Donald Link - Down South: Bourbon, Pork, Gulf Shrimp & Second Helpings of Everything

Copyright 2014 by Donald Link
Photographs copyright 2014 by Chris Granger

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Clarkson Potter/Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
www.clarksonpotter.com

CLARKSON POTTER is a trademark and POTTER with colophon is a registered trademark of Random House LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Link, Donald.
Down south : bourbon, pork, gulf shrimp, and second helpings of everything / Donald Link
with Paula Disbrowe.
pages cm

1. Cooking, AmericanSouthern style. 2. Cooking, Cajun. I. Disbrowe, Paula. II. Title.
TX827.L64 2013
641.5975dc23
2013020280

ISBN 978-0-7704-3318-5
eBook ISBN 978-0-7704-3319-2

Printed in Hong Kong

Book design by Jan Derevjanik and Stephanie Huntwork
Cover design by Stephanie Huntwork
Cover photographs by Chris Granger

v3.1

Im going back down South now. Its a line from my favorite band, the Kings of Leon. For me the lyrics, especially cued to a guitar, stir up strong feelings, a yearning for a very specific place and our way of life here. My life in the Souththe birthplace of Elvis, the blues, jazz, rock and roll, and country musicis cued to a soundtrack that includes everything from Freebird, the anthem at our high school parties (where wed meet up in the country and drink beer), to the song Whipping Post, the background music for shooting pool and wearing my favorite cowboy boots at the Gator Bar (a classic backwoods dive) in Baton Rouge. There arent words to describe what its like staring out at the stars from the back of a pickup, on a warm summer night, while Seven Bridges Road by the Eagles plays on the radio.

This cookbook is a collection of remembrances and recipes meant to make you hungry, make you laugh, and convey what its like to be both a chef and an eater in todays South. This region is part of my DNA in a way that you cant explain to someone who wasnt raised here, but every Southerner knows exactly what Im talking about. Its about growing up shooting rifles, hunting, fishing, engaging in heated BB gun wars, launching fireworks at each other, drinking beer with the boys, water-skiing in snake-infested rivers, eating fried chicken and cornbread, and admiring beautiful girls in cowboy hats and boots. Its a place where people can cut up and be themselves. Its rowdy, good-natured fun seasoned by deep flavors and a distinct culture.

Not everyones story is the same, but theres a common thread that connects people who grew up here. The South lives in me just as much as it does in this guy named Skoots whom I met on Floridas northwest coast. He used to work as soundman for the Allman Brothers (giving him major Southern street cred) and as a guitar tech for Deep Purple (he still carries a silver cigarette lighter that lead guitarist Steve Morse gave him). We met incidentally, because wed rented beach houses next door to each other, but it didnt take long for us to be sharing cans of Bud, stories of fishing, guitar legends, and grilled scallops in the driveway. Southern hospitality is not a mythits real.

Along with the soundtrack of life in the South, theres a menu, steeped in fresh Gulf seafood, cured meats, and deeply flavored family meals. Its impossible for me to say which part of the South has the best food, because each place has its own soul. Smoked Texas lamb is hard to beat when youre out on a ranch by a crackling campfire, and the two ranch hands you just met pull out guitars and a bottle of bourbon. Then again, so is slow-smoked Memphis barbecue, when youre surrounded by hundreds of smoking pits at Memphis in May, and hanging out with good friends alongside the mud-brown Mississippi River. And there is the great swath of South Louisiana with its gumbo, spicy boiled crawfish, sausage, and boudin. We all know Im a little biased on this one. Keep driving east and youll arrive on the Gulf coasts of Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida, all bountiful with baskets of buttery peel-and-eat shrimp, gorgeous beaches, and excellent fishing. Somehow my life in the South has focused mostly on the coastal regions, and thats where youll find most of my influences come from.

Southern food has changed from when I was younger. The meals that we ate at home while I was growing upprepared almost exclusively from local ingredients and my grandfathers gardenare not what youll find on most dinner tables these days. Because of the fast, frenetic lives we all lead, people just dont cook from scratch as much as they used to. If you do stumble on a true home-cooked meal, its a treat in a big way.

An encouraging thing that I have seen in the last few years is a movement back to the small-scale, local farming that seemed lost for some time to industrialized agriculture. Its definitely a national movement, but those trends dont always reach here. But with a passionate devotion to seasonal, locally driven fare, Southern chefs have changed the landscape of what food is in the South, and have shown the national media that its not all fried chicken and cornbread. We enjoy a bounty of unique, satisfying ingredients (e.g., farm-raised pork, shell beans, butter beans, peanuts, peaches, okra, tomatoes, hot peppers, and an absurd amount of seafood) that lend themselves to infinite variation, and meals that run the gamut from .

As a chef and owner of several restaurants, I am constantly working to bring out the best of these ingredients in fresh ways that still maintain the soul of Southern cooking and the rich, deep flavors that I grew up with. Ive spent my life and career on the road, a journey thats taken me from the oyster shell driveways of Louisiana to the most refined restaurants in the world. The travel has informed my cooking and helped me understand who I am, as both a Southerner and a cook. Ive eaten some amazing food and seen some incredible places, but eventually I long to get back down South. I yearn for my people and my home, and especially for its food. Its me. Its a Southern thing.