Now, that's good eatin'!

It's funny how good blogs often lead you to other really good blogs, which oftentimes end up being more elucidating reading than a stack of newspapers and magazines.

The New Yorker's New Orleans Journal by Dan Baum -- who's living in the Crescent City until June while working on a book -- is one of those blogs I discovered because I'm a fan of Harry Shearer, who's a really big fan of Baum. Journal is indispensable reading about an indispensible place.

Here's a sample, from a post about Baum's trek to the place you go when you get a hankerin' for some fresh snappers (turtles, not game fish) or alligator, or muskrat . . . or raccoon:

He led us into a shed and opened a freezer that looked like the morgue at the Bronx Zoo. Inside, encased in plastic, were raccoons, rabbits, and muskrats, all of them flayed but easily identifiable and looking surprised in their wrapping. “How about this?” he said, holding up something about two feet long that looked exactly like a whole skinned alligator. “Whole skinned alligator,” he said. “Marinate that and put it right on the grill.”

A whole skinned alligator seemed a bit much for just the two of us, so we bought a couple of packets of alligator meat. (“Tail? Body meat? Both?” he asked, dropping the packets on the scale.) We also brought home a quartet of frozen soft-shell crabs for ten dollars, a jar of Cajun Land Fish Fry, an unlabelled bottle of homemade strawberry wine that turned out to be delicious but produced an instantaneous headache, and a stack of flyers to give to our friends.

When I asked the proprietor if I could identify him in this column, he wrinkled his nose and shook his head. “I don’t need the commotion,” he said. It may also be that he doesn’t need a visit from the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. On the other hand, he was careful to tell us that his cowan are common snappers, not endangered alligator snappers. I’m pretty sure his operation is legal; he’s been in business since 1959.

Back on Dauphine Street, I pounded the alligator pieces with a rolling pin to tenderize them. Ask Louisianans how to prepare any kind of wild meat, and their answers are so alike in content and wording that I suspect they were reciting this in school when I was pledging allegiance to the flag: “Get some Wish Bone Italian dressing, and put it up in that with your spices, some onion powder, some garlic and some green onions. Serve that with hot rice and”—they clap their hands.

Yankee food snobs that we are, we didn’t have any Wishbone Italian dressing on hand, so I made a marinade with imported extra-virgin olive oil, red-wine vinegar, dried thyme, onion powder, crushed garlic, Zatarain’s Creole seasoning, and some cayenne pepper. Then I added more cayenne pepper. And then a little more. I left the alligator marinating in the refrigerator overnight, and then thought up excuses to eat out, hoping the alligator would disappear. When it didn’t, I lit the burners in our stove’s Jenn-Air grill and laid the slices atop it. “How do you like your gator?” I asked Margaret.

“I think you should cook it a very long time,” she said.

It was chewy and mild, like a cross between chicken and veal. It seemed lean and healthful, the kind of thing that will soon show up in a Jane Brody column. (No antibiotics! No trans fats!) Its flavor was faintly nutty and not fishy at all; if I had to put an adjective on it, I’d say, “Reptilian.”

I called Ronald Lewis, to see if he liked gator any more than he liked gefilte fish. “Oh, yes,” he said. “I’ve been eating it all my life. I like it fried or smothered.”

I told him I didn’t think it had much flavor.

“Well, that may be because it was frozen,” he said. “I think it probably tastes better when it’s fresh. What you really want to try, though, is coon. My mama used to boil that in seafood boil and then bake it with sweet potatoes. Now that’s good.”

AS SOMEONE who reads posts like this and sorely misses home, I can attest that alligator is good eatin' -- particularly breaded and fried like catfish. Its taste lies somewhere between fish and chicken . . . at least to me.

And I wholeheartedly agree with Mr. Lewis that coon is good eatin', too. I'd like to try his mama's recipe, though it's plenty tasty just barbequed.

I strongly suspect that sometimes, in her heart of hearts, Mrs. Favog wonders just what the hell she'd been smoking the day she said "I do."