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My father's hands moved deftly; although rough and scarred, they handled an oyster knife like he was using a bow on a Guarneri. The oysters were always fresh, slightly cold, and tasted of the salt waters where they had lain only hours earlier.
Growing up on the bayous of South Louisiana, we often ate foods that were much closer to the source than I do today. My early education in food came mostly from my father (a wonderful cook by anyone's standards) and he was from a generation that wasted very little. Two dishes that we had regularly back then were blood sausage and hog's head cheese.
Hog's head cheese isn't a diary cheese, but more a terrine made from the head and feet of a pig and set in aspic. A traditional
recipe would typically begin with
• 1 hog head, split and cleaned
• 4 pig feet, scraped and cleaned
• 4 pounds pork butt
and go on from there to add spices and vegetables, cooking, molding, and cooling. We ate it like a lunch meat on saltines or slices of French bead.
My mother's favorite, however, was what we referred to as Boudin Noir--a blood sausage that has been all but outlawed for commercial sale in Louisiana, although there are a few butchers that have worked within the FDA rules to offer a product that is similar (but not the same) as the traditional blood sausage.
As the name tells you, it is simply a sausage that uses blood and fillers (usually pork or beef) cooked just long enough to have the blood congeal when cooled. I've found traditional blood sausage in various countries throughout Europe and Northern Africa and I know it is widely available in South America. Here, in the states, it is hard to find and is almost non-existent in my hometown.
Still, these many years later, I can still taste the salt of those oysters, the cool sharp taste of the thinly-sliced cheese, and the ferric heaviness of warmed blood sausage. And now I leave you with a short song about food, "Cornbread and Butter Beans" by Lehman Monroe, aka Johnny Tyler.
Here's hoping your weekend starts early.