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!