Father's Day Gift

“Canned food is a perversion,' Ignatius said. 'I suspect that it is ultimately very damaging to the soul.”
― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

NEW ORLEANS-Stroll down Canal Street on the sidewalk that fronted on DH Holmes department store and you’ll be greeted by the statue of Ignatius J. Reilly, the protagonist of A Confederacy of Dunces, the Pulitzer Prize –winning novel by John Kennedy Toole. It’s standing near today’s Ritz-Carleton and rare is the moment when someone isn’t posing for American literature’s best-known slacker.

Like Twain’s Huckleberry, Ignatius has become part of the American scene where the lines between. fiction and fact are blurred. This, however, is an original cookbook and a doggone good one at that.

Recall the larger-than-life, overweight Ignatius living with his mother Irene in 1960s New Orleans. Viewed by some as the Don Quixote of the French Quarter, Ignatius is the star of the farce that still attracts a global audience. The stage play of Confederacy was performed a few years back by Atlanta’s Theatrical Outfit and is on the road now. Such expansiveness and longevity merits a cookbook and we are grateful that one author had the ability to do what would appear to be quite daunting.

Cynthia LeJeune Nobles, a cookbook editor at the Louisiana State University Press, was asked to undertake the task of writing a Confederacy of Dunces cookbook. "When I first read the novel,” Nobles said, “the most captivating thing to me was it had all this food in the book." Author of "The Delta Queen Cookbook, and a member of the Newcomb College Culinary History Writers Group, Nobles spent a year researching and writing. The result: A Confederacy of Dunces Cookbook: Recipes from Ignatius J. Reilly's New Orleans (LSU Press), with over 200 recipes plus stories and photographs.

Ms. Nobles confirms that the research for her cookbook was fun, often delicious.” I gained 10 pounds,” she admitted. But the result is a highly readable, well organized work loaded with recipes and stories from Toole’s classic novel along with her interesting insights about legendary restaurants like Antoine’s in the French Quarter and descriptions of the ethnic neighborhoods of New Orleans.

Using one of the author’s original recipes, I entertained guests with her multicultural Muscatel Braised Lamb Shanks with Sour Cream Mashed Potatoes. A bottle of Malbec from Argentina complimented the dish in the grandest tradition of New Orleans dining.

The chapters bring the reader back to that first reading of Toole’s novel with an added lagniappe: tested and reliable recipes that include many classic cocktails. Chapters titles “Hanging Out with Burma Jones, In the Kitchen with Irene Reilly, Santa Battaglia, or How to Cook Like a Sicilian are just a few. The French Quarter’s iconic weenie wagon appears in the chapter “Adventures with Paradise Vendors.”

Come on along with Ignatius, Irene, Claude, Burma, Lana Lee, Patrolman Mancuso, Darlene, Miss Trixie and Gus Levy. You’ll have at least three adventurous meals daily, unlimited refreshing cocktails and enjoy some of the best stories found on cookbook pages in recent years.

A Confederacy of Dunces Cookbook: Recipes from Ignatius J. Reilly’s New Orleans, published recently by LSU Press. One of the world’s great food-obsessed cities and one of the great gluttons of literature are paired in this new book by Louisiana food writer Cynthia LeJeune Nobles. Nobles has collected recipes for the dishes presented in John Kennedy Toole’s classic novel, dressed them in local history, and served up a fun and readable cookbook I’m glad to have on my shelf.

The resulting book is a both a compilation of updated and standard Louisiana dishes, and a "Confederacy" companion piece.

It delights the reader in several ways. One is Michelle Neustrom's edible Ignatius cover image, with wieners for a scarf, eyebrows of dates and a green hunting cap made of spinach leaves flapping over his ears. His prominent nose is a hot dog bun.

The Pulitzer prize-winning book is popular worldwide. It depicts New Orleans in the early 1960s, where author John Kennedy Toole was raised. Widely considered a comic masterpiece, the novel has sold more than 2 million copies in 23 languages.

"People not from New Orleans ask, 'Was D.H. Holmes real? Is there really a Prytania Theatre? What's daube?'" Nobles said. She answers those questions and many more. Locals will like the general index for mentions of everything from Abita Beer to zydeco.

The book has been the subject of much research, and Nobles added to the scholarship.

In John Kennedy Toole’s iconic novel, Ignatius J. Reilly is never short of opinions about food or far away from his next bite. Whether issuing gibes such as “canned food is a perversion,” or taking a break from his literary ambitions with “an occasional cheese dip,” this lover of Lucky Dogs, café au lait, and wine cakes navigates 1960s New Orleans focused on gastronomical pursuits.

For the novel’s millions of fans, Cynthia LeJeune Nobles’s “A Confederacy of Dunces” Cookbook offers recipes inspired by the delightfully commonplace and always delicious fare of Ignatius and his cohorts. Through an informative narrative and almost 200 recipes, Nobles explores the intersection of food, history, and culture found in the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, opening up a new avenue into New Orleans’s rich culinary traditions.

Dishes inspired by Ignatius’s favorites—macaroons and “toothsome” steak—as well as recipes based on supporting characters—Officer Mancuso’s Pork and Beans and Dr. Talc’s Bloody Marys—complement a wealth of fascinating detail about the epicurean side of the novel’s memorable settings. A guide to the D. H. Holmes Department Store’s legendary Chicken Salad, the likely offerings of the fictitious German’s Bakery, and an in-depth interview with the general manager of Lucky Dogs round out this delightful cookbook.

A lighthearted yet impeccably researched look at the food of the 1960s, “A Confederacy of Dunces” Cookbook reaffirms the singularity and timelessness of both New Orleans cuisine and Toole’s comic tour de force

. Most of the recipes are completely accessible to anyone who, broadly put, “knows how to cook” and represent a good mix of dishes you might actually make for dinner, foods you might prepare if you were feeling ambitious, and a few examples of pipe-dream cuisine you know, on some level, you’ll never attempt but enjoy reading about. (The best cookbooks always seem to combine practical-instruction-manual with culinary fairy tale.)

Nobles also thoughtfully includes a number of classic recipes that might not yet be in your repertoire: remoulade, étouffée, and fried catfish for instance. In so doing, she risks alienating somebody, somewhere; but if Nobles wants to put sour cream but no vinegar in her deviled eggs, I suppose that’s between her, her guests, and the Lord. She more than makes up for these infractions with the inclusion of several recipes that improve on dishes you already cook. Anyone can smother a pork chop in some Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom and be content, but the recipe for Pork Chops with Brandy Mustard Sauce makes me want to go the grocery store on an ingredient run now.

Lagniappe: Father’s Day will be forever remembered if this book finds its way to a dad who reads good books and loves to cook while ebjoying a cocktail.