New Orleanians have elevated the pleasures of cooking and consuming to a highly skilled, sophisticated art form. In this collection, the authors offer 119 recipes they consider most representative of New Orleans home cuisine. The trio have drawn extensively from the three primary cultures--English, French, and Spanish--that have contributed most to refining the city's culinary specialties, in many cases unlocking nineteenth-century cooking secrets discovered in old handwritten notes. The carefully compiled recipes include metric measures and can be prepared perfectly, even by the beginning cook. Balanced categories make the volume simple but complete, so that everyone, from gourmet chef to neophyte cook, may enjoy the pleasures of a wide range of food that many regard as the best in the world.