Chasing the Gator
Isaac Toups and the New Cajun Cooking
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- $21.99
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- $21.99
Publisher Description
A badass modern Cajun cookbook from Top Chef fan favorite Isaac Toups and acclaimed journalist Jennifer V. Cole, featuring 100 full-flavor stories and recipes.
Things get a little salty down in the bayou...
Cajun country is the last bastion of true American regional cooking, and no one knows it better than Isaac Toups. Now the chef of the acclaimed Toups' Meatery and Toups South in New Orleans, he grew up deep in the Atchafalaya Basin of Louisiana, where his ancestors settled 300 years ago. There, hunting and fishing trips provide the ingredients for communal gatherings, and these shrimp and crawfish boils, whole-hog boucheries, fish frys, and backyard cookouts -- form the backbone of this book.
Taking readers from the backcountry to the bayou, Toups shows how to make:
A damn fine gumbo, boudin, dirty rice, crabcakes, and cochon de lait His signature double-cut pork chop and the Toups Burger And more authentic Cajun specialties like Hopper Stew and Louisiana Ditch Chicken.
Along the way, he tells you how to engineer an on-the-fly barbecue pit, stir up a dark roux in only 15 minutes, and apply Cajun ingenuity to just about everything.
Full of salty stories, a few tall tales, and more than 100 recipes that double down on flavor, Chasing the Gator shows how -- and what it means -- to cook Cajun food today.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A "born and braised" Cajun from Louisiana's Acadia Parish, New Orleans chef and Top Chef alum Toups presents innovative Cajun dishes in this must-have collection of recipes. There's the expected recipe for a crawfish boil (complete with a playlist that includes Fiona Apple, Nirvana, and Hank Williams); gumbo with chicken and sausage (as well as seafood and smoked duck versions); and a meaty dirty rice made with sirloin, cayenne pepper, and amber beer. But the real fun is Toups's creativity there's a Sazerac terrine of pork butt and belly; crawfish corn bread dressing; crab fondue; as well as an unassailable chicken liver mousse that incorporates bourbon, port, and cream cheese. Toups's Mid-city Meatery restaurant offers house-cured meats, referenced here in a somber recounting of the slaughtering of a pig and the many items it produces, such as boudin, hog's head cheese, and chaudin, a classic boucherie dish with meat from the pig's shoulder and liver cooked in its stomach along with seasonings. Toups's grandmother's Gulf seafood couvillion a flavor-packed stew served over rice is presented in its original version, and the fiendishly simple Toups Palate Cleanser, a simple salad composed of fresh cucumbers in a sherry-dijon vinaigrette, hits all the right notes. An outstanding addition to the storied Louisiana cookbook canon, Toups's volume deserves a spot on the shelf of anyone who cooks Cajun and New Orleans cuisine.
