As someone who travels a fair bit and reads lots of cookery books, it isn’t often that I come across a new culinary state of mind; a way of eating and talking about food that’s quite different from anything I know. This last happened late last year, on my first ever trip to New Orleans.
I call it a state of mind because New Orleanian cooking really only makes sense in the context of this great city’s history, in its cultural baggage and, especially, in the way its people tell their stories. Take po’ boy, a sandwich made with baguette-like bread filled with anything from roast beef to fried shrimps or oysters, from ham and cheese to potato chips. Add some lettuce, tomatoes and some optional mayo and/or hot sauce, and you’re in pretty familiar sandwich territory, true, but there’s so much more to a po’ boy. The story goes back to the 1920s, when Bennie and Clovis Martin, two former streetcar conductors, opened a restaurant in the French Market. When their old workmates went on strike a few years later, the brothers gave them free sandwiches. Every time they saw a striker approaching, they’d say, “Here comes another poor boy,” and the name stuck.
The po’ boy is just one example of how New Orleans’ various food traditions are fused together to make a dish defined by its purpose (the bread goes back to its French colonial past, the seafood plentiful locally, the hot sauce a result of the mash-up of African cultures with those of South America and the islands of the Caribbean). The first po’ boy I tried also happened to be absolutely delicious, filled with thin, crisp, freshly fried oysters and doused in a deep and rich hot sauce.
The po’ boy story is pretty typical of the way I got to discover and understand the food of the city. Food writer and academic Jessica Harris had invited me to New Orleans with a group of students and teachers from Oxford Brookes University. Most of us went with the feeling that we had at least a vague idea about the local food, for instance Creole and Cajun cooking, and believed that we’d be able to crack its secrets in no time.
Like any smart teacher (or cook, for that matter), Jessica introduced us to the local cuisine by way of seduction. In five days, the list of what I ate was almost endless, as well as stupendous. I had countless variations on the theme of gumbo (the famous soup that the city wears as a badge of honour); succulent local shrimp in remoulade sauce (both the creamy white French version and the red Louisianan take on it that is full of vegetables, lemon, paprika and cayenne); chayote stuffed with crab; jambalaya (a kind of Creole paella) with chicken and andouille sausage; fried green tomatoes; cochon de lait (siuckling pig) topped with fried egg; crawfish étouffée (a spiced seafood stew); wonderful rice with beans; warm bread pudding with creamy toffee sauce; and sweet potato pie with roasted pecans and cinnamon.
So, far from easy, it soon became clear to me that I just didn’t have the time properly to unravel this gloriously delicious mess of a cooking culture. I was in good company, though: even our hosts couldn’t agree on the definitions Creole or Cajun. But the cooks I met, and the food they shared with me, gave me some insight into this great city’s magical state of mind.
Alzina’s brown sugar prawns
Alzina Toups is the most gentle and generous person I have met in a long time. Now 88, this daughter of a shrimp fisherman spent years on the waters between Texas and the mouth of the Mississippi. She now runs a Cajun kitchen about 50km south of New Orleans. The unassuming dining room (you can’t really call it a restaurant) used to be a welding workshop, but is now filled with religious icons and the smells of her enchanting cooking: fresh bread, black-eyed pea jambalaya, andouille gumbo, rum-and-raisin bread pudding and these wonderful brown sugar prawns. They’re great with bread or plain rice. Serves four.
2 tbsp olive oil
10g unsalted butter
5 shallots, peeled and finely diced
6 garlic gloves, peeled and crushed
1 green pepper, deseeded and julienned
Salt
120ml tomato passata
1 tbsp tomato paste
½ tsp smoked paprika
¼ tsp chilli flakes
1 tbsp muscovado sugar
400g sustainably sourced peeled raw prawns
500ml chicken stock
15g chives, finely chopped
Put the oil and butter in a large nonstick frying pan on a medium heat. Add the shallots, garlic, peppers and three-quarters of a teaspoon of salt and fry for 10 minutes, stirring from time to time, until pale and very soft. Add the passata, tomato paste, paprika, chilli and sugar, and stir to combine. Roughly chop five prawns and add to the sauce. Pour over the chicken stock, mix well and simmer for 12 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the sauce has reduced and thickened, like a pasta sauce. Add the remaining prawns (along with any liquid in the packet) and cook for about three minutes, until the prawns are pink and just cooked. Serve at once, scattered with the chives.
Dirty rice
Composed rice dishes are typical of African-American cooking. This one, which is a bit reminiscent of Chinese fried rice, but drier and richer, gets its name from the spices and chicken offal that give it a stained look. I’ve tried several versions, but the best was Rebecca Wilcomb’s, chef de cuisine at Herbsaint, an iconic New Orleans restaurant. It is she who taught me to deglaze the pan multiple times to intensify the flavour. Serves four as a side dish.
3½ tbsp vegetable oil
140g basmati rice
Salt
240ml boiling water
1 small onion, peeled and finely diced
6 garlic cloves, peeled, 3 crushed and 3 finely sliced
250g minced pork
200g chicken livers
1 tbsp Cajun spice blend
500ml chicken stock
10g parsley, finely chopped, plus 1 small handful extra, to serve
Heat half a tablespoon of oil in a small saucepan on a medium-high flame, then add the rice and a quarter-teaspoon of salt, and stir to coat. Cook, stirring, for about a minute, then pour in 240ml boiling water and turn the heat as low as it goes. Cover the pan and leave the rice to cook for 12 minutes, then turn off the heat, take off the lid and quickly cover with a clean tea towel. Return the lid and leave to rest for 10 minutes.
While the rice is cooking, heat two tablespoons of oil in a large nonstick frying pan on a medium-high flame. Fry the onion and crushed garlic for about three minutes, stirring from time to time, until starting to soften, then stir in the pork mince and a quarter-teaspoon of salt and fry for three minutes more, breaking up the meat with a spoon.
Place the chicken liver in the small bowl of a food processor, blitz to a rough paste, then stir into the pork pan with the Cajun spice blend. Leave to fry for five to six minutes, resisting the urge to stir: you want the meat on the bottom to brown and form a crisp layer.
Once the pork has started to crisp up at the bottom of the pan, add 100ml stock and leave to cook for another five or six minutes, until the liquid soaks into the rice. Repeat four or five more times, letting the meat brown and crisp up on the bottom of the pan before deglazing the pan with another 100ml stock and letting the liquid reduce again: this should take about 20 minutes in total and eventually leave you with a dry, intensely flavoured mixture. Once you are down to the last bit of stock, take the pan off the heat, pour in the stock, stir and set aside.
While the meat is cooking, heat the remaining tablespoon of oil in a small nonstick pan on a medium-high flame. Fry the sliced garlic for two to three minutes, stirring, until golden, then transfer the garlic to a plate lined with kitchen paper to drain.
To serve, tip the rice, meat, sliced garlic and parsley into a large bowl, stir to mix, then transfer to a large bowl (or individual plates). Scatter the remaining parsley on top.
