Miss Ella of Commander's Palace by Ella Brennan

Author:Ella Brennan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gibbs Smith
Published: 2016-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

Voodoo Mix—or Something

As head of private parties at Commander’s Palace in the late 1970s, Marcelle Bienvenu worked closely with Paul. Both hailed from the bayou country of southwestern Louisiana and shared an affinity for the Cajun food of that region. She shares her impressions of watching him startle the food world:

“Paul was incredibly creative. He always had these pieces of paper in his pocket with some kind of seasoning mix on them, and I would say, ‘It’s voodoo mix or something!’ I was kind of curious about what a fantastic mouth he had and how he wanted to get everybody’s mouths all fired up. It used to scare me because I thought that he meant peppered. But it was all these other seasonings that he came up with. I will never forget when he came out with a mirliton [chayote squash] carved to resemble a pirogue [a little boat]. And he fried it and then he filled it with fried oysters and fried shrimp. Then made a béarnaise sauce with tasso [spicy ham] in it. And I said, ‘I never had that when I was little.’

“So he really took a lot of the ingredients and kicked them up all kind of ways. And when he did blackened redfish, I thought, ‘Oh, nobody is going to like that.’ My mother would say, ‘It’s just burnt and I am not going to eat it.’ But he was of the right time to start preaching the gospel of Cajun cooking. People were ready for a change—nationwide, not just here. People were looking for something else, and I think that the flavors he introduced people to were something that nobody had ever had. Paul was bigger than life, and he said, ‘Y’all gonna like this.’ And people did. It was something so unusual on their palates that everybody went, ‘Yeah, that’s pretty good.’ ”

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.