Watching a travel programme on TV the other night, I was reminded of a very pleasurable trip to New Orleans many years ago, and all the delicious food I ate there. Any recommendations for cookbooks for this kind of food and cooking?

A recent book My New Orleans by John Besh is really good.  It was #4 in our Best of the Best Cookbooks list of 2009.

The Commander's Kitchen which is a restaurant in New Orleans is good and lots of pictures.

You just can't go past Southern Food: At Home, on the Road, in History by John Egerton. Not yet indexed, available from Amazon. An oldie, but I think the definitive one. I've had the hardback for about 20 years, and it's still the best. A great writer, who investigates the traditions, the people, the recipes.  I have very fond memories of a dinner party that started with mint juleps, and included gumbo, grits, greens, black bottom and key lime pies that is still being talked about. Which is suprising because those mint juleps really pack a whallop. A fascinating and engaging read. Not only history, but great traditional recipes. One of those seminal reference texts you'll just keep on using.

I've had great success with another newish book, Real Cajun by Donald Link -- he has a couple of NOLA restaurants, Herbsaint and Cochon. The jambalaya recipe really taught me technique, and he has a contemporary palate with old school roots. I use it much more than Prudhomme and other Louisiana books.

Not New Orleans, but Alabama and Virginia and other southern states represented in the impeccable 

The Gift of Southern Cooking: Recipes and Revelations from Two Great Southern Cooks by Edna Lewis and Scott Peacock

collaboration between Edna Lewis and Scott Peacock. Great GREAT fried chicken, chocolate cake.

I used to live in New Orleans, and my Dad is a native.  For Louisiana food I'm enamored of Pirate's Pantry, River Road Recipes, or Talk About Good -- all community cookbooks from South Louisiana brimming with local recipes. From New Orleans itself you should look for Recipes and Reminiscences, Jambalaya, and La Bonne Cuisine, all community cookbooks as well.  You should also check out the classic Picayune's Creole Cookbook -- the recipes are from the turn of the last century but are still viable and a fascinating insight into just how long people have been eating well in New Orleans!  The restaurant cookbooks are fun, but tend to be more complicated recipes.  The community cookbooks are easier and oriented toward the home cook. However, I recommend trying the recipe for the shrimp and crab stuffed eggplant in the Galatoire's restaurant cookbook. That may be my favorite dish on the planet!  

Jean Anderson has a very fine book on Southern cooking in general which is indexed here on the site.  

I've just gotten a copy of Cooking Up a Storm by Marcelle Bienvenu and Judy Walker.  I haven't cooked from it yet, but the story is so inspiring it makes me cry.

After Katrina, readers of the Times-Picayune New Orleans newspaper used the columns of the paper to exchange recipes with one another, trying to rebuild their lost recipe collections, many of them dating back generations; the book collects the first group of those rediscoveries and reconstructions.

It's vernacular food from the one place in the United States where you used to be able to walk into any establishment, no matter how humble or grand, and be sure of a good meal.  The editors say in their introduction, that the book "tells the story, recipe by recipe, of one of the great food cities in the world, and the determination of its citizens, in the face of adversity, to preserve and safeguard their culinary legacy."

xxx, mcvl

Thank you to everyone who's replied to my question - this is really useful information, lots of great leads to follow up on.

My mouth is watering already ...

Very interesting. Southern Food: At Home, on the Road, in History by John Egerton caught my attention. What do you think of Paul Prudhomme´s books?

Love Prudhomme's books and his recipes never disappoint me.  But I have classified him as New Orleans cooking (Cajun and Creole) and keep his books with that group and not with Southern Cooking books.  I also keep Florida based books (very few) separate from Southern US cookbooks.  But some of he recipes certainly overlap esp with John Besh's books.

Thank you very much Rinshin, I was very curious to know what in his homeland and especially you all that treasure huge culinary collections of culinary books thought of him. I just have his “Chef Paul Prudhomme's Louisiana Kitchen” and found it a gorgeous book about an outstanding and rich type of cuisine, I thought Cajun and Creole cuisine was included into Southern food and that there was not such a marked distinction, that is but very interesting indeed. I was ignorant of this. I am eager now to receive John Egerton´s book!