It’s time for Mardi Gras, and for some this celebration means procuring as many strands of brightly colored beads as possible and consuming outrageous amounts of beer. For others though, Mardi Gras means eating and savoring great food such as hearty gumbo or spicy jambalaya. So, I thought it would be fun to research a couple of ingredients that make Cajun and Creole food unique: cayenne pepper and file powder.
If you like food that is spicy hot, cayenne pepper is probably in your spice cupboard. Ground cayenne comes from small red chili peppers of the Capsicum genus. Cultivated in the Valley of Mexico in North America some 9000 years ago, peppers remained one of the most well kept secrets of the New World until Columbus introduced them to Europe in the late 1400s.
There are hundreds of chili varieties ranging in pungency from sweet banana chilies to fiery hot habanero chilies. Chilies contain capsaicin, which is the source of their hot flavor. Capsaicin is an oily substance, not water-soluble, so it won’t wash off easily and can be painful if it comes in contact with the eyes or other sensitive areas of skin. The capsaicin is contained in the ribs and seeds of the chili and the flavor of each variety is in the flesh of the chili. Ground cayenne is about medium on the fiery scale of ground chilies and is used on many Creole and Cajun dishes as well as a table condiment.
File powder is not as common as cayenne, but it is used quite often in Cajun and Creole cooking. File powder is the dried; ground leaves of the sassafras tree and is used as a thickening agent for gumbo. Louisiana’s Choctaw Indians are believed to be the first users of sassafras.
Sassafras is an aromatic tree with yellow-green flowers and dark blue fruits. The bark and leaves were used in the past mostly to make tea of flavor medicines. Now its principal use is as file powder.
File powder is always added after the dish is removed from the heat but while still very hot. Stir and blend thoroughly. If the dish is allowed to boil after the powder is added, it will turn stringy. Both file powder and cayenne pepper can be found in the spice aisle at your local supermarket.
Below are some recipes that will come in handy if you are throwing a Mardi Gras party, or any other fete. Put a little Zydeco music or New Orleans Jazz on the stereo and pretend you are down on the Bayou. Wearing strands of brightly colored beads is optional.
This article appears in March 2024.