Paula Wolfert is the undisputed “queen of Mediterranean cooking”.  She is one of America’s premier food writers, and has been a role model of mine since I cooked from her first book, Couscous and Other Good Food from Morocco, originally published in 1973, and inducted into the Cookbook Hall of Fame by the James Beard Association in 2008. Over the ensuing years Paula has written for some of America’s most prestigious publications, and has published other cookbooks, including the critically acclaimed The Slow Mediterranean Kitchen and The Cooking of Southwest France.  Paula has won just about every award that could be bestowed on a food writer in this country. 

If you’re as much of an oyster lover as I am, then this book will make you tremble all over.  When I began to thumb through the pages, of P&J Oyster Cookbook, The,  savoring the stunning, full-page photos of many classic oyster dishes and even more enticing new ones, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on some oysters and start cooking!

In this giant tome of a book, My New Orleans: The Cookbook, with almost 400 pages, New Orleans chef/restaurateur John Besh has penned more than a mere cookbook.  It’s really the story of South Louisiana culture.  And, of course, any story of Louisiana culture is also all about food.  Folks there live to eat.  They see the workaday week as the means by which to earn the means to have fun, eat well, and enjoy life.  Besh has captured this culture of the love of life and family in his book.  In this book he tells the enduring story of preserving the region’s rituals and livelihood through raising food well, cooking it with joy, and being mindful of the frugality of one of America’s most beloved cities.  The recipes, both old and new, preserve the use of ingredients traditional to the region for decades.