We've been home from New Orleans for four days now and we are still eating our delicious pralines we brought with us. I brought some home to distribute as souvenirs to my two office co-workers, the perfect taste of sweetness of New Orleans. Now, Bruce and I are planning our Super Bowl party with a New Orleans theme since the game will be played there. We saw the Super Dome when we were driving to and from the airport as well as lots of signs about it like "Expect Mayhem!" (since it's also during Mardi Gras)
We've been thinking of all the food we want to have at our Super Bowl party that will remind us of this beautiful and historic city.
Pralines
Pralines are a popular Southern candy that actually originated here. It turns out that the French settlers brought the recipe to Louisiana where both sugar cane and pecan trees are plentiful…makes sense. Pralines have a creamy consistency, similar to fudge and I've noticed while we were there that they come is all flavors according to your liking, like chocolate.
Roux
This is a sign from my favorite kitchen shop I found in the French Quarter and I thought it was catchy name. Apparently, roux is a part of the classic creole cuisine of Louisiana. (It is an equal mixture of flour and fat - I usually use butter - used to thicken sauces) The classic creole cooking method uses oil whereas in Italian cooking they use butter. The french use roux in three of their classical sauces of bechamel sauce, veloute sauce and espagnole sauce. I knew it was a french thing, but I kept hearing about "roux" when we were there, so now I know it is also a popular creole thing! It's used to thicken gumbos, etouffees (like the Crawfish Efouffee we had when we first arrived here) and stews.
The Hurricane
This is a popular drink in Louisiana and we decided it's going to be our featured drink of our Super Bowl Party this year. We made sure we stocked up on the mix while we were there. There is a variation of the Hurricane drink called the Cat 5 or Category 5 Hurricane. Bruce tried one.
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It's even stronger than the Hurricane. It's half margarita mix and I really could not even drink it. I'll stick to the Hurricane.
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King Cake
Another thing you see all around town are King Cakes. These are cakes associated with Mardi Gras that are made with twisted bread similar to that used in brioche, topped with icing or sugar and colored with the traditional Mardi Gras colors of purple, green and gold. The cake has a small trinket (often a small plastic baby, said to represent Baby Jesus) inside and the person who gets the piece of cake with the trinket has various privileges and obligations like being the one who hosts the next Mardi Gras party or who makes the next King Cake.
Po-boy
This is popular sandwich in New Orleans made on French bread and usually fried seafood. Other versions use hot or smoked sausage, ham and cheese, or hamburger. The original was roast beef with gravy. The story goes that in 1929, the streetcar drivers went on strike. Two brothers, Bennie and Clovis Martin, who were former streetcar drivers had opened a restaurant earlier called Martin Brothers' Coffee Stand and Restaurant in the French Market in 1922. They took up the strikers' cause and created an inexpensive sandwich of gravy and spare bits of roast beef on French bread they would serve the unemployed workers out of the rear of their restaurant. When a worker came to get one, a cry would go up in the kitchen "here comes another poor boy!" and the name stuck, eventually becoming "po-boy". I like that story.
Tabasco Sauce
I also did not know that Tabasco sauce was from Louisiana until I started seeing Tabasco being sold everywhere. They even have shops that sell only Tabasco sauce and related items.
Apparently, Tabasco sauce has been around since 1868 when a banker moved to Louisiana and began distributing his sauce to family and friends in cologne bottles from a New Orleans glassworks. It was in these bottles that the sauce was first commercially distributed. I always did like those little bottles of Tabasco sauce which I've thought are so unique and cute. Originally, all Tabasco peppers were grown on Avery Island in Louisiana. Now, there are various locations in Central and South America but a small crop is still grown there. The peppers are handpicked and each worker carries a little red stick to determine the ripeness of the pepper. Peppers are compared to the stick and if they do not match the red color of the stick they are not harvested. The peppers are mashed and mixed with vinegar and salt, the salt also comes from Avery Island which has many salt mines. I'm suddenly interested in putting Tabasco sauce on my food now.
Bread Pudding
After all that Tabasco sauce, you must have something sweet like pralines or bread pudding. We noticed bread pudding was on all the menus for dessert. This is a Southern dessert along with pecan pie. We had it a couple of times and it was very decadent. There are a lot of versions, no fixed recipe but it's usually made with stale or leftover bread and some combination of milk, eggs, sugar, syrup, dried fruit, cinnamon, nutmeg, mace or vanilla. It tastes like custard. It often has a sweet sauce of some sort, such as a rum sauce, caramel sauce or whiskey sauce and served warm in squares. You can't go wrong with this dessert.
With all this delicious food, our Super Bowl party is sure to be a success this year. After eating our way through New Orleans, I think we have a pretty good idea how to make our party a true Southern experience.
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