Mosquito Supper Club: Cajun Recipes від Disappearing Bayou

Winner, James Beard Award for Best Book in U.S. Foodways
Winner, IACP Book of the Year
Winner, IACP Best American Cookbook
An NPR Best Book of the Year

For anyone who loves Cajun food or is interested in American cooking or wants to discover a distinct and engaging new female voice — or just wants to make the very best duck gumbo, shrimp jambalaya, she-crab soup, crawfish étouffée, smothered chicken, fried okra, oyster bisque, and sweet potato pie — comes Mosquito Supper Club.

Named after her restaurant in New Orleans, chef Melissa M. Martin’s debut cookbook shares her inspired and reverent interpretations of the traditional Cajun recipes she grew up eating on the Louisiana bayou, with a generous helping of stories about her community and its cooking. Every hour, Louisiana loses a football field’s worth of land to the Gulf of Mexico. Too soon, Martin’s hometown of Chauvin will be gone, along with the way of life it sustained. Before it disappears, Martin wants to document and share the recipes, ingredients, and customs of the Cajun people.

Illustrated throughout with dazzling color photographs of food and place, the book is divided into chapters by ingredient—from shrimp and oysters to poultry, rice, and sugarcane. Each begins with an essay explaining the ingredient and its context, including traditions like putting up blackberries each February, shrimping every August, and the many ways to make an authentic Cajun gumbo. Martin is a gifted cook who brings a female perspective to a world we’ve only heard about from men. The stories she tells come straight from her own life, and yet in this age of climate change and erasure of local cultures, they feel universal, moving, and urgent.

About the Author:

Melissa M. Martin grew up on the Louisiana coast and has lived in New Orleans for 25 years. After graduating from Loyola University New Orleans, she worked as an adult literacy teacher before moving to California following Hurricane Katrina. Working in the Napa Valley, she honed her self-taught culinary skills to a professional level. Martin returned to New Orleans and opened Satsuma Café, a casual farm-to-table restaurant, and worked at Café Hope, a nonprofit restaurant, teaching at-risk youth to cook seasonal food. In 2014, she opened Mosquito Supper Club, a Cajun restaurant created to celebrate the bounty of the shrimpers, oystermen, crabbers, fin and crawfish fishermen, and farmers that define bayou cuisine. Her first book, Mosquito Supper Club: Cajun Recipes from a Disappearing Bayou, was named a Best New Cookbook by Bon Appétit, Food & Wine, NPR,The Splendid Table, Eater, Epicurious, and more. It was awarded Cookbook of the Year and Best American Cookbook by the IACP. Martin is a 2022 James Beard Award Finalist in two categories, Best Chef: South and Best Book in U.S. Foodways. Follow her on Instagram at @mosquitosupperclub and on Twitter at @mosquitosupper.