Ragin’ Cajuns
We went out for cajun and creole tonight, and I have to say, it’s a very unusual cuisine. I’m quite fond of it, but it certainly reflects the peculiar characteristics of the Louisiana region — it’s an odd combination of styles. You get the latin style, with the heavily-seasoned mixed vegetables and rice, topped with mixed meats, but it’s crossed through fancy French cuisine at odd angles. The result is menu descriptions like this:
A delicious spicy combination of crawfish tail meat, shrimp, red peppers, yellow squash, broccoli, green onion in a lobster brandy cream sauce. Served with rice over a puff pastry.
You see what I mean? There’s all this brightly coloured spicy hoo-hah, and it’s accompanied by a brandy cream sauce and served over a puff pastry. It’s just about the weirdest combination of styles I can come up with. It is also, however, really good. Really good. And that restaurant in particular was excellent (which I’m sure will be highly relevant to my mostly-west-coast-and-international readership); it’s not a fancy white-tablecloth place, but the diner ambience and the blues on the radio seems to fit the cuisine better anyhow.
