Real Cajun Cooking - Pure and Simple

"I was seven years old when my grandfather had this crazy idea of flooding our rice fields after the harvest. Grandfather didn't even finish grade school back in the old days but it did not diminish the fact that he was a innovator.

The Gaspard Family has a claim of being the first commercial crayfish farmers in the State of Louisiana. The only challenge to that claim came from the Trahan Family who resided about 12 miles away. I think Mr. Trahan emulated my grandfather's success and began their own farming operation the following year.

Back then we were resigned to using rudimentary harvesting methods to catch crawfish; namely, pyramid type nets and blood bait placed in the center. Even then, each year we managed to harvest tons of the delicious crustaceans. Later we made and used wire traps. The traps were made of ¾ inch chicken wire formed into a cylindrical shape with a funnel opening at each end. We quadrupled our harvest.

We kept the crawfish farm going for a couple decades. Most of the money we earned from the farm was unreported cash. The windfall from the operations allowed me to purchase my first brand new car by the time I was 15 years old. Actually, my grandfather purchased the car for me before I obtained my driver's license.

As word spread, people would travel from miles around just to fish our ponds. Back then we would rent the nets by the dozen, sell bait and soda to anyone who did not have their own fishing equipment. I remember one time a business man came by to check out our farm. Before you knew it we equipped him with a pair of waders, a dozen nets, a number two wash tub, and a long cane pole. He fished a couple hours and walked away with about 100 pounds of crawfish.

Folks would place the nets at the very end of the pole and from the levee would strategically place them about 15 feet apart...never getting their feet wet. A dozen nets would do the trick. If you didn't walk away with about 100 pounds in an hour or so it meant you were just playing around. We sold our crawfish for 10 cents a pound if you caught your own, or 20 cents a pound if we caught them for you.

Later on, when I was in high school, my grandfather would give me all the proceeds from the fish farm just for managing it while he was away pursuing another hobby. Some weekends I would pocket around $300. Not bad for a pimple faced teenager back then.

Crawfish season would last only about 4 months until it was time to plow up the fields and prepare for the next rice harvest. This is when I would go down to the coast to catch shrimp and crab. I used a throw net to catch shrimp and string with chicken necks to catch crabs. We always had a freezer full of seafood. Those were the good ole days."

It was my second year cooking for the Texarkana Hunting Club. The club's deer lease encompasses several hundred acres of wooded ridges and bottom lands and extends partially south of and adjacent to Hwy 287 in Nevada County, Arkansas. (between Hope and Camden)

I looked forward to being the camp cook again. Maybe it was because I added just enough spice and Cajun seasoning to the foods I prepared the year before that prompted a re-invitation to cook for them this year.

Now, it seems, that the hunting club would like for me to cook for them in 2007. This could become a tradition.

The challenge I faced this year was to prepare hearty dishes from the game bagged on the lease...which was mainly deer and wild pigs.

I arrived at the deer camp around noon on Friday. My time that afternoon was spent getting settled in at the bunk house, taking inventory of the galley provisions, and getting reacquainted with friends I had met at the camp the previous year.

All afternoon the hunters trickled in at the camp to set up for the following opening day. One of the hunter's age was 84, but if I had to guess the average overall age of the members , I would guess around forty-eight.

I had to awaken early enough the next morning to prepare breakfast for everyone; early enough so that the hunters could eat a hearty meal and still have enough time to take positions at their respective blinds or tree stands.

This meant getting up at 4 o'clock every morning. In most cases I could have everything prepared within one to one and one half hours. After everyone would leave for the hunt I would clean the galley and go back to the bunk house to get a couple more hours sleep before preparing the afternoon meals.

It was Saturday, November 11, 2006 and it was also Veteran's Day. Everything progressed smoothly the first morning. I had the hunters in and out in less than a couple hours. I went back to the bunk house to listen to the news and get some more shut-eye. I had a special treat in mind to cook up for supper on Veteran's Day.

That afternoon, while in the galley peeling potatoes, I heard a small commotion outside the building. I went outside to check it out and I noticed a couple hunters. They had just arrived. I didn't recognize them from the year before so I naturally assumed they were invited guests.

I took particular notice of the less tall of the two hunters because of the way he interacted with the other hunters, most of whom he had never met before.

He was gregarious to say the least. Although he was of a smaller stature, he strutted around like he was ten feet tall, in full hunting regalia, (just shy of a Gillie suit), and exuded more self-confidence than a rogue porcupine.

He could tell a story and spin a yarn that would make Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn green with envy. His name was Gage Paul Wylie. He liked and wanted to be called Gage Paul by the other hunters in the group. He was proud of his name.

That evening I prepared a hearty meal for the hunters. The main course consisted of chicken fried venison back strap with mash potatoes and gravy. I noticed Gage Paul tearing into his fair share. He acted like he needed to store as much energy as he possibly could in preparation for the following day's hunt.

While the other hunters gathered around to talk about old times and drink beer, I noticed that Gage Paul wasn't particularly interested and made his way back to his travel trailer to get some early rest, I supposed.

It wasn't long after that when I also made my way to the bunk house to get some shut-eye of my own. It was tough enough under normal circumstances for the cook to get some sleep, let alone jaw boning with a group of hunters who had another year's worth of tall tales, light beer and football under their hats.

I awakened at 4 PM the next morning to prepare breakfast. (scrambled eggs, bacon, biscuits and gravy) Everyone was in and out in about one hour. Doing good! I thought to myself.

I cleaned up the galley and went back to bed and before long I was getting some peaceful rest. There was no one around...just pure silence...the perfect setting for peaceful sleep. It's what camp cooks dream about.

I don't remember what I was dreaming about that particular morning, but it wasn't about tall tales, football or bagging deer.

Suddenly! Out of the peaceful silence and sweet dreams, I heard this voice. It kept repeating itself and getting closer and getting louder.

"I killed two!"

I heard it again. "I killed two!"

I remember jumping up from the lower bunk, where I slept, and nearly knocking myself out when my head hit the top bunk. I couldn't find my glasses. (not good for a near sighted cook) I bent over and closely examined the alarm clock on the bed stand and it said 8:30. It was still dark in the bunk house.

At that point I didn't know if it was in the AM or the PM. I was totally confused.

Don't laugh. You should try thinking strait when it's dark and you can't see in the first place...and with a knot on the head that you feel is slowly growing by the minute.

I found my specs and finally figured out that it was still morning. I figured I got almost exactly one and a half hours of sleep. Imagine that!

I slipped on my overalls and made my way to the door to see what all the excitement was about. As soon as I opened the door...there he was...Gage Paul Wylie.

"I killed two!", he shouted; "just fifteen minutes apart!", he added.

There he was...Gage Paul Wylie...a bit loquacious, in my opinion, and now a whole lot on the braggart side.

He touted his weapon of choice - a 243 rifle, (a kid's gun by hunting standards), like a gallant warrior after his first exhausting battle.

So Gage Paul bagged two whitetail deer in fifteen minutes on the first day. Big deal! ... Right?

For Gage Paul it was a big deal. It was a big deal because the sharp, self-confident, nonchalant, keen eyed whitetail deer hunter is only nine years old.

As a well known radio commentator loves to conclude: "now you know the rest of the story." But, ...not quite.

When I was composing this story I couldn't help but think that perhaps there were other nine year old hunters, like Gage Paul, who bagged two deer in just fifteen minutes; that perhaps there were other nine year old hunters who have a good story to tell.

But, the amazing thing about this story is that on that faithful morning in November of 2006, a day which I will always remember, was the day when Gage Paul Wylie participated in his very first deer hunt.

Nine year old Gage Paul Wylie of Cabot, Arkansas stole the show that day as he out shined, probably for several more years to come, all of the other deer hunters in the hunting club.

He had been accompanied by his grandfather, Roy. As Gage Paul repeated his story to the other hunters who trickled in that afternoon, one of the older hunters asked, "Gage Paul, how many times do think you need to tell that story?"

Gage Paul responded by saying, "As many times as it takes. I just wanted you all to know that you may have won the battle, but my papaw and me...we won the war."

Jacques Gaspard

"I first tried this recipe during my second year in college. My wife was pregnant for our daughter at the time. We were visiting some close friends who had moved out of the college dorms to a quaint small house which was situated next to a railroad track in the north section of Lafayette, Louisiana. Seafood was readily available at a moments notice.

Alvin Toups, a friend, and I shucked a few dozen oysters and decided to smoke them on a small grill. We added a small amount of butter, liquid smoke and freshly minced garlic to each oyster on the half-shell. It turned out great. Later, I tweaked the recipe a bit.

Shantal, my daughter, was not yet born. In 1986 I acquired a small interest in a restaurant in Texarkana, Arkansas. I made up a batch for everyone to try and it consequently became a big hit with our customers. That is how the name Oysters Shantal came into being."

It was the smell of seafood and my grandmother's cooking I liked the most about Friday evening, as if the preparation for that event meant setting aside the stress of running the family farm that week. It seemed that everyone in the family couldn't wait for supper time.

I could feel my senses reaching out to embrace the particular smell of her seafood gumbo. It was like music to the soul. The sweet nutty aroma of the the flour roux permeated our entire house; any excess which vented out through the open windows invited anyone who was lucky enough to walk near our home.

This was especially true the moment my grandma added the onions, celery and peppers to the hot gumbo mixture. The aroma of the sautee was indescribable...like an invisible magnet, it would draw you to the source – to the very pot in which the magic elixir was brewed.

It was the closest thing to heaven that I knew. We lived in a predominantly Catholic community except for a small Methodist Church located off a dirt road about three miles south of us.. (highway black topping had not reached our remote area yet.) Eating seafood on Friday kept the family in tune with the church's meat abstinence laws.

There was something holy about that church doctrine. All that seafood! It was, in my thinking, God's way of rewarding us for not eating meat. One couldn't wish for more.

One of my most memorable moments for me came at age seven, when my Grandfather announced to the family that we were going to establish a crayfish farm.

No one ever heard of such a thing. No one had a crayfish farm in the area, and arguably, in the entire State of Louisiana, as far as it goes.

There were no crayfish farms in which to pattern ours after. My grandfather started from scratch.

We had always been inundated with these ubiquitous claw pinching shell fish. They grew everywhere! Even in people's yards.

Every June my grandfather would begin the process of slowly releasing the water from the irrigated fields in preparation for the July rice harvest. The ground had to be dry and solid for a few weeks, which allowed the large weighty harvesters to operate at maximum efficiency.

Every year, during this process, my grandpa would harvest hundreds of pounds of these delicious fresh water crustaceans – what seemed like millions of small lobsters through the eyes of a young boy.

My grandfather was a functional illiterate. He had not had the opportunity to even finish grade school because his father needed him to work on the farm instead of attending to his education.

This didn't, in any way, mean that grandpa was stupid, nor did it diminish his ability to conduct business. He could calculate numbers and solve problems in his head faster than a lot of folks who use a calculator today.

The announcement to start a crayfish farm came one Friday afternoon when my grandfather returned from the rice fields in his dark green 1953 Chevrolet pick up truck.

It was loaded with two dozen sacks of crayfish. Each sack weighed around fifty pounds. He and his farm hands had harvested them from the run-off on one forty acre rice field.

As it turned out, his desire to run and operate a crayfish farm, in hind sight, could not have come at a more convenient and opportune, although inadvertent, time because Hurricane Audrey, a category four storm, wiped out all the crops in our area, as well as crops in several adjacent parishes, before they could be harvested.

If grandfather's crayfish farm plan worked, it meant that we could defray some of the loses from the rice crop created by the storm. It worked! Oh how did it work. It worked beyond our wildest dreams.

Grandpa didn't have to pump underground water to flood a forty acre farm three feet deep. There was a substantial costs involved in doing this. The flood waters of Hurricane Audrey solved that problem. He merely reinforced the levee system in his field and captured, from nature, the prime ingredient to raise crayfish – and that was water.

The storm hit land on the Texas/Louisiana coast on June 27, 1957. It was estimated that over 500 people perished. We were fortunate enough to be located on the eastern outer periphery of the storm. Most of the sustained damage in our area came from the flood waters.

My grandfather managed to turn a terrible situation into an asset. Water costs in those days, as it is now, was substantial; it would consume nearly 20 percent of the profits. As it turned out, in this particular circumstance, the flood was a blessing from heaven which further enhanced the prospect of establishing and operating a successful crayfish farm.

The entire rice crop was flattened by the storm and impossible to harvest, so grandpa just left it as it was and flooded over it. Every-thing was now under water. Unaware to him at the time was the fact that the rice and the rice stalks not only gave the newly hatched crayfish a safe haven from fish, frogs, snakes and other predators, it also produced food for them.

In the years following the first crayfish harvesting season, we learned that by dotting the forty acre pond with broken bales of rice straw, it had the same effect of protecting and producing feed for future crayfish seedlings.

Our crayfish farm had a levee system which meandered and criss-crossed each other throughout the pond. There were nearly 4 miles of walking space for our customers to fish from.

When I turned eight, grandpa began teaching me all about the correct ways to cultivate the little creatures. The growing season synchronized perfectly with the growing of rice crops. Neither growing season inter-fered with the other; in fact, they complimented each other.

Crayfish reproduce in the spring and grow through the summer and fall toward maturity; some are ready for harvest by November. This gave us at least four good months to operate and produce the crawdads before preparing the soil for the next year's rice crop.

We allowed the public to enter our ponds and do their own fishing. It was fun and economical for them – as well as time saving and profitable for us.

We rented bamboo cane poles, small plastic boats in which to put their catch; we rented nets, sold bait and soft drinks. No one was allowed to bring in equipment, food or refreshments. By doing this we were able to hold down the natural tendency for people to pollute the pond's water. Broken glass and trash was not a problem on our farm as it was on some of the other crawfish farm operations, later on, who attempted to emulate our farm techniques and operations.

I earned a lot of cash during my growing up years at grandpa's crayfish farm. I fished early in the mornings before shool and in the late afternoons after school. I fished when it was raining...when the wind blew fiercely; I fished through ice. And, I fished on some days which were so perfect... with the sun's rays beating down just the right amount of heat to make it so comfortable on a nearly cold day.

My first new car was purchased with the money I earned from crayfishing. I just turned fifteen - right after I got my driver's license.

I remember the year when we stopped public fishing for insurance reasons. From then on we harvested all of the crayfish in-house. We began to use wire cages (made from chickens wire) along with cut fish as bait. We were able to quadruple our yield, as well as our profits.

It was truly a family business. Anyone in the family who needed a little extra spending money was able to enter the pond, catch as much as he or she wanted, and sell it. The starting price back then was twenty cents per pound. Imagine that!

There are times when I would like to go back – even for just a short while - to re-experience the root based feelings of fishing for crayfish with my grandpa on the very first crayfish farm.

In memory of my grandfather: Henri Gaspard 1899 -1975.

Developer of the first commercial crayfish farm.