The Commander's Palace is consistently rated one of the best restaurants in the United States and is de facto the place where many chefs specializing Louisiana-based cooking obtained their apprenticeships, including Emeril Lagasse and Paul Prudhomme as two of the most famous examples. It specialty is in the time-honoured Creole cuisines with a little bit of Cajun influences thrown around.
You would have expected a book that is Commander's first official cookbook would provide all the classics of the Creole cuisine that the restaurant prepared. Alas, it was very much a book that was a product of the 1980s low-fat especially butter and low in flour sentiments. So for example, the recipe for seafood gumbo on page 37 doesn't include roux and oysters Rockefeller is not even featured at all. Bear in mind also that the book was published at the time when Emeril Lagasse was the executive chef there, so fusion recipes like crawfish and pasta with stir-fried vegetables or Lagasse's touches dishes like duck jambalaya were all there.
The recipes themselves are workable using home cookware and turn out perfectly if you follow the recipes like the Brennan salad or the Creole onion soup.
But many spice mixtures like the Creole seasoning mixes or crab boil, are not well defined at all. Similar to fish or meat curry powders in many Singaporean or Malaysian cookbooks published in Southeast Asia, it is assumed spice mixtures are commonly available at every market. In the case for Creole spice mixes, it is the case in Louisiana but nowhere near true when you try to replicate the recipes in Auckland or London. It would be very handy to provide methods to produce such spice mixtures from scratch. But I must stress I sense the Brennans have not withheld any secrets behind the recipes in the book as like Patsy's restaurant cookbook does, and the non-mention of making spice mixtures is due to their assumption of widespread availability.
In sum, the book could have been better that is now, and if you have eaten at Commander's Palace it is a good souvenir to take home. I wouldn't recommend it if you rely on this as the only title to give you the full picture of Louisiana Creole cooking. There is also a second and currently marketed official cookbook published in 2000 by Ti Adelaide Martin and Jamie Shannon. Purchase that book instead or alongside this title.
A 3.5 star rating.