Fresh from Louisiana is an authentic cookbook from George Graham. It is written by seasons with beautiful photographs of each recipe. There are fun stories written throughout as well as tips and a guide of where to shop for high quality Louisiana ingredients. I’m especially excited to try the Butternut and shrimp pasta, shrimp broil, and sweet tea brined chick.
A great cookbook to add to your collection!

Thank you to NetGalley and Harvard Common Press for the opportunity to read this book.

I LOVE cookbooks. Honestly, it borders on obsession. So being the foodie I am, I knew I had to request this one right away. They divide this cookbook into four chapters (Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter). Each section packed with a plethora of yummy sounding, easy to follow recipes. Gorgeous photos, notes, tips, antidotes, and more.

I can't wait to try SO many of the recipes in this one! 👍👍

A fun book to read. Love his sense of humor, which makes the book a delight to read, and of course plenty of great recipes to try. I have an allergy to Bell Peppers, so have to substitute those, but otherwise easy to follow and I like that he offers alternatives to harder to find ingredients that would be hard to find outside Louisiana. Would highly recommend this book and author. Would make a great gift too.

What a beautiful cookbook this is! Every page breathes love for life, food and Mr Graham’s region and family. I felt transported into the author’s world and it was lovely. I particularly liked that it was organised by season which proves how much he respects his region and produce. I have never eaten creole cooking, never got the opportunity, but I can say everything in here looks absolutely wonderful and vibrant - the photos are colourful, exotic and homely. The recipient read like spicy delicious meaty treats. There is a lot of crayfish and shrimp recipes that look absolutely fantastic and that I can’t wait to try them in those soulful dishes that combine smoked meats and seafood for complex flavours. I am big on French food so I know French boudin and andouille which I both love to eat (but are really acquired flavours as they are respectively blood and tripe sausages), but I do not know their American equivalent which seem much milder, so I was very happy to find a recipe for American boudin at the end as well as a few other typical flavour sauces and spice mixes. A great book!

For someone who has never been to Louisiana, this is the perfect introductory book for understanding the food and culture of the state. With very creative recipes, there's something for everyone to make.

I do like Cajun food but never made any myself until recently.

I find this cookbook is well done. Tons of great recipes.

Has some great sounding cajun recipes. I love Cajun food so these would definitely be a cookbook add for me.

I was provided this book by Netgalley for an honest review**

George Grahm's cookbook Fresh from Louisiana provides Cajun and Creole recipes (both Savory and Sweet) sure to please. The recipes are meat-heavy, and the author even provides uses for rabbits in stews, which is a type of meat I have never tried. The recipe combinations were new to me - not sure if they are traditional fare as I am not familiar with Louisana cooking.

I would purchase this book for friends and family interested in trying food that they may have never tasted or ventured to cook before.

FYI, the pictures were amazing!

This is a lovely Cajun and Creole cookbook that's quite heavy on meat and seafood (often less common variations). There are color photos of every recipe and lots of little side notes to teach you more about the regional flavors. Several reviewers complained that he calls for purchasing a seasoning mix, but I didn't see that. He generally calls for the Cajun seasoning mix on page 231, though a couple of times he says you can use a specific store bought seasoning or his recipe.

No nutritional information is provided.

Those outside of the region may have trouble finding some of the ingredients, but people who want some authentic new recipes are likely to enjoy it a great deal. I try to cook a lot healthier than this as a general rule and also don't have the kind of time commitment that many of the recipes call for right now so it's not a cookbook I'd be likely to use much, but it's one I'd recommend for those who are looking for these sorts of recipes.

I read a temporary digital ARC of this book for review.

This is a neat little cookbook! I was excited to receive a copy, to say the least. Cajun cooking is my favorite, full stop. Personally I'm obsessed with the crab-stuffed portobello and the shrimp and tasso mac and cheese (I'm a sucker for any and all mac and cheese recipes). I'll probably be adding the Cajun rice bowl and the backyard beans to my regular meal prep rotation. Lots of satisfying and bright pictures accompany the recipes, and all of them sound delicious. Some ingredients might be a little harder to come by depending on where you're at (looking at you, ever-so-tempting rabbit gumbo), but there are plenty of recipes to choose from that are accessible to cooks at all levels.

Fresh from Louisiana by George Graham is such a great cookbook. I read cookbooks like a book and then I go back and start recreating. The stories and comments on the recipes were entertaining, The Lemon Thyme Chicken Breast with Cauliflower Mash was amazing! Low carb, tangy, and creamy – the perfect combination. Plenty of traditional south Louisiana recipes to keep this Cajun girl happy in the kitchen for months.

***** I received an ARC from NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for my honest review. *****

While some of the formatting on this book is incomplete, this is such an exciting book! I am so excited to try out several of these dishes myself. The photography is well done and helps me get a good picture of what my meals will aspire to look like. I'm especially excited to cook the Cajun Rice Bowl With Griddled Shrimp, the Gulf Shrimp Pasta Primavera, and the Pure Vegetable Soup! Thank you so much to the publisher and Negalley for a copy of this book in exchange for a review!

What a beautiful book about cooking! Yes, it’s got tons of recipes but it’s also full of gorgeous pictures and writing about personal connections to the food.
I like that Fresh From Louisiana is split into sections by season. It guides the reader to buy/cook more seasonal items and also makes a sort of sense as far as “theme”: heartier dishes in the winter months and lighter ones when it’s warm. There is a ton of seafood recipes, which is great for a carnivore who hosts some pescatarian friends for dinner! These dishes remind me of my southern roots while sometimes taking me out of my comfort zone ingredient-wise. It made me laugh that there’s beef in the “vegetable“ soup, my southern family did that too!
Something I liked less was the recurrence of specialty ingredients; I get it, there isn’t a substitute for things like crawfish in Louisiana cooking, but the amount of recipes calling for specialty items makes me less likely to purchase. For example, there’s a “shrimp boil seasoning” used in many recipes that, instead of giving you a recipe to make the spice blend yourself, you’re just directed to a sources page of where to order it online. If I’m flipping through for something to cook the next day, that cancels out those recipes automatically because I’m not waiting for a bag of seasoning to ship to me. Also while my mouth appreciates the tons of seafood recipes, my wallet might not! The author encourages you to buy local and fresh, and for me and millions of others in landlocked states, you’re not going to have fresh, local seafood.
Overall I think it’s well written, well organized, and full of recipes I might try, but I’d be more likely to get it from a library than purchase because I am so unlikely to order the specialty ingredients needed for a good chunk of these recipes.
(While I won’t let it affect my rating, it should be noted that the arc I received was just one long PDF file that was poorly formatted, making it very difficult to read. There were whole sections of more personal writing I couldn’t read because the lines of text overlapped, a double page spread included upside down, and I had to zoom in to read any of the pages on my device. I don’t think E-book is the best format for cookbooks and I’m sure it’s meant to be read as a physical copy, but I feel like I missed a chance to evaluate it more in-depth because of the poor formatting.)