You might want to get to Ann Cuiellette Marr's cookbook signing this Thursday on the early side, before she runs out of gumbo and bread-pudding samples. That's because, according the Creole-cooking maven, "I can never make enough bread pudding. No matter how much bread pudding I make, I never, ever have anything left. I will be making a big one for the Thursday event."
Her newly published cookbook, Classic Creole: A Celebration of Food and Family, features dozens of authentic New Orleans recipes, including one for that bread pudding with a creme anglaise sauce that knocks 'em dead. ("A lot of people are afraid bread pudding is going to be dry, but mine is moist," she avers.)
Portion control is not an issue for Marr, who grew up the 12th of 13 children in a New Orleans family. "With that many people in the family, it was like a party every night," she said. "My friends without big families always wanted to hang out at my house, and my mother was so welcoming to them. If you were over at the house at dinnertime, she would always put out a place for you. I never knew what it was to be alone."
Marr, a veep at World Wide Technology in Maryland Heights, demonstrated how to make jambalaya and Hurricanes, and dished up some of that famous bread pudding, too, on "The Early Show" on CBS, on Fat Tuesday this past March. She's also been featured on the "Lunchbreak" cooking segment on Chicago's WGN News a number of times, and is known locally for offering "a complete Creole dinner in your home" at silent-auction events at various charity balls.
It's only natural that she would eventually compile her family's recipes into a cookbook. The book, published by University Press of Southeast Missouri State U., offers great photos of those dishes, including a few unusual ones, like banana fritters, stuffed mirliton (squash), and a shrimp-and-crabmeat pie that looks like the best quiche you've never had.
Marr said she's especially happy to share the recipe for smothered pork chops over mashed potatoes, a favorite of her father's. "He liked to take buttered French bread and dip it in the extra sauce," she said. "And my daughters and I created the shrimp stuffed with crab meat recipe, so we're proud of that."
She also described some devastating "Creole rice cakes, served at Mardi Gras time and at first communion."
"Those are deep fried and covered with powdered sugar," she said. "We call them the Creole beignets."
In the foreword to her cookbook, Marr casually reveals that she is a direct descendant of legendary New Orleans voodoo queen Marie Laveau.
I had to ask her if she practices the Caribbean religion that has become the fodder for so many trashy horror films.
"I'm not going to say one way or the other if I believe in it," she said. "As I said in my book, I don't practice it, but I don't not believe in it, because that would not be good." (Please pardon the quadruple-negative in that last statement.)
But there was nothing mystical about the need for a ton of food every Sunday night at the Cuiellette homestead back in New Orleans, she said. "Every Sunday was a big family dinner, and friends and family would come over," she explained. "Sometimes my mom would make fried chicken, which we all loved, and even if it was just the 15 of us, my mom would fry seven whole chickens, and there were never any leftovers then, either."
