Big Man has been very busy this hot summer, piecing together different gigs in different places to make up for the regular nightclub gig he lost when the club closed this spring. But it also means that he has nights off that he otherwise might have had to work, and so we very happily made plans to attend the annual Catfish Festival in Des Allemands, about 35 miles from our house, in a small spit of land set among swamps and lakes and bayous that eventually make their way to the Gulf.
Des Allemands boldly bills itself as the Catfish Capital of the Universe, and they may well be. As the name suggests, the little Cajun village was first settled by German immigrants, who nestled themselves among the French Acadians/Cajuns already there. The area now has black and white French Cajuns and German Cajuns, and a goodly number of Vietnamese fisherfolk as well. They are mostly Catholic, with some Baptists and Evangelicals. In addition to the ubiquitous oil field jobs that it seems no Cajun community can escape, folks there make their living shrimping, crawfishing, hunting, and of course, catfishing.
Every year, on the same weekend of July, on the extensive grounds of St. Gertrude the Great Catholic Church and elementary school, they throw the Catfish Festival. The fest has tons of food -- more ways to eat catfish than you might've thought (more on that later), hamburger and hot dogs for the unadventurous (though I have it on good authority that the homemade chili on the 'dogs was outasight), fried shrimp and softshell crab po boys, gumbo, and sauce piquante. There's also snow balls and funnel cakes and beer and soft drinks and frozen daiquiris. Off to the side, there are numerous crafts booths, including 2 in the name of small Cajun children who, sadly, have contracted some very rare, incurable, genetic diseases (all that intermarriage in small Cajun towns has led to a significant uptick in these kinds of illnesses and conditions that physicians almost never see), and one staffed by prisoners from the local St. Charles Parish prison, who learn leather-working as a craft while incarcerated. To the back of the grounds, near the railroad tracks (a train went by that night while we were there), giant carnival rides were set up.
Behind the school's frosty air-conditioned gym/cafeteria, a giant steel-framed, concrete floored pavilion has been set up, apparently for this and other festivals on the grounds. The pavilion is named in honor of a St. Gertrude priest, and, significantly, he had a Vietnamese surname. I liked the way the pavilion had been set up, with the floor painted to show clearly demarcated areas to put folding chairs, allowing for aisles, and leaving a giant dance floor in the center. There were enormous electric fans set up around the edges, facing the dance floor. Which was a good idea, because couples of all ages crowded in there, dancing up a storm. It's the kind of thing that makes me so happy to be a Louisianian -- all those people, old and young and middle-aged, black and white and Vietnamese, dancing together to the same music.
And the music was terrific! A guy we had never heard of before, Al "Lil Fats" Jackson, with a band of 3 saxes, bass, guitars, drummer, with him on keys, doing absolutely wonderful, swinging, versions of Fats Domino songs. Everyone was diggin' it like crazy. The band was really tight and they played like they had been playing this stuff like forever (even though they were all, of course, considerably younger than Fats himself). Al was quite the showman too, teasing the appreciative crowd several times by starting out, "I found my...." but then NOT going into "Blueberry Hill." By the time he deigned to do it, everyone was all hyped up and cheering. Big Man and I joined the dancers in the pavilion and a great moment. (Amazingly, the band played from the time we got there -- a little after 8 pm -- and was still playing with no break when we left, around 10 pm. When I mentioned this to Big Man, he burst out, "Are you kidding? South Louisiana is the No-Break Capital of the Universe!")
The three Catfish Queens were brought onstage to much applause and appreciation. There are three of them because there are three age divisions. They were all three sweet-faced, pretty girls, with towering rhinestone tiaras on their heads, but otherwise dressed in what was apparently the festival uniform of T-shirts, shorts, and flipflops. It made quite a contrast, I can tell you. Inside the gym/cafeteria, air-conditioned to a fare-thee-well, there were framed photos on all four walls of Catfish Queens going back to the early 1970s. They start off conventionally enough, with blondes in bouffant hairdos and standard Cajun surnames, but as the years and decades and eras go by, the pictures show girls with dark hair and swarthy skin, and even some Vietnamese girls. It was wonderful to see the Catfish Queens tradition evolve like that, like a sweet Cajun fairy tale.
So, back to the catfish. There was fried catfish filets served in platters, and on po boys. There was catfish, shrimp, and crawfish gumbo, which, while a little thin, sort of like a courtbouillion, was beautifully seasoned and totally chockfull of the aforementioned seafoods. There was a deep red sauce piquante, studded with big chunks of catfish, and with cute little cocktail onions in it instead of chopped onions; I wondered if the cook had run out of fresh onions and just found the jar of pickled cocktail onions in the fridge and decided on a whim to go in that direction, or if this was an intentional, stylistic choice. Either way, it was fantastic.
There was also something called Catfish Boullettes. Now anywhere else in America they might be called Catfish Fritters or, to be playful, maybe Catfish Balls; in New Orleans, they might be Catfish Beignets. But we're in Cajun Country, so they're Catfish Boullettes (little balls). Chopped up raw catfish is mixed in a thick seasoned batter with little snippets of green onion in it, and then mushed up by hand into balls that are roughly between a golf ball and a tennis ball, and then deep fried (of course). Oh my these were *wonderful*! We ate more of them than we should have, all the time speculating about making them at home and then serving them with home made tartar or remoulade sauce. (The festival was serving them with simple ketchup.)
We saw flyers at the festival for the Des Allemands Catfish Cookbook, which listed an intriguing dish called Catfish Cacciatore on the front. Believe me, if they had had that at the fest, wed've eaten it.
After about 2 hours, we were stuffed. However, we still had food tickets left over, so we scouted for a little while and gave our tickets to a young family with several children on our way out of the fest. It was a lovely if hot night, the people-watching was great fun, the music great and the food fantastic, but we'd had enough. If you haven't been or haven't been in a while, you should go.
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