Slowly, we came to discover that no one in Louisiana hated us (at least not to our faces!) In fact, I’d never felt more accepted or loved by complete and total strangers in my whole life, like the ladies at the grocery store who call me “baby” and ooh and ahh over my own “little mama” and “little man.” In the year that we’ve been here, I’ve eaten a lot of red beans and rice everyone has their own way of doing it, kind of like everyone has their variation of funeral potatoes in Utah. If you’re curious, okra is a vegetable imported straight from hell and personally hoed by Satan himself (unless it’s fried, and then all bets are off.)
And I have to say that it’s a good thing that red beans and rice was the first Louisiana food I ate here, because my first several encounters with gumbo were unpleasant ones (I was finally converted– this is my tried and true recipe). And I don’t know if it was the loneliness and upheaval that we were feeling in our lives at the time or if it truly was that delicious, but even though it was something new, it tasted like going home. I’d never had it before, and I didn’t know what to expect when I ordered it. That’s when I tried red beans and rice for the first time. We ate out a lot those first few weeks as we were settling in and after a little while, we decided to step out of our comfort zones and try some of the more regional fare since, supposedly, Louisiana has the most delicious food in the world. Our first night here, we went to an Italian restaurant where the waitress called the little girl at the table next to us “little mama” and I felt so out of place and conspicuous with my “definitely not from here” accent and having NEVER referred to anyone as “little mama.” I was convinced that everyone was going to automatically hate me. I’ll spare you the gory details of our move down here, but I will tell you that it involved a missed flight, a week in an extended-stay hotel that my 3-year-old referred to as the “ho-temple” (and I won’t lie, he wasn’t too far off), and leaving our families on the other side of the country. When we announced that we were moving here, we heard one of two things: 1) “Why?!” and 2) “The food there is absolutely amazing.” Actually, a lot of times we heard both. Benwick and Olga Massov.As a lot of you probably know, we moved to Louisiana about a year ago. Serve hot, with white rice and garnished with additional parsley pass the hot sauce at the table.įrom David Guas, chef-owner of Bayou Bakery Coffee Bar and Eatery in Arlington. Taste, and season with the salt, as desired. Return the reserved sausage to the pot, as soon as it’s heated through, turn off the heat and stir in the parsley. Using the back of a wooden spoon, mash about a cup’s worth of the beans against the side of the pot this will thicken the mix a bit. Reduce the heat to medium, cover and cook for 25 minutes. Add the beans, broth, thyme, bay leaves and the black and cayenne peppers. Increase the heat to medium-high and cook, stirring, until just softened, about 2 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the sausage to a plate.Īdd the bell pepper, onion, scallions and garlic to the pot and stir to coat in the fat. Add the sausage and cook, stirring a few times, until some of its fat renders and the sausage browns, 6 to 8 minutes. In a large soup pot or Dutch oven over medium heat, heat the oil until shimmering.
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