Cajun

 

Another distinctly American food is Cajun cuisine.  Cajuns are a people descended from French-speaking settlers in Canada who had been expelled from Canada by the British during conflicts with the American government in the early 19th century.  They have developed their own microcosmic society, with distinctive linguistic, lifestyle, and culinary traditions.

 

'Cajun cuisine developed out of necessity. The Acadian refugees, farmers rendered destitute by the British expulsion, had to learn to live off the land and adapted their French rustic cuisine to local (i.e. Louisiana) ingredients such as rice, crawfish, and sugar cane.  Many households were large, consisting of eight to twelve people; thus, regardless what other vocations may have been followed by the head of household, most families also farmed. Feeding a large family, all of whose members did hard physical work every day, required a lot of food. Cajun cuisine grew out of supplementing rice with what meat, game or other proteins were available such as crawfish or any other type of river creature.'

 

A famous Cajun staple is red beans and rice.  Also, if one orders some type of meat in a restaurant that is described as Cajun, it usually means that the fillet or steak or whatever will be coated in a spice mixture predominated by cayenne pepper.  It is a cuisine that, once one acquires a taste for it, is likely to  become a favourite.