In which a midwesterner guesses at Louisiana favorites

Travel and restaurants are opening up more and more as the vaccine rolls out, so I thought you might be ready for a trip to New Orleans.

It could just be so beautiful there that you'd want to spend most of the time outside anyway, or at least that's what the figures enjoying a day at the creek on the cover of Cotton Country Collection (The Junior Charity League of Monroe, Louisiana, copyright 1972, but mine is from the 1979 ninth printing) seem to suggest. Stand on the shore with an indistinct pet! Paddle through the brown waters! Hope that no one gets eaten by giant reptiles!

I saw enough recipes that seemed like they might be genuinely regional (at least to this midwestern reader with little real knowledge of southern cooking beyond what I can find on the internet or see on cooking shows) that I decided to present a menu of foods that are unlikely to show up in midwestern cookbooks. I already have 1001 things to do with cans of cream-of-something soup, so maybe it's time to look for regional flavors?

Of course, if we're in Louisiana, you'd expect something from the creek, so we'll start with some of Howard's Boiled Crawfish.

The recipe does not have the same hesitancy to season as I see in midwestern recipes. I'm not sure exactly how big the cans of red and black pepper are, but the recipe calls for using multiple whole cans, plus eight pounds of salt, half a box of bay leaves, a 4-ounce bottle of Liquid Crawfish Boil (which comes in gallon jugs, too, so I suppose this is a pretty restrained amount), and four bags of crawfish or shrimp boil. Of course, this is to season 15 gallons of water for boiling (not eating as part of the recipe), so all those flavors will definitely be diluted, but still. Midwestern recipes might have called for a tablespoon of each seasoning at most if they were going all-in on flavor. Even if they might be appalled by the enormous quantities of seasoning, though, midwesterners would be happy to know that the boiling water can be repurposed to cook and flavor a potato accompaniment.

We'll need a salad to go with the crawfish and potatoes, and I'm going with something regionally appropriate this time rather than getting an easy laugh from a little Jell-O number. 

I thought I'd never heard of mirlitons before, but when I looked them up, Wikipedia said they're more commonly known as chayote. I've at least heard of those, but never had them. In any case, the Mrs. Kenneth C. Landry doesn't know me because my favorite French dressing is none, but maybe with some whipped cream cheese and paprika to make the salad company-ready, it could be good?

Good southern meals have biscuits, and instead of a honey topping, let's go for something a little more regionally specific.

Mayhaws are harvested in (surprise!) May, and apparently they're tart enough that jellification is one of the best routes to go for their use.

Finally, on to dessert. We've all heard of sweet potato pie, so I thought I'd pick something a little bit different.

Surprise! It's Sweet Potato Surprise Cake, which seems kind of like a carrot cake-- only with sweet potatoes instead of carrots. The cream cheese icing gets replaced with an evaporated milk, egg yolk, and coconut number, so that seems like a loss to me (Team Cream Cheese forever!), but your mileage may vary.

So there you have it-- a very southern (as far as I can tell?) menu from Louisiana cooks. (And if you're disappointed about the lack of gelatinous salads, don't despair! Pride month is coming, and I found a rainbow.)