In a Cajun Kitchen: Authentic Cajun Recipes and Stories from a Family Farm on the Bayou
A Cajun cookbook in a post-Katrina world is a delicate undertaking, but Wuerthner (Food for Life: The Cancer Prevention Cookbook) finds the right approach. In a soothing roux of memoir, gentle humor and classic dishes, she comforts the reader even as she turns up the spice. Family comes first, literally, with an opening section that lays out the author's family tree and its roots in their 120-year-old Louisiana farmland. Next comes a handy glossary and an exploration of the Cajun style of cookery. Wuerthner's recipes are mostly hearty hand-me-downs: from her father's first cousin, Madge, there's Pork Jambalaya, and Great-uncle Adolphe adapts a recipe from Central Grocery in New Orleans—Cayenne Roasted Pork Muffaletta, which employs the traditional olive salad. Her late Aunt Lorna, however, is the chief inspiration as well as the source for the majority of the concoctions. Her most intriguing choices include Chicken Maque Choux (a kind of stir-fry with corn and bell pepper). Wuerthner begins each recipe with a brief paragraph on what the dish means to her family and ends each with a lagniappe: for instance, readers learn that supposedly hush puppies got their name from outdoor cooks who offered fried batter "to keep the dogs from barking."(Oct.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.