A diverting hodgepodge of family recipes (some good, some mediocre) and techniques

books:


	• The Prudhomme Family Cookbook: Old-Time Louisiana Recipes by the Eleven Prudhomme Brothers and Sisters and ... Paul Prudhomme William Morrow & Co, 1987 - 446 pages average customer review:based on 9 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A Must Have - It's out of print; if you can find it BUY IT

This book has changed my taste buds forever. The food is SO good! IT takes a little more work than most of today's cookbooks, but the results are worth it. If you like food, you need this book.

Good food from a wonderful family!

Grew up for part of my childhood in Opalousas LA. We had a local restaurant run by this great family in one of the near-by towns. They used to test out new recipes on my mother and father, but the desserts were always tested by me! This was a wonderful and loving family, full of fun and good food. thank you Prudhommes for the wonderful childhood memories!!! I'm sad that your book is out of print.

Now for others on Amazon. This is REAL cajun food. YOu get a lot of stuff that is buffed up to be cajun because it is supposedly spicey, and contains a few ingredients such as andoille sausage. But truthfully that does not make it cajun!!! Cajun food is supposed to be a mixture of creole, french and carribean influences -- but it is not those foods just mixed up together!!!! You cannot borrow this and borrow that! Cajun food is part of a culture, one of the many diverse cultures that make up our dearest US. So if you want to learn authentic, delicious Cajun cooking, pick up the Prudhomme Family Cookbook and Paul Pruhomme's Louisiana Cooking or Tastes of Louisiana.

This cook-book (written by the whole family)is a treasure, and unforetunately it's out of print. I would highly recommend buying it used even. I must own 20-30 cook-books, and yet I always borrow this one from my mom when I want cajun food.

Great book!! Should be back in print! And you can see a bit about Paul in Bon Appetite this month as well. He and his family are a generous lot.

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Prudhomme's Best

Unfortunately out-of-print, this great book contains many, many recipes from Chef Paul Prudhomme's family, along with a few from the King of Blackening himself. Meticulously detailed to ensure good results, the recipes are all failproof. Some recipes, however, serve better as conversation pieces than actual things you'd want to make. Hog's head cheese? I shudder to think. Red boudin ( made with fresh pork blood )? Eeek! All the same, the coconut cake recipe is really excellent, worth preparing your own fresh coconut for. A must for serious Cajun cooking fans.

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The Prudhomme Family Cookbook

This spectacular Cookbook is sadly out of print. I have seen it here on Amazon.com though. Be sure to purchase your copy before they are all gone. I am a big fan of Chef Paul Prudhomme, my entire family is actually. We have all of his cookbooks. This particular book contains some of our favorites. We recommend the Jambalayas. There are several different variations. The Shrimp & Crabmeat Jambalaya is terrific. It's not a spicy Jambalaya so you might want to add some of the optional hot peppers as described in the recipe. We sure did, Wow what a difference it makes. The Fried Green Tomatoes are a wonderful tart snack or side dish. Green tomatoes can be hard to find, try your local farmers market or health food stores that sell fresh produce. These are definately worth the effort it takes to find them.

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A diverting hodgepodge of family recipes (some good, some mediocre) and techniques

Paul Prudhomme is a well known celebrity chef in the Louisiana cajun/creole culinary scene, as well as a prolific author. This particular book has some interesting information, but it's not one of my favorites.

What I liked:

* There's some good historical information on some old regional specialties that are slowly disappearing ... blood sausage, hog boucherie, salting/pickling/canning meat, etc. Some of this information is not particularly useful or practical for modern suburban cooks (who lack access to fresh pig blood and who have refrigerators and thus no longer need to salt/pickle/can stuff to preserve it), but it's important and interesting stuff that deserves to be preserved ... touchstones from a slowly vanishing era & sub-culture.

* The recipes are no-frills, stick-to-your-guts, feed a hardworking blue collar rural family type fare ... and ya gotta appreciate and respect that. Many of the recipes are well honed, and have the patina of age to them, and will always have their rightful place on the American table.

* There's some good instructional information that many other co-called 'cajun' cooks gloss over ... things like extensive tips of making, storing and using various types of roux, tips for cleaning (and eating) crawfish, etc.

What I disliked:

* PHOTOS: There are none ... only a small scattering of indifferently drawn B&W sketchs. Call me spoiled, but I like books with glossy photos, so that I have a general idea what finished dishes are *supposed* look like, presentation-wise. I also like photos, because it helps me 'windowshop' for recipes that I'd like to try ... that way I can see at a glance if it's something I'd be interested in, rather than having to read through a recipe at length in order to get a general feel for its style/approach/flavor. If I'm paying a premium for a hardbound book, then surely the publisher can include some work by a food photographer.

* COVER SHOT: Another thing that never fails to irk me is books that have photos of dishes on the cover that don't appear anywhere in the book. Case in point - this book features a photo of a whole roasted piglet on the jacket ... something I was interested in attempting for a BBQ I was planning at the time, so I bought the book. You guessed it - nadda. Zip. Zilch. Not mentioned anywhere, not even in the small print buried up front in the publisher's legaleze. Typical bait & switch 'teaser' photo, to entice readers. I wrote the publisher a ... ahem ... nice note about that goof.

* SCOPE & POLISH: This is just a book of some assorted family recipes - it's hardly an exhaustive treatise on cajun cooking, and recipes were duplicated faithfully rather than updated or polished in any way to achieve improved results ... the result is many recipes are lackluster and out-dated. Forget about modern appliances like food processors - this is chop/grind it all by hand cookin. Anyway, just because a given recipe documents the way grandma did it forever, doesn't mean that it's the best, tastiest, or easiest recipe ... as anyone who's serious about cooking will rapidly attest.

Anyway, it's a decent, if unspectacular and rather dated book.

Add a star if you're an old fashioned Louisana dirt farmer, age 50+, who raises pigs on/near the bayou, sans phone or electricity.

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reviews: page 1, 2

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