Added: 05/19/2006 |
Basic Elements of Southern FoodsThe important distinction is that Cajun cuisine arose from the more rustic, provincial French cooking adapted by the Acadians to Louisiana ingredients, whereas the cooking of the Louisiana Creoles tended more toward classical European styles adapted to local foodstuffs.
Starting in the 1980s, Cajun influence became important, with a national interest in Cajun cooking developed. Well, the main dishes of Southern foods are Beignets, jambalaya, Shrimp Creole, Boudin, Tasso, the Poboy, red beans and rice, and hush puppies.
Hearty, rice-based jambalaya is a classic among Southern foods. It is loosely based on Spain's paella, although in practical terms the national Southern foods probably closer to chicken and rice (arroz con pollo) but can include practically any combination of fowl, shellfish or meat. In fact, jambalaya Southern foods contain ham, hence the name of the dish (ham in Spanish is jamon). Jambalaya is a flexible workaday dish that carries with it an added level of informality, as it is less susceptible to culinary improvisation of southern foods. The meaty ingredients are sauteed with onions, bell pepper, and celery, and cooked with raw rice and water into a flavorful mix of textures.
Rice is an vital and essential part of southern foods, there is practically no dish not followed by it. Whether you're digging into a tangy chicken sauce piquante (spicy tomato-based stew), and earthy boucherie reintier de cochon (pork backbone stew), or a traditional Monday helping of slow-cooked red beans, the bowl or plate will start off with a healthy scoop of rice with a few hush puppies tossed in on the side.
When a meal represented by southern foods doesn't come wrapped in a crunchy poboy roll it is served on a bed of white rice. Many signature dishes from both the Creole and southern foods are inseparable from the low-maintanance grain. So, such a big role of the grain in southern food is supported by the fact, that Louisiana rice consumption is considerably higher than the rest of the nation, and even rivals that of some Asian countries. So strong is the local rice culture!
But the use of the pepper is does not yield to the rice consumption - in fact, there are no southern foods without hot pepper or some spicy sauce. The successful transplant from elsewhere in the Americas, the hot pepper is cooked in the vinegar-based hot sauce that is a standard seasoning in the Southern foods tradition. It is usually a fermented mix of peppers pods, salt and vinegar, having departed from the standard red-pepper variety in recent years.
The third basic column on which the southern foods rest is seafood, to be exact is crawfish.
It is everywhere- throughout the Southern foods region, you will see its bright red, beady-eyed visage staring at you from billboards and tourist brochures. Resembling tiny lobsters, crawfish grow wild in the freshwater wetlands of Louisiana and, through water farming, provide the state with a profitable industry. If you will not take an opportunity to taste this delicacy of southern foods, your culinary experience will be incomplete- southern foods are unimaginable without crawfish dishes.
Not so much a dessert as a round-the-clock breakfast specialty akin to the common doughnut - flat squares of dough are flash-fried to golden, puffy glory, dusted liberally with powdered sugar, and served scorching hot. Good any time of day, southern foods have always something to offer to any gourmet.
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