A True Cajun Mardi Gras

This is the time for Mardi Gras and all the flavors of New Orleans.However, it's the cuisine of the Cajun backwoods that's the true taste of the holiday. some recipes have been handed down , first originating in Nova Scotia and France and marrying dishes from Africa and Spain. Their traditional dishes is what the holiday is all about.

Gumbo is an excellent example of  Cajun cooking. Every family probably has a recipe handed down through the decades. Its origins are from the French seafood stew bouillabaisse and the hearty soups of West Africa.Okra is the binder in it,In fact the name gumbo comes from the Bantu word for the plant nkombo. Any kind of caught meat , from squirrel to venison is used. A meatless variation, gumbo z'herbes for Lent. made with beet greens spinach and turnip greens. Spanish colonists brought paella to the area and it was refashioned in jambalaya.Again, the recipe varies from family to family. The basic one is made with chicken and shrimp along with the holy trinity of Cajun cooking, celery onions, and bell peppers. Thyme, bay leaf and parsley are also added.  Some parish home chefs add andouille the homemade garlic laced sausage along with alligator (!). Tomato paste is omitted from the recipe unlike the professional ones in New Orleans.Crawfish is a huge part of any celebration and the spicier the better. The fish is dipped in a blend of paprika , cayenne and chile powder along with garlic , salt and pepper.

Sweets also plays an important part in any Cajun country celebration. There is the King Cake a fun sweet yeasty brioche type  bread. It's decorated with a vanilla glaze that's been sprinkled with gold, purple and green sugar. Gold symbolizes power, green means faith, and purple means justice . Home bakers hide little trinkets inside such as a coin meaning prosperity in the coming year, a baby doll representing the infant Jesus and a wedding ring , hinting at a possible marriage for the finder. Another sweet Mardi Gras treat is chocolate yummy  or pudding cake..It begins with a cookie base , followed by layers of chocolate pudding, sweetened cream cheese and Cool Whip. Every house has a different spin on it. Instead of cookies, the first layer can be a cake or a mixture of  flour , pecans and butter.. Some home bakers will add an extra layer of vanilla pudding to the layer of chocolate pudding. Instead of a third layer of Cool Whip, freshly whipped cream can easily be used as a third layer.Chopped pecans or chocolate chips can be sprinkled on top.


True Mardi Gras celebrations are in the parishes surrounding New Orleans. Locals revel and eat these delicious dishes that have been  handed down. It is a fun way of enjoying the last day before Lent.

Where The Wild Things Are Eaten

There's A club in New York that has attracted adventurers and adventurous eaters for decades.The meats aren't your usual roast beef and chicken.They"re a bit more gamier, in fact they're downright wild.It's the famed Explorer's Club and it' been serving up some strange beasts for interesting feasts. Stephen Rex Brown wrote about it in today's New York Daily News(again the Daily News has some really good food articles).It an annual dinner that has attracted some of the last century's more famous explorer's.Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Sir Edmund Hillary This year Amazon founder ,Jeff Bezos and the edge of space skydiver, Felix Baumgartner will be honored. However it's the food that will shine.In past years it was a maple glazed hog mask or the face of the pig,along with python patties with bacon on top.For seafood adventurists the club served up jellyfish slivers in a white soy sauce.Turtle cakes with capers remoulade has also been given out.Desserts usually have the added decoration of mealworms and crickets. The club started in 1903 when navigating through most sit down dinners was an adventure.The club was founded by professionals dedicated To the exp,oration of Earth, the oceans and outer space.The first group included early Arctic explorer's,Adolphus Greeley and David Brainard.Teddy Roosevelt and Prince Albert I of Monaco were honorary members..The club has always been known for it's strange dinners.This year a few dozen pounds of alligators will be used as well as some exotic fungi.The dinner became a yearly fixture in the 1930s when explorer's brought back well preserved mammoth meat from Siberia.Since then every kind of meat, from ostrich to tarantula has been served.It's been made into such mundane recipes like bakes and sliders,the easier to eat them. Insects become kabobs while eyeballs are like appetizers. The Explorers were never faint hearted men and women.Eating the wild things on the planet means having a steely constitution.It's a club for the adventurous palate.

Eating Gator And Snake Where The Wild Things Are-

This will be a first for Foodie Pantry in the sense that I'll be writing about the other white meats - the exotics. A few foodies out there have tasted everything from gator to rattle snake to all sorts of wild game. It's an outre cuisine that may require an acquired taste. Everything supposedly tastes like chicken (or so I've been told). Big game is also a foodie fantasy (providing it's not endangered) where the food is beyond exotic.



Gator meat is probably more widely eaten in the South , especially in Louisiana more than anywhere else. I checked a web site entitled http://www.1800exoticmeats.com/ where the critters are also sold for all sorts of dishes. Alligator can be dipped in batter and fried or stir fried.It can also be blackend and served with a kind of sassy rice as well. It actually tastes "just like chicken". Personally I 'd rather see these guys in a nature show than on my plate. There is also a cadre out there who love rattlesnake meat. This foodie here will never try it. I hate snakes. Period. They''re part of that creepy ewww factor yet some other foodies enjoy the taste which is again like chicken and slightly chewy. The Southwest is full of rattlesnake chili recipes.



If you're squeamish like me, you may want to stick to trying bison and elk. Buffalo burgers are a staple of many restaurants and they're better for you than beef. Elk is like venison and surprisingly low in fat and cholesterol It has a mellow sweet taste that would go well with delicate sauces and gravies. Ostrich meat is big and so popular that even diners offer it in burgers. It's actually better for you than turkey or chicken.

If you can stomach (pun intended here) eating critters, then gobbling gator and snake is for you. If you're not ready to walk entirely on the wild side then head over to some of the tamer versions of big game. You might like them and ditch the conventional foods or you may be running back to chicken ,turkey and beef - you know the tamer foods.