Male Quirks and Female Foibles

Jambalaya, Crawfish Pie and File' Gumbo

My husband Wayne is from Prairieville, a small southern Louisiana community near Gonzales. When he took me home for the first time, he introduced me to the delights of Cajun cooking . . . crawfish, jambalaya and gumbo. Having been raised in the north by a north Louisiana mother, I knew nothing of these Cajun delicacies, except the song "Jambalaya, and a crawfish pie, and a file' gumbo . . ." I knew the song but had no idea of its meaning until I spent time in Cajun country.

The first time Wayne's family boiled crawfish in the back yard, I was somewhat overwhelmed by the sights and smells. As I stood before a table piled high with the miniature red lobsters, all I could focus on were the beady black eyes staring vacantly from my dinner.

Between the eyes and my ineptitude at getting that little bit of meat out of the contrary tail, I only managed to ingest three of the things before my stomach revolted. It probably didn't help that Wayne also introduced me to the joys of crawfishing, and I was well aware of the muddy swamp these little creatures called home.

Crawfish is an acquired taste – one that I've managed to achieve with enthusiasm over the last 44 years. I now have no qualms about those eyes and I can manage most tails like a pro. I still refuse to suck the heads, though. My acculturation reached its limits when it came to head sucking.

Jambalaya was a different matter altogether. Gonzales considers itself the jambalaya capital of the South. They hold a Jambalaya Festival every summer. Once you've eaten Gonzales' jambalaya, you're hooked; it tastes like none other I've ever eaten.

Jambalaya was the one dish Wayne insisted I had to learn to cook when we got married. And I didn't protest. By that time, I was as hooked on jambalaya as he was. While I had a recipe in the River Road Cookbook, my efforts did not taste right. So, Wayne and I joined his Grandma King in the kitchen for a lesson.

After several more tries, we managed to come up with a pretty good facsimile of the real thing. The more we cooked jambalaya, the better it tasted. In fact, I got so proficient that when we invited a Washington Parish lady who had grown up in Gonzales to our house, she asked, "Where did you learn to cook Gonzales jambalaya?"

Wayne may joke about my lack of cooking skills, and they are rather limited, but even he admits that I can cook jambalaya with the best. In fact, when the boys decided they had to learn to cook jambalaya, they asked me what my secret was because they preferred my version to Wayne's.

File' gumbo, though, was the Cajun dish that really made my taste buds exclaim, "Wow!"

I really like seafood file' gumbo. Unfortunately, it is one of the easiest dishes to botch. I have never mastered the art of gumbo cooking. I just can't seem to get the rue right.

When we moved to New Orleans for seminary, I was surprised to find that most restaurants in the city also made lousy gumbo. I did find one restaurant that made a superb gumbo and since it was only a block from our house, I got a gumbo fix quite often.

After we left Louisiana for northern regions, I suffered from gumbo withdrawal. When a restaurant opened in Calgary, Alberta, named the Louisiana Purchase, I was ecstatic. I made Wayne take me there for gumbo. As soon as I saw the yellow rice, I clued in to the fact that this gumbo was not going to satisfy my craving. It turned out the cook was Chinese, and he put curry in the rice. If you've ever eaten Louisiana gumbo, you know that's a no, no.

Since we have been back in Louisiana, I have sampled a lot of gumbo. Some of it was better than most New Orleans gumbo, but no one seemed to get the rue just right. When we visited Wayne's Mama in Prairieville, I would sometimes get a satisfactory bowl of gumbo – if I could convince Wayne to take us out to eat or if his niece, Vanessa, agreed to cook.

When a new restaurant opened near our house, I did not even bother to order their gumbo, I was so used to being disappointed. However, the service was extremely slow that first night and the proprietor brought us a bowl of gumbo to share while we waited for our meal.

My stomach shouted, "Whoa, Mama. Where you been hidin' dis good stuff? You call dat der waiter boy back and tell him to forget dat stuff you ordered and give me mo' ah dis stuff."

When the gumbo is right my stomach even develops a Cajun accent. That and the ability to make jambalaya are the only things even remotely Cajun about me. Actually, that is not true; my maiden name is Marson, which is a French name; although my grandfather, a Baton Rouge native, denied it to his deathbed. He certainly wasn't claiming a Cajun heritage, but he never turned down a bowl of gumbo.