Cajun Food Where You Find It
Cajun French: l’ecrevisse (l’a-kru-vees) – crawfish
Crawfish is a staple in south Louisiana. It may be a lowly crustacean to most people, but to Cajuns it can bring a dish to new heights. This dish is one of those. Adding crawfish cream sauce on top of smoked salmon is a dish made in heaven. This cream sauce is good on almost anything.
Mais C’est Bon!
Enjoy!!
Continue reading “Crawfish Cream Sauce over Smoked Salmon & Greens”Cajun French: la tarte (la tart) – pie
Fennel made its appearance at the Farmers Market this week and Laurie was very excited. We like to use the entire plant and are always looking for different ways to prepare the fennel. After much discussion, we decided on a fennel pie with shrimp and other vegetables.
Mais C’est Bon!
Enjoy!! Continue reading “Fennel Pie”
Cajun French: le melon doux (lu m’lon doo) – watermelon
Watermelon and shrimp – two of our favorites. That said, it took John a moment to agree to use them together in a dish. Laurie was ready in fact she is always up for a combination of foods. Once John agreed we took to the kitchen and salad making. As usual we wanted to give the dish a Cajun flair so we introduced Cajun olive oil and local honey along with cane vinegar. The ingredients were purchased at our local farmers market with the mint coming from our herb patch.
Mais C’est Bon!
Enjoy!! Continue reading “Watermelon Salad with Grilled Shrimp”
Cajun French: la chevrette (la shuv-ret) – shrimp
Pasta is a staple in our pantry and we are always looking for ways to make a pasta dish interesting. What was to be just another tomato sauce and pasta evolved into a dish with depth of flavor. There was fresh corn in the refrigerator so that went in. Laurie had Kipper Snacks for lunch and one was left, so it was mashed and into the sauce it went along with red wine. The sauce is full of flavor with a depth of richness.
Mais C’est Bon!
Enjoy!! Continue reading “Shrimp Pasta”
Cajun French: la moutarde (la moo-tard) – mustard
Fresh Louisiana wild caught catfish – nothing like its sweet taste. We purchased catfish from Outlaw Katfish at the Red Stick Farmers Market and were ready for some of that sweetness. We wanted to try something different and our herb garden was calling us. Fresh tarragon and Creole mustard – yes! We made a paste using the mustard as a base and rubbed one side of the fish. The fish was served with our Rice with Broccoli Flowers.
Mais C’est Bon!
Cajun French: la patate (la pa-tat) – potato
Potato Salad – picnics, family dinners, comfort food. That’s Potato Salad.
How about potato salad with a twist? Instead of using just white potatoes, include equal amounts of sweet potatoes for a flavor twist. This is a very fresh tasting salad that pops in your mouth.
We had boiled shrimp that we added to the plate and wow what a meal!
Mais C’est Bon!
Cajun French: la prune (la prūn) – plum
Most of our recipes are made from “starch”, but sometimes we have prepared items that must be used. We do not like to throw out anything including prepared foods. In walks Pesto and we must use it somehow, somewhere, in something, etc. The pesto had already been used on pizza, but we still had half a bottle left. Shrimp was on the menu and the pesto became a marinade. The blending of flavors became a simple supper of shrimp with fresh plum and avocado. This is a great summer evening meal!
Mais C’est Bon!
Enjoy!! Continue reading “Pesto Shrimp”
Cajun French: l’orange (l’ō-ronj) – orange
A small bottle of Sweet Roasted Garlic Balsamic Dressing was hanging out in our pantry. We weren’t sure how we would use the dressing. Flash forward, on the table in our fruit bowl was oranges and avocados while in the fridge we had cooked shrimp, roasted corn and roasted garlic. It was coming together. We decided to build a citrus salad with shrimp.
Mais C’est Bon!
Cajun French: le jardinage (lu jar-deen-aj) – vegetables
Pizza has the reputation of high fat, high calorie food. Because of this pizza is something we enjoy yet rarely indulge in. We had a whole wheat pizza crust and were trying to decide what to do with it. Grilling is a favorite way of cooking for us and so Grilled Pizza was on the menu. Not only grill the pizza but also grill the vegetables that would go on the pizza. This process is a labor of love and does take some time, yet the end product is worth every minute of preparation and cooking. We took what would have been high fat and calorie and made it healthy.
Mais C’est Bon!
Cajun French: la chadiere en fonte (la shō-dee-air en font) – cast iron pot
Crawfish boils are a staple of south Louisiana. Any given weekend during the Spring and into the Summer, pots are boiling and “mudbugs” are crawling. Once boiled and eaten, generally there are crawfish remaining. For us that is part of the boil, leftover boiled crawfish for future dishes. This past weekend was no different, we had a boil and had boiled crawfish leftover. In fact we had enough crawfish left to prepare three dishes; one of which was a potato crawfish Galette. Unfortunately, we did not have potatoes left over so we used new potatoes purchased from the Acadiana Farmers Market in Lafayette (another blog post). This is an easy dish to prepare, slicing the potatoes is the most time consuming part.
Mais C’est Bon!
