GET A TASTE!: STIRRING THE POT
“It fits all the cooking that we do,” Toby Rodriguez says of the simple black cast-iron pot, explaining that Cajuns have long relied on it to slow-cook traditional fare over high heat. Tonight, tomorrow and Sunday, Rodriguez, who Anthony Bourdain called a “Cajun renaissance man,” will be cooking “black pot suppers” as part of the Freetown Produce Festival, a Cajun food, music and dancing extravaganza at Red Hook’s Jalopy Theatre. He’ll start cooking each day at noon in a 2-foot-wide black pot, and will offer informal, hands-on cooking classes throughout the day. “I might be putting you to work stirring the pot,” he says. “You might be going to get a round of beers.” After all of that work (and revelry), dinner — catfish court bouillon tonight, cabbage rolls with homemade sausage tomorrow and gumbo Sunday — starts at 6 p.m. each night.
From $15 for supper only. 315 Columbia St., Red Hook; 718-395-3214, jalopy.biz.
— Hailey Eber
Getty Images/Dorling Kindersley