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Crescent City Cooking: Unforgettable Recipes from Susan Spicer's New Orleans: A Cookbook
One of New Orleans’s brightest culinary stars, Susan Spicer has been indulging Crescent City diners at her highly acclaimed restaurants, Bayona and Herbsaint, for years. Now, in her long-awaited cookbook, Spicer—an expert at knocking cuisine off its pedestal with a healthy dash of hot sauce, and at elevating comfort food to the level of the sublime—brings her signature dishes to the home cook’s table.
Crescent City Cooking includes all the recipes that have made Susan Spicer, and her restaurants, famous. Spicer marries traditional Southern cooking with culinary influences from around the world, and the result is New Orleans cooking with gusto and flair. Each of her familiar yet unique recipes is easy to make and wonderfully memorable.
Inside you’ll find :
• More than 170 recipes, ranging from traditional New Orleans dishes (Cornmeal-Crusted Crayfish Pies and Cajun-Spiced Pecans) to Susan’s very own twists on down-home cuisine (Smoked Duck Hash in Puff Pastry with Apple Cider Sauce; Grilled Shrimp with Black Bean Cakes and Coriander Sauce) and, of course, a recipe for the best gumbo you’ve ever tasted
• Over 90 photographs by Times-Picayune photographer Chris Granger, which display the vibrant city of New Orleans as much as Spicer’s wonderfully offbeat yet classy way of presenting her dishes
• Instructions that make Spicer’s down-to-earth but extraordinarily creative recipes easy to prepare. Spicer, who cooks for two picky preteens and packs lunch every day for her husband, knows how precious time can be and understands just how much is enough
There is something else of New Orleans—its spirit—that imbues this book’s every useful tip and anecdote. The strong culinary traditions of New Orleans are revived in Crescent City Cooking , with recipes that are guaranteed to comfort and surprise. This is some of the best food you’ll ever taste, in what is certain to become the essential New Orleans cookbook.
Crescent City Cooking includes all the recipes that have made Susan Spicer, and her restaurants, famous. Spicer marries traditional Southern cooking with culinary influences from around the world, and the result is New Orleans cooking with gusto and flair. Each of her familiar yet unique recipes is easy to make and wonderfully memorable.
Inside you’ll find :
• More than 170 recipes, ranging from traditional New Orleans dishes (Cornmeal-Crusted Crayfish Pies and Cajun-Spiced Pecans) to Susan’s very own twists on down-home cuisine (Smoked Duck Hash in Puff Pastry with Apple Cider Sauce; Grilled Shrimp with Black Bean Cakes and Coriander Sauce) and, of course, a recipe for the best gumbo you’ve ever tasted
• Over 90 photographs by Times-Picayune photographer Chris Granger, which display the vibrant city of New Orleans as much as Spicer’s wonderfully offbeat yet classy way of presenting her dishes
• Instructions that make Spicer’s down-to-earth but extraordinarily creative recipes easy to prepare. Spicer, who cooks for two picky preteens and packs lunch every day for her husband, knows how precious time can be and understands just how much is enough
There is something else of New Orleans—its spirit—that imbues this book’s every useful tip and anecdote. The strong culinary traditions of New Orleans are revived in Crescent City Cooking , with recipes that are guaranteed to comfort and surprise. This is some of the best food you’ll ever taste, in what is certain to become the essential New Orleans cookbook.
416 pages, Hardcover
First published October 23, 2007
15 people are currently reading
70 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
October 17, 2018
Susan Spicer (2007) has a very fine cookbook in Crescent City Cooking: Unforgettable Recipes from Susan Spicer's New Orleans.
Her content emphasizes technique and ingredients as well as her favorite recipes. I made a great lunch with her Farmer's Market Chicken and Vegetable Soup. I learned to poach chicken breasts as well as to make bouquet garni. I was glad to read that the Crescent City Farmer's Market has continued to impact the quality of cooking and eating in New Orleans. My next steps are to vary vegetables, to add Asian flavors (so typical for us in Seattle), and to bolster this recipe with autumn vegetables.
I enjoyed reading Spicer's cookbook because it is good reading. When I got to page 142, I stopped to make soup for lunch served with my wife's homemade bread.
Bon Appetit
April 21, 2008
This is one of the best cookbooks I've bought in a long time; indeed, this is a cookbook you can actually read and enjoy, not just cook from. Susan Spicer provides both autobiographical touches on her training and historical details to cooking tips that make this a worthy read. Though the subtitle for the cookbook is "Unforgettable Recipes from Susan Spicer's New Orleans" and there are cooking details specific to Louisiana (ever heard of "filé powder"), this is eccletic, French inspired cuisine at its best and recipes are, on the whole, approachable and inspired. Definitely not a swapper but a keeper!
May 9, 2019
The recipes look great and I enjoy the authors commentary. I can't wait to try the recipes. I just prefer a bit more pictures to help inspire!
March 19, 2021
This is a great cookbook, full of accessible recipes that people can cook from everyday. Susan Spicer is a master at marrying exotic flavors with great Southern food. She is a New Orleans treasure and one of the most talented chefs at work in America today.
Suzanne Goin
Susan Spicer is a chef who dazzles the palate with flavors rooted in her beloved New Orleans. Her long-awaited debut, Crescent City Cooking, is full of mouth-watering recipes and show-stealing sides, and her chapter on killer cocktails from Bourbon Street is simply not to be missed. This book is one big party. Congratulations, Susan.
Lidia Bastianich
Susan Spicer is one of my favorite chefs in my favorite dining city in the world. Her sense of place and tradition is as romantic as it is alluring, and her recipes, basted with an incredible depth of flavor, are disarmingly simple to prepare. Susan's cooking celebrates the vibrant key of the French quarter, and the food in this book is tasty, delicious and exciting to make.
Mario Batali
Susan's cuisine is a true journey around the world, blending soulful ingredients into exciting and original recipes. Her love for New Orleans' tradition shines through her innovative cooking.
Daniel Boulud
Suzanne Goin
Susan Spicer is a chef who dazzles the palate with flavors rooted in her beloved New Orleans. Her long-awaited debut, Crescent City Cooking, is full of mouth-watering recipes and show-stealing sides, and her chapter on killer cocktails from Bourbon Street is simply not to be missed. This book is one big party. Congratulations, Susan.
Lidia Bastianich
Susan Spicer is one of my favorite chefs in my favorite dining city in the world. Her sense of place and tradition is as romantic as it is alluring, and her recipes, basted with an incredible depth of flavor, are disarmingly simple to prepare. Susan's cooking celebrates the vibrant key of the French quarter, and the food in this book is tasty, delicious and exciting to make.
Mario Batali
Susan's cuisine is a true journey around the world, blending soulful ingredients into exciting and original recipes. Her love for New Orleans' tradition shines through her innovative cooking.
Daniel Boulud
April 26, 2024
It’s an easy to use cookbook with sufficient photos and formatting to make it easy to follow the recipes, very good recipes! The recipes showcase one of my favorite city, New Orleans. Its authentic blend of cultures, peoples and foods with a laidback atmosphere and friendly greetings makes one understand why it’s nicknamed the Big Easy! The cookbook gives a taste of NOLA, New Orleans, Louisiana.
October 10, 2008
I'm a big fan of Susan Spicer and her New Orleans restaurants, Bayona and Herbsaint. In this cookbook you will find page after page of creative special occassion recipes accompanied by beautiful pictures that will make your stomach growl.
The recipes are a bit too fussy for me, even for a special meal. For example, the Pecan Roulade with Praline Mousse looks delicious but the recipe instructions takes up three pages and Susan offers the tip of baking it in stages, making the mousse two days in advance.
I will try the Jalapeno Roast Pork, it looks simple enough and I can almost taste the finished product.
I did make the Portobellow Mushrooms Stuffed with Italian Sausage, I thought this was a good stuffed mushroom, but my husband found it too rich. So I won't be making it again. But I did appreciate Susan's helpful tip and picture on how to clean the portobellos by removing the gills.
Other examples of what you will find in the cookbook include Bayona Caesar with Arugula, Grouper Baked in Grape Leaves, Filet of Beef with Herbed Cream Cheese Filling and Bordelaise Sauce and Ephiphany Lemon Tart.
The recipes are a bit too fussy for me, even for a special meal. For example, the Pecan Roulade with Praline Mousse looks delicious but the recipe instructions takes up three pages and Susan offers the tip of baking it in stages, making the mousse two days in advance.
I will try the Jalapeno Roast Pork, it looks simple enough and I can almost taste the finished product.
I did make the Portobellow Mushrooms Stuffed with Italian Sausage, I thought this was a good stuffed mushroom, but my husband found it too rich. So I won't be making it again. But I did appreciate Susan's helpful tip and picture on how to clean the portobellos by removing the gills.
Other examples of what you will find in the cookbook include Bayona Caesar with Arugula, Grouper Baked in Grape Leaves, Filet of Beef with Herbed Cream Cheese Filling and Bordelaise Sauce and Ephiphany Lemon Tart.
May 21, 2008
Beautifully laid out and wonderful dishes. This is a skilled to advanced cookbook, but if you're feeling ambitious, you can really create excellent restaurant quality dishes that you and your friends will love. A wonderful blend of exotic spices that you don't traditionally use; it's great for testing your strengths and experimenting. A must have in your kitchen!
February 29, 2008
Excellent. Spicer is an interesting personality and her passion comes across in her recipes. Everything I have made has been delicious.
September 23, 2012
One of my favorite cookbooks! Elegant and tasty recipes from the Big Easy.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews