"louisiana" news and stories

'Real Cajun: Rustic Home Cooking from Donald Link's Louisiana.'
By Donald Link with Paula Disabrowe
Photographs by Chris Granger
Clarkson Potter 2009
Buy it on Amazon

Although Donald Link's restaurants, Cochon and Herbsaint, are located in New Orleans, these recipes are not the food of that city. Far from the touristy restaurants, his food comes from a place off the highways and byways that run along Louisiana's bayous. The book lives up to its title-serving Cajun food at its simple and rustic best. This collection is filled with family recipes that have been honed and perfected with the skill of chef but without losing site of how people cook at home.

In creating this book Link said he set out to "preserve a way of life and give people an idea of how it really is." He's repairing the misconceptions of Cajun food that came with the blackened craze that swept the country in the '80s, and his recipes demonstrate and explain the wide variations between Cajun and Creole.

Along with the recipes, he shares insight into Cajun traditions and the country cooking that can usually be made in just one pot and never requires any fancy kitchen gadgets. There are plenty of recipes that make wonderful week-night meals, such as the Post-K Meatloaf that separates the flavor base of brown sugar and a generous portion of bacon from the actual meatloaf. But the real magic happens in those recipes that call for hours at the stove-perfect for this time of year when the warmth of a simmering pot keeps away the chill.

"For some people, the way they eat boudin is to bite off the first bite and squeeze out the filling the rest of the way," explains event organizer Bob Carriker, who created the web site The Boudin Link to chronicle his ardor for the spicy, rice-y, pork-based snack. "And some people like to eat the casing as they go."

Carriker polled attendees at last year's cookoff, the first edition of the festival, and discovered the crowd was almost evenly split: Discarding the casing was favored by 117 voters, while 86 boudin fans claimed they liked their casing on.

"This is a raging debate in South Louisiana," Carriker says. "Health care, schmealth care."

As Carriker's lingo suggests, he's not a Louisiana native. He moved there from Washington for a job, and immediately set about acquainting himself with the state's cuisine.

Middendorf's in 2006. Photo: Rdpeyton, Flickr

A hurricane can't keep a good restaurant down.

Middendorf's, a Louisiana catfish institution, on Wednesday reopened in its original location, nearly one year after four feet of Hurricane Ike floodwaters sloshed through the building. The exiled restaurant kept serving guests in an adjoining annex, but owner Horst Pfeifer says a white coat of paint applied to the structure known as the "brown building" didn't fool his longtime customers.

"It means a lot to people," Pfeifer says. "They want to be in the original building."

Middendorf's, which celebrated its 75th birthday on July Fourth, was the brainchild of Louis Middendorf, a lousy fisherman whose catch didn't pay the bills. He used his $500 World War II veteran bonus to start the cafe and stationed his wife Josie in the kitchen. Her paperthin fried catfish, which gained more fans every time the state poked another interstate past Manchac, was ultimately celebrated by Saveur and -- of greater interest to the Middendorf's crowd -- the quarterback-rich Manning family.

Sweet potato fries. Photo: Louisiana Sweet Potato Commission

Sweet potatoes, long touted for their nutritional attributes, are soon to make a cameo in the fast food world.

To keep up with the mushrooming demand for sweet potato fries -- a snack which about a decade ago was primarily available from eateries that stocked their condiment caddies with liquid aminos and stuffed their Reubens with tempeh -- ConAgra Foods Lamb Weston has announced plans to build the world's first large-scale facility dedicated to sweet potato processing. According to a release, the Louisiana plant will allow Lamb Weston to meet the sweet potato fry needs of the nation's "largest quick-service restaurant chains."

"Sweet potatoes are a strategic priority for ConAgra foods," CEO Gary Rodkin says in the announcement.

René Simon, director of the Louisiana Sweet Potato Commission, isn't bothered that the deep-fryer has helped turn the spotlight on his state's signature Beauregard sweet taters (which, weirdly, many Louisiana farmers call "yams," a misnomer that entered the Pelican State's vocabulary at the behest of a 1950s marketing exec).

"This is the South," he laughs, telling Slashfood: "Don't we fry everything?"

Jambalaya. Photo: madaise, Flickr

Red Lobster this summer became the latest fast-casual chain to dip into the bayou for a promotional menu item, reflecting a mainstreaming of Louisiana flavors many experts attribute to the continuing diasporas of chefs displaced by Hurricane Katrina.

Red Lobster, which has introduced many American landlubbers to seafood through its 600-plus locations, recently debuted a "New Orleans jambalaya," made with shrimp, sausage and "Creole seasonings." Earlier this year, O'Charley's tested a Cajun-spiced shrimp salad, while Chili's tried to lure customers by slashing the price of its Cajun chicken pasta. And Uno Chicago Grill set its sights south with a NOLA-beholden menu featuring a shrimp po' boy, bananas Foster and an andouille-sausage flatbread.

"Cajun-Creole is one of the most important regional cuisines in America, and more and more people are more educated about it than they've ever been," says Randy Cheramie, associate dean at Nicholls State University's John Folse Culinary Institute in Thibodaux, La.