Customer Reviews

Who's Your Mama, Are You Catholic and Can You Make a Roux: A Family Album Cookbook

5 star:		(9)
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3 star:		(1)
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Unless you live in Louisiana you've probably discovered Marcelle Bienvenu by watching Food TV's "Emeril Live." When it comes to cajun/creole food, she's the real deal. Who's Your Mama... is an excellent seasonal based regional cookbook. It's also a warm, charming memoir of life in a large family in Southern Louisiana. Bienvenu brings serious credentials to the table. In addition to this book and several others co-authored with celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse, she writes a food column for the New Orleans Times-Picayune and is a former restaurant owner. The cookbook contains a wealth of cajun classics. In addition, the memoir of times and events and their ties to food in the kitchen may well remind you of Marcel Pagnol's novels of life in Provence or Laurie Colwin's delicious essays on food and eating. A delightful book.

These recipes are very easy to prepare but the tastes are rich and complex. I have been very impressed with the quality. Try the recipe on page 73 for "Shrimp Stew at the Point". It is truly fantastic!!!!!! I bought it because of the funny title but I have really been impressed with the content. This is a must for all Cajun and Creole afficianados!

My mamma's a Crochet, I am Catholic and my husband and I can each make a roux. I, also, am Cajun, know Marcelle and can attest to the authenticity of the recipes and accompanying stories. Many try to capitalize on the Cajun food craze, but few are the real deal. The only thing better than the recipes in Marcelle's book is enjoying them with she and her husband over dinner from their kitchen.

Unlike other cookbooks in this genre, Marcelle Bienvenu does not bow to any trends, heat spicings to absurd extremes or present a faux version of what Louisiana cooking is all about. Bienvenu presents recipes for foods that she loves and grew up on, with wonderful stories that genuinely enhance your enjoyment of the food.

Rather than pontificate about this wonderful collection of recipes, I would simply urge you to just buy this book, invite friends over for breakfast, and make her recipe for baked grits. I promise, you will never look at grits the same way again!

This book is a compendium of recipes that the author has collected over the years but it is also a book that helps you understand the area around New Orleans. It is a fun read and the recipes are marvelous! I have never met the author of this book but would love to meet some day, preferably over a good pot of gumbo for a lively discussion of the region's most famous past time - good eating!

Yay!

Finally the new hardcover edition of this wonderful book is out, and it's only around $20 bucks. Now I can get copies for the whole family. Amazon has them using isbn 0925417556.

Enjoy

As a Cajun descendant raised on courtboullion, gumbo and rice dressing, I found this to the most authentic Cajun "home-cooking" recipe book with dishes popular with Cajuns but not necessarily thought of as Cajun, like snowy white coconut cake.

Marcelle Bienvenu uses her two greatest talents, writing and cooking to take the reader/cook on a journey back through her childhood, meeting her late father, her mother and siblings along the way, and she supplies the recipes that made many of their life's moments special. The recipes are easy to read, follow and fix and will produce rave results. I love the way she specifically explains how long to cook the filling for mini crawfish pies "cook until a fine glaze appears on the mixture." Perfect results; fabulous food and stories to warm your heart.
-Martha Hardcastle Guthrie

Although I wasn't raised in Lousiana, I love the food, and I love this book. The home recipes and the family memoirs are too good to put down, in the kitchen or the easy chair. If you only buy one cajun cookbook, buy this one.

Who's Your Mama, Are You Cajun, And Can You Make a Roux? is one of the absolute best cookbooks I own and I own hundreds of cookbooks. An absolute must for anyone who loves to cook, especially if you like Cajun cooking. I give this to friends who like to cook and they all love it. The stories and family history in it are as interesting as anything you'll ever read.

A great title and great unofficial advertising on Emeril Live. But it could have been much more diverse. I relize that was not the point of the book. But there had to be some recipes that people comonly made but were not creole. I guess I would have liked one or two exotic recipes.