On the Beignet

A few years ago I spent a week in New Orleans and had my first beignets. Like po' boys, jambalaya, or chicory coffee, beignets are so closely tied to New Orleans that many of us can't think of New Orleans without craving beignets.
The best-known place in New Orleans to enjoy beignets is perhaps the Café du Monde. Once a coffee stand at the French Market, Café du Monde is now the place to sip coffee and nibble on a beignet. The Café du Monde, and the French Market, are now over 200 years old, and so closely tied to beignets that I'm told you just tell them how many "orders" of beignets you want, and what sort of coffee. Beignets are the only food they serve, so no one will in any doubt about what you're ordering. You can however, have quite a wait (the tables are always crowded so expect to get an order to go) so you might want to order an extra order of beignets for yourself, or one to share. They're very light, and not filling.

I must confess that I never actually made it all the way to Decateur street and Café du Monde; instead I spent a number of hours in the morning for several days pleasantly people and gecko-watching at Café Beignet, in New Orleans Music Legends Park, technically at 311 Bourbon Street, New Orleans, LA , but really just off Bourbon Street in a small fenced-off park. The cafe had outdoor seating as well as indoor, and had full southern New Orleans style breakfasts, and heartier fare, but I mostly enjoyed the coffee and beignets. I was surprised when one of the staff at the hotel told me that he had "cafe n' doughnuts" on Sundays at another local park, where he told me I could hear zydeco, and when I said I'd have expected him to favor the beignets. He laughed and said only the tourists and the "true" Creoles called beignets that. He also gave me an excellent piece of advice; go hungry and eat as many as you can, because beignets don't keep for more than a few hours.

The word "beignet" essentially means fritter in French. It comes to us from an older word, "bigne", which means "to raise." Beignets were brought to Louisiana by the Acadians, immigrating from France by way of Canada. Those early beignets were fritters, sometimes filled with fruit or fruit preserves. Beignets don't have a hole, but they're closely related to a modern raised doughnut—and just as tasty. Louisiana officially declared the beignet their state doughnut in 1986.

The beignet we think of today, when we think of New Orleans and Louisiana Creole cuisine, is a square of dough, roughly 2 inches x 2 inches, that is fried in very hot oil until it puffs up, and is then drained and dusted with powdered sugar. Beignets are traditionally served in orders of three, and are best accompanied by chicory café au lait, or at least a good French roast. You want to be sure to gently knock the extra powdered sugar off a beignet before you bite into it, and try to avoid getting the white powder all over your clothes; it does seem to get everywhere. It's a bit hard to describe a fresh beignet; you taste the sweet of the sugar, of course, and the outside should be crisp, but inside a beignet is light and flaky, almost but not quite croissant like. They are most emphatically not like doughnuts, in spite of their close relationship.

I've recently found a local restaurant with close ties to bayou country where they make fresh beignets daily, much to my delight. Nothing makes a leisurely weekend morning quite as satisfying as hot, fresh beignets and coffee while you share a newspaper with a good friend or loved one. But if you don't have a local Creole restaurant, you can make your own beignets, fairly easily. You can even use Cafeé du Monde's recipe to make your own beignets. It's very important that the oil be hot enough to fry the beignets quickly, without becoming sodden with oil. You can, by the way, store the dough in your refrigerator for a week; punch it down when it rises, and it will actually be even better. Alternatively, you can cut the pieces of dough, and freeze them to cook later; place them on plastic wrap, being sure to place layers of plastic between layers of dough pieces.

If you decide to make beignets at home, do consider going for the whole experience and make the traditional accompanying café au lait, as well. This part is dead easy, but it's important to do it right. For café au lait you'll brew a pot of dark French roast with chicory blend, and separately you'll scald milk to accompany the coffee. Brew the coffee strong, because you'll want the flavors of the coffee and the chicory to hold up well when you pour coffee and scalded (not steamed, and this is important) still-hot milk together into your cup. You should use approximately a 1:1 ratio of coffee to milk.