Louisiana – Hungry for Louisiana

Green eats: 30th Annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Baton Rouge

It’s a perfect storm for fun this weekend as Baton Rougeans, starved for spring and warm weather, will come out in droves for the 30^th annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade. That means lots of green beer, backyard crawfish, spent beads, irreverent t-shirts and behavior that gets worse the closer it gets to the end of the route near the Perkins Road Overpass. Some of us claim Irish ethnicity; most of us don’t. No matter, this particular day is one for hitting the pause button on regular life, shutting down streets and relishing the spectacle that is South Louisiana.

And speaking of spectacle, gaudy green foods are required eating. It’s something I’ve mastered by living on or near the parade route for the last 15 years. One of my favorite things to break out is a bottle of Crème de Menthe.

Cajun, Hungry for Louisiana, Local, Louisiana, The Writing Life

Hungry for Louisiana Chapter 1 Peers into Crawfish

This is one of my subjects, Rayne crawfish farmer Aaron Melancon, who was kind enough to let me tag along on his crawfish boat during my book research. You would not believe the work that goes into the painstaking act of crawfish farming. As I write in the book, the crawfish boil might be the epitome of abundance – outdoor tables piled high with steaming mudbugs – but when you see how few crawfish emerge from each trap (relatively speaking), you realize what goes into keeping the region’s rabid crawfish fans happy during the season.

Thank you Aaron for your hospitality!

Hungry for Louisiana, Louisiana, The Writing Life

Hungry for Louisiana the book has been released!

So excited! My book, Hungry for Louisiana, An Omnivore’s Journey (LSU Press) is out this month. You can find it on Amazon or in regional book stores, including large chains and local independents. It’s also in some gift shops and culinary stores, like Red Stick Spice Co. in Baton Rouge.

This was so much fun to work on. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it. The book includes an intro that explores how Louisiana’s food culture was local before local was cool and how there are few places in the world with such intact culinary traditions. Each subsequent chapter peers into a different food or ingredient from the state’s culinary tableau. Discover the quirks and traditions behind crawfish, jambalaya, Creole cream cheese, snoballs, filé, blood boudin, Zwolle tamales and oysters. Meet some of the people who produce these famed eats. This is breezy food writing with a few recipes at the end of each chapter.

Find out:

What Ashley Hansen of Hansen’s Sno-Bliz did when her grandfather’s famed snoball machine was on the fritz…

Why the northeast Louisiana town of Zwolle has a deep and meaningful tradition of tamale-making that is nothing like the Mississippi Delta’s…

Exactly what makes a pot of jambalaya achieve blue ribbon excellence at the annual Jambalaya Festival in Gonzales, Jambalaya Capital of the World…

And lots more.

Please keep coming back to this site for updates, additional material, photos and more recipes.

Thanks for your interest!

Louisiana, Sweet Potatoes, Vegetables

Truly, madly, dirty…sweet potato myths revealed

My mother-in-law, Nan, likes to buy Louisiana sweet potatoes direct from a local farmer, resulting in a large box of spuds that get passed around among my husband’s large extended family. We’ve been well-plied with Beauregard variety sweet potatoes for several weeks now, and each time I go back to the till for more, she repeats the same directive: Keep the dirt on them until you cook them.

Is this true, or just rural myth? I recently asked LSU AgCenter Associate Professor Tara Smith, who studies the Louisiana sweet potato at the state’s research station in Chase, Louisiana, southeast of Monroe. The dirt, Smith says, keeps the sweet potatoes from bruising before use.

“Sweet potatoes are stored with the dirt on them after harvest. They’re not washed until they’re packed and shipped to market,” she says. “If you buy direct from a producer with the dirt on them you can store them in that manner until you’re ready to use them. Really, it is the handling component. They are susceptible to bruising and the more they are handled the more likely you are to encounter losses due to shriveling, bruising and subsequent breakdown.”

So there you go.

The dirt is a sort of protective layer for Louisiana’s favorite vegetable.

And what about curing?

Unlike other fresh picked produce, sweet potatoes have to “set up” before they’re ready to consume, or so they say. True? Yep. Consumers never really see this stage, though. Smith says that sweet potatoes are cured immediately following harvest, a process that involves bringing them into the storage shed and subjecting them to 85-90 degrees F and 90% humidity for 5-7 days. Potato sauna! Afterwards they’re stored at 55-60 degrees also with high humidity. After about 6 weeks they’re ready to be packed and shipped. The curing process quickens the conversion of starches into sugar and makes the spud tastes sweeter. It also begins the healing process of any bruises and skinning that occurred during the harvest operation, and “sets” the skin, allowing the sweet potatoes to be washed and packed with less damage to the outer surface.

As for shelf life?

Sweet potatoes can be stored for a year or longer under the right conditions, making them seasonal in Louisiana year round.

Fresh from a Hessmer, La. farmer, Beauregard sweet potatoes

Lent, Louisiana, Shrimp

Lent: Restraint tastes good in Louisiana

Lent may be the season of restraint, but in Louisiana, it’s become 40 days of seafood-centric culinary creativity. From backyard boiled crawfish to indulgent chef’s specials on Fridays, there’s no shortage of good eats wrapped up in all that contemplation and sober self-sacrifice.

Last Friday — the first Friday of Lent this year, I dropped by Tony’s Seafood in Baton Rouge to check out the action. Even though it was mid-afternoon, the hot food line at Tony’s was still 25 deep. Bummer. I didn’t have time to wait for the fried catfish snack and trio of boudin balls I’d been fantasizing about driving up I-110. “Man. Look at that line,” I said to the guy bagging up my fresh shrimp. And as if it required no other explanation (even at 3:30 in the afternoon) he said, “Well, it is Lent.”

Breakfast, Eggs, Farmers Markets, Louisiana

Editing the Egg McMuffin

It wasn’t that long ago that fresh eggs – the kind with deep golden yolks from happy chickens – were hard to come by. Our farmers market here in Baton Rouge would routinely sell out, especially if you were a sleepy straggler (like me) who liked to get there late. Now it’s much easier. More vendors are selling them at our farmers markets – and probably yours, too. And in many cities, urban poultry is commonplace. I’m usually not without locally raised eggs, and one of my favorite uses for them is in a….

homemade egg McMuffin.

Newer Posts