Kitchen and Culture

As I am packing up  to hit the road on a fact finding mission for the next issue of Louisiana Kitchen it struck me: I am doing EXACTLY what I have always wanted to do. Near the beginning of my "career" I was a regional grunt for both Time magazine and The New York Times. This means I was the unfortunate soul who received the telephone calls at 2 am with instructions to get my ass out of bed and do things like drive into hurricanes or cross state lines to investigate trail derailments. I roved around the region and discovered all sorts of interesting things but nothing so fascinating as the cultural mishmash we have within the boundaries of Louisiana. There was born my desire to conduct a thorough, ongoing investigation into Louisiana's cultural gifts.

I have also been a lifelong participant in and admirer of the culinary arts.

Due to reasons far too complicated to get into here, I had a very complex, not very happy relationship with my mother. She died when I was 18, resulting in an even more complicated, past-tense relationship.

However, I do have a few memories of her that can make me smile. Among them is her cooking. She was patently horrible in the kitchen; this resulted in my starting to cook out of self defense when I was about 6. But that, too, is another story, one  with the end result of my nagging tirelessly at my 15-year old daughter, Cecilia, to observe closely and learn to cook at least a handful of dishes. The horrible cook gene skipped a generation, leaving me unscathed, but it may have picked up again in my daughter. I am uncertain; she has 0 interest in learning to cook anything beyond store-bought cookie mix so I have no idea whether or not the potential for a respectable etouffee lurks within her. 

I have always loved festival food.  Some of my best childhood memories revolved around my grandparents’ hometown, Carbondale, PA and the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, a quasi-religious affair where burly Italian-American men pulled a float a mano through the narrow streets like bridled horses, the float carrying a statue of the Virgin Mary and her live female attendants who would collect the dollar-bill offerings of the acolytes who lined the streets and pin them to the colored streamers attached to the statue.  Behind the float was a makeshift brass band and the legions of the faithful who followed, as the rest of us -- the elderly, the children, and the less devout -- looked on and offered encouragement and refreshments.  After a long day in the sun, the street pageant gave way to

The weekend after next my family will be entering a Quack Pack in the 3rd Annual Rubber Duck Derby. For the event 15,000 rubber ducks will be dropped into Bayou St. John for a race to the finish line where four lucky ducks will win fantastic prizes:

1st Place – Choice of a Chevy Sonic or Ford Fiesta courtesy of Banner Ford and Chevrolet
2nd Place - $1,000 Rouses gift card
3rd Place – Dinner for 10 at Zea Rotisserie & Grill 
4th Place – Luxury suite for 20 at a New Orleans Zephyrs game

Dr. Jessica B. Harris
On June 8 from 6 – 8 p.m. , the Historic New Orleans Collection will host an opening reception for Creole Sweet, a forum on pralines and their spinoffs,featuring culinary historian Dr. Jessica Harris of Dillard University’s Ray Charles Program and Institute for the Study of Culinary Cultures. The day-long forum will feature talks and panel discussions on the vending, production and consumption of the quintessential Louisiana candy and its cousins. The culinary journey will wend its way from Mexico to Jamaica, from Puerto Rico to Louisiana, and into praline-loving households worldwide.

Taste Buds Management of New Orleans, has been selected as the 2012 Restaurant Neighbor Award Winner in the mid-size business category. The Restaurant Neighbor Award was created by the National Restaurant Association (NRA) to recognize restaurants that exemplify the industry’s philanthropic spirit.

After back-to-back tornadoes hit Alabama and Missouri in 2011, New Orleans-based chefs Greg Reggio, Hans Limburgh and Gary Darling launched Three Chefs One Mission. Remembering the help they received after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, these restaurateurs wanted to respond in kind.

Leah Chase," The Queen of Creole Cuisine," has been selected as a 2012 Faces of Diversity American Dream award winner by the National Restaurant Association (NRA). The award recognizes those who have achieved the American Dream of entrepreneurship in the restaurant industry. In addition to the award, a $2,500 scholarship was given to a student in their honor. Mrs. Chase is the figurehead of Dooky Chase Restaurant in New Orleans. The NRA, in partnership with PepsiCo Foodservice, created the Faces of Diversity awards program in 2007.

This is a really cool thing for New Orleans. On Friday of this week from 1:30-4:30 Woldenberg Riverfront Park will be the site for the battle between eleven well-known Louisiana chefs, each of whom will be paired with a culinary specialists (military speak for chef)  from each of the visiting tall ships currently docked at the Port of New Orleans. Teams will compete in the use of fresh Louisiana seafood.

The star-studded culinary cast will include emcees Chef John Besh, Chef John Folse, and Louisiana Seafood Marketing and Promotion Board Executive Director (and my friend) Ewell Smith. Confirmed judges include Louisiana Eats! famous food expert Poppy Tooker (another of my good friends) and Rouses Supermarket Head Chef Jack Trueting.

The chef contestant line-up reads like a who’s who of chefs:

After having been locked up in my office for weeks I am looking forward to getting out and rejoining society this weekend.  And, while I really do not care at all about the NCAA Men's Final Four, other than that the presence of the games is a HUGE coup for New Orleans, I am very excited about the Big Dance Party on the Mississippi River at Woldenberg Park, even if the line-up is weird and all over the place.

Congratulations to the chefs and restaurateurs of Lafayette for being named Tastiest Town in the South by the readers of Southern Living magazine. It's well-deserved. Look for a feature story on the culinary delights of the town in the April edition of Southern Living—a tribute to the Cajun underpinnings of the cuisine.

Last year, Rand McNally's "Best of the Road" named Lafayette the best small town for food in the U.S.

Take a food tour here, and let us know your favorites.