These are Congolese beignets. I ate these freshly cooked delights tonight, prepared by a Congolese woman named Mimi who is visiting Belgium from her current home in Kentucky, USA. One of her friends from Kentucky, visiting Belgium with her, said to me, “Oh you’re from Louisiana! We have beignets tonight! It should be something familiar for you!”
Well I appreciate her kindness. But while both Congolese and Louisiana beignets are delicious (seriously, you have to try them!), they are not really the same thing. Mimi explained to me that in Congo, they don’t really put sugar on their beignets. And they can eat beignets as a part of almost any meal, or have them separately. Congolese beignets, in my opinion, are more dense in texture, and the ones I have eaten (from tonight and previously) are round and moist. The texture is more similar to a thick doughnut.
In fact, I found a recipe on another blog in case you’d like to try them at home. For those who don’t do recipes in French, here’s another website that can prove beneficial: Google Translate. Just copy the recipe and paste it, and voila! There ya go. English recipe. Yeah, I’m a genius. But I digress.
Beignets in Louisiana are usually served at restaurants and coffeeshops. I know that people make them at home sometimes, but not nearly as often as they would eat them in a restaurant. It’s a tourist thing, but the locals love them too. Louisianans put a bunch of powdered sugar on top of their beignets and they always do this body contortion type of movement when eating them, in order to avoid covering themselves with powdered sugar in the process. It’s a skill only native New Orleanians have mastered. Why you may ask? Well because New Orleans is the home of the most famous beignet cafe in the world, Cafe Du Monde. Their website even has a whole page devoted to beignets.
If you live in New Orleans and you’ve never eaten a beignet at Cafe Du Monde, well… there’s no way I can finish that sentence. Everyone who lives in New Orleans has been there for beignets. And with good reason. They are light, puffy squares of fried dough which are moist on the inside, but not too moist, and the outside is almost crisp, but not crunchy. No one really eats them with a regular meal to my knowledge. They are more of a special treat. If you can’t get to Louisiana (though I highly recommend it!), you can try them at home too. Of course, you can order the mix from the Cafe Du Monde website, or you can make them from scratch using this recipe.
I would say to Congolese and Louisiana beignets: I love you both.
adventurousglasses 