The Cajun Chef
Fine Louisiana Cajun Cuisine
Cajuns, the descendents of French Acadians who settled in
southern Louisiana in the 18th Century, eat and cook mostly spicy
but rarely very hot dishes. So just because it says Cajun doesn't
mean it has to make sweat pop out and make your eyes bulge.Cajuns
do like their food well-seasoned, and this seasoning almost
always includes black pepper and cayenne pepper, but the idea
that Cajun food is like regular food with a pound of pepper on it
is a misconception.
Creole and Cajun cooking uses certain specific ingredients and techniques with which you might want to familiarize yourself. Find out what they are, how to make them, where to get them, or how to substitute for them. Using fresh cuts of meat, just off the boat seafood and picked out of the garden vegetables is always best.
Chef Paul Prudhomme, of K-Paul's Restaurant in New Orleans and
a native of Opelousas, Louisiana, can be given a lot of the
credit for popularizing Cajun-style cooking in America.The dish
that became his signature was Blackened Redfish, for which he
created a new, simple but brilliant technique for cooking fish
which involves cooking fish dipped in clarified butter and
sprinkled with Creole seasoning in an iron skillet over
incredibly high heat, creating a blackened crust and preserving
the natural juiciness of the fish. Other great chef's like Justin
Wilson, who appeared on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson,
brought a special brand of humor to cooking and helped further
the 70's and 80's craze for Cajun cooking. Brilliant, innovative
Acadiana chefs like John Folse, Patrick Mould, James Graham and
others are bringing in other ingredients, techniques, and
sophisticated sauces into contemporary Cajun cuisine.
We will endeavor to bring you the best, most popular and tasteful recipes the Cajun/Creole culture has devised.
Add to this a little history and humor for your enjoyment and we believe this will be a website that will keep you coming back for more.
