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For book reviews, news and more,
read Louisiana Book News every Sunday in The Daily Advertiser. |
Sara Roahen moved to New Orleans when her husband was
accepted into medical school. A former vegetarian from the Midwest with
culinary experience, she obtained a job as restaurant critic for the city’s
alternative newspaper, Gambit Weekly, and sought to understand the food scene
of the Big Easy, which wasn’t so easy for a vegetarian from the Midwest.
Her
foray into foods
with names like sno-balls and turducken led her to pen Gumbo Tales: Finding
My Place at the New Orleans Table (W.W.
Norton, $24.95), which explains New Orleans foods for those who don’t know a
Sazerac from an alligator pear. Each chapter takes on new territory, from gumbo
to the Vietnamese community, from crawfish to coffee and chicory, and some
subject matters that may be new to those of us born here.
“Sara
Roahen’s empathetic tales of time at table in New Orleans will break your heart
and rile your stomach,” writes John R. Edge, author of Southern Belly: The
Ultimate Food Lover’s Companion to the South
“If you wish to understand why and how food matters in this papal city of
American cookery, trust her palate, trust her pen.”
Note:
Roahen explains in Gumbo Tales that
turducken could be the invention of the Hebert brothers of Maurice despite Chef
Paul Prudhomme introducing it to New Orleans, but sites a few sources that show
no one really knows for sure. She does, however, recommend visiting Acadiana’s
version.
“Whoever
made the first turducken, the Hebert brothers’ boneless chicken with spicy pork
stuffing is worth the two-and-a-half-hour drive from New Orleans to Maurice
with an ice chest; and whatever its origins, in spirit the turducken is 100
percent Chef Paul,” Roahen writes. |
The best holiday news is that Louisiana Chef John Folse has
published a new giant cookbook to add to his collection, this one honoring the
hunt. And it’s just in time for holiday gift giving.
For
fans of Folse, you will remember his massive Encyclopedia of Cajun and
Creole Cuisine, a 2004 book large enough
for a door jam and choked full of history lessons, recipes and photos. This
year, Folse surpasses the size of that tome with After the Hunt:
Louisiana’s Authoritative Collection of Wild Game & Game Fish Cookery, published by his Gonzales company ($49.95).
The
book examines man’s love of hunting from prehistoric times to the present,
adding information on guns, knives, dogs, attire, decoys, taxidermy, duck
stamps — you name it. And on Page 186, the fun starts with roux, stocks, sauces
and marinades and continues until desserts and drinks through Page 781. There’s
also a listing of renowned hunters and conservationists, excerpts from
literature and a handy resource guide in the back.
It’s
a must gift for the hunters on your list, and an equally impressive book for
those who love to cook. I’m not a hunter, but I can’t wait to try the Creole
tomato grits, crème brulée lost bread and the many oyster and trout dishes.
—Chere Coen | |
Holiday Cookbooks 2007 “Cajun” Karl Breaux, owner of Lafayette's Breaux’s Mart and television chef personality, has
published a second cookbook, appropriately titled Cajun Karl’s Cook’n
Adventures Volume II. The book is filled
with more of Breaux’s authentic recipes and published in Breaux Bridge, and if
you’re lucky enough to attend one of Breaux’s book signings, you’ll get to
sample some of his delectable cooking.
Manjeet
Bhatia of Gonzales is on a mission to teach the world the truth about her
native Indian cuisine. To do so she’s published a cookbook, Don’t Say Curry:
Redefining Indian Cuisine ($14.99). A
former marketing analyst for Nabisco/Kraft Foods, Bhatia now owns Saffron
Spices Inc. and produces Touch of India, a spice blend. Bhatia’s recipes range
from minty potatoes and cilantro chutney to mango shrimp and spicy chick peas.
Ovation Books pays homage to Texas’ county courthouses with the Texas Judicial
Cookbook ($19.95), featuring 59 recipes
from residing and former judges and other state and county officials. It’s a
fun book with recipes ranging from pretzel salad to jambalaya and crawfish over
rice.
Rebecca Rather, author of The Pastry Queen, uses
her Texas upbringing to bring more pastry ideas to print, this time for the
holidays in The Pastry Queen Christmas (Ten Speed press, $32.50). Her Hill Country recipes include sweet
potato scones, whiskey-glazed eggnog cakes and special menus for different
holidays, from a ranch barn brunch to New Year’s black-eyed peas. There’s even
a Day-after-Christmas Cajun turkey gumbo by Rather’s “Louisiana-born friend and
Cajun-cooking expert” Sam McNeely.
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Bright Sky Press of Texas, which brought us Recipes from Historic Louisiana and Recipes from Historic America, is releasing two must-have food books this month: In Praise of Pecans: Recipes and Recollections ($24.95) by June Jackson and Dominique’s Tropical Latitudes ($29.95) by Dominique Macquet and John Demers.
Being raised around pecan trees and loving just about every dish that contains them, I was instantly drawn to Jackson’s book while at New York’s annual BookExpo this summer. Jackson was drawn to me as well as soon as she spotted my nametag. Although she now lives in Washington, D.C. and St. Simons Island, she was born in Natchez and reared in Winnsboro and happy to see a Louisianan in the crowd.
The book recounts her youth in Louisiana and the little joy she found picking up and shelling pecans as a child. The drudgery of pecan picking was outweighed by the candy her mother made, including pralines her mom created from a recipe found in the Monroe paper of 1928.
“From that day to this,” Jackson writes in the intro to her mother’s praline recipe, “no one has veered from its directive; consequently, there have not been many faulty pralines in the family for more than 75 years!”
The book is full of pecan recipes, from garlic-cheese grits topped with pecans to oysters escalope, from appetizers such as spiced and roasted pecans to a wide variety of salads. Of course, there are plenty of dessert recipes as well, including one for the “classic pecan pie.”
Chef Macquet was born on the island of Mauritius and has worked in Southeast Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa before becoming chef-partner of Dominique’s in the Hotel Maison Dupuy in New Orleans. He reinvented the restaurant two years ago with some of his multi-ethnic “tropical” flavors. Now, along with food writer John Demers of New Orleans, he has released a cookbook that offers these tropical specialties to the public in Tropical Latitudes.
Like many before him, Macquet seems to have developed this fusion of tastes after arriving in New Orleans and discovering that it was “a tropical colonial city of ancient languages and even more ancient stories, tied forever to those bright and dark moments that gave us legacies of culture and grace, cruelty, poverty and death,” he writes in the introduction. His tropical cuisine is not New Orleans, he insists, although the Creole city inspired him onward. Her food is “born of a thousand political, social and entrepreneurial dreams on hundreds of outposts beneath palm trees and within a conch shell’s throw of white sand and blue water.”
Recipes include coconut, mango, conch, boniato, papaya and plantain, among other exotic tropical flavors. Even the desserts offer a French-tropical marriage such as the Key Lime Crème Brulée.
Both books — plus Recipes from Historic America and Recipes from Historic Louisiana by Linda and Steve Bauer — are available in bookstores or at www.brightskypress.com, (866) 933-6133.
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