A Taste of the Gulf Coast: The Art and Soul of Southern Cooking - Hardcover

If you're planning a visit to America's Gulf Coast, it's time to prepare: there's more to the good life than hot beaches and cold drinks; there's food as well. The Gulf Coast, including Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, melds flavors and fancies of Creole, Mexican, Cuban, West Indian, Dutch, African, Spanish, Italian, and French settlers in its cuisine, so it would be a shame to spend your vacation gumming burgers when you could be mopping up plates of Crawfish Étouffé, Pompano Almondine, Sticky Chicken, and Couche Couche. But Jessie Tirsch's text will do more than familiarize you with delectables to enjoy on vacation, it'll allow you to extend the holiday, culinarily speaking, when you get home.

America's long Gulf of Mexico coastline encompasses five states in its 1,000-mile arc. Tirsch argues that although everyone recognizes the contributions of Louisiana's Cajun, Creole, and French communities to American cooking, the rest of the coastline, from Tex-Mex bounty in the west to Florida's nascent cuisine in the east, is equally significant. Her compendium of Gulf cooking emphasizes the region's close relationship with the sea, so recipes such as barbecued shrimp and oyster-stuffed lobsters abound. In addition, Tirsch demonstrates the influence of immigrant populations with several variations on moussaka. Desserts reflect the area's burgeoning Cuban population, which has brought both Spanish and Caribbean ingredients northward. Recipes come from Gulf Coast cooks, whom Tirsch introduces to give a personal texture to the cookbook. Recommended for regional American cookery collections. Mark Knoblauch