When Alex Patout opened the original Patout's restaurant in New Iberia, Louisiana, in 1979, he set out to show food lovers that there was more to Cajun than blackened redfish. Now the family operates busy restaurants in New Orleans and Los Angeles as well, and in Patout's Cajun Home Cooking, the first authentic guide to the most popular regional cuisine in the country, Patout takes his culinary mission another giant step further, divulging the dark, spicy secrets of Cajun food as it is prepared by the Cajuns themselves. Beginning with the basics -- roux from light to dark, techniques from smoking to smothering -- Patout initiates the home cook into a culinary style that has developed over the decades in bayou country kitchens. Dozens of exciting recipes introduce a savory repertoire of Cajun delicacies: appetizers both rustic and refined (Cheese Biscuits, Daube Glace, Cajun Pate); slow-simmered gumbos (Shrimp and Okra, Duck and Sausage, and more), soups, and stews (Red fish Courtbouillon, Shrimp and Crab Stew); hearty main dishes (from classic Jambalayas and Etouffees to such Patout specialties as Lady Fish, Shrimp Ms. Ann, Veal on the Teche, and Maw Maw's Cajun Chicken Stew); luscious side dishes (Maque Choux, Smothered Snap Beans, Cajun Hash Browns); homey and festive sweets (Old Dominion Pound Cake, Calas, Pralines, Gateau au Sirop); and preserves and pickles (Chow Chow, Hot Pepper Jelly) for the cook with canning fever. And Patout shows how to pull it all together, with menus for all occasions and a list of mail-order sources for fresh seafood and special ingredients. Adaptable, easy on the budget, and above all exciting, Patout's Cajun Home Cooking brings Cajun back towhere it originated -- the home kitchen.

With contributions from Karen Leathem, Patricia Kennedy Livingston, Michael Mizell-Nelson, Cynthia LeJeune Nobles, Sharon Stallworth Nossiter, Sara Roahen, and Susan Tucker New Orleans Cuisine: Fourteen Signature Dishes and Their HistoriesNew Orleans Cuisine shows how ingredients, ethnicities, cooks, chefs, and consumers all converged over time to make the city a culinary capital.

This step-by-step cookbook is packed with more than 450 favorite American recipes, from appetizers to desserts, that taste as delicious as ever, but meet today's nutritional guidelines. Each of these carefully tested recipes is easy to make, using modern timesaving tips and appliances to simplify the process. 200 color photos.

The Booklover's Guide to New Orleans is Susan Larson's delightfully informative response to questions most frequently asked her as book editor of the Times-Picayune. Tourists and locals alike want to know what to read, where authors lived, which bookstores to browse, and when literary festivals are scheduled. Now all the answers can be found in this one convenient volume, the only complete directory of New Orleans's "write life" available. Whether you are passing through the Big Easy, residing there, or longing to visit, these pages will heighten your experience of one of the most intoxicating places on the planet, taking you into countless nooks and crannies along its storied streets. Book jacket.

Paul and Angela Knipple's culinary tour of the contemporary American South celebrates the flourishing of global food traditions "down home." Drawing on the authors' firsthand interviews and reportage from Richmond to Mobile and enriched by a cornucopia of photographs and original recipes, the book presents engaging, poignant profiles of a host of first-generation immigrants from all over the world who are cooking their way through life as professional chefs, food entrepreneurs and restaurateurs, and home cooks. Beginning the tour with an appreciation of the South's foundational food traditions--including Native American, Creole, African American, and Cajun--the Knipples tell the fascinating stories of more than forty immigrants who now call the South home. Not only do their stories trace the continuing evolution of southern foodways, they also show how food is central to the immigrant experience. For these skillful, hardworking immigrants, food provides the means for both connecting with the American dream and maintaining cherished ethnic traditions. Try Father Vien's Vietnamese-style pickled mustard greens, Don Felix's pork ribs, Elizabeth Kizito's Ugandan-style plantains in peanut sauce, or Uli Bennevitz's creamy beer soup and taste the world without stepping north of the Mason-Dixon line.