Sunday

Breakfast at Cafe Des Amis delivered up Eggs Begnaud, grilled biscuits with crawfish etouffee, two eggs up, and grits. We also tried Grilled Boudin Patties with beignets, which turned out to be a new favorite way of getting a boudin fix. This lead us to our first assault on the day’s boudin makers, because Sandra Henry, the chef here, tells us they use Charlie T’s from just down the street, but she also admits that “the best one of all is the one I make at home.” Mais oui, cher! Pretty soon all the waitstaff is involved in our project and start making strongly worded suggestions about where to get the best boudin. Sandra says it’s because they are all from different areas around here and each one has its own style, see. (Delores Bonin told us that the Cajun villages were very insular and a town thirty miles away was a “long way away”, and people were very much related and intermarried in each town.) One waitress, when we commented on one place we had been, said, “oh well, that place is in Lafayette, so what could they know about Cajun boudin?”, seriously, like it was obvious, she of course being from Breaux Bridge, fully twenty miles away. We asked Sandra about a few other places and she would say “that’s not around here, I don’t know”.

Boudin "pig's ear" (Kimmie Rhodes)

Down the brick streets is Charlie T’s. He’s standing chatting with a customer, his small store full of prepared meat dishes, sausages, and takeout food as well as emergency supplies- beer, bread, and music. He likes to talk about his boudin and his cracklin’s and shows us his huge kettles for deep-frying cracklin’s and the custom-designed paddles that scrape across the bottoms to keep them from sticking. His cracklin’s are the best we find, a wonderful skin/fat/meat cube with just a hint of heat. He makes the boudin for the Café and we have already had it twice for breakfast, once in a batter “pigs ear” and once as a fried pattie, and it is very rich and meaty, almost a pork sausage with a rice binder rather than the rice sausages with pork added that you usually find. He uses pork shoulder and liver in a 6 to 1 ratio and the green onion tops (“we use the new onions from around here in winter, so the flavor drops off a little when we have to use the onions from Mexico”). His prepared meat dish case is a Cajun wonderland, with not only the usual things ready to be cooked at home like stuffed pork tenderloin, but with eyepopping things that you would never see 200 miles from here in any direction, like “cowboy stew” (which, being from cowboy country, I can tell you no Texas cowboy ever wrapped lip over) containing liver, heart, brains, kidneys, sweetbreads, “melt” (which I think means tallow), jawmeat, and cayenne. Also in the smoked-for-four-hours-today section, there’s tasso ham, turkey wings, ham shanks, and pork back bones. Here in Stuffed we see turkey wings, chickens with various cornbread/boudin combinations and wrapped in bacon, chicken breasts stuffed with cornbread dressing, stuffed deboned chickens that you can serve in cross-sections, marinated rabbit and pork, spiced pigs feet and tails, and fresh pork back bones for stew. It is of course torture for a cook to stand here, but we have boudin to taste…

I begin to feel that the place Clifton took me to that long ago fateful day might have been Poche’s, a long-standing boudin joint that sits backed up to the bayou over on the north side of I-10. Poche’s even has signs along I-10 advertising their food, that’s how big they are. We drive up there, cross the bayou on Poche’s Bridge, and there’s the joint, only instead of a little wooden frame house, it is a big ole red metal building. People are going in and out in a stream, some of them sitting down on the benches outside to eat their finds, some taking it home for Sunday lunch. Inside is a long L-shaped meat case filled with every sausage, stuffed stomach, bird, and formerly quick animal on earth. Just past there is a very large dining room. People are buying fried chicken and whole meals from the steam tables and eating at long picnic tables. We purchase a couple of boudins, one the traditional and one a crawfish version. A lady says to her daughter “be sure and get some braid to take wid us” and I was mightily puzzled by this, even being from Texas, where English is tortured into dazzling new forms. Braid? This is new. I watched as the clerk handed them a loaf of standard American soft white bread. Oh.

(Kimmie Rhodes)


Poche’s boudin is classic- not strong, not wimpy, just assured, as dishes tend to be after somebody cooks them for many years and rounds off the corners and loses the sharp edges. This may be the one after all, but since the building isn’t the same, I can’t be sure now. Just enough heat to get your attention, just enough liver to give it authority, but plenty of pork shoulder and onions. (http://www.pochesmarket.com/)

(Kimmie Rhodes)
Twenty-five boudins and twenty-five little shops, gas stations, grocers ancient and modern, bait stores, and cafes right out of a 50’s dream, we are on our way back to the room, sated beyond relief when it comes to me: the best boudin is the one in your memory. No matter how good the one in your hand may be, the best one will always be the one you remember, like the one I had that day with my much-missed friend Clifton, watching the swamps fly by the windows of his grand Cadillac automobile, a time and a place that I can never go again except in dream. Laissez Bon Temps Roulet!




Our Boudin Honor Roll, in no particular order:
Bonin’s
Johnson Brothers Grocery
Charlie T’s
Poche’s
Best Stop
Ray’s
Cajun Creations




(Kimmie Rhodes)

Gracey's Boudin Recipe

After sampling many boudins over the years and probing as delicately as possible the best boudin cooks along the way, this is my best approximation of the real thing, to date. If you cannot get pork liver (try Fiesta Markets, or oriental markets), you can use beef liver or chicken liver, but you will need to experiment with the amounts- chicken tends to be slightly bitter, beef stronger in flavor. My boudin is not too hot with peppers- I see no reason to obliterate my palate in order to prove my manhood, and the myth that Cajun cooking has to be eye-wateringly searing is not only untrue, but silly. Adjust the heat levels with jalapenos; they at least deliver some flavor as opposed to merely heat. To wit:

The Ultimate Boudin

1 pork shoulder roast or “Boston Butt”
1.5 lbs pork fatback or other fresh pork fat, or blanched salt pork (not smoked bacon!)
1.5 lb pork liver, sliced thin
3 yellow onions
1 carrot
1 stick celery
1 t. dried Thyme
1 bay leaf
handful fresh flat-leaf parsley
1 t. cayenne pepper plus jalapeño to taste
3 t. salt
1 t. freshly ground black pepper
6 c. Louisiana “Popcorn” Rice
12 c. broth
1 t. salt
3 T. minced fresh parsley
2 bunches green onions (scallions), white parts chopped, green tops finely minced

Place pork shoulder and fatback in a large heavy pan with the onions, carrot, celery, thyme, bay and parsley. Add water to cover and simmer on very low heat for 2 hours. Remove and cool, reserving broth. Sauté green onion bottoms in a tablespoon of lard until translucent, then add liver. Sauté liver about ten minutes or just until done. Put 12 cups of the strained pork broth (use more water or good broth if needed) into a large pan and bring to a boil. Add rice, stir, cover, reduce to very low heat, and cook for 20 minutes. Allow to stand for five minutes covered.

Meanwhile, when the pork shoulder is cool enough to handle, debone it and run it through the large blade of a meat grinder or chop it coarse in a food processor or mince it very fine with a knife. Do the same with the liver and fat. Mix very well with rice, seasonings, green onion tops, and parsley.

Stuff into sausage casings and roast or steam for fifteen minutes, or fry patties like breakfast sausage, or make “Orielles de Cochon” , beignets stuffed with boudin.

Breaux Bridge and Clifton's Grave

We drove across on the Gulf Coast road, the green breakers pounding the brown sand to our right. After a while we headed north over the Cheniers, land composed of oyster shells, through lush grass and tall trees, fields of sugar cane, through Abbeville and up to Breaux Bridge. The town is named for the man who built bridge across the Bayou Teche, a slow-moving muddy brown stream that connects this part of the country with New Orleans and once served as the main trade route. We found our hotel, which was located in an old Creole cottage that had been saved from destruction and renovated and was now a truly beautiful little B & B, paired with the Des Amis Café just around the corner on the main street over the bridge. Tossing bags on a massive walnut four-poster, we sprinted for the café and food. Let the Boudin Odyssey Begin!

However, our first night we didn’t dive for Boudin, we dove into turtle soup, chicken & sausage gumbo with a scoop of potato salad in it, softshell crab with garlic shrimp sauce, cold Abita beer, and heroically finished with a spice cake made with Steens Syrup from down the road in Abbeville. Ah, now we are definitely Here.

In the morning is the big Saturday Zydeco Breakfast. At the café, every seat is filled and the room is jammed with Cajuns drinking Mimosas and Bloody Marys. A loud electrified band of Black Cajuns, or more properly Black Creoles, is playing in the front window/stage. People of every age, color, and ability are dancing like crazy. The waitresses dance by with trays held high, the washboard maestro makes a tour of the room playing the whole time, dancing with the ladies, and a very old little man in a starched green gimmie cap dances non-stop with every girl in the room.

The food is serious. We have Couche Couche (cornbread broken into a bowl and covered with milk and Steens Syrup), fried eggs, grilled biscuits with crawfish etouffee, and grits with cheese and andouille sausage. The Boudin now makes its first appearance in a dish called Orielle de Cochon, or “Ear of the Pig”. This is a long sheet of beignet dough, stuffed with boudin, made into the shape of the ear in question, quick-fried, and sprinkled with powdered sugar. We also have Eggs Des Amis, a biscuit topped with a grilled boudin patty, swiss cheese and two eggs sunny side up.

Our waitress, a young Cajun girl named Amy, says she doesn’t like Steens. True, it is rather strong and not to be taken lightly, but in the right combo it is delicious. Kimmie learned to make the “Spice Cake” which uses a whole can of the stuff. Amy is like most of the Cajuns- she seems perennially happy, as if breathing the air here made you feel better than people elsewhere. It is this prevalent cheerfulness and openness, with the word "cher" ("dear") being constantly used with friend and stranger alike, a sort of natural groove, that is so striking to outsiders and gives meaning to the phrase “Laissez Bon Ton Roulet”, because nobody here is gonna try and stop it. If a whole culture could be said to smile, this one does.

Let the Boudin Begin

In France, boudin blanc is a white mousse sausage made with herbs, chicken breast and fatback, much like a Bavarian veal bratwurst. When the cast out Acadians at last landed on the Bayou Teche upriver from New Orleans, they found it to be ideal rice country. One fine day a Cajun was making pork sausage with the odd leftover parts of a freshly killed hog and instead of using a more traditional binder/lightener like oats or bread (Cervelas is from Latin for “cereal”), they used what was at hand: rice. Today Cajun boudin means a mixture of cooked rice, pork liver, pork, fatback, green onions, parsley, yellow onions, cayenne pepper, garlic, and depending on the cook, pork hearts, tongue, etc. It is as variable as Texas Chili, and as personal. When we talked to the cook at the Des Amis Café, she named her favorite local boudin, but then added that of course the best boudin of all was the one she made at home. As we ventured out over the next few days, we found boudin ranging from rich, subtly balanced concoctions that we dubbed “Sunday Dinner” types, to those powerfully hot with cayenne, to ones loaded with offal to the point of being too strong for gringos like us.

Day One

We left the Zydeco Breakfast still going full blast- apparently “breakfast” runs all day there- headed for Clifton Chenier’s grave. We crossed over the bridge to the east side of the muddy bayou where the Crawfish Parade floats drift downstream every year, turned south, and headed for the cemetery. It began to lash rain but by the time we got there it had stopped. I stood at the foot of the unmarked whitewashed concrete slab and tried to say a little prayer of thanks to God for giving us Clifton and his music, and then I tried to call on Clifton just a little bit and see if he would guide me back to the Best Boudin, if it wasn’t too much trouble, amen. Now we crossed the Bayou into the town of New Iberia looking for Bonin’s Boudin. Downtown, a wedding reception was spilling out into the street in front of an old renovated building, with Cajun swells in fancy clothes laughing and holding drinks. The cops were making the traffic flow around the people rather than making the revelers stay out of the street, naturally. We asked a policeman where we might find Bonin’s and he had to think for a second- perhaps he wasn’t an aficionado- then told us it was just around the corner.

When we pulled up, it was closed but “Nook” Bonin saw us on his way into the house and came out to the car and Kimmie said we were looking for boudin. He said, “Come in, we have a little piece left” and we followed him into the back door of the shop, where he met us grinning holding a pound of sausage in butcher paper. Tall, thin, bald, neatly trimmed white mustache, big grin. Wanted to know all about us. He said, “I want you to meet mama!”, went to the back door, put two fingers to his mouth, whistled twice, and Delores came over from the house. She makes the boudin (her recipe) in the two huge kettles and the little hand cranked stuffer. She and I discussed sausage making and she said “I use pork shoulder, rice, green onion tops, onions, garlic, salt and pepper and red pepper, parsley, pork liver, jalapeno, and enough pork fat to make it moist.” Hers is perfectly balanced, not too hot, not bland, very moist, very Sunday Dinner. She and Nook only make a couple of hundred pounds on Fridays now and sell it all out by Saturday morning in their old meat market. Nook has a little bitty race car he says he won for a dollar, he won something else for two dollars, and “her” for three dollars. She rolls her eyes, used to his ongoing line of bull. He asks us about our families and family names. He shows us photos of the little girl who raised a 4H pig every year which they bought and it went into her college fund. They made the pig into hogshead cheese and boudin, of course.

Up the road apiece is St. Martinsville, originally a Creole town now known as where the legendary Evangeline and the Acadians landed, which is ironic because the locals looked down on the new arrivals and most of the Acadians got out of there as soon as possible. Here we gassed up the car at Sammie’s and asked him where he liked to get boudin and he sent us to Joyce’s Supermarket, where the sign has a picture of a baby and says “Where Prices are born, not raised”. Into the new ice bag it goes, destined for tonight’s Comparative Boudin Tasting back at the room. As the thunderstorms roll through, we pass a sign saying “Body Shop. Open. Cold Beer”, more evidence of the civilizing influence of the Cajuns.

On the road north back to the hotel, we stop at a little store called Goula’s. Kimmie, our official photog, is out taking pics of the fabulous rusty sign and the lady inside says “y’all must not be from around here.” This is the kind of spot that the neighbors and fishermen drop by for milk, bread, beer, bait and fresh cracklin’s. The daughter is manning the deep fryer, and they allow as how they use “no spices” on the thick one-inch cubes with skin on one side and plenty of meat on the other, crunchy and brown, the perfect snack food. We also bought a sack of what she called “Cajun Croutons”, cracklin’ crumbs, and they were spectacular later in a pot of red beans and sprinkled over eggs. Goula’s buys their boudin from a Breaux Bridge supplier called Baudin’s Acadian Farm, which can be found in all the local markets. I called it “fishin’ camp food”, strong and obvious.




Next Up: Sunday Suprise