Cooking Up a Storm: Recipes Lost and Found from The Times-Picayune of New Orleans

As a Louisiana native who LOVES to cook, I cannot recommend this book highly enough. I started reading cookbooks and menus for fun as a small child and learned traditional Southern recipes from my mother and grandmother, but soon branched out to other cuisines. I didn't return to my roots until I found myself halfway across the country, homesick and hankering for some home cooking! Armed with an arsenal of family recipes and a growing collection of cookbooks, I've introduced all my friends to the wonders of Cajun and Creole cuisine. I bought this for myself as a special treat, and read it cover to cover. I've never been so touched while reading a cookbook - the introduction is heartrendingly beautiful. The recipes are wonderfully varied and FANTASTIC - everything I've tried so far has been exactly as I remembered! This cookbook is a treasure!

I've been looking for a great New Orleans cookbook and this seemed a likely candidate so I ordered it. I am very impressed. There are a lot of recipes I've never seen anywhere else, and much emphasis on spices and good flavors. I was going to wait until I tried a few recipes but I wanted to write about the recipe I made today. My entire family loved it and the dogs have been following us around all evening, in hopes of getting more of a taste of it than just licking the plate. They don't normally follow us like this.I made Brenda Huchingson's Holiday Casserole. It is a wonderfully flavored stuffing mixture, with sausage, carrots, nuts, apple, onion, dried cranberry, whole grain bread, broth and spices, layered with cooked chicken as a main dish casserole. I've always thought my own stuffing recipe was great but this recipe blows mine out of the water, no contest. The stuffing could also be used as a stuffing for chicken, turkey or pork by itself.I'm looking forward to trying more recipes but this book is well worth it for just the Holiday Casserole. This recipe is a keeper!I'll update this review as I try more recipes.

This is a surprisingly good cookbook. Its genesis was the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, at which time many displaced people wrote in to the New Orleans Times Picayune seeking recipes that were once published in the paper and which they had now lost due to the storm. The editor compiled the most-requested recipes into this book with a short narrative about it. I have tried several of them and they have all been great. My favorite is the McMann School Brownies, a very easy, from-scratch recipe for the best brownies you ever ate.

I received this book years ago as a gift from a friend from N.O. I absolutely loved it then lost it in a car fire! Then when I went to New Orleans myself, I purchased two more but left them in a cab on my way to the airport! I was so happy that I found a copy on Amazon and purchased it straight away. There are so many wonderful recipes and heartwarming stories preceding each one. A clever title for a book that not only captures the essence of Cajun Cooking, but also the resiliency of the people from Southeast Louisiana. Quite possibly my favorite cookbook!!!

I am a native New Orleanian, born raised and educated there, but moved away for work. I still have family there, and tons of friends who lost so much during Katrina. What a wonderful idea to publish the many lost recipes of the city residents--and to publish a collection for all to enjoy? Fortunately, we did not lose our cherished family recipes, but it is nice to have a collection of recipes of dishes that I have had at friends' homes, school, or church events. No, this is not for the novice to Creole and Cajun cooking, nor is this necessarily Creole/Cajun cuisine. It represents what the ordinary Orleanian makes at home. New Orleans isn't just about French derived dishes, but a mixture of the local ingredients plus a healthy injection of Italian, Spanish, Irish, Carribean, Native American and even Chinese and Korean influences. I have yet to visit or live in a city that embraces good food at so many different levels. You do not have to be wealthy to enjoy a fantastic meal here. Sometimes the best meals are those 'by ya mama's', and the recipes in this cookbook are just that, the recipe's of one's own mother.

I was in the New Orleans area during and after Katrina. As a first responder I saw first hand how the storm devastated homes and lives. So on an emotional level this cookbook touched me, and I ordered it.Once I received it I couldn't put it down. It was an instant reconnection to the New Orleans I'd grown to love as my second home.Whoever posted that these recipes are not true revelations of New Orleans cusine, obviously never lived here. The day after I received the cook book I took it to work with me. When the book was returned to me several hours later, it was well thumbed, the spine was starting to bow, and one person told me she was ordering one book for herself and one for her daughter.This is Southern Louisiana food at its best! It is now my primary cookbook. Thank you, and Thank you Times Picayune for returning to us our New Orleans food heritage.

99% of the houses in my community were flooded when the levees failed during and after Katrina, ALL of our possessions were lost. Cooking in Louisiana is almost a religion, much like politics and football, not having family recipes is a big thing to us. The Times-Picayune( picayune-a small coin) newspaper received many requests for lost recipes, over the years they had run weekly columns with favorite local recipes for everyone to share, they were our only hope in trying to recreate a little bit of home by way of favorite cooking. This printing, in book form, of some of the most requested recipes was a god-send to many in the area. The book is invaluable to the people of southeast Louisiana and the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, giving them the ability to once again create for their families great comfort food. All who like to cook will be glad to have this book on their cookbook shelf.