New Orleans Floyd's American Pie

MUSIC: "Green Onions" by Booker T The MG's

I am driving the ultimate "dream machine" - a Corvette Stingray 67.

Seven litres under the bonnet!

I've got my pots and pans and my knives because I'm on the BBC maxi-break of a lifetime!

I'm going to take you to Louisiana, Memphis, New Orleans, Florida,

California - from shining sea to shining sea!

Try the food, the music, the blues, the rock'n'roll,

the a-whop-bop-aloo-bam of American gastronomy! Let's go for it!

MUSIC: "The Star Spangled Banner" by Jimi Hendrix

The Bayou, Louisiana - gastronomic heartland of the southern states,

home of crawfish and file gumbo, and lots of other dishes immortalised in rock'n'roll songs.

Amongst these stunted trees, destroyed coincidentally by Hurricane Floyd,

you can feel the spirit of General Jackson,

who beat the living daylights out of the Brits at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815.

That curious machine is a mud-bug harvester!

Mud-bugs are what the locals call crawfish - an aggressive, lobster-like crustacean

that lives in the same swamps that produce the wild rice they ultimately meet on a plate.

This symbol of Louisianan cuisine is farmed in vast quantities here in the Mississippi Delta,

and those not eaten by these winged predators end up in pots with Cajun spices and garlic,

spreading the gastronomic spirit of Louisiana right across the States.

As my Cajun chum explained so succinctly...

Keeping them away.

He was only scaring those birds, though he eats the occasional one.

Our first cooking sketch now, with a guy who really irritated me.

He cooks a great jambalaya, so he can't be all bad!

I've got trouble on my hands here. This so Chris.

He knows everything about Cajun cooking and he's going to teach me

how to make a jambalaya, the classic dish of this Louisiana swamp region.

What are all these ingredients? Floyd, I want to tell you something.

Jambalaya's an important part of our diet

and I want to tell you something before you go too far. Trouble!

If you mess up, I got something to handle you! Fair enough?

Fair enough! Mess up my jambalaya and we are going to settle the odds up.

That's all I wanted you to know. Let's talk about the ingredients.

Remember what I dropped in here? You thought it was lard. I did.

It was alligator fat. Alligator fat? That's all. No, really, it was lard.

Lard has a good flavour. SIZZLING

Can you hear that pot sizzling?

Drop that sausage in. All of it? Yeah. I'm going to give you the spoon and you can do the work.

How's that? This is good! Somebody else is doing the cooking!

How long do we cook this for? We cook this until we get some of the oils out of the sausage.

This is hot sausage. Good.

The flavour of this sausage is going to carry this jambalaya. Right.

Don't break 'em all up! Just hit 'em lightly. There you go.

Let it saute for a few minutes.

By getting the oils out, it lubricates something you don't know nothing about.

What's in there, then? You really want to know? Yes.

Mississippi river water. Good chemicals come down our river. This has very good flavour.

Is that a good shot? No, let me tell you what I've really got.

I've got chicken stock and a little kitchen bouquet.

I know you're familiar with that. That's a bouquet garni. Right.

They give great colour and flavour.

We're going to add a little trinity.

You know what trinity is? It's green peppers, celery and onions.

Right. This is a basic seasoning group we use in South Louisiana,

whether we're making a jambalaya, a gumbo or Creole.

We're going to add this to the pot. I'll tell you what else you can add right now.

You can put chicken in. Already? Go ahead. Heat it up real good.

Does that look like chicken to you? Well, I don't trust you any more...

Would I lie to you?! I think you might!

This is what we had the back part of.

That was a little bit we had left in the freezer. It's a big chicken!

How do you like the looks of this baby? Can you open him up?

I wouldn't think so. Go ahead. Oh, my word!

I would not put alligator meat in this pot. Why?

Alligator is $6.95 a pound! Right. Pretty expensive.

We're using raccoon today. Raccoon! Don't you prefer raccoon? Oh, dear!

Rocky Raccoon! Rocky Raccoon!

How's that looking? Very good.

Fa-a-antastic! How about dropping a little garlic in there? Garlic...

This guy's learning how to cook. He's finally learning real food.

Hey, this stock's boiling away here now. You see how the chicken base has come to the surface? Sure.

Now it's time to pour it in the pot. The handles aren't hot.

Just to recap on this, if I may.

It's spicy New Orleans sausage fried in lard. Then add the trinity of celery, peppers and onions.

Then the chicken or, in this case, raccoon meat went in. Alligator is too expensive.

And now in we go with the stock.

Do you know a Cajun philosophy for making a jambalaya? No.

If it walks, crawls, swims or flies and you can catch it,

you can put it in that pot! How's that, huh?

Right, what about the rice? When does it go into the whole thing?

We have to bring this to a boil,

but we need to add a little salt in there. Salt.

Put about two teaspoons of salt in there. Is this the salt?

No, leave that alone, don't even touch that.

This is called Joe's stuff. No, that's salt. Salt.

Yes, I just use Joe's bottle.

That's pretty close. I'd put a little bit more in.

You're cooking five cups of rice.

Right, OK, well, it needs a little bit more, then.

That's what I'm getting at. We'll stir this in.

Bring that to the boil.

Get back to the alligators. I'd love to get back.

They eat anything that get in their way. Female alligators that

have baby alligators, that is

probably the meanest creature you ever run across in your life.

Worse than a mother-in-law, in fact.

Well, I don't know, my mother-in-law,

the first job I ever had was taming alligators.

You ever tried to tame alligator?

I used to have to stand there and run my hands through the mouth,

once I got it open. You know who got me the job? My mother-in-law.

I quit that right quick - I realised what was going on.

Shall I put the rice in? Yes, that's boiling.

We just going to put the lid on it. Lower the fire, though it real low.

I'm not looking to bring it back to a boil. How are we coming?

Let's see how what you've got here, Floyd. Very low. Yes. About there?

Oh, there you go, all I want was a simmer. That is perfect.

I'll tell you what. Have you cooked before? No. No?

Well, why do they call you Floyd On Fish?

I'm just curious, that's all.

What we have to do now, Floyd, we have to time this for 10 minutes.

Can you tell the time? Nine cans of that and that's ready?

No, one can and this is a quarter can. I need a whole can of Dixie.

How much did you have in yours? Oh, yeah, we can time it -

by the time you finish that and I've finished this, 10 minutes will be up,

then we're going to turn our jambalaya off.

At that point right there,

we have to let this thing sit for about 20 minutes.

This rice will cook itself. Right. Right in the pot,

and that's what's nice about it. OK.

They call New Orleans "The Big Easy", it's a city

that likes to sleep late and party hard.

Once extremely prosperous, the failing oil and shipping industries

have left their scars on this most European of American cities.

It reminds me of a cross between Avignon, Seville, and Liverpool.

The streets rattle to streetcars and rock with the jazz

that fills the food-scented air in this humid city.

'Three pizzas, one with anchovies, one with mushrooms...'

These flags flying for Mardi Gras owe their colours

to a British Victorian touring theatre group playing Lear,

dear, dear, dear Lear at the local theatre.

The organisers of the first carnival borrowed their costumes for

the carnival king and queen, so it's all down to Shakespeare, really.

"Laissez les bon temps rouler", "Let the good times roll," is the motto

of this naughty place, the home of Tennessee Williams,

A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, etc, etc.

I could go on but I'm more into Faulkner,

another great Southern writer.

New Orleans is a superstitious city, palm readers, witches,

diviners and clairvoyants of all kinds hang out on the streets

and dubious little studios, but with its Indian, French, Spanish

and slaving heritage, it's not surprising.

# I love, I love you, baby and I want you to be my girl... #

Along with fortune-telling and music,

your Big Easy native is never happier than when eating beignets,

a French-style doughnut in the Cafe Du Monde, the hangout

of musicians, artists, tourists

and the potpourri of New Orleans' demimonde.

Ah, I hope you like these little jewels of commentary,

they're quite important really.

Anyway, the central grocery store at the turn of the century

or thereabouts created the famous muffaletta sandwich,

presumably by Senor Muffaletta.

They're sliced salami, ham, and Swiss cheese

smothered in olive oil and pickle. Do you really like them?

# Yes, I do, yes, I do

# Yes, I do

# And I want you to be my girl... #

I'm not keen on being a tourist and wild horses couldn't drag me

on to anything called a Creole Queen.

I should be telling you all about the Mississippi,

but this isn't a look at life and all I know about it is,

it's very long, very wide and the Americans like it very much

and if it wasn't here, there wouldn't be jazz in the world.

In the French Quarter,

you can't move two paces without being tempted to eat something.

The Creole and Cajun dishes of this place make it

the Mecca of American cuisine.

Louisiana is rich in produce of all kinds,

a bit like Provence, really, and its spicy, tasty, uncomplicated dishes

are a menu-weary gastronaut's dream.

Now, take, for instance, the oyster po' boy, prepared by my chum.

"A po' boy," I hear you cry.

People say, "That's for a po' boy,"

because he doesn't have much money

and he has to buy something that is a lot of food and cheap

and can go far and the po' boy was a kind of cheap sandwich, you know.

That's good.

And you want to put just a little pickle on there,

give it a little dash here.

Nobody comes to New Orleans without getting an oyster po' boy.

They'll come here to get it when they hear.

Sometimes I've had people right off the plane, right here,

"Give me my oyster po' boy."

And when they're going back, take your oyster po' boy with them.

When my daughter was pregnant, she's in Los Angeles,

"Send me an oyster po' boy,"

what we call an oyster loaf, you know,

we put the whole bread and ship it to her.

People never go home without them and they're really typical New Orleans.

You haven't come to New Orleans unless you eat oyster po' boy.

SIREN WAILS

Because the BBC couldn't afford a taxi,

I've flagged down this passing police car and later hitched a ride

on this fire engine to visit one of New Orleans most famous

restaurants, K-Paul's Kitchen, run by my new chum,

Paul Prudhomme, who believes passionately that cooking

is not only good for the soul, but for the sanity of America.

Many of our psychiatrists in this country recommends that

a family that is under stress, that both members are working,

that are under tremendous stress during the week

to cook together on weekends, so...

Because it's relaxing, it's enrichening

and you can make your life better

and there's nothing in the world that you do more than eating.

You don't change your clothes more often,

you don't brush your teeth more often.

I mean, you eat more than you do anything else

and I think America is finding its eating sphere,

its eating enjoyment and its eating love and we're the head of it

because in Louisiana we've been doing that,

we've been living that way for the last 100 years,

so we have this huge amount of different dishes that we have

to offer America and the whole world, so Cajun and Creole is where it's at.

There's always a time in the programme when

I have to try to convince my hosts, in this case Paul,

that I DO know a bit about cooking myself. He said, "OK, since you're so smart,

"just make me some smothered Cajun style okra. Just go and do it."

So, I have. I've prepared for myself here a sunshine tray

of Louisiana food.

Starting from your left, Clive, we've got onions,

we've got lovely mixed bell peppers, red, yellow, and green,

we've got chopped okra, or ladies' fingers as we call them in England,

we've got skinned, depipped - largely - and chopped tomatoes,

we've got chicken stock at the back,

we've got Louisiana sausage here, and we've got some butter.

Swing to the left of the pan,

you'll see the first stage of my dish going along here.

Onions, peppers and okra going ahead in butter.

Into that, we put more of this magic Cajun mixture.

The pink wonder, as it has become known amongst our crew here.

Stir that round a little bit so this dish starts to absorb the flavours.

I think I'd still like to put more butter in that.

Paul - you can't see him at the moment -

but he's watching me with an eagle, eagle eye.

With great interest. So, into that some tomato.

Now...

What we're trying to do here, we've got that lot starting to cook.

We're going to relay it all again on top so that the food

is going to cook in different sort of textures and flavours.

Hopefully. So, more onions in,

peppers in, and now some more okra in.

And now some more of the Cajun magic.

I've probably put a bit too much of that, doesn't really matter.

Stir round.

I'm going to have to employ some magical television stuff here

because, obviously, if I let this cook on camera,

it would last 35 minutes, which would be far too long.

So right now, can I have a quick word with my viewers?

OK, lots and lots of minutes have gone by now. Back to the pot again.

Bit of sausage. This is a spicy sausage.

We put that in. OK.

Then we're going to add a bit of this wonderful chicken stock.

And how heartening. Back to me again, please, Clive, if you would.

I was amazed of the sophistication of the cooking

when I came to America.

I didn't expect to find reduced chicken stock.

It's really good news. It's wonderful. Right, back into there.

OK. Now, that has been bubbling for not long enough, but I want to add

some more tomato because this is okra smothered in tomato.

Put that in. Plenty of tomato in this. Right.

If you can just stay with that, Clive,

just keep looking at that for the next 35 minutes, OK?

So, there we are, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

Mine is the one with the wooden spoon in it,

and Paul's, the sort of more mature,

more reduced-looking one is that one with the metal spoon.

All we have to do, Paul, to see where I've gone wrong,

where I've gone right, is to taste it, I suppose.

Can I try yours? Yes, and I'll try yours. OK.

You really did a wonderful job.

Matter of fact, I think since we've identified whose is whose with the spoon,

I think we'll switch spoons there.

The taste comparison is very, very close.

There's...

There's a little more depth in the one that's cooked a long time,

but this is... This is good. Really, you've done a super job.

What a nice chap! And how wise he is.

You might think I'm shopping. But I'm not going shopping.

I'm making the groceries, as they say here in New Orleans,

in this French market established in the late 1700s

where the French immigrants brought their own typical produce to make

the wonderful American dishes you can get.

There are yams and sugar cane, and wonderful plump tomatoes,

garlic, peppers, courgettes. You could be in Provence.

And I'm making the groceries for the classic New Orleans

signature dish, shellfish gumbo.

Shellfish gumbo was invented by the people who lived here when

they tried to sort out how to make French bouillabaisse.

They didn't have the proper spices. But the West Indians did.

They had a spice called ngombo.

So they stuffed that into their shellfish stuff,

and, eventually, it was called gumbo. File gumbo.

To make the perfect shellfish gumbo, you need a fistful of dollars,

Thank you. Isaac, how are you doing?

What do I need for a really good shellfish gumbo?

First of all, sir, we have some lovely shrimp.

I'm cooking for 12, so whack them in there, if you would. Brilliant.

Beautiful. What's next? Next up, we have some combo file.

What exactly is this spice? It's ground-up sassafras leaves.

I've got that sussed at last. Then some Cajun sausage.

That's a spicy sausage? That's right. We have some Towson.

And that's what, smoked pork? Yes, sir.

And we have crabs to go with it. Great, chuck in some crabs.

How many of those do I need? About half a dozen. Good-oh.

We also have some Creole seasoning.

Right, that's spicy food, in that goes. How about some oysters?

You bet. Brilliant. How about some crawfish?

Crawfish, I like it. Now this thing here, what is this?

This is Cajun Boudin.

Crawfish Boudin. That's very stylish, isn't it?

This is what French nouvelle cuisine chefs are making these days.

Really brilliant. Anyway, jambalaya, crawfish pie, and file gumbo.

We're going to have some fun on the bayou.

Well, not exactly,

but at the New Orleans Cookery School run by Joe Con.

There it is at the bottom of your picture,

on the corner of that building where the pink is.

Food is more important than just sticking something in your mouth,

chewing and swallowing.

Food is what social is about. Food is what family is about.

Food is such a passion with local people, be it Creole or Cajun,

that people will say that their mother

is the greatest cook in the world,

their grandmother is the greatest cook in the world.

That's one of the things about Louisiana restaurants.

It is hard for a restaurateur to compete

against somebody's home cooking.

Because as you taste it, the people will say about a gumbo,

"My grandmother did better than this." Or "I did better than this."

And that's the fun part about it.

But all of our food, we have a passion for eating.

We have a passion for life.

I'll tell you what, I... I mean, actually, this is my show,

my viewers expect me to cook... This isn't my show?

This isn't your show, and as Fats Domino said, Big Bad Joe,

you've got to go, me-oh-my-oh.. But, wait, wait. Go, out!

I'm going to get out of the kitchen,

but here's the thing about the English.

You have a beer in front of you. Yes, what have you got? I have a beer.

But you have learnt how to only cook with one hand

because you have to drink with one hand.

In Louisiana, we're probably the only people who have a beer holster.

So what I've got to say is goodbye Joe,

we've got to go down the bayou...

You have been watching, or just missed, Big Bad Joe.

That's great, but we have actually got to get down to business.

I've asked Joe, I've asked Paul,

I've asked old ladies in the street, I've asked

every kind of person how I make a file gumbo,

this is going to be my interpretation of it.

I'm going to try very hard,

I'm going to give it to Big Bad Joe afterwards.

So, no furthermore ado, as we say, and, Clive,

the routine, spin round the ingredients.

This is going to be a shrimp gumbo.

So we've got fresh shrimp, lovely, lovely prawns,

as we call them in Britain.

We've got oysters, we've got gumbo crab meat taken from the shells.

These are the actual gumbo crabs here. We've got crawfish.

Remember the Elvis Presley thing? Crawfish, crawfish. These are they.

In fact, they're crayfish, as we would call them.

OK?

We have got the Cajun spices, the Louisiana spices,

we've got the tomato sauce,

we've got rice, we've got this wonderful sausage,

which I'm going to speak about much later, just check it out for now.

We've got peppers, and onions, and parsley.

And the dish takes its name from the okra, OK? Or ladies' fingers.

This is the gumbo.

In fact, ngombo from the West Africans, West Indians,

who were imported here in those dreadful years of slavery,

they brought this kind of stuff with them.

But, in fact, a gumbo doesn't have to have okra in it.

And mine is not going to have it in.

So that's the beginning of it all.

But before we can even start to cook, we need some fish stock.

Clive, if you can zoom over here, I've got a regular fish stock

of carrots, leeks, onions and stuff like that and a fish head.

Also, I'm going to put in all of the shells from the prawns.

We let that simmer and bubble away for a second,

and we get on with the real business. This is cookery school,

and he'd be waving at all the people up there, I suppose.

Anyway, fat in the pan, oil.

Some people say you should use margarine AND oil.

Right, no problem, into our hot fat,

the very first thing that I believe we should do is throw some onions.

You might get a bit of smoke in your eyes, but don't worry about it.

We then need a few of these peppers.

They called them bell peppers, I just call them green peppers.

They do like to take the whole thing to the maximum.

Then I need some chopped celery.

It's a very unbalanced knife,

so I'm not going to do it quite as fast as I normally do it.

We have some chopped celery. OK.

And we sweat all these vegetables down for a second or two. Right.

The next thing I'm going to do is put in Joe's mix.

I mean, this is a mixture of -

and here I have to refer to my notes because, I told you,

I don't know all of these things - this is...

You can be looking at that while I'm reading it out.

It's a mixture of freshly ground red pepper,

sweet paprika, salt,

white pepper, black pepper, dried thyme leaves, o-RE-gano leaves...

I'm getting American, I meant ore-GA`no. I'm terribly sorry.

And a bay leaf, all stuffed into there.

And this goes now, we've sweated these vegetables down a bit,

that goes in there as well.

And this is going to help us to make a bit of a roux.

OK, we've got that.

Then something brought to the gumbo by the Indians,

the indigenous American Indians is the file.

This is a safassas seed...

Sassafras leaves pounded up. So we have to put some of that in.

There's a school of thought here, some say it goes in later,

at the end, in which case file means string,

and it turns into a kind of stringy thing in the pot and that goes in the end.

Another school of thought says put in that the beginning.

I'm putting it in right at the beginning.

That feels more comfortable to my European way of cooking things.

Then we also need, cos they like these things a little hot,

but not too hot. And, don't forget -

Cajun, New Orleans, Louisiana cooking

is not just a question of chucking in a great

handful of spice onto something which hasn't been prepared,

the same rules still apply.

Freshness, honesty, integrity in the ingredients and all that

kind of thing, so a bit of Tabasco, or chilli sauce, into there.

OK. Like all sunshine cooking,

we need some tomato sauce.

This is just pureed fresh tomatoes,

strained through so there are no pips and skin in them.

So we'll put a bit of that in.

All right?

Now, you will hear it said the whole time in this programme,

this Louisiana programme, this New Orleans programme,

that anything for a gumbo goes. You put in what you like.

We're making this for a party so there are no precise ingredients.

You can buy my book, if I can be bothered to write it, for

the exact quantities, but it is a party dish so you just chuck things.

Stay there, because I need the fish stock now.

Right, sorry about this, you might get some steam on your lens,

I hope you can cope with that.

The fish stock goes into there.

You can see all the lovely ingredients I've used

to make that stock. That's trout heads,

trout are quite different here from other parts of the world.

It is trout, for sure.

Then we have now our basic gumbo mix.

You have to take a close-up on that.

The director has to dream up a lovely cutaway because that must

now simmer for at least 45 minutes before I can continue the process.

Because you all read the Sunday Times,

you will know that Carnival means "farewell to the flesh".

That is the season from Twelfth Night or if you prefer,

the Feast of Epiphany - I hope I said that right.

January 6 or the first Wednesday after Pancake Tuesday.

That was when the Three Wise Kings visited young Jesus

and the king carrying the gold said, "Oh, dear, my camel has a stone

"in its paw, you two go on ahead and I will be along later." Honest.

Now, 45 minutes has in fact gone by.

At least 45 minutes.

It has given me time for a few arrieres pensees, second thoughts.

What I forgot about was this wonderful chopped

and smoked Louisiana ham, which they think should go into

a file gumbo, even if it is meant to be a fish one.

Also I forgot this lovely andouille,

which is a kind of spicy smoked sausage.

We will pop a bit of that in as well. OK, that's for sure.

The other thing is we can put these now,

we can put just the shells of the gumbo crabs in,

because they'll add more fish flavour to the soup.

In they go. They are beautiful colour, aren't they?

They go in. They will be left in the plate just as a signature.

You would not eat that bit, that is just for flavouring it.

Then we've got the magnificent shrimps, OK?

Or prawns, as we call them.

Lovely fat, plump, fresh prawns.

Oysters.

Taken out with their juice, in they go.

That's the oysters. The wonderful crab meat from the Cajun crabs. OK.

Because the Americans don't like particularly to eat shells and bones

and stuff like that, so all this stuff is taken out of the shell.

Then finally we have our crawfish or crayfish. In that goes.

This is a feast and a half.

Hold that moment while I get a spoon and stir that in.

Now we have, we are cooking on gas, as they say.

But what was it those of you who were paying attention

at the beginning of this cooking sketch

have realised I haven't talked about?

It is the Crawfish Boudin. This is so stylish.

This is a real skin, and inside is minced up crawfish, spices

and bread. Stuff like that. It's really classically French.

Modern cooking, but here it is right in Louisiana.

So to make this dish absolutely sumptuous

and really a rock 'n' roll dish, in they go.

They simmer and poach in there for about another 10 minutes.

The lid goes on.

The lid goes on and the beat goes on.

The next time you see that, we'll be eating it.

OK. We take the top off. Put the top down on the floor.

Can I give you some? Do you want to have this with rice or not?

With rice is the traditional way. OK.

That was for one reason - rice was a filler.

Now, one of the things is with all the shrimp

or the prawns, and the crawfish and everything else,

it is hard to imagine anything like this could not taste good. Right.

So for yourself, sir.

'He couldn't bring himself to say it was absolutely brilliant.

'He was wittering on so much about the American War of Independence

'and stuff like that, he didn't realise that my thing was rich and delicious and wonderful.'

He does know that he is free to be edited out.

This is a biggie. Here I am, the Queen...

'Here we go again - the Queen is watching him in New Orleans.

'He gets all this muddled as well. He is talking about New Orleans, not America.'

OK, it is about America, we lost the war.

But they're watching America because we are not part of America.

Who cares about Andrew Jackson and Pakenham?

We've forgotten those little things.

'Come on, out with it.'

CAJUN MUSIC PLAYS This is good.

Anyway, back to the Bayou where we started

for a well-deserved glass of fresh air

and to do a bit of catfish fishing with my crazy chum,

powerful Pierre, who by the way is a real Cajun.

And also you should know that Cajun is a corruption of Arcadia -

the name given to the French who settled in Louisiana

after being booted out of Canada by the Brits, so there.

There is something here, I can feel it. Can you feel it?

Good, that might be our supper for tonight.

What does Cajun really mean?

Oh, closest I can tell you is about my family.

My grandfather... Let's see what you got?

Raise it up. See how nice that is.

Oh, yeah! That's a nice one.

A little catfish on a pole. Yeah!

Look at that one.

That looks like a good one there, you see. It is a nice one.

We got to get the hook out. How do we get him out?

We have to cut the line off.

HE MUTTERS

That's good. About two or three pounds.

That's a little blue cat, it is going to be very tasty.

CAJUN MUSIC PLAYS

Hey-yah!

SINGING

Pierre likes to dredge bits of catfish in cornmeal,

season with Cajun spices and then fry them until they are crispy.

It is delicious.

Jim, so my people at home can really understand

what is going on here, you've got lemons, you've got oranges,

sausage, celery, sweetcorn,

bell peppers, garlic, spices... I mean, crabs.

Cajuns never throw nothing away.

Whatever we got left in the refrigerator or the deep freeze,

in the cupboard or in the garden or whatever,

some oranges left over from Christmas, we don't throw it away.

We put it all in the pot, it all adds seasoning.

That's good, putting in the pot, but

I mean, you can't really call this a pot, you could cook people in this.

What's the excuse for cooking on this vast scale?

Oh, that's when we have parties down here, we cook big like that.

We might have 500, 600,

1,000 pounds of crawfish, shrimp, some crabs,

you know...

We party hearty. We work hard and we play hard.

MUSIC CONTINUES

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

INDISTINCT CHAT

'Yes, you can do this at home.

'All you need is a hundredweight of fresh crawfish, half of Sainsbury's

'fruit and veg department and a 50-gallon oil drum,

'preferably unused.'

It's just like hee-haw on the dancing.

MUSIC CONTINUES

Ay-ee!

'I hate to think how much this lot cost,

'but I was really impressed by the serving arrangement.

'Good solid serious newspapers are essential for a crawfish boil

'as is a truckload of ice-cold Dixie beer.

'This is a traditional Cajun way of making newcomers feel welcome,

'and we didn't set this party up.

'It was just typically spontaneous Cajun hospitality.

'It's the one place in the world where I do like to see

'the evening sun go down, because that's when your parties begin.'

CAJUN DANCE MUSIC CONTINUES

The other thing about this place has really touched my heart -

because despite my flash approach sometimes,

I do have one and things do touch me.

This does remind me of the Dordogne.

It does remind me of the Somerset levels and Provence.

It is not brash and crazy and over the top.

It is inhabited by people who love the Bayou, who care about it,

its culture and its food. That's right, isn't it?

This is a real, real place. It is easy enough to remember.

Generation after generation of people grew up on this bayou

and never leave. This is our home.

You were fortunate enough today to come in here.

I know you've had a great time.

Jambalaya ain't too bad either, is it?

The Jambalaya is great. This is the dish of the area.

Just like eating this Jambalaya today,

that's how the people feel about their area.

You put your heart and your soul into it.

People you met today, the little while you've been here,

they consider this their home.

The one thing I've learned about South Louisiana,

you come in here as a friend, you leave as a friend.

You come in here as an enemy, you leave as an enemy.

The people here are real people.

They do what they can for you.

They'd give you the shirt off their back.

Only thing they ask is one thing,

that's that you respect them when you leave.

Our culture is different,

we know it's different from anywhere else in the world

and we thank the good Lord he gave that to us because we are Cajuns.

We were born and raised that way.

I think it is superb, isn't it? Doesn't it say it all?

I've been around. I am a cynical old fool sometimes.

This is Louisiana, this is Jambalaya on the Bayou. It's good.

MUSIC PLAYS

# Jambalaya, crawfish pie, file gumbo

# For tonight I'm going to see my cher ami-oh!

# Pick guitar, fill fruit jar and be gay-o

# Son of a gun I'm gonna have big fun on the bayou! #

How are y'all?!

Yee-ah!

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd