Creole Feast

by Nathaniel Burton

Fifteen master chefs reveal their secrets for creating more than three hundred dishes, including fried catfish, turtle soup, and Creole gumbo, and describe their own tricks of the trade

Genres: Cookbooks, Food

320 pages, Hardcover

First published October 12, 1978

Reviews

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

John T. Edge writes more eloquently about the value of this book than I ever could in The Potlikker Papers: A Food History of the Modern South. So I'll share his words instead of writing my own review (from pages 81-2):

Published in 1978, the year after New Orleans elected Ernest “Dutch” Morial the first black mayor of the city, Creole Feast was a political manifesto, masquerading as a cookbook, draped in a black chrysalis. “Black involvement in the New Orleans Creole cuisine is as old as gumbo and just as important,” [Rudy] Lombard wrote. “French, Spanish, Cajun, Italian—all these ethnic groups live in New Orleans, but they are not running the best kitchens in the best restaurants of the city. The single, lasting characteristic of Creole cuisine is the Black element.”

Too many writers ascribed a “secondary, lowly, or nonexistent role to the Black hand in the pot,” Lombard explained. Too few recognized that New Orleans culture, food, music, architecture, ceremony, and belief were based on African knowledge and traditions. If the chefs who ran the kitchens of Antoine’s and Galatoire’s were not going to get the pay they deserved from employers or the accolades they deserved from customers, Lombard aimed to canonize them himself.

To make his case, Lombard interviewed fifteen black chefs including Nathaniel Burton, with whom he partnered on the recipes. (Tony Morrison, who had already written The Bluest Eye but was still working at Random House, served as editor.) Lombard gave the chefs voice and space to share the lessons they learned in city kitchens. Leah Chase held forth on how to avoid a gravy that roped on the heat. Austin Leslie of Chez Hélène talked through how to cut up a chicken into twelve pieces instead of the customary ten.

Sherman Crayton, who began cooking at Arnaud’s in 1936, confirmed Lombard’s argument that the problems of Creole food were rooted in attribution: “They say it is a mixture of Spanish and French, but the only people who seem to know all about it are neither Spanish nor French, they’re Blacks.” Lombard worked to frame the lives of these chefs in a way that bestowed honor. He accomplished that with a subtitle, 15 Master Chefs of New Orleans Reveal Their Secrets.

Jacques Pépin, the celebrated French-born chef, made the arguments advanced by Crayton and Lombard when he told his biographer that, on arrival in the United States in 1959, he was most impressed by the old guard African American chefs he met, the men and women who worked in the grand hotels and fine dining rooms. He thought they had the same gravitas, the same experience-honed talent that Frenchmen exhibited.

Pépin expected those black men to emerge as stars, and was surprised when they did not ascend to the firmament during the American culinary renaissance of the late twentieth century. He didn’t understand why they failed to get their due. As the years advanced and Southern food gentrified, his question would linger in the air, nagging and unresolved.

[Redsteve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Published in 1978, this book focuses on professional Black chefs in New Orleans. Except for Leah Chase (of Dooky Chase fame), I hadn't heard of ANY of these guys, but I have DEFINATELY heard of the restaurants that they cooked in: Brennan's, Pontchartrain Hotel, Broussard's, Commander's Palace ,Monteleone Hotel, La Louisianne, Pascale's Manale, Galatoire's, etc. The first section of the book includes bios of the chefs (interestingly, while almost all are from the South, relatively few are actually from New Orleans), their personal philosophies on cooking and restaurant work and tips of the trade. The rest of the book is a collection of their recipes (each attributed to an individual chef). While their advice is fascinating and helpful, be warned that these chefs do NOT all agree with each other, so there are some contradictory advice from chef to chef. What is also nice is that the book includes multiple versions of recipes for many New Orleans standards, As you'd expect for a New Orleans cookbook written in the 1970s, the dishes are a collection of Creole, Southern, and French dishes - not too much Cajun (This is the pre Paul Prudhomme era). 4 stars.

[Mary Olivier · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fabulous

[Ariel Rosetti · Rating 5 out of 5]

If a cookbook can be exciting then this is it. The recipes are exciting, new, and different. This book gives one a clear view to the delicious food offered in New Orleans during that time.