Home Cook
Eunice, LA

“To me it’s not boudin if there is no liver in it.” – Coz Fontenot

Boudin may be best known as convenience store food, but for every commercial producer of the sausage there is a Cajun like Coz Fontenot, who makes boudin at home—or at the communal boucheries (hog killings) still occasionally staged throughout the area. Coz ate boudin every Saturday with his family while growing up, and he learned to make the sausage from three different men, his bosses at small stop-and-shops, while he was a teenager. Eventually he developed his own style and an (unwritten) recipe, which incorporates several twice-ground seasoning vegetables, long-grain rice, and always pork liver. He lived in Atlanta for ten years as a young adult, during which time he performed as a musician and ran a catering company focused on Louisiana specialties such as sausages, jambalaya, and bread pudding. For Coz and many other Cajuns, food and music go hand in hand. For example, you might catch him singing during a regular Saturday jam session at Savoy’s Music Center just outside of Eunice. That’s where he bought his first harmonica; that’s also where breakfast boudin packaged in white boxes outnumbers doughnuts.

NOTE: What follows is a portion of the original interview that has been edited for length. To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.

EDITED TRANSCRIPT

Subject: Coz Fontenot, home boudin maker
Date: June 19, 2008
Location: Ruby’s Cafe – Eunice, LA
Interviewer & Photographer: Sara Roahen

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Sara Roahen: This is Sara Roahen for the Southern Foodways Alliance. It’s Thursday, June 19, 2008. I’m in Eunice, Louisiana at Ruby’s Café with Mr. Coz—I’ll let him pronounce his last name. If you could just say your full name and your birth date we’ll get started.

Coz Fontenot: My name is Coz Fontenot. September 23, 1955.

Thank you, and did you grow up in this area?

Yes. I was born and Mama raised me in Eunice.

And what about your family—are you Cajun?

Uh-huh, yeah, I’m Cajun. My--my father hardly talked any English.

How often when you’re--when you’re working during the day or meeting people—what percentage of the time do you speak French and what percentage English?

Well a lot of times I’ll drink coffee with a bunch of old men; I’m not old yet but—and they all talk French. We all talk French. I come to Ruby’s (Café), but a lot of times I’ll go to McDonald’s because they got a lot of old-timers that go over there that talks French, and I just keep my heritage up.

So you also sing in French?

Yes, I love to sing. I’ve been singing ever since I can remember, yeah. My father was paralyzed when I was seven years old and we took care of my father while my mother worked at night, so there was no playtime outside after school. But on Saturdays we used to listen to the radio program, which was French. It started at like 7:00 in the morning until noon and then at noontime they would play the mambo two-step and I knew that was the end of our quality time—me and my father—so I always hated that song. Not too much that I hated mambo; I just hated that song because it was a key to let, you know, that--that was the last song that was going to be played that Saturday, and there went our quality time. So I always hated that song. And to this day I never did learn how to play it at all.

Was that a work-related injury?

No, he had a stroke and he was paralyzed. And when he passed away I was 10 and I’d cut grass 50-cents a yard with a motor—lawn mower with no motor, push mower, and the St. Augustine grass which was really thick. And then I bought my first harmonica when I was 10. I saved up enough money and bought my first harmonica the first year at Mark Savoy’s—that Savoy’s Music Center was in business. And I paid $3 for the harmonica. And now they’re $30. [Laughs]

I probably done went through 100 of them since I’ve started playing because I just blow them out. They don’t last very long. I usually go through two or three of them a month, so that gets to be pretty expensive—you know, like $90 a month. I could buy me a real good accordion, but the reason I started playing the harmonica was I loved the music so much but my father--my father passed. And all my neighbors, their dad bought them each an accordion but I didn’t you know—didn’t have no means to get one.

When I--when I got old enough I bought my own, and then I started playing fiddle, and then I started playing drums and I played bass tuba in school and never played football. I’m a great big guy. But everybody said, I bet you played football. I said, No, I played music. And I said, I got all my bones. [Laughs]

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Let’s get to the boudin. You told me, when I first met you at Bubba Frey’s (Restaurant), you mentioned that you make your own boudin—or have—at home. Can you talk about that?

I used to do the boucherie downtown in Eunice for seven years in a row and make the boudin. But I--I had to quit on the count of my diabetes; I was just too sick to be able to do it anymore. But I learned since I was 12 years-old how to make boudin, and I’m 52. [Laughs] So there’s 40 years I know how to make boudin.

They had a store named Pete’s Stop and Shop, and mister--Mr. Pete used to—he showed me a lot of that. And then they had another place called the Easy Shop, which is no longer here—both of the places are not here—and they had a guy named Mr. Steve LeJeune that showed me. And then they had another man that worked there, and he made it different, and his name was Mr. Frank Bordelon. So I learned from three different men, and then I kind of put my own seasoning and my own vegetables the way I like it and came up with my own recipe. And it’s just—as a matter of fact, this gentleman named Mr. Jimmy Pelican about four years ago had a boucherie at his house—a butcher—and I made some homemade boudin. And he told me his father made boudin ever since he was a kid and Mr. Jimmy is about 70 now. And he said he’s never ate no better in his whole life. Even his father couldn’t touch my boudin. He said I missed my calling; I should be making boudin for a living.

What do you think distinguishes yours from other boudin?

Well a lot of people now, they don’t like to put liver—pork liver—and I still put pork liver, but I don’t put enough to overpower my taste. I just—I usually put like one pound of liver to 10 pounds of pork meat. And then I put bell peppers and I put onions, green onions, parsley, celery—all my vegetables, I run it through the grinder twice. Most people put it just once, and I put it to where it’s almost like liquefied to where you get a consistency all throughout. Where a lot of people just chop it up once and put it in there and you bite it and you get a big old piece of celery or something and it just—all you taste is that big piece of celery instead of it all combined together.

To me it’s not boudin if there is no liver in it. And in the old days they used to make blood boudin, where they would put the blood from the hog and mix it in with the—but it’s not--no longer allowed today to be sold. You can still do it at your home, you know, when you butcher a hog. But as far as to buy it in a store or—you can't buy it, blood boudin.

You said you were recently at a boucherie…Tell me what that is just for the record, a boucherie, and what you did that day.

Okay, a boucherie is a killing of a hog and you cut it up and use some meat to make boudin. And you make backbone stew, pork backbone stew, and make pork jambalaya—anything you can make. You don’t—you use everything except the squeal on a pig at a boucherie. You make cracklins; you know, boudin, hogshead cheese—you make it all. The only thing you lose on the hog is the squeal because they eat the tail; they eat the feet. Pig tail, pickled pig tail, pickled pig feet.

Have you ever written your recipe down?

No, I never have. I just do it by memory and taste.

Have you taught it to anyone else?

No, I never have. [Laughs]

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So you’re very conscious, it seems like, about preserving your culture.

Oh I love my culture. I love to talk French. I love my—just the people in general. The people around here is the most friendly people. I’ve been all over the world and I’ve never met nobody around here—not that I’m stuck on Acadians, but we are very kind people, very loving.

What does boudin mean, just in the culture at large? What does it mean to the people?

Well when I was a kid we’d get boudin every Saturday. That was like a ritual, and every Saturday morning we didn’t have breakfast; we had boudin. That was better than breakfast. As long as I can remember every Saturday my dad would—. And then when my dad passed away my mother would get it. Every Saturday we ate boudin, and that was like our weekly treat. [Laughs] Sitting down at the table, or we might open the package up on the way home and eat some. It’s just something that we was born and raised with you know, all our life. And when you go out of state you really learn to appreciate your culture even more because you can't get the stuff like you can over here. There’s no comparison.

Have you lived out of state ever?

I lived in—outside of Atlanta, Georgia for 10 years, and I had a little catering business and I had my Cajun band there. And I made my own boudin, my own tasso, and my own sausage. And one day I came back and I brought some for my mother to try and she said, Son, Mama can't eat that you know. I’m real sick. So she said, But cook you some on the stove; boil you some sausage. And then she said, We’ll cook something tonight. She said, Everything I got is in the freezer. I said, Okay. So I started boiling some and one of my aunts got there and she told my mother, she says, Oh May, she said, That sausage smells good. And she hadn't even walked in the kitchen, so I said, Well I done something right. So when I—when it was cooked my mother told her, she said, Go make you a few sandwiches, baby. So my aunt did and she took a bite and she says, Oh May, where did you get that sausage? I need to go get some. That was like when we was kids. And she said, Well you’ll have to go a long ways because Coz made that all the way over there in Georgia. And she looked at me and she said…I felt sorry for you all this time and you’re eating better than us. And I told her, I said, Well Aunt May, the only thing I can't grow over there is crawfish. I said, I can make everything else except crawfish. [Laughs]

What do you think made your sausage taste like when she was a kid?

Probably the way I seasoned it and the way I smoked it. I smoked it--I smoke it longer than most people. And the old people, they would smoke it all night long, and now they smoke it two or three hours. I always like to use hickory, but there’s not many hickory trees around anymore.

Have you heard about the origins of boudin, like where the tradition came from?

I really think it came from the Germans. You know as far as I know, that’s where it come from, just like the accordion and our music came from the Germans. And our sausages. The Germans had a big influence on it too, because in Germany they’re--they’re connoisseurs on sausage in Germany. And I think we learned a lot about cooking as far as sausage and boudin from the Germans.

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I was going to ask you if there’s anyplace where I could get boudin commercially that tastes anything like yours?

Probably. Yeah, that would be close--as close as you can get without me making it, is at the Eunice Poultry from Gary Mercantel.

What about besides boudin do you cook at home?

Oh yeah, I can make the best jambalaya in the world. Pork jambalaya. And then I can—I make the best bread pudding in the world too because my bread pudding, most people they call it bread pudding and they slice it like a cake. Well mine is like a pudding; it’s not like a cake. So when somebody offers me bread pudding I look at it and I’ll say, No, I don’t want no cake. I want bread pudding. I won't even eat it here at Ruby’s because they don’t make it like I do. And my sister—my mother used to make it all the time and my sister hated it. And I started making mine and she loves mine, and she never liked bread pudding before.

My mother always made hers with milk and I make mine with water. Yeah, and when I lived in Atlanta there was this lady that was allergic to dairy products and she said, Oh I’d love some of that bread pudding but I know you got milk in it, and I said, No Ma’am, I don’t. She said, You’re sure? I said, I promise you. She said, because I’ll get deadly sick. I said, Ma’am, I’m telling you there is no milk. I use water instead. So every time she would come to the dance she would buy a bowl to eat and two bowls to go home with because it never made her sick, because I was telling her the truth. There was no milk in it.

I wanted to ask you about this place where we are right now—Ruby’s. It’s been around for a while. Have you been coming for a while?

I used to come when I was a kid when we’d come to the show on Saturdays right—which is right next door. And Miss Ruby was the one that would—she would stay in the back most of the time and cook. And she had a--her two daughters that would work in the front. And you used to have go through the kitchen to go to the bathroom.

I ran into you here yesterday. What did you have yesterday for lunch?

I ate some fried chicken. But I like their ponce over here, which is pork stomach stuffed. That’s pretty good stuff, and then they got pig tongue; that’s good stuff too. People say, Oh tongue; I say, Yeah. And then I like their ribs over here too because it’s got like the skin on it, and they bake it in the oven and it’s kind of like a cracklin’, like a hog cracklin’. It’s out of this world. So if you eat them, I don’t know which one will be the best for you to try.

If you like hog cracklins, then you just as soon go ahead and get the tongue. If you’ve ever ate hog cracklin’ before it tastes similar to that, and if you never ate tongue I would recommend for you to eat the tongue because you’ve done ate hog cracklins except they was fried instead of baking them.

So this place was open your whole childhood?

Yeah, yeah this place was here since 1957.

Has it changed much?

Well they put a little bit of wall paneling and wainscoted it. Other than that it’s the same old roof and same old walls, same old floor. Yeah, the food is pretty much the same. Good, real good.

Could you say good-bye in French?

Bonjour. That means Good day, and if it would be nighttime I would say bon soir. As a matter of fact they’ve got a band called bon soir, Catin that just came out. And in France a catin is a whore. In Louisiana, a catin is a baby-doll, something precious. So, Bonjour à tout.

Merci.

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To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.

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