At least three times a week I get mail like this:
From: somebody@somewhere.comWell, I'm sorry, the answer is "no".
To: Chuck Taggart
Subject: Bourbon chickenHello, I am looking for a recipe for Bourbon Chicken. I had it at a Cajun food stall in a mall here where I live in [insert the name of any state other than Louisiana]. I'd love to have the recipe. Do you have it?
This dish is not a typical or traditional dish of New Orleans, of Creole cuisine, or of Cajun cuisine. This is a dish that appears at shopping mall food courts everywhere in the United States except, significantly, in Louisiana, where they know they'd never be able to pass this off as Cajun food. These mall food court stalls try to pass it off as authentic Louisiana cuisine, which it simply is not. You know how I feel about people who try to fake out the public with inauthentic Louisiana cuisine and claim that it is, and if you don't, read my rant about it.
From what I can tell from people's descriptions, it seems to vary from place to place; I've heard descriptions ranging from a simple butter/cream sauce flavored with bourbon whiskey, with chicken and onions and bell peppers, to some kind of sweet, dark, sticky sauce like an overly-sugared teriyaki sauce (which is what I personally witnessed in Atlanta, Georgia). The popularity of this dish befuddles me. But I know our cuisine pretty well, and I'd never heard of it until the emails start coming in. No one in my family had heard of it. None of my friends in New Orleans had heard of it. No one on the New Orleans Mailing List had heard of it unless they saw it in some shopping mall food court in Georgia, Minnesota or New Jersey.
I'm reminded of a quote I saw written on the wall of Marc Savoy's accordion workshop in Eunice, Louisiana: "COMMERCIALISM: The process of taking something real and true (beer, music, etc.) and fucking it up so that the American public will buy it."
Think of me as a hardheaded sonofabitch if you like, but I won't put recipes for poser cuisine on my site. If you've had this and liked it, that's fine. Enjoy it. But if you've had this and have been told that it's a classic Louisiana dish, you've been had.
ADDENDUM: August 15, 1998
I was recently contacted by a guy who says he knows the guys who developed the "original" recipe for this dish; it was developed by Louisiana natives for mall food court stalls called "Big Easy Cajun", and that it is "based on the BBQ style cooking done in much of Cajun country using various marinades and sauces for baste", and that it is "simple and appeals to people across America". The guy also said that "there are many copycats and folks who try imitate the original. If you have had the original recipe you may like it and may recognize it a close to some family recipes from Cajun country." So there you have it. Seems, though, that nearly everyone I know has had it from the copycats. Caveat emptor.
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