Christmas Gifts Creole Cajun Cookbooks

The one to give this year is Chef John D. Folse's Encyclopedia of Cajun and Creole Cuisine. Nine pounds twelve and a half ounces, 850 pages 700 recipes difinitive work in the field. Quantities limited. $49.95 plus shipping of $6.50 from New Orleans in to the continental U.S. kwitchen1@aol.com or kwcookbooks.com for complete listings of Creole Cajun and Louisiana cookbooks.

Cookbooks in Creole country: Ruby Slippers

Ruby Slippers is the product of a disaster. Amy Cyrex Sins, a twenty nine year old New Orleans native came back from exile to find her home destroyed. For reasons of her own, she collected stories and recipes from her beloved city and local cooks and chefs and put them into one vollume, using profits to help costal restoration. In full four color photographs she cronicles the food, family, culture and life after Katrina. Panned rabbit with Satsuma Sauce, Sweet Potato Salad, Muffulettas and even Bayona's Grilled Shrimp with Corriander Sauce and Black Bean Cake. Other favorites include Granny's Peanut Brittle, Ponchatula Stawberry Shortcake and de Bess Bread Pudding. Hard cover 219 pages. $35.00 plus s&h from kwcookbooks .com

Chef Paul Prudhomme's Louisiana Kitchen

Written in 1984 this brilliant cookbook is in it's 87th printing. 351 pages including the index. Color photos on dishes and rouxs and how to blacken a redfish. The book took two years to write because at that time Chef Pual did not measure ingredients. And so, Paulette Rittenberg tested and retested each recipe to get them right. As a consequence, all spice mixtures are broken down by ingredient... a lovely touch. I tell people that Chef Paul wrote the book like a prisoner of war: he gave away all secrets---red beans, gumbo, jambalaya, crawfish ettoufee, BBQ shrimp etc etc. The book has a section on salads and dressings and the remoulade sauce is the blueprint for all remoulades used here now. Also a section on breads and rolls AND a dessert section that includes a sweet potato pecan pie to make your mouth drool! For us, this is the standard for all Creole Cajun cookbooks to be compared to. $28.00 plus s&h