It started as an innocent hobby. I'd pick a cookbook or two up at thrift stores and used bookstores when I was traveling or visiting my parents. Then I got a real job and had a bit of disposable income and so started filling the gaps in my cookbook collection, buying the ones that I had always longed for. Then I acquired books from the collections of others, including my aunts Flora and Anne, reader Kate and the mother of a friend of a friend. Suddenly my apartment was overflowing with cookbooks. I love the abundance of cookbooks, but at times it makes walking through the living room challenging.
So I was thrilled to discover on Shuna's blog that the Southern Food and Beverage Museum is in need of cookbook donations. They are located in New Orleans and lost more than half of their collection to Hurricane Katrina back in 2005. They are looking for new and used cookbooks that have something to do with Southern food, cooking and culture. I plan on culling my collection in order find anything that they might be interested in and putting together a package for them.
If you have some appropriate volumes in your collection, you can send your (fully tax-deductible) donations to:
Southern Food & Beverage Museum attn. Liz Williams 1 Poydras Street, #169 New Orleans, Louisiana 70130
Love cocktails? Spirits? Want to know how to make your own bitters, infused syrups or tinctures? Interested in bartending techniques or the history of the craft? Or, heck, do you like to drink? Brothers and sisters, have I got an event for you. . .
Tales Of The Cocktail is the only event of its kind. From July 16-20th bartenders, spirit representatives, notable authors, mixologists and enthusiastic barflies will gather in New Orleans to celebrate, attend seminars and drink a whole bunch of hooch. Tickets are available on the TOTC site. Hope to see you there.
Additionally, I've been invited to be a participating writer for the all-star blog site that they are putting together for the event, Talesblog.com. In the coming months, we will be previewing the events, seminars and notable participants of this wonderful event. I guarantee you won't find a giddier bunch.
New Orleans now offers a soulful culinary phenomenon that's more often seen on the streets of New York City or Los Angeles: taco trucks.
Residents of New Orleans have embraced the mobile taquerias' offerings, including al pastor and pork tacos. Some even go for the more exotic cow's head and tongue varieties, both of which are some of my favorites. Even though the public has warmed up to a type of restaurant little known before an influx of Latinos came to the state seeking reconstruction work, Jefferson Parish officials have recently banned the trucks. The new law gave vendors only 10 days to set up restrooms and washing stations. I've certainly wished for both of these amenities after wolfing down a few tacos de carnitas on the streets of Jackson Heights, Queens. But it's simply not going to happen. It should be pointed out that if my fair city banned the taco trucks, there's a fair chance that I'd soon find myself living in L.A.
But back to the story at hand. Jeff Parish pols raised concerns that the mobile kitchens are unsanitary, even though state health officials found nothing wrong. As the article I read pointed out, the taco trucks are embroiled in a food fight of sorts. To be sure, racisim also plays a role in the ban, but so does a concern that the cuisine of Puebla threatens the historic foodways of the Big Easy. New Orleans City Council President Oliver Thomas recently asked, "How do the tacos help gumbo?"
The burning question for me is something more along the lines of, "How soon can I get me a boudin noir taco?
The author of Tom Fitzmorris's New Orleans Food: More than 225 of the City's Best Recipes to Cook at Home, Tom Fitzmorris, was actually born on Mardi Gras in New Orleans, which certainly gets him brownie points in terms of heritage and, although that birth date didn't come with any guarantees, Fitzmorris certainly knows his stuff with it comes to NOLA foods. He is one of the leading food writers (if not the leading one) and restaurant critics in the area and runs the New Orleans Menu website that keeps tabs on the reopenings of restaurants in the wake of hurricane Katrina.
Getting back to the book, it has a great collection of food favorites from Crescent City. Most have been updated to suit modern tastes and to cater to some more modern food trends (small plates, for example), the dishes are basically staples of the area, the types of food that residents already know and love. Drago's Charbroiled Oysters and Cajun Smothered Duck are two of the more regionally-familiar recipes, while everyone will recognize Bananas Foster and Beignets. Whether you're interested in trying New Orleans' cuisine for the first time or are already a fan, you probably can't go too far wrong with this volume.
It has taken a long time to rebuild, but the point is that they have done it, and still are. After the devastation left behind by Hurricane Katrina, one of New Orleans' landmarks, The Commander's Palace, on the corner of Coliseum and Washington off of St. Charles in New Orleans' upscale Garden District, will be re-opening this weekend. Sunday, October 1 will be service of their first brunch since being hit by Katrina in August of last year.
No, the rotund New Orleans-inflected celebrity chef will not be rocketing beyond the earth's atmosphere, but his food will.
Next week astronauts on the International Space Station will dine on a menu that Lagasse began crafting more than 18 months ago. The chef will chat with the astronauts next Thursday as they chow down on Mardi Gras Jambalaya, kicked up mashed potatoes with bacon, green beans with garlic, rice pudding, and mixed fruit. UPI's press release notes without a hint of irony that Lagasse is the first star chef to develop recipes served in outer space. It seems that's not entirely true. Alain Ducasse, one of haute cuisine's most successful chefs, has been working with the European Space Agency to give astronauts a taste of fine dining.
Perhaps we can look forward to freeze-dried meals from chefs coming to science museums sometime in the future. God knows they have to be better than Astronaut Ice Cream.
Since Mardi Gras
is coming up on Tuesday, we've been making all kinds of Creole, Cajun, and purely-for-Fat Tuesday dishes in the Slashfood
kitchens this past weekend.
Jambalaya is a rice-based dish that is popular in the American
South, and is most often associated with New Orleans. If you've been paying attention to out study of Cajun vs. Creole cuisines, you know
that jambalaya is common to both.
It's not clear where the name "jambalaya" comes from. Some say it is derived from French word
"jambon" for ham, "a la," and an African word, "yaya," for rice. Personally, I think it
just means a "jumble" of rice, vegetables, and whatever chicken, pork, and crustaceans you have lying around,
because that's what it looks like in the pot and on the plate.
At the heart of jambalaya is rice, spice, and the "Holy Trinity," chopped onions, bell peppers,
and celery. From there, every recipe for jambalaya takes on the personality of its cook. It can be made on the stove
top or in the oven, it can be soupy or stew-y, it can have chicken or ham or sausage or crustaceans or all of the
above. It's all up to you.
Every Monday at every restaurant in New Orleans, Chef Bobo tells us, red beans & rice is on the lunch menu. It's delicious, hearty, and cheap when you've blown your Friday paycheck on a weekend of partying. Last night, Chef Bobo threw a dinner at The Calhoun School in Manhattan to benefit the victims of Hurricane Katrina, and red beans & rice was a featured dish. The recipe is online at NPR; I wouldn't suggest using just any turkey kielbasa, an andouille-style sausage is mandatory for the "right" flavor here.
Have you ever stashed a Coke in the freezer, hoping to chill it quickly, then forgotten all about it, only to have it explode all over your frozen peas?
Love cocktails? Spirits? Want to know how to make your own bitters, infused syrups or tinctures? Interested in bartending techniques or the history of the craft? Or, heck, do you like to drink? Brothers and sisters, have I got an event for you. . .
New Orleans now offers a soulful culinary phenomenon that's more often seen on the streets of New York City or Los Angeles: taco trucks.
Wow.
No, the rotund New Orleans-inflected celebrity chef will not be rocketing beyond the earth's atmosphere, but his food will. 
Since Mardi Gras
is coming up on Tuesday, we've been making all kinds of 
A fraking amazing Battlestar Galactica cake
Iced Tea 101
Pierogies + cheese + onions + kraut = Parmageddon!
