An obsession with remoulade.
A mundane obsession when you consider all the possible obsessions out there: Robert Downey Jr., shoes, cosmetic surgery.
It began more years ago than I care to reveal in a public forum with a wedding present--a jar of home-made remoulade sauce and a cookbook. I had never tasted anything like it. I had grown up in a home where "sauce" meant cream of mushroom soup. This sauce was mushroom soup's polar opposite.
The preparer of the sauce was Mrs. Brown, a southern Louisiana housewife, a neighbor of my soon-to-be husband's grandparents. The sauce itself was rich, oil-based, piquant, spice-rich. I learned its purpose was to accompany boiled shrimp. I loved it.
Many years later, my still-husband MO and my sister-in-law TO began an idle conversation about remoulade. In France, my husband and I had found remoulade sauce to mean something entirely different from what we considered the platonic form of remoulade. On trips back to southern Louisiana, we found, too, that remoulade apparently has no set definition.
The three of us decided that we needed to set out on a Remoulade Tour of the Gulf Coast to taste every possible variation. Unfortunately, we all have to make livings. We have sampled remoulade in a variety of locations, however, and still see the sampling and tasting of remoulade at every possible opportunity as a serious responsibility.
The pictures above are of a couple of remoulades we've experienced at a now (sadly) defunct restaurant, Joe's Dreyfus Store in Livonia, Louisiana. The first picture is of amazing shrimp with remoulade, a mayonnaise-based rather an oil-based sauce. The second is a picture of a plate of boudin balls.
MO came up with the Remoulade Hypothesis stating basically that even though all remoulades are different, all remoulades are good.
At a very popular restaurant, Prejean's just north of Lafayette, we learned that all remoulades aren't good. But our passion for the stuff is undiminished.
Now I've started collecting remoulade recipes, and there are a lot of variations. After our last trip to southern Louisiana, I pulled out that now very old cookbook MO and I were given a whole lot of years ago, and I made Mrs. Brown's recipe, and I still love it.
Soon after, I was thinking about the blog that turned into a book, Julia and Me, in which the writer cooks from Julia Child's classic cookbook of French cooking every day in a tiny New York apartment. I make no claims that my quest is that interesting, but my plan is to prepare, photograph, judge, and share the many variations of remoulade.
Will Mrs. Brown's version remain the standard by which I judge all remoulade? Probably. But it's a win-win since I'm wagering there's plenty of good remoulade available to me if I'm willing to make it myself, and my local grocery in my tiny town sells frozen shrimp.
I will report.
