Marcelle Bienvenu recently visited Lake Charles, Louisiana to chat with fans and sign books to introduce her newest cookbook, True Blood: Eats, Drinks, and Bites from Bon Temps.
Having written Who’s Your Mama, Are You Catholic and Can You Make A Roux?, Cajun Cooking For Beginners, and having a regular food column in the New Orleans Times-Picayune since 1984, Bienvenu was an expert on Louisiana-style cooking. However, when first contacted to make the cookbook, she didn’t know much about the show and all of its supernatural drama.
How to solve the problem? Bienvenu sat down and watched every single episode and took note of every mention of the Louisiana cooking.
Bienvenu knows a lot about food, having cooked with esteemed chefs like Emeril Lagasse, Paul Prudhomme, and Ella Brennan at the Commander’s Palace in New Orleans. She can even tell where a person’s from by their gumbo:
“In Baton Rouge, the roux is lighter,” she said. “Along the coast, they have seafood and on the prairies, it’s chicken and sausage.”
Thanks to her True Blood research, however, the HBO show’s cookbook is now complete with 75 Louisiana-approved recipes with clever names any True Blood fan might recognize. Some of Bienvenu’s favorites include, “Stake and Eggs,” “Tequila Moonrise” and “Wanted: Dead or Alive.”
Having first started cooking as a child, Bienvenu expressed her life-long love for the craft:
“I’ve been eating my way through life since.”
The full video can be viewed here:
KPLC 7 News, Lake Charles, Louisiana
Have you tried any of the True Blood recipes?
Source: KPLCTV.com - True Chef Talks ‘True Blood’ at Central Library
(Photo Credit: Store.HBO.com)