Cooking With St. Clair: Second Edition

In discussing this book, Fred has suggested this guideline for success: If you find a recipe that you like, and use it exactly and successfully, then this is a successful recipe book, and you're a successful reader and cook. But if you find a recipe that you like, and out of necessity or invention successfully add or subtract something of your own, then this is a real Creole cook book, and you are a real Creole cook.These are not just recipes to be followed to the letter (although that procedure will certainly result in some sublimely rewarding hours and meals) . These are also recipes to be improvised upon, to be altered, to be adapted to necessity; to be used, in spirit, for whatever happens to be in the kitchen. To be improved upon, if You will, given your own tastes and resources.One cold, blustery night in Minneapolis, a night too bitter to go out anywhere for ingredients deClouet demonstrated the basics of Creole cookery to a couple of friends by offering to create a gumbo with whatever he had in the house. And so, he made a gumbo of smoked sausage, green onions, shortening, dried shrimps, and a little flour. They thought it was a classic.So you will find some classic gumbos in the pages beyond, but if you don't happen to have at hand everything that's called for, don't be intimidated. Read on - in another recipe, you'll probably find a perfectly adequate (and possibly inspired) substitute.