When we heard that a highlight of this month’s Natchez Food & Wine Festival would be a four-course tour through the culinary history of the Mississippi River presented by Chef John Folse, we had to know more. So we called the internationally renowned chef, reaching him on his way to film an episode for Hooks, Lies and Alibis, the new PBS television series in which Folse visits Louisiana fisheries to explore the historical and culinary significance of each. That day Chef Folse was on his way to Scott, Louisiana, to visit a tilapia farm. “We’re doing an episode on Louisiana aquaculture, and I think tilapia gets a bad rap for no reason,” explained Folse. “But it’s fantastic! If I served a dinner with black bass, large-mouth bass, and tilapia, I doubt anyone could tell the difference. At the Sea of Galilee they call it the ‘St. Peter’s fish’ because the fish the apostle Peter caught with a coin in its mouth was a tilapia. So I say, if Jesus chose it, that’s good enough for me!”
Talking with Chef Folse is always an educational and entertaining experience, and his event in Natchez will put that historical perspective in the spotlight. The four-course feast will chart a course defined by the Mississippi River and the ports of its lower reaches. “Natchez has a huge connection to French Louisiana,” noted Folse. “I think most people forget that many of the great families of New Orleans started out in Natchez. Then, after the Natchez Massacre (1729), they moved south. There’s so much history; so much kinship between the settlements, that I decided to take a culinary trip from the Port of New Orleans, up the river, and back to the Port of Natchez. What would that have looked like? Where would we have stopped? And what would the foods have been?”
Building on that idea, Chef Folse’s culinary journey begins with a classic loggerhead turtle soup to represent the Port of New Orleans. “Because although turtle soup was originally a clear soup of English origin, in its Louisiana form it reflects the evolution of Creole cuisine,” he explained. “The French added the thickening roux. The Spanish added the cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg spices. The addition of the turtle eggs was a New Orleans twist to prove that this was an authentic turtle soup.”
Successive courses represent other important ports that a traveler headed upriver would have called at on his way to Natchez. “Donaldsonville was the first real deepwater port upriver of New Orleans,” observed Folse. “And with Bayou Lafourche flowing into the river there, you had such a seafood industry cropping up. Alongside the river shrimp and catfish, there were boats bringing oysters, shrimp, and other fresh seafood up from the Gulf. So to represent the Port of Donaldsonville, we’re serving a pan-sautéed shellfish cake, with a sauce Acadian that represents the Acadian culture that also came to Donaldsonville with the bayou.”
A braised veal shank served on Creole tomato grits will represent the busy cattle yards that built the Port of Baton Rouge. “Because Baton Rouge is where all the cattle from the Spanish parts of Louisiana and the Mississippi territory were brought for shipment to New Orleans, which had a big meat culture,” Folse noted. And representing the Port of Natchez and ultimate destination for this historical feast: a wild strawberry and pecan gâteau on strawberry honey coulis, because “we thought it’d be a good idea to think of Natchez as a dessert town, for the pecans, the fruits, and the wild honey that the Native Americans of the Natchez region collected.”
All the above will be presented, with wine and cocktail pairings and a liberal serving of the culinary history that makes us all neighbors, at Rolling River Bistro on Saturday, July 26 during the Natchez Food & Wine Festival. Tickets are $175 apiece. See natchezfoodandwinefest.com.
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