Cajun Food Where You Find It
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 salade (la sal-ad) – salad
Growing up among fields of sugar cane in south Louisiana we are always interested in local products made with sugar cane. Steens, famous for their pure cane syrup, makes cane vinegar from their cane syrup. The vinegar has a light sweet aftertaste and adds a unique flavor to this dressing. This dressing is great with tomato and red onion salad, potato and dill salad, and just about any other salad you prepare.
Mais C’est Bon!
Cajun French: l’écrevisse bouilli (l’ā-krū-vees boo-ee) – boiled crawfish
Crawfish boils bring family and friends together to enjoy the bounty of south Louisiana. Every Cajun family has their own “special” boiling recipe and most are willing to share to prove it’s the best! Besides the enjoyment of the boil itself, one of the best parts is the left over crawfish. Most families plan their boils so there is crawfish left to incorporate in other dishes. Our Saturday afternoon boil was no different and we had crawfish to make our Crawfish Boil Fritter. This is a sweet savory dish and makes a great start to any meal.
Mais C’est Bon!
Cajun French: le cachat (lu ka-sha) – squash
While traveling we see many varieties of fruits and vegetables not available in Louisiana. One such was the Delicata Squash we purchased at the North Platte, NE farmers market. As we normally do with most of our fresh vegetables, the Delicata Squash was grilled using olive oil and salt. We enjoyed it, were glad to have tasted it and added a new vegetable to our food regimen.
What do we see at the Red Stick Farmers Market in Baton Rouge, LA this week but a Delicata Squash – what a surprise. The farmer called it Sweet Potato Squash; no matter the name we had to have it. This time we decided to roast it with fresh sweet red peppers, onions and leeks. We gave the dish a Louisiana spin by using Steen’s Cane Syrup and Creole Mustard.
Interested to know why it was called Sweet Potato Squash, research ensued. We found the name came from the pulp tasting somewhat like a sweet potato. Also the rind is edible which gives another dimension to the squash. While researching we came across an article by “What’s Cooking America”, stating that the Delicata Squash was first introduced in New York City in 1894 and was popular through the 1920’s. Once vegetables began being transported from one area to the other, the Delicata became unavailable due to its thinner more tender skin which was not suited for transportation and storage.
Now with the popularity of farmers markets, vegetables like the Delicata Squash are available and enjoyed once again.
Mais C’est Bon!
Cajun French: la sauce aux tomates (la sos ō tō-mat) – tomato sauce
Salmon was the main dish and we were looking for a side. In the frig we found fresh ears of corn, homemade tomato sauce and left over spaghetti – that was a good start. We first decided to roast the corn, then we added the sauce and finally the pasta and a side was born. The salmon was grilled with rosemary seasoned with salt, pepper and lemon juice.
Mais C’est Bon!
Cajun French: la farine de maïs (la far-een du ma-ee) – corn meal
A loaf of cornmeal and corn bread was one of our purchases at the farmers market. We only find this bread when fresh corn is in season, so we purchase a loaf every week as long as it is available. The bread taste fresh and clean and melts in your mouth!
We wanted to make the bread a part of our lunch so the planning was around the bread. Fresh eggplant, sweet red peppers and tomatoes were also some of our purchases and we had marinaded artichokes so a sandwich was born. Add onions and we were set for stacking a sandwich.
Mais C’est Bon!
Enjoy!! Continue reading “Grilled Eggplant and Artichoke Sandwich”
Cajun French: la breme (la brem) – eggplant
écraser (ā-kra-zā) – mash
The eggplant sitting on the counter was begging to be used. Not wanting to prepare in the usual way of smothering we put our creative caps on and went to work. Knowing we were going to serve the eggplant with salmon, we decided on a mash. Salmon has a very mild flavor so we did not want the eggplant to overpower the salmon. By using garlic and mint with grilled onions the eggplant was not heavily herbed. The eggplant taste was predominant and blended well with the rosemary salmon.
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!
Cajun French: le pain (lu pain) – bread
Stale bread is bread pudding in waiting. When bread pudding is mentioned, we think dessert. Recently our stale bread consisted of wheat, French, lemon rosemary, and olive. Thinking of the bread combination dessert was not in the vision. Besides the stale bread, we also had vegetables that were in need of cooking. What evolved was a vegetable bread pudding that became a side dish, part of a stuffing for flounder and used in an omelet.
Mais C’est Bon!
