Real Cajun: Rustic Home Cooking from Donald Link's Louisiana
An untamed region teeming with snakes, alligators, and snapping turtles, with sausage and cracklins sold at every gas station, Cajun Country is a world unto itself. The heart of this area—the Acadiana region of Louisiana—is a tough land that funnels its spirit into the local cuisine. You can’t find more delicious, rustic, and satisfying country cooking than the dirty rice, spicy sausage, and fresh crawfish that this area is known for. It takes a homegrown guide to show us around the back...
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An untamed region teeming with snakes, alligators, and snapping turtles, with sausage and cracklins sold at every gas station, Cajun Country is a world unto itself. The heart of this area—the Acadiana region of Louisiana—is a tough land that funnels its spirit into the local cuisine. You can’t find more delicious, rustic, and satisfying country cooking than the dirty rice, spicy sausage, and fresh crawfish that this area is known for. It takes a homegrown guide to show us around the back roads of this particularly unique region, and in Real Cajun, James Beard Award–winning chef Donald Link shares his own rough-and-tumble stories of living, cooking, and eating in Cajun Country. Link takes us on an expedition to the swamps and smokehouses and the music festivals, funerals, and holiday celebrations, but, more important, reveals the fish fries, étouffées, and pots of Granny’s seafood gumbo that always accompany them. The food now famous at Link’s New Orleans–based restaurants, Cochon and Herbsaint, has roots in the family dishes and traditions that he shares in this book. You’ll find recipes for Seafood Gumbo, Smothered Pork Roast over Rice, Baked Oysters with Herbsaint Hollandaise, Louisiana Crawfish Boudin, quick and easy Flaky Buttermilk Biscuits with Fig-Ginger Preserves, Bourbon-Soaked Bread Pudding with White and Dark Chocolate, and Blueberry Ice Cream made with fresh summer berries. Link throws in a few lagniappes to give you an idea of life in the bayou, such as strategies for a great trip to Jazz Fest, a what-not-to-do instructional on catching turtles, and all you ever (or never) wanted to know about boudin sausage. Colorful personal essays enrich every recipe and introduce his grandfather and friends as they fish, shrimp, hunt, and dance. From the backyards where crawfish boils reign as the greatest of outdoor events to the white tablecloths of Link’s famed restaurants, Real Cajun takes you on a rollicking and inspiring tour of this wild part of America and shares the soulful recipes that capture its irrepressible spirit. The New York Times - Christine Muhlke …shows why [Link's] food means so much to the community…The tone is easygoing, the explanations clear. Before I knew it, I was frying up spicy hush puppies and serving chicken and sausage jambalaya while drinking Abita beer.
Real Cajun\ Rustic Home Cooking from Donald Link's Louisiana \ \ By Donald Link \ Clarkson Potter\ Copyright © 2009 Donald Link\ All right reserved.\ ISBN: 9780307395818 \ \ \ Lake Charles Dirty Rice\ Serves 6 to 8\ \ This recipe appears at just about every occasion in Cajun Country. Whether it’s a holiday, funeral, family reunion, or potluck dinner, you can bet there will be at least one form of dirty rice or rice dressing. At the Link family reunion in Robert’s Cove, I counted six versions, all different. The essential ingredients are few, but flavor and texture vary greatly.\ \ The main difference between dirty rice and rice dressing is that rice dressing is generally made with ground beef or pork, whereas dirty rice is made with pork and chicken livers. Many people think they don’t like liver, but when it’s balanced with other flavors, the liver taste is not overpowering. I’ve served this deeply flavored rice to many people who claim they hate liver, only to have them love it.\ \ 2 tablespoons canola oil\ 4 ounces ground pork\ 1/2 cup chicken livers (about 4 ounces), pureed1 \ 1/2 teaspoons salt\ 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper\ 1/2 teaspoon chili powder\ 1 1/2 cups chicken broth\ 1 small onion, finely chopped\ 2 celery stalks, finely chopped\ 2 garlic cloves, minced\ 1 jalapeño pepper, stemmed, seeded, and finely chopped\ 1 tablespoon dried oregano\ 3 cups cooked rice\ 1/2 bunch scallions (white and green parts), chopped\ 2 tablespoons chopped parsley\ \ Heat the oil in a large skillet over high heat. When the oil is hot, add the pork and chicken livers and cook, stirring, until browned. Add the salt, black pepper, and chili powder and stir often, but resist the impulse to stir constantly: You want the meat to stick to the pan and get crusty. Add ¼ cup of the chicken broth and cook until it has evaporated, allowing the meat mixture to get browned and crusty and stick to the pan once again. Add the onion, celery, garlic, jalapeño, and oregano and cook, stirring, until the vegetables are nicely browned and crusty and beginning to stick to the pan. Add the rice, the remaining 1 ¼ cups broth, the scallions, and parsley. Stir until the liquid is absorbed and the rice is heated through.\ \ NOTE: When making dishes that involve rice, remember that your flavor base will seem overly seasoned until the rice absorbs the flavors. In Cajun cooking, salt is the most crucial ingredient to get right, so you’ll want to taste the dish after the rice cooks and adjust accordingly. \ \ Continues... \ \ \ \ Excerpted from Real Cajun by Donald Link Copyright © 2009 by Donald Link. Excerpted by permission.\ All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.\ Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site. \ \
\ Christine Muhlke…shows why [Link's] food means so much to the community…The tone is easygoing, the explanations clear. Before I knew it, I was frying up spicy hush puppies and serving chicken and sausage jambalaya while drinking Abita beer.\ —The New York Times\ \ \ \ \ Publishers WeeklyIf bacon does not immediately come to mind as an essential ingredient of Cajun cooking, then clearly you have been missing Link, the chef-owner of two New Orleans restaurants, Herbsaint and Cochon. He not only begins his premiere cookbook with instructions on making four pounds of homemade bacon, he includes such tempting items as a fried oyster and bacon sandwich, tomato and bacon pie, and catfish fried in bacon fat. Even in his vegetarian twice-baked potatoes, he cannot help mentioning, "Normally I like crisp bits of bacon in stuffed potatoes." And where bacon leads, the rest of the pig is sure to follow. A classic boudin recipe is rich in pork liver and shoulder; deer sausage combines venison with pork butt; and a hearty/scary breakfast dish, oreilles de cochon (pig ears), is boudin-stuffed beignets. There is also plenty of crawfish, be it in a crawfish pie, a traditional boil or in a boulette (deep fried balls of crawfish meat and stuffing). A bourbon cherry lemonade or a plate of fresh peach buckle would cleanse the palate nicely, Eighty color photos enhance Link's efforts, as do his brief meditations on crawfish farming, family gatherings and the joys of making a perfect roux. (Apr.)\ Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.\ \ \ Library JournalLink, who grew up in Acadia, or "Cajun Country," is the chef of two acclaimed New Orleans restaurants, Herbsaint, which serves what he calls "modern Creole" cuisine with some French and Italian influences, and Cochon, a more rustic spot serving down-home Cajun food. His first cookbook includes recipes from Cochon and other family favorites, plus stories and photos of people enjoying great Cajun food, sidebars on topics like the Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival, and lots of photos of people enjoying great Cajun food. For most collections.\ \ —Judith Sutton\ \
