little photo-heavy New Orleans cookbook as a gift. Its butter-splattered pages are a testament to how much I love those recipes. My all time favorite is barbeque shrimp, which despite the name has nothing to do with grilling. Basically it is shrimp sauteed in butter, beer, cayenne and rosemary, with a little lemon and parsley. This recipe is pretty close, though I've never used celery and onions.
The people I was watching the game with usually frown on the idea of eating anything served swimming in melted butter. Health freaks. So with their eyes fixed on the game, I fried blackened redfish in butter instead. If they can't see the butter, it works best for all of us.
On the side, I made my own version of red beans and rice:
- saute onions, garlic, sliced okra, red pepper and tomatoes with bay leaf, pepper, salt and chili powder/cayenne until soft
- add broth and rice, cover
- separately cook and dice some andouille sausage
- when the rice is done, add a can of azuki beans (red kidney beans are too big to me) and the chopped sausage and heat through
I fully planned to drink beer, but we had a bottle of 2008 GB Chardonnay open while we were cooking, and it worked really well with the food, so we stuck with that.
It was all pretty easy and yummy, if not particularly authentic, but even so, the moment I set the plates down, Tracy Porter famously intercepted that pass, and it was as if we all were in New Orleans.
