Hungry Travelers

When it comes to the food vendors at the Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival, the food isn’t all crawfish, but to quote a good friend’s catch phrase, it’s all good. Well, most of it. I’d been given a big buildup from a couple of locals about Cajun pistols or pistolettes, which are buns stuffed with seafood and cheese and then deep-fried. As someone said, “they musta changed the recipe.”

Cindy Harris from Houston, Texas (above) opted for Giant Shrimp on a Stick from the same vendor selling Gator on a Stick (“tender and delicious”). In fairness, I tried the alligator on a stick and found it more tender than most alligator I’ve tried. And, no, it doesn’t taste like chicken. It tastes like alligator.

Food on a stick always does well at outdoor gatherings where few people can get a place to sit. In addition to the shrimp and gator, one vendor had the venerable corn dog (hot dog on a stick dipped in cornmeal batter and deep fried). More popular than all the meat on wooden sticks were the original meat on a stick: both frog’s legs (deep fried) and turkey legs (grilled over charcoal).

Having sampled many of the offerings, I will venture the opinion that the best tasting and probably healthiest options were some of the classics: crawfish etouffée on rice, jambalya, and seafood gumbo. (As the T-shirt says, “All creatures great and small taste better in gumbo.”) But this being the Crawfish Festival, my vote goes to the plates of boiled crawfish. (Watch for a future post on the technique for peeling boiled crawfish.)

By the end of a short work week in and around Breaux Bridge, we the matriculated have been inculcated with the full flush of gracious community, the can’t-help-but-smile chords of a pounding accordion and fiddles, and the feisty spirit of the crawfish (right), which seems to flourish no matter what the world might do to beat him down. (This might be the secret of keeping a French Acadian spirit alive and well in exile from its original homeland. Like the crawfish, they took to the rich swamps and became Cajuns.) So we at the College reached our graduation day as part of the opening ceremonies, where we were presented with cap, gown, and diploma (above).

As the bands began to tune up for the one-of-a-kind Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival, I had the pleasure of meeting Helen and Pete Rago (below) of Covington, Louisiana. They have been coming to the festival longer than anyone can count (Pete admits to being 88, Helen is forever young). No one can even come close to matching their costumes. To honor them this year (they have been Grand Marshals at least once), they were presented with the original painting from which the 2013 festival poster was made. Rock on, Helen and Pete.

Jody Meche is a third or fourth generation fisherman who maintains about 1,000 crawfish traps in the Atchafalaya Basin. He also happens to be a member of the Henderson Town Council and a board member of the Louisiana Crawfish Promotion & Research Board. So even if he can clown around with a grimace as he shows off a prize crawfish (above), he has the bona fides to be taken seriously on the subject of crawfish. And he’s not modest — not even a little bit. “My crawfish are the best tasting crawfish in the world,” he proclaims.

He spent a half day on the Atchafalaya showing some of us in Crawfish College just how deepwater wild fishing is done. Meche fishes a much larger trap than the pond fishermen. His traps stretch 4-5 feet long, which allows the crawfish to crawl to the surface for a sip of air now and then while the trap rests on the bottom.

The landscape where Meche fishes is phenomenally beautiful and productive swamp within the basin. It could be even more productive, he points out, if the powers that be would use the basin for the purpose created by the Army Corps of Engineers – as flood relief. On Thursday morning, there was more than a 20-foot differential between the height of the Mississippi where it can be let into the basin (33, almost 34 feet) and the height of the basin water itself (under 13 and a half feet). To Meche it makes no sense for people all up and down the Mississippi and Ohio rivers to deal with flood water when the river could be lowered by bleeding out some of the water into the Atchafalaya. Another 5-6 feet would restore the basin to its natural heights readily visible as water lines on the embankments.

More water would mean a smoother flow and better oxygenation in the basin. It would, in effect, cover up the channeling effects of the spoil banks left behind by oil and gas exploration and pipeline construction. It would also mean bigger and more crawfish. Of course, it would also make the whole basin into an undisputable navigable waterway. That could call into legal question a number of land claims currently providing outside investors with lucrative oil and gas royalties that would otherwise revert to the state. This is all according to some legal views. And litigation runs by Napoleonic code in Louisiana.

Still, Jody and his nephew Casey Bodoin, running a sister boat, quickly gather two big sacks of crawfish — around 70 pounds. They will make a mighty fine boil come evening. The Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival is about to begin and on the eve of the festivities, all the volunteers who make it happen have a party and picnic on the fairgrounds. We students of Crawfish College are privileged to join, and our crawfish from the trip with Jody Meche are part of the feast. Here Byron Blanchard dumps the just boiled crawfish into a cooler as his son sprinkles them with “swamp dust” – a spice blend that includes salt, paprika, and just a bit of cayenne pepper.

To begin understanding crawfish, it’s worth starting with the culture and harvest. A lot of the Cajun country crawfish business involves growing them in ”ponds” – really flooded depressions fed with bayou water and held in place with an earthen levee. We went to visit Mike Clay’s pond, where he’s been growing and (after a fashion) breeding crawfish since 1985. Shown above is Mike’s pond, with crawfisherman Robbie Guidry getting ready to make a harvest.

Incidentally, Mike, shown here, is also the 2013 Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival king. Crawfish from his pond have also won the festival’s crawfish races for the last dozen years or so. From every haul, Mike selects a few fast movers for training, which is why he has crawfish crawling around on his rubber gloves, as shown below.

Crawfishing is deceptively simple. A crawfish trap is a funnel-shaped wire mesh basket into which the fisherman throws bait – in this case half a small fish. Like lobsters, crawfish are scavengers and they will crawl into the trap to feed on the bait, only to find they can’t crawl out. On Clay’s pond the traps are set on twin posts. The fisherman places a trap on a blank post, then hauls the trap on the adjacent post and dumps the crawfish either into buckets or a sorting table. Here’s a photo of Robbie holding up a trap with a few dozen crawfish inside.

It’s a monotonous task, but the crawfish pile up quickly. On the sorting table they are cleaned of debris (including the fish bones from the bait) and scooted into sacks that end up weighing 35-40 pounds. The sacks are then covered with wet burlap to keep the crawfish cool through evaporation.

Once they are delivered to a processor, that operation will wash the crawfish with clean fresh water before boiling them for a carefully controlled time and then chilling the cooked crustaceans. Here at CJ Seafood, they then peel the chilled crawfish and package the tail meat in vacuum bags for sale. Like the fishing, peeling is monotonous, but the crawfish peelers who do it work swiftly. For what it’s worth, the staff at CJ Seafood pack about 16,000 pounds (that’s eight tons) of crawfish meat a day.

I met Kendall Schoelles around dawn at 14.2 miles west of the John Gorrie Memorial Bridge on Route 30A. (That’s how they measure distances in Apalachicola, Florida.) We drove his pickup down a packed dirt path to a marshland dock, where we boarded Schoelles’ shallow-draft oyster boat. We were headed for the oystering grant that’s been in his family since the late 19th century. The Schoelles family grant used to be 1,100 acres; after government takings, it’s down to 158. That’s enough to keep Kendall and his brother harvesting enough oysters to make a living. Most Apalachicola oystermen, like those pictured above, have to make do with the public bars.

Apalachicola Bay oysters are the pride of the Gulf of Mexico – plump, sweet, and salty. It’s the last place in North America where wild oysters are harvested by hand by oystermen in small wooden boats. It’s back-breaking work, not unlike the small-boat lobstering I used to do in Maine, and I felt honored that Schoelles let me come along to participate, if only peripherally, in this vanishing way of life. Food doesn’t get any more locavore than shellfish from a town’s front-yard bay.

Apalachicola Bay is a unique environment on the Gulf of Mexico, created by an extensive barrier island system at the mouth of the Apalachicola River, which drains much of Georgia and the Florida panhandle. The plankton-rich mix of salt and fresh water creates optimal conditions for oysters. Apalachicola bivalves have always been the premium Gulf Coast oysters, so prized that oysters from elsewhere in the Gulf were sent here for packing so they would be shipped out in crates stamped ”Apalachicola.”

Schoelles revved the engine and we sped through the weeds into flatwater, unable to see more than a few feet in the fog. I asked how he found his lease under such conditions. ”Mostly, I just know,” he told me. ”I’ve been coming here most of my life.” Schoelles has never fished more than two months anywhere else but on his lease. He paused for effect, ”Of course, the last four or five years I use GPS.”

We anchored on a bar and Schoelles got down his tongs, which resemble two garden rakes connected together like a pair of scissors. The fog was starting to lift, and I could see that loons ringed the boat because tonging stirs up the small fish that they like to eat. The chicks were diving feet from the gunwales while the adults kept their distance. Both herring and laughing gulls had keen eyes on the boat.

Tonging is intensely hard work – reaching down to the bars, closing the rakes, and hauling the catch to the surface. Schoelles did it methodically, moving the boat a few feet every few minutes, until we had a huge heap of oysters and other sea life on the deck. With the sun trying to peek through the fog behind him, he seemed to glow beatifically.

Then we sat down for the grunt work. Because Apalachicola Bay oysters are wild, not farmed, they grow in clumps with a slew of other organisms – mussels, clams, sea cucumbers, giant algae, and other creatures I couldn’t possibly name. The oysters have to be separated from all these other objects – mostly by banging on the junctions with a steel culling iron without cracking the shell. All the small oysters must be tossed back to grow. Schoelles held out whelks and starfish to take ashore to die because both are oyster predators.

The cracked oysters (it’s easy to smash a shell by accident) became bird food for the gulls that follow the boat. One laughing gull has been coming to Schoelles’ boat every morning for two years. How does he know it’s the same gull? He doesn’t – not for sure – but the two seem to have an understanding.

The birds of Apalachicola eat well – but then so do the people. For more on where to enjoy the nutty, buttery flavor of Apalachicola Bay oysters, see my profile of three restaurants in the October 28 Boston Globe: “Where to eat oysters in Apalachicola.”

Those of us who aren’t Basque have a hard time imagining just how well they eat. Good food and a love of cooking seem to be central to the culture. When we sat down with Elena and Juan Marí Arzak for the Robb Report story about the seasonal special dish of angulas (see the Dec. 21, 2011 post), they emphasized that love of good food was a Basque birthright that extends to every meal–not just special occasions.

That certainly seems to be true. When we later met professional guide Ana Intxausti Gardeki, she took us to the San Sebastian market and told us all about the various kinds of fish available. (She had worked for a seafood broker before changing careers.) She even gave us a recipe for calamari that she makes at home. It’s a Basque home cooking standard that even superchef Martín Berasategui serves in his restaurants. Ana calls it “Chipirones encebollados,” or “calamari with onions.”

CHIPIRONES ENCEBOLLADOS

Serves 4

Ingredients
4 tablespoons of olive oil, divided
8 spring onions, sliced (shallots will also do)
1 cayenne pepper, crumbled
2 cloves of garlic, minced
32 whole squid, cleaned and cut into tentacles and rings (about 2 lb.)
brandy or Armagnac
1/2 cup of dry white wine
salt to taste

Directions

1. In a sauce pan, mix 2 tablespoons olive oil, onion, cayenne, garlic, and a pinch of salt. Set heat on lowest setting and cover pan. Cook very slowly until the onion becomes golden brown, about 90 minutes.

2. Set a large sauté pan over strong flame and add remaining olive oil. When is it hot, add squid and sauté quickly, about 2 minutes. Add a splash of brandy and set it afire, turning pan to deglaze. Do not crowd the pan. Cook squid in 3 or 4 bunches if necessary. Pour the calamari and any remaining liquid into the onion.

3. Add white wine to the pan of squid and onions. Simmer for 30 minutes. Season with salt before serving.

Superchef Gordon Ramsay has 19 restaurants in the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Qatar, and the U.S., but only one in Ireland. It’s at the plush Ritz-Carlton Powerscourt outside Dublin, where I visited in the spring when Ramsay was on hand to mark the restaurant’s re-launch.

I have to admit I didn’t know what to expect from the flamboyant TV personality. But Ramsay was on his best behavior and only let an occasional profanity slip, and always with a wink. Perhaps the gracious setting had a mellowing effect, or perhaps the broadcast persona is just that. At any rate, the Powerscourt Estate is truly magical. It was established in 1169 as one of the grand medieval properties forming a defensive ring around Dublin. (See ”The Eyes Have It” in this fall’s Fashion Forum.) The woodlands seem positively Druidic. The 200-room resort, which opened in 2007, was the most expensive hotel project in the history of Ireland, and it reflects the Georgian architecture of the estate’s manor house. Current general manager Massimiliano Zanardi lives for good food and wine and the chance to share both. It is no coincidence that not long after Max arrived, the Gordon Ramsay restaurant changed its focus from formal dining on classical cuisine to relaxed dining on farm-to-fork dishes. Hence the re-launch in May.

Like many of the Gordon Ramsay Holdings operations, the menu is developed by Ramsay and implemented by a chef de cuisine–in this case a super-talented Peter Byrne, whose previous gig lasted more than seven years at Chapter One, the Michelin-starred restaurant at the Dublin Writers Museum. Byrne knows the farmers and the shepherds and the foragers of the County Wicklow countryside. Thus the restaurant serves lamb raised less than 20 minutes from the hotel, the vegetables come from an organic farm a 10-minute walk away, and some herbs and mushrooms are foraged on the Powerscourt estate itself.

”I’m from Dublin,” Byrne told me, ”born and raised on the flavors of the Republic. My main goal is to keep the food fairly simple and focus on the natural flavors.” It’s a radical idea in a country that has always had wonderful bounty and seemed intent on spoiling it by overcooking or over-fancying the dishes.

Veteran showman that he is, Ramsay couldn’t resist giving some cooking lessons for the attendees at the re-launch dinner. He certainly made it all seem a lot easier than on an episode of Hell’s Kitchen. I was particularly taken with the ease–and great taste–of his simple dish of scallops with spring vegetables. The West Cork sea scallops were so big and meaty that he cut them in half so they would cook in the 3 1/2 to 4 minutes required for a normal sea scallop.

Here’s my adaptation of that recipe:

SCALLOPS À LA GORDON RAMSAY

Serves 2 as an appetizer or lunch

This is adapted from Gordon Ramsay’s recipe for West Cork scallops that he prepared for the re-launch of Gordon Ramsay at Powerscourt earlier this year. He used fresh spring peas and mushrooms, but with a few substitutions, I found that I can make the dish all year. I use frozen baby peas, for example, and dried morel mushrooms rehydrated in vegetable stock. Ramsay serves the dish with broad beans, but baby limas are a good North American substitute. Pea tendrils, fortunately, are available year-round, though watercress makes a fine substitute.

Pea purée
1 tsp butter
2 scallions, sliced thin
1 cup tender young peas
vegetable stock

To make the pea purée, sweat scallions in butter until soft, add peas, a little vegetable stock and simmer until the vegetables are tender (3-4 minutes). Purée in a blender until smooth, then set aside and keep warm.

Vegetables
1 cup baby lima beans
vegetable stock
1 teaspoon vegetable oil
1/2 cup morel mushrooms
1 teaspoon butter
1 cup pea tendrils

Steam baby limas in vegetable stock until tender (5-7 minutes). Set aside and keep warm.

Heat oil in small sauté pan. Add morels and sauté a few minutes. Add butter and a little vegetable stock to keep moist. Set aside and keep warm.

Scallops
10 scallops (for two plates)
salt and white pepper
vegetable oil
butter

Season the scallops on both sides with salt and white pepper. Place a non-stick pan on medium high heat. Once hot, add 1 teaspoon of oil and the scallops. Let the scallops caramelize for a couple of minutes on the first side. Turn them over, add a knob of butter to the pan and finish cooking the scallops in the butter foam for 1-2 minutes.

To assemble the dish, place a spoon of pea purée in the middle of the plate, place the scallops, lima beans, and morels around and garnish with the pea shoots.

Valencia is beginning to rev up for Las Fallas, the festival of fires, fireworks, and managed explosions that culminates on the evening of March 19. The pageantry, sheer noise, and almost giddy sense of celebration is almost unfathomable, and we were not sure how we could possibly write about it. But we gave it a try for the Boston Globe. See it on the Globe‘s web site or check it out on our page of sample articles.

This being Spain, there is of course plenty of time set aside for eating. Paella, the quintessentially Valencian dish, fits the celebratory mood as people gather around a big festive pan. Last year we posted our version of paella valenciana . But we know that a lot of people prefer the shellfish version, paella con mariscos. Here’s our New England adaptation, using small hard-shell clams for the Spanish almejas, and some pieces of cooked lobster tail in place of the monkfish. It remains true to the spirit of a paella you’d find at the beachside chiringuitos, or ”snack bars.”

PAELLA CON MARISCOS

Serves 4

Ingredients

About 5 cups fish stock or mixed fish and chicken stock
1 large pinch saffron
1/4 cup olive oil
1 medium onion, minced
cloves from 1 head garlic, peeled and sliced paper thin
24 large raw shrimp, shells on
1 can diced tomatoes, or two large fresh tomatoes grated and skin discarded
1 tablespoon sweet Spanish paprika
1 3/4 cup Bomba rice (or substitute any Valencian rice)
1/2 cup white wine
1/2 cup minced flat-leaf parsley
12 live littleneck clams, or 16 winkles (if available)
12 blue mussels, beards removed
1 cooked lobster tail, cut into 1-inch cubes
lemon wedges for serving

Directions

1. Heat stock in saucepan with pouring lip. Crumble saffron into stock and keep hot but not boiling.

2. In large paella pan (16-18 inches) heat olive oil. Add onion and cook 2 minutes over medium heat. Add garlic and continue cooking until onion is soft. Add shrimp and cook 2 minutes on each side. Remove shrimp to warm plate.

3. Set oven at 425F.

4. Add tomatoes and paprika to pan, using tomatoes to de-glaze. Pour in rice in cross pattern. Add wine and use spatula to swirl rice into wine. Continue cooking until liquid is almost absorbed. Stir in hot stock and swirl well to mix rice and stock. Bring to a shivering boil and cook for 5 minutes. Stir in parsley and swirl to distribute well.

5. Stud the rice with pre-cooked shrimp, clams, mussels, and lobster pieces. Cook for another 3 minutes on stovetop, then move to preheated oven. Bake 7 minutes until liquid is almost completely absorbed.

6. Remove from oven and cover with foil for 7 minutes. Serve with edges of lemon.

There must be as many recipes for sofrito as there are cooks in Puerto Rico, Cuba, Trinidad, Puerto Rico, and even Catalunya. But the mixture is to Latin cooking what the classic mirepoix of onions, carrots and celery is to French. It’s the underlying mother flavor of the cuisines.

When I asked around the garden, I got very different answers about ingredients. Jamaicans seemed to favor a lot of green sweet pepper, and some suggested ham. Some people add tomato, some don’t. But everyone felt that the sweet ají dulce peppers were critical for an authentic sofrito. If they were not available, you could substitute an equal amount of chopped bell pepper. Some folks use only cilantro (or cilantrillo, as some call it), while others insist on also using culantro, the Caribbean herb with flat leaves about the size and shape of a finger. The flavor is similar to cilantro, but is much more intense.

Back in the kitchen, I made a sofrito that used the ingredients that seemed to cut across the various cuisines, though I confess I was probably more influenced by Puerto Rican sofrito than any other version. When I tasted the sauce that came out of the food processor, I was initially disappointed. It was harsh and the flavors did not marry.

But then I tried cooking with it. Seasoned with just a bit of salt and some sugar (the tomatoes were not that sweet), the mixture came together into a sauce of complex, layered flavors when heated. After all, I told myself, you wouldn’t eat raw mirepoix either, right?

Seasoned and lightly sauteed, this sofrito makes a terrific sauce for chicken or fish. It’s shown here on a small swordfish steak brushed with olive oil and cooked by indirect heat for five minutes total in a Weber charcoal grill.

Following the directions of Daisy Martinez of the Daisy Cooks! show on PBS, I froze the rest of the raw sofrito in half-cup batches to use in soups and stews this fall.

BASIC SOFRITO

In the best of all worlds, I would have added culantro, but I did not grow any this year and I could not find it at local ethnic markets. Hence, this recipe has a lot of cilantro.

Ingredients

1 medium yellow onion cut in large pieces
1 very large or two medium cubanelle peppers, seeded and chopped
10 cloves garlic, peeled
1 large bunch cilantro, washed
10 Cayman peppers, stemmed and roughly chopped
3 large plum-type tomatoes, cored and cut into chunks
1 large red bell pepper, cored, seeded and chopped

Directions

Place onion and pepper pieces in bowl of food processor and process until roughly chopped. Add remaining ingredients, one by one, and process until smooth but not paste-like.

The marvelously bourgeois restaurant La Couronne changed the way Americans eat, so when I was in Fécamp to write about Bénédictine for the Robb Report (see “Leisure: A Secret for the Centuries”), I had to stop off in Rouen on my way back to Paris. Mark your calendar: On Wednesday, November 3, 1948, Julia and Paul Child stopped for lunch after their ferry landed at Le Havre and they began the drive to Paris. Writing years later, Julia called it “the most exciting meal of my life.” It was her first taste of French food.



Founded as an inn in 1345, La Couronne (31 Place du Vieux Marché, 33-02-35-71-40-90, www.lacouronne.com.fr) has a strong claim as the oldest auberge in France, not that the countryside Art Nouveau décor suggests such antiquity. Nor does the kitchen: The cooking is timeless northern French cuisine. Since this was a pilgrimage to the spot where Julia Child figuratively discovered fire, I ordered the same dishes that she and Paul ate in 1948.

When I requested six oysters, sole meuniere, green salad, fromage blanc with berries, and coffee, accompanied by a half bottle of Pouilly Fume, my waiter nodded and smiled. “Le Menu Julia Child”

Minutes later he whisked over six perfect Brittany oysters so large and plump that each made two substantial bites. They were presented on a bed of ice with a plate of rye bread and a small pitcher of onion-steeped vinegar. As I paused between oysters to savor the clean salinity, the proprietor, Madame Darwin Cauvin, came over and we chatted about the pilgrims who had been coming since the release of “Julie and Julia,” which featured the First Lunch filmed at La Couronne.




The centerpiece of the meal the Dover sole, a European fish rarely seen fresh on my side of the Atlantic. The whole fish arrived on a presentation platter, perfectly browned with the butter sauce still sputtering. I approved and the waiter whisked it to a side table to de-bone, presenting me with four perfect fillets. Julia called the sole “a morsel of perfection,” and I won’t argue. I closed my eyes to savor the aromas, then opened them to take a tentative bite, chewing slowly and enjoying the mild salty fish and lemony sauce. It was a little like eating hot buttered ocean.

After the sole, the green salad with a lightly acidic vinaigrette was almost anti-climactic, though it did clear my palate for the subtle but unctuous fromage blanc (like a cross between tangy yogurt and sour cream) with fall berries. Black coffee and crisp little tuiles made a perfect finish.

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SOLE MEUNIERE

Here’s my version of that great fish dish, substituting New England winter flounder for the unavailable Dover sole. I also use fillets because they are easier to handle and serve than the whole fish, especially without a waiter to expertly de-bone it. The picture, though, was taken at La Couronne, a reminder of how to serve a seemingly unattractive dish. This recipe serves 2.

Ingredients

4 flounder fillets, 4-6 ounces each
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
4 tablespoons butter, divided
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons minced parsley, divided
4 teaspoons lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon capers

Directions

1. Rinse the fillets and pat them dry. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Spread flour on a flat surface and drag each fillet through flour, patting lightly. Turn fillets over and repeat. Shake off excess flour.

2. Divide butter evenly between a large (12-15-inch) frying pan or fish sauté pan and a small (8-inch) skillet. Add oil to large pan and heat over medium-high heat, swirling to blend oil and butter. When mixture begins to foam, add fillets and cook without disturbing for about 90 seconds per side, until coating is lightly browned and fish is firm to the touch. Remove to warm platter, sprinkling half the minced parsley on top.

3. Heat butter in smaller skillet over medium-high heat. Swirl pan steadily until butter begins to sputter and brown. When it reaches the color of an almond, add lemon juice, capers, and remaining parsley. Stir vigorously with a slotted spatula to emulsify ingredients and serve immediately over the warm fish.