I went to the Farmer's Market

[GoddessOfGuinness]

and picked up this soap that smells wonderful! Its formed around a piece of loofah and it's scented with grapefruit, lime, and lemon. mmmmmmmmm...

Can't wait to get the little one out of the tub! :-)

[trof]

1. Wow, me too.

Got some rattlesnake beans and andouille(sp?)sausage.
About 3 hours ago.

[Kellanved]

2. andouillette?

Yuck, that is on aspect of the French cuisine I never got to like. I've had good ones once, but IMHO it tastes exactly like one expects it considering the ingredients ...


Well, bon appétit!






Edit:

Did some research and Louisiana andouille suasuages are different from the French andouillette. The French ones are sasuages made of tripe; infact they're tripe sausage-casing filled with tripe.

[MojoKrunch]

5. Akshooly

Until recently that was how they made it back home too.

Something about a "clean food act" or "federal law" or some such silliness... no more blood boudin, no more blood sausage, no more tripe andouille.
Now andouille is just really spicy, dense pork sausage.

My dad recalls making andouille... chopping up large intestine, seasoning/spicing it and stuffing it into the small intestine.
Of course this was all they had left from raising a hog and selling the meat to the local butcher.

Other fun Cajun/French food I don't eat... Gog. Hogshead cheese in aspic. Grillades.(actually I eat the gravy over rice or sopped up with some good french bread.

I do, however, miss boudin and conchon de lat.

Sigh... but then that might be part of the reason I was 100 lbs overweight, I suppose.
lol

Mojo

[Shakeydave]

6. Mmmmmmmmmm boudin!

Best meal I ever had. Crawfish boudin, grits and sauteed peppers and onions with a cold PBR!

[GoddessOfGuinness]

8. I guess I've gotta visit the Bayou Country...

I've never heard of any of those dishes except for andouille. It all sounds so foreign to me that I can't even imagine how they must taste.

[MojoKrunch]

9. Well, let me try to explain.

Take everything you've ever heard about how bad some food is for you and leave it at home locked away.
Put on your shorts, a T-shirt and your walking shoes and get ready to sweat like a pig and eat like a fool.
:D

The best Cajun food is the stuff prepared by somebody's fat mama who ain't never heard nuthin' about no "high cholesteral" or "heart disease".
Every dish has a pound of melted butter and roux to go with it.

Cajun food(gumbo, jambalya) is "left over" food... mama served beef, pork and chicken earlier in the week and now she's gotta do something with what's left.
Mostly she adds a whole lotta "flavor". And rice. Plenty of rice.

Boudin is a essentially pork sausage with rice added to it... and plenty of cayenne. It is mostly cooked, but you have to steam it for proper eating.
Some folks get fancy, schmancy with their "fried boudin balls"(just the filling without the casing) or by squeezing the filling out and eating it with a fork.
Mah non.
You cut a link in half and slap that between two pieces of Wonder bread and wash it down with your favorite cold beer.
You have to eat it while it's warm otherwise you can taste the congealing pork fat. Mmmmm.

Gog is a like a cross between boudin and real andouille... a "dressing" stuffed into a large intestine.
Not as spicy as boudin, it has more green and red bell pepper for flavor.

I honestly don't know what hogshead cheese tastes like... I can barely stand looking at it. lol
But IIRC, it is basically the "meat" from a pigs head(boiled off) gound up real fine and mildly spiced with green and red bell peppers.
And then coated in aspic.

Other Louisiana staples... rice dressing or "dirty rice".
Typically chicken livers, green bell peppers and onions... you can make "oyster dressing" by adding a jar of oysters to the mix.

Cochon de lait is basically roast pork.
50-75 lb pig suspended on a vertical roticery between two metal grates and slow cooked until done... some folks add spices and what not, or splash beer on it but all of that is optional.

Boiled crawfish... not just any old boiled crawfish, mind you.
The resturants have gotten damned lazy and started putting the spices on the *outside* of the crawfish after they were boiled.
What crap.
Done properly a "spice ball"(shit load of red pepper, etc. in a cloth sack) is made and added to the boiling pot *with* the crawfish, along with some baby potatoes, corn on the cob and the odd onion.

Damn, I'm making myself hungry.
:D

Mojo

[cally]

10. What a great description of the food

I'm still deciding if I should go out and try to find some or if I just wish I didn't know what the ingredients are. Happy eating!. I'm going to pass on it.

[MojoKrunch]

13. Definitely get a taste of it at some point

I mean it isn't really any different from Braunsweiger(wursts), scrapple or SPAM.
Just spicier.

Oh, and I gave all of that stuff up.(easy to do since I don't live in La. any longer) HA.

That shit'll kill you if you eat it all of the time
But then so will fried chicken, fried seafood and just about everything else that tastes good.
lol
There is a reason La. pretty much leads the nation in heart disease.

I try to eat as much of it as I can when I visit and try not to jones too much.

Oh man... I just remembered my favorite dish as a kid... smothered rabbit with rice and gravy.
::drool::

Mojo

[MojoKrunch]

11. Talked to mom last night

And found out that what we call gog folks in southwest La. call "ponce".
And it is like pork sausage(no rice) stuffed into the stomach, not the large intestine.

And I was right about the hogshead cheese, though most places add/substitute a better cut of meat(boston butt?) instead of the head meat/fat.

Mojo

[xJlM]

14. You're making me hungry!

I lived in Cameron LA in 1981, and it's been near that long since I had good boudin. I always thought it was hog liver, rice, and cayenne made into sausages with actual tripe.

Head cheese, I don't even want to think about. There's lots better stuff to get in south Louisiana. I can remember getting BIG shrimp fresh off the boat for just $3/lb., and fresh oysters (still in the shell) for $5/lb.

[trof]

15. Whose mama you callin' FAT?

;-)
My Cajun mama(in-law) was about average size, but man could she cook.
Crab gumbo, shrimp gumbo, duck gumbo, chicken/sausage gumbo, and rice, rice, rice, three times a day (seemed like). The gumbo was ALWAYS accompanied by potato salad. I think it's a law.
Crawfish etouffe, jambalaya, and oysters ever-which-a-way.

I was an orphan by the time we met, so I called her "Mom". ("Just call me Mom, everybody does.") And my father-in-law was "Pop". Pop made head cheese and I loved it. Kind of a spicy meat aspic. That and a hunk of rattrap cheese with a side of pickled jalapenos from mom's garden (and a few cold beers) was mighty fine. He also took me "oystering" my first time.

Goddess, if you get down that way, I highly recommend a pilgrimage to Avery Island and the Tabasco factory. Stop off in New Iberia and eat your way through town. Don't miss touring some of the plantation houses along the Mississippi.

Anybody want to talk about boneless chickens with crawfish stuffing and turduckens?
:9

[GoddessOfGuinness]

3. What are rattlesnake beans?

I bought a jar of tear-jerker salsa too :-)

[trof]

7. green beans with brown striations

If you squint they look a little like a 6" rattlesnake.

[mlawson]

4. Stopped an one yesterday in North GA.

On our way back from a hike. I bought collards, cowpeas, peppers and tomatoes!! Oh, yeah....

[muriel_volestrangler]

12. So that's a fruit, is it?

Or is it a tuber? Strange farmers you have near you...