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Aug. 21, 2007 My cookbook collection includes ten of the Cajun/Creole kind. By far the best, the most interesting, and the most historically important is a facsimile of The Picayune Creole Cookbook, second edition, written in 1901. A modernized version has been written, but it's not as good, the editor having inexcusably dropped historically important recipes upon her own questionable whims. The Picayune Creole Cookbook, compiled and written by some anonymous newspaper journalist, consists of recipes for both working class families and extravagant, "recharche`" tables. The people in New Orleans of the nineteenth century ate tastier and healthier food than what most modern day Americans eat. There's an emphasis on salads, the writer claiming the Creoles ate salads sometimes for all three meals. It was from this cookbook that I learned how to properly dress a salad, expanding the uses of a good basic French dressing to cold cooked vegetables such as cauliflower and lentils. In the summer the Creoles even ate cold cooked okra in a vinagrette. A basic meal of the working class was a soup or gumbo course, a salad, and a grillade with a side of red beans and rice. For breakfast they might have a grillade with hominy. A grillade is a round steak cut into a four inch square, seasoned with salt and cayenne, and smothered with tomato and onion. Oysters were popular. There are thirty-two recipes for the chewy bivalve and almost all eleven gumbo recipes call for the liquor of the oysters, if not the meat itself. The gumbos then didn't call for such a heavy roux as modern day ones, unless that step was omitted from the cookbook for one reason or another. A secret trick perhaps? Or maybe the writer assumed everyone knew that first you make a roux? The most unusual gumbo (at least by modern standards) was the cabbage gumbo which was "a favorite of all the Creole children." Apparently, kids back then relished the various bean and cabbage dishes because that quote is found throughout the book. Undoubtedly, a diet of beans and cabbage is much healthier than a Big Mac and fries. A chapter on rice has several jambalaya recipes and pork was the meat of choice--fresh, smoked, and/or transformed into sausage. The kinds of sausage made in the nineteenth century were far more varied than just the famous Andoullie which the book disparages. Chaurice (pure pork), saucisses (beef, pork, veal), saucissons (pork, beef tenderloin!), boudin (blood, pork fat), and boudin blanc (chicken, pork, cream) were the sausages they preferred. The French Market offered a greater variety of meats and fishes and even produce than modern stores. They had everything from mutton and veal to rice birds, wild ducks, and guinea hens. They weren't limited to a few kinds of flabby farm raised fish but could choose the then bountiful sheepshead, red fish, pompano, and flounder. No other cookbook ever written probably has a recipe for stewed pigeon decorated with boiled crawfish. I've never seen pigeon in a modern store, and the quality of the crawfish flown in from Thailand is unspeakably bad. By 1900 pate` de Fois Gras was only available in cans but the writer recalls an old French woman who up until the Civil War raised fattened geese in small cages for their livers. Despite the lack of air conditioning, the Creoles ate soups at every meal during the summer, and the book distinguishes between bullion, consomme`, and a pot au feu. Perhaps the most delicious summer soup, one I've tried and recommend, is a beef rib, corn, and tomato soup. For bread they ate the basic French loaf, but also whole wheat and corn and biscuits. One cornbread recipe is particularly satisfying. Beaten egg whites were folded into boiled cornmeal in a loaf pan. The bread's fluffy like a sponge cake. One kind of biscuit I'd like to try but requires too much labor is the beaten biscuit. The cook beat the biscuit dough for an hour, thus making the finished product airy and light without chemical or yeast leavening. I suspect this kind of biscuit, though delicious, became extinct shortly after slaves were emancipated, and the people found it easier to just mix in baking soda. ------------ About the author Mark Gelbart: My book, Talk Radio, is a black comedy about a radio talk show host who gets kidnapped and psychologically tortured by a loser. http://www.authorsden.com/marksgelbart Email: agelbart@aol.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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