Craving creole dishes while stuck at home

It’s a strange thing to have an epiphany in the middle of a grocery store, especially as your cheek is pressed against a shelf while you reach for the last container of some random food thing you think you need in your kitchen.

I speak from experience. Outside of the household essentials we all require during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, my trips to the store lately include a search for Louisiana seasonings. To be more specific, Zatarain’s boxes, which come from the New Orleans company known for its red beans and rice, gumbo and jambalaya seasoning kits. Zatarain’s seasoning kits are essentially shortcuts to achieving a somewhat respectable creole flavor in a recipe.

As a Louisiana native, I have the brightred Zatarain’s logo imprinted on my brain. And in the Bay Area’s prepandemic time, locating a box was never an issue. Whether it was an aisle in a Target in San Francisco or at Gazzali’s Supermarket in East Oakland (where I had my epiphany), the shelves were always full. Now? Not so much.

At Gazzali’s, as I stretched to the back of a shelf for the sole remaining box of redbeansandrice seasoning, I realized rice and beans are pandemic shopping items. As such, more and more people are looking at Louisiana recipes for ways to use their supply of shelfstable items.

This is fine. But as someone who has cooked and consumed just about every creole recipe, and then taken a long nap, I can say that a bad pot of red beans and rice or gumbo is an unforgivable sin. When the beans are woefully under seasoned or the consistency is just off, a cook has let down the family and friends.

But a cook can learn. Enter Brenda Buenviaje, a Louisiana food pioneer in the Bay Area.

Buenviaje, alongside her partner, Libby Truesdale, has built a restaurant empire over the years based around New Orleansinspired flavors. The coronavirus pandemic has forced her to shut down or scale back her restaurants, including Brenda’s French Soul Food in San Francisco and Brenda’s in Oakland. The latter remains open for delivery and takeout and continues to draw folks all day who socially distance along the sidewalk waiting to pick up boxes of red beans and rice, slowcooked and served with smoky andouille sausage.

According to Buenviaje, for those who choose to cook at home, the key to executing a great creole recipe is patience.

“When you start something off, just consider yourself a flavor gatherer. What that looks like is when we say saute or caramelize something until brown, we really do mean cook it low and slow and bring it to those colors,” she said. “That’s where your flavors start, and if you don’t do that, then you doom yourself in the endgame.”

When it comes to the holy grail of Louisiana food, which is red beans and rice, Buenviaje has specific advice.

“Make sure you season throughout. That’s going to get you ahead of the game,” she said. “And if you want your food to taste like deep restaurantquality food, it’s always going to have more salt, pepper and fat in it than you think it does.”

My personal advice for home cooks concerns ambiance. Play some music while you’re cooking. Create a real New Orleans vibe by playing songs from the Rebirth Brass Band. Or find something by New Orleans music legend Trombone Shorty. Also, in a pinch, any soul or funk music by the Gap Band or Earth, Wind and Fire or even Sly and the Family Stone will work. There’s a rhythm to creating Louisiana food. Music will help you keep the beat.

I accept I won’t be making Louisiana food for a while. Everyone is beating me to the ingredients. I can live with that, especially since Buenviaje has something extra for home cooks in the works: a possible YouTube video series where she will execute her recipes from the restaurant. She plans to hire her son to film it. I may not be cooking what I want, but I am comforted knowing people will soon be making their food as flavorful as possible, with Buenviaje’s help.

“This might make it to where I don’t have to keep repeating myself when it comes to this stuff,” she said. “And people could always just come to the restaurant.”

I can say that a bad pot of red beans and rice or gumbo is an unforgivable sin.