Chef Link: Rustic, communal culinary methods have slipped away

It’s a picturesque Cajun affair: Families and neighbors gather around a long cypress table, preparing rustic food. Only, the earlier generations’ methods might be hard to stomach in this modern era of easy-to-buy prepared foods. Children plucking feathers from a lifeless bird, men tearing apart the jowls and cheeks of a pig, women saving every bit of the neck, knuckles and skin, getting the most from the animals that keep everyone fed for weeks. This is what Chef Donald Link, chef and co-owner of Cochon and Herbsaint in New Orleans, experienced as a child growing up in Crowley. Cajun families would cook hogshead cheese, cracklins, some 2,000 pounds of blood sausage at a time—not for sale, but for “communal” feasting. “My dad’s generation didn’t know anything else in this world but this pig. It didn’t matter if there was blood,” says Link, who explains that people stopped slaughtering pigs for family consumption years ago. “The culture changes with TV and Saturday morning cartoons and McDonald’s… part of why it’s a dead tradition.”—Rebecca Breeden