John Besh’s and My New Orleans
John Besh dedicates his newly released cookbook, My New Orleans: The Cookbook, to the people of New Orleans, and to those who hold the city close to their hearts. Indeed, it is a must add to the library of anyone who loves New Orleans, or anyone who has flirted with the possibility of falling in love with the city. While Besh’s New Orleans is not exactly the same as mine, and I found myself quibbling over the details of recipes for basic dishes like gumbo and jambalaya (New Orleanians can be very proprietary about their recipes), I realize that the wonderful thing about this city is that it’s like Rashomon. We all see different sides of New Orleans, and defend our view. Yet unlike other cities, there is so much commonality that is essential to life as a New Orleanian- like the extraordinary love of food (“In New Orleans, folks live to eat; they don’t just eat to live”) and festivity (“there’s a Mardi Gras taking place in every household and every neighborhood of New Orleans on Fat Tuesday”)- that binds us together. And our fierce love of New Orleans binds us further together. “After Katrina, being from New Orleans became the focus of my identity,” he writes in his introduction. I hear ya, brother! I had just begun to write about my early life in New Orleans when Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. I remember e-mailing a fellow writing workshop member that it seemed trivial to be writing about backyard family parties, and okra and shrimp and gumbo at a time like this. He wisely responded, “that’s precisely what you should be writing at a time like this. Food is a means of preserving culture.” And so, Katrina was the impetus for beginning this blog. Likewise, Mr. Besh felt the urgent call to preserve the culture of New Orleans, using food as his window. Besh acknowledges, and his book embodies “…a tension in New Orleans cooking between preserving the classics and modernizing them for today’s palates, between home cooking and restaurant food.” He offers some updates of classic dishes which reflect NOLA’s evolving demography, like Shrimp Creole infused with lemon grass (keep reading-recipe’s coming) to reflect the arrival of the Vietnamese and their imprint on the city and its cuisine. And because he trained as a chef at the Culinary Institute of America, and apprenticed in Europe, he also offers us some modern reinterpretations of the classic ingredients and dishes, like Grilled Watermelon, Tomato and Goat Cheese Salad, with a knowing aside, “where I grew up, grown men did not eat grilled figs with baby greens and artisanal goats’ milk cheese.” Besh’s book is not just another cookbook. While it contains 200 recipes, it’s also a beautiful coffee table book with gorgeous archival and present day pictures of NOLA and its families and characters at work and play, at Mardi Gras, on the waterways, and at the table. Its contents are not organized in traditional cookbook “appetizer to dessert” order, but rather by ingredients, seasons and feast days- some of those days meriting their own chapter- like Mardi Gras and Thanksgiving. Speaking of ingredients, the book is also full of sidebars with background notes on the glorious ingredients available to New Orleans cooks-i.e. Creole...
read moreAutumn at the Santa Monica Farmer’s Market
I have shopped for many years at the Santa Monica farmer’s market. Those of us who do, happen to think it’s the best farmer’s market in the country, btw. When I started my catering business, it was a natural to purchase my produce there. Produce from a grocery store or a big purveyor will never match the taste and freshness of produce allowed to ripen on the tree or vine. The farmers pick it only a day or two before coming to market, and then I hand pick it to meet my produce needs. Yes, it takes a bit more time, but in my opinion, if you care about good food, it’s completely worth it. There is no substitute for a vine ripened tomato in a Caprese salad. No amount of poaching and sugar can make up for the flavor of a fully ripened peach in a cobbler, and compared to a farmer’s market starawberry, a grocery store strawberry is not even worth eating. Autumn is probably the best season at the farmer’s market- it is after all the season of the harvest. Here are some pictures I’ve gathered over the last couple of months for you to enjoy. Bon Appetit, Gisele ...
read moreAll Cuisine is Fusion Cuisine- and Asian Spiced Duck Tamales
A New Mexico Chef shares his Asian/Latin duck tamale recipe.
read more“Traditional” Thankgiving?
November is here, and my thoughts are turning toward Thanksgiving dinner. We all have our own favorite foods, you know -the ones that show up year after year, and that we wouldn’t think of replacing with a new dish. And we sometimes have a tendency to think everyone serves those foods. The truth of the matter is, though, that America is a land of immigrants, and each successive group of immigrants has brought its own favorite foods to the Thanksgiving table. If, like me, your roots are Southern, oysters probably show up in some way on your table, candied yams and macaroni and cheese are favored over mashed potatoes, and you probably prefer pecan pie to pumpkin. Italians have included pasta-maybe a lasagna, the Chinese use rice, often making a turkey stuffing with it, and a Mexican American turkey might include a mole to sauce it. Thanksgiving feasts have been multi-cultural since the very beginning. As far as that first Thanksgiving dinner goes, it’s widely believed that since lobster was so available off the coast of Massachusetts in those early days, that it surely must have been served (hey -that would work for me). Potatoes were unavailable in those days, so no mashed potatoes. It’s unlikely that cranberry sauce was served, as sugar was an extremely expensive item. Pumpkin may have been a part of the meal, but not as a pie (they had no flour or ovens yet), nor were apples present in Plymouth at the time. What are some of your special “ traditional” Thanksgiving dishes? I’d love to hear about them, and invite you to leave a comment. In return, I’m giving you a link to a recipe at Food and Wine that has, no doubt, become a “tradition” in many Chinese American families. Asian Roasted Turkey with Sticky Rice Stuffing Bon Appetit! Gisele...
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