Laissez Les Bon Roadfood Temps Rouler: Part 10

Fais Do-Do: a Cajun country dance party where the music, talking, and eating is all done to a swampy beat.  And that’s exactly what Saturday night’s Roadfood Fais Do-Do, otherwise known as the Roadfood Shrimp and Crawfish Boil, was all about.  The event took place on the grounds of the Bayou Barn in Crown Point, and everyone appeared to enjoy themselves immensely (with the likely exception of the guy in the photo above).

That pig above is known as a cochon de lait: a suckling pig roasted over wood.  It had been cooking for a good part of the day and, once everyone had the opportunity to view him in his whole, roasted state, our hosts began to tear him apart.  Trays were filled with the pulled and hacked roast pork, some of which was creamy tender beyond belief while other parts, with maximum exposure to the heat and seasonings, and constant self-basting with the pig’s own fat, achieved a savory crustiness that was irresistible.  There were sauces available for pork-swirling, and they were good, but we found the meat to be at its best without any condiments at all.  Here’s what was left after the picking (vegetarians are advised to skip this photo):

This was a shrimp and crawfish boil, remember!

The live crawfish were first soaked (to purge them) and then boiled up.  The cooked crawfish were scooped into cardboard boats, and it was up to you to figure out how to get to the meat.  It’s actually very easy to do: you just twist off the tail.  You may have heard it said that the way to eat crawfish is to “suck the heads and pinch the tails.”  The meat is in the tail.  Head-sucking?  That’s how you get all those crawfish juices, especially the orange stuff known as crawfish “fat.”  Cajun cooks prize the fat as an essential ingredient in things like crawfish etouffee; they claim it’s where the essential flavor resides.  The “fat” is actually an organ called the hepatopancreas, which functions as a combination liver and pancreas in the crawfish.  We’ll gladly enjoy the qualities this fat lends to an etouffee but, when it comes to freshly boiled crawfish, we’re wimps.  We’ll stick to tail-pinching!  And if the only crawfish you’ve ever had was in dishes prepared in Cajun restaurants in New York or Minnesota, you’re in for a real treat when you sample freshly cooked live specimens, hot, juicy, and full of flavor.  And remember, “Don’t eat the dead ones!”

Shrimp too!  These were the good ones, cooked with the heads still attached, as we who live in the Northeast so rarely encounter them.

We enjoyed plenty of cold beer and two kinds of jambalaya (one with alligator) and there were other good things to eat, like corn-on-the-cob and potatoes but quite honestly we sated ourselves on crawfish and shrimp and pig and beer.  We finally had the chance to spend some real time with Cliff (buffetbuster) and Mariton, Cousin Johnny, Doug, and joerogo.  Cousin Johnny’s presence on Roadfood.com is mostly in the form of references in buffetbuster’s trip reports, so many folks may not realize that Cousin Johnny is a true Roadfood believer in his own right.  We had a blast talking Roadfood with Cousin Johnny!

There was an indoor dance hall with live music, which we could hear outside, but we only stepped inside for about the last hour.  Jane and Michael Stern, and Stephen Rushmore Jr., took the stage and introduced the Roadfood team, who then donned washboards and grabbed tambourines and served as the rhythm section for a Roadfood zydeco jam session:

 
Jane, Michael, and Stephen

Amy, Jane, and Chris

Eventually, everyone’s feet were moving to the zydeco beat; here’s one of our favorite tour veterans, Holden, showing how it’s done:

Dance Along With Roadfood!  Courtesy of EliseT:

Then it was time to put the celebrants to work.  Earlier in the evening, everyone was divided into teams.  It was the job of each team to come up with a Roadfood jingle or song.  Jane and Michael promised to sing the winning jingle on a future episode of The Splendid Table (be sure to listen to The Splendid Table in the coming weeks).  Here’s one of the winning teams (there was a two-way tie).  That’s buffetbuster on the right.

The always-game Holden also participated, performing a solo number (video clip courtesy of EliseT):

The party finally broke up.  People made their way back to the buses.  Some folks later went home.  Some returned to their hotels.  And others presumably continued the celebration long into the New Orleans night…

Coming up… It Really Is Possible to Find Bad Food in New Orleans and How to Find the Good Stuff Wherever You Are!

Hear It From Mr. Beef Himself

Joe Zucchero, co-owner of Chicago’s Mr. Beef, talks to FOXBusiness Network about his loan difficulties with Midwest Bank.  The bank is foreclosing on loans of over $600,000 that matured last year.  Mr. Beef wants to refinance; the bank is refusing; fans across Chicagoland are worried about the fate of a local favorite.

Florida Strawberry Festival

Strawberry shortcake, strawberry shakes, strawberry sundaes, strawberry cobbler, strawberry ice cream, chocolate-covered strawberries, strawberry cookies, fresh strawberry lemonade, fresh local strawberries by the flat… if strawberries were their own state, the Florida Strawberry Festival, which opens today (2/26/09) and continues through March 8,  would be its state fair.  First held in 1930, the festival celebrates the more than 5000 acres of strawberries grown in the Plant City region.

In addition to sampling all things strawberry, you’ll also enjoy a huge lineup of classic country music artists, including George Jones, Brenda Lee, Mel Tillis, Marty Stuart, Randy Travis, the Gatlin Brothers, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, and Ray Stevens.  More contemporary acts include Jessica Simpson, Kellie Pickler, and Taylor Swift.

There’s a midway, a kiddie area, and The Neighborhood Village, where the homemade and handcrafted items of local folks are judged and displayed.  Regular ticket prices are $10 for adults, $5 for kids (parking is $5), but discounts abound.  For more information, see the festival website.

Riverside County Fair & National Date Festival

Roadfooders know Indio, California as the home of Shields Date Garden (Roadfood.com review).  It’s also home to the National Date Festival, where you can sample brandied, crystallized, or candied dates, or dates stuffed with chocolate, nuts, or coconut.  There’s also date cookies, date ice cream, and the legendary date milkshake.  And if you’ve never sampled the moist, candy-like Medjool date plain, you are in for a real treat; these are nothing like standard baking dates.

There’s plenty of entertainment, but what sounds best to us are the camel races and ostrich races, and the Arabian Nights Musical Pageant (this IS the desert, after all).  Festival dates: February 13th (this Friday) through the 22nd in Indio, CA.

The Obama Horseshoe

First off, what’s a horseshoe?  It’s nominally an open-faced sandwich invented in central Illinois that generally consists of bread, meat, cheese sauce, and French fries, similar in spirit to a Rochester garbage plate.  But it’s really a canvas upon which the mind of the short-order chef can run wild!  And in that spirit, the Springfield State Journal-Register asked three local restaurants to come up with new horseshoes to honor the new president.  The three restaurants: Maldaner’s (going with a Chicago hot dog concept), Sangamo Club (seared ahi tuna???), and Roadfood.com-reviewed D’Arcy’s Pint (a Hawaiian Loco Moco theme).  The new horseshoes will be on the menus of these three restaurants.  Check out the video above, and the story in the Journal-Register.

"A Hamburger is the Most Universal Symbol of What it Means to be an American"

So said Josh Ozersky as he took ABC’s Nightline on a New York City hamburger tour last night (1/8/09).  The main thrust of the piece is the rise of the hamburger as the economy sinks.  They visit The Spotted Pig, Shake Shack (pictured above from the Roadfood.com review), Pat La Frieda Wholesale Meats, and City Burger, where they serve La Frieda’s dry-aged beef burgers.  You can see the whole seven-minute-plus video here.

One Restaurant Deals With the Bad Economy

Eden Alley, the vegetarian restaurant in Kansas City’s Unity Temple, discusses ways they’ve tried to address the bad economy, and the resulting drop in business, without laying off employees.  See the WDAF-TV video and interview.  One thing they did was reduce portion sizes, not something you’d expect to hear from a Roadfood restaurant but, then, Eden Alley is not at all your typical Roadfood restaurant.  Pictured above is a squeezed-to-order glass of watermelon, lemon, carrot, and apple juices, from Michael Stern’s Roadfood.com review of Eden Alley.

October 16th Thru 26th: North Carolina State Fair

The first North Carolina State Fair was held in 1853, and has been held every year since, with breaks for the Civil War and WWII.  It’s been held at the present site in Raleigh since 1928.  Total attendance last year reached over 800,000 visitors.

Barbecue is the thing to eat here.  North Carolina barbecue!  Various churches and community organizations offer this local specialty, as do the North Carolina Pork Producers; the chopped pork is served on a bun, or as part of a plate with hush puppies and slaw or beans or French fries.  You’ll also find some of the great local country ham, perhaps nestled between halves of a biscuit, and fried catfish too.  Look for Brunswick stew to round out your Carolina feast.

The Got To Be NC Agriculture exhibit will feature local growers and producers, with a changing array of samples throughout the fair.  There’s an extensive horse show schedule, and all sorts of competitions will be held at the fair, from agronomy to wine.  There’s an extensive concert schedule, featuring Montgomery Gentry and Josh Turner, tractor pulls, demolition derbies, and BMX stunts.  The Folk Festival Tent celebrates North Carolina’s musical heritage.

Oysterponds

Have you ever sat at the counter at the Grand Central Oyster Bar (Roadfood.com review; photo above) in New York City, and downed dozens of freshly opened oysters?  You study the oyster menu overhead and make your choices from among the couple dozen offered, maybe choosing a platter of Oysterponds, Wellfleets, and Buzzard Bays for your first dozen.  Have you ever given thought to where these oysters actually come from, how they are harvested, and how they make their way, in pristine condition, to the basement of a midtown NYC train station?

Here’s one answer, as Newsday tells the story of Oysterponds, an oyster company on the North Fork of Long Island that was started a few years ago by a group of retired men who wanted to keep themselves busy.  Today you’ll find Oysterponds on the oyster menu at Grand Central’s Oyster Bar.  Be sure to watch the fascinating video accompaniment!

Jake’s Famous Crawfish of Portland, OR Robbed at Gunpoint

Jake’s Famous Crawfish (Roadfood.com review; photo above), the Portland, Oregon fish house that’s been operating for over a century, was robbed at gunpoint early this morning, after the restaurant closed, by a man dressed as a Jake’s employee.  Nobody was injured.  Read more on the KGW website (where you can also watch a video news report) and the KPTV website, or check out KPTV’s news video segment.