Customer Reviews

The Top 100 Cajun Recipes of All Time

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My wife and I are avid fans of Cajun and Zydeco music, and we take trips to Louisiana as often as possible to go to festivals and dance. On one of our trips we stopped by The Cajun General Store in Lafayette to do some souveneir shopping. I spied "The 100 best Cajun Recipes of All Time" on a book rack. It was a humble little pamphlet and very reasonably priced. I figured that any book that made that boast for so little a financial risk was worth a try. That gamble paid off with years of great eating.

I haven't tried all the recipes, only about 20. Not only have I not been disappointed, I have eaten some of the best food of my entire life. You won't find Paul Prudhomme in this cook book, but you will find Manning "Pete" Broussard of Lafayette Parish. Never heard of him. Well, don't feel bad, no one outside of his family has probably heard of him either. You see, these recipes were collected by Acadiana Magazine over a period of 20 plus years. The were sent in by true Cajuns who probably learned the recipes from their family members who had been perfecting them for generations. Most of the recipes are very simple. For example, there is a chicken stew recipe that I frequently make, and most of the time, I only need to buy chicken to have everything I need to prepare it. If you follow the instructions, you really do not need to be a great cook to prepare great Cajun food. But you do need patience, because most of the recipes require several hours to be prepared right.

I can't emphasize enough what a great buy this book is. If you like to eat great comfort food, you will be forever grateful that you purchased it. If you don't believe me, try this recipe and see if you are convinced.

Chicken Stew

2 tablespoons butter - 1/2 cup flour - 1 onion, chopped - 1 bellpepper, choppped - 1 rib of celery, chopped - 1/2 cup of chopped parsley - 2 cups of water - 1 chicken, cut up - Salt and pepper to taste - 1 teaspoon of garlic salt.

1. Make a roux by blending butter and flour in a sauce pan and continuously stirring over medium high heat until dark brown. Stir vigourously and don't burn.

2. Add everything and cook until the chicken is boiled off the bone. Cull out all the bones, cartiledge and skin. Serve over rice.

Mrs. Mary Colar Franklin, (St. Mary Parish)

As a native of South Louisiana, I love Cajun cooking and have long read the Acadiana magazine, and saved recipes from it. This little cookbook takes thebest from the magazine. These are the basic recipes that we love--gumbo, etoufee, bisque, all the favorites of the region. There is a section for cooking game for those who like it. After traveling around this country and some places in Europe, I think the best food anywhere is South Louisiana Cajun cooking! I may be a bit biased, but someone must agree with me, since Cajun has become so popular. We were in a pub inEngland and Cajun food was on the menu. The book is simple and there are no pictures, but the recipes are easy to follow. For the price, well worth it.

This is the best of Cajun cookbooks. The recipes are easy to do and the flavor and taste is pure LA!! AWESOME BOOK!

`The Top 100 Cajun Recipes of All Time' from the editors of `acadiana profile' and `The Justin Wilson Cookbook' are two excellent little sources for Cajun (Arcadian) recipes. Their primary value lies in both their relative authenticity and in their low cost. For a more complete source of `relatively authentic' Cajun recipes at a slightly higher cost for over twice as many recipes, I suggest `Cajun Cuisine' from the Beau Bayou Publishing Company.

It's interesting that all these books come from very local sources. In this regard, they share a characteristic of some of the best Pennsylvania Dutch cookbooks. This is easily understandable, as unlike `Southern' cooking and `Tex-Mex' cooking, Cajun and Pennsylvania Dutch cooking both come from just a few counties in just one state (Louisiana and Pennsylvania respectively).

While both of these books are inexpensive and `kitchen friendly' (will lie flat on the kitchen table while you cook), there are some important differences. The `Top 100' book is simply recipes and nothing but recipes. Justin Wilson's book has fewer recipes (and NO INDEX!) but lots of homey observations so familiar to anyone who saw him on his PBS cooking shows. Another big difference is that in spite of the fact that Wilson was an `amateur' cook, he was an `amateur' in much the same way as Julia Child was an `amateur', in that they did not cook in professional (restaurant) kitchens, but they knew a whole lot about cooking technique and their technique did show a lot of professional touches. To be sure, Child was a much more accomplished teacher and literally a more accomplished researcher into her chosen field than Wilson, whose primary attraction was not `technique', but `bon hommine' (sic).

Two things which set Wilson apart from `The Top 100' is his use of stocks and his cooking with wine. Wine certainly appears in some `Top 100' recipes, but it appears in almost half of Wilson's recipes and many recipes are named for their use of wine (even the French have just a few recipes named for their use of wine).

The biggest question I have about `The Top 100' is whether this means the best recipes of the 100, or the 100 most distinctively Cajun recipes. Since the latter is much less subjective, it would be much more valuable than the former, as one can always use the book to find the most distinctively Cajun recipes and feel free to improve on them. The introduction suggests that the editors had both objectives in mind. I will concede to them the claim that these are the 100 most typical Cajun recipes, as no one should be in a better position to know than a local publisher of local recipes which has been in the business for many years.

On the question of quality, I remain agnostic, but I will do a little survey on my favorite recipe, the turtle soup, to see if there is a chance that `The Top 100' does have `the best recipe'. First, a look at the recipe itself reveals that it is truly a recipe for the amateur cook, as it does not use a prepared stock, unlike both Justin Wilson, Emeril Lagasse (see `Emeril's Delmonico'), and Paul Prudhomme (see `Chef Paul Prudhomme's Louisiana Kitchen'). Thus, it reflects a home kitchen that does not have the resources to prepare stock in advance or a nearby supermarket with ample supplies of chicken stock. It's interesting to see the progression of complexity from the home recipes to Lagasse to Prudhomme to the ultimate classic French recipe in `The Escoffier Cookbook'. On the basis of this little survey, I have to believe that one should qualify the book's title to be `The Best 100 HOME Cooked Cajun Recipes of All Time'. This is evident from the fact that almost all recipes have a source of a local Louisiana home cook! It's also interesting to see the progression in this series from no stock to chicken stock (Wilson and Lagasse) to combination of chicken and turtle stock (Prudhomme) to pure turtle stock (Escoffier).

One thing I notice in both books which simply has never come up in all the hours I have spent watching Emeril on the Food Network. This is the common use of `oil' rather than either butter or pork fat in many recipes. Wilson goes further to specify olive oil, and this is well before we all became familiar with how good olive oil and the whole `Mediterranean diet' was for us. It would be the ultimate irony to find that Justin Wilson's red wine and olive oil recipes were `healthy'.

To make up for this, there is also a fairly common use of `prepared' staples here, such as `American cheese', Worchestershire sauce and Lea and Perrins sauce. (What is surprising is to see Emeril use `A1' sauce also in his Turtle Soup). `The Top 100' uses a bit less of the prepared stuff, but does use `oleo' more often. Please replace `oleo' with real butter. It's actually better for you.

Both books fully embody everything I ever heard about `Cajun' cooking, most especially the use of the trinity of onions, celery and sweet peppers (replacing the French carrots in the classic mirepoix). Even where the three are not used together, celery and sweet peppers seem to find their way into just about everything, especially given the high number of braised and casseroled dishes using lots of aromatics.

I confess that like Jean Shepherd's writing, Justin Wilson's Cajun accent and wry expressions simply don't come across as well in print as they do on the screen, so the extras in his book have limited value.

For the price, I recommend both; however, `The Top 100' may have a longer shelf life.