Louisiana Real & Rustic

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Description: In Louisiana Real and Rustic, Emeril Lagasse, the prize-winning New Orleans chef, cookbook author, and television cooking personality presents the great dishes of his adopted state in ISO down-home recipes—authentic versions of some of America's favorite regional dishes, gathered from generations of Louisiana cooks. Fricassees, etouffees and grillades, meat pies and oyster fries, red beans and rice, and jambalayas and gumbos in endless, mouthwatering variety -- each recipe is spiced with the unabashed joy of cooking and eating that makes every Louisiana meal a feast. 

On a delicious tour of back roads and bayous, from country cabins in Acadia to the refined town houses of Creole aristocracy, Emeril, accompanied by co-author Marcelle Bienvenu, finds that Louisiana is more than a geographical state—it's a culinary state of grace. It is a garden land of peppers, pecans, oranges, yams, rice, tomatoes, and mirlitons, and a watery paradise, teeming with oysters, shrimp and crawfish, redfish, trout, snapper, and crabs. 

Emeril traces the roots of Creole and Acadian (or"Cajun") dishes, and honors the pioneering cooks who blended traditional tastes and techniques with the region's native ingredients. He shows how gumbos can use French roux, African okra, or file from the indigenous Indians and he features Chicken and Oyster, Duck and Wild Mushroom, Shrimp and Okra, and Rabbit, or even collards, kale, mustard, and turnips. Emeril's explorations reveal that the spirit of culinary improvisation still thrives today. On board his Lafitte skiff on Bayou Lafource, an old fisherman prepares Seafood Gumbo for Emeril -- loaded with shrimp, crabmeat, and oysters plucked that day from the Gulf of Mexico. 

Nowhere are big black iron pots put to more loving use than in Acadia, and Louisiana Real and Rustic offers dozens of soups, stews, gumbos, jambalayas, etouffees, and fricassees -- all hearty one-pot meals to remember. Creole Onion Soup, Oyster Stew, Crawfish Bisque, and Fricassee of Pork and Turnips are simple, hearty home favorites. Etouffee means "smothered," or cooked in pan juices, and with Shrimp or Crawfish Etouffee, Chicken Smothered in Onions, Smothered Okra and Tomatoes, or simply Smothered Cabbage, only steamed rice is needed to complete an Acadian feast. Rice, the great grain of Louisiana, is also the heart and soul of heavenly jambalaya and rice dressings (or "dirty rice"), like Shrimp and Ham Jambalaya, Andouille and Chicken Jambalaya, and Wild Pecan Rice Dressing. 

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Condition: Good condition.