Marcella Bienvenu is a cookbook author and food writer who has been preparing Cajun and Creole dishes since the 1960s. She is currently a chef/instructor at the John Folse Culinary Institute at Nicholls State University.
She is the author of four cookbooks: Who’s Your Mama, Are You Catholic and Can You Make a Roux? (Book 1), Who’s Your Mama… ? (Book 2), Cajun Cooking for Beginners, and No Baloney On My Boat. She co-authored four cookbooks with renowned chef Emeril Lagasse. She also co-authored Eula Mae’s Cajun Kitchen with Eula Mae Dore, a longtime cook for the McIlhenny family on Avery Island, and Stir the Pot: The History of Cajun Cuisine, with Carl A. Bras-seaux and Ryan A. Brasseaux. With Judy Walker, food editor for The Times-Picayune, Ms. Bienvenu co-authored Cooking Up A Storm: Recipes Lost and Found from The Times-Picayune of New Orleans, which was nominated for a James Beard Award in 2009.
She talked about her interest in cooking and her contributions by writing books and stated: I spoke to a group in New Orleans a couple of weeks ago, and one of the ladies in the audience asked me how “did you get into food?” Well, I was born into it. My father’s family. – large family owned the newspaper, went home for lunch. My mother’s family – farmers – had pigs, chickens, cattle, garden, canned figs and pears, and made butter.
My experience in Washington, D.C. and my stint at the TP – living in New Orleans opened up a whole new world to me. I became infatuated with the history of why we eat what we eat – how did the cuisines of Cajun and Creole evolve? And now I’m somewhat of a culinary historian. I teach at Nicholls – Culinary History of the American South. And now it appears that we’ll be having our own culinary building -33,000 square feet on a 6-acre site on Highway 1 on what used to be Acadiana Plantation.
