“Where y’all at?” – the Louisiana Swamps

Logan helps Boo with pudding

In southern Louisiana, when someone asks you: “Where y’all at?”, they are asking how you are doing?  At the moment, we’re doing just fine.

On Friday night, we went to the New Orleans Cooking Experience – a five-hour course where you get to learn four classic Cajun dishes and then enjoy what you have cooked with other participants at the dinner party that follows. We learned that the secret to any Cajun dish is getting the roux right. Roux is basically flour cooked in oil until it is a dark caramel colour (“the colour of the bayou after heavy rain”), and then enhanced with onions, celery, green capsicum, salt, cayenne pepper and garlic. The roux is the starting point of most Cajun dishes and it is amazing how different they all taste despite having the same base.

Beignets for breakfast - a New Orlean's treat!

Our teacher was a woman named Janice “Boo” Marcomb, who when she is not cookin’, she’s shootin’, crabbin’, or fishin’.  Boo is the real McCoy when it comes to southern Louisiana cuisine and life on the Bayou.  Widowed at a very young age, she was forced to earn a living as a restaurant chef in the French Quarter of New Orleans to support her two young daughters, cooking the way her Mama and Grandma taught her. Boo taught us how to make a chicken and sausage gumbo, rosemary prawns, crawfish stew and loaf, and a pecan and bourbon pudding.  After the practical hands-on demonstration, we got to enjoy the meal in the dining room of the historic Creole mansion (circa 1870s) where the cooking school is located. The other two couples who attended the course on the night we went were both professional couples from New Orleans, and it was a great night to learn more about real life in New Orleans and how the city is still recovering from Hurricane Katrina now more than 10 years later (only about two-thirds of the population before Katrina has returned).

Swampy backwaters of Louisiana

Saturday morning in New Orleans begins with chicory coffee and beignets – delicious deep fried pastries covered in icing sugar – at a local café in the French Quarter. The weather here is much warmer than anyone expected for this time of year, so we found the local Gap store and picked up three t-shirts each for Daren and  I, and two shirts and two shorts for Logan,  outlaying less than $120 for the lot (tip: Come to the US with empty suitcases – the shopping is very good). At lunch, we headed out on our New Orleans swamp tour – a lovely afternoon on a boat drifting around the Louisiana backwaters. Logan got to hold a baby alligator and throw marshmallows at the larger ones in the water (even the reptiles in the US have a sweet tooth it seems). On the way back, we stopped off for a look at the NASA base and a disused space shuttle.

The baby 'gator on our swamp tour

Saturday was St Patrick’s Day here and the French Quarter was awash with thousands of people dressed in green, drinking green beer, and dancing and singing in the street. Logan thought it was great to follow the parade along Bourbon Street and wave to all the people lining the balconies who throw down coloured beads to people below. He amassed quite a collection of beads before we headed home.

St Pat's Day in the French Quarter

Logan with his collection of parade beads

We continue to eat amazing food – shrimp po’boys  (baguettes filled with a delicious black pepper flavoured prawn filling), Cajun crabs legs, and jambalaya.  Daren is keen to give the swamp chicken (i.e. alligator) a go before we leave so I will let you know if it really does taste like chicken!