Louisiana Coastal Cooking

-Funding for "Louisiana Coastal Cooking" was provided by... ...and by the Plaquemines Parish Tourism Commission.

A short drive from New Orleans, Plaquemines Parish offers a diverse variety of fishing, fresh seafood, rich history, and environmental activities in Louisiana's Delta Country.

Learn more at visitplaqueminesparish.com.

[ Birds chirping ] -This time on "Louisiana Coastal Cooking," we're celebrating the state's prized oysters, a seafood delicacy that packs a significant cultural punch in Louisiana.

We'll visit Terrebonne Parish for a history lesson on the early oyster industry.

Then we'll meet oyster purveyors in Jefferson and Orleans parishes to sample dishes featuring the marine mollusk.

With over 200 years of commercial cultivation in Louisiana, oysters are a way of life in the state.

The Louisiana oyster industry has been around since the early 1800s.

Today, it has an economic impact of more than $300 million and is responsible for nearly 4,000 jobs.

Terrebonne Parish has been a backbone of oyster production in the state from the beginning.

Terrebonne is one of the most southern of Louisiana's parishes bordering the Gulf of Mexico.

The city of Houma, the parish seat, located on a convergence of six bayous, was named after the Houmas Indians, a tribe that settled in the area.

In Houma, we sit down with Dr. Christopher Cenac, Sr., an orthopedic surgeon and historian who has authored several books on Terrebonne Parish.

In "Eyes of an Eagle," he tells the story of his great-grandfather Jean-Pierre Cenac, who immigrated to Louisiana from France and became a leader in the Terrebonne oyster industry.

-This was a developing area.

This was new.

And, um, my great-grandfather had a close friend, Jean-Marie Dupont, who was from Cenac, France.

And he came first and wrote letters back and said that, "You should come down here.

We got a lot of promise."

And so Jean-Pierre Cenac came to meet his friend in 1860, and they went into business together.

-The oyster industry got its start on the East Coast, where rich oyster beds produced abundant oysters that were a cheap source of protein.

In time, overharvesting and pollution shut down many East Coast oyster beds.

-They had overpopulation, overfishing.

They ruined all the sources on the East Coast.

And the number-one thing was pollution.

So the oyster industry had to go south to the Gulf Coast.

-The development of railroads, canning, and refrigeration meant that oysters could be shipped across the nation.

-It all came together here in Terrebonne, uh, because we had the water bottoms.

So the federal government, in order to encourage people to come live down here, let you buy a patent, 160 acres.

But if a lake was present and you bought that patent, you owned the water bottoms.

My great-grandfather had almost 4,500 acres below Houma.

He had a massive amount of water bottoms, and it was easy to catch the oysters on their water bottoms that they owned and bring them to Morgan City, because there was a crab industry there.

Remember, we had motorized the oyster luggers.

By the way, the word "lugger" is Croatian in origin.

The Croatians came down to Mississippi and settled in Plaquemines Parish in the 1820s, and they built their boats in Plaquemines like they did back home in Croatia, shaped a certain way.

But the sail was a lug sail, and that's where the word "lugger" comes from now, because after they put the motor in the boat, they didn't need the sail, but they still called it a lugger.

And that persists to this day.

-In 1905, 75 million oysters were produced in Houma, and 50% of the town's population was involved in oyster production.

To support sales of oysters from their reefs, the Cenac family purchased an oyster-packing business, a livery stable for transport, and an ice company.

C. Cenac & Company was the first to can seafood in Terrebonne Parish.

-The celebrated Houma Oyster won the Grand Prix at the San Francisco World Exhibition.

Oyster saloons, oyster bars.

That was a popular place to go.

Go get some oysters and drink some beer.

-By the 1920s, the oyster industry was booming, with 125 million oysters shipped annually from Houma by rail.

-The most productive 500,000 acres of oyster reefs in Louisiana were right here in Terrebonne Parish.

They always have been.

New Orleans is famous for a lot of things, but everybody thinks, "Oh, boy, the restaurants, the food."

Well, where does New Orleans get the food?

They don't get it in Algiers.

They get it down here.

So we're still a major player in the seafood industry in the United States.

Oyster was considered king in Terrebonne Parish until, let's just say, the '50s and early '60s, when oil became more prominent.

-Environmental changes, including erosion and sea-level rise, threaten much of Terrebonne Parish.

Dr. Cenac has observed that as the coast of Louisiana is washing away, the culture and history of French-speaking southern Louisiana is running away.

-One of the biggest things we looked forward to when we were little boys is that we could go on the shrimp boats that all my family had, and we could go to the camp on Timbalier Island, Last Island, go trawling in the morning and go swimming in the afternoon.

And the three or four older gentlemen, all relatives, they only spoke French on the boat.

Nobody spoke English.

And I'm talking about into the '60s.

The trawlers, the oyster fishermen, the trappers -- French was the major language.

What has occurred is these major storms have come into our coast.

Eight named hurricanes struck the Louisiana coast in 12 months, from Louisiana to Texas.

This most recent hurricane, Ida -- it devastated the coast of Terrebonne and Lafourche.

As of right now, four years after Ida, I think 5% or 6% of the parish has never returned.

So the long and short of it is when that family group leaves, the French-speaking culture and history is devastated.

And it's never coming back, because it can't come back.

There's no place for them.

-Our next destination is Metairie in Jefferson Parish, where Drago and Klara Cvitanovich opened Drago's Seafood Restaurant in 1969.

The husband-and-wife team grew up on the Dalmatian Coast of Croatia.

-I was born and raised on the little farm, and then when I was eight years old, we moved to Dubrovnik.

Drago, on the other hand, was a little further north, also on Adriatic coast, in a village called Igrane.

It was small fishing village.

-Klara and Drago both fled the communist regime of Yugoslavia.

In the 1950s, Drago became one of many Eastern Europeans who were offered sanctuary in Canada.

In the meantime, Klara left Croatia for New Jersey, staying with her aunt and uncle.

-All I wanted to do was get to America because America was my dream.

-After corresponding, the couple met in New Orleans during Mardi Gras.

Four weeks later, they were married.

-Came to New Orleans.

Drago came to New Orleans.

Courtship of four week, and we got married.

I went and lived in Canada until his permanent visa came.

-They moved from Canada with their two children to New Orleans, where Drago's sister had a restaurant, the original Drago's in the Lakeview neighborhood.

-He was shucking oysters.

He was bartender.

Whatever there was to be done in the restaurant, he did it.

So that was, for him, first-class experience for our restaurant when we finally opened it.

We were married for 59 years.

We had same ideas.

We both love our country, but we love America more.

And it was the land of opportunities.

-The couple's son, Tommy, who now oversees the flagship restaurant, is proud of his family's heritage.

-They lived together for 59 years before my dad passed away and truly lived the American Dream.

They started our restaurant.

They were both very, very hard-working immigrants.

I'm truly blessed to still have my mom, and she works in the restaurant every single day.

-New Orleans was a center of Croatian immigration during the 19th century.

Many Croatians came from villages along the Adriatic Sea and settled in Plaquemines Parish fishing communities, including Empire and Buras.

-Those people were fishermen in Croatia.

A lot of those people, when they immigrated to Louisiana, you know, they did what they knew best.

And so they started work in the oyster industry.

And for the longest time, the oyster industry was completely dominated by Croatians, and not just the fishermen.

A lot of your old seafood restaurants in New Orleans were all, you know, owned and operated by Croatians.

You know, so we're a big part of the, you know, the restaurant industry as well as the oyster industry in Louisiana.

-A pioneer in sustainability, Drago Cvitanovich insisted on sourcing oysters directly from the water to the restaurant.

-He had an old club wagon, Ford club wagon.

He used to drive down there, load it up with 10 or 15 sacks, drive them back.

You know, where everybody else was buying from oyster dealers, we were always buying from the fishermen.

-Traditionally, oysters are harvested with a dredge raking up the oysters in the estuaries where they grow.

-When oysters are pulled out of the water, when they come up on that table on the oyster boat, it looks like a pile of mud and rocks, and they have a hammer and they start hitting it, and all the stuff starts falling off, and lo and behold, they end up with one oyster.

And so they're hand-selected.

-Recycling oyster shells is a priority for the oyster empire launched by Drago.

-There are a few different ways that we do recycle oyster shells so they don't go into a dump.

The old way, people used to put them down as roadbeds, you know, and they still use that in some cases.

And oyster fishermen will take them out, put them in a big pile, dry them.

After about six months, they'll load them on their boat.

They'll take them back into the bayou, and they'll put them back in the water.

And that's where the oysters actually grow from and attach to, and it's the best way to rebuild, you know, an oyster-bedding ground.

-Drago's also participates in the oyster-shell recycling program of the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana.

-They bring them out, and they build these oyster-reef barriers to stop the erosion and start building a little bit of land.

As these oyster shells start growing in these little reefs, they create these barriers that help protect our coast.

-Drago's is known for its charbroiled oysters, a signature dish launched in 1993 based on an experiment by Tommy.

-In those days, we used to have redfish Tommy, which was half of the redfish in skin and scales, put on a grill, and baste it with butter-garlic sauce.

So Tommy said, "Mom, what will happen if we take oyster freshly open on the grill and baste them with the sauce?"

Star was born.

They even have it in Croatia now.

-We take the oysters that are opened on the half shell, literally just put them right on the barbecue grill or char grill.

It doesn't matter what type of grill you have at home.

It gets very easy.

Got the oysters down on the grill.

Now, for the most important part, the sauce.

This is margarine, butter, black pepper, and Italian seasoning.

Nothing else.

No secret ingredient.

Simple.

You take the butter-garlic sauce, put a little bit on top of each oyster.

Probably about a tablespoon on each oyster.

The cheese that we use -- we use a regular Parmesan and Romano cheese.

We make it like it's Christmas at Drago's, so the cheese is coming down.

Nothing else in it, but just Parmesan, Romano, and parsley.

The number-one question I get is, "How can you tell when they're done?"

Well, it's simple.

You look at the raw oysters.

When it's flat like that, it's still not cooked.

The way you tell it's cooked -- you can see it's got a nice little puffed-up look.

It separates, it comes up a little bit, and you can see the little flaps on the side.

It depends on how hot the grill is.

The hotter the grill, the faster they cook.

So if the grill is not as hot, it takes a little bit longer, But usually about five minutes, three to five minutes.

Beautiful Louisiana oysters.

We got to put a little bit of extra sauce on there, because you know what you do with that extra sauce.

It doesn't just stay on the plate.

We add the French bread to it, and we've got beautiful Louisiana charbroiled oysters.

-Next, we're making a stop in Uptown New Orleans at Pascal's Manale, a seafood restaurant established in 1913, to chat about New Orleans oyster bars with proprietor Dickie Brennan and oyster shucker Thomas Stewart.

-It's tradition in New Orleans.

We call them stand-up bars.

And this is a stand-up oyster bar.

There are no chairs here because we're all about being real serious when it comes to throwing down some oysters.

Pascal Manale's is in Uptown New Orleans.

And so you go down this beautiful avenue, Napoleon Avenue.

And that is tradition in the city for people to just, as they're passing by here, to just come in, visit you, have some oysters, and keep moving on.

-Thomas, or "Uptown T," as he is known, has been shucking oysters at Pascal's for over 30 years.

-You know what the secret really is?

Wanting to do it and like to do it.

This is what I enjoy doing, and that's how I guess I became pretty good at what I do and willing to pass it on.

-Uptown T is the living legend of oyster shuckers, and people are coming not only to have a great oyster.

They come in to spend time with T. There's a plaque for Thomas and it says, "the most famous oyster shucker in the world."

And that would be this man.

-When it comes to fresh oysters, Dickie recommends eating the tasty treat right from the shell.

But for guests who prefer to add a condiment, Thomas makes a cocktail sauce that allows the unique flavor profile of the oysters to shine.

-You start off for a basic cocktail sauce.

You would start off with an ounce of our ketchup, 1/2 teaspoon of horseradish, to your liking.

Hot sauce -- three dashes or to your liking also.

And Worcestershire sauce -- three dashes to your liking, with a half a wedge of lemon juice.

Mix until emulsified.

Et voil -- you have cocktail sauce.

-The restaurant was established over 100 years ago by Frank Manale, one of the many immigrants from Sicily who poured into the port city beginning in the late 1800s.

-Every neighborhood, you're gonna find what we call a Creole-Italian restaurant, because they came here, they adapted to what's coming out of our fields, what's coming out of the waters, and created their version of Italian food, which is such a key part of New Orleans food.

-Recognizing the cultural and historical significance of the restaurant, under Dickie's helm, traditions are maintained but with an eye to the future.

-So one of the things we started doing -- instead of all these shells going to the landfill, T's goal is, is with the oyster-recycling program that we've done in the city of New Orleans to put these oyster shells back into our vanishing coasts.

-I think it's a good idea.

Yeah.

Should have thought of it a long time ago, but, hey, better late than never, right?

-We'll join Chef Grant Wallace in the Pascal's Manale kitchen for combination pan roast, a dressing starring fresh Gulf seafood.

-So the first thing we do is we're gonna melt butter in a hot saut pan.

I start it on, like, a medium heat because I don't want to brown the butter.

I just want to get the butter to melt.

My butter is bubbling here.

I'm gonna add my onions.

All right?

Now that my onions are kind of starting to get translucent, I want to add my -- my red and green bell pepper.

Maybe just -- maybe like one or two minutes of cooking.

Not that long because we're not trying to -- to brown it.

I'm just trying to get it to where we build enough flavor out of it.

It's starting to look really good.

Now I'm gonna add my green onions because these won't take but about half of that time.

Now, I want to make sure I mix everything up so everything's not in one spot.

Like, you want to get an even distribution of vegetables throughout the dish.

White pepper here.

Like a tablespoon of kosher salt.

It's starting to cook down pretty well.

You can see how translucent the onions are getting, how wilted the green onions are, the green bell peppers, red bell peppers are.

I'm gonna add my flour, right?

My flour is gonna help thicken it up.

I'm gonna fold the flour in there.

And what I'm doing is, I'm essentially making a roux with butter and flour.

That's gonna help thicken it up.

I'm gonna let it just simmer for two or three more minutes.

You don't want to brown the flour because you want it to be a blond roux.

I'd like to show y'all our Louisiana blue crabs that we have down here in Louisiana, how beautiful they are.

You could tell this is actually a male.

You can tell by the blueness in the -- in the claws.

You know, the ladies have the little red tips on the end.

You know, this is kind of where, these two back swimmers, these are where our jumbo lump comes from.

You know, right here, these are the big -- the big swimmers.

I'm gonna show you that through, like, what we like to do is we steam or boil our crabs here in Louisiana.

This is what they usually look like when they come out.

We can go ahead and just -- I'm gonna show you the inside real here.

We're gonna crack it open, and tell you what I do.

I just take it all off.

You see, I have all the -- that great flavor that's inside that crab.

We like to put it in our stock, you know?

We put it just straight in, right?

This is our jumbo shrimp that we have here.

We just take the heads off.

You know, I'll peel them, and then I'll take the head and the shell and the body.

I'll just add everything to my stock.

We'll chop this up real quick.

The same shrimp.

I keep it in here with the rest of them.

Now that our roux has been made here, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna add -- I'm gonna add my shrimp.

And I'm gonna add the oysters.

Now, these oysters have been chopped up.

All right, so... you can just chop them by hand.

That's gonna help with the thickness of this dish.

As you can see, after I add the seafood, it's only been in there maybe like a minute and a half, and we're almost done.

Everything in this pan is cooked, and what I'm gonna do is I'm turning off the heat.

This is claw crab meat we're gonna add.

And then I've got lump crab meat which I'm folding in.

We're really using the whole crab.

Now I want to add a little bit of parsley to this right here just to give it some color, just some green.

So I'm gonna add some breadcrumbs now till I get it to the consistency I want.

Now I'll fold it in.

And then I'm gonna add a little bit of seafood stock and oyster liquor until I get this to the right consistency that I'm looking for.

You can see it's starting to kind of get really thick here.

And so this oyster liquor right here, I put it in a nice pan earlier and I reduced it, so that way it could be pasteurized.

I'm gonna add a little bit of this oyster liquor right here.

And the pan's still hot, right?

Everything in here is still hot.

Now, you can see it kind of -- it moistened up the breadcrumbs and it's pulling everything right back together.

So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna ladle the stock.

I'm gonna have a little screen and just pour the stock through here.

That way I don't get any of the shell or anything that I didn't already want in my stuffing.

It's about 6 ounces of seafood stock liquor in here.

You can see where we are with the consistency.

We're ready to plate up.

You could either do this ahead of time at your house and cool it, and you do it the next day, which in that case, um, it changes the flavor a little bit because, you know, the flavors are fresh right now.

What we like to do here is we like to cook it straight off the stove right now and serve it.

So if you were bringing it back from cold, you'd probably put it in the oven at 350 degrees for about, you know, 15, 20 minutes until it's piping hot.

We have our little metal pans here because we're gonna top it with breadcrumbs and some butter.

We're gonna go back and add some more on top to give it a little bit of the different texture.

What we do now -- we add a little bit more breadcrumbs to the top, maybe just a spoonful per.

And so I'm just putting a little bit of clarified butter on top.

And then what we're gonna do is we're gonna brown it in our salamander here.

So, see how we got nice, golden-brown crust on top?

We added some green to it, too.

There you have Pascal Manale's seafood combination pan roast.

Buon appetito.

-Oysters have played a prominent role in the lives and livelihood of the people of Louisiana.

The entrepreneurial pursuits of immigrants from Europe helped forge the development of Louisiana's oyster industry and secured the bivalve's prominent place on local menus.

Today, oysters remain a popular and important natural resource, with a new emphasis on protecting the rich coastal waters where they grow.

-You can find recipes for all of the dishes in this series, chef profiles, and more information about "Louisiana Coastal Cooking" by visiting wyes.org.

Funding for "Louisiana Coastal Cooking" was provided by... ...and by the Plaquemines Parish Tourism Commission.

Nature, tradition, and culture come together in Plaquemines Parish, where the Mississippi River and the Gulf meet in Louisiana's Delta Country.

Learn more at visitplaqueminesparish.com.

[ Birds chirping ]