did I learn cooking from my mom? or is it NOLA’s food teaching me how to cook?

COOKING!! This week assignment is to cook. I am so excited to know that my assignment is to cook. Usually I prepare my own manus. This time I start by reading the cookbook that my professor handed to me. Its title is “Who’s Your Mama, Are You Catholic, and Can You Make A Roux?” The title of this cookbook is really appealing. I already feel that I read the book before. It has an introduction, a body, and a conclusion in its title. The introduction is: your background, the body is: your religion and social life, and the conclusion is: can you cook. When I start flipping through the book, I notice that the recipes are divided in response to the four seasons of the year. And since we are in the fall, I decide to cook a dish from the fall section. The fall here is different from the fall in Lexington. The trees do not change in color, the leaves do not fall on the ground, and the weather is not as cold. But yet I feel that we are in the fall season because it is a little cold now.

The cookbook is filled with delicious dishes like: Duck, Oyster & Andouille Gumbo, Keith’s Smothered Quail, Wild Rice Torres, and more. Choosing a dish from the cookbook to prepare is a little hard considering I am a Muslim and also a student with a budget. As a Muslim I am not suppose to eat anything that contains pork, and as a student I have a certain limit to my budget. And therefore, I chose a dish that has no pork as well as cheap to prepare.

The dish I chose to cook was the Cajun Waldorf Salad. This time I decided to go grocery shopping from a farmer’s market. The food and the products here are organic and also fresh. I bought a couple of Granny Smith apple, some seedless raisins, some roasted pecans, and a bag of shredded lettuce. I got the other two recipes - lemon juice and mayonnaise - from Wal-Mart. As soon as I got home, I start preparing the dish. It was really enjoyable: the smell of apple, the texture of raisins and pecans, and the color of the lettuce. All these senses came together to make a really tasty salad. Yet I didn’t find the taste of New Orleans Culinary in it. I think the writer called it Cajun because she tried to fit it to the rest of her dishes in her book.

After doing some research, I discover that the soul of New Orleans Culinary is embedded in the Holy Trinity. It is the secret ingredients to the food in this city. It adds a unique taste, flavor, and smell to all the food. Consequently, I add these ingredients to my salad which includes celery, peppers, and onion. The smell of the celery, the flavor of the peppers, and the taste of the onion added a delightful taste to my salad. It tasted different and also weird. After all, I really enjoy preparing this dish, even though the salad I made doesn’t follow the correct recipes. I learn to prepare food differently from shopping to making.

my own Cajun salad recipe:

1 granny smith apple, cored and chopped

1 cup of seedless raisins

½ cup of chopped and roasted pecans

1 tablespoon of fresh lemon juice

mayonnaise, shredded lettuce

holy trinity to taste

epicurious.....part 2

As I am researching, reading, and eating New Orleans food, my interest about this topic becomes part of my ritual daily life. When I go grocery shopping at Wal-Mart, I pretend to act like a chef or at least like a man who is taking care of a family. I prepare a list of what I will cook for that week, and that includes a wide range of different flavors. I also consider the right nutrients, the right tastes, and the right ingredients that would make a healthy and more importantly - a delicious meal. I pick the freshest vegetables in the vegetable section as well as the freshest meats in the meat section. After the one hour shopping at Wal-Mart, the first thing I do when I go home is to decide what I am going to cook that day. I think cooking is a social act that every family should do or every group of people living together should do. Cooking involves talking, laughing, moving, making, etcetera. It is a social activity that gathers people together, and therefore I think it has a really big value that you wouldn’t think it has.

Next, as part of my seminar class and my interest in this topic, I decide to interview people in New Orleans who have a strong knowledge about the food in this city. Since I eat my lunch at Frady’s almost everyday, I was able to know Mr. Kirk Frady. I was also able to get to interview him regard my topic.

My first question for him was, “Why is NOLA food delicious?” He answers, “Because it is a MELTING POT that contains different people and different flavor.” One shopper in the store, Clayton Kerth, over heard us talking. He jumps in and says, “This is because our food is BEST of the BEST of the BEST of the family recipe.” He continues with, “Those people might give you the recipe but not the secret ingredients. If you found it, it is like a treasure hunt.”

After that, I focus on the food in this restaurant. I learn that Frady’s serve both Soul and Cajun food. For example: red beans and rice (Soul), and jambalaya and po-boy (Cajun). I also find out that his famous dish is Bread Pudding that he learned from his father who learned from his father. Suddenly, the store gets packed with people. And so I decide to stop the interview with Kirk and continue some other time.

The second part of my research is to go to a lecture by Susan Lauderman on “Dollops of History in Every Bite: Two Culinary Heritage Projects to Preserve Creole Cookery in New Orleans”. In this lecture, she talks about the danger that we might face; we might lose one of our treasures and that is Creole Food. She addresses the factors that lead us to loose this culinary treasure.

Some of these factors are:

• Our Creole restaurants are not able to reopen after Katrina
• Increase in the number of non-Creole restaurants
• The mother doesn’t pass to her kids the culinary of Creole cooking
• The schools are feeding the students fast food

Susan Lauderman’s mission is to keep our Creole heritage. She is trying to preserve this type of food in this city. She says, “There is French, Spanish, and African every where in the world, but none create a unique food as of New Orleans.”

After interviewing Mr. Frady and going to Ms. Lauderman’s lecture, I find out that I have never had this passion about food until now. This city is giving me a new perspective everyday that I can learn and collect: Today food and tomorrow …..

epicurious.....part 1

I have one reason to be in New Orleans; Kentucky New Orleans Architecture Studio. The education that I am getting from this program is exceptional as suppose to a normal studio that I could of take at the University of Kentucky. No wait, I have one more reason, it is the food of New Orleans. The food that I am eating here is delectable as suppose to the food that I use to eat in Lexington. “New Orleans is a town where food is almost a religion,” says John Rosenthal. Being here in this city and eating its food, I think he is very right. Yet I still want to know why, and therefore I ask myself the following three questions:

First Am I going to be a restaurant critic?

My main goal is to start eating at New Orleans style restaurants to analyze different menus from different restaurants. What makes different restaurants have different tastes? What makes a dish in a particular restaurant famous? Who is behind this famous dish? In the next couple of weeks, I will be visiting these restaurants to interview their chefs, cooks, and may be the people eating there.

Second Am I going to know what does Cajun mean?

Before getting to New Orleans, when someone mentions the word Cajun, I always thought that he or she refers to a flavor. But after talking to the people here, I find out that it is more than that. My next step is to find out what does Cajun mean? What are the roots of the word Cajun? And how does it relate to food?

Finally Am I going to create the next signature plate?

I have been a chef assistant at a Japanese restaurant in Charleston for two years. I did enjoy being a chef assistant. I also enjoyed cooking in the kitchen of this restaurant. At the mean time, I am enjoying the food here in New Orleans. Recalling the past and experimenting the present a question pops in my head: Am I going to be an architect or a chef or both? I think I am more leaning towards the word both. In fact, after dining at Baru Bistro & Tapas with my classmates, Bob and I created the next Chimichurri called the “centrino sauce”.

centino recipe:

4 ounces cilantro, chopped

3 clove garlic, minced

2 teaspoons black pepper

1 ½ teaspoon old bay

3 tablespoons fresh olive oil