What is Creole cookery?
Classical French cuisine combined with equal parts of Spanish and Anglo-Saxon classical cuisine.
Herbs and spices from France and Spain coupled with seasoning learned from the Choctaws and Chickasaws
The ingenuity of the Acadians (Cajuns) with the exotic taste and magic seasoning power of the African cook using nature’s own foods wherever they were to be found. From these we have the jambalaya, court bouillon, red beans and rice, grits, grillades, pain-perdu, coush-coush, caille and gumbos.
Voila! Creole cookery! whose tenets are economy and simplicity governed by patience and skill to produce a subtle, exotic, and succulent cuisine recognized throughout the world; a cuisine which stands apart from all others.
In the course of Louisiana history great chefs and restaurateurs arose who created dishes destined to become famous among gourmets of all nationalities. Their cardinal rule was to mate meat, fowl, fish, or game with the fruits of the fields and woods currently in harvest. To do this they evolved five requisites for Creole cookery.
1. THE IRON POT - handed down from ancestor to ancestor
2. THE BROWN ROUX - blend of butter, flour, and stock used as a base for gumbos, stews, vegetables, fish, and fowl
3. THE STOCK - in which they used materials others threw away…all game, fowl, fish meat leftovers, bones, carcasses, shells, skins, giblets, etc.
4. HERBS AND SPICES - French, Spanish, Indian in origin interpreted by Negro cooks who gave Creole cookery its exotic, distinctive flavor
5. ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES - exhaustive use of all known European grapes combined with knowledge of wild grapes learned from the Indians.
Originally, Louisiana pioneers used only sugar rum in food but time and historic
migratory changes added the use of whiskies, brandies, wine, etc and that alcoholic beverages should be added to the food after the heat has been cut off. The Creoles devised wines and liqueurs from almost anything from which juice could be extracted. From fermenting cane juice comes Vin de Canne. Watermelons, pecans, geraniums, oranges, pineapple, rice, strawberries, kumquats, guava, figs, plums, and pomegranates were all utilized.
It is to the Creole ingenuity that we attribute the creation of the cocktail-an Anglo-
Saxon version of the French word coquetier or egg cup in which an apothecary served
a combination of brandy and bitters as early as 1793.
Despite the fact that Creole table service is formal and food customs still reflect the
eating habits of the vieux carre (old French-Spanish quarter), Creole menus are surpris-
ing. There is an absence of conventional entrees, and the novice gourmet will be intro-
duced to a variety of Creole delectables.
Salads are most important in this cuisine.
Creole side dishes are prepared with great care and kept in a bain-marie (a roaster-like pan filled with hot water) to retain flavor.
Desserts are exotic trifle, such as ambrosia.
In fine, no discussion of Creole cookery could be complete with out mention of that
small black café noir, coffee essential to every Creole meal.
