Rouses Everyday - May & June

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32 MYROUSESEVERYDAY MAY | JUNE 2015
Beans have always been a strong presence in local diets. Long before the arrival of
Europeans, Native Americans were cultivating a variety of beans including runner
beans, lima beans and red beans.The crops of beans, corn and squash, called theThree
Sisters, supplied a nutritionally complete diet.When Europeans arrived, they brought their
own history of bean consumption, eating garbanzos, lentils and other legumes.
Bean preparation can be very forgiving to a cook who must tend other duties.They are also
ways of stretching a small quantity of meat to feed a large number of people. These two
qualities made them very appealing to the cooks across the Gulf Coast. Italians, Alsatian
Germans, Cajuns and Spaniards all ate beans in their countries of origin and brought a
variety of methods of preparing them to the Gulf Coast. Creole recipes often call for ham
or pickled pork as the meat, while Cajun recipes would call for andouille sausage or tasso as
their meat, reflective of local tastes.
smoked & Cured
by Tim Acosta – Rouses Marketing Director
V ille Platte, about 45 minutes northwest
of Lafayette, Louisiana, is the home of
Le Festival de la Viande Boucanée, or as most
people refer to it, the Smoked Meat Festival.
Ville Platte bills itself as the Smoked Meat
Capital of the World, which is ironic,
because Laplace, 30 miles away, is known as
the Andouille Capital of the World.
Andouille, a course-grain spicy sausage,
could be Louisiana’s most famous smoked
meat, but there are more. Bacon is smoked.
Ham hocks are smoke our own
Rouses smoked sausages. We also make our
own fresh pork, chicken and turduchen
sausages, and our own andouille and boudin.
It’s true that andouille and smoked sausage
usually get the glory, but I would argue that
tasso ham deserves equal billing. Tasso is
the most versatile smoked meat around.
Tasso is referred to as a ham, but it’s not
a ham-ham. Fresh hams and country hams
come from the hind leg, but tasso is cut from
the pork shoulder.Most ham is wet cured or
dry cured with salt. Spanish Serrano ham
is dry-cured ham; so is Italian prosciutto.
Prosciutto’s Croatian cousin, pršut, is also
dry-cured. Tasso is dry cured and smoked.
It’s seasoned with cayenne pepper.
And, really, tasso ham is less of a smoked
meat than a seasoning. When you cook
with it, the seasonings are extracted from
the meat and blend into whatever you’re
making. I use tasso in my jambalaya, white
beans, greens, or shrimp and grits. My wife
Cindy wouldn’t dare make a pot of red
beans without tasso.
Tasso has been used by Cajuns since the
mid-1800s, but back then it was made with
beef, not pork. Some history books say
Native Americans taught French settlers
how to make tasso; others suggest its origins
are Spanish (the Spanish brought their own
version of smoked beef, Tasajo, with them
to America). After the Civil War, Cajuns
started making tasso with pork, which is
what we use at Rouses.
by Liz Williams
One Pot
wonders
the Culinary Influences issue