Lenten Season in NOLA, the Big Easy

Lent is one period in which it’s OK to be a quitter – as in, giving something up. When I was young, it was something most people in my community adhered to during this 46-day period from Ash Wednesday to Easter. In my small overwhelmingly Protestant community in the 1950s, it was the Lutherans who were the most penitent, and my more religiously devout grade-school classmates were serious about the tradition.

Why give up a favorite something?

Lenten repentance expectations grew out of a solemn tradition in ancient Catholic Rome in which the penitents wore sackcloth and were sprinkled with ashes. Then they were reconciled with the remaining Christian community on Maundy Thursday, the Thursday before Easter. The idea was to commemorate Jesus’ 40-day fast in the Judean Desert by thinking about how we can be more devout serve others to be closer to God.

I was curious about how people in New Orleans, where the population is one-third Catholic, approach Lent. It seems that when the area was colonized by Spain and France, settlers were required to be Catholic. Immigration since then, with Irish, Italian, and Portuguese, has maintained the strength of Catholicism such that currently, the archdiocese comprises 137 parishes administered by about 380 priests. During Lent, they’ll be advocating that parishioners try to give up what they love most. Beignets, chocolate, lattes, and soft drinks top the list. The devout give up meat and even dairy foods during all of Lent, not just on Fridays. Giving up meat on Friday is not only a large part of the culture; it’s also a gold mine for local churches who host fish fries on Fridays, and the hometown New Orleans Times-Picayune event lists the best church fish fries.

In denial?

Errol Laborde, former editor of New Orleans Magazine and Louisiana Life, explained why Lenten penance is so difficult in New Orleans. He blames the “theological mission” of Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday – the religious expectation that people will go from feast to fast overnight. In fact, feasting tends to linger right into Lent. ‘We have become masters of the feasting part,” he wrote. He noted that Catholics have their meatless days fulfilled by seafood, and it seems that people have figured out many ways to skirt the fast. He observed that turtle soup was sanctioned because turtle is a reptile and hence more like seafood. He went so far as to note that a Louisiana bishop once ruled that duck was not a meat because it was a waterfowl. And then there are the crawfish boils on the weekends. In other words, there are lots of ways to get past Lenten abstemiousness.

Besides fish, what else is consumed in New Orleans? Food writer Bill Neal has proclaimed in his Bill Neal’s Southern Cooking that Crescent City natives hold red beans and rice closer to their hearts than any other dish. New Orleans native Louis Armstrong made his autograph “Red beans and ricely yours.” Neal points out that during Lent, the pork sausage and ham might be omitted, but the red beans remain popular.

One of Farmboy’s faithful readers has requested a recipe for red beans and rice, so here’s my take on this iconic New Orleans dish pictured above. I think it benefits from the full treatment of dried beans soaked overnight, then cooked with a good smoky ham hock and finished with ham chunks and a good, hot sausage such as andouille. It needs the spices along with a shot of Louisiana tabasco sauce and chopped parsley.

Meanwhile, please pass the beignets.