Bayou

Starred review from August 1, 2024

Martin, author of the James Beard Award-winning and IACP Best New Cookbook Mosquito Supper Club, returns with another exquisitely written offering that illuminates and celebrates the culinary treasures of Cajun country. Arranged in chapters dedicated to topics such as abundance, simplicity, and resilience, Martin thoughtfully explores the food of the bayou through a seasonal approach. Cooks can expect to find recipes for beloved classic dishes such as Carnival crawfish boil (whose ingredients list includes 60 pounds of crawfish), hush puppies, and �touff�e in the style of Mim & Ennola, as well as simpler favorites, such as fresh bean salad with tomatoes and herbs, 7 Up biscuits, and fried potato sandwiches. Illustrated with art-gallery-worthy photographs and enriched with essays written by Martin on topics ranging from onions and Carnival to fishing and holidays in the bayou, this book is a feast in every sense. VERDICT Both armchair cooks and anyone seeking an introduction to Cajun cuisine will find that Martin's latest eloquently and elegantly written book perfectly captures the culinary heart and soul of the bayou.--John Charles

Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2024
Cajun cooking, essential to American cuisine, rises from the land, climate, and people of southern Louisiana. As Cajun country continues to evolve with the addition of recent immigrant populations, including Vietnamese, it also retains traditions that focus on the produce of the land and the surrounding bayous, rivers, and seas. In her second cookbook, much-lauded New Orleans restaurateur Martin (Mosquito Supper Club, 2020) celebrates the unpretentiousness of Cajun cooking, noting that food is the focus of the Cajun home, whether it's eaten off a table dressed in fine linens or from a blanket on the floor. In spring, the Cajun table may be piled high with crawfish, oysters, and shrimp or a complex jambalaya. Summer brings crab in profusion, along with fruits for sweet delicacies like blackberry tarts. As seasons move on, vegetables mature, yielding bumper crops of mirlitons for slaw or for stuffing with shrimp. The great Cajun tradition of using every part of an animal and wasting nothing appears in recipes for hog's head cheese and pork backbone stew. Especially appropriate for regional library collections.

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Starred review from October 7, 2024
In Martin’s moving follow-up to Mosquito Supper Club, the Bayou Petit Caillou, La., native strikes an impressive balance between fun and function while painting a vivid portrait of a place and its people. Chapters are organized thematically: “Abundance” features a crawfish boil to serve a couple dozen and étouffée for a crowd; “Simplicity” includes a salad of strawberries and pickled beets and hush puppies drizzled with honey. The “Grace” chapter highlights frugal options, such as biscuits that incorporate 7Up soda and corn and tomato maque choux (“one of the oldest dishes in Louisiana’s culinary history”), while “Tradition” offers venison tamales and a sidebar on boucherie, or hog butchering. Among the plentiful seafood options are buttermilk-soaked fried fish collars, boiled shrimp with garlicky tomato mayonnaise, and softshell crabs cooked with “no marinating or fussy stuff.” Martin’s recipes are expressive and easy to comprehend: for a yeasted cardamom-spiced coffee cake, readers are advised to “smudge” the butter into the flour, and corn bread batter should be the consistency of Marshmallow Fluff. Throughout, Martin weaves in facts and family stories, as when she describes her mother’s tattered recipe for king cake taped up inside a cupboard, followed by a sidebar on the meaning of king cake, how to decorate it, and when to consume it. Complete with stunning photography, this nostalgic ode to living and eating on the bayou is a winner.