Jambalaya, one of Louisiana’s iconic dishes

There are two things you ought to know if you are going to New Orleans. How to pronounce the name and knowing the difference between Cajun and Creole.

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We are leaving Memphis and heading south on Interstate 55. We are driving straight through Mississippi, only stopping to eat and fill gasoline. After some hours the dull highway landscape changes. From out of nowhere small huts on tiny islands unfold in what seems to be wetland. In front of us a giant lake appears. The Interstate does not abide, but continues straight ahead. Suddenly the road grows tall feet. We are crossing the lake on the numerous pilings that make up one of the longest bridges in the world. Lake Pontchartrain, a road sign declares. We are soon there. NOLA. New Orleans, Louisiana.

New Orleans and Paris

I have prepared myself for the journey. Read about the history, Hurricane Katrina and the kitchen of New Orleans. I know this where you find a culinary pride and a unique cuisine the same way you will encounter in other food cities like Paris, Mexico City or Bangkok.

Saveur Magazine characterizes New Orleans as the country’s best food city. But there is more. At home there are two books in my bookshelf about the world’s culinary capitals. Side by side there is one about Paris and one about New Orleans. Little New Orleans with its barely 500,000 inhabitants until 2005 and big Paris with its 10 million people. They have both contributed to the world’s culinary heritage. How can such a little city make such a big contribution?

La Nouvelle Orleans

New Orleans has been called the most European and most Caribbean of all the American cities. But it is also a southern city with a history of sugar and slaves. New Orleans or La Nouvelle Orleans was founded by the French in 1712. Already in 1762 it was ceded to the Spanish. It was and is a city of stark contrast. It was in New Orleans the first opera in America was raised. From the onset New Orleans was based on slavery as the French made sure ships filled with African slaves arrived. Here the country’s largest slave marked took place. Tremé just north of French Quarter is the oldest Afro-American neighbourhood in the USA, home to jazz and Louis Armstrong.

Germans, Irish and Italians arrived in big numbers in the 18th and 19th century. French Quarter was nicknamed Little Palermo due to the influx of Sicilians. One of their grocery stores, Central Grocery founded in 1909, is still run by the same family. Some of the most recent immigrants to arrive in New Orleans were refugees fleeing the Vietnam War. In Louisiana they encountered something familiar; rice paddies and former French colonial rule. New Orleans also has a close kinship with the Caribbean, especially Haiti. Haiti or Saint-Domingue was once a French slave colony. In the aftermath of the Haitian Revolution slaves, former slaves and slave owners fled the island and headed for New Orleans. The Caribbean influence is reflected in music, architecture, second lines, voodoo and one of the most cherished dishes, rice and beans.

Sleepless in New Orleans

We check in at the Hotel Richelieu in the French Quarter, or Vieux Carré. I open the door to the balcony, and stare at a long communal balcony in wrought iron. This is one of those moments where you find yourself at the place you only before have known through pictures and dreams. It looks like it is raining because the glass on the balcony door is soaking wet, but it is only vapour due to high humidity. From the balcony I get a good look at the old and worn buildings of the French Quarter dating back to the 18th and 19th centuries. Just like in Oslo, this is a city with just a few tall buildings. New Orleans is so filled with food culture and history. How can I savour all of this? I want to cry. I am only here for two days.

French Quarter in New Orleans

French Quarter at night

Creole cottage, one of the many types of architecture in New Orleans

New Orleans has the largest collection of antebellum archicture in the USA, ie. houses dating to the period before the Civil War. Ante means pre and Bellum means war in Latin

Beignets at Café du monde. The café opened its doors in the 1860s. And has ever since been the place for café au lait and beignets. The latter is always served in pairs of three

Snoball, a kind of granita (shaved ice) with flavoured syrup. A tradition brought to New Orleans by the Sicilians

New Orleans is a tropical and humid city that reminds you of the Caribbean

The Storm we always feared

When you arrive in the French Quarter, little reminds you of what happened August 29, 2005 when Hurricane Katrina hit the city. Most of New Orleans is situated 2 feet below sea level, and 80 % of the city was flooded. In areas such as the Lower Ninth Ward water levels reached as high as 13 feet (4,5 meters). Hurricane Katrina, or the Storm, was a man-made disaster. The levee system broke down due to lack of maintenance. What then unfolded is hard to comprehend. People lost their homes. They drowned in their attics. For six weeks the city was evacuated. Anarchy and looting was the order of the day. People did not know what they came back to. And many never returned. The population decreased from 480,000 to 360,000. Those who ventured back home met the stench of their refrigerators with rotten food. The streets were filled with cemeteries of duck-taped refrigerators.

Oysters and cocktails

Today there is a different smell in New Orleans. The smell of oysters. I have a reservation at Acme Oyster House. I have never tried oysters before, but this is the place to try it. The love for oysters is another thing people from New Orleans share with the French. Here it is savoured raw on top of a saltine with horseradish and hot sauce, charbroiled or deep-fried in the poboy sandwich.

As a first-timer in New Orleans I have to fall into some of the tourist traps, like rushing to Bourbon Street and try the overtly sweet Hurricane with rum and grenadine. New Orleanians however prefer other drinks in a city known for its cocktails and liberal alcohol laws permitting drinking in public with to go cups. Until recently you could also buy a drink at so-called drive-through daiquiri joints. Two of the cocktails of New Orleans are Brandy Milk Punch and Cajun Bloody Mary. The Brandy Milk Punch is like a dessert cocktail, made with brandy, cream, syrup and nutmeg. It that’s too overwhelming try the Cajun Bloody Mary: Vodka, tomato juice, mustard, garlic, lime juice and Tabasco all adorned with okra.

Crawfish and rice

They say people in Louisiana eat everything that doesn’t eat them first. Don’t be too surprised if alligator, turtle or frog appear on your menu. However, New Orleans is first and foremost a seafood town, and a town that loves its rice and beans on Mondays. New Orleans is surrounded by and established on water: the Mississippi River, Lake Pontchartrain and the Gulf of Mississippi. No wonder seafood is such an integral part of life. All the wetland is beneficial if you like crawfish and rice. Louisiana is one of the largest producers of rice and the largest producer of crawfish in the USA. In the 1970s and 80s farmers started to use rice fields as ponds for the crawfish making, making these mudbugs more available. But the successful story of crawfish farming is threatened by the salty sea. In the past 75 years the coastline of Louisiana has eroded the size of Delaware.

Not a city in which to be careless

New Orleans is not a safe city. Along with Mississippi and New Mexico Louisiana is among the poorest states in the USA, and New Orleans is one of the most dangerous cities in the country in terms of murder rate. To quote Lonely Planet: ”New Orleans has a high violent-crime rate; it’s not a city in which to be careless.” The boundaries between safe and unsafe, do not necessarily follow boundaries of neighbourhoods, but streets. This is a city where you literally have to be street smart.

Dazed and confused

Staying here makes me dazed and confused. What looks like the sea is the Mississippi. Bourbon Street reminds me of the worst of Amsterdam. The restaurants in the French Quarter look French with their uniformed waiters, white tablecloths and dressed up guests. The receptionist at my hotel talks like she is a New Yorker, but she has never ventured outside Louisiana. The weather and flora is so tropical you could easily close your eyes and pretend you are in the Caribbean. In the bars they serve one the of quintessential English cocktails, the Pimm’s Cup, but the English never settled in this part of America. And one of the things I associate the most with the USA, the ubiquitous international chain stores, are not present.

The greatest confusion of them all, of course, is the difference between Cajun and Creole. Both can trace their origins back to France, but in two different ways. They vary in time and geography. One is the food of a city, the other is country food.

Creole cuisine

Creole is the cuisine that has evolved in the city of New Orleans, reflecting the people who have settled there over a period of 300 years. The Creole cuisine has a lot in common with the French cuisine, but borrows elements from other cultures too. It could be cayenne from the Caribbean, okra and rice and beans from Africa, tomatoes/canned tomatoes and pasta from Italy and paprika from Spain.

Looking at it politically you might say the cuisine of New Orleans is a result of inequality. New Orleans was a divided city with a slave-owning aristocracy where the slaves, both Native Americans and Africans, worked in the fields and in the kitchens. Some known Creole dishes are Trout Amandine, Oyster Rockefeller and Bananas Foster.

Cajun cuisine

The Cajun cuisine on the other hand was born in rural Southwestern Louisiana. This is where French Catholics fled after the British conquered Acadia (Acadie) in Canada in the 1750s. The people from Acadia were called Acadians, in which the word Cajun derives. Cajun food is the food of refugees, one pot wonders made with what was available in the swamp, be it alligator, squirrel or crawfish. No slaves were forced to work in the kitchen. Rice and pork are of utmost importance, and everything is utilized, from pig’s feet to its blood in sausages (boudin rouge). Starting in the 1980s, Cajun cuisine has acquired international fame due to chef Paul Proudhomme, and the two kitchens cannot be separated like water and oil.

Most of the French refugees who were later known as Cajuns have never been to France, and they lived a quite isolated life until the 20th century. Today they speak a French dialect called Cajun French, and the heart of Cajun country is Lafayette. Donald Link, prominent New Orleans chef and a native of Southwestern Louisiana, describes his Cajun roots this way: ”It is a land where any given gas station sells tasso, andouille, hogshead cheese and smoked pig stomach.”

Jambalaya with the holy trinity

Jambalaya – a common thread

The most characteristic dishes of Louisiana, gumbo and jambalaya, belong to both kitchens. Jambalaya resembles the Spanish paella and was originally a frugal Cajun dish made with what was at hand. Like paella jambalaya is food made in large skillets enough to feed a crowd, and served at festive occasions such as Mardi Gras. If it is brown, i.e. without tomatoes but with andouille, game or chicken, it is Cajun. If it is red, i.e. made with tomatoes, it is Creole.

What forms the basis of jambalaya and a whole range of dishes in the Creole and Cajun cuisine, is the holy trinity. Consisting of chopped onion, celery and bell pepper (paprika) this is the Louisiana counterpart to the French mirepoix, the Spanish sofrito and the Italian sofritto. The flavour is further enhanced with garlic (often called the Pope), thyme and bay leaves.

According to Tom Fitzmorris, New Orleans’ most renowned food critic, Creole is the oldest comprehensive regional cuisine in America, recognized as a thing apart in the late 1800s, when the earliest Creole cookbooks appeared. “It had a French face, a Spanish soul and African hands. Soon it would get an Italian heart and a Cajun smile.”

I left New Orleans the same way as I came. Over Lake Pontchartrain. Eastbound. From the Interstate I get a glimpse of the empty shells in Lower Ninth Ward that were homes until Katrina. The beauty of New Orleans is sad and brutal at the same time. Still, I can’t wait to get back, and now I know how to pronounce the name. It ain’t Noo Or-LEENS, honey, it’s N’Awlins.

Note: I visited New Orleans in the autumn 2010.

Red Jambalaya served with crusty bread

Jambalaya (makes 3-4)

Cooking oil
2 onions, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
3 celery sticks, diced
1 big bell pepper, diced
3 big tomatoes, diced
1-2 sausages (preferably andouille, but chorizo will also do)
4-5 chicken thighs
200 g shrimps
600 ml water
250 g long-grain rice (but I have to admit I like to use short-grain risotto rice)
2 bay leaves
3 scallions/spring onions, sliced
leaf parsley
lemon
2 tbs cajun seasoning

1. Heat oil in a wide frying pan. Sauté the sausages and chicken until nicely coloured, about 5-10 minutes.
2. Now it is time for the holy trinity: Add the onion, garlic, celery, bell pepper and Cajun seasoning and fry for 10-15 minutes until the onion is softened.
3. Add the rice and fry for another i 1-2 minutes.
4. Add water, bay leaves and diced tomatoes. Cook until the rice is done.
5. Right before serving, add the shrimps and scallions. Adjust the seasoning with salt, pepper and lemon juice. Garnish with parsley.

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The post Greetings from New Orleans appeared first on Nordic Diner.

Brownies with salted caramel sauce and sugared pecans.

How to make brownies with salted caramel sauce and pecans on the side.

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Baking powder, flour, eggs and sugar. This is what we are taught most cakes need. But not brownies. Brownies chooses its own road. It does not want baking powder and is not fond of flour. Instead it helps itself with some extra sugar, steals some chocolate and flirts with Peggy Pecan.

Brownies are ubiquitous, but not all brownies are brownies. Some are fudgy chocolate cakes. In my opinion brownies should be a mix between chocolate cake and cookies. They should not be too dark, and they should contain so much sugar that the edges are slightly crispy but still moist and chewy on the inside. If you decrease the amount of sugar (and believe me I have tried) it will turn into a chocolate cake, not brownies.

The hardest thing about brownies is bake it just right. Long enough to avoid a mud cake, short enough to avoid it getting dry. In this respect, lots of sugar come in handy. The rich amount of sugar makes it more difficult to bake the brownies dry.

My version of brownies is pretty childish and becomes even more childish when served with ice cream, caramel sauce and pecans. If you want to make an easy dessert easier, skip the brownies and just serve ice cream with pecan nuts and caramel sauce. It is still a dessert that will haunt your guests. Buy the ice cream but make the caramel sauce yourself.

The rule of making your own caramel sauce is a spoon of butter and twice as much heavy cream as sugar. Drizzle the sauce on top of the ice cream while still warm. Also, you can easily substitute the flour with gluten-free flour. Brownies is one of those cakes that easily bares the transition from gluten to gluten-free. And the cake is also suitable for those allergic to nuts since the nuts are served on the side.

The cake is suitable for those allergic to nuts since the nuts are served on the side.

Brownies (makes 4-5)

150 g / 5,3 oz butter
50 g / 1,8 oz dark chocolate (70 %), chopped
200 g / 7 oz sugar
2 organic eggs
75 g / 2,6 oz flour
2 tbsp cocoa powder

1. Preheat oven to 175C/350F. Melt the butter in a pan. Remove from the heat and allow to cool. Add the chopped chocolate. Stir until blended.

2. Whisk eggs and sugar until pale and fluffy, then add the melted chocolate and butter. Fold in sifted flour and cocoa powder.

3. Pour the batter in a small pan with parchment paper. Bake in the oven in the lower position for about 25-35 minutes. In contrast to other cakes, brownies should not come clean when you insert a skewer in the center of the cake. The skewer should come out with wet crumbs.

Salted caramel sauce

40 g / 1,4 oz sugar
100 ml / 3,4 oz heavy or double cream
1 tbsp butter
1/2 tsp flaky salt (e.g. maldon sea salt)

1. Place the sugar in a heavy-based pan and shake the pan so the sugar distributes evenly. Let stand on medium heat until the sugar melts into a light brown caramel. Have patience and do not stir. It may take about 5-10 minutes for the sugar to dissolve. Keep your eyes on the pan the whole time. When the sugar first starts to melt, it will turn from brown to burnt in just a few seconds.

2. Right after the sugar has turned brown, add the cream and stir well. The caramel will first harden and splutter. Keep cooking while you stir until the caramel has melted. Remove from the heat, add the butter and salt.

Sugared pecans

A generous handful of pecans
1 tbsp icing sugar
1 tsp water

1. Heat a frying pan on medium heat and add the pecans. Toast the nuts for about 5 minutes while you shake the pan often. They are finished when they start to smell.

2. Add the icing sugar and water, shake the pan well and remove from the heat.

More sweet delights?

Roasted plums with cookie topping
Cupcakes three ways

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Potato and beet chips with Cajun spice

The ultimate Friday luxury to me is a cold drink and homemade potato chips. The only problem is: How to get the potato chips crispy?

I have made potato chips a few times in my life, but I have always found it difficult to get them crispy. So I had to do a little research, consulting various food blogs and cook books. And frying a whole lot of potatoes. Some recipes give little advice on how to make the potato chips. Some say you have to parboil the potatoes first. Many recipes will state that you have to soak the potatoes in water to get rid of the starch, while a few, namely Andreas Viestad states the opposite. In my experience Viestad is correct. There is no need to soak the potatoes nor parboil them. The most important thing is the temperature when deep-frying.

One of the best things about making your own chips is the freedom to try other vegetables such as beets or sweet potatoes and the freedom to make your own spice mix. I love Cajun food, so here I make a spicy Cajun seasoning to give your potatoes a little kick. Whatever spice mix you use, Cajun or salt only, season immediately after frying as it will better cling to the chips.

Homemade chips, Friday luxury

Cajun spice mix:

1 tbsp salt
1 tbsp sweet paprika
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp onion powder
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp black pepper
1 tsp white pepper
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp dried thyme

If using whole peppercorns, grind them first. Also grind the oregano and thyme. Combine all spices and store in an airtight container for up to three months.

How to make potato chips

1. You do not need special equipment like deep-fryers when deep-frying, a pan will do. A mandoline slicer is neat but unless you want to make potato chips on a regular basis, it is not necessary. A cheese slicer will do the job too, preferably one cutting not too thinly. Never use olive oil but cooking oil that can stand high heat e.g. peanut, sunflower or rapeseed oil.

2. The key to getting the potatoes crispy is frying them on medium heat. If the oil is too hot, the potato will burn. If the oil is too cold, the potatoes will never get crispy or change colour. With the right temperature you are able to fry the potatoes long enough until they are crispy – this happens when they almost stop sizzling! Always fry one potato slice first to check the temperature of the oil.

3. Fry in batches as too much potato slices will lower the temperature. The whole process should take about 5-7 minutes, enough to make the potatoes golden and crispy.

4. Immediately when finished, leave the potato chips on a paper to absorb the oil and sprinkle with the Cajun spice mix.

Safety rules when deep-frying

1. Always use the rear cooking zone of the cooktop in case the pan should tilt.
2. Fill the pan half way up or less with oil because the oil will bubble and rise during frying.
3. Keep the lid close by. Never use water in case of fire – use the lid.
4. Keep water away from the pan and do not fry vegetables with remains of water. Water will cause the oil to splutter.
5. Never leave the pan unattended when deep-frying.
6. Keep children and others out of the kitchen.

Why not serve the chips with a drink?

Nordic mojito with blackcurrants
Ginger lemonade with lime and passion fruit

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Strawberry milkshake.

Strawberry milkshake made with fresh strawberries and vanilla ice cream is a real treat in the summer.

The Norwegian food writer Henry Notaker once said “Sugar is the Americans’ favourite spice”. I guess he had ketchup on his mind, but you could also add marshmallows in the fruit salad or frying bacon with sugar to make candied bacon. Then there is the love of ice cream. Serving strawberries with ice cream to make milkshake instead of strawberries and cream. Putting ice cream in soda drinks. Having cookie dough or brownies in the ice cream. I might as well admit it: I want it all! When I first arrived in the U.S. I bought the biggest cookie I could see.

But there is another America. Such as the Creole kitchen of New Orleans, the Tex-Mex kitchen of Texas, soul food of the Afro-Americans  or the super food of California. America has small villages like Woodstock where the only supermarket is organic and tiny  seafood restaurants on the coast of Maine serving chowder (soup) and lobsters. You think of fast food? I think of slow food. Barbecued ribs roasted for more than 8 hours. And the very best ice cream from Ben & Jerry’s, ice cream that has been fair-trade for decades.

If you leave out the ice cream, you get the liquado. This is the Latin-American type of milkshake, only healthier. Made only with milk, fruit and sugar, liquado is closer to the name – milkshake!

American food is the ultimate comfort food

And the ultimate comfort place is the diner with its most celebrated beverage: The milkshake. Like the milkshake that has existed since 1900, my journey also started long ago. I do not know when but sometimes in my childhood, a desire coming from the American films I watched on television. One of them being the Thorn Birds, an American TV-series from 1983 starring Richard Chamberlain. I sent him a fan letter, receiving a signed photograph. I did not know at that time that he was gay (well, I did not know that I was either).

But it was still years before I could go to there myself. I had to turn 30 years old. But then I really did it. Landed on American soil at JFK, New York and finally saw the skyline of Manhattan. It was the summer of 2001 and two months before the towers of World Trade Center were to collapse. I made it to the bookstore on the ground level of WTC, inhaling the views from Brooklyn Bridge and having lunch in Central Park. Then taking the bus up north to the little village of Woodstock, forever associated with hippies and the Woodstock Festival that actually took place in White Lake in the neighbouring county. Here I ate my very first American cookie at the café Heaven and got married, before jumping on the train to go, like so many before me, west. To San Diego, Santa Monica and San Fransisco. Dreaming the California dream.

Later I have come back twice. The second time a journey by car from New York to Southern Florida. The third time driving from Memphis to New Orleans to New York. Most of the time I have had decent or wonderful meals. Be it in a backyard in Brooklyn, in an ice cream parlour in Kingston NY, in a live blues club in Memphis or at home as a guest.

The milkshake was invented around 1900 with its predecessor dating back to 1885.

Strawberry milkshake (makes 4):

1 punnet strawberries (500 g / 17 oz strawberries)
4 large scoops of vanilla ice cream
200 ml / 7 oz milk
2 tbsp sugara (optional)

1. Wash and hull the strawberries and pat dry. All ingredients should be cold, so put the strawberries in the freezer for an hour.

2. Assemble the strawberries in a large blender. Add the milk and blend well. Add the ice cream and blend until smooth.

Music: Chris Isaac.

Also with strawberries:

Eton mess, my English summer flirt
Panna cotta with strawberries

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