New Orleans is a gourmand's dream.
The
food , commonly defined
as
Creole , is a spicy,
substantial - and usually very
fattening - blend of French,
Spanish, African and Caribbean
cuisine, mixed up with a host of
other influences including Native
American, Italian and German. It
tends to be rich, and fragrant,
using heaps of herbs, peppers,
garlic and onion. Some of the
simpler dishes, like red beans and
rice, reveal a strong West Indies
influence, while others are more
French, cooked with long-simmered
sauces based on a
roux (fat
and flour heated together) and
herby stocks. Many dishes are
served
étouffé ,
literally "smothered" in
a tasty Creole sauce (a roux with
tomato, onion and spices), on a
bed of rice. Note that what passes
for
Cajun food in the city
is often a modern hybrid, tasty
but not authentic; the
"blackened" dishes, for
example, slathered in butter and
spices, that were made famous by
chef Paul Prudhomme in the 1980s.
The mainstays of most menus are
gumbo - a thick soup of
seafood, chicken and vegetables ( gumbo
comes from the Bantu for okra, a
prime ingredient) - and jambalaya
, a paella jumbled together from
the same ingredients. Other
specialties include po-boys
, French-bread sandwiches crammed
with oysters, shrimp or almost
anything else, along with spicy
sauces or gravy, and muffulettas
, the Italian version, stuffed
full of aromatic meats and cheese
and dripping with olive and garlic
dressing. Seafood is
abundant and can be very cheap.
Along with shrimp and soft-shell
crabs, you'll get famously good oysters
; they're in season from September
to April. Crawfish , or
mudbugs (which resemble
langoustines and are best between
March and October), are served in
everything from omelets to
bisques, or simply boiled in a
spicy stock. To eat them, tug off
the overlarge head, pinch the tail
and suck out the juicy, very
delicious flesh.
Finally, European-influenced
New Orleans has always been the
American city for coffee ;
drunk in copious amounts, fresh,
strong and aromatic, and often
laced with chicory, it's been a
big part of life here since long
before Seattle got trendy, and
locals drink twice the national
average.
