I never intended to leave this blog for two and a half weeks, but sometimes that’s the way life rolls. I recently started working out of the home again, an arrangement that leaves me not as much time for messing in the kitchen. But I have been enjoying reading cookbooks, particularly since my family was so generous this year with another foodie Christmas. An early present was Chef John Besh’s My New Orleans. My husband took me to a book signing where we met the great chef and purchased a copy of his book which he signed. We had hoped to snap a quick picture of him, but the gracious Mrs. Besh insisted we let her take the photo of all three of us.
My New Orleans, The Cookbook: 200 of My Favorite Recipes & Stories from My Hometown is just as ambitious yet accessible as its title. It’s a book that’s one part recipes and one part stories, stories of how John Besh’s love for food, cooking and sharing has grown out of the region into which he was born and from the forces, attitudes and experiences that shaped who he is today, experiences like fishing and hunting in and around the bayous, cooking through Europe and raising his own produce and protein for his restaurants. This book takes us through a year of cooking and eating in New Orleans, from winter’s harvest of crawfish and celebration of Mardi Gras with dishes such as Jalapeno Cheese Grits and King Cake through shrimp and speckled trout seasons, to summer’s bounty of vegetables and fruits, into crab season, and the time to forage for mushrooms, to oyster season, gumbo weather, and Thanksgiving and on to a traditional Christmas-time standing rib roast and bread pudding with brown butter sticky rum sauce named for his son Brendan. The recipes in each chapter accompany a narrative in which Besh shares how he came to love this total way of cooking and living immersed in the process of hunting, fishing, planting, feeding and harvesting one’s own food before cooking it gently and sharing with others. If I could live a year in his world, it would be an enriching year indeed. Along the way, vintage photographs, images from his family collection, and food photos by photographer Ditte Isager so clear you think you can smell what’s on the plate beckon you further into this massive volume.
Prior to embarking on his journey through a year of food, New Orleans-style, Besh shares the building blocks of his cooking, Basic Recipes for roux, stocks, pan sauces, Creole spices, vinaigrettes, remoulade, and more. These recipes are the backbone of many dishes in his repertoire. It may seem a little daunting to have to prepare a recipe in order to prepare another recipe, but when Besh explains how to save the bits and bones and scraps of ingredients to make the stocks and sauces, it doesn’t seem out of my realm of possibility to do so. Besides, I imagine there is no substitute for carefully prepared Basic Shrimp Stock.
The prescriptive detail of his recipes—he instructs us to cook ingredients separately or in a certain order and combine them at the end; for example even in a dish simply titled August Chopped Salad, he says to “blanch the chanterelles, baby carrots, baby turnips, potatoes, and asparagus separately and in that order”—may seem overwhelming and slightly pedantic, but what it really demonstrates is his respect for the ingredients and his careful attention to extracting the best flavor and texture from them.
When I read the recipes in the chapter titled “Boucherie”—the hog slaughter—I was a bit nonplussed. Directions for cooking a whole pig’s head and for making boudin noir, or blood sausage, using two cups of fresh pork blood, are a bit out of my reach. I have no idea where I’d even buy the requisite ingredients. But when I turned back a few pages to the chapter’s narrative, I understood that he included these recipes because they come from his heritage. His grandfather’s tales of butchering hogs are tales of self-reliance and survival. They are stories of families and neighbors working together to ensure they all had enough meat to last all year. There are lessons of thriftiness and mastery over ingredients that these pioneers taught the next generations. And now Chef Besh has put them in this book with clear directions and amazing photos that bring the earthiness of the process back to us. It’s important to preserve these techniques and recipes for future generations. Chef Besh’s penchant for educating his cooks and chefs and all the rest of us makes this possible. This way of life will not die. In fact, it is thriving.
In spite of the ambition of several sections of this book, in spite of its armchair-cook-quality in places, my copy is studded with strips of blue sticky notes stuck to recipes I want to try: Rice Calas [rice balls] with Blackberry Filling; Beignets; Wild Strawberry Flambée over Lemon Ricotta-Filled Crêpes; Pasta Milanese; Besh Barbecue Shrimp; Chanterelles, Chicken, and [ricotta] Dumplings; Busters [soft-shelled crabs] and Grits; Oyster Gratin with Horseradish and Parmesan; Hot Blueberry Pie; and Cornmeal White Chocolate Biscotti. I have already made his Basic Cornbread, and it truly was the best I’ve ever made, with a crisp crust and a tender middle. I was also pleased to see his directions for cooking a perfect fried egg, something for which I have been on a quest for quite some time. I like the white to be tender, not rubbery, and with no brown on the bottom, and a yolk that oozes voluptuously when broken with a fork on the plate. Following his directions to the letter yielded me exactly what I was looking for.
Throughout the book, you’ll find Master Recipes for Crawfish Étouffée; Shrimp, Chicken, and Andouille Jambalaya; Crab Bisque; Drew’s Chicken and Smoked Sausage Gumbo; and Beef Daube Glacée (Terrine of Beef Short Ribs). These recipes present Besh’s signature dishes and preparing them will provide an education right into the heart of how he cooks his French-inspired Cajun and Creole cuisine, with respect for where ingredients come from.
The people of New Orleans have prided themselves for living on the edge. The hurricane of 2005, no matter whose fault the terrible aftermath was, may have set them back, but it did not squelch their determination to enjoy the lifestyle their region allows. Chef John Besh is on a mission to restore to New Orleans its culture, people, and food sources, yea, its very self-esteem. My New Orleans is a gastronomical autobiography of literary and epic culinary proportions, and if there is the occasional touch of loftiness in how he raves about the advantages of breeding his own pigs over opening a package of pork chops, it’s hard to fault him for an enthusiasm born of a lifetime of handling, cooking, eating and sharing the bounty of a region he has always called home. His New Orleans can become mine, if only in small measure, as I test and taste the flavors and spirit of his recipes.
Basic Corn Bread
from My New Orleans, by John Besh
3 tablespoons rendered bacon fat
1 cup white cornmeal, organic if possible
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 pinch cayenne pepper
2 eggs
1 ¼ cups milk
2 tablespoons butter, melted
1. Put the bacon fat into a medium (about 9-inch-diameter) cast-iron skillet. Put the skillet into the oven and preheat the oven to 425˚.
2. Combine the cornmeal, flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and cayenne in a large mixing bowl.
3. Put the eggs, milk, and melted butter into a small bowl and mix well.
4. Pour the egg mixture into the cornmeal mixture, stirring until just combined.
5. Carefully remove the hot skillet from the oven and pour the batter into the skillet. Return the skillet to the oven and bake the corn bread until it is deep golden brown, 15-20 minutes. Serve immediately.
Oeufs au Plat (Fried Eggs)
from My New Orleans, by John Besh
2 teaspoons softened butter
2 eggs
2 pinches salt
1. Rub a room-temperature 9-inch skillet with the butter. Place the skillet on the burner without turning it on. Crack the eggs into the skillet on opposite sides of the pan from each other.
2. Turn the heat on to medium-low and cook the eggs until the whites have coagulated and turned opaque. Season the eggs with salt.
Mmm....cornbread. Yum!
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