A Festive Fusion: Ohio & Cajun

Mardi Gras or Fat Tuesday is upon us followed by the forty solemn days and nights of Lent. I feel more pressure to indulge on this day than I do in the minutes counting down to New Year’s Eve and the start of a new resolution. I can already taste the decadence!

I’ve planned a Cajun feast for some friends with a challenging twist: make it with as many locally grown and raised ingredients as possible. Although easy and noble to think, I suspected it might be harder to accomplish.

The number one challenge is that it’s February in Ohio and some of my fresh produce choices would be problematic, although I am feeling pretty good the quarts of tomatoes I put up in September and the onions and garlic in storage.

The next challenge is that this is not Louisiana and finding the classic components of Cajun cooking might be a stretch. To me, the defining tastes of Cajun cuisine are andouille (say it “ahn-doo-I”) a spicy smoked sausage, and tasso (say it "tah-so"), a highly seasoned smoked or salt cured ham used in small measures to flavor a variety of Cajun dishes. I consider both meats exclusively Cajun and poorly considered substitutions would turn this Cajun dinner into something ordinary.

So my quest for these Cajun style meats started and ended with one phone call to Kris Krieger’s butcher and sausage shop, Chef's Choice Meats in Berea. “Do you have tasso and andouille and are they made with Ohio raised meats?” I asked. Kris’ answer: Yes, on both counts.

If you’re a passionate cook on the prowl for obscure ingredients in the unlikeliest of places, you will understand the thrill of the one-phone-call victory.

I remember meeting Kris on a couple of occasions at the North Union Farmers Market at Crocker Park. A chef by training and a butcher and sausage maker by his own skillful and cold hands, Kris’ Berea neighborhood meat market and sausage shop reminded me of when my mother used to send to Daniel, the neighborhood butcher, for a pound of ground chuck and a half-pound of baloney, "sliced thin, please.”

Chef's Choice features a long,long cooler filled with wonderfully fresh meat: flank and skirt, ground rounds and chuck, filets, porterhouses and T-bones, brisket, hams, ribs and chops, bacon, whole chickens, ducks, chubby sausages, dry cured meats, and more. If you’ve spent a lifetime looking through plastic wrap at the meat you intend to feed your familiy, scanning the coolers at Chef’s Choice Meats will feel like window-shopping. (On a side note, the beef in Kris’ shop is Ohio Signature Beef, corn fed beef from small producers in Ohio.)

Kris took me back to the processing room that was cold (41.2°) and filled with the kinds of meats that make cooks and chef feel all a’tingly. Sides of beef were swinging and a stack of thick cut, rosy-colored pork chops waited for an escort to the meat case. Proscuitto that was hung in July sported tags that said another year of aging was ahead. In the back, Kris opened the door to the smoker, the size of a bank vault, and the sweet scent of hickory smoke escaped into the room. Inside dangled lines and links of sausages, like necklaces in your jewelry box, except better. In the walk in cooler, I was surrounded by sopresseta, linguisa, dry cured pepperoni, salamis, haggis (oh, yeah. haggis) and the objects of my desire, tasso and andouille.

Kris gave me the short course on how he prepares tasso by trimming out the rich, fatty “heart” of a pork butt, the same cut you might use to make pulled pork, rubbing it in measures of salt cure, sugar, cinnamon, thyme, paprika, and cracked black pepper then vacuum packing which he says pulls all the spices deep into the meat. Kris leaves it to cure for two days before he’ll sell it. The demand for tasso spikes around this time of year but also again during Christmas although Kris is not sure why.

I bought my tasso, a couple of links of andouille, knockwurst and frankfurters for the freezer, and a half pound of Chef’s Choice dry-cured Genoa salami, “sliced thin, please” for the ride home.

At home, I scanned the list of ingredients among the recipes in my Cajun bible, Chef Paul Prudhomme’s Louisiana Kitchen. Anything calling for crawfish or oysters, shrimp and crabmeat were eliminated and the search came down to a Chicken and Tasso Jambalaya and an Andouille Sausage Gumbo. Outside of the rice, a few dried spices and a vegetable or two, these dishes are my best shots at fusing Cajun cuisine with Ohio flavors—thanks in large part to Chef's Choice Meats.

So to all who revel or are pressured by the “hurry-up-and-do-it” atmosphere that comes with Fat Tuesday, laissez les bon temps rouler—in Ohio!