Stick with your seasonings. Poot does.

 

     Culinary Thrill Seeking fans, I know you hear me on this week’s topic, sticking to your seasonings. We’ve all got our favorites, and I grew up with Tony Chachere’s. I’m sentimental about anything TexJoy, made locally in Beaumont. Slap Ya Mama is big now in restaurants.

     I have a question for y’all! Where does Old Bay Seasoning fit in the Cajun Capital? I consider it a very Baltimore thing, and just researched a German immigrant developed it! I was in college when I discovered this tin. As a waitress at Bennigan’s, it was in some popular recipes. So, I’m asking if readers down here on the Gulf have incorporated it into their seafood boils, because I sure am seeing it out there.

     This, leads me to Poot, a fellow I met this week at the Cajun Heritage Festival, in the Big Doobie’s trailer. I love those little brown bags of cracklings that have just the right amount of grease spotting through. You know that’s good, and it was.

     Before social media, we didn’t always take photos of our food, but times have changed. I asked Poot if he’d mind using his scoop to move around the cracklings in a tub to show motion in a video. Poot declined, as that would tend to make his spices come off the product.

     Wel, we can’t have that. The flavor needs to stick. I respect that in a cook. Keep it up.

 

Here’s another stick-with-what works tidbit.

     I went to a covered dish and asked where can I set my corn and bean salad. A woman who had just said that the Facebook algorithm said we should be friends exclaimed that she, too, and brought a corn and bean salad. I used garbanzos and I recall she went with black beans and added avocado. The salads looked completely different.

     The next day I saw a Texas Monthly feature that corn and bean salad is a classic dish for us in the Lone Star State. Called it.

 

Darragh Doiron is a Port Arthur area foodie all about the spices. Tell her your favorites via panews@panews.com