I met Donald Link for the first time three weeks after Hurricane Katrinadrowned New Orleans. He was mucking out the walk-in at Herbsaint, his sophisticated restaurant in the city’s central business district. Hauling rotted pig heads to the curb in a city that had just lost hundreds of people was awful work. But it had to be done, and he was one of the first chefs to do it.
In the nearly 10 years that have passed, a lot has changed in New Orleans, not least of which is the Link empire. It now includes Cochon, his temple of pork, and Cochon Butcher, its little sister next door. Peche Seafood Grill, the latest from his team, is sending out whole Gulf fish roasted over hardwood to a cadre of fans.
Now comes his second book, “Down South: Bourbon, Pork, Gulf Shrimp & Second Helpings of Everything,” written with the author Paula Disbrowe and published in February.
His first, “Real Cajun: Rustic Home Cooking from Donald Link’s Louisiana,” was a deep study of Acadian cuisine filled with recipes for gumbo and classic boudin. The new book has Mr. Link ranging throughout the South like a kid on a road trip. He culls lamb recipes from the Texas Hill Country, tamales (both shrimp and pork) from the Mississippi Delta and seafood like coal-fired Royal Red shrimp from the Alabama-Florida border.
He makes the point Southern cooks have been trying to get across for years: Southern food is a collection of microcuisines, as specific in ingredients and technique as the regions of Italy.
Like the Cajun book, “Down South” certainly has its share of dishes you are glad to know about but are not likely to cook. There are fish collars to fry and douse with pickled chile vinegar, and lamb necks to braise and crisp for a recipe that takes two days, not counting the hunt for the neck itself. His decadent headcheese recipe takes a week.
But there are also smart dishes whose simplicity and straightforward methods give people something to execute and still keep the household running. A grilled ham steak with charred blood oranges can easily be pulled off on the gas grill on a Tuesday night. Mustard-marinated turnips are an excellent side dish that lets refrigeration do the work.
And there are plenty of dishes that combine culinary surprise and easy execution, like braised chicken with salami and olives.
The dish, a homage to the Sicilian branch of the New Orleans culinary tree, takes only a bit of fooling around. You brown chicken pieces and spend a little time on prep work that includes halving green olives and turning a chunk of good salami into cubes. Then the dish goes in the oven to braise. The olives and salami offer backbone unachievable by simply seasoning everything from the salt box.
But like a lot of the recipes in the book, there is a certain freewheeling sensibility that is delightful in the prose but maddening in a recipe. For example, it calls for a cup of green olives, without further explanation.
Thus armed, one might just reach for a jar of common supermarket olives stuffed with pimentos. But that would be wrong. “You want to use any hard green olives that aren’t overly brined,” Mr. Link said in an interview.
Some of the book’s lapses in detail likely stem from the organic way the recipes were put together. After he got back from his research trips, he headed into his home kitchen and started cooking, his sous-chef at a table nearby with a laptop.
“I just cook, and that’s the fun part,” he said. “The research and the discovery and the cooking is almost like a record for me.”
The sometimes imprecise nature of the book might send a cook in search of a cocktail, and there are plenty, from an Antiguan Julep that highlights the role of rum in the South to a Deer Stand Old-Fashioned that muddles pecans with honey before the bourbon goes in.
But don’t be put off. Mr. Link’s “Down South” is a good time. Just like life there.
via:http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/16/dining/flavors-of-the-south-from-one-of-its-own.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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