Louisiana Book News

Cookbooks are a marvelous thing, offering hope to those who want to relive great food at home or add inspiration to even the best cooks when their imagination runs dry. Some cookbooks add a dollop of lagniappe, that little something extra that makes you want to forgo the pots, pull up a comfy chair and enjoy the background material instead.

Belinda Hulin's Roux Memories: A Cajun-Creole Love Story with Recipes (Globe Pequot, $19.95) is just such a gem, filled with family stories, photos and anecdotes about life in South Louisiana. Her mama's seafood gumbo, for instance, comes with a heart-warming story of how her parents met. Her crawfish etouffee complements a story of her first New Orleans Mardi Gras. It's written with love but also well written, a real joy of a book. And to top it off, Hulin's aim at assembling these 250 home-tested recipes was to preserve them for prosperity, after watching so many in her home town of New Orleans loose their family lore in the flood after Hurricane Katrina. Her message is simple, but not news to those of us in the Bayou State: cooking goes way beyond sustenance, and good food and great company result in vivid memories. "Mostly, it's the way we offer comfort and show people we love them," Hulin writes. Don't miss this sweet cookbook and share the love.

Other cookbooks out this month to consider are:

Music critic Roger Ebert loves using his electric rice cooker and sharing his recipes and tips on his blog. He's compiled these entries, along with reader comments and recipes in The Pot and How to Use It: The Mystery and Romance of the Rice Cooker (Andrew McMeel, $14.99).

Jerald and Glenda Horst continue their series on Louisiana seafood with The Louisiana Seafood Bible: Crabs (Pelican, $25). Like the books preceding this one, there's information on the different types of blue crabs and how they live, how to peel a crab or clean a soft-shell, the crab industry in Louisiana and, of course, recipes, plus much more.

Get going in the morning with something fresh and healthy with a recipe from Super-Charged Smoothies by Mary Corpening Barber and Sara Corpening Whiteford (Chronicle, $19.95). These 60 recipes stretch the boundaries of typical smoothies, including cacao frenzy, adios arthritis and cancer kicker. There's even the alcoholic cucumber sake-tini and pomegranate cosmos.

The benefits of eating local -- helping local farmers, reducing oil consumption in transporting food, etc. -- is not news but Sur La Table and author and journalist Janet Fletcher have compiled a cookbook highlighting the trend and its many attributes in Eating Local: The Cookbook Inspired by America's Farmers (Andrew McMeel, $35). In addition to the 150 recipes incorporating regional foods, there are tips for preserving seasonal produce, creating a garden, maintaining the urban homestead and more.

Summer doesn't end in Louisiana at the autumnal solstice, which can make us envy those in places where leaves are turning. On the other hand, a long, hot summer makes for more cool drinking. Rum Drinks: 50 Caribbean Cocktails, from Cuba Libre to Rum Daisy by Jessica B. Harris (Chronicle, $19.95), combines fun cocktail recipes with rum history, creating a "Caribbean bar" and Caribbean snacks for the party. The author even offers an anecdote titled "Last call in New Orleans." I'll let your imagination take that one away.

So many friends have told me they don't buy cookbooks just to use the recipes, but to lie in bed at night and peruse the pages from cover to cover. Some cookbooks lend themselves to be appreciated page by page, and one such example is New Orleans Kitchens: Recipes from the Big Easy's Best Restaurants by Stacey Meyer and Troy Gilbert with a forward by Emeril Lagasse (Gibbs Smith). The book marries recipes from some of the best chefs and cooks in New Orleans with artwork. There's oysters Rockefeller from Brian Landry of Galatoire's, for instance, accented by a painting of the restaurant by Fredrick Guess, a white truffle bean dip from Tom Wolfe of Peristyle next to a painting by James Michalopoulas and smoked duck breast pain perdu with fontina cheese and cane syrup from Greg Picolo of The Bistro at Maison de Ville with a painting by Jim Sudduth. For dessert, Carmello Truillo from La Divina offers a sorbert di fragola e balsamico (strawberry sorbert) complemented by Elemore Morgan's Governor Nichols Street Whart. Some of the chefs include Donald Link of Herbsaint, Jack Leonardi of Jacques-Imo's Cafe, Bob Iacavone of Cuvee, John Folse and Kevin Vizard of Vizard's.

Some other great cookbooks to consider this summer are:

N The Secret Ingredient: Delicious and easy heart-healthy recipes that might just save your life by Sally Bee (Sterling) is everything the title suggests. After the writer and TV personality had three major heart attacks within a week, she dedicated herself to eating healthier and credits it for turning her health around. Her cookbook not only offers heart-healthy recipes that avoid the bad food elements, but they are simple to prepare, feature fresh ingredients and taste great, everything from easy hummus to the ratatouille chicken tray bake in which Bee states, "Don't always assume that a 'healthy' meal has to based on a salad. Sometimes we need comfort food to fill up on."

N Mary Mac's Tea Room has been serving the Atlanta hungry since 1945, and its current owner, John Ferrell, shares its secrets in a new cookbook, Mary Mac's Tea Room: 65 Years of Recipes from Atlanta's Favorite Dining Room (Andrew McMeel). The lovely hardback cookbook offers 125 classic recipes, from fried chicken and black-eyed pea cakes to Georgia peach cobbler and Granddaddy Ferrell's eggnog. There're recipes for pickles and canning as well, such as the homegrown pepper sauce. If you're looking for a traditional Southern cookbook, this could be the one.

New Orleans native David Guas, a former executive pastry chef, offers up some of his favorite recipes in DamGoodSweet: Desserts to Satisfy Your Sweet Tooth, published by Taunton Press with food writer Raquel Pelzel. Guas states in the book's beginning that he compiled the cookbook as "a way for me to celebrate the restaurants, bakeries, and sweet shops that remain and thrive in New Orleans as well as to keep alive the traditions of long-gone institutions." For instance, Guas dedicates a recipe for buttermilk drop donuts, a patron favorite at McKenzie's Bakery, now just a Crescent City memory, and a luscious lemon doberge cake recipe in honor of Haydel's Bakery, still going strong in Jefferson.

Chef John Besh both honors the culinary traditions of New Orleans and aims to preserve his interpretations of the classics with his first recipe collection complemented by reminiscences titled My New Orleans: The Cookbook (Andrews McMeel, $45). This gorgeous book may look great on a coffee table but don't let it linger there; there are too many wonderful dishes inside next to Besh's stories of growing up and learning how to cook in South Louisiana. The book is separated into chapters on events and types of food, such as "Feast Days" and "Speckled Trout and Redfish." As an introduction to each are stories about the city, the countryside (including Acadiana in the gumbo chapter) and lots of entertaining anecdotes.

It's 5 a.m. and a bleary eyed Chef John Folse is whipping up a seafood sauce piquant on Passe Patout at KLFY and the delectable smell is driving everyone crazy, despite the early hour. He spent the previous night at Christmas in Grand Coteau and will visit the Lafayette Barnes & Noble just before hitting the road to Natchitoches and another booksigning event. And even though dawn hadn't cracked the horizon and it was clear the intense schedule was wearing on the award-winning chef, Folse took a moment to joke around with a life-sized dinosaur, on the show to promote the upcoming Dancing with the Dinosaurs. It's all in a day's work for Folse touring the region to promote his latest cookbook, another giant undertaking -- literally -- titled Hooks, Lies & Alibis: Louisiana's Authoritative Collection of Game Fish & Seafood Cookery.

The 10-pound cookbook full of 600 seafood recipes is Folse's ninth book, and the third of its massive size. His first oversized tome was The Encyclopedia of Cajun & Creole Cuisine, which sold out in 17 days in 2004 and is now in its seventh printing, and 2007's After the Hunt, specializing in wild game recipes. Both have been tremendous sellers for Folse, who traveled extensively when each book came out. For his current book, he'll be on the road every day until Christmas Eve, he said. Like the previous two cookbooks, Folse poses on the cover to replicate a photo from Louisiana's past. For the Encyclopedia cover, he struck the same pose of The Oysterman, taken by 1930s photographer Fonville Winans. For After the Hunt's cover Folse imitated a photo from the Works Progress Administration. The cover of Hooks has Folse paddling a pirogue down a bayou, in honor of a scene from the documentary Louisiana Story in which J.C. Boudreaux does the same. Boudreaux makes an appearance in the book and he appeared at the book launch in Baton Rouge.

Also as in books past, there is plenty of history, including early fishermen in the bible, seafood feasts of the Pharaohs of Egypt and fishing in the American colonies, plus the modern concept of recreational sport. Louisiana, of course, takes a large portion, representing the state's many seafood industries. There's also information on just about everything a fisherman needs to cast off, including reels, bait, boats and Cajun Reeboks. Wine pairings, fish preparation, tips for preserving, fishing tournaments and seafood food festival guides -- it's all here. And then there are the recipes, all 600 of them, from stocks, sauces and rouxs to old-fashioned sea foam candy and bikini martini cocktails, complemented by wonderful photographs and anecdotes.

New to this cookbook is the addition of a graphic to signify recipes that are Louisiana icons, such as shrimp Creole, oyster pie and trout amandine. There's also a gumbo map outlining the state's varied gumbo history, from a dark-brown roux with tasso and sausage in the southwest prairies to the oyster-based gumbos of the Barataria region.

The Muses seem to visit certain people often. Mozart, Michael Caine, Nora Roberts -- these are people who routinely crank out winners. In our own backyard we have Marcelle Bienvenu of St. Martinville, who appears to be setting records for the most cookbooks of Louisiana. In addition to her long-standing Who's Your Mama, Are You Catholic and Can You Make a Roux?, Bienvenu co-wrote Eula Mae's Cajun Kitchen with Eula Mae Dore, Stir the Pot: The True Story of Cajun Cuisine with Carl Brasseaux and Ryan Brasseaux, Cooking up a Storm: Recipes Lost and Found from the Times-Picayune of New Orleans, Abita Beer, Cooking Louisiana True: Recipes by Celebrated Chefs plus the History, Culture and Customs of Louisiana's Favorite Brew and the gorgeous coffee table book newly published, Wings of Paradise: Birds of the Louisiana Wetlands with Lafayette nature photographer Charlie Hohorst. And now, from Pelican Publishing in New Orleans, we have Pecans: From Soup to Nuts, a cookbook originally published by the late Keith Courrege, grandfather of Jady Regard, current owner of the family-based Cane River Pecan Company of New Iberia. Courrege published his version of Pecans in 1984 for the Cane River Pecan Company store in Natchitoches, near where the company grows its pecans. Pelican's 2009 version is lovingly updated by Bienvenue, with photography by Louisiana's Sara Essex. The cookbook contains the history of the pecan, unknown to the world before European settlers were introduced to the nut by Native Americans. Thomas Jefferson and George Washington were fans of pecans, but it was a slave at Oak Alley Plantation who grafted the trees and began the first commercial pecan orchard. In addition, the cookbook informs us, pecans are really good for you, containing antioxidants, vitamins and minerals and phytosterols, which protect against cardiovascular disease. Pecans are also proven to be successful in decreasing bad cholesterol. The cookbook offers recipes for roasted pecans, appetizers, side dishes and entrees, desserts and specialty drinks. You can choose from pecan-crusted fish, "super-duper yams," all types of salads utilizing pecans in various ways and les oreilles de cochon or Cajun pig ear dessert, a fried dough topped with cane syrup and pecans. And what would bourbon balls and fudge be without the delectable nut? 

Award-winning New Orleans chef Donald Link celebrates all things Cajun, from his childhood home in Sulphur to his camp at Toledo Bend in his new cookbook, Real Cajun: Rustic Home Cooking from Donald Link's Louisiana (Clarkson Potter, $35). Link, who owns Cochon and Herbsaint restaurants in New Orleans, naturally uses lots of pork recipes, including boudin, cracklins and homemade bacon. He fishes in Louisiana waters as well, offering boudin this time with crawfish, crab cakes, the light summer crab and tomato salad and a shrimp stew, among many others. There are also plenty of great meat recipes, including a Natchitoches meat pie, typical south Louisiana drinks and decadent desserts.  There are many references to the Big Easy -- naturally since that's Link's home now -- but perhaps more than necessary for a "Cajun" cookbook. Absinthe cocktails and shrimp Creole are better served in a New Orleans book, and purists who tire of tourists relating Cajun to New Orleans might take offense. Link also associates the Cajun nickname of "coonass" as an affectionate one, which might also raise some eyebrows. Overall, the book is an excellent addition to any culinary collection. Link won the James Beard Best Chef South Region Award in 2007 and you can see why with this lovely collection of recipes. 

Shrimp is a Gulf Coast delicacy. We know it, considering the shrimping industry has been part of the Louisiana landscape since the 1870s. But now the rest of the country can learn all about the shellfish in The Louisiana Seafood Bible: Shrimp, published by Pelican Publishing of New Orleans. The book is written by husband and wife team Jerald and Glenda Horst of Franklinton. Jerald was a professor of fisheries at LSU and coauthor of The Anglers Guide to Fish of the Gulf of Mexico and Glenda was born and raised at Bayou Sorrell, the daughter of a commercial fisherman. The Louisiana Seafood Bible: Shrimp includes plenty of shrimp recipes, but also examines the industry today and explains the many different types of shrimp available, giving credence to the title of "Seafood Bible." The Horsts also guide readers on how to choose quality shrimp, learn of its country origin and freeze it, boil it and serve it up in salads, soups and in remoulades, among many other dishes.

--Times of Acadiana May 28, 2009