Book Review by Steve Holetz
The first cookbook I ever purchased, Chef Paul
Prudhomme’s Louisiana Kitchen will always be special to me.
In 1989 I had
never tasted Cajun food. My
of seafood which sounded
fantastic to me, but I never had the opportunity to try it. One day I
was
perusing the
small selection of Creole and Cajun cookbooks at the Los Angeles
bookstore
where I worked and came across
this title. As a young man on a modest salary,
the big man on the cover with the even larger plates of meat, sausages,
gumbos
and pies pointed to a culinary abundance that I couldn’t wait to
explore
myself.
Jambalaya,
Etoufee, Shrimp Remoulade, Blackened fish, you name it, it’s in there.
As a
matter of fact, if you have
shrimp around the house and are undecided about
what to do with it, I can’t think of a better book to turn to, as the
variety
of delicious platforms for shrimp alone is fantastic. The book’s recipe
for
Shrimp Diane has become a special
Valentine's day, Birthday and Anniversary
dinner at my house for years, and is not be missed. Even the basic rice
recipe
is wonderful. The rice is baked with chicken stock, onions and bell
pepper,
endowing it with amazing flavor.
And
don’t get me started on the Red beans and rice, Awesome!
As for the Gumbo recipes, look out. Here we are
given seven different
recipes, using either roux or file’. I have
made the Seafood File’ and
the Chicken Andouille gumbos, both of which are wonderfully complex in
flavor.
Chef Paul accomplishes this by using seasoning blends which build
tremendous
levels of flavor and heat, a
technique that Emeril Lagasse would take to an
unprecedented popularity a decade later. One caveat though:
If you follow these
recipe’s to the letter, you will come out with a finished dish that may
be a
bit challenging to
those with a low tolerance for spicy heat, so know your
audience and adjust accordingly.
From a sheer beauty standpoint, the book is somewhat
lackluster in comparison to today’s beautifully shot
high gloss cooking titles,
but that deficiency is more than compensated for by the content. The
recipes
are well
written and concise, and give you a good idea of what to expect
throughout the cooking process. There is even
a photo color chart for the
different stages of roux, which I found extremely helpful.
Most of the necessary ingredients for these recipes
are easy
to find at your local grocery store or fish market.
The only challenge might be
a need to make substitutions for Pork Andouille sausage or Tasso Ham if
you
are
in a hurry and can’t hunt it down.
So, if you are looking for an excellent introduction
Cajun
and Creole cooking, Look no further, as Chef Paul’s
accessible and flavorful
collection of recipes make a great addition to any cookbook library.