Somehow, it became a winter tradition. My friends from New
Orleans and I would pile in a car the second weekend of November and make the
trek west along the winding Mississippi Great River Road to St. Charles Parish,
where we’d spend the day at the annual Destrehan Plantation’s annual fall
festival.
A
beautifully restored plantation house and its sprawling, oak-shaded grounds
sits across from the river levee, and we’d spend the whole day visiting the
house and antique barn, listening to local bands play, and eating—crawfish
bread, pralines, roasted peanuts.
For a
couple of years, when I was making art quilts, I had “Yat Cat Quilt” T-shirts
printed up and had a booth along with my friend Debbie, who made quilted tea cozies.
Most of the years, though, I was on the visitor end of things rather than the
seller end.
And
yeah, I’ll admit it now, I went for the crawfish bread. Think of a fresh French
loaf, hollowed out and then stuffed with a mixture of crawfish tails and cheese
and tomatoes and cheese and butter and garlic and cheese. (Did I mention
cheese?)
I drew
on another favorite winter tradition for “Christmas in Dogtown,” a story about
family and tradition and what “home” means: my semi-annual trek to LaPlace,
Louisiana, in St. John the Baptist Parish, also west of New Orleans. Now, the
locals will tell you they’re “Bailey’s People” or they’re “Jacob’s People,”
meaning they prefer the smoked meats from either Jacob’s Smokehouse or Bailey’s
(next door).
In
“Dogtown,” Teresa Madere has fallen on some rough times so she agrees to leave
New Orleans for the month of December and help her uncle run Madere’s Meats out
in St. James Parish (just keep heading west and you’ll get there). In my
crossroads community of Dogtown, people from the city drive out to buy their
holiday meats from either the Maderes or the Caillous, the two main families in
town.
It was
fun to pull on some Cajun culture to not only tell about the mystery behind the
Dogtown community, but also the culture of boudin and andouille and tasso and
smoked alligator gar.
It’s not
as exotic as it sounds, so in case you want to know more about what Resa’s
having to do in “Dogtown,” here’s a quick “meat primer” of the Louisiana river
parishes
--Andouille,
pronounced “ahn-DOU-eee,” is a smoked pork sausage sort of like a spicier
kielbasa. It’s used to make red beans and rice (red beans spiced and cooked
down to a mush, with andouille and rice) and jambalaya (a rice dish that
usually mixes spices and rice with andouille and either chicken or shrimp, or
both). I’m sure others use it in all kinds of other things, but those are the
main things I make with it.
--Boudin,
pronounced “boo-DAN,” is basically “dirty rice” in a sausage casing and unless
otherwise noted is synonymous with “boudin blanc.” The rice is mixed with pork
or shrimp or crawfish, and then seasoned well and stuffed in the sausage
casing. One of my favorite memories was when my mom came to visit me in New
Orleans for the first time and I served some crawfish boudin with my red beans.
She didn’t say anything but I noticed she kept picking something out of her
food. She finally said she didn’t eat grub worms. Needless to say, no more
crawfish boudin for her (it was crawfish tails, not grub worms…really!).
There
are also variations: boudin balls are balls of the rice mixture that’s battered
and fried instead of stuffed into the sausage casings and boiled or grilled.
“Boudin noir” has the blood and organ meats in it. Suzanne doesn’t care for
boudin noir, thank you. In “Dogtown,” Resa weasels out of making it whenever
she can.
And yep,
I have had alligator boudin, as well as alligator sausage. It doesn’t taste
like chicken!
Don’t
like the sound of that stuff? No worries—“Dogtown” also has a sexy guy with
moss-green eyes and the St. James Parish bonfires. Each year, bonfires are
built along the river levees and set ablaze on Christmas Eve to help Papa Noel
find his way to all the Cajun boys and girls when he arrives in his pirogue (kind
of a flat-bottomed canoe). It’s a beautiful sight, and for those of us making
our winter pilgrimages out of New Orleans, a sure sign that the holidays are
here!
Have you ever tried any of the Louisiana cuisine—if so,
what’s your favorite thing?
Suzanne Johnson
Genre: Sweet Paranormal Romance
Publisher: Story Vault
Date of Publication: December 2012
ASIN: B009RBKTSG
Number of pages: 30
Word Count: approx. 11,000
Book Description:
A woman who spent years escaping her rural past learns that Dogtown, Louisiana, hides more family secrets than just the recipe for boudin blanc…..
Resa Madere’s on the verge of losing it all. The boyfriend’s gone. The job’s history. Her beloved house is on the brink of foreclosure. She’ll do anything to save it—even spend a long Christmas holiday working in St. James Parish, Louisiana, helping her uncle run the family meat business. But the community of Dogtown, which has been home for seven generations of the Madere and Caillou families, has deep roots and deeper secrets. For Resa, going home is one thing.
Getting out might not be so easy.
About the Author:
Suzanne Johnson writes urban fantasy and paranormal romance (under the name Susannah Sandlin) from Auburn, Alabama, on top of a career in educational publishing that has thus far spanned five states and six universities—including both Alabama and Auburn, which makes her bilingual. She grew up in Winfield, Alabama, halfway between the Bear Bryant Museum and Elvis' birthplace, but was also a longtime resident of New Orleans, so she has a highly refined sense of the absurd and an ingrained love of SEC football, cheap Mardi Gras trinkets, and fried gator on a stick. She’s the author of the Sentinels of New Orleans urban fantasy series and, as Susannah Sandlin, the Penton Legacy paranormal romance series.
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