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Listen to this 2–minute audio clip of Eric Cormier talking about kitchen sages. [Windows Media Player required. Go here to download the player for free.]

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NOTE: What follows is a portion of the original interview that has been edited for length. To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.

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Subject: Eric Cormier
Date: September 11, 2007
Location: Pujo Street Café—Lake Charles, LA
Interviewer & Photographer: Sara Roahen

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Sara Roahen:  This is Sara Roahen for the Southern Foodways Alliance. It’s Tuesday, September 11, 2007. I’m in Lake Charles, Louisiana at Pujo Street Café with Mr. Eric Cormier. And could you say your full name and your birth date?

Eric Cormier:  Eric Cormier. I was born October 1st in 1971.

And your position in Lake Charles?

I’m a reporter for the American Press Newspaper. I split my time between covering City Hall, and 50-percent of my other time working as a food columnist.

Where did you grow up?

I grew up here in Lake Charles. I went to school here all the way through college. Graduated from McNeese State University and left only a short period of time to move into the deep, deep bayou I call it—Abbeville, Louisiana, where I worked at a newspaper there. [I] worked in Lafayette, Louisiana, in radio, and came back to Lake Charles.

Can you tell me a little bit about your ancestry on both sides?

Well I’m legally, as the federal government says, I’m African American. In Louisiana culturally I fall under the umbrella of—of what they call Creole with a mix of French, Cajun, some Native American, African American, and Spanish. Cormier, being my family on the French side, are from Saint Martinville, Louisiana. My mother’s parents—that’s my father’s parents, his father and—his mother was born on Cane River in a little town called Cloutierville, and she goes by the maiden name of Brevelle. And on my mother’s side, she’s a Prudhomme with her family originating out of Opelousas, Louisiana. And her mother went by the last name of Day, to which we find our family is up in Chicago.

And so do you—do you identify culturally, if not you know ancestrally, as Cajuns?

Yes. We have some connections to the Cajun culture because, like with so many families in South Louisiana, you see a—in my family a combination of both people of color or black, and people who are white co-mingling and having children. And I’m like a third generation as—child of light complexion. And living in Lake Charles, one of the things that I’ve learned is that as—I’m 35 right now and I’m getting—as I get older, I’m getting closer to my Creole heritage, especially in Natchitoches, Louisiana, where you have Cane River and then the Creole Heritage Foundation. And also I have family members who are from Saint Martinville, and honestly what’s called a little town—a little settlement called Cade, Louisiana, which is right out of Saint Martinville, which is right next door to New Iberia. So when it comes to food, that’s where my heritage really comes out, because I—we really truly identify with smothering food and making gravies, experimenting with smoked meats, boudin, wild game, which is if you have—it’s something that historically both blacks and whites in Louisiana have always loved whether it be rabbit or venison, wild—wild duck for gumbos and—. So culturally I feel connected, and it’s something that I like to define in this section of the state, whereas in New Orleans you have Creoles whose heritages is a little different than on this side of the state because—it hasn’t been written down, but there’s some folks here in this area who like to call ourselves Prairie Creoles because we come from areas like Lawtell and Saint Martinville where folks were farming. And they came to Lake Charles for work; that’s how my grandfather came here from Saint Martinville when he was like 12 years-old, and that’s on my dad’s side, the Cormier(s)—came here way back when. And with my grandfather on my mom’s side, the Prudhomme, Henry—Harry Prudhomme, he came here with his brother-in-law, [who] we called Uncle Antoine, looking for work right after World War II. And so a lot of African Americans or people of color came here after World War II because of the petrochemical industry, and they got those jobs and they settled here and called this home, and with that came their culture.

And how was the food down there [the Saint Martinville/Abbeville area] similar and different from the food that you grew up eating?

The similarities are gravy and rice. Sometimes they even call it a sauce. Now some people call it a sauce piquant; Creoles down there, well they just call it a sauce. Some roux, a little tomato sauce, little tomato paste, beef, pork, chicken, smoked sausage—anything that you have in the house; put it over some rice. And what was really cool is that as with here, down there the men do a lot of the cooking. Both my brother and I go to a hunting camp up in Arkansas, and what happens is a lot of folks down from Acadiana—Lafayette, Saint Martinville, that area—they drive up there too. And that’s where you really see the—the cooking style: very rustic, very basic, highly flavorful, with any meat that’s available with a big old pot. Got to have the big cast iron pot and a big spoon and some sharp knives, and whatever is out there that’s walking or swimming is dinner. And to take those real simple flavors and, and jack them up a notch, that’s—that’s the thing that I took from living down there. My mom, who I always say is the best pot cook I ever knew smothering chickens, smothering liver, smothering pork, gravies—one of my favorite all-time dishes is basically [Phone Rings] a—a smothered okra or shrimp and smoked sausage right over rice with tomato base. That’s something that it—it has that, a whole lot of similarities that you might find in black—from black families in New Orleans that carry it over and it—it jumped all the way to the other side of the state. But it—the ingredients might just be a little bit different in terms of what the wild game is—what people will eat [of] wild game on this side of the state and the other sides of the state. Especially the more cosmopolitan areas, they might not be putting deer backstrap [Laughs] in their red sauce. But that’s—that’s the—that’s the thing that I took from being down there, and even from the gumbos: dark, rich rouxs. They do that on this side too. But down there I learned a couple tricks from some old cooks. You know, drop an egg in there. [Laughs] And thicken that, you know—thicken that up a little bit. Sometimes it’s boiled. Sometimes I even saw raw eggs cracked and put in—put in the gumbo. When I would ask—and I was always told, Just eat it. [Laughs]

Did you mean crack an egg in the roux, or crack an egg just like—?

No, in the gumbo. And if it—and that happened—a lot of times we didn’t have time to boil it, ‘cause normally what you’ll find it’s like one of the restaurants in this area—Big Daddy’s, there’s on Fridays, I love the fact that they do a crab and shrimp stew and in that stew they put boiled eggs in it. And also there’s something called poor man’s stew, where they would take a gravy, crack an egg on the top of it to get protein and stretch that dinner. And that’s something my dad told me came from like, you know, the Depression Era, where you took what you could to get those proteins. And I didn’t see that until I was like six years-old, when one night my mom had made some stew and was out of meat, and we was just going to scrounge around, and my dad said, Here. He took an egg, cracked it, put it on top and threw some cayenne on it—on there and let it cook along with the gravy and ate that over rice with some parsley and green onions. I’ll never forget that.

Can you tell me what kind of gumbo you grew up eating in your house, since your—your mom was the cook in your house?

Chicken and sausage, and seafood. One of the cool things growing up is that here in Lake Charles we’re about an hour away from the Gulf of Mexico. My dad and a friend of his who was from Michigan would go offshore and shrimp, and they would bring back shrimp all the time, and so we had frozen shrimp, frozen fish—. —Always going crabbing the old-fashioned way with some strings and chicken parts and go to the river and that—you know, chase after the crabs like that. So seafood gumbo, along with oysters, was always the big thing in the house. Now my mom, I vividly remember, would always during the wintertime you would have—she would get up in the morning and cook a chicken and sausage and gumbo, but for those special occasions where we would have visitors home for—for dinner, a seafood gumbo was the way to go. And the thing is, what was really cool is that we all—me and my brother always hoped there was leftovers ‘cause like with gumbo, it’s always better two, three, and four days later. And seafood gumbo especially with the crabmeat—you have half blue crabs in the gumbo, and after two or three days you keep stirring that pot and all that crabmeat starts coming out into the gumbo so you would—about the fourth day that gumbo was perfect. [Laughs] All the seasonings were mixed and worked out all the kinks, and the roux was settled and just rested as they say. And so that was—that was always special.

I’m wondering if she—if she put sausage in her seafood gumbo?

Smoked sausage, but if [we] didn’t have it, something else. But normally smoked sausage, because gumbo just doesn’t taste right without having that smoky earthy taste to it, especially when you have a good, thick, robust roux. And she had a few other little tricks that she did. She has yet to ever tell me; I probably will never learn ‘cause my brother actually makes a better gumbo than me, and her gumbo is better than his. And so in the family it’s kind of like I’ll cook a gumbo, but I don’t because I know that’s their thing. [Laughs]

Did she use the same roux for both of her gumbos? She would cook it to the same shade?

Exactly. For gumbo, brown. Her—her gumbo is always a little, I call it earthy brown—just real rich. But, gumbo was a big thing, but her greatest dish is étouffée—crawfish étouffée, and that was only cooked for special occasions. She did not cook it like she would cook a gumbo, which would be any time. Her étouffée was normally for when we had people over at the house, ‘cause at my house, since my dad was a cook he had a reputation so people would come to the house to eat, and she would start cooking her crawfish étouffée. For sure we had it in April during Easter season. For sure we were going to have it at least once during the—the late, between Thanksgiving and Christmas season. She would cook it and have a big group of people over and maybe two or three times in a year. To this day she probably makes étouffée twice a year.

Your dad was a professional cook?

He worked in an Italian restaurant, Papania’s, which was here in Lake Charles for years. And actually I started going to Papania’s when I was like four or five. He would wake me up in the morning. He’d work at the railroad, come in late, about midnight, 1 o’clock; he goes, would wake me up: Do you want to come with me to the restaurant? ‘Cause he would make the sauce, the spaghetti sauce, the pizza sauce, for the next day, and so I would go with him as a little kid, and that’s when—at that time at the restaurant newspaper people used to be in there too. Well I would be with him in the kitchen and he would be doing his thing and I’d get—invariably I’d get thirsty, and the greatest treat in the world was a cherry soda, which was either 7-Up with cherry—cherry juice or a Coke with cherry juice added to it, and I would sit at the bar [Laughs] at the corner, and he would put me in there and I—and I would hang out with the waiters who were—who to this day were—still remember me now as—as an adult. And I just kind of grew up in the kitchen. I mean it just—I didn’t know how natural it was ‘til I was 22—23. So that’s how I got a real close association with what goes on—what goes on with seasoning and hanging around food and really learning to love the people who do it: the waiters, the cooks, the sous-chefs. You know, celebrity chefs don’t really mean much to me; it’s the people who really are sitting in the back peeling the potatoes, washing the dishes—that’s where I really feel like I got a connection with them, when I hear their stories and I’m able to tell their stories in the newspaper or in a magazine article, and that’s what’s important to me because if you—I think people forget. Your food just doesn’t come to you on a plate. There’s some no-named individual who doesn’t even think about it—they know it: they just do something marvelous and create something. They got it from their grandma and their mama, or their dad or uncle, and they’re just doing what they do, and that’s the thing I really, really appreciate especially about being in this side of the state. There’s no pomp and circumstance about eating and cooking. It’s survival, and at the same time it’s having a good time. And you can't have a good time if the food’s not good. [Laughs]

Did your dad cook gumbo, or was that your mom?

Strictly my mom; dad was fried foods, Italian sausage, spaghetti sauces, pizza sauces, pizzas, fried chicken, chicken fried steak with white gravy—stick to your bones stuff, that was him, and he didn’t cook no vegetables. [Laughs]

Your mom—did she put okra in any of her gumbos?

Never. I didn’t realize they put okra in gumbo ‘til I went to New Orleans. On this side [of the state] you have a few people who put okra in their gumbo, but for the most part okra is smothered and that’s it. Very few people around here actually—if you look on most restaurants’ menus around here, people do not put okra in their—in their gumbo. I don’t know why. Personally I love it, but on this end of the state, fried okra, pickled okra, smothered okra, but very seldom in a gumbo. And if it does happen, it’s not frequent.

Is there anything else that you think really distinguishes a Lake Charles-area gumbo?

Smoked sausage. We don’t do andouille; we do smoked sausage, and that smoked sausage is normally going to be beef, pork, a mix of beef and pork, or a mix of deer and pork, or deer and  beef. And slowly but surely you going to have some people starting to put more smoked turkey sausage into their gumbos, so the smoked flavor really is important around here because we have so many small smoked meat producers. You can start right in Vinton, Louisiana, which is 10 miles away from the Texas border, and go clear across Calcasieu Parish and there’s—you’re going to be inundated with these small little shops where people have smoked ham hocks, chicken, turkey, turkey legs, turkey wings, and every last one of those things will go into a gumbo. So around here people like that infusion of just that earthy natural flavor to go into their gumbos. And that’s the one thing that I find—that I find common. Around here you’ll find—and I tend to call it—and I have friends who call it junk. Well a person—you will have a gumbo with smoked turkey necks, smoked turkey wings, smoked sausage, some shrimp, some chicken, you know four or five different main ingredients and they’re all in—in the gumbo. And even though, I mean I don’t personally like that much junk in my gumbo, the flavor is undeniable. It—even if you don’t like picking through all the meat, you’re going to eat it because the flavor is so rich. And whether it’s  pecan wood, hickory, oak—all those smokes is what really, really changes the flavors in gumbos on this side of the—of the state. I go anywhere else and I know over here this—the flavor is going to be a whole lot more robust. And that’s the big difference that I find on this side of the state compared to other parts of the state when it comes to cooking gumbo.

Is there anywhere that you can think of off-hand, a restaurant that makes a junk-style of gumbo?

No. Most people stay to the basics: chicken and sausage, shrimp and crab. And that’s it. And it’s only when you start getting out of restaurants and going to people’s houses you get a bowl of something, and I’m serious: there could be deer backstrap in this; it could be rabbit. I went to a hunting camp and threw down with me with some smoked wild goose—I mean geese—and had some smoked sausage and had the nerve to put some rabbit in it and oh, I mean it was great. But it had junk [Laughs]—just too much stuff in it.

When you make a gumbo at home, are you trying to go for your mom’s gumbo, or do you have your own gumbo?

I have my own ‘cause I can't duplicate my mom’s. If I try it I will fail each and every time. And I try to keep it simple. Bell pepper, celery, onions sautéed in olive oil. And I cheat: I use a roux that’s already made. I’m not going to sit up there for 45-minutes stirring in the pot; add that, sausage, maybe some chicken. I mean my wife and kid, they don’t really like a lot of stuff in it.

And are you the main cook in your household?

Definitely [Laughs]. My wife is from Kansas, so I’m the cook.

And that’s not unusual in this part of the country even-—even in New Orleans, I think a lot of men are the main cooks.

I’m actually working on a story right now for a magazine about smoked sausage and smoked meats, so I was on the road actually today, and I was talking to what we call old-timers, some old guys and—excuse me—. What they were telling me were these stories about their fathers and grandfathers—and we’re talking about the early 1900s—butchering the pig, and the men out there doing cracklings and making boudin, smothering pork steaks, barbequing and the whole nine yards, and that’s inherent in this culture. There’s one thing that I think that’s amazing and pretty cool is that men—and that’s on both sides of the color spectrum, black or white—in most communities when it comes to cooking, you won't find a man who’s going to run from the kitchen. And the ones who did, then their mama really was a doggone good cook. They had no reason to learn. [Laughs] But every guy I know personally cooks—even guys I went to high school with and their dads and their grandfathers, and really and truly those recipes are passed down. And the thing is, it’s not like it’s written down. You pick up the recipe watching as a little kid. And it’s amazing how much kids pick up when you’re five years-old and you’re outside with the guys and they’re passing around the whiskey bottle and drinking beer, joking, you know and playing the dozens—hanging out outside and the women are inside and—you’d just be amazed at how much you pick up and watch what these old guys do. And to me that’s what’s pretty cool, especially as a food writer. When I get a chance to go around some of the old-timers who are still alive, and they’re at a festival and they’re cooking, and just to sit there and watch them, and you feel a kinship with them because they’re doing the same thing that you did and have learned. And it just—you just feel at home. And that’s what makes writing about food, what makes watching these people even when I’m not worried about writing about food—you just feel this connection and it’s—it’s basic, and it’s not macho at all. It’s just guys who want to have good times and love cooking. And that’s—I love that.

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To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.

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