Cajun Night
I decided to have a Cajun night with my fiancee, just because. I decided this evening would involve food, music, and a film and it would all be themed around the Cajun culture.
Food consisted of Oysters Rockerfeller as a starter, which I recommend trying because they were delicious. Preparing the oysters was the toughest part as you have to separate the shell to get at the meat inside, and those things are tough little bastards. Essentially they are like rocks; how did anyone ever discover that these were edible!? I melted butter in a frying pan, then added chopped up spinach and parsley and breadcrumbs and fried these together. I then added this topping to the oysters and put them under the grill for five minutes max. The result was fantastic. Wow. You have to try oysters like this.
The main was prawn and sausage gumbo, a traditional Cajun dish consisting of lots of stuff… cayene pepper, prawns, sausage, bay leaves, okra, tomato, celery, onion, green pepper, and more. I also added Tabasco for flavour. It was gooooood.
The dessert was non existent as I attempted to make pecan praline, but I did this too late and it didn’t set in time. I hope it’ll be ready today - in fact it is still in the fridge and I haven’t check it yet!
Music consisted of The Lost Bayou Ramblers and Jesse Lége, traditional Cajun music.
As for a film, we watched Southern Comfort, a film from 1981 directed by Walter Hill with a score by Ry Cooder.
A squad of National Guards on an isolated weekend exercise in the Louisiana swamp must fight for their lives when they anger local Cajuns by stealing their canoes. Without live ammunition and in a strange country, their experience begins to mirror the Vietnam experience.
- From IMDB
Yes, there is some dodgy editing, and the script could have been better, but the overall feel of the film is somewhat claustrophobic and very eerie. In my opinion it is a sadly underrated film that not many people have heard of.
