Chef John Folse On How To Cook Delicious Shrimp
all right, good evening everyone. hello, welcometo food in the garden and cafeteria tonight. i'm susan evans. i'm the program directorhere at the national museum of american history for our american food history project. wehave moved ourselves inside due to weather, but for the past three weeks we have beenout in the beautiful victory gardens created by smithsonian gardens, who are our partnerin this endeavor. while we're not in the garden tonight, i do encourage you to come back 364days of the year and visit both the victory garden here at the american history museumand any other of the smithsonian gardens around the campus. while you're there, be sure totake a guided tour by one of their horticulturists or garden docents. more information aboutthe garden tours can be found on their website:
gardens.si.edu. this year at food in the garden,we are exploring four waterways impacted by the war of 1812. we looked at long islandsound, chesapeake bay, and the great lakes earlier this month. tonight we are closingout our series by exploring new orleans and the gulf of mexico. we're looking at the impactof the war on the waterways of these important regions and asking: what is happening todayaround those waterways in terms of eating and growing? food in the garden is one ofthe many programs around food and food history that we do here at the museum. we would trulylove to hear your feedback on both this evening's program and any big ideas you have for futureprograms. of course, you all have your phones out because it is completely socially acceptableto be telling your friends what a great time
you're having using the hashtag food in thegarden. and of course, this is meant to be a relaxed chat up here so if you want to getup, get a second drink, maybe another praline, you're more than welcome to. we'll be herefor about 20 minutes and then we'll leave some time for questions. there will be plentyof time for discussion and more people to chat with. we're definitely not going to cover200 years of history in 20 minutes, nor will we attempt to. i encourage you to continuethe discussion unless you guys want to to try. before we get started, i want to give a specialthank you to our generous supporters who made this evening possible. the julia child foundationfor gastronomy and the culinary arts, and
dupont. they are great partners who have supportedour efforts to have conversations around how americans understand themselves through ourshared food history. i also want to thank the in-kind donors who have brought you thesips you're sipping and the food on your plate. you're enjoying cocktails made with d.c.'sown green hat gin and cider from distillery lane ciderworks. our generous food supporterthis evening is wegmans, so a huge thank you to them. a special thank you this eveningto our chef, william bednar, who has made all of this delicious and historically inspiredfood. exactly, we want to give him a huge round of applause for his work. both tonightand for all of the food he's created for this series. it has truly been amazing. i hearthere is a special dessert coming out later,
too, that will be pretty exciting too. a hugethank you to the whole team that makes all of this happen. if you see anyone wearinga food in the garden apron, feel free to ask them all sorts of questions. they can totallyhandle it. so, let's get started. most famously during the war of 1812, neworleans is remembered for the battle of new orleans. when american forces, led by andrewjackson--yes indeed, that andrew jackson--handily defeated the british in 1815 after the warhad officially ended. there's more information about the region during the war in your program,but beyond it's role in the war of 1812, new orleans has always been a crossroads of people,ideas, and products. at the heart of new orleans are the people. a diverse population rangingfrom native americans to french, spanish,
africans, and other waves of immigrants. drawingfrom abundant natural marine resources and then adding diverse foods from around theworld through merchants and settlers, the new orleans population created one of themost unique and influential foodscapes in the world. the markets and new migrants continueto thrive and draw from the many unique and cultural and natural resources of the area.tonight, we'll explore what was created out of this dynamic interplay of people and productsat this global crossroads of new orleans. with us to discuss this and much more aredavid guas. david is a new orleans-born chef and owner of bayou bakery in arlington. heis the host of american grilled on the travel channel, where you may have seen him. he'sgarnered national praise for showcasing the
soul of the south in his delicious louisiana-styledishes and desserts. if any had the pralines that were out on the table right behind you,he is responsible for those as well, which were incredible. they're so incredible. ashley young, to his right, is a phd candidatein history at duke university and a research fellow and guest curator at the southern foodand beverage museum in new orleans. her dissertation, called nourishing networks: provisioning southerncities in the atlantic world, focuses on the trans-atlantic history of food markets andstreet food culture in 19th century american port cities. that's a really interesting topic,right?
so, ashley-- i will mention also, i've been on the boardat sofab, southern food and beverage museum for five years. oh, great! we have a few connections before we met here. they are doing some really great work, too.and if you don't know about the southern food and beverage museum you should definitelylook them up as well. they're really doing some groundbreaking, fascinating things aboutthat whole region. so ashley, can you start us off? help situateus in early 19th century new orleans. what
were people eating, and how were they gettingthat food? i'd love to sort of bring in the historicalcontext as much as i can for you. at our disposal, we have an amazing array of travel narrativesfrom the 1800s that give us descriptions of the market, the people in the markets, howthey sounded, the foods that were on display. in our historical arsenal, we really havea wonderful array of sources that we can turn to, to understand what people were eatingin the markets. not only what they were eating or what was being vended, but also what themarkets sounded like, what the markets looked like. an example i like to draw people inwith is the description of sound. sound is very important to help people understand themarketplace because you might imagine four
hundred--five hundred vendors in the marketcalling out about fresh vegetables, fresh produce, prepared foods. one of the most popularstreet vendors cries that i'm going to sample for you very quickly is the praline vendorcry. these were sold mostly by enslaved african women in public marketplaces or in front ofthe cathedral in new orleans. they're very melodic and you'll see that they have a melodyto them, almost like a lullaby. you could easily harmonize with them, which is interesting.but, you'll see, even in the melody and the melodic nature of these street cries, they'reappealing to a certain audience and that is children--children who would have been playingin these marketplaces. they would hear this cry, give a few cents to the women, and walkaway with a praline. i will demonstrate that
for you, if i can get my voice ready for that.so you see here. it sounded like this: pralines, pralines for your sweet tooth-y. for yoursweet tooth-y. pralines, pralines. so you can only imagine that children would comeflocking to these women. it's just one example of the kind of soundscape of these cities,which i find interesting. but in the markets themselves, they would have had an amazingarray of fresh waterfowl, duck, bear even. they were bringing in these louisiana-basedwild game to the markets. seafood was paramount, obviously. new orleans was a major port city,not only in the atlantic world but also because of it's connection with the mississippi river.you have inland waterways as well as atlantic waterways really influencing the food culture.so oysters, obviously, so important. shrimp--if
you've had gulf shrimp it's phenomenal. youcould have acquired all of these dishes, like today in new orleans, you could have had themin the early 1800s as well. don't even get me started on the produce. but for those ofyou not familiar, the french market even had it's own market just for bananas. new orleanswas so tied to latin america and the banana plantations there, that they actually dedicatedan entire pavilion to the sale of bananas. wow, that's so interesting! new orleans foodis so distinctive and the food and culture are so tied together. david, can you tellus a little bit about how would you describe new orleans food culture in a couple of minutes?how do you think that came to be created? growing up in the city, like any kid, yousort of take advantage--take for granted where
you're from or what's around you. it wasn'tuntil i actually left new orleans in '88, moved here and i started writing a cookbook,that i went back to the city and kind of re-found my city and what it meant to me as an adult,and relive some of my childhood through some of the iconic restaurants and spots that igrew up going to. different bakeries were a big part of my upbringing. of course allthe famous restaurants like galatoire's and antoine's and things like that that we wouldgo for special occasions. what i iove seeing about new orleans now, everything is kindof now post-katrina, that's sort of our mark. growing up in new orleans--new orleans, i'vekind of put my chef hat on a little bit and don't get me wrong, i absolutely adore thecity. i think that what i love seeing now,
after the storm, is this influx of new, youngchefs that are doing amazing things in that city. we don't want galatoire's to changebecause that's part of our identity, our history, our culture of that city. we don't antoine'sto change. we don't want clancy's, some of these really small neighborhood restaurantsto every change. that's why the city fought so hard to come back because we couldn't losethose, because then we'd lose ourselves. that was what my book was about, what these placesmeant to us. going back and now living here and going back there, their that much moreimportant to me--to ground me and to anchor me of those memories that i have of growingup in the city. what i love seeing now is these chefs coming in that are doing innovativecuisine. i'm not talking about molecular gastronomy.
i'm just talking about different types oftakes on foods that are embedded in history in the city. shrimp creole, but done a littledifferently. so, still taking advantage of the abundance of seafood right off our coast,but just presenting them in a different way and maybe a different presentation as opposedto a whole fish with a whole pound of jumbo lump crab meat smothered in bearnaise sauceor something like that. don't want that to change but i don't want that to be on everymenu of every restaurant. that's what i love when i go back and eating at my friend's restaurantsnow that are that new generation, or coming up in this city and have their own restaurantsnow. i really enjoy both ends of the spectrum right now. the city is really doing well.i use all louisiana seafood for the most part.
i do take advantage of where i am in the chesapeake,but a lot of my shrimp and of course my crawfish and everything come from louisiana. we doboils during the summertime at the restaurant every saturday where we fly in 120 poundsof fresh live crawfish. can you talk about a boil? when you say "aboil", for some people who may have never had a boil, what's that? in new orleans, we boil everything, very differentthan the crab situation here. i've come to appreciate the steaming of crabs. in fact,i actually prefer them that way now--don't tell anybody or anybody back home. we evenboil our crabs in louisiana so boiled crabs, boiled shrimp, boiled crawfish. we just boilit. it's easier that way. we throw a bunch
of spices in it and it picks up all that.i like sort of the delicate aspect of steaming. crawfish boils, like any type of ritual sortof getting around the table, breaking bread, it goes back to the acadia's in how they wereexiled from what now is nova scotia area and whatnot. i think it was about 1755. they obviouslyfound their way. those were the cajuns as we know it today. my aunt lives in abbeville,louisiana which is about three hours west of new orleans in vermilion parish. that'swhere i was really exposed to--there's the new orleans way and then there's the acadianaway and they are very different. growing up in the "city," being a city boy, i got toexperience both. i try to bring a little of that sort of more acadian and sort of vermilionparish kind of way to my restaurant, especially
when we do the boils. we're talking potatoes,we're talking about yellow corn, sweet corn varietals. obviously, sweet corn is a newervarietal of corn. back then it would have been white corn and not nearly as sweet asit used to be. you weren't trying to preserve that sweetness because the sugars would turnso quickly. you picked corn, you'd have to eat it within a day. now we've got these differentvarietals that have higher sugar content and they can last longer. in my house it was artichokeswere thrown in there, andouille sausage, smoked sausage, it was--we'd have hot dogs--justthe whole refrigerator was going. so that's kind of the new orleans version but in differentparts--and that is what it's supposed to be. it's a personal thing. so it depends on whatdad wanted to throw in the boil that day.
dump it out on a big table with the newspaperand you get to town. there's a couple of rolls of paper towels and there's some ice coldbeer. it's really where you just have conversation. it's like picking crabs, it's the same thing.you eat for 20 minutes to an hour, you clean up a little bit, you have another cold beer,your mouth starts burning and you're on fire. then you go right back to the table and startpicking again. these things would happen. they'd be in batches so every hour anotherbatch would be dumped on the thing, steam coming up and everybody comes back to thetable. it was all day affair and that's what i love about it. it forces us to slow down,you know? it's such a tactile experience, too. i rememberthe first time i went to a crawfish boil they
said, "watch out, because the pads of yourthumbs are going to be so sore for the next few days." because you're peeling off theexoskeleton of the crawfish and then you have people poking you and saying, "suck out thehead! suck out the juice in the head!" it's certainly a communal experience. yeah, don't come to the table with any papercuts or anything. some people, they put band-aids on their thumbsif they don't think they're up for the challenge of peeling off those exoskeletons. and in louisiana, the young ins would cometo the table. parents don't pick crawfish for little kids in louisiana. it's somethingyou learn right off the bat because it's a
very sort of "me"even though it's very communal.so you teach them very early how to pick crawfish. survival of the best crawfish picker. so it sounds like there's a lot of communalthings, a lot of family stories involved. you talked about your aunt, which i thinkis great. janice bourgeois. well, bourgeois. french name. and you mentioned the acadians, too. can youtell us a little bit about the acadian group. and you said the word cajun, we also say theword creole. what's going on there? here we are. see?
i know, we always end up back here often. wait, so let me ask that a little differently.should we talk about the difference between cajun and creole? i think we have to talk about the differencebetween cajun and creole. often we associate the cuisine of new orleans as a creole cuisine,as it was in the 1800s through 20th century. some people argue that it was with chef paulprudhomme that cajun food really was brought to new orleans. he was the one who made iton a national scale, bringing cajun cuisine into oat cuisine and saying we can have thesefantastic dishes. we can smother our rabbit, we can smother squirrel and this can be somethingcelebrated in a formal white tablecloth restaurant.
but the history of it, as david was sayingbefore, 1755. think of the seven years war, the french and indian war. acadians were--thebritish came in, they said get out of nova scotia, get out of these northern provincesin canada. they migrated slowly through the mississippi valley down to what we know callacadiana and louisiana. and the cuisine there is completely different. it's a cuisine thatis built off the land. it's built off of affordable foods like crawfish. slow boiled, slow flames,slow cooks, smothering techniques, and very different from the oat cuisine of new orleanswhich in the 1800s was more so french than anything else because there was such a connectionwith france. chefs from new orleans were sent abroad to france to train, were brought backto antoine's and other restaurants like that.
those foods in the restaurants of new orleanswere not even, i would say creole, in the sense that they weren't even serving gumbo.they were serving french restaurant culture. its just completely different. the roux, we always kind of come back to gumboand roux. like ashley was saying-- and can you talk about what roux is? yeah, it's a thickener. it's the base to everystew sauce, (names sauces), and gumbo. in the french world, which would have been morethe creole side of new orleans cuisine, it was with butter. butter and flour. we sayflour and fat is what we say in the south. in acadia, butter was--you know, dairy productswere just nonexistent so it was oil. it was
lard and flour. just those two alone, thedifferences, and also obviously the shades of color. you're going to get the more french-influence,refined chefs that are doing blonder roux, softer in flavor because there's a certainlevel you can't really take your butter. and then the oils, flours of the acadian regionfrom the acadias would be more of a darker roux. so the cook it longer, flour gets a littletoastier. you've got the tomato and the influences whichthey don't have there. even in cajun cuisine today, you'll read recipes that call for whitewine but aunt boo will tell you that cajuns didn't cook with wine. we didn't have wine,we didn't have butter. she goes, "that's all
the stuff you guys do in new orleans." she'sstill sort of shouting out and claiming--keeping it as pure as possible and sort of remindingpeople. what did she use instead if she wasn't usingwine? acids, she uses a lot of citrus. louisianahas a lot of citrus, a lot of oranges in certain parts outside of new orleans as you're goingdown to venice, louisiana where most fishermen would go out. myself included. that's wherewe would enter the mouth of the mississippi, that's where great redfish were caught, andthat's where you had the chance to go out into the gulf right there as it opened upand and do big water stuff like wahoo and maui. mahi-mahi dolphin, and red snapper,and tuna. just an amazing--so abundant. it
still is today. it's fascinating too because you mentionedroux. so there's a saying in new orleans. first you make a roux, that's the base ofevery creole dish you can think of. but, in the 1800s and 1700s, flour often spoiled inthe trans-atlantic journey coming over to new orleans. so originally, gumbos where notmade with flour, they were not made with a roux until well into the 1800s. originally,they had to turn to native american techniques using sassafras leaves, ground sassafras leaveswhich we call file, for example, to thicken those stews. or they used okra coming fromwest africa. it also has that slimy texture, slimy quality that some new orleanians inlouisianans love. they're absolutely in love
with that texture. it was a thickener. soyou see that there's an evolution in the cuisine. even though these dishes were french is someways, in more ways they're west african, they're caribbean. even the mirepoix of new orleans,the holy trinity, it includes bell peppers. so you have celery, onion, and bell pepper.the bell pepper was brought up from latin america through the caribbean, and it showsyou how a french tradition, which would've used carrots instead of bell peppers, wastransformed and adapted within the colonial context. they call that "sofrito." it's the same baseto every--peppers, onions, garlic. even in cuba, they're still. everything is sofrito,sofrito. the parallels of cuban cuisine to
new orleans are amazing. i got to experiencethat firsthand two years ago when i went back to havana. my father was born and raised inhavana and we got to go back. it was his first trip back in 53 years. the first dish thechef taught me how to make in his own kitchen in havana vieja, the older part of the city,was identical to my shrimp creole recipe except instead of using shrimp he was using spinylobster, caribbean lobster. it was called "langosta de enchilada." it was a tomato-based,he even used a little wine, got a little fancy on me, sofrito. then he had the lobster tailmeat, served with white rice. it's identical to my shrimp creole. it was amazing. the otherchange is that they didn't have a lot of spice there, believe it or not, even though it'sa caribbean island, it was not a heavy chili
or spicy cuisine. unlike louisiana; we gotthe cayenne and the different peppers. that was obviously our central american sort ofconnection. that sort of cuisine became a little spicier, a little spicier. then we'rekind of known for that, so then we had to keep going up. now everybody expects that.although, louisiana cuisine is not blow-your-head-off spicy. that's why we have hot sauce on thetable. exactly. and their histories are intertwined,too. with saint-domingue, what we now know as haiti. with the haitian revolution, youcan imagine ten thousand immigrants first came through cuba and they lives in cuba.then in 1809 ten thousand people came to new orleans, doubling the population. we reallyidentify this period as the franco-phile influence
coming back into new orleans and really bringingback these traditions from france because they were both colonies at one time of france.although, new orleans, believe it or not, was under spanish rule longer than it wasunder french rule. the french quarter today, the historic architecture that you see therewas actually of the spanish era, not of the french era. so a common misnomer there. butyou really have to pay attention of saint-domingue and how those refugees were coming to cubaand brining those red beans and--use of red beans and whatnot--into new orleans. it'sall connected. all connected in the caribbean and the atlantic. so many connections and multiple stories andpeople coming from different areas. we should
probably open it up for questions as well.there should be some folks with microphones. does anyone--we could talk all day, clearly,which is great. but does anyone in the audience have a question for the panel that they wantto get after? all right, yes in the back. long-term, who do you think has a bigger impact:prudhomme or emeril? what's that now? which chef do you think had a bigger impactor will have a bigger impact overtime? paul prudhomme or emeril lagasse? hands down, paul prudhomme. hands down. emerilwas our t.v. guy, but even going further back--and that's a great point because we look backat food. the nation has julia child to thank
for so many things--an amazing exhibit here.we in new orleans, even before prudhomme or during paul prudhomme's era, we had justinwilson. justin wilson, if you don't remember, was on pbs television. i grew up watchinghim on channel 12 in new orleans. he had that tagline: "i guarantee." and he had that--big,thick, red suspenders. believe it or not, we were kin. i found that out later in life.he actually was the one that--we set up and arranged a phone call one day. i was on thefence of whether or not i was going to go to culinary school and if it was the rightdirection to go or should i just launch right into my career and just get a job at a restaurantand just start cooking. he connected me to a guy in new orleans who had a culinary schooland was a good friend of his. but i remember
the conversation just like it was yesterday.he grew up in amite, louisiana which is where my grandmother was born and raised. rightin amite, and it's about an hour outside of new orleans. recently, my wife and i weredriving through amite on the way out of new orleans and stopped by and got to see hishouse and where my grandmother was raised. i would say justin wilson and paul prudhommehad--and john folse, of course. you can't talk about louisiana without talking aboutjohn folse. those were the pioneers. what's that? john folse? he's in thibodaux and he's gota culinary school there. he's just an amazing chef and he's an amazing ambassador and sortof spews louisiana. he's got these amazing
cookbooks that are just absolutely--just stunningphotography, amazing recipes. they are, for lack of a better word, coffee table books.but there are also ones that you need to put some roux stains on because they're good.really good. new orleans has a very long tradition withfood television. i've done some research on a woman named lena richard who had a cookingshow called lena's new orleans cookbook in 1950. this is 15 years before julia child.she was an african-american chef who was recruited by the rockefeller family to cook in colonialwilliamsburg, trained at the fannie farmer school in boston, and came back to new orleanswhere she opened up her own cooking schools, white tablecloth restaurants. she was oneof the first chefs, and one of the first african-american
women on t.v. i mean, this is 1950, it's incredible.unfortunately, the records of her show no longer exist. so we have to rely on oral historiesand photographs to really get a sense of what she was making on television. a huge impacton what was going on locally. of course, these weren't nationally broadcast, but it was onwdsutv. there you go, wdsu. you know, it's still around today. well, nother show, but the station. all right, another question. right in themiddle here and then another in the back. okay, so this is a question for ashley, andthis is slightly unfair because i have known her for a long time. david obviously has verystrong ties with new orleans the city, i'm
assuming you grew up there. ashley, what inspiredyou to study new orleans, and specifically food pathways? again, having known you verywell, the second part to the question: how did your family's grocery store impact yourthesis? are there any modern implications that you're seeing through all of that? so, the question was about how ashley, asa non-new orleanian, became interested in new orleans. i was pulling out there, there'sa family story that involves a grocery store as well. so what is the story there? i have two sides. i am the perfect marriageof my parent's interests. my father is a historian and he was a teacher for high school studentsin world cultures and other american histories,
and my mother's business--which my mothernow owns and operates with her two sisters--was started by my grandfather just after worldwar ii. he started as a vegetable stand operator on the side of the road on christmas eve andeventually built up this business overtime into--in pittsburgh--now we have three storesthere. they are gourmet grocery food stores. i have this interest in food and i have aninterest in history, but my ties in new orleans go back to an internship i had in 2009 asa collections intern at the southern food and beverage museum. on the very first day,liz williams introduced me to the the picayune's creole cook book and she said, "this is thecook book you need to read to really understand new orleans culture." i opened up the pagesof this cook book and i started reading the
introductory essay. it has a history of creolecuisine, and it nodded to this trans-atlantic nature of creole cuisine, ties to west africa,ties to the caribbean and europe. but the racial prejudices embedded in these pages,the representations of african american women and women of african descent caught me sooff guard. i had never come across a historical document so rich with prejudice. it fascinatedme, it troubled me, and it drew me to write a thesis about race and gender in new orleanscreole cook books from turn of the century, 1884 to 1905. essentially when they were firstpublished. so, that's how that all begin. but for implications for today, i mean, istudy public market culture and they don't really exist in many cities. some are beingrevived, some, like the french market, have
existed for over 200 years. but, we have farmer'smarkets today. these are iterations of the public market culture, right? we have a fascinationwith good food. we want to know where our food is coming from, we want to know our farmer.but in the 1800s, your farmer was your next door neighbor. you knew them. it was justa community there. each public market--and new orleans did 33 of them--33 neighborhoodmarkets. each one catered to the ethnic community of that market. so everything was tailoredspecifically to the interests, the consumption interests, of that particular community. nowadays,we're facing food security issues, hunger, obesity. can we learn something from the 1800s?is there a seed of inspiration in how public markets were run there or how street foodculture operated that might provide insights,
or perhaps a potential solution for issuesthat we're facing today? i'm hoping that in some ways, my dissertation will be informativefor public health individuals who are working in these sectors. it's a difficult question. just for the record, she still cheers forthe wrong black and gold. i'm assuming you're a steelers fan. i am a steelers fan. well, first of all i want to point out thatshe said that in order to understand new orleans culture, you have to read a cook book. reallyan amazing way of tying it all together. david, how are you impacted in the work you do bysome of the history of the city you come from
in that market system? has any of that impactedwhat you're doing? yes, it's influenced it, of course. for me,getting back to knowing your vendor, where your product comes from. it got really trendyabout 10 years ago with chefs. it's really just a full circle. i don't necessarily thinkit's something that should be promoted or used as a marketing tool . i think it's anobligation. for me, honestly what it is, it's fulfilling. what i do and the hours that iput in and the sacrifices that myself and my family makes to do what i love to do, wewere talking about this. from an academia background to our industry--yes, certain networkshave made what we do and glorified it to our advantage and then also there is some negativeaspect to the t.v. world and what it's done
for our community and our industry. if i didn'tknow where something was coming from and i wasn't able to see what they do. we want outto purcellville two weeks ago to visit where all of our greens come from. we purchase froma farm--it's got a vienna farm but the main farm is in purcellville. it's potomac vegetablefarm. we have a relationship with the farm managers and we ended up going out there andcooking for their entire crew right on the farm. we had a little grill. it's about relationships.obviously, it's about product first. but for me, it's a very--if i can't connect with themand know what they do, and it's not the same mission statement that i have. the parallelshave to be there. we have to have the same goals, the same reasons for doing what wedo. these guys are sleeping on the farm, some
of them. because they love to farm. they maketheir own compost. a lot of people buy their compost. these guys are amazing. to learnmore about how they do things and their operation and what sets them apart from other farms,and the cover crops that they do just to throw it back into the soil, and how they care fortheir soil like you would care for a new baby. to see someone else's passion is infectious.you have that energy after leaving the farm and you have that energy in your space andin your restaurant. you attempt to have that kind of--move around and the energy is shared.but for me, i just do it so that i can sleep well at night knowing what i'm giving my customersand i think that it's sort of an obligation that we have. and it's nothing new. let'sjust remember that. there's nothing new about
what i'm doing or anybody else should be doingas far as having a relationship with their farmer. it's about as old as it gets. we have time for a couple more questions.and speaking of family! speaking of family, i'm from new orleans soof course i'm going to have a very hard question. but i do want to add to yours about paul prudhommeor emeril is a person that we shouldn't forget that was very influential in the caribbeancuisine and the influence is leah chase. i think she is someone that was very instrumentalin that cuisine and developing that cuisine. us learning about gumbo and stuff like that.you talked about the bananas and having in the french market, that there was a designatedarea for just bananas. is it true--i understand
that we were, new orleans was the port mostimportantly for bringing bananas into this country through the gulf coast. do you mind,ashley, explaining a little bit about that if you do know? so the question is about the trade of bananas,how they moved, and really how bananas got to america and now of course in every grocerystore, every corner store, but now grown here. so what's the new orleans story with that? i think there's some statistic out there that'ssaying bananas are the most popular fruit consumed in the united states today, if i'mnot mistaken. but the banana republics have a very complicated history tied to slavery.these are largely along latin america and
what not. they would have been grown in latinamerica, brought on mass ships through the caribbean, and you have that caribbean connection.some of these ships would have diverted to saint-domingue, they would have gone to cuba.most of these ships would have come to the port of new orleans. then either through railroador going up the mississippi after we had the innovation of the steamboat which could goup the river, these bananas were then transported to the rest of the united states. it's reallyimportant to bring in transportation history here, particularly with the railroads becauseit transformed how we grow produce in the united states. prior to that, farms wouldhave specialized not in one crop, not monoculture, but many crops. unless you were in a typicalsouthern plantation system where you were
doing cane sugar or cotton. most small-scalefarms had numerous kinds of fruits and vegetables. california is similar. but once you had therailroad system in place, you could ship a single commodity crop from the west coastto new orleans, to new york. it created a culture of monoculture, completely transformingthe ways that people actually farmed. of course we didn't adapt bananas in the united statesbecause they wouldn't grow very well here. we depended on those banana republics to feedour consumption habits. just an interesting thing to bring in transportation to the historyas well, and to the culture. and if you go through the garden districtor a lot of places in new orleans, banana trees--even though they're not grown for theircrop--is a big part of the landscape there.
obviously, with the sub-tropical climate thatwe have in new orleans you can grow some beautiful lush. it's just amazing. if you haven't beenthere, there's just some amazing gardens. by 1850, the port of new orleans was the fourthlargest port in the world. it wasn't even in the united states. there were so many productscoming through the port of new orleans. like i said, they were using both atlantic traderoutes, but then also these in-land trade routes because of the connections with themississippi. new orleans is so central. it's a huge city by the mid-19th century. wow. all right we have one more question overhere and then we're going to make way to dessert, which is also coming. one more question.
i've been noticing in northern virginia thatthere are a number of crawfish boil restaurants opening up. the ones that i've been to allseem to be owned by vietnamese families. i'm wondering if there is a connection betweenthe vietnamese people who moved into louisiana and started fishing and the crawfish that'scoming up into northern virginia and into these restaurants. so some restaurants in northern virginia crawfishrestaurants, crawfish boil restaurants owned by vietnamese families and then of course,vietnamese migration into new orleans, huge part of the story related to fishing and agricultureand all sorts of movement of people. is there a relationship there between where we areand new orleans?
the connection of the vietnamese in louisianaand new orleans is huge. i grew up in the eastern part of new orleans, new orleans east,and half a mile to a mile closer to the slidell or to the five-mile bridge or to the pontchartrainwas a very large shrimping community. my area was thick, rich with culture and we had vietnamese,african-american and that was just a part of the city that was a working community.heavily influenced by the shrimp community and the vietnamese. a lot of vietnamese restaurantsdown chef menteur highway towards chalmette. i didn't think anything of it. i've grownup eating vietnamese cuisines since i was knee-high to a grasshopper. now, what's interestingin new orleans, a friend of mine--a 40-year old caucasian male--just opened up a vietnameserestaurant, had 10 years training with a very
famous chef down in new orleans john besh,and he broke away from john and opened up a place called mopho. it is his take on tryingto celebrate the influence of the vietnamese community and population on food and bringhis more modern technique in cuisine to--he's in mid city right now it's been open for abouta year. it just got a big award from esquire magazine and is doing really well. but, whynot? that's what new orleans is, it's why not? i love that you brought up mopho. i had friendsvisit me in new orleans when i was doing my dissertation research last year and i tookthem to mopho. i took them to several vietnamese restaurants because new orleanians--when ifirst came they said you have to try banh
mi. you have to try pho. it is a part of neworleans culture now. you may not call it exactly creole food, but it's definitely part of creoleculture to the point where people say, you have to have this, we need to go to the neworleans east farmer's market at 5 am to the vietnamese farmer's market. or we have togo across the bridge to this particular place. some of the best produce in the entire city. yeah, for their banh mi. it is just so integratedinto the culture now. i love that that story has continued of course,throughout history. we started those whole discussion with banana stalls in a marketand have really continued to how new orleans is continuing to change, continuing to evolvetoday as well.
i don't know why here, why northern virginia.why am i here? i don't know if it necessarily was any kind of migratory specific reasonwhy. i'm assuming you're talking about a couple of restaurants like chasing tails and thingslike that. it's interesting because everyone has their take on how to prepare crawfish.they do it differently than i do. i don't know them very well and i've heard their connectionto louisiana and i know they have a couple of people behind the ownership of the restaurant.they toss it in different--so it's a little more modern and almost like a buffalo wingplace where they've got different flavors if you will, which is fun. again, why not?i don't do mine that way, but to each his own. there are quite a few. i love that wehave more crawfish in the city. i hope they're
getting them from louisiana. i think food history, it's a history of diaspora.it's about communities. obviously, you can study a community that is "isolated" whichwe know is a very controversial term. people are constantly moving and taking their cultureswith them, they're meeting new cultures, creating hybrid cultures. i think this is an exampleof that kind of diasporic food culture that is so brilliant to study as a historian oreven a chef. that's really where inspiration for your meals comes from. they are vibrantcultures, cultures that are just rich with so many histories. you know how it feels to be in your own kitchenand to finally tackle a recipe that somebody
before you in your family used to do or you'recarrying along this recipe as a story and passing it down. there's not too many otherthings that we ingest that isn't an heirloom, in a sense. when you have these recipes--mygrandmother, when she passed, i received all of her cook books. you talk about the riverroad volumes of the cook books and of course the creole cookeries and different volumesof cook books that i got. to be able to thumb through those books and to see your grandmother'shandwriting in the margins. we were looking through one recently and it was pretty blunt,but she said, "this recipe is not good." it was a note to herself because she flippedthrough it constantly and she was a wonderful entertainer. she had this great exposure tocuban cuisine living there for 18 years and
raising my father and his brother. she cameback to new orleans with even more in her rolodex as far as recipes. and i got to securethose and that to me is what food is, it's stories. the feeling you get, you can't compareit to much else after eating it and taking that first bite and transcending and rememberingthat moment when you first had that from the person who made it for you. i think everyone here must have those kindof connections. i have my grandmother's cast-iron skillets, and when i make a pineapple upsidedown cake or whatever in that skillet, it shapes the way you think about it. black and gold, you're back to black and gold.
but, it really is. it's about family, it'sabout connections, memory. we're really constructing our own narrative here with our family histories,but that doesn't mean they are any less important or significant. that's what i study in the1800s, that's what chefs are bringing to the table today. it's about family. it's aboutyour connections and how you imagine yourself in an inconceivable world. we try to drawthese networks to understand ourselves and our identity. that is why we love having groups like thishere together tonight in our own kind of community to talk about these things and learn aboutwhat's happening both in our communities around the country, and as part of a global storyof what's always been happening here. with
that, i want to give a huge thank you to ourpanel. and to let you know that the night is not over. there is still plenty of timefor discussing with the folks up here. also, visiting with people in our marketplace area.we have coffee roasting demos from chesapeake bay roasting company, some heirloom rice presentationsfrom the american history museum, capital city company is here to talk about hot sauceand mumbo sauce in d.c. we have cocktail historian phillip greene who is here, who is doing somedrinks on the stage. he'll also be signing his book, to have and have another: a hemingwaycocktail companion, david will be here signing his book which is also for sale, and jamesgagliardi of smithsonian gardens will be signing the encyclopedia of garden plants, which ishot off the presses, and smithsonian garden
staff will also be here to talk about thework they do at the museum and in the community. on top of all that, we also have a specialdessert that our chef has been making fresh for all of you, so i won't hold you back fromyour beignets anymore. thank you all for coming to food in the garden for this entire seasonand we hope to see you back in the garden next year.
