Recipes Found, Faith Restored
By Warren Rojas
“Cooking Up a Storm: Recipes Lost and Found from The Times-Picayune of New Orleans.” Edited by Marcelle Bienvenu and Judy Walker. Chronicle Books, 400 pgs., $24.95
Hurricane Katrina didn’t just upend buildings and flood streets across the Crescent City. It swept away generations of culinary tradition by permanently displacing scores of lifelong residents, shuttered historic restaurants (Commander’s Palace, Galatoire’s; both have since reopened) and destabilized the fragile economy by scaring tourists away for months after.
The food desk of The Times-Picayune reached out to evacuees who returned to their ravaged homeland, working to rebuild a society short on basic necessities and starved for a taste of normalcy.
“Cooking Up a Storm” was born of this shared frustration, chronicling a battered people’s attempt to fill in the gaps of their communal cooking memory one misplaced recipe at a time (“In New Orleans, food is culture. Food is family. Food is life”).
Rather than focus on any one style of cooking or specific ingredients, the commemorative cookbook tracks the dishes T-P readers hungrily sought out. Noteworthy contributions include: homemade cheddar and Creole mayonnaise spread, a pre-Civil War specialty known as calas (rice fritters), crawfish braid, Natchitoches meat pies, muffaletta pasta and, of course, all manner of gumbo creations.
View from the Bayou
Most Louisiana natives seem to cherish memories of meals past. We asked some now-locals to share a few of theirs.
David Guas
Pastry chef/N’awlins native
• What single dish most reminds you of home? Beignets.
• Do you still celebrate Mardi Gras? If so, what are some of the festive plates you can’t live without? King cake (of course), doberge cake (half chocolate, half lemon). The day before Mardi Gras, I always make red beans and rice with smoked sausage.
• What local restaurants do you visit to get your fill of Cajun and/or Creole cooking? If I had to go outside of my own kitchen, I would go to Acadiana (which I helped open in Sept. 2005) and order the gumbo, a po’boy, the duck, a muffaletta and a frosty frozen mug of Abita root beer!
Heather Kenney
A Louisiana transplant so enamored with the Big Easy, she named her daughter Nola
• What single dish most reminds you of home? A roast beef po’boy on good French bread with lots of gravy—which is next to impossible to find outside of the Pelican State.
• Do you still celebrate Mardi Gras? If so, what are some of the festive plates you can’t live without? Cream cheese-filled king cake and Abita beer.
• What local restaurants do you visit to get your fill of Cajun and/or Creole cooking? RT’s in Del Ray is my favorite and most like my mom’s home cooking. I’d rather go there or to Popeye’s than go to Acadiana in D.C.
(March 2009)
Tags: Chew on this, cookbook, Louisiana, New Orleans, recipe