To celebrate Fat Tuesday, Another Wine Blog is offering you a chance to win an autographed copy of a new cookbook by New Orleans’ World Class Chef John Besh.

Besh grew up in southern Louisiana and has set the benchmark for fine dining in New Orleans. As a chef, Besh’s talent and drive have earned him continuous kudos from the outset of his career: from Food & Wine’s “Top 10 Best New Chefs in America” to Gourmet’s “Guide to America’s Best Restaurants,” and “America’s Top 50 Restaurants”. He won the James Beard Award for Best Chef of the Southeast in 2006, and was awarded Food Arts’ Silver Spoon Award in 2009.

Mardi Gras, French for “Fat Tuesday” refers to the the last night of eating rich, fatty foods before the ritual fasting of the Lenten season, which starts on Ash Wednesday. Popular practices include wearing masks and costumes, overturning social conventions, dancing, parades and in the land of Who Dat Nation, Laissez les Bon Temps Rouler! The first Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans was on February 24, 1857 by the Krewe of Comus.  That began the tradition of presenting a parade with floats and following it with a ball for the krewe and their guests. Rex, the King of Carnival, selected the Mardi Gras colors and assigned meaning to them in 1892. Purple stands for justice, green for faith, and gold for power.

When we visited New Orleans for Harrah’s Greatest Weekend Ever, our nice hosts not only treated us to dinner at Besh Steak in Harrah’s Casino, but gave us each an autographed copy of Chef John Besh’s new cookbook, My New Orleans: The Cookbook. This 384-Hardcover volume sells for $45 and not only includes recipes featured in Chef Besh’s fabulous restaurants, but gorgeous pictures and entertaining stories that make it an excellent addition to library of both the home chef and frequent restaurant diner alike!  Since we have two of them, we thought we’d give one away to one of you lucky readers!

But how do you win?  That’s easy. Just select one of the many recipes we have featured on Another Wine Blog, prepare the dish, and post a link to the photograph as a comment to this post.  You can post it on your own blog, on twitter, Facebook, Picasa, or wherever you share pictures with friends.  Just make sure to come back after it’s posted and post a link to the photo here on Another Wine Blog.  Let us know which dish you’ve prepared, by identifying the AWB post in your comment.  If you don’t have a place to post pictures, just use the Contact AWB form and we’ll give you an email address where you can send it.

We’ll select the best picture of the dish as the winner.  Foodies, get your apron on and start cooking! Contest ends at 11:59 p.m. on Sunday, February 28th.

Bon Chance!

The WineWonkette

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