I've been in Cajun country for seven hours and already I have eaten handfuls of cracklins, stuffed myself full of
boudin
, practically drunk a bowl of gumbo-and been called "baby," "darlin'" and "hon." I love this place! Please don't stop feeding me pork and calling me pet names!
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I'm here on a culinary tour sponsored by the Louisiana Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism and everywhere we go, people are thrilled to see a dozen food and travel writers. Much like New Mexico, Louisiana's economy depends on tourism; but when Hurricanes Katrina and Rita blasted through, this vital industry was devastated. This afternoon the mayor of Opelousas, Donald Cravins Sr., a handsome and charming former state legislator, told us point-blank: We want you to write about us so people will come here and spend money.
And hey, every small town wants that, right? Especially a town that took in tens of thousands of refugees from back-to-back natural disasters.
Opelousas is three hours northwest of New Orleans, located in what's known as the "Prairie Bayou," a part of the state commonly overlooked by tourists who flock to NOLA for Mardi Gras, get drunk and leave without seeing anything beyond Bourbon Street. But this here is the heart of Cajun country, a destination any true foodie should have at the top of his list of domestic destinations (second only to Santa Fe, of course).
If you love pork as much as I do, then you, too, will find your soulmates among the Cajuns. Earlier this morning we stopped at Billy's Boudin, a squat, unassuming building with a drive-up window through which locals can pick up a few pounds of
boudin
or delicious cracklins.
Boudin
is a type of soft, coarse sausage made with pork and rice, and spiced liberally with red chile (known here as red pepper). It's sold in long, half-pound links or rolled into orbs the size of racquetballs, battered and deep fried. Oh yeah, it is as good as it sounds. Billy's sells as much as 1,000 pounds a day.
What these folks call cracklins would be familiar to most New Mexicans; we call them
chicharrones
. With layers of juicy meat interspersed with ribbons of decadent fat, they are just as terribly delicious (and terribly fattening) as our own snacks. The only difference is that Billy's cracklins are bigger-1- to 2-inches square-and dusted with salt, black pepper and "red pepper." The salty, hot cracklins had my parched lips begging for a beer, but it was barely noon and we hadn't even gotten to lunch yet!
Speaking of lunch, I had crawfish. Did you know it's crawfish season? Sure, crawfish grow wild all over the US, but in Opelousas they're farmed, like salmon or shrimp-only not really at all like salmon or shrimp. Catfish live in rice fields; during the summer and fall, when the rice is growing, it's too hot for the mudbugs, so they burrow into the soil (which helps to aerate it). After the rice is cut, and the weather cools down, the crawfish emerge and feed on the stubble left in the fields.
At the Palace Café in Opelousas I ordered the crawfish platter, which came with tiny, crispy fried crawfish tails and homemade tartar sauce, a cup of thick, rich crawfish
étouffée
and a big bowl of dark crawfish bisque. At $14.95 it was the most expensive thing on the menu. And the most delicious. (Yes, I dug my fork into everybody else's food!) For dessert, we sampled another local specialty, bread pudding redolent of almond paste.
Later we stopped at Targil Seasoning and Butcher Supplies, where you can buy your own bright orange stickers that advertise buffalo-"buy 1 get 1 free!"-or Cajun Sausage. But Targil is best known for its custom blends of sausage spices, a service that the company provides mostly to sausage makers looking for ultimate consistency. The whole visit made me hungry for more sausage, something I thought was impossible after my huge crawfish feast.
For dinner I found myself at the Steamboat Warehouse in Washington, La., a town on the old steamboat route between St. Louis and New Orleans. The chef, Jason Huguet, came to our table for a chat and, after a little prodding, told us the story of how he'd started out as a busboy. Seeing some innate potential, the former owner of the restaurant taught him how to cook, then suggested an irresistible deal: The owner would send Huguet to culinary school if he'd agree to come back and spend several years cooking at the restaurant. Needless to say, Huguet agreed and today, at the age of 32, he owns the place.
Many of the stops on our tour today are on one of the seven Louisiana Culinary Trails, a brand-new state program designed to promote the state as a vacation destination for foodies. Wouldn't it be interesting to set up something similar in New Mexico? Just think, you could start down in Hatch, drive around the chile fields, stop at a few wineries, drop into Albuquerque for a Frontier roll, then hit two (or 20) places in Santa Fe and eventually wind your way (and your expanding waistline) to Taos. Are you listening, Department of Tourism?
For more information about Louisiana Culinary Trails, go to
.
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