The Dooky Chase Cookbook

Shop Notes:

This is a wonderful cookbook full of Leah Chase's recipes for all things comfort food, Creole, and a little bit Cajun.  The narrative, the artwork, and the recipes are just a wonderful primer on growing up as a black woman in one of the most creative and vivid areas of the United States.  Above it all Ms. Chase's heart and soul shines.

From the Publisher:

Where do personalities the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, Lena Horne, Ray Charles, Lou Rawls, Sarah Vaughan, Dizzy Gillespie, the Jackson 5, and Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama choose to eat when they are in New Orleans? Dooky Chase's Restaurant, a New Orleans landmark and celebrated bastion of fine Creole food, has welcomed these notable individuals as well as thousands of locals through its doors since opening in 1941. The unquestionable authority in the restaurant's kitchen for many of those years, Leah Chase offers here a collection of recipes from the menu and her personal files that have delighted patrons for decades.

Each section is introduced with an original work from the art collection hanging in the dining room. Interspersed among the entries are anecdotes and recipe origins from the estimable Leah Chase herself. This cookbook features some two hundred recipes ranging from the traditional to the adventuresome, with entries in bread, soup, meat, poultry, and dessert categories. Many of Leah Chase's iconic dishes are included: Shrimp Clemenceau, Southern Fried Chicken, Crawfish Etouffee, Split Pea Soup, Creole Jambalaya, Court Bouillon, Lemon Meringue Pie, and the famed Gumbo des Herbes.

Presented here from the original edition published in 1990 are recipes and sentiments that will be forever intertwined with the history of New Orleans.

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