Subject: Mardi Gras

From: [email-masked] (Christopher C. Hudson)
Date: Mon, 9 Jan 1995 22:23:01 GMT

Hey Southern cooking fans,
	I would love to know more about the history of cooking in 
New Orleans, specifically at Mardi Gras time.
	Since I beleive that it is soon approaching it would be 
an excellent theme for a party
Please send me any tips , here say, recipes, tales of misadventure,
et al.
	Thanks in advance,
		Woodchuck

	Peppered for posterity!

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From: [email-masked] (Edward J. Branley)
Date: 13 Jan 1995 00:50:39 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>, [email-masked] says...
>Please send me any tips , here say, recipes, tales of misadventure,

Well, Mardi Gras time is actually a lousy time for New Orleans cooking, mainly 
because we're all so busy going to parades, balls, etc., that there's little time 
for preparing anything involved.  Parade food usually means sandwiches or 
Popeye's chicken.  I did an article for my mailing list on this, and we've got a 
bunch of stuff on the mail-server.  Send a message to:

[email-masked]

with the following in the body:

INDEX

and you'll get back the file list.  We've got discussions about restaurants, 
restaurant reviews, cooking threads, and recipes there.  I'm in the process of 
putting it all together for a Web site that ought to be up and running next week 
(if I can figure out routing with Windows NT).  

Anyway, rather than just say "read the stuff I've already written," I'll throw 
out one important tip:  make sure you're aware of the difference between Creole 
and Cajun cuisines.  Creole is what New Orleans is all about, while Cajun is the 
culture/lifestyle/cuisine/etc. of the Acadian people who fled Canada and 
re-located in southern Louisiana.  Creoles are New Orleanians of 
French/Spanish/African/Caribbean descent.  Chefs like Paul Prudhomme have gone a 
long way to popularize Cajun cooking, but it's a misnomer to say that New Orleans 
is a good place to get Cajun food.  With the exception of a handful of Cajun 
restaurant's (K-Paul's, Alex Patout's, Mulates, Michauls), restaurants here tend 
to be Creole-French or Creole-Italian.  We use these terms because (particularly 
in Creole-French places) the menu may read like a French or Italian restaurant, 
but the food will often come to the table prepared quite differently from what 
you'd expect in another city.  This is the New Orleans influence on the food.

The other interesting thing to note about New Orleans cooking is that there isn't 
much of what is known as "soul food" here.  Creole cooking crosses racial lines 
in a big way, and black and white folks alike eat the same things here.  The kind 
of cooking you see in black households in Memphis, Jackson or Atlanta doesn't 
happen here.  We all eat red beans and rice, crawfish etouffee', fried seafood, 
etc.

I'll probably pick up a King Cake tomorrow for a client's office.  The King Cake 
is probably the one food item most closely associated with Carnival.  I just 
wrote a big article on king cakes that I posted to rec.food.cooking, but I'll be 
glad to forward it to anyone who missed it there.

I'd better stop for now before I get too long-winded.  I may make my living 
writing about computers, but I do all of the cooking in the house... :-)

-- 
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