A badass modern Cajun cookbook from Top Chef fan favorite Isaac Toups and acclaimed journalist Jennifer V. Cole, featuring 100 full-flavor stories and recipes.

Things get a little salty down in the bayou...

Cajun country is the last bastion of true American regional cooking, and no one knows it better than Isaac Toups. Now the chef of the acclaimed Toups' Meatery and Toups South in New Orleans, he grew up deep in the Atchafalaya Basin of Louisiana, where his ancestors settled 300 years ago. There, hunting and fishing trips provide the ingredients for communal gatherings, and these shrimp and crawfish boils, whole-hog boucheries, fish frys, and backyard cookouts -- form the backbone of this book.

Taking readers from the backcountry to the bayou, Toups shows how to make:

A damn fine gumbo, boudin, dirty rice, crabcakes, and cochon de lait His signature double-cut pork chop and the Toups Burger And more authentic Cajun specialties like Hopper Stew and Louisiana Ditch Chicken.

Along the way, he tells you how to engineer an on-the-fly barbecue pit, stir up a dark roux in only 15 minutes, and apply Cajun ingenuity to just about everything.

Full of salty stories, a few tall tales, and more than 100 recipes that double down on flavor, Chasing the Gator shows how -- and what it means -- to cook Cajun food today.

Isaac Toups has four times been named a James Beard Best Chef of the South Semi-Finalist or Finalist since opening Toups' Meatery in 2012 with his wife, Amanda. He was named an Eater Young Gun of the South, Eater New Orleans' Chef of the Year, and a Top Chef fan favorite.

Before opening Toups' Meatery, he honed his skill for a decade as a fine-dining chef at restaurants such as Emeril's Delmonico. His cooking has been featured by the Wall Street Journal, Food & Wine, CNN, and Tasting Table, among many other outlets. He is a passionate advocate for the protection of America's wetlands.

Jennifer V. Cole spent nearly a decade getting to know the intricacies of the South at Southern Living magazine, where she served as deputy editor and where her annual restaurant lists were considered the final word on where to eat in the region. Her writing appears widely in other publications, including Food & Wine, Garden & Gun, and Wildsam Field Guides.