My Louisiana Holiday - Days 1-3

My name is Omar. I'm new to posting on mmm-yoso, and I'd like to thank Kirk and Cathy for encouraging me to eat and talk about eating.

Over the holidays, my wife and I spent 8 days in Louisiana, visiting some Cajun friends near Houma (just below Thibodaux); stopped in New Orleans for the weekend; and returned to the bayou country for Christmas. Here's what we ate:

Seafood Gumbo

We arrived in rural Louisiana on Tuesday evening, and weren't in the house 15 minutes when our friend, Mr. Mike, laid out bowls of his seafood gumbo. We were happy to eat it for him. To Louisianans, gumbo is food, party, compliment and favor, and as prepared by Mike, who spent years buying shellfish from bayou watermen, it's a blessing.

Flavored by the "trinity" (peppers, onion and celery), Zatarain's Creole Seasoning®, smoked sausage and sweet Gulf shrimp, oysters and blue crab, Mike's gumbo is one of those dishes that you don't want to fill up on, because you don't want to stop putting that taste in your mouth. My friend, like many Cajun cooks, caramelizes his vegetables to deepen the gumbo's flavor, but doesn't "cheat" the process by adding roux, okra or filé spice. "If you want it thicker," he says, "cook it longer, or add filé from the table." For what it's worth, you can start arguments by passing this advice along to the wrong cook.

Though Mike taught me how to make the dish, I've modified the recipe, so when we get together, we often "discuss" our preferences.

The biggest difference: Mike turns out a pot of gumbo in a few hours; mine takes three days.  Also, Mike uses water; I use seafood stock flavored with toasted shrimp and crab shells. A third point of contention: Mike cooks his shellfish in boiling gumbo broth and serves the dish once they've cooked through. I prefer to pull my pot off the flame when the shellfish go in, letting them cook like pho meats while the broth cools.

More about gumbo:

1. To a large pot of water, add toasted crustacean shells and heads, a few fish heads if you have 'em, bouquet garni, and some carrot and onion; let the stock simmer for several hours, then rest it overnight.

2. On the second day, strain the stock well and bring it to a slow boil. Brown your "trinity" of vegetables well, then add them and spoons of peanut butter-colored roux to the stock to deepen the liquid's flavor. Once it has a savory rich taste and a tiny bit of thickness (think very thin gravy), add browned-off smoked sausage bites (preferably andouille) and shellfish, which can include: sweet Gulf shrimp, crab , small oysters, and, if they're convenient, crawfish tails.  Cut the heat under your pot, let the gumbo cool, then send the whole thing into the fridge overnight.

(n.b. Crab can include cooked claw meat, cleaned raw half-bodies, even frozen scraps from your last crab feast, but it *has* to be blue crab; neither snow, king, Dungeness, spider, rock nor any other type offers the sweet, buttery flavor the gumbo needs. You can buy live, soup-sized blue crabs at 99 Ranch or Vien Dong markets, most of the year-round.)

3. A day or two later, slowly heat some or all of your gumbo and serve it over bowls of rice. For the table, some pepper sauce (I prefer Cajun Power® Garlic Sauce, but Tabasco® or other brand will do), Creole seasoning (Zatarain's® or Tony Chachere's®), and filé spice are appropriate.

Crawfish

Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Mike and his wife, Ms. Ruth, drove us west towards Avery Island, where we intended to visit the Tabasco plant. Instead, we toured the Joseph Jefferson Home (circa 1870), on Jefferson Island. The 22-room mansion, "listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is surrounded by the Rip Van Winkle Gardens ... and features a fourth-story cupola, 350-year-old-oak trees, heirlooms, period paintings, rare Louisiana pieces, and fine examples of American and French Empire furniture."

Along the way, we stopped at Landry's Seafood & Steakhouse (not related to the national chain) in Jeanerette, LA for a bit of lunch. The place was all but empty, and the friendly young woman who served us seemed relieved to have company. We evaluated the lunch buffet, finding little more than fried shrimp and red beans and rice, then ordered from the menu.

Lunch along the highway is a dodgy proposition. Each of us ordered something different, and while some dishes satisfied (crawfish platter), others ranged from disappointing ("stuffed" crab) to roundly rejected (seafood gumbo).

My lunch included: crawfish au gratin (greasy, but tasty), crawfish étouffée (good flavor, but needed spicing), batter-fried crawfish tails (light and not greasy at all), cold crawfish salad (hard to mess up), crawfish bisque (wow...take some of this home!), some onion rings, and a fried crab "finger," donated by my wife. I'd stop for this plate any time I was passing by.

My wife's "stuffed" crab (what we call "deviled" crab on the East coast) looked promising on arrival. The portion was large, but the filling was gummy and over-spiced, and it was served at room temperature. 

The gumbo, as mentioned, was not a hit. I enjoy playing "guess what's in here?" and this dish was too simple: "sip... water... roux... vegetables... shellfish... done." I'd guess the gumbo hadn't cooked more than an hour, and its roux tasted "black" - darkened to a tar-like consistency - a flavor that, like smoke on meat, can be wonderful if it's used cautiously. Maybe the dish would have improved by suppertime, but we didn't stick around to find out.

Landrys Seafood & Steakhouse
20371 Highway 90, Jeanerette, LA
(337) 276-4857

More about crawfish bisque:

This very Cajun dish was traditionally made in late spring, at the end of crawfish season, when friends and family would gather to share the work of "cleaning" lots of crawfish heads and tails and making a very large pot of bisque. Everyone counted on taking home something for the freezer.

Here's a recipe for crawfish bisque from Chef Frank Brigtsen, owner/chef at New Orleans' award-winning restaurant, Brigtsen's, and here's a great article about Chef Frank.

Boiled Blue Crabs

Back home, we talked about the day and old times, and napped a bit; as Christmas vacations went, this one was shaping up nicely. Dinner was a snack of some boiled blue crabs Mike had in the fridge. These were mediums, it not being crab season, but for people who love blue crab, volume can make up for reduced size.

In Louisiana, crabs aren't steamed, they're boiled, which prompted another recurring discussion at the table. He said that boiling gets the spice flavor into the crab meat; my wife (from Philly) and I (from Virginia) said steaming preserves the delicately sweet, buttery flavor of the crab. But, since I've never met a blue crab I didn't want to hit with a mallet, I had this conversation with Mike while plowing through the pile of sooks on the table. Everything you ever wanted to know about blue crab can be found here or there.

Fried Seafood #1

Mike, a big kidder, phoned before my trip began to say he'd run out of fish; if I wanted to do a fish fry while I visited, he said, we'd have to catch them first. I told him I was glad I hadn't asked for hamburgers.

So Thursday was Fishing Day, except it rained so much that we cancelled our trip and went Christmas shopping, instead. At lunch time I suggested Dave's Cajun Kitchen in Houma, a diner Mike and I had visited a year earlier. 

Owner Dave LeBeuf provides what is a favorite sort of place for me: small (maybe 15 tables), Formica floors and vinyl tableclothes, and from the back of the dining room you can see into the kitchen. The place is jammed at lunchtime; businessmen, plumbers, bank clerks and rained-out fishermen all know that Dave's serves up  good food and plenty of it.

Besides salads, gumbos and daily specials, the menu offered lots of platters, including: shrimp, fish, oyster, crawfish, crab and frog legs. I've never tried frog legs. I'm not squeamish; it's just that those things don't have enough meat on 'em to suit me.

For starters, I had a cup of shrimp and okra gumbo.  Oh, that gumbo. It's the only one I've ever seen Mike smile about; the one that made him compliment a waitress, the one he came back for. It had the sweet, smoky, rich flavor you get from mixing with Gulf shrimp and andouille with a well-made roux, and the okra had been cooked down to eliminate the slime.

For my main, I ordered a platter of "stuffed" shrimp and fried oysters, and my wife had catfish and something I've only seen along the Gulf coast: fried crab "fingers". Dave's definitely knows how to fry; the dusting of seasoned flour surrounding each of my bites was perfectly crisp and without a hint of grease, and the fish and seafood each bite contained was moist and intensely flavored.

As good as my meal was, though, I should have ordered what Mike got: an oyster po-boy. Simple in design, elegant in presentation, this sandwich relies on the skill of the baker as much as it does the quality of the oysters and the fryer; great po-boy bread is lightly crusted and yeasty, soft and chewy, and hard to find done right. Dave's does it right.

Dave's Cajun Kitchen
6240 West Main Street
Houma, LA 70360
(near the corner of State Route 24 & Bellaire Dr)
(985) 868-3870

Fried Seafood #2

We took Mr. Mike and Ms. Ruth to dinner Thursday night at Copeland's in Houma (apparently a franchise vs. company-owned). I hadn't been to a Copeland's in years, but the menu included a broad selection of Creole dishes, and importantly, the thick, tender juicy steak I'd been craving for a week.

What a disappointment. My ribeye was thin, tough and fatty and overcooked, and the "caramelized onions" were greasy, slightly wilted chunks of white onion. Usually, I send such a plate back and choose something else from the menu, but since I didn't want to upset my friends' meals, I picked at my food and waited for my wife to get full.

She got the seafood platter, a monster plate of fried oysters, shrimp, crawfish tails, crabcake and catfish served with onion strings, fries, corn fritters and french bread.  I can't say why, but she also got some sort of twice-baked potato that she raved about all evening. I waited her out, then loaded up on "leftover" oysters and crabcake. Copeland's does know how to fry.

Copeland's
1534 Martin Luther King Blvd.
Houma, LA  70360
(504) 873-9600

More about Copeland, the man:

The chain was started by 63 year-old Al Copeland (also founder of Popeye's Chicken & Biscuits), a riotous character famous in New Orleans for: getting rich, going bankrupt, recovering nicely, brawling, getting married a lot, and prompting the Louisiana Supreme Court to rule that he does not have an inalienable right to burn as many Christmas lights as he likes.

Comments

[Carol]

Great first post, Omar! We love crawfish étouffée and wish I was on this trip with you. Darn, now I need to go get some Cajun food...:o)

[RONW]

ditto.

[JennDZ_The Leftover Queen]

Welcome to blogging Omar! I think you are a natural!

Welcome mmm-yoso to The Foodie Blogroll!

[rooney]

absolutely fabulous post. btw, i use frozen okra in my gumbo and its never slimey. heresy or a good tip?

[janfrederick]

Wow! Nice big succulent post! Thanks Omar.

My cousins are crab fishermen near Yorktown. One of my fondest memories was the time I visited them whn I was a teenager and helped them collect pots to raise money to go to Busch Gardens. We pulled pots all morning and then set up the steamer for our own pick of the pots. I must say, that was some deeeeeli-shus eatings. I think we might have had a teeny bit of butter, but that's it. Oh man, I'm tasting it right now.

Oh, and we got a couple of soft-shells and fried those up. Hoo mama!

And to think we traded a boatload of those lovely crabs for a day at an amusement park where we ended up eating amusement park burgers and hot dogs. :)

Thanks again!

[janfrederick]

Oh, by the way, could you tell me a little more about that oyster po-boy? Was that mayo, tartar sauce, or something else? (You gave me my idea for a playoff-watching meal)

Also, does anyone here know a really good place for fresh bread in San Diego? I like the Sorrento European bakery for Bahn Mi baguettes. I trek down to Solunto's for italian bread when the need arises. But how about Po-boy/hero/hoagie/submarine/grinder bread?

[Trent]

Thanks, Omar, for covering Louisiana food with more depth and honesty than Alan Richman did in GQ Nov. `06. Seriously, much appreciated.

[cathy]

Solunto sells par baked large torpedoes{75¢ each/doz for $8.50} and frenchettes {35¢ each or $4/doz} and 1 lb bread loaves {$2.20}, janfrederick. When it is made fresh at home, it is perfect for a po'boy. Point Loma Seafoods sells their sourdough sandwich 'loaf' in store-and that is the same one they use for the fried oyster sandwich (served with only tartar sauce, BTW).{I posted about the fried oyster sandwich at PLSF}
Oh, welcome, Omar-nice post!

[Sandy]

I don't know anything about po' boys but I know something about bread :-) Vien Dong on Linda Vista Road sells freshly-baked demi baguettes. I'm sure they provide the bread to bahn mi places, and I would think the demi baugettes would be the right size for a po' boy.

Thanks for the nice post, Omar! It sounds like you had a delicious holiday.

[Omar]

Carol, thanks for your kind comments. Do you make étouffées? It's a messy, smelly way to spend an afternoon, but man, is it worth the trouble. When I serve étouffée, I also like to make little 1" wide baking powder biscuits ( http://www.recipezaar.com/255251 ) with touches of cinnimon and cayenne added. Also, assuming you're in San Diego county, Where would you expect to find good Cajun food?

RonW, thanks for the encouraging thought that I might be a "natural," but I'm ashamed to admit that while we were in Louisiana, there were several times when I thought I couldn't eat another bite. I sucked it up and chowed down, but my committment was tested. Maybe I should blog about something that requires the ingestion of less oil.

JennDZ, I'm grateful for your kind words. Regarding frozen okra: it's a commonly-used alternative to fresh in gumbos, especially when it's cooked down first, for 10 to 15 minutes, in a bit of oil. No matter: I think that if you like the way frozen works for you, it's the right choice, and screw orthodoxy. I don't cook with the stuff myself; I grew up in a Southern family, confonting okra frequently in fried and stewed form, and frankly, I'd rather swallow worms.

Jan, are you talking about Yorktown, Virginia? I grew up in Loudoun and King and Queen counties. Neighbor! I was never lucky enough to hang out with crabbers, but as kids, we used to tie chicken necks on string and dip in the water by the pier, and pull up crab enough to feed the table. But we kids didn't care much for crab (too much work), so we did this for the fun of catching, then turned over the proceeds to our parents, who rewarded us with burgers, hot dogs, etc. What suckers kids can be!

Mr. Mike's po-boy was "dressed", as is common in Louisiana, with mayonnaise, lettuce, tomato. The bread was warmed but untoasted. The oysters were likely coated with something like Louisiana Fish Fry Products' "All Natural Fish Fry" ( http://www.louisianafishfry.com ) then fried in peanut oil, the fresher, the better.

Bread is tricky. I've been looking for great bread in SD for years, mostly to make cheesesteaks for my wife. It seems to move around: BMH Deli on El Cajon Blvd. to Ralphs to K Sandwiches, and so on. Problem is, none of it is the right light consistency you'd want for authentic po-boys. However, our New Orleans friends Dave and Sharon sheltered here for a year after Katrina (more about them in my next post), and Sharon said she got something close to perfect at Stumps Family Market in Point Loma (3770 Voltaire St, San Diego, CA 92107,(619) 226-9575).

Trent, I'm grateful to you for pointing out the Richman piece ( http://men.style.com/gq/features/full?id=content_5165 ). I hadn't seen it, and though it's a year later, I'll comment on it in my New Orleans post. For the moment, let me say I've found that a key to enjoying New Orleans, something I believe Richman lacked, is selflessness. It's counterintuitive, I know, to think that a place so decadent might be best appreciated by those who adopt an open heart, but it works. Just like in Mexico, and Thailand and Brazil.

Cathy, thanks for the warm welcome. Sourdough in a po-boy, hmm? I couldn't find the PLSF post you mentioned. Did did you try the sandwich, and if you did, did you like it? I like sourdough in general, but for a po-boy, I don't think I'd care for the taste combination or the chewyness of the bread. However, as I said before, screw orthodoxy. If people like a food, they should eat it. (Hey, if no one's using "screw orthodoxy" maybe I'll adopt it as my catch-phrase)

[Omar]

Sandy, the Vietnamese take on sub rolls, the demi-baguette you mention, is the right size but the wrong texture for an "authentic" po-boy. The bread used in the New Orleans area is softer and lighter, almost like a dinner roll, but with more body.

That being said, I rely on demi-bagettes from K Sandwiches for cheesesteaks, crabcake sandwiches, chicken parm subs, and so on. Their bread doesn't go soggy, an important point when you're providing the main course for a Padres tailgate party, or my wife's birthday dinner.

[cathy]

Top left "search" box- just type in "Point Loma Seafoods" or whatever you are looking for. I don't like sourdough at all, but that is how they make their sandwiches. I tend to maybe eat half the bread when I get a sandwich there.

The bread at Vien Dong is great fresh, but is not good the next morning- absolutely has to be convectioned.

I have tended to buying par baked at Solunto and Trade Joe's, just to be sure I have fresh bread at home.

My wording is "there are no rules". You can have your own. ;)

[yummieyummy]

Wow...!!! You don't know how much I love and appreciate this post. Thank you. I enjoy reading it a lot. For the blue crab, I prefer old bay flavor. Steam or boil with old bay, it can't go wrong there.

[Omar]

Hi Cathy,

A search of the site didn't return information for your post about fried oyster sandwiches at PLSF. No matter. I'm still full from last month's eats.

[Omar]

yummieyummy, I'm happy you were so pleased by my post. You're welcome, of course. And you're right, of course, that Old Bay is what crab *should* taste like :) Louisianans use crab boils like Zatarain's®, which are good, but a bit heavy on bay leaf, coriander seed, and other "earthy" flavors for my preference. I mean, we're not making curry here, right?

[janfrederick]

Actually, my cousins live in Grafton. I guess I could have easily said Hampton Roads or something larger than Grafton in the area. I didn't live there, I was just visiting from California. My great aunt made the best shrimp creole when we were there. Actually it was my first, but nothing has measured up to it since. Oh, and that salty pungent virginia ham. Yessssss......

Thanks everyone for the bread tips. Man, we used to live near India street near a commercial bakery. It smelled so good and yet we couldn't go in and buy a loaf. Man!

By the way, the Disney resort is going to build a bakery on premisis. They baked their own bread for years and switched to off site providers a few years back. I don't think it will be open for a couple of years, so if you visit soon, you can compare with their offerings in a couple of years.

[nhbilly]

Geesh the painful reminder that I missed out on when I was in Houston, Tx.

[yummieyummy]

Exactly! Did you get a chance to try Cafe Du Monde? It's one of the best.

[Gumbeaux Gal]

Hey Omar,
I am from a small town near Thibodaux and my sis resides in Houma. I grew up eating gumbo, red beans, fried seafood, etc. Now that I live in San Diego, I use my trips home to fill up on the good stuff (and to carry some La. goodies back home for cooking)!

One of my friends and blog readers who also reads your blog pointed out that both of our "Home Cooking" posts are with regards to Louisiana.

Happy eating, cher!

[Gumbeaux Gal]

FYI, the secret to counteracting the ropey-ness (sliminess) is mixing it with a little white vinegar.