-Funding for "Louisiana Coastal Cooking" was provided by... ...and by the Plaquemines Parish Tourism Commission.

A short drive from New Orleans, Plaquemines Parish offers a diverse variety of fishing, fresh seafood, rich history, and environmental activities in Louisiana's Delta Country.

Learn more at visitplaqueminesparish.com.

[ Birds calling ] -Celebrating Louisiana food and culture through public television.

-To kick off a look at Louisiana shrimp and crawfish, we're starting with a spring tradition held across South Louisiana.

The colorful blessing of the fleet marks the beginning of the inshore shrimp season in May.

With roots in a centuries-old Catholic tradition, decorated shrimp boats parade down the bayou and are blessed with a prayer for a safe and bountiful season.

Although the number of boats and shrimpers have declined, the celebration continues to unite small communities along the bayous.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ We head to Montegut to meet Lance Nacio, a leader in sustainable fishing practices.

This third-generation fisherman runs his family's shrimp operation out of his dockside home on Bayou Terrebonne.

-Welcome to the Anna Marie.

-On the tour of the Anna Marie, Lance explains the high-tech innovations he added to his trawler that have helped keep the business viable despite challenges to the shrimp industry.

-We have a lot of unique and interesting things on this boat that's not typical of a shrimp boat.

Some of the things we have is we have an onboard sorter which sorts the shrimp by size.

We have a refrigerated seawater chiller where we chill the shrimp to about 40 degrees before we put them in a 20-pound box.

This piece of equipment is a plate freezer.

There's only a couple of boats in the Gulf that have it.

It's ultra-low-temp.

This box, it could be 90 degrees, and when you turn it on, in one hour, it's 45 below zero.

A lot of this technology we have on this boat come from the Northwest, the Alaskan fisheries.

They are probably about 25 years ahead of us.

-Other improvements include below-deck freezers, wider mesh nets, and modified turtle-excluder devices that reduce bycatch.

These and other forward-thinking efforts allow Lance's son, David, captain of the Anna Marie, and his crew to shrimp longer and more productively.

-We target mainly white shrimp at our operation.

White shrimp is a sweeter-tasting shrimp.

It grows faster.

It prefers brackish water, so it likes to live along the coast.

It likes to live around the rivers.

So, you know, we try to focus our efforts around the Atchafalaya or the Mississippi River, where you have more concentrated white shrimp.

-When the Anna Marie leaves Bayou Terrebonne, the crew shrimps in the Atchafalaya Basin for about two weeks.

-Bayou Terrebonne is one of the tributaries of the Mississippi River that built this land here, but it goes out straight into the Gulf from here about five hours.

And then to get to the Mississippi Atchafalaya, it's about another five hours.

So if we're gonna go straight to the rivers to shrimp, it usually takes us 10 or 12 hours.

-At his home base just on the other side of the road, Lance runs a microprocessing plant for shrimp and for finfish caught from a second fish boat.

The heart of the facility is a freezer that can accommodate 30,000 pounds of shrimp.

-Whenever we are out harvesting the shrimp and we come in with the boxes, it gives us some time to be able to sell them for the best price that we can.

It's all costly to keep going.

And, uh, you know, with the commodities price of shrimp, we just can't afford to operate with those prices.

So it's all about supply and demand in this industry.

This freezer was a big addition to our operation.

So, this freezer stays at 6 below zero.

And, uh, we have this curtain.

But, I mean, you can see it's fairly empty right now.

And that's by design.

We don't like to hold that much shrimp in the summertime.

A big part of our business is farmers markets, so we do three farmers markets a week.

One of the markets, we've been in for 20 years.

And in order to do well at a market, you need to bring what the consumer wants.

This here is an old lugger.

You can see there's two others in the background.

These... -In his home, Lance talks about growing up on the fertile coast of Terrebonne Parish.

-As a child, I grew up in a trapping camp.

I was one of the kids that went to school in a boat.

You know, our camp was only accessible by water.

And, you know, we lived in this camp out in the marsh.

And it was a trapping camp because that's what a lot of the, you know -- Commercial fishermen, they trapped in the wintertime.

We had a wood-burning stove to cook on.

We had a little gas generator that they'd put on every night for a little while.

And we lived off of the land.

We always had a garden.

We need to educate the next generations of the way life used to be because I don't think it's gonna be like that anymore.

I mean, in my lifetime, it's amazing how much coastal land loss I've saw.

We're losing culture.

We're losing, you know, our history.

You know, what made South Louisiana is going away with the coast.

-Shrimp are central to the culture, heritage, and livelihoods of generations of Louisiana families.

But with unpredictable shrimp catches and imported shrimp driving down the price for Louisiana homegrown shrimp, shrimpers are navigating troubled waters.

-The resource is still there, but the money to be made in the industry is not there anymore because of globalization and aquaculture.

Shrimp is the number-one consumed seafood in the nation, but it's also the most heavily aquacultured product out there.

And, you know, what happens here in the United States is that no matter where you go and eat shrimp, there's over a 95% chance that you're not eating domestic shrimp, even though you're on the coast with shrimp boats tied up outside.

They -- You know, a lot of times, they give you the perception that you're eating Louisiana shrimp or domestic shrimp when in fact you're eating, you know, a third-world-country aquaculture that is loaded with chemicals and antibiotics that you probably wouldn't want to eat if you knew and had a choice.

But that's part of the problem.

People just don't know.

Here in Louisiana, we have the best-tasting shrimp.

We have an all-natural, good, clean, wholesome shrimp that has the flavor profiles of the estuaries.

-For a special treat, Lance puts together a quick bayou shrimp boil featuring wild-caught Louisiana shrimp.

-I'm prepping to do a little shrimp ball for you guys.

I'll use some Louisiana seasoning and potatoes and onions -- what we typically use in our shrimp boil.

Yeah, we're gonna go out and put this stuff to boil and enjoy some good Louisiana shrimp here shortly.

-Lance adds seafood seasoning mix to the boiling water.

Typically, a pound of the spice and herb mix is used for 10 to 15 pounds of seafood.

Onions and potatoes are added.

Corn can also go into the boil.

-We boil potatoes and onions for about 10 minutes, and then we put the shrimp in.

And the shrimp, we only let them go about a minute.

-The shrimp turn pink when cooked, which happens quickly.

-What I like to do is I like to put ice on them when they're done because what it does, it kills some of the heat, and it allows you to let them soak for longer to take in the seasoning and helps with peeling and all that stuff when you put ice on them.

So any seafood I boil, when I'm done with them, I like to shock them with ice.

I crab in the wintertime.

We duck hunt.

We fish recreationally.

There's a lot that you can live off of here in South Louisiana, and I just love it.

♪♪ -Our next shrimp dish is a living link to Filipino fishermen who helped revolutionize Louisiana's shrimp industry with a method for preserving the shellfish in the days before refrigeration.

Fresh shrimp were brought to Manila Village or one of the other wetlands' drying communities, where they were boiled in brine and then spread out on large platforms to dry naturally in the sun.

Then a process called "dancing the shrimp" broke the dried shell from the shrimp so they could be stored and transported.

By the 1930s, refrigeration and the availability of ice meant that shrimp no longer had to be dried to be sold in distant markets, although Louisiana dried shrimp continues to be produced and sold in markets around the world.

At Pêche Seafood Grill, chef de cuisine Nicole Mills taps into her culturally rich heritage.

A native of the Philippines, she was raised in a family that ran a bakery and a dim-sum stand.

She came to the U.S. to attend culinary school, eventually making her way to Louisiana and Pêche, where she discovered similarities between the flavors of Southeast Asia and the Pelican State.

Chef Nicole puts her stamp on the menu with inventive Filipino-inspired dishes like today's jumbo shrimp with coconut and greens.

-So, I have here peeled shrimp.

I leave the tails on just because the shells add a lot of flavor to the searing process.

I'm going to season this with some salt and a spice mix of black peppercorn and coriander.

Um, I think it adds a lot of nice flavors to the dish.

And the way it sears is really nice.

Coconut, I think, and coriander go very, very well together.

I have a pretty hot sauté pan here.

You want a high, sort of high, medium-high heat.

I'm going to sear the shrimp.

[ Sizzling ] So what we're looking for here is a nice golden-brown color.

And usually you tend to see that on the edges of the shrimp.

And we don't touch the shrimp.

We just let it sear until it's, like, nice and golden-brown.

You know, I try always to tell the line cooks not to move the shrimp, not to sauté the shrimp.

They're supposed to keep it there so it gets a nice caramel color.

Now, once that caramelizes, we're going to be adding this liquid, which is a coconut broth that we make in-house.

So what we do is we make a broth out of the shrimp shells.

So we use the whole thing.

Uh, we make a shrimp stock out of the shrimp shells and, um, cook it down with some ginger, a little bit of chilies, some coconut milk, some lemongrass.

Um, you know, I'm from Philippines.

And in the Philippines, we like to do the preparation called gatâ, which is everything that's cooked and simmered in coconut milk.

And I think it really, really works very well with the greens, the sweet potato, and the shrimp all together.

Um, so at this point, I'm starting to see it kind of turn brown over here.

And I'm gonna go ahead and flip this.

So you see it's got a nice caramelization there.

And you get that nice toasty spices, the toasted spices coming off of that.

Okay, so now at this point, I can see that the shrimp is about 70% cooked, so I'm going to start adding the rest of my ingredients.

I'm gonna add chilies.

Any jalapeños are nice.

That's what I usually like to use.

And then I'm gonna add these roasted diced sweet potato.

It's there to add some nice sweetness to this dish.

And then I'm gonna add the greens that have been pre-blanched.

And then we're gonna deglaze this with the coconut broth.

And then I'm going to add a little bit of chili vinegar to this dish.

It's our acid that we like to use a lot here at Pêche.

We pickle some banana peppers and white vinegar and cider vinegar.

Here we have a sticky rice cake.

It's mixed with some green onion and sesame seeds, and then it's deep-fried.

Um, if you're doing it at home, you can also sear it.

But I find, um, what's nice about this rice cake is it absorbs all of that broth, that liquid, uh, flavorful stuff.

So I'm going to go ahead and plate this.

Kind of just stack your shrimp up so it looks nice.

This is an entrée, so this is like -- I mean, it's a pretty hefty portion.

And then we're going to... garnish it with a little bit of pickled red onions.

So the onions are pickled in red-wine vinegar, a little bit of sugar.

So a little bit more acid.

And then we're finishing it off with just some picked cilantro.

There you have the jumbo shrimp with coconut and greens.

-Louisiana crawfish are a staple at backyard boils and on restaurant tables, especially during lent when Catholics abstain from eating meat on Fridays.

The delicious and versatile crawfish is celebrated at festivals throughout the state, with the largest in Breaux Bridge, designated as the Crawfish Capital of the World.

Fishermen began harvesting the freshwater crustaceans commercially in the late 1800s, and the state's wetlands remain significant sources for wild-caught crawfish.

A method for farming crawfish developed when flooded rice fields were turned into crawfish ponds, and today crawfish farming in Louisiana has grown to include over 1,200 farms on more than 120,000 acres.

The state leads the nation in crawfish production, with 110 million-plus pounds harvested each year.

Our final stop is St. James Parish, located along the banks of the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge.

St. James is known for its extensive history and also for its mouth-watering Cajun cuisine, a specialty of the region's talented home cooks, including parish president Pete Dufresne.

A sugar-cane farmer and business owner, Pete was inspired by his grandfather, Ellis Bourgeois, who served as the assessor of St. James Parish for many years.

His grandfather was also owner of the Service Inn restaurant in Vacherie.

-Well, you know, nowadays a lot of people like to cook fast and quick, and I just feel like the old-fashioned way -- I like to stand by the stove and stir my roux.

It usually takes about an hour.

I enjoy watching people eat more than I enjoy cooking it.

You know, and it's just a -- It's just a happy feeling.

You know, people are happy when they're full.

-Today, Pete prepares a Cajun specialty -- Louisiana crawfish bisque, a team effort where many hands make light work of stuffing crawfish heads with the savory filling made from the ground tails.

-What I like most importantly about making crawfish bisque is not eating it, but it's also spending quality time with the person you love.

So I have my fiancée, Melanie.

I got a little system that I use when I grind the tails.

You know, a lot of people, some people like to grind all their tails first, and then they like to start adding the seasoning after, but it's never consistent when you're doing it like that.

So what I do is I take 1 pound of crawfish tails at a time, and I pass the crawfish tails with some onions, some bell peppers, and some celery, and I put about an equal amount.

And also included with that, for every pound of crawfish tails, we're going to use one egg and we're going to use three slices of white bread.

Here we go.

We're gonna get started making our -- grinding our tails.

[ Whirring ] And after each pound is ground, I have a blend right here of regular salt, black pepper, cayenne pepper, and garlic powder.

So you just take a blend of whatever seasonings you prefer and you sprinkle it on top of each pound after it comes out of the grinder.

And then you just move on to the next pound.

Now that we finished grinding all the tails, you see I poured a little water?

There's a lot of flavor in each bag of tails.

Add you a little water and make sure you capture the flavor out of each one of these bags because we're gonna add that to the gravy.

We're gonna go ahead and mix this a little bit to get it nice and even.

Now that we finished grinding all the meat and we got it all mixed nicely together, we're gonna go ahead and stuff some heads.

Now, a lot of people just go ahead and stuff them dry.

I don't like to use a dry shell when I'm stuffing the heads because a lot of times they crack and they break.

So I like to keep the heads soaking in warm water, and also I like to put a little cooking oil in the water so the inside of the heads can get coated with a little cooking oil.

And I just think it's very helpful when you're eating a crawfish bisque for the meat to slide out of the shell -- a lot easier than for it to be stuck.

So we're gonna go ahead and stuff a few heads.

Just open it up and just add a little meat to it.

This is when you really want your friends and your family to walk through the door right now because this is what takes the most time, is stuffing the heads.

You put a generous amount of stuffing inside, where the top's gonna be opened up.

So you lay them down on the pan, just as we're doing.

We're gonna go ahead and we're gonna sprinkle all-purpose flour.

Just gonna tap it lightly.

We're gonna dust the top of these heads with flour.

And it's gonna make a really nice crust.

-Before they're added to the bisque, the stuffed crawfish heads will go under the broiler just long enough to brown.

-We're gonna start to make the roux for the crawfish bisque.

Um, now, I think I may do mine a little different.

This is one thing I learned from my grandfather.

He always started his roux off cold, and I like to start it off with cold oil, as well.

I don't measure anything, except I have a system that I use, and it doesn't matter what size pot.

We're gonna pour the oil.

We're gonna start right in the center of the pot.

And you continue to pour it until it hits the side all the way around.

There we go.

That's gonna be perfect.

So now we're gonna turn the fire on medium.

So we're gonna go ahead and add the flour.

And a lot of people like to start their roux with a spoon.

I like to use a barbecue spatula.

And the reason is because it's got a wide, flat surface, and it makes it easier to stir, and it also helps you to gauge how much flour you need to put with the oil.

We want it to look pasty.

We don't want it to be loose and runny.

Because if you make it too thin, it's gonna act like a gumbo when you add it to the rice.

You don't want the gravy just to run off of the rice.

You want the gravy to absorb into the rice.

And by making a thick, pasty roux like this, it really helps to accomplish that.

So you can see it's starting to bubble.

It's really starting to cook nicely.

We're gonna continue to stir it like this.

Alright.

So you can see now we've been stirring the roux for quite some time.

So now we're gonna go ahead and add some onions.

Drop some onions in here.

At this time, you probably can reduce the heat just a little bit because you want to stop the cooking.

Right now the roux, it's cooked enough.

This is just gonna make it all nice and creamy.

We're gonna add one stick of butter.

It's gonna begin to melt.

And I'm gonna go ahead and add a little minced garlic.

I can't tell you how much to add.

You just add whatever your liking is.

I got a little blend here of salt, red pepper, black pepper, and granulated garlic.

In Cajun cooking, this is the base for almost anything you can dream of, almost anything you can imagine.

The roux is cooking nicely, and now it's time to go ahead and add the crawfish meat.

We're gonna just spoon it in a little bit at a time.

You know, let it hit the bottom of the pot.

So what I have right here is 4 pound of ground-up tails.

Gonna let that cook for a little while.

It's coming along beautiful.

It's cooking nicely.

If you remember, when we was washing the bags that the crawfish tails came in, this is the flavor that we got.

We're gonna go ahead and add this right now.

And we're gonna let that start cooking with the roux, as well.

Now we're gonna go ahead and put the heads in the oven on broil.

It's time to add just a little more liquid.

You don't want to add too much at one time.

Because you don't want to stop it from cooking.

So we're just gonna add a little bit and stir it.

And some people might say, "Chicken stock and crawfish?

Does that blend well together?"

But, yeah, it does.

I find it does.

It works well, and it adds a lot of flavor to the crawfish bisque.

One thing that I really like to do when making a crawfish bisque, I like to get the claws from the boiled crawfish to add to the crawfish bisque because it just helps add another little unique flavor to it, as well.

Another little flavoring that I like to add to the crawfish bisque is a little liquid crab ball.

So I like to start off with maybe about a half a cap full.

Because it really doesn't take much.

And now for my secret -- very, very secret ingredient.

One thing that I learned that really softens the taste of the roux is apple jelly.

So we're gonna go ahead and add a couple tablespoons of apple jelly.

There we go.

-The crawfish heads are ready to be added to the bisque.

-They got a nice brown color, and it's got a crust on the top.

We're gonna start adding a few at a time to the bisque.

So you can see how it's nice and singed on the top, and it made a nice crust.

That's what the broiling is good for.

It's gonna be help the shell retain the meat, and the meat's not gonna fall out of the shell.

We're gonna add some green onions.

Stir that in nicely, and then we're gonna cover it.

We're gonna turn the fire down just a little bit and just let it cook.

And the longer you can let it simmer, the better it's gonna be.

Alright.

So we have our crawfish bisque.

It's been cooking mostly all afternoon.

Let's open the cover, take a look and see what we have.

Oh, yeah.

It came out really nice.

It's beautiful.

It's got a great color to it.

I love the consistency.

So, as I mentioned earlier, I love eating my crawfish bisque over angel-hair pasta.

You can choose to eat it over white rice.

This is what you call a labor of love.

♪♪ -Abandoned and derelict shrimp boats on Louisiana's bayous are sad indicators of the industry's fragile state.

Faced with a new reality, self-reliant shrimpers like Lance are determined to carry on.

-Mother Nature seems to always be bountiful and provide.

You know, here in South Louisiana, we're very unique because of the Mississippi and the Atchafalaya River.

We have these vast estuaries that create so much life.

And, you know, even though things seem to be down and depressing, I mean, Mother Nature is continuing to do her thing.

You know, I was just out in the marsh a couple days ago, and the amount of little white shrimp that I'm seeing is just unbelievable.

So, you know, it gives me hope that this is gonna be a very bountiful fall season.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -You can find recipes for all of the dishes in this series, chef profiles, and more information about "Louisiana Coastal Cooking" by visiting wyes.org.

Funding for "Louisiana Coastal Cooking" was provided by... ...and by the Plaquemines Parish Tourism Commission.

Nature, tradition, and culture come together in Plaquemines Parish, where the Mississippi River and the Gulf meet in Louisiana's Delta Country.

Learn more at visitplaqueminesparish.com.

[ Birds calling ] -Celebrating Louisiana food and culture through public television.