Cooking Up a Storm: Recipes Lost and Found from The Times-Picayune of New Orleans (Paperback)
May 26, 2009 by TheChef
Filed under Culinary Cooking Books
Product Description
After Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans thousands of people lost their keepsakes and family treasures forever. As residents started to rebuild their lives The Times-Picayune of New Orleans became a post-hurricane swapping place for old recipes that were washed away in the storm. The newspaper has compiled 250 of these delicious authentic recipes along with the stories about how they came to be and who created them. Cooking Up a Storm includes the very best of classic and contemporary New Orleans cuisine from seafood and meat to desserts and cocktails. But it also tells the story recipe by recipe of one of the great food cities in the world and the determination of its citizens to preserve and safeguard their culinary legacy.
Marcel Bienvenu writes the “Cooking Creole” column in the “Times Picayune”, and and Judy Walker is the food editor for that publication. They’ve written other books together, but in a sense this one was written by their readers as they sought to recover from Katrina.
On Oct. 7, 2005, Walker invited her readers to take part in a program they called “Rebuilding New Orleans, Recipe by Recipe.” Essentially, the idea was to pair readers who needed a particular recipe with folks who still had theirs. Walker writes that the response was over-whelming. “It became a sort of community project; everybody wanted to help…. It was amazing, so many of the requests were for the same recipe, sometimes the same recipe on the same day.”
The book contains 250 of the best recipes, each with a short essay that puts the recipe into a human perspective. Only two of the thousands of requested recipes have not been found; a gumbo recipe from a New Orleans Saints football player and a pasta salad recipe.
Some of the recipes are famous, Jamie Shannon’s recipe for Tasso Shrimp with Five-Pepper Jelly; Leslie’s mirliton gumbo; and the Roosevelt Hotel’s shrimp remoulade, for example.
Others are clearly from home cooks, some handed down from generation to generation; these ten were taken from a file of newspaper clippings: Fair Grounds corned beef; Crabmeat Remick; Johnny Becnel’s Daddy’s okra gumbo; turkey bone gumbo; Jolene Black’s cream biscuits; salt and pepper shrimp; Rosie’s sweet potato pies; Brownies to die for; Ursuline Academy anise cookies; and rosemary cookies.
Walker describes the importance of this collection in the following words:
“Here in south Louisiana, we still have an intact food culture, thanks to every one of you who’s ever made a roux. Restaurants and home cooks keep the cultural and literal flame burning under the emblematic red beans and rice on Mondays. People make their mama’s oyster dressing at Thanksgiving. That’s reason No. 1: We have something unique, worth saving.
“And, the region is blessed with many only-in-Louisiana ingredients — crawfish, hot sausage, cane syrup, andouille, Creole mustard — this list could go on and on until lunchtime. But there are not a lot of recipes in “Joy of Cooking” for crawfish or cane syrup. So that’s another reason: Even when you do find a recipe for stuffed peppers, they’re not stuffed with seafood as they are here. So these unique recipes, the lost ones, are specific to south Louisiana.”
This is a wonderful book for people like me who have gone to New Orleans just to spend a long week-end enjoying restaurant foods on offer. The recipes and stories capture a wonderful city, its cuisine and its citizens.
Robert C. Ross 2008
This cookbook is not the most visually stimulating, with no pictures and no color. However, I quickly got over my disappointment with the overall look when I began thumbing through these fun dishes, full of Louisiana flavor and ingredients that are universally appealing. I began to realize that this cookbook was put together just as one would on their own: a collection of recipes that have been passed down through the years between family and friends. I immediately ordered 5 more as gifts.
COOKING UP A STORM is an excellent addition to the abundance of New Orleans cookbooks. Born out of a humanitarian campaign by the two editors to restore the treasured local recipes that had been lost in Hurricane Katrina, the book provides a thorough survey of Creole and Cajun cuisine.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wow! Love the bood!
What a great idea! I collect cookbooks and live in Baton Rouge. Love the book. Not only for the recipes, but the stories.
4.0 out of 5 stars
COOKING UP A STORM
GREAT COOKBOOK TO OWN AND GIVE AS A GIFT. IS WELL WRITTEN & CONTAINS GOOD RECIPES. DONNA FLOWER
5.0 out of 5 stars
Recipes
Found some old favorites in this book. My wife looked it over and used a crayfish pie recipe to get rid of an aging pie shell in the freezer. The book paid for itself that night.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Homesick
I saw this book and immediately knew I needed to order it. I grew up in Louisiana and love the food from my home state.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Food, History, and Fun
Cooking Up a Storm has large variety of recipes from the South. Many are from establishements that are no longer in business.
5.0 out of 5 stars
A great service by the Times-Picayune
99% of the houses in my community were flooded when the levees failed during and after Katrina, ALL of our possessions were lost.
5.0 out of 5 stars
A great cookbook!
Everybody who loves Louisiana cooking should have this book! The recipes are old family ones, recovered after Katrina, and the accompanying stories are delightful.
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the Best
I absolutely love this cookbook! It is truly a collection of beloved favorites, even for a former transplant who claims New Orleans as an adopted home.
3.0 out of 5 stars
allright but…
allright book and I surely understand the sentiment but boring, dull no greats just food one eats every day…sorry