Gulf Coast Kitchens: Bright Flavors From Key West To The Yucatán (Hardcover)

Gulf Coast Kitchens: Bright Flavors from Key West to the Yucatán

Pinpoint the major settlements around the Gulf of Mexico and you’ve got a road map to good times and great food. Start light in the Floribbean cafés of Key West, then it’s on to Tampa Bay for the Cuban nightlife of Ybor City and the Greek tavernas of Tarpon Springs. Old South fish fries and porch suppers fill lazy days from the Florida Panhandle through Alabama and Mississippi. A few miles and a world away, Louisiana is famous for its Creole and Cajun cuisines and pagan work ethic. Tex-Mex goes uptown in the cosmopolitan restaurants of Houston, while covering the waterfront in freewheeling cantinas and crab shacks from Galveston to South Padre Island. Go even deeper and you’ll taste its sophisticated tropical roots along the Mexican coast.Gulf Coast Kitchens is your culinary guide to these incredible places. Here is true fusion cooking—French, Cajun, Spanish, Mexican, Asian, African, Italian—centuries in the making, where jambes and paellas morphed into jambalayas. Author Constance Snow gathers together the vast array of flavors this wide-reaching landscape offers, making for a collection of recipes so fresh, exciting, and diverse that your taste buds will be aquiver as you turn the pages, which are filled with all the Ya Ya energy and Creole color you would expect from such a melting pot of people and cultures.Never before has the Gulf Coast received this kind of attention as a distinct culinary region. Like Southwestern cuisine and California style, the Gulf Coast’s blend of earthy seasonings, indigenous produce, and eclectic mix of flavors put it at the forefront of cooking trends. But forget trends—this food simply tastes great.Gulf Coast Kitchens offers more than 200 recipes, including Pensacola Gaspachee Salad, Chilled Avocado and Crabmeat Soup, Calabaza con Pollo (Mexican Squash with Chicken), bayou standards like Creole Filé Gumbo and Jambalaya, and even drinks like the Blue Margarita and Louisiana Strawberry Lemonade. There are tips and tricks as well—from “Oyster Shucking 101” to “A Guide to Chiles” to “The Ins and Outs of Beer Tasting”—and beautiful photographs. Snow’s writing is fresh and engaging and this book marks the appearance of a major new voice on the culinary scene. Join her tour in Gulf Coast Kitchens, one of the most interesting, lively, and tasty places on the planet.