RIP Paul Prudhomme

[Robin Garr]

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/09/us/pa ... d=fb-share

Paul Prudhomme, the Cajun chef who made Cajun a trend in the 1980s, has died at 75. This hits me on a personal level, because - as with Marcella Hazan for Italian and Julie Sahni and Madhur Jaffrey for Indian, Bernard Clayton for bread, Craig Claiborne for modern American cookery and Pierre Franey for "60-Minute Gourmet," and a few others - more even than James and Julia, really - I shaped my young Baby Boomer's passion for cooking through their books.

But Prudhomme went a step beyond. I ate in his restaurant, K-Paul's Louisiana Kitchen, every time we went to NOLA - often, in those days - and as a mild-mannered writer for a major daily newspaper, I was able to wangle an interview that led to a couple of hands-on days in his kitchen, llistening to his stories and learning a few skillz.

He was simple, honest, genuine and kind, without ego issues. I learned from him, and I liked him. May he rest in peace.

[Robin Garr]

A couple of other points I've recalled in a Facebook conversation:

* A good part of his fame rested on blackening - actually not a classic Cajun technique but one that he said he developed to replicate long, slow Cajun techniques with a fast process suited for restaurant presentation. It was awesome in his hands originally but quickly became a cliche that lasted for a decade and still turns up here and there.

* His sister, Enola, who ran a restaurant near Lafayette, La. - some said it was better than KPaul's - died a few years ago.

* His wife, Kay (the love of his life and the other half of the restaurant name "K-Paul's") died young of cancer. A lot of people didn't expect him to live long. Tremendously obese during his rise to fame - he said he weighed over 400 pounds when I met him, and used a motorized wheelchair to walk more than short distances - he famously tried to change his life and wrote a low-fat cookbook, "Fork in the Road." I'm not sure he every really won that battle, but he made it to 75, and I'm glad he did.

Very sorry to hear this Robin. RIP.

I read an obit earlier today that also observed that Paul Prudhomme was really the first 'celebrity chef'. Before him, chefs did not go on television shows, publish travelogues, do book-signings, etc.

[Robin Garr]

I read an obit earlier today that also observed that Paul Prudhomme was really the first 'celebrity chef'. Before him, chefs did not go on television shows, publish travelogues, do book-signings, etc.

I'm not sure about that, Jeff. Depends on how you define it, maybe? Philly's Chef Tell was one of the progenitors, even before my time. How about Julia? Doesn't count because she didn't come out of a restaurant kitchen? Wasn't Pierre Franey on TV, in NYC at least, while he was still at Pavillon? Didn't Graham "Galloping Gourmet" Kerr come out of a kitchen? The Romagnolis? Prudhomme hit his peak in the '80s and might have defined TV chef at a new level, but as much as I liked him, I'm not sure I buy that he was the first.

Long before Paul Prudhomme there were The Galloping Gourmet, Julia Child, and Joyce Chen.

I've enjoyed recipes out of Prudhomme's "Louisiana Kitchen" cookbook (his first) for decades. I'll be making a batch of andouille and chicken gumbo in his memory.

-Paul W.

Fair enough. I can't find that particular obit now and the others do not make the same claim. They do say he was the first 'big name' chef not to cook from the French playbook. He brought cajun to the world, including, alas for him, blackened redfish. ("Alas" because it eventually became so popular that people wouldn't order anything else....)

I'll always remember a meal my brother cooked shortly after the Louisiana Kitchen cookbook came out. He'd tried making the blackened redfish and really liked it. He wanted to make it for us while the whole family was at my parents' house,so he picked up the fish and the spices and fired up the stove. Unfortunately, the exhaust hood over that stove was not a particularly good one and it didn't take long for the kitchen and then the whole house to fill with smoke that (because of the spices) had similar effects to tear gas. We all exited the house and stood around in the back yard while my brother gamely continued cooking. He managed to get all of the fish cooked and then cleared out the smoke. The fish turned out beautifully.

I've cooked many a pot of gumbo from the cookbook since then as well as a jambalaya that I dearly love. Sad to think that Chef Paul is no longer among us.