Times Picayune Lagniappe
TWICE-COOKED TALES
Acadiana émigrés connect at Donald Link's Cochon restaurant
Published: August 18, 2006
By Pableaux Johnson

'Mmmmm." After scanning the menu at the Warehouse District's Cochon restaurant, our representative from South Lafourche tapped his finger on the page.

"You know what's my favorite way to cook rabbit?"

The other two members of our party quickly snapped to attention. I watched the photographer's eyes widen as he cocked his head to hear the details as I reflexively checked my pockets for pen and paper, just in case a recipe started with the next breath. When you're raised in rural south Louisiana -- the photographer was raised between Lake Charles and Lafayette, I in New Iberia's bayou country -- you know that every dinner story ends up either as a vague recipe or a Boudreaux/Thibodeaux joke.

"Smothered in onions." The tiny audience growled in appreciation. "You take the rabbit and rub it in salt and pepper. Heat up your Dutch oven on top the stove. . . ."

And we were off. This was going to be a very good lunchtime indeed.

We'd set aside a long Friday afternoon to take a couple of trips -- one through chef Donald Link's modern interpretations of Cajun and Southern favorites and another through the food culture and recent history of Cajun food both modern and traditional.

Each member of the trio hailed from different parts of Acadiana, the diverse, mostly rural swath of Louisiana that hugs the Gulf Coast all the way to the Texas border. The region's topography runs from salt marsh to sleepy freshwater bayous; brackish coastal bays to seemingly endless primeval swamps populated by every imaginable bird and beast; broad plains tilled and dammed for rice fields and crawfish aquaculture.

Just as the denizens of Gentilly and Treme know their neighborhood's distinctive traits, traditions and quirks, so do the people of Acadiana's various zones and parishes. And even though we might know a bit about our neighboring towns, it's always good to sit down with others raised in our distinctive Motherland, especially if it means swapping food stories and memories.

And Cochon -- probably the trendiest New Orleans eatery to offer up headcheese and fried chicken livers in its appetizer list -- seemed the perfect place to eat and swap stories. Donald Link is a Lake Charles boy, and the inaugural menu at Cochon puts an upscale twist on core flavors and dishes familiar to most folks raised in Cajun country. With an emphasis on pork-friendly dishes, Link pays homage to the whole-hog boucherie and sausage-making traditions of southwest Louisiana, serves simple seafood dishes from the fertile wetlands, and rustic home-prepared condiments (house-made jellies, mustards and pickles) that Grandmère would recognize.

We settled into a booth as the open kitchen swung into gear and the wood-burning stove crackled in the background.
"These remind you of anything?" I asked as I picked up a hefty potato roll from a tiny galvanized bucket-turned-breadbasket. The tender brown top crust was just barely glazed; a puff of steam wafted up from the rich, fresh-baked center that soaked up butter like a sponge.

"Lunch rolls at the public school cafeteria."

Lafayette broke into knowing laughter as Lafourche shrugged a bit. In the times before fast-food giants entered the institutional food arena, Louisiana lunch ladies went to work every morning brewing batches of savory shrimp and okra gumbo, smothering round steak in vats of roux-thickened gravy, and of course, baking fresh rolls before the students hit the hallways before class. Former students dream of that crusty soft bread, and this bucketful of goodness triggered our first flashback of the day.

Raised in the bayou town of Cut Off, Lafourche mentioned that he didn't eat much school food but saw plenty on the first round of small plates that resonated with his childhood. A flood of starter-sized options covered the table -- fried pies stuffed with ground shrimp and flavorful crab claw meat, triangular slices of pork "head cheese" artfully fanned out on porcelain, crunchy deep-fried globes of meaty boudin alongside pale yellow pickled peppers.

"My family used to do a boucherie every year," he said as he layered a slice of the gelatinous sausage-like cheese marbled with chunks of pork and flecked with bright green onion. "We'd buy a piglet and fatten it up during the trapping season, then kill it in the fall when it was four, five hundred pounds. It would be the whole neighborhood and make all kinds of stuff. Blood sausage, smoked sausage. . . ."

As city boys, Lafayette and I hadn't grown up quite that close to the land, but we'd had our own experiences coming of age during the 1980s "Cajun Hot" era. Working out of Commander's Palace and then K-Paul's, Louisiana's iconic chef Paul Prudhomme introduced the world to bayou cuisine and his own seared preparation of a local "trash fish," and the Cajun blackening revolution was born.

"I remember when Cajun food got funneled through New Orleans and everything started to be about the red pepper," Lafayette scowled. "They started marketing EVERYTHING as 'Cajun' and my uncles who had fought to preserve the French language in Acadiana just fumed. They're still mad to this day."

Every plate struck another cultural chord and a round of stories. Every drive-in or fried-chicken place in south Louisiana offered chicken livers on the menu, but Link's interpretation played the livers' earthy flavors and crunchy texture against a dollop of whisper-thin pickled onions and marinated herbs (fragrant mint and Italian parsley). The mixture of trademark Vietnamese flavors and a sweet drizzle of Southern-style pepper jelly made the dish sing, despite its humble roots.

A simple plate of palate-cleansing cucumber chunks with vinegar and herbs got us talking about working in backyard gardens and the joys of summertime tomatoes. A cheesy twice-baked potato launched remembrances of a time when the area's few restaurants were either informal steakhouses or "seafood and steak houses." Pork cracklings (or gratons) that garnished the pulled-pork patty billed as "cochon du lait" were as crunchy as those we snacked on by the greasy paper bagful. A shallow bowl of shrimp and eggplant dressing bound with cornmeal and long-cooked aromatics was as savory and swoon worthy as it was straightforward.

About the time Link's updated version of catfish courtbouillon hit the table, we'd already started talking about the region's universal starch. "Where's the rice? That's all I remember from being a kid," Lafayette laughed. "Rice, rice, rice, rice!"

"My mama would always put the rice on first, then figure out what we'd have for dinner," Lafourche echoed. "I don't think we ate a meal without it."

Link's version of the tomato/fish stew reflects its newfangled surroundings, with sweet, delicate fillets of pan-fried Des Allemandes catfish covered in a bright red tomato gravy highlighted by wilted mint leaves. Not really like the traditional one-pot seafood default, but exceptionally flavorful nonetheless.

And served, or course, on a bed of hot white rice. The meal wore on, the plates emptied as old memories piled up and the family stories flew. Lafayette talked about childhood days flying with his pilot father, spotting schools of pogie and menhaden in the Gulf, then fishing off the seaplane floats between hops. Lafourche kept us riveted with tales of his grandfather's muskrat trapping days and, of course, more pig stories. Fishing camps, hunting trips and Louisiana barrier islands sinking into the sea.

Picking through the remains of our last entrée -- a tiny cast-iron skillet of rabbit and dumplings -- we felt full, but not uncomfortably so. The laughter and steady stream of stories tamped down our meal as we went. Just like home.

But even as we sat back to recover before dessert, Lafayette let out a deep belly breath and turned to Lafourche, picking up a conversational thread that somehow got lost in the flurry of food.

"Now back to cooking your rabbit," he said, picking up on his mental recipe taking. "You get the meat roasted down and slice up a big bowlful of onions. Then what?"