cajun-food

And as far as seamless fusion goes, Vietnamese-style "Viet-Cajun crawfish boils" were gold simply waiting to be struck. Ready for lemongrass mudbugs?

Commander's Palace has been a New Orleans institution since 1880.[/caption] For fans of Hurricanes and po' boys, any month is a good month to head down to New Orleans. But there's just something about February that makes the Crescent City shine. The temperature starts climbing back toward the 70s (but without that awful humidity), Gulf…

Think of boudin as the down-home Cajun style of sausage. The rice-and-pork tubesteak is native to Lake Charles, Louisiana and the surrounding area. And, it's pronounced "boo-DAN," thank you very much. This pale frank started as a typical product of a boucherie, the day Cajun-French families would butcher a whole pig. Like most of its…

From the local chef bringing modern culinary techniques to classic Creole cooking to the dives and cocktail joints that make up what is easily the country’s coolest bar scene, New Orleans is an incredibly dynamic place that — like any great food city — is constantly evolving. Whether you’re in town for NBA All-Star Weekend…

Molly Quirk is chef/owner of Sips & Bites in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. If you haven't had a thoughtfully handcrafted sandwich in a while, there's no better place to get your fix. She's generously donating a few of her tailgate food recipes to our cause: feeding you during football season. If you're in the mood to put the crab in…

Sure, you’re familiar with Nashville and Atlanta. But what about the smaller southern cities packing just as much flavor? In The Hidden South, Chris Chamberlain takes a look at a region of the South that is most certainly worth traveling to for the food. When most folks think about Louisiana cuisine, New Orleans is the…

I guarantee there is not one of you who, when breading something, hasn't either thought to (or actually gone through with) adding cheese to breadcrumbs. How could it be a bad idea? It couldn't be, and truth be told, I do a ratio of about 1/3 cheese to 2/3 breadcrumbs, with an extra yolk in…

Danny Trace is Executive Chef at Brennan's (same good folks as New Orleans legend Commander's Palace) and says it's turtle soup season! A few words of encouragement... Turtle soup has been served here at Brennan's since it opened 43 years ago. It's by far the most popular dish. You always get praise for certain dishes…

New Orleans chef Susan Spicer has sure received a lot of recognition over the years, from winning the James Beard Award for Best Chef in the Southeast to being inducted into Food & Wine’s Best New Chef Hall of Fame. Among several New Orleans ventures, she currently co-owns Bayona, a nationally acclaimed restaurant that is…

[caption id="attachment_63479" align="alignnone" width="700" ] Clockwise: The oyster bar at Felix's, Coop's Place, an order of Cheddar burgers at Port Of Call, the legendary fried chicken at Fiorella's.[/caption] New Orleans is a fun drinking town, especially with all these great new cocktail bars cropping up. But with a fun drinking town comes the not-so-fun-hangover-morning town.…

When conceptualizing this week's updated hot dog recipes, I tried to think of how the elements of some of my favorite dishes might translate into tube steak form. Jambalaya is a Cajun dish that's really pretty simple: sauteed holy trinity (peppers, onions and celery), andouille sausage and/or other meat and Cajun spices cooked with rice.…

A couple tens of thousands of people – don’t quote me on that number – squeezed in last Sunday to watch Bruce Springsteen belt out bittersweet songs about living hard and staying true. (Janelle Monáe writhed on her stage nearby.) I ducked out from the crowd just before the end of the performance. I had…

I was so excited by the idea of a po' boy on Mardi Gras last week that I forgot about muffalettas for ten whole days. Muffaletta, please stand up. Everyone, a round of applause for the Italian hero of the South. Isn't it lovely? Wave to the crowd, dear. That public apology given, I would…

Welcome to one of the happiest days of the year, if you live in a city with outrageous Mardi Gras happy hours like we do. I'm not going to provide you with a history of the po' boy (streetcar workers went on strike, sympathetic sandwich shop owners plied the po' boys with free food, the…

Last June, Food Republic picked 10 food and drink-related Kickstarter.com projects that we thought deserved funding. Since all of those projects have expired, we’ve added 10 new projects to our existing Kickstarter Gallery. The old projects (slides 1-10) are updated to reflect whether or not they reached their funding goals, while the new projects (slides…

Now when we say blackened, we don't actually mean black. That would mean your catfish is charred, and not necessarily in a good way. Rather, when hot fat meets dry spices, they burn slightly, or "blacken," giving you a great, crisp sear and releasing all the oils from the spices right into the fish. Best…

Few creations in this world are as worthy of Food Republic's Sandwich of the Week as this fried catfish po boy. While we're crazy about all manners of deli offerings, there's nothing quite like the crunch of a lightly toasted sandwich containing something fried. The cool crunch of homemade coleslaw and warm flakiness of tender…

To quote the regional cookbook Louisiana Entertains, “Good gumbos are like good sunsets: no two are exactly alike, and their delight lies in their variety.” All gumbos use a roux. However, in addition to a roux, some gumbos flavor and thicken with okra and others call for filé powder. Integral to Creole and Cajun cooking,…

Don't know your way around New Orleans' storied culinary scene? Our friends over at Uptown Magazine picked out a dozen choice favorites, including these five: Dooky Chase Leah Chase, known as the "Queen of Creole Cuisine," has been operating Dooky Chase since the 1960s and has established it as a staple of New Orleans’ restaurant…