re: Why are tomatoes absent in Cajun cuisine?

I’m not a hardcore recipe cook, but it’s a thinner, lighter version of a sauce piquante....think of a slow cooked Italian style tomato auto, but with green peppers and way more onions than any Italian would condone. You cook down the tomato gravy, add shrimp and a few spoons of crab fat, and it’s so damn good. Serve over #7 Luxury brand spaghetti. (ETA: I just did some googling, and apparently crab fat in pasta is a common Filipino thing....which makes me wonder if it’s a DTB holdover of something learned from the residents of the old Manila Village settlement? MV was a raised stilt village in Barataria Bay occupied by fishermen who produced dried shrimp on big platforms.)

This is right up there w an “etouffee de macaroni” full of shrimp and sausage and green olives as serious DTB comfort food that is just not on the radar of most people wh think they know Cajun food. That dish involves cooking the pasta in the soupy dish, so it soaks up an incredible amount of flavor. There are quite a few bayou cajun dishes like fricot, or potato and dried shrimp stew, or shrimp boulettes, which are old school home cooking.