Getting Donald Link's appropriately named cookbook, "Real Cajun," and browsing through it immediately motivated me to make some Natchitoches meat pies. It's one of the things we all miss about Louisiana food. Sure, there are the great crawfish pies that are closer to my roots, but those meat pies are just so damn good. I knew Chef Link's recipe would be a good one to start with... he's obviously an RCA because there's a picture of him dancing with his beer coozy tucked in his back pocket. I would even bet money that he's cut his lip licking crawfish stew off a bay leaf once or twice. Sure, this cannot prove it alone, but it's enough for me to take a leap of faith. Besides, he did name his book REAL cajun which I hope is the first step in a new wave of Cajun cuisine to leak out into the mainstream among the current comfort food incarnations... that is the true food of the bayou. Forget about blackened fish and gumbo thick as sludge, the real deal is rustic and celebrates fresh seafood and has a tradition of charcuterie and nose to tail eating (and it doesn't all have the obligatory 'cajun seasoning' generic spice sprinkled all over it). For this reason, I would love to someday meet Chef Link. He is one of the most successful chefs in New Orleans at the moment, and doesn't do 'touristed' pseudo-cajun food... and you don't have to be cajun to love it, but it helps.
The pie filling is a slow cooked mixture of ground beef, chilies, tomato, and carefully selected dry spices. I added in a ton of green onion, because you can't cook a cajun recipe and not modify it somewhat. Modification is actually part of the recipe.
The filling is stuffed inside these butter rich pie dough rounds. Sure every culture has some form of fried stuffed dough thingy, and this is ours.
Stuffed and crimped and chilling in the fridge. Let the butter dough harden before dropping in the hot oil.
Fry until the dough lightly browns and flakes up.
I did admit that I changed up the recipe somewhat when it came to the filling, but the dough is really good. Nothing like fried butter rich pie dough... so soft. This is one of those projects like rolling eggrolls. It doesn't make sense to set up the prep to do it and not bang out a bunch to save in the freezer. They'll fry up fine from frozen... just takes a little extra time in the oil.