Recipes

CREATING A CREOLE KITCHEN: THE ESSENTIALS

Criollo was the term the Spanish used for their cooking, but New Orleanians quickly christened it Creole. Call it what you choose, but don’t think it’s ordinary. Creoles are fiercely proud of their particular culture and heritage, which they consider more sophisticated than that of their Cajun country cousins.

Creole culture and heritage go back to the European settlers of New Orleans who were predominately of French and Spanish ancestry. Most were from wealthy families and either brought their personal chefs with them to New Orleans or sent for chefs from Europe. Many of the ingredients the chefs normally used in their cooking were unavailable locally. New Orleans Governor Bienville, afraid of losing the new settlers, asked his personal cook to share with the Creole chefs his unique skills, techniques, and use of the native ingredients. A “recipe” showing the components of the Creole cuisine:

 A RECIPE FOR CREOLE COOKING

5 parts French cuisine (butter, cream)

1 ½ parts Spanish cuisine (spices, red peppers, rice)

1 part Native American cuisine (filé powder, local herbs and spices)

1 part African cuisine (okra, yams)

1 part Italian cuisine (tomatoes, garlic)

½ part German cuisine (mustard, black pepper)

1.  Add a smattering of skill from the Portuguese, Canary islanders, Caribbeans, Mediterraneans, and South Americans.

2.  Import chefs from Europe, blend in local ingredients indigenous to New Orleans and surrounding areas, use Choctaw Indians as teachers, and prepare in the classic French style of cooking.

3.  Relish the contributions of each influx of immigrants who added their own ingredients to the pot to form what is known as Creole cooking.

Creole cooking is city cooking; refined, delicate and luxurious. It was developed and originally prepared by servants, with a great emphasis on cream and butter. The result was rich sauces, elegant pureed bisques, time intensive soups, brunch dishes, and desserts.

Creoles and their cooks discovered the wonderful shellfish, snapper, pompano, and other forms of seafood available in Louisiana. Native meats and game, and unfamiliar produce including mirlitons and cushaw, sugar cane and pecans, were then adapted to the European cookery methods of the now-Creole chefs. To make yours a Creole kitchen:

INGREDIENTS FOR A CREOLE PANTRY

With the following 10 items you can make most Creole dishes by adding a main ingredient, and serving over rice.

oil or butter

flour

onions

celery

bell peppers

garlic

hot pepper sauce (Tabasco® is a favorite)

salt and pepper

bay leaves

thyme

1.  For most savory dishes, make a base (roux) by heating the oil or butter and flour and slowly cooking to a golden brown or very dark brown, depending on the desired flavor and thickening power.

2.  Add onions, celery and bell pepper and cook until softened and well-blended with the roux.

3.  Add main ingredient (meat or poultry), garlic, bay leaves, thyme, hot pepper sauce, and salt and pepper, plus enough water to completely cover the food.

4.  Cook for 2-3 hours, until the main ingredient is tender (if making a seafood dish cook the above mixture and add seafood only for the last few minutes, to avoid overcooking).

The spices and other ingredients in Creole cooking are carefully balanced so that each bite is exciting, but no single ingredient predominates over any other. The thoughtfully added seasonings are intended to excite the palate without overwhelming it. Contrary to common belief, Creole food is not hot—so don’t confuse spices with spicy. Most if not all ingredients for a Creole kitchen can be found in, or ordered from, your supermarket:

COMMON INGREDIENTS FOR A CREOLE KITCHEN

shellfish (crab [soft-shell, buster, blue-claw]), crawfish, shrimp, oysters, dried shrimp

alligator

fin fish (pompano, red snapper, trout, flounder)

game (duck, quail, squab, rabbit)

meat (beef, pork, ham, veal, lamb)

tomatoes (fresh or canned)

Worcestershire sauce

white and cayenne pepper

allspice

stocks, long-simmered and flavorful

Creole mustard

okra

filé powder

parsley

green onions

dried beans

rice

butter

cream

white and red wine

beans

LESS COMMON INGREDIENTS FOR A CREOLE PANTRY

Creole cream cheese

turtle

crab and shrimp boil sesoning

chicory (for coffee)

Satsumas (Mandarin oranges grown in South Louisiana))

Herbsaint

cornmeal

fish fry (finely-ground corn flour to coat foods to be fried)

tasso

andouille sausage

 Creoles adhere to their age old traditions of elegant dining and a relaxed lifestyle in which friends and family are of utmost importance. These people have such a love of food that shortcuts are not an option. Stocks are cooked long and slow, roux can take up to an hour to make, and foods are seasoned and tasted as each new ingredient is added. They are dedicated to every dish and love cooking as much as they love eating the results of their labor. It is this dedication and refusal to compromise on time that results in the amazing flavors gently coaxed from the foods.

Another quality of extreme importance to Creole people is their refusal to waste food; everything is used. Wonderful puddings result from leftover rice and bread; Pain Perdue (lost bread) is made from leftover French bread. The day’s gumbo is often determined by what is remaining from the previous night’s meal. Jambalaya, as well, uses ingredients on hand, often stretched by a bit of seafood or sausage. Bones from meat and poultry are used in other dishes or saved to use in stocks, as are scraps from vegetables and fish.

The Creole people take their cooking very seriously. Don’t argue with them about your recipe being better than theirs or you will lose. Their recipes do not come from a book, as they are likely to have been passed down from previous generations.

They probably make their dishes just the way their great-grandmothers made them. Creoles resist change. They strongly believe that if something is just right, there is no reason to experiment or alter a recipe...and they don’t.

The similarities between Creole and Cajun cuisines are due to the French heritage of both cultures, and the new ingredients to which French cooking techniques were applied by Creoles and by Cajuns. Both types of cooking have culinary roots in France, with a nod to Spain, Africa, and Native America, and to a lesser degree to the West Indies, Germany, Ireland, and Italy. Both cultures take their food very seriously, and love to cook, eat, and entertain.

It is said that a Creole feeds one family with three chickens and a Cajun feeds three families with one chicken. Another major difference between Creole and Cajun food is in the type of roux used as the base of sauces, stews, soups, and other savory dishes. Creole roux is made from butter and flour (as in France), while Cajun roux is made from lard or oil and flour. This is partly due to the scarcity of dairy products in some areas of Acadiana (Acadia + Louisiana) when Cajun cuisine was being developed. Gumbo is perhaps the signature dish of both cuisines. Creole gumbo has a tomato base and is more of a soup, while Cajun gumbo has a roux base and is more of a stew.

The cultural difference between the two methods of cooking lies in the fact that Creoles had access to local markets, and servants to cook their food while Cajuns lived mostly off the land, were subject to the elements of the seasons, and generally cooked meals in one large pot.

• CREOLE refers to the original European — particularly French and Spanish — settlers of New Orleans. They were mostly from wealthy families and brought or sent for chefs from Madrid, Paris, and other European capitals.

• Ingredients. Many of the ingredients the European chefs normally used in their cooking were unavailable locally. Governor Bienville, afraid of losing the new residents, asked his personal cook to teach the Creole people and their chefs how to make use of the native ingredients, and to share his skills and techniques with them.

Thus, the Creoles and their cooks discovered the wonderful shellfish, snapper, pompano, and other forms of seafood available in Louisiana. Native meats and game, and unfamiliar produce including mirlitons and cushaw, sugar cane and pecans, were then adapted to the European cookery methods of the Creole chefs.

• Seasonings. Tips and seasoning ingredients from the native Indians, and Caribbean and African cooks helped give birth to Creole cooking. Africans introduced okra; the Spanish, spices and red peppers; the Germans, black pepper and mustard; the Irish, potatoes. In addition, file powder came from the Choctaw Indians; allspice and peppers from the West Indians; and garlic and tomatoes from the Italians.

• Cooking Style. Creole cooking is city cooking: refined, delicate and luxurious, developed and originally prepared by servants. There is greater emphasis on cream, butter, seafood (though not shellfish), tomatoes, herbs, and garlic, and less use of cayenne pepper and file powder than in Cajun cooking, resulting in rich sauces, elegant pureed bisques, and time-intensive soups, brunch dishes, and desserts.

• CAJUN Country is the southwest section of Louisiana, unique unto itself. Acadiana is an area comprising twenty-two parishes (counties) in Southwest Louisiana. This area is predominately populated by Cajun people who are, technically, descendents of the Acadians expelled from Acadia, now known as Nova Scotia, in 1755. While their new home in Acadiana was familiar in terms of being an agrarian setting already populated by Catholic, French-speaking people, the Cajuns had to adjust to the unknown terrain of swamps, bayous, and prairies that presented some exotic forms of meat, game, fish, produce, and grains.

• Ingredients. The Cajuns applied their French cooking techniques to these new ingredients, with a result that is recognized and respected as some of the best regional cooking in America, as well as one of the world’s most unique cuisines. There are versions of Cajun dishes on restaurant menus across the Country, from upscale to hip and trendy to fast food establishments. Unfortunately, many of these restaurants misrepresent Cajun food by using their standard menu items and carelessly over-spicing them, making the food unbearably hot, then calling it “Cajun.”

• Seasonings. Cajun food and culture has little to do with the mass media hype of the past twenty years that presents Cajun cookery as fiery hot, and Cajun people as hot pepper eating, beer swilling caricatures of themselves. Pepper and spices are merely one element of Cajun cookery, and not the most important one at that.

• Cooking Style. Cajuns in Southwest Louisiana have steadfastly adhered to the preservation of their habits, traditions, and beliefs in terms of lifestyle, language and cooking. They became noticed by society during the oil boom in the mid-1900s, which brought many outlanders (non-Cajuns) into the area. These new residents began to discover the food-oriented, talented Cajun cooks whose lives and socializing revolve, to a large extent, around the preparation, sharing, and enjoyment of food. The word began to spread.

To really understand the roots of Cajun food today, we must look back to the 16th and 17th centuries when the new Acadian arrivals from France were perplexed at some of the unusual foods at their disposal. 

• The Acadians brought their extraordinary culinary skills with them from France, and applied those skills to the foods that were available in their new land. Some foods were familiar, like pigs, cows, and chickens, but others were strange and some adjustment was needed to incorporate meadowlarks, groundhogs and porcupine into their meals. Likewise, root vegetables, potatoes, and spinach were old acquaintances, while plantain leaves, samphire, and brined, salted herbs were new ingredients.

• In researching food from the old days in Acadia, I was surprised to find so many recipes and cooking methods similar to those I learned from my Cajun relatives as I was growing up. I didn't realize that dishes made 350 years ago could be so much like recipes we cook today, with the main difference being in the names. Fricot is a soup, a bit thinner than soups we make but prepared in much the same way, and consisting of the usual soup ingredients of chicken, fish, or meat, vegetables and potatoes; Viande Fricassée is much like my Grandmother Olympe's Fricassée of Beef, though Grandma used a roux to thicken the stew rather than the potatoes that thicken the Viande.

• Beans and pork were a specialty of my Grandpa Pischoff, who paired them together just as the old Acadians did, though the Acadians served their beans with sugar and molasses. Both cultures relied heavily on animal fat in their cooking, and the one-pot meal is central to both Acadian and Cajun cookery. The biggest difference between old Acadian and new Cajun cooking is found in the seasonings (see below). Also, Cajuns are not known to cook meadowlark, bobolink, weasel, or snow bunting soup; eel pie; roast porcupine; goose tongue greens and samphire greens; and pork fat and molasses pie. These dishes were developed to make use of the ingredients available to Acadians in the 1600s – 1700s.

Basic Acadian Foods in the 17th and 18th centuries.  Pigs were an important element in the Acadian kitchen, as most of the meat consumed was pork. Lard was used for frying as well as for flavoring soups and stews, and for any application needing fat--although in some areas bear fat was used for frying.

• Cows were used for milk, cream, and butter, and oxen were work animals; neither were killed for food until they were too old to be serviceable. Game was plentiful in the form of wild rabbit, moose, deer, porcupine, squirrel, groundhog, and beaver. Sheep were used mainly for wool, as young animals were never killed while they were still useful, and the older meat was considered too strong and unpleasant to eat. Chicken and geese were the favored birds, along with partridge, pigeons, blackbirds, meadowlarks, wild duck, and seagulls.

• The most common vegetables were root vegetables, such as cabbage and turnips. The greens were mostly wild and included herbs, spinach, and dandelion greens. The blossoms of dandelions were used for wine, and spruce trees and hops were used for making beer. Herbs and plants were used as medicine; those still familiar to us today are mint, plantain leaves, and sarsaparilla. Summer vegetables were corn, beans, and tomatoes; grains consisted of wheat, oats, and barley, although bread products were made mostly from buckwheat. Berries and apples were the main fruits, while maple trees provided syrup and sugar. The abundant fish included herring, cod, smelt, gaspereau, halibut, trout, clams, oysters, and lobsters.

• So while the Acadians applied their food preparation methods to familiar ingredients in their new land, they also used their extraordinary cooking talents and applied them to the many new foods with which they were surrounded. Thus, the tradition continued by using their tried and true cookery style with foods both new and familiar. For nothing was ever wasted in an Acadian kitchen.