A rustic cuisine, one in which locally available ingredients dominate, that has developed for the last 250 years, coming mostly from the French, especially in Louisiana, is Cajun Cuisine, featuring Country cooking, and in its earliest stages, one pot meals. Cajun Cuisine is a mixture of Cajun and Creole techniques and recipes, using a blend of natural spices to make it what it has become today.

The original Cajun cooking procedure was one cast iron pot suspended over a fire. Authentic Cajun meals today are usually a three pot affair: one pot used for the main dish, one pot for steamed rice, skillet cornbread, or other grain dish, and one pot for the vegetable dish. Originally, Cajun meals were bland and nearly all foods were boiled. Roux eventually gave more vitality and flavor to the boiled dishes, and rice is used to stretch the meals out.

One good tasting meat source is the Nutria Rat, or Swamp Beaver, whose recipe name is spelled backwards, "Tarairtun". Staple ingredients for Cajun cuisine consists of mirlitan (chayster or vegetable pears), corn, sweet potatoes, wheat, cucumbers, lemons, peas, beans, okra, tomatoes, maseadines, scallions, strawberries, wild game, pork, beef, figs, satsumes oranges, plums, pecans, grapes, sassafras, sugarcane, Thyme, hot sauce, and vinegar.

The abundant use of Cayenne pepper makes Cajun cuisine more spicy dishes. Onions, celery, green peppers, and garlic are also popular ingredients in Cajun cuisine. Sausages, like andouille and boudin, ham hocks, head cheese, grators, jambalayas, gumbos, and etouffees (the art of cooking vegetables and meats in their own juices), are popular Cajun cuisine, however, Mud Bugs, or crawfish, remain the symbol of Cajun cuisine. Alligators, frog legs, rabbits, and farm raised turtles often find their way into Cajun cuisine dishes as well.

To most Cajun Chefs, the Holy Trinity of Cajun cuisine, are bell peppers, onions, and celery. Crawfish Boils are a Modern Cajun celebratory event. Cajun social gatherings, called baucheries, (traditional pig slaughterings), complete with music, dancing, and meat preservation, still occur in some rural communities.

Cajun cuisine, while it does have a "kick" to it, is not eye-watering hot. Some decidely non-Cajun dishes, including red beans and rice, and blackened seafish, earn the "Cajun" title by the way they are prepared using Cajun-style seasonings. Cajun dishes prepared outside Louisiana are often hotter, and seasoned more heavily, than the original dishes, and are partly the result of the "Cajun" foods craze of the 1980s when Cajun-style seasoning was popularized by the very spicy dish Blackened Redfish, and are also a result of "extreme" food fads where many foods are hotter than the originals. The advent of mail order ingredient delivery has allowed Chefs to duplicate the original taste successfully outside of Southern Louisiana where Cajun cuisine has its base.

Cajun food is not fancy, it is not extremely hot from pepper, it does not use wine, it does not require expensive ingredients, it is not available in a box, it is often simple and brown, and it is not often seen on restaurant menus, however, it can be made outside of Cajun Country.

Lil Rickie's Shrimp Scampi (But, who is Lil Rickie?)

Ingredients:

2 pounds large shelled, deveined, and uncooked shrimp, 1/2 cup butter, 1 teaspoon salt, 6 cloves crushed garlic, 1/4 cup chopped fresh garlic, 2 tablespoons chopped parsley, 1 teaspoon lemon zest, 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice, lemon wedges.

Preparation:

Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees. Melt butter in a 13x9x2-inch baking pan in oven. To melted butter add salt, crushed garlic, and 1 tablespoon chopped parsley. Stir well.

Arrange shrimp scampi in baking pan in single layer. Bake, uncovered, 5 minutes. Turn shrimp, sprinkle with lemon zest, lemon juice, and the rest of the parsley.

Bake shrimp scampi 8 to 10 minutes, or until just done. Arrange shrimp scampi on hot serving platter, pour garlic butter from pan over shrimp and garnish with several lemon wedges.

Serves: 4 to 6