The annual Cajun/Creole Cookbook will be delivered to subscribers the last week of September. For extra copies to give friends and family, complete the above card. Individual copy buyers may have already received a card through the mail. Bon Apetite, enjoy this year’s Teche Area cook’s contributions.

Full bellies and bent elbows at annual cookoff

All seemed to agree Thursday night that Joanie Kraker’s Brussels Sprouts and Apple Salad, just sweet enough and not too tangy, was fabulous.

“Joanie, these are your brussels sprouts?” someone shouted across the cook’s room of The Daily Iberian and Cypress Bayou Casino Hotel’s Cajun Creole Cookoff that night. “These are so good!”

It was a sentiment repeated throughout the evening, and reaffirmed as the results came back from the judge’s room, just down the hall at the Little River Inn on Main Street.

“This was the hardest decision we’ve had to make,” said Christina Pierce, the publisher of this newspaper and one of the judges that night. “The salad plates of all the judges are completely empty, I promise that,” she said, then read aloud the the results for the Salads competition: third, Darnelle Delcambre’s Refreshing Summer Fruit Salad; second, Gigi Kerns’ Tuscan Sunset Salad; and, for the win, Joanie Kraker’s Brussels Sprouts Apple Salad.

Previously, Brenda Boudreaux had won top honors for her Italian Sausage Soup and Mark Boudreaux for his Creamy Stuffed Crabs, in the soup and appetizer categories, respectively. Later, Fracine Garzotto’s Loaded Baked Spaghetti and Chicken and Sauce Picante would win for Starch Dish and Meat & Fowl Dish, respectively. Gigi Kerns’s Savory Squash Pancakes with Basil Sour Cream Sauce would win for Vegetable Dish.

But already, by that early hour of the Salad Dish, it was clear that there was another winner without a category back in the cook’s room. A large container of Jay Florsheim’s Bayou Cosmopolitan was rapidly disappearing.

“It’s just Bayou Satsuma rum, regular Stoli vodka, cranberry juice and some lime,” said Florsheim, “that’s it.”

The container would be empty before the Vegetable Dish results rolled in and a second mix would vanish even quicker than the first.

“That’s the Satsuma from Bayou Rum. It’s made with Iberia Parish sugar cane. They make it over in Lacassine, but they make it with all Iberia Parish sugar. It’s great,” said Florsheim, whose Easy Cajun Stuffed Mushrooms had taken third in the Appetizers round.

“One day I wanted to cook, but I had very limited ingredients. I had four — three, really, if you don’t count the olive oil — so I put them together. It’s just mushrooms stuffed with ground pistachios and ground cracklins, cooked in oil,” Florsheim said, then asked, “have you tried the Brussels sprouts?”

John Olivier’s Heavenly Etouffee narrowly beat out Brenda Boudreaux’s Bang Bang Shrimp and Kraker’s Seafood Stuffed Bell Peppers in the Seafood Dish category. The competition made Pierce, the publisher and judge, reconsider her earlier statement. “Okay,” she said, “this is the hardest decision of the night.”

It was true, but popular opinion in the cook’s room held by a wide margin that Olivier’s etouffee was, in fact, heavenly.

“I got creative one day,” Olivier said. “They’re all doing shrimp or crawfish etouffee. I decided to combine the two. That was good. But the third time I made it,” about six months ago, that’s when I added the crab meat, too. And that’s it.”

“It’s got onion, bell peppers and celery — that’s the trinity. I call that the trinity,” said Olivier. “Then there’s Rotel tomatoes and I use shrimp stock instead of water — it gives it more flavor. Rich but balanced, invitingly spicy, it certainly did.”

It was getting late, and Kraker was tiring.

“Are you ready, Jack,” she asked her husband, who was philosophizing about the subtle similarities between southern Louisiana bayou culture and cuisine and that of his native central Minnesota.

“People think they’ve got the market on cornmeal here. When I was a kid in Minnesota, my mother used to make cornmeal mush with sauerkraut and spare ribs,” he said. “And also, we used to eat blood sausage. You’d stab a hog in the neck and stir the blood to keep it from coagulating. When I got down here, in the 1960s, they used to have what you call Red Boudin — same thing. Now the health board doesn’t really allow it. You’ve got to know somebody to get it. In Minnesota, a long time ago, they recruited German Catholics. So there are many Catholics, just like here.”

Florsheim was applauding Kraker’s Brussels Sprouts, prompting Jack to offer the truest words of the evening.

“There’s nothing that wasn’t good,” he said. “Some things were more good.”

He drained a tall glass of Bayou Cosmopolitan and then the Krakers, soon to celebrate their 55th year of marriage, rose to leave. Pierce entered the room to announce the evening’s final winner.

“Okay, this was really the hardest decision,” she said. “Millie Comeaux’s Chocolate Cake with Cream Cheese Filling and Chocolate Cream Cheese Buttercream Frosting bested Rena Clay’s Chocolate Macaroon Cake and Olivier’s Vegetable Pear Delight to win the Desserts Dish category.”

“Y’all are gonna have to roll me out in a wheelbarrow,” one of the judges was heard to say.

Special Thanks:

The Daily Iberian would like to thank their team of judges who went above the call of duty by fully enjoying themselves and the dishes prepared by the cooks. They were Mike Davis with Konriko, food writer and chef Stanley Dry, Cypress Bayou Casino Hotel interim General Manager Jack Darden and marketing director Richard Picard, chef Vern and Debbie Mitchell of Vern’s BBQ and Catering, Little River Inn co-owner Lori Hurst and Christina Pierce, publisher of The Daily Iberian.