Explore Pelican Publishing (September 2024)

Dooky Chase’s Restaurant, a New Orleans landmark and celebrated bastion of fine Creole food, has welcomed notable individuals as well as thousands of locals through its doors since opening in 1941. The unquestionable authority in the restaurant’s kitchen for many of those years, Leah Chase offers here a collection of recipes from the menu and her personal files that have delighted patrons for decades.

Spiced with exquisite works from the African American art collection that hangs in the restaurant’s dining room, this cookbook pairs the flavors of Leah Chase’s dishes with anecdotes recounting the restaurant’s traditions, origins of the recipes, and memories. This revised and expanded edition presents even more of the restaurant’s favorite offerings and features a new chapter on drinks. Dooky Chase’s longtime chef and proprietor passed away in 2019, but these pages honor Leah’s legacy through recipes and sentiments that will be forever intertwined with the history of New Orleans.

Since first published in 1977, Puerto Rican Cookery has remained a bestselling cookbook throughout the world, not only in Puerto Rico. With hundreds of practical and delicious recipes, this cookbook is required reading material for anyone who loves fine Caribbean cooking.

When author Camen Aboy Valldej́uli was a girl, proper young women were not permitted to learn domestic work such as cooking, yet her love for fine dining and her native Puerto Rico launched a lifetime adventure collecting recipes of traditional Puerto Rican dishes. Their cocina criolla, or traditional native cookery, can be traced back to the original indigenous inhabitants for over 500 years, from delectable barbacoa and the staple plantain, to the zesty seasonings of citrus, cilantro, and oregano, as well as two magical words which are the secret to many unique and characteristic dishes with a Caribbean flavor: adobo and sofrito. With new outside influences of the Spanish, British, Dutch, and Africans who arrived in the islands, the delicate blends and innovations of five centuries have developed a genuine Caribbean cuisine. Stuffed with hundreds of recipes ranging from every day favorites to fancy feasts for breakfast, lunch, dinner, desert and cocktails, this cookbook is as essential to beginner cooks as it is to seasoned chefs alike.

Since 1899, Vaucresson’s Sausage Company has produced its beloved brand in the Seventh Ward of New Orleans. Julie Frederick Vaucresson shares stories from the Vaucresson and Frederick families along with scores of recipes using both the sausages and a new line of mustards. Also included are classic dishes from the fabled Bourbon Street Vaucresson Café Creole (circa 1963-1972) along with other homestyle recipes from the Frederick family, with color photographs of many of the recipes.

Chef Jason Smith is back at it, providing you with more of his one-of-a-kind Country Bling recipes. The Kentucky native, known for his glitzy wardrobe, colorful expressions, and award-winning recipes, is thrilled to present his second cookbook, which focuses on decadent confections, using eight ingredients or less.

The recipes in this book have been developed to encompass everything that makes a decadent dessert; whether you like sweet, salty, tart, savory, silky, crunchy, chewy, creamy, frozen, fried, or chilled; you are promised to have a lip-smackin’, eye-rollin’ experience with each recipe.

It was Chef Jason’s flair for taking all of the above considerations when making tasty confections that shot him into the national spotlight, when he competed on and won Food Network’s Holiday Baking Championship, season 3; and Holiday Baking Championship—Kids vs. Adults, 2016. He continued to parlay his talents in the sweet and savory, by competing on and winning Food Network Star, season 13. Chef Jason has appeared as a judge and competitor on several national network food shows, and has had the honor of participating on The GOAT, an Amazon Prime reality show.

With all his accolades, he considers the privilege of sharing his love of food through his cookbooks to be his greatest accomplishment.