Important Tips for a Successful Cocktail Party
If you are planning a cocktail party, there are a few essential things to remember. Here are some important tips for ensuring that your cocktail party is a tremendous success.
read moreSweet Potato Brioche- Part 2 in a Series on Sweet Potatoes
On a visit to Bayona, a the bread basket containing little rolls of Sweet Potato Brioche appeared. I devoured them immediately, and I never forgot those wonderful little rolls, so was very happy to see that Susan Spicer’s cookbook included the recipe for them.
read moreGreat Christmas Gifts for People Who Love New Orleans
If you happen to be someone who loves New Orleans, just in time for Christmas, here are some great suggestions.
read moreSweet Potato Pound Cake
This Sweet Potato Pound Cake is tastier than the ubiquitous autumn pumpkin bread- it’s spicy, rich and moist, with the dusky taste of fall- what’s not to love? And I was a little surprised, although I guess I shouldn’t have been, to see that it’s basically a 1-2-3-4 Cake.
read moreSweet Potato Pecan Pie Bars
Sweet Potato Pie is a southern classic, as is Pecan Pie. Marrying the spicy, dense sweet potato custard with the gooey, dark sweetness of pecan pie filing- well, that’s a stroke of genius.
read moreA Menu to Complement a Keg Party- and Korean Beef Taco Recipe
Beer is the world’s most widely consumed beverage after water and tea, and its often called the world’s oldest alcoholic beverage. It’s also a natural to accompany spicier ethnic cuisines. Take a look at this menu designed specifically to complement a beer only party.
read moreAlison and Aaron Wedding Party and Asian Barbecue Sauce Recipe
A Pan Asian menu for a casual backyard party to celebrate a newly married couple.
read moreFive Years after Katrina- Hungry Town and Red Beans and Rice
Reading Tom Fitzmorris’s Hungry Town, and making Red Beans and Rice 5 years after Katrina’s wake flooded New Orleans
read moreA Special Cake for a Special Day-German Chocolate with Milk Chocolate Buttercream
This German Chocolate Cake with Milk Chocolate Buttercream has always been a “go to” cake for special days in my family.
read moreJohn 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...
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