Please excuse an Englishmans ignorance but please can someone explain what exactly is Cajun food? What are the principal, popular ingredients? And what is a typical popular recipe?
@Babs Hunt cooks a lot of Cajun so she's your best bet and also @Bobby Cole ....since he was a chef and I have heard him mention Cajun food.
To properly answer your question would take pages and pages. That said, much Cajun food consists of seafood, due to living on or near the Gulf Coast and the back-waters of the Bayou country. . But most importantly, Cajun dishes often have a base of dark roux, and a cooked down combination of vegetables called "The Holy Trinity": onions, celery, and green peppers. Lastly, it is the selection of spices and herbs which make up the flavor or Cajun dishes. If a person has not grown up eating Cajun foods, they may find it is a bit of an acquired taste. You will often find the main staples to be: crawfish, andouille sausage and shrimp. And, of course, rice and cornbread.
One thing Cajun food is.......hot. At least that's what I'm told. Can be hotter than Mexican food. Years ago I could've handled Cajun food, but I've heard that a person has to have a "iron stomach" to handle it. Just what I've heard and read. Crawfish Boils and Jambalaya are two favorite Cajun foods. Not into ether or any other Cajun or Southern foods.
Think I'll stop you there. Not too fond of sea food or anything too hot & spicy. Was intrigued though.
My favorite Cajun recipe: Okra and tomatoes 4 slices of bacon, cut up ¼ cup chopped green bell pepper 2 tablespoons minced onions ½ cup chopped fresh tomatoes 1 can (16 ounces) okra and tomatoes, drained 2 teaspoons steak sauce ½ teaspoon of hot pepper sauce (I use Texas Pete) pinch of sugar 1 ½ to 2 cups rice 1-Sauté bacon, bell pepper and onion in a large skillet over medium heat. (I cook the bacon for a few minutes first.) 2-Stir in fresh tomatoes, drained okra and tomatoes, steak sauce, hot pepper sauce and sugar. Simmer until heated thoroughly Season to taste and serve over hot cooked rice. It's soooooo good.
I'm not sure what else would go with it. My Cajun cookbook calls for a lot of rice. I think it's because they grow rice in Louisiana and the Cajuns cooked with what they had at hand.
@Eric Cook did a pretty good job of round-housing the cuisine and what he wrote about it being quite extensive is true. There are no real boundaries to it since there are so many cultural influences involved but let's just say that the base is country food on steroids but it also travels up the culinary ladder equaling that or some ways better than the lighter French cuisine. The Dutch had a huge influence as did the French of course but the local Indians and the slaves from Africa (and elsewhere) were also part of the history. To compliment the Cajun dishes there are the Creole dishes which have a heavy influence of the Spanish which is also married with the local slaves and Indians and their most prominent cuisines. The restaurant that my wife and I owned and one other one I owned and sold some years before I met her were a combination of Cajun and Creole. We normally served (buffet) some type of gumbo whether it was a seafood base or chicken sausage. Red beans and Rice is normally the Monday special because it was the day most Cajun mothers did the laundry but we served it every day. A nice piece of Endouille sausage with that with plenty of Batard bread and butter and everything wrong that went on during the day suddenly turns out right. The granddaddy of all Cajun preparation, Crawfish (or chicken) Etoufee was always on the buffet as well as stuffed crab casserole but we also always had chicken Clemenceau which is named after the first governor of New Orleans. Clemenceau is made with Brabant potatoes, mushrooms, green peas and pimento saute'd in garlic butter and white wine base and placed over a baked highly herb and spice seasoned quarter of chicken. Along with our normal buffet we did have some exotics such as Panee'd frog legs and fried alligator jowls or tail which no real Cajun menu can do without. The bottom line with the whole cuisine is yes, it can be spicy but still, with the right cook at the stove, it's a well balanced herb and spice journey with multiple types meat like pork, seafood, beef, and sometimes whatever the hunter wishes to bring home to mama. It's a journey like none other and a veritable walk through history. Now, I am from the most southern part of Louisiana but @Babs Hunt is from the Lafayette area which is pretty much pure country Cajun. If she does stop in, she might divulge a recipe of two that she makes for her family. But, some Cajun mama's are pretty picky about who they share their culinary secrets with....................dunno.......
@Eric Cook did real good with his quote above in explaining Cajun food. Gumbo, whether seafood, chicken and sausage, or anything else you want to throw in the pot...is one of the most popular Cajun foods. My High School friend's Mom even made a pork chop gumbo one time that was not bad at all. The base of any good gumbo is the roux...a mixture of flour and oil stirred together and slowly browned to the consistancy and color each Cajun cook likes the best. Some like really dark roux's...I myself prefer a nice medium brown color. When the roux is done...you throw the "Holy Trinity" in as Eric Cook told you about and let it wilt. Then you add that roux mixture to a big pot of water and let it simmer down some...once it is where you want it to be...you add your other gumbo ingredients. I would be adding seasoned chicken pieces, smoked and chicken sausage, rotel and chopped okra...and shrimp to mine. Some Tony Chachere seasoning and Gumbo File to taste will top off my gumbo. When done I like to serve that gumbo over rice and with a side of potato salad. Sometimes I even have some garlic french bread with it. Cajun cooking can be anything from barbecue to seafood boils. Cajun cooks like to add a lot of seasoning to their cooking but that doesn't mean it has to be real hot or spicy. It just means we like to as we call it "throw in everything but the kitchen sink." Cajun cooking often consists of whatever we have on hand as we do not like to waste any food. I used to season my cooking really hot and spicy...but as I've gotten older I have toned that down a lot. And I notice many other cooks have too. Cajun food is really delicious and can be really additive too. Cajuns are some of the nicest and friendliest people in the World to me...and some of the best cooks too.
Maybe That's why the Cajun and or the Creole cuisines are so popular. The northeast U.S. has their chowders and boils and the Atlantic Ocean while the Midwest is meat and potatoes. The southwest is influenced by the southern border and the Pacific ocean but Louisiana is well,...... different. We have the Mississippi river, the Gulf of Mexico and the brackish and fresh waters of each bayou throughout the state. So yeah, seafood is a prevalent source of food but we do not limit ourselves to it because Louisiana is an agricultural anomaly unto itself and have access to so many different types of meats. For the lack of a better terminology, we like to excite each and every portion of the tongue. The sweetness of thyme and basil, the heat of cayenne, the rich subtle taste of the marriage of vegetables like celery, bell pepper and onion with garlic cooked in butter or fat and sometimes, a little wine if it's handy. The thing is, we not only use what we have to it's full extent, but it has to be tasted by each different area of the tongue. It's not just a singular taste but several layers of tastes that make our culinary preparations so popular.
The first time I ever tasted andouille sausage was when I was driving through Louisiana many years ago. I stopped at restaurant somewhere in Louisiana, I don't remember where, and ordered something else that was very good. Then the owner asked if I'd like to try some sausage, on the house. It was andouille sausage, and it was terrific. Later, I found it in a store in Texas, where I was living at the time, but the taste was only a hint of what I had tasted in Louisiana - kind of like frozen smelt from a store versus freshly caught smelt from a stream.
I was searching the site for Cajun/creole food threads. This looks like the only one. I’m not a big foodie I guess compared to some but I loved the food in New Orleans. There used to be a New Orleans style restaurant in this area, Copelands of New Orleans, and it was about the best one could hope for around here. They’ve been gone for many years and now my geographic area is a Cajun/creole desert. That’s a shame. I loved the blackened catfish, red beans and rice. I never had one bad meal down there in all the times we visited, many of them were truly outstanding.