Creole Gumbo and All That Jazz: A New Orleans Seafood Cookbook - Paperback

by Howard Mitcham (Author)

Seafood, folklore, and New Orleans jazz history combine in "a delightful book with excellent recipes" (Mimi Sheraton, The New York Times).

A dazzling array of photos, recipes, and far-out folklore, spiced up with tidbits of jazz history and lyrics, comprises a seafood cookbook that celebrates the world-famous cookery of New Orleans. Howard Mitcham offers more than 300 enticing dishes, from crab gumbo and shrimp-oyster jambalaya to barbecued red snapper and trout amandine.

As an appetizer, Mitcham traces the development of the cuisine that made New Orleans famous and the history of the people who brought their native cookery to the melting pot that makes New Orleans a living gumbo. For the main course, he puts together a cornucopia of local delights that are ready to prepare in any kitchen.

Mitcham traces the development of sophisticated Creole cooking and its rambunctious country cousin, Cajun cooking, with innumerable anecdotes, pictures, and recipes as well as a list of substitutes for hard-to-find seafoods.

"Creole Gumbo is more than a cookbook. It is a history book, a music lesson and a personality profile of great jazzmen." --Today

Back Jacket

" . . . hugely influential for me and my budding culinary peers of the time . . . both [Mitcham] and his books were fascinating depositories of recipes, recollections, history, folklore and illustrations, drawing on his abiding love for humble, working-class ethnic food of the area."
-Anthony Bourdain

"Creole Gumbo is more than a cookbook. It is a history book, a music lesson and a personality profile of great jazzmen."
-Today

"A delightful book with excellent recipes . . . "
-New York Times

Here's a dazzling array of photos, foods, and far-out folklore, spiced up with tidbits of jazz history and lyrics-all gathered into a seafood cookbook that celebrates the world-famous cuisine of New Orleans. Author Howard Mitcham traces the development of sophisticated Creole cooking and its rambunctious country cousin, Cajun cooking, with innumerable anecdotes, pictures, and recipes.

Mitcham offers more than three hundred enticing dishes, from crab gumbo and shrimp-oyster jambalaya to barbecued red snapper and trout amandine. Along the way, he offers a list of substitutes for seafood that may be hard to find, a bibliography, and a guide to the best mail-order seafood markets in New Orleans.

Howard Mitcham, renowned chef, poet, artist, and raconteur, practiced the inventive art of New Orleans cuisine for three decades.

Author Biography

Howard Mitcham, a renowned chef, poet, artist, and storyteller, died in 1996. For over thirty years Mitcham practiced the creative art of New Orleans cuisine. His book Creole Gumbo and All That Jazz: A New Orleans Seafood Cookbook is no ordinary cookbook. Along with more than three hundred recipes he incorporated the heritage of both the people of the city and the people of the country-the Creole and the Cajun. He called this book an autobiographical chronicle of his love affair with New Orleans. The fine art of cooking in New Orleans rivals some of the greatest cuisines in the world, including those of such countries as France and Spain. New Orleans cuisine alone is such a broad topic that Mitcham felt that he should write a cookbook focused on the seafood side of Creole-Cajun Cooking. Mitcham was the author of several cookbooks including Clams, Mussels, Oysters, Scallops, and Snails: A Cookbook and Memoir and the Provincetown Seafood Cookbook. He lived in both New Orleans and Provincetown, Massachusetts.