Louisiana Adapts
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Character isn’t made by machine. #68 SUMMER 2018 • A QUARTERLY PUBLICATION FROM THE SOUTHERN FOODWAYS ALLIANCE • $7 Every bottle of Maker’s Mark® Bourbon is still hand-dipped in our signature red wax. Learn more at makersmark.com. LOUISIANA WE MAKE OUR BOURBON CAREFULLY. PLEASE ENJOY IT THAT WAY. Maker’s Mark® Bourbon Wh isky, 45% Alc./Vol. ©2018 Maker’s Mark Distillery, Inc. Loretto, KY ADAPTS 9065-06 MMADV_6x9_CharacterMachine_AD.indd 1 5/30/18 3:30 PM career as a cookbook collaborator. In the Louisiana with Marcelle as a guide, they late 1960s, Sarah Brash, a researcher for knew the subject was worthy of its own Time-Life’s Foods of the World series called book. After Time-Life published Amer- the Picayune. She needed help researching ican Cooking: Creole and Acadian in 1971, Acadian foodways for a cookbook. Marcelle left journalism for Command- “I didn’t even know I lived in Cajun er’s Palace. She learned the intricacies Country,” Marcelle told me, laughing at of the restaurant industry, working in her twenty-five-year-old self. ‘That was the front of the house, keeping invento- before Paul Prudhomme said there was ry, and catering. In 1984, she began a such a thing as Cajun Country. And I told column, Cooking Creole, for the them I knew everything there was to Times-Picayune. know about it, and they could hire me, In the months since I traveled to Thi- and they did.” bodaux, nine other female food journal- Marcelle, a native of St. Martinville in ists have opened their homes and offices the Bayou Teche region, proved the to me. They have given me time, spare perfect choice. With a photographer, she batteries, cookbooks, and brownie traveled through New Orleans, eating mixes. They have cooked for me. And oysters at Acme and visiting Ella Brennan they have shared stories of their lives at Commander’s Palace. In Cajun country, and extraordinary careers. As a young she procured pigs for boucheries and woman documenting Southern food- crawfish for boils. When Marcelle joined ways, I am grateful for the paths they the project, the Time-Life editors carved, and for the opportunity to follow thought of Cajun and Creole food as a their leads. chapter in a larger book about Southern food. After seeing and tasting south Annemarie Anderson is SFA’s oral historian. Gravy is a publication of the Southern JOHN T. EDGE, Editor-in-Chief Foodways Alliance, a donor supported [email protected] FEATURES institute of the Center for the Study 02 First Helpings MARY 62 BETHThe LASSETER,Queer Pleasures Publisher of Southern Culture at the University [email protected] of Tammy Wynette’s of Mississippi. 28 08 Mixed History SARA CAMPCooking MILAM, Editor The SFAOsayi documents, Endolyn studies, and [email protected] Mayukh Sen Italian Heaven explores the diverse food cultures of OSAYI ENDOLYN, Deputy Editor Justin Nystrom the changing American South. We reframe14 The dialogues Rise about and the Fall region of and [email protected] 65 Barbekue catalyze the conversations South’s aboutACP racism, Kings DANIELLE Daniel A. SCRUGGS, Vaughn Image Editor gender inequity, class discrimination, [email protected] 42 and otherGustavo challenges. Arellano We curate a beloved community that gains strength RICHIE 72 MarcelleSWANN, Designer Bienvenu’s The Taking of [email protected] and22 voiceDare at a well-setto Look table. Cajun Chronicles Freret Street KATHERINE W. STEWART, Your donationW. Ralph makes Eubanks our work possible. SFA Oral History Maurice Carlos Ruffin Fact Checker Visit southernfoodways.org to make a donation or become a member. MONIQUE LABORDE, Intern ABOVE: Sandy Ha Nguyen, executive director of Coastal 52 Communities Consulting, Inc. (CCC) speaks to a group of An Industry’sSFA MEMBERSHIP fisherfolk IS OPENin Buras, TO Louisiana. ALL. NOTPhoto Aby MEMBER?Claire Bangser. Annemarie Anderson HeartbeatJoin us at southernfoodways.org • [email protected] • 662-915-3368 Simi Kang Cover photo by CLAIRE BANGSER Summer 2018 | 73 First Helpings FEATURED CONTRIBUTOR MAURICE CARLOS RUFFIN Lucky Ryan, a Vietnamese restaurant in Buras, Louisiana EAST NEW ORLEANS NATIVE of its kind. Some churches someone on the street. It’s Maurice Carlos Ruffi n is a would regularly serve ‘dinner important, so be aware of the graduate of the University of plates,’ a plate piled high little things like that. Listen GO AHEAD, SURPRISE ME New Orleans MFA program with fried fi sh, peas, mac more than you talk. And if in creative writing. Ruffi n is and cheese, cornbread, for you want a good meal, make ords brought me to I always urge them to put people and a nonfi ction columnist at the fi ve or seven bucks. Since a good friend. Hang around food, not the other way places ahead of flavors. Virginia Quarterly Review Katrina, most of those church their cousin’s house or aunt’s and a contributing editor to congregations have gotten house. That’ll be where you around. I’m a reader before Of course, there are readers and editors W Know Louisiana magazine. smaller, and others have can get a good meal. I’m an eater. (And I’m definitely a reader whose tastes run counter to mine. And His writing has also appeared disappeared altogether. before I’m a cook. Ask my husband.) So I there are writers, from critics to poets in the LA Times, The Bitter Was there a specifi c event or take extra pleasure in this year’s SFA pro- to novelists, who deliver those gustatory Southerner, Kenyon Review, What would you say to news item that motivated you gramming theme, Food and Literature. descriptions with precision and beauty. and Massachusetts Review. someone who is not from to write about gentrifi cation I care how food tastes. But when I’m They’re not the primary focus of these One World Random House New Orleans and thinking in New Orleans? reading, that’s not usually what I’m pages. And that’s intentional. will publish Ruffi n’s fi rst about moving to the city? It wasn’t one moment, but reading for. Delicious means something The features in this issue conjure South novel, We Cast a Shadow, in New Orleans is as welcoming I’ve been noticing how rapidly different to everyone, and so it effec- Louisiana, past, present, and future. They January 2019. as it is complex. It’s such a the change is happening. tively means nothing. Your savory, your remind us that the region is constantly unique place, and it can give I thought I’d see a new delectable, even your crispy—they might evolving and adapting—demographically What’s a dish, from a you so much. Be prepared restaurant once a month. It’s particular restaurant or to give back. Have a plan more like once a week. Every be different from mine. So I’d rather and even topographically. The ground kitchen, that you can’t get for how you can contribute week, one place is opening a writer take me to a place I haven’t shifts beneath the feet of those who make anymore in New Orleans? to the community and to and another is closing. They been, or help me see a familiar place in it their home. This shifting is sometimes I’m going across the city disadvantaged people. One open with a big fanfare and a new light. Or introduce me to a person tragic, sometimes triumphant, and it all in my head thinking about of the worst things I see is close with a whimper. I hardly whose story will surprise, or delight, or but ensures that rich and complex stories places I used to go all the when people come down have time in my schedule inspire me. When I get the chance to will never stop tumbling to the surface. Gutter credit Gutter credit time. Barrow’s catfi sh was here and don’t know that to go to some places before offer advice to writers of food or drink, —Sara Camp Milam Claire Bangser Bartlett Tad really one of a kind, the best we say hello when we pass they close. 2 | southernfoodways.org S 2018 | 3 First Helpings their freedom and go on to open shops of their own. CP: Another interesting FROM BLACK HANDS TO component of your work is the use of sales ads for enslaved WHITE MOUTHS: CHARLESTON’S cooks. Can you tell me about these ads, how you found ENSLAVED COOKS them, and what you learned? KM: The ads were given to me by David Shields [of Kevin Mitchell, a chef and culinary instructor from Charleston, professions were closed off to the University of South South Carolina, earned his MA in Southern Studies from the blacks. And the professions Carolina]. These ads are University of Mississippi this spring. SFA foodways professor that were seen as more interesting because not only Catarina Passidomo advised Mitchell’s thesis, “From Black feminine—cooking and are they looking for specific Hands to White Mouths.” Here, a peek into his research. cleaning and sewing—were levels of skilled cooks, these the things that were left open skilled cooks were of course CATARINA PASSIDOMO: professional cooking for to blacks. That particular enslaved. Just the fact of You trace the lineage of enslaved and free people of lineage is important to me an ad being published in a black chefs and caterers color during the antebellum because it allows me to see newspaper for the sale of a in Charleston back to the period in Charleston. where I came from. human body.... I was able to BUD BREAK early nineteenth century.