Cajun Kitchen
160 Harrison Road, Ste. 4, Sequim
683-5973 for take-out
Hours: 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Wednesday-Friday
With their Louisiana accents as rich as their Cajun food, Curtis and Cathy Harper chat easily about their new restaurant The Cajun Kitchen, located in a complex behind Sears. The couple, who say they were born and bred in Central Louisiana, are proud of their Cajun heritage and and its cuisine, handed down over many generations.
In escaping the heat and humidity, the Harpers have brought their authentic Cajun dishes to Sequim on a call-in/take-out basis Wednesdays-Fridays. In 2015, they found a following at the Sequim Farmers Market and it’s transferred over to the restaurant.
“We learned from our parents and grandparents that you ate what you grew, killed or caught — years ago, people ate what they had. We stick with the old way of cooking and cook from scratch,” 70-year-old Cathy said.
Curtis, 77, also learned the fine art of Cajun cooking from his relatives, including his homemade sausage.
“A lot of Cajun food starts with roux (rue) — that’s the basis of gumbos and gravies,” he said. “A roux is real tricky to make even though it’s just cooking oil or lard with flour in equal amounts. There’s a fine line between just right and ruined — you’ve got to be careful not to scorch it. It’s time consuming because because you continually have to stir it for 45 minutes on low heat. It should be like a paste and then we add seasonings to it.”
Controlling the stove’s heat to such a fine degree was so important to the Harpers that they paid to have a gas line run and purchased a commercial gas stove.
“You can’t cook real Cajun food over an electric stove,” Curtis stressed. Fellow Louisianan and friend Jerry Dake helps the Harpers with the cooking.
Dishes include étouffée (shellfish over rice), several gumbos (a meat or shellfish stew) and jambalayas (meat, often sausage, vegetables and rice), Creole red beans, fried oyster or shrimp po-boys, chicken fricassee, muffuletta (a plate-sized stuffed sandwich on sesame bread from Louisiana) and boudin (pork and rice sausage) that can be made into meatballs and fried. .
Many dishes contain what Cajuns call the Holy Trinity: bell peppers, onions and garlic.
The Harpers say the reputation for Cajun food being hot to the taste is not really true although the original Tabasco sauce was created in 1868 by Edmund McIlhenny on Avery Island, La., where it still is made today.
“We don’t season our food hot — it’s spicy with various types of seasoning,” Curtis said. “Most of our food has a very slight bite to it. Restaurants in Central Louisiana put hot sauce and Tabasco on the table because some people like it hot.”
“I like a bite to it,” Cathy said. “Cajun food is comfort food like Mama and Grandma made.”
She described her chicken fricassee as frying spiced and flour-coated chicken, making a good roux and putting the chicken into it so that “all the crunchy part” of the chicken goes into the gravy.
“I call it not delicious but malicious — because you want to eat too much of it,” Cathy laughed.
“When we started this (two-table eatery), we were not interested in getting in the full-blown restaurant business so it’s mostly call-in and take-out. We opened Sept. 14 and I plan to add a couple of tables to make people feel at home,” Curtis said.
Presently, the Cajun Kitchen closes at 4 p.m. but Curtis is thinking of extending closing to 5:30 or 6 p.m. for supper take-outs.
“We love what we do — love cooking Cajun food,” Cathy concluded.
