There is not a new café in town, but there is a new cookbook now available with recipes that could easily match those served at a first-class café. It’s called “Café Sassone,” and the author is none other than Vicksburg’s own Denise Sassone.

The collection of recipes includes recipes from friends and relatives of the New Orleans-born Sassone. And a portion of the  proceeds from the sale of the book will go to two of Sassone’s favorite charities, the New Orleans Musicians’ Clinic and the New Orleans Slow Food Convivium. For, as the author writes:

“ Because what would New Orleans be without our food and music?”

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The cookbook’s index reads like a South Louisiana recipe collection with lots of Mississippi “sides” and old Southern recipes you simply can’t resist. The cookbook includes 238 kitchen-tested recipes and 161 photographs of family and friends. Cost of the book is $19.95, plus 7 percent tax for Mississippi residents. Copies are available through the www.CafeSassone.com Web site. 

Signed copies may be picked up at the new offices of Dr. David Halinski, 114 Monument Place, Suite B, between the hours of 9 a.m. and 5 p.m, Monday through Thursday. “Café Sassone” is hardcover with a concealed wire binding, so that it will lie flat for cooking.

Passion for cooking

Born in Louisiana to a Cajun father and a mother raised in New Orleans, and married and living in Vicksburg for the past 18 years, Sassone has had a deep passion for cooking since she was young. She often hosts dinner parties in her home, and family and friends always request her recipes.  Her brother Joe, a master executive chef, even uses some of her recipes in his fine-dining New Orleans-cuisine restaurant, J. Broussard’s, in Columbus, Miss.

The author of two previous benefit cookbooks — “Children’s House Montessori Cooks” and the Old Court House Museum’s “Moore Groceries,” Sassone has been encouraged by family and friends, many of whom are cooks and foodies, to publish her own cookbook. The new book includes stories with the recipes and photos of recent ancestors as well as family and friends.  Cook any of her kitchen-tested recipes and you will wish that she would attend your potluck party also. These Southern home cooking-type recipes, Cajun specialties, Creole standards, and a smattering from international cuisines will leave you feeling like you visited warm, loving families in both Vicksburg and New Orleans and had wonderful creative family dinners with them.