Chasing the Gator

Starred review from September 3, 2018
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.

October 1, 2018
Credentialed as a Top Chef contestant and a James Beard finalist, Louisiana restaurateur Toups launches his first cookbook with much bravado and no fear. How often does one encounter a collection with Cajun games in sidebars (try tomahawk throwing) and more than occasional cussing spattered throughout? Ignore all, if possible, because Toup's authentic voice also relays some mighty fine (more than 100) dishes, all, as he says, either prairie or coastal Cajun. He spares no description, whether discussing slaughtering (sans photographs) or how to stuff a sausage and shuck an oyster (with pictures). Opinions are also rendered without pretense: stay away from pre-minced garlic, he insists, and don't eat a chocolate dessert after a seafood dinner. The recipes reflect his heritage well: trotters and white beans, smoked duck gumbo, boiled crawfish, bacon-tomato braised rabbit. Good photographs accompany, but unfortunately prep/cook time estimates do not. New things to learn, from food (ponce is a pig's stomach) to fun (Toups' hometown, the "frog capital of the world," hosts the Rayne Frog festival), abound.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)