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Monday’s Red Beans, Tuesday’s Gumbo By David W. Brown

TEAM ROUX

BLUE RUNNER ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Blue Runner Foods, renowned for its canned Creole Cream Style Red Beans, dates back to 1918, when the Union Canning Company began canning fresh fruits and a variety of other items. In 1946 the company moved to its current location in Gonzales, Louisiana, where all of its products are still produced today.

RED BEAN GUMBO MIX ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Lucius Hamilton Hayward founded L.H. Hayward and Company in 1923 to sell red beans in the French Market in New Orleans. When the company moved into an old cotton plant, it was named Camellia after the favorite flower of the wife of L.H. Hayward Jr. Around 1940, when supermarkets were becoming popular, William Gordon Hayward, son of L.H. Jr., came up with the revolutionary idea to package beans in individual bags for consumers. While the Haywards have expanded to offer beans, peas and lentils to the world — including a Red Bean Gumbo Mix — Camellia remains a local, family company today.

“I certainly had my share of white and red beans and rice when I was growing up, but the beans usually came with smothered or fried pork chops,” says chef and influential cookbook author Marcelle Bienvenu. She grew up in St. Martinville, Louisiana, which wasn’t quite so eccentric in its use of beans as other parts of the state. Working and living at Oak Alley Plantation in St. James Parish, she encountered dishes that deviated from the norms of her home parish of St. Martin, including a signature cuisine of the area: red bean gumbo. “I was asked to do a cooking presen tation at one of the schools in Ascension Parish, and one of the teachers asked me if I had ever experienced red bean gumbo,” she says. According to Chef Jean-Paul “J.P.” Daigle, a chef instructor at the John Folse Culinary Institute at Nicholls State University, red bean gumbo is one of those recipes that “you go down a certain ghost road in Louisiana somewhere, and they only prepare it in like a six-mile square area, but you don’t see it everywhere else.” Farmers and local economic circum stances likely yielded the unusual gumbo. Blue Runner Beans (then the Union Canning Company, because of their location in Union, Louisiana, along the Mississippi River in St. James), opened in 1918, first canning figs and blackberries in the backyard of local farmer, cook and entrepreneur Pierre Chauvin. He would eventually begin canning a family recipe he learned from his grandmother — a cuisine, indeed, that would define the company and the St. James community: Creole Cream Style Red Beans. Now, I’m not taking credit for this culinary sensation, but according to my mother, my

SEASONED HAM ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT If you don’t have a ham bone left over from Sunday supper, try using a Chisesi Ham Shank or bite-size Seasoned Ham to add flavor to red bean gumbo. For many Louisianians, Chisesi is ham. Philip Chisesi, like so many Italian entrepreneurs in the area, got his start at the French Market. More than 100 years later, the company he founded is still family owned and operated by 4th- and 5th-generation Chisesis.

OUR FAMOUS FRIED CHICKEN IS DOUBLE BATTERED SO YOU GET THAT SPICY CRUNCH IN EVERY BITE. ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT The Rouse Family Recipe for our fried chicken goes back more than 60 years. Our cooks start with fresh, never frozen chicken. Every piece is double battered and fried in our special 0% trans-fat seasoned oil. You get juicy meat, a crisp crunch and just the right amount of Louisiana spice.

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PHOTO BY ROMNEY CARUSO