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• by:
• Hulin, Belinda

In Louisiana, life happens in the kitchen. children are reared and lives unfold over bubbling pots of gumbo, bowls of shelled peas, and shaved-ice sno-balls. The kitchen is the happy hub where heritage is conveyed, culinary traditions evolve, and cajun and creole cuisine is at its finest. When hurricanes Katrina and Rita destroyed homes and neighborhoods and displaced hundreds of thousands of people in Louisiana, bonds were stretched, and many recipes lost. Fortunately, Roux Memories offers the Louisiana diaspora--as well as anyone else with a love for Cajun and Creole fare--250 home-tested recipes along with snippets of life from a Cajun family with four decades of roots in New Orleans.

Accompanying the recipes are vintage family and food photos as well as sidebars explaining the roots of Cajun and Creole cooking. Recipes include crawfish gumbo, cajun corn soup, shrimp remoulade, New Orleans shrimp boil, hickory and spice burgers, cochon de lait, crawfish pie, alligator fritters, chicken and sausage jambalaya, pork cracklins, cracklin cornbread, dirty rice, king cake, pecan pralines, syrup cookies, and many more Cajun and Creole favorites.