Product Description

Emeril Lagasse fuses the rich traditions of Creole cookery with the best of America's regional cuisines and adds a vibrant new palette of tastes, ingredients, and styles. The heavy sauces, the long-cooked roux, and the smothered foods that were the heart of old-style New Orleans cooking have been replaced by simple fresh ingredients and easy cooking techniques with a light touch. Emeril serves up a masterpiece in his first cookbook, Emeril's New New Orleans Cooking.

Emeril offers not only hundred of easy-to-prepare recipes, but plenty of professional tips, shortcuts, and useful information about stocking your own New Orleans pantry and making your own seasonings.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #472574 in Books
• Published on: 1993-04-22
• Released on: 1993-04-22
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 368 pages

Amazon.com Review
New Orleans is all about food, and for centuries it has been dominated by two distinct styles, Cajun and Creole. For the uninitiated, Cajun food came out of the bayou and off the farms of southern Louisiana. Creole developed in the city with a healthy dose of European influence. Étoufées, crawfish bisque, gumbos, red beans and rice, shrimp rémoulade, bananas foster--the list is long, familiar, appetizing, and heavy.

According to Emeril Lagasse, this is the classic sauced, smothered, and rouxed Old New Orleans (ONO) cooking that made the city, and Emeril, famous. But even great chefs grow bored, and when Emeril opened up his own restaurant in the Big Easy he began to experiment with ONO cooking, infusing it with new cultural influences and fresh ingredients. The result, and apt title for his debut cookbook, is Emeril's New New Orleans Cooking. The food, as you might guess, is magnificent, and the cookbook is a masterpiece. Since Emeril is an immigrant to the Big Easy (from Fall River, Massachusetts), he doesn't fear messing with local tradition and overhauling the hallowed Oysters Rockefeller into Oysters in Pernod Cream with Fried Spinach. In fact, his genius lies in his willingness to experiment and a no-holds-barred approach to flavor combinations. Sautéed Scallops with Saffron Corn Sauce or Stir-Fry of Sesame Ginger Crawfish over Fried Pasta are just a few of the examples. Along with more than 200 other recipes, it is easy to see why Emeril has become the chef of the '90s, and why New New Orleans Cooking is here to stay. --Mark O. Howerton

From Library Journal
Lagasse opened Emeril's Restaurant to raves in 1990 after several years as chef at The Commander's Palace, a New Orleans institution. His food, which he refers to as New New Orleans, or NNO, is a reinterpretation of Creole cookery, strongly influenced by Oriental, Portuguese, and Southwestern cuisines. The result is gutsy, flavorful dishes, though the juxtaposition of ingredients is sometimes startling: Crawfish Egg Rolls with Sesame Drizzle, or Spinach and Goat Cheese Salad with Andouille Dressing. There are lots of appetizing recipes here. For most collections.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author
Emeril Lagasse is the chef/proprietor of two New Orleans restaurants: Emeril's and Nola (an acronym for New Orleans, Louisiana) and most recently, he opened Emeril's New Orleans Fish House in Las Vegas's MGM Grand Hotel.

Emeril is also a national television personality, hosting Television Food Network's highest-rated program, "The Essence of Emeril," and he has also become an established cookbook author, sharing his inventive cuisine in Emeril's New New Orleans Cooking and taking the backroads through the bayou to uncover Louisiana Real & Rustic.

Emeril, who is of Portugese and French Canadian heritage, grew up in the small town of Fall River, Massachusetts, where he worked in a local Portuguese bakery and learned the art of bread baking and pastry. As a teenager he turned down a music scholarship to follow his dream of cooking and worked his way through the culinary program at Johnson and Wales University, from which he received an honorary doctorate. Emeril trained in France and then returned to work in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. Persuaded to move to the Big Easy, Emeril fell in love with New Orleans and worked as executive chef at the legendary Commander's Palace for seven and a half years before opening his own restaurants.Marcelle Bienvenu

Born and raised on the Bayou Teche, Marcelle Bienvenu, graduated from the University of Southwestern Louisiana and worked as a feature writer for the New Orleans Times-Picayune. She operated her own restaurant, Ches Marcelle, near Lafayette, Louisiana and has worked for many of the top restaurants in New Orleans. Marcelle currently writes for several Louisiana publications including: Louisiana Life Magazine, Teche News and Times of Acadiana. She has co-authored two cookbooks with EmerilLagasse and is the sole author of many other books. Bienvenu still resides on the Bayou Teche in St. Martinville, Louisiana.

Customer Reviews

Fine New Orleans cooking worth the effort
Emeril Lagasse has created a fine collection of what he calls "New New Orleans Cooking". The recipes are straightforward, although some people may have trouble obtaining some ingredients ( I mean, who carries duck glaze, and will you cook a duck just to get a glaze?) Every dish that I have prepared has been extremely well received by my family and friends. Chef Lagasse has also included enough "basics" for the beginning cook. All in all, an excellent effort and a worthy additon to any cook's bookshelf.

Thought I found treasure...ended up trash
I was very excited to find this book, in perfect condition, at a garage sale for $1.00!!! What a treasure! I was more thrilled to see the recipe for the Banana Cream pie that my husband and I had at his restaurant in New Orleans. I decided to make it for a special occassion. I knew something was wrong when it said to mix 3/4 c. corn starch with 1 cup cream. I stopped there and looked up the recipe on-line. I found other mistakes but it was to late...we are having banana soup on mushy crust for my husband's 45th birthday today. This wasn't the first recipe errors I've found in this book, but the most expensive. (Price vanilla bean right now and you'll see what I mean.) Now I understand why this 'treasure' was put out for 'trash'. Quantities are wrong and important directions are omitted. What a waste!

His first and his best thus far
Now that he has a NBC sitcom (and who thought that would be a good idea?) and his own cookware line (at least it's All-Clad), everyone might be getting sick of Emeril and his "schtick", but this book predates all of that.

This was his first book and its still his best. The contents are a good range, from "traditional" cajun/creole offerings (with some lincense taken) to some quite original recipes. A warning though, nearly everything is very rich. It's a wonder that Emeril doesn't look like Paul Prudhomme with all the butter and cream he uses, but it does taste awesome. What I like particularly is that many of the recipes are inclusive of side dishes that compliment the main dish, therefore making it easier to make single dish presentations to each person you're cooking for. Also, many of the serving sizes are low, which is nice. For the most part, I tend to cook for 2-4 people, so recipes for 6-8 always produce leftovers.