When you heat that pan, are you using gas or electric?
Any fans of Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking? Do you still use it?
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Peter_New Orleans
Assistant Cook
I love it. It is a wonderful reference. Unfortunately I lost my copy in a move but it will soon be replaced. It is like going to culinary school. I am from New Orleans so French cooking is part of the culture.
Hello @Peter_New Orleans I had mention on another Thread about a Creole CookBook. It is by Lafeadio Hearn from somewhere about 1885 or so. Not sure exactly when it was written and have not read other than the first pages blurb.
A "perceptive account of all walks of New Orleans life in the 1870's and 80's includes the street cries of New Orleans vendors, Creole songs and sayings collected by the studious, then unknown reporter, and sketches he made of New Orleans people...."
It promises to be a fascinating read.
Kathleen
Cupcake
We have a gas stove and a lot of cast iron. The skillets are well-seasoned and, if they are heated through before butter/oil/grease is added, eggs do not stick. I think Julia's eggs would work well in them.
Not sure how many people know, but Creole and Cajun are not the same food. They use some common ingredients, but also some very different ones.
Creole people came to Louisiana long before Cajuns. They were people of mixed colonial French, African and Native American ancestry.
Cajuns came to Louisiana from Eastern Canada. French Canadians or "Acadians." They settled heavily in Southwest Louisiana (and spread into SE Texas, where I grew up).
If you are interested in both foods, you'll want to get cookbooks for each.
CD
I know there is a difference. I know about the Acadiens vs the Creoles. I know they have different cuisines, but I couldn't tell you which foods fall into which categories. Would New Orleans have more of one or the other of those two cuisines, and which would predominate in NOLA?
Haven't actually read the book other than little blurbs on cover and here ad there. If Lafeadio Hearn didn't know the difference between Creole and Cajun in New Orleans in the 1870's - not my fault! 
Kathleen
Cupcake
I really didn't know the difference. Both kinds of food are yummy!
It used to be that Creole was more "city food" than cajun. But from my own experiences, you can find plenty of both, if you are looking for it.
The newest trend is VietCajun, a Vietnamese/Cajun fusion. It stretches from NOLA to Houston. After the war, a lot of Vietnamese refugees settled in that area, because they were fishermen in Vietnam.
CD
Doesn't one of them use hot spices more than the other?
Rumor has it that hot spices used in hot climates were mainly to cover up the fact that a lot of the food was rancid due to lack of refrigeration. 
I don't do a lot of Creole cooking, but the biggest single difference I know of is tomatoes. Creole cooking uses them, Cajun cooking doesn't. Tomatoes make a big difference in flavor.
CD
Interesting to know. I guess I would lean towards the Cajun cuisine then, since tomatoes that have been cooked with the seeds and gel left in make my arthritis flare. I like tomatoes, they are just mean to me. It's astounding how pervasive tomatoes are in cooking. It can be hard to avoid them.
rodentraiser
Head Chef
Well, this last batch had very, very minimum sticking on the sides and none on the bottom. I think it's because I didn't get the butter up on the sides, though. And it was pure chance that led to this discovery. I usually let my pan (singular) heat up, but that morning I had a few things that took me extra long to do, resulting in the pan heating up for at least 8 minutes, if not longer.
I'm using gas right now.
I asked because, electric can get incredibly hot. It takes a while, but it really does get hot. It's sort of like a locomotive engine.
