PIGS FISH AND BEDS

Some of my latest creations, all available at your local SOSOSOUTHERN retail store.

Goodmorning New Orleans

I have fallen in love with the place and to say “place” when talking about New Orleans is a mouth full. Cause that’s what it is all about “place”. And what makes “place” is a gumbo, pun intended, of people, food, drink, history, ect. I could go on and on when it comes to New Orleans and it sense of “place”.

To get an idea of what I’m talking about try doing this. Each morning when you go to your computer, or whenever you go to your computer to read the news paper or check out CNN or whatever it is you like to check out regularly on the Internet, start going to this site. I do almost every morning and I always find a good read. And being that it is the Food and Dining section of the Times Picayune I never find bad news. Give it a try and see if you don’t long to jump on an airplane just to go try a new restaurant or try the latest cocktail you just read about.

Peachtree Road Market opens for new season

Saturday was a beautiful day. The weather was great and it was the opening day of the Peachtree Road Market. The Peachtree Road Market is a food lovers dream come true. I was reading a post on another blog this a.m. about how good the Peachtree Road Market is and at the end someone posted a comment saying they liked to get 20 bucks from the ATM machine and spend it all at the Peachtree Road Market. I’m thinking that would only tease me, $20 bucks? are you kidding me. Hell Stacey spends that with one vendor.

Let me lay it out for you.

Bess is there and she owns Antico Mrecante. They sell some of the best cheese in the world. Bess has Italian cheese and she has cheese from Sweet Grass Dairy. If you don’t know Sweet Grass click on them and learn. The number of cheeses Bess sells are too many for me to write about, but off the top of my head the dolce Gorgonzola we got was excellent. The Tomini with herbs and pepper on top is excellent. Of course her Parmigiano is great. She has lot’s more and she has a retail shop. She shares a space with Via Elisa Pasta. Once again, if you don’t know about Via Elisa click on them and learn. The best fresh pasta in Atlanta. The best restaurants and Whole Foods use her products. It is available at the Peachtree Road Market every Saturday morning.

You can also stock up on fresh, as in made early each Saturday morning according to their signage, salsas, tortillas, guacamole and other Mexican specialties. Zocalo, a popular midtown restaurant is selling there product at the Peachtree Road Market again this year.

Hopes Garden sells Pesto. It is delicious. One is a regular pesto and one with jalapeno. Hopes Garden is a Mom Pop Daughter operation. Hope being the daughter, I bet she is about 13 years old. Click on them to learn more about them.

There are also many farmers at each market and lots of other vendors. Next week I will write about some of the other great products you can get there each Saturday morning. But my point is how great it is to go to one spot and get some of the best food in town. We always go home with an ice chest full. We go often because I sell my art and some furniture along side all these wonderful vendors. Like I said stay tune for more info about the Peachtree Road Market, but in the mean time I will see you there this Saturday.

BEAUTIFUL POBOY

If you go to Washington Rd. Seafood in East Point, Ga. this is what you can get for $4.29, tax included. Call me and I’ll meet you there.

Sydnee and Jameys Excellent Crawfish Boil

We have been getting to know our neighbors Sydnee and Jamey the last year or so. Really nice people and serious about their food. Serious about their beer as well. Anyway I’m gonna let these photos of last weeks Crawfish Boil tell the story.

DAY THREE NOLA

We wake from our food coma thinking about where we will eat today. It is our last day in the city for this visit and we think we have picked out a really good restaurant. Rio Mar. We have read about and the bar tender at Cafe Adelaide said he liked it a lot. We start with coffee around the corner and then head into the Quarter. We are looking for a book store and the Nepoleon House.

We get to the Quarter and right away find a book store. It’s a classic. Tons of books written by southerners or about the south. New and old. We spend about an hour looking around and get a few books. We then head to the corner of Charters and St Louis streets.

The Napoleon House is a famous bar and cafe and Napoleon never stepped foot in the building. He was supposed to hold up there at one time , but never made it. It is one of the most beautiful buildings I have ever been in. It is and has been in the perfect state of decay for as long as I can remember. I first went there about 30 years ago and nothings changed. Tourist flock there , but that doesn’t stop the locals form coming as well. You got to have a Pimm’s Cup when you go and the food is good. Click on Pimm’s Cup to read about it. It is the only cocktail I’ve ever had that uses a slice of cucumber for a garnish. The muffaletta is very good also. We had a Pimm’s cup and then head out to lunch. We plan to sit for a hour or so and eat Spanish and Latin American Tapas.

So that’s what we do. We order a nice crisp white wine from the Basque region of Spain to match with dishes like ceviche, grilled Octopus, Oysters baked with chorizo & spinach, you get the idea. Maybe it’s because we make good ceviche at home or maybe it’s because we have had most of these dishes in it’s native land, but we’re just not that impressed. It’s not bad, but it’s not blowing us away like most all our other meals in NOLA have. No big deal. Can’t complain, what?, six great meals and one ok meal. I can live with that.
And with that being said, we can’t wait to get back to New Orleans, hope it’s not a whole year before we do so.

THE PIG CHEF AND HIS NEW BOOK

Found this in the New Orleans news paper. I did a fund raiser for the Southern Foodways Alliance with Chef Link and got to talk with him some. Nice guy and very serious about his food. Stacey and I have also eaten at all three of his restaurants. Cochon and Butcher are the places to go. So go.

Chris Granger / The Times-Picayune

This month, look for Chef Donald Link’s new cookbook “Real Cajun: Rustic Home Cooking From Donald Link’s Louisiana” (Potter, $35).

Paging through his new cookbook with chef Donald Link is like looking at a family scrapbook, one with recipes and photographs that make you want to run into the kitchen and prepare the food.

“That’s Billy Link, ” Link says, pointing to a photo of one of his cousins, posing with the chef on a tarp-covered boat. Link’s favorite photo in the book is one of him dancing with his 9-year-old daughter, Cassidy.

Debuting this month, “Real Cajun: Rustic Home Cooking From Donald Link’s Louisiana” (Potter, $35) is about the chef’s big family and its profound influence, what he grew up eating, why he so loves the smell of rice cooking. Boudin, bacon and beer are constant themes.

It’s about much more than his New Orleans operations: Herbsaint, Cochon and Cochon Butcher. But after reading the book, it’s clear why Cochon and Cochon Butcher exist. Link’s love of pork and rice is in his DNA, he writes.

Link’s great-great-grandfather immigrated to Rayne with 40 other families from Geilenkirchen, Germany, in 1881, settling in Robert’s Cove. He is credited with being the first person to ship rice to New Orleans. The family brought recipes, still in use, for making sausage.

“Real Cajun: Rustic Home Cooking From Donald Link’s Louisiana” (Potter, $35) is about the chef’s big family and its profound influence, what he grew up eating, why he so loves the smell of rice cooking.

“Everybody, when they talk about Cajun food, they talk about the French and the zydeco music. But if you think about it, the Germans played a huge role in modern Cajun cuisine, with the rice farming, crawfish farming and sausage making, ” Link said last week.

“I’m on a mission to prove andouille is a German sausage, not French . . . The Germans brought over the sausage, and the French named it.”

Link’s grandparents lived in Sulphur. His mother’s parents were from Alabama originally, and his Granddad Adams, a Southern-style cook, was “a big influence here at Cochon, ” Link said.

His paternal grandmother “did pretty basic Cajun: smothered pork over rice, gumbo, rice dressing, anything with rice. Of course, they were rice farmers. And that Granddad was all over the place. He did everything. He was really my true inspiration for cooking, ” Link said.

“He’d go in the kitchen and make eight or nine things. He’d have a squirrel with the head on sitting on the table, everything he’d gathered over the week. Then the whole family would come over, 35 people, and he’d cook for everybody.

“I have just amazing memories of growing up in Louisiana with food.”

Link worked on the book with Paula Disbrowe, who also cowrote the very successful “Crescent City Cooking” with Link’s mentor, chef Susan Spicer. Clarkson Potter won the rights to publish the book after four or five publishers accepted their book proposal.

“We didn’t want to do a beautiful coffee-table food-shot cookbook, ” Link said. “For one, I don’t necessarily think that’s a good characterization of Louisiana food. It’s not necessarily a pretty, overstyled cuisine. It’s more that you’re outside sweating, cooking crawfish, drinking beer, dancing a little bit, going to festivals.

“That’s how I grew up, going to food festivals, hanging out under the carport, fishing on Big Lake and shrimping with my dad. That’s more what I wanted to convey. It’s not a restaurant cookbook.”

He fought to get to work with Chris Granger, the Times-Picayune photographer whose freelance work includes Spicer’s cookbook. Granger, who grew up in Lake Charles, traveled extensively with Link to the festivals, the sausage-making sessions, the crawfish boils and the family camp, where they made etouffee on the big covered patio while it was raining.

“This is J.W., ” Link said, pointing to a photo of cousin J.W. Zaunbrecher. He turned the page. “And this is one of J.W.’s pigs he trapped. Chris got in the cage with him” to take the photo.

The beady eyes of the feral pig stare out at the reader. Flip to the next page and there’s a close-up of homemade bacon.

“Writing this got me a lot more involved in that area and way of life, ” Link said. “I’ve always known about it, but I’ve never really hung out with them until I started writing the book: making sausage with them, going to crawfish boils, going dancing at Bubba Frey’s, ” his cousin who owns the Mowata General Store.

“It’s been an amazing experience to connect with somebody like that. He’s got this little store. He raises guinea hens, has turtles in a bucket outside. He has a little garden. He just kind of does what he wants. My dad will talk about that. These people just live in their own world out there. I find it incredibly fascinating.”