Famed New Orleans chef Paul Prudhomme, who turned Commander's Palace and K-Paul into legendary Creole eateries, died yesterday at 75. Prudhomme popularized Creole and Cajun food and influenced scores of chefs in New Orleans and beyond, including Emeril Lagasse.
Prudhomme spoke with former AJC features writer Elizabeth Lee in 2007 about life after Hurricane Katrina: "We're no doubt challenged, but the spirit of New Orleans is great and it's still wonderful, " he said.
Q: What are you involved in now?
A: We're up to survival. We're trying to rebuild the city [by] trying to get the word out that New Orleans and the French Quarter and the hotels and convention center are ready for thousands and thousands of people. We just need to convince them they'll be safe here and have a good time. We're working on that, very hard, the whole city is.
Q: It seems like you're having a hard time getting the message across.
A: No doubt about it. The media keeps showing pictures of the city, some of them with water still in it. People really ask me if there's still water in my house. It just drives you nuts. The water has been gone for a year and a half, you know. There was no damage to [my house] at all. The restaurant is in the French Quarter and the water didn't reach us at all. One of the things that's really amazing is, we lost tourism, but we got the locals back.
Q: Is business pretty good?
A: We're used to getting 500 to 700 people a night. Now it's way below that. Some nights you break even, some nights you don't. We actually went from October '05 to January '07 without breaking even one time. Since then we're on our third month we're going to break even, because of Jazz Fest and other things. It's a battle and we know it's there, we accept it, and we're going to win it.
Q: What do you like to cook for yourself now?
A: I'm into whole grains. Sometimes we roast them, which really makes a difference. We'll roast vegetables and we'll put them together and put dressing on them instead of a sauce, literally salad dressing, and it just makes it spectacular. You just can't stop eating it.
I went from 560 pounds to 225 or 230. I fluctuate from 220 to 250, and when I get to 250, I get back to 220. It changes the way you eat.
I just decided I didn't want to be large anymore. Eleven years ago --- it's going to be 12 on my next birthday [in July] --- I decided I had a lot of information about food and I didn't want to go on a diet and I didn't want to get cut on, so I started a program on understanding what I should eat and how to eat it. It gave me a whole new lifestyle, and a whole new feeling in my bones and my body.
It's not hard to do. The first three or four weeks it was miserable, because I was used to eating massive amounts of food. I just started knocking it down. I cannot eat 30 percent of what I used to eat in one day.
Once you get going and you see the removal of the body fat on you and the pounds go down, it's very exciting. You're proud of yourself.
Q: What are you working on in the seasoning business?
A: We feel very strongly that the usage of salt in America is getting to be extreme everywhere, so we got one salt-free seasoning out. My goal is to have seven or eight in retail in the next two years. I think it's important. If you're in a business and it involves the human body, you've got to be conscious to an extent of what you can do or not do to help people put [healthy foods] in their mouth.
Q: Are you going to reduce the salt in your other seasoning blends?
A: We can do a Meat Magic without salt. Why take away what they've been buying for years? I can't make choices for the public, but I'm going to give them options. I'm not going to tell them what to do.
Q: Your older recipes from books like "Chef Paul Prudhomme's Louisiana Kitchen" are famous for the amount of butter they use.
A: You learn. That was 30 years ago. I'll give you a real example. When you do blackening, I said, only turn it once. I've learned it's better to turn it over and over again, when you're cooking it.
The old kitchen didn't have refrigeration. It was small, and we put everything on ice. [After a 1997 renovation that added refrigeration, ] we had to change the way we did blackening. When it's really cold, it won't blacken the same way. The more you turn it, the better it is.
Cooking is a constant learning curve, and if you don't think of it that way, you won't stretch out, you won't continue to grow with it. It's what keeps you young, learning.
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