Stephen Interviews:
Chef Paul Prudhomme
His Website

hef Paul Prudhomme is a man with a passion for food and a lust for life. He is the youngest of thirteen children who grew up on a working farm in rural Louisiana. He helped his mother in the kitchen at age seven and learned from her the art of cooking Cajun style. At the age of seventeen, Chef Paul started his first restaurant and for the better part of forty years has been deeply involved in the art of food, becoming one of the world’s most renowned chefs. His PBS Show Cajun Chef is aired all over the world, and his cooking vignettes are syndicated across the country on daily news shows. His legendary cookbooks have been hailed as some most enjoyable and informative tomes available today. Currently Chef Paul is touring the country promoting his Magic Seasonings product line that features every possible combination of Cajun spices to light up any recipe.

SV: Tell us about your Magic Seasonings line of products.
PP: The thing about being in the herb and spice business is that it gives you such an open feeling knowing that there are things as simple as herbs and spices that in slightly different combinations can make any dish of food taste special. In the last ten or fifteen years I have developed literally thousands of recipes for herb and spice blends.

SV: You have developed quite an impressive array of spices and products.
PP: We are in 35 countries around the world and by the end of this year it will be over forty. It’s really neat because I know that I have developed something that works for everyone.

SV: I have had the pleasure of dining at your restaurant K Paul in New Orleans, how do you manage to keep it successful,
PP: We originally opened up with a very small restaurant, just 64 seats; it was like one floor and honestly it was a dump. There’s just no other way to put it. In 1996 I realized the we couldn’t continue to just repair it as it was falling apart so we renovated the whole thing, but were still doing the same great food with the freshest ingredients and make them really hum in your mouth.

SV: I like that. “Hum in your mouth.”
PP: Well it does. It’s just a tune that rings out through your entire mouth.

SV: Even your meatloaf was just the best I have ever had.
PP: If your gonna do it you have to do the best you can, that’s just the way it is.

SV: You have made a point of helping many young people into the business. Why such generosity?
PP: It is important to carry on the tradition and it’s sort of like a way of not ever going away yourself. We all know were gonna die, but when you teach people stuff they pass it on and it’s like a little bit of immortality.

SV: How long have you been cooking professionally.
PP: Forty-two years, professionally. I was seven years old when I started helping mother and I was 17 years old when I had my first restaurant. I feel that you have to be in physical contact with your food to learn all that it can teach you.

SV: The experience of doing that makes it possible to use all your senses in the kitchen.
PP: The best cooks use all their senses. You hit the nail right on the head. When you do it enough times it just comes naturally.

SV: Now what are you doing these days with television? Your shows have been so incredibly popular and I really enjoyed watching them.
PP: Well I have four PBS series out, that’s 104 shows [annually], and I do a daily thing at some of the stations around the country.

SV: You have written some fabulous books too. I have your new book right here called, “The Louisiana Taste.”
PP: So much has happened since I wrote the first book Louisiana Kitchen and this book uses ingredients that just were not there back then or that I did not know about. I was probably forty years old before I knew about fresh ginger. I was that age or older before I had seen a mango.

SV: The cuisine of New Orleans is a fairly creative infusion of different cuisines.
PP: It is because our culture is very diverse. We have an Italian community, we have a French community, we have an Irish community, a Spanish community...

SV: And a Jewish community.
PP: Yes, and a Jewish community. By the way, the Jewish families in New Orleans say that they have a special dispensation to eat shrimp and crab.

But the idea is, that we have these cultures that have been there so long and all this mixture has created truly three kinds of cooking in this small state, and we call it Creole in Louisiana. New Orleans is different, it has both finesse and local flair which we call Cajun and in New Orleans we use cream and butter, my kind of food.

SV: Ohhh YEEESSS! You’re not afraid of fat when your eating in New Orleans.
PP: That’s true.

SV: I think that in New Orleans one of the best things you can do is to eat.
PP: Absolutely

SV: What are a few of your favorite restaurants in San Francisco?
PP: I have a lot of friends here, Wolfgang Puck’s got a restaurant [Postrio] which is absolutely spectacular.

SV: You’re the man responsible for introducing Cajun food to this country. When you went to New York with it, all of a sudden blackened catfish became the rage. You’re going into another realm now with some of the things your preparing, which you call bronzing.
PP: Right. One of the things that I’ve experienced with the blackening, especially in the restaurants where most people did it wrong, is that they burned it and it was bitter. Blackening, if you do it correctly, is sweet. Some people were taking it and literally pressing a piece of fish and herbs and spices with a lot of pepper in it and then burning it.

SV: What are your Three Maxims of cooking?
PP: Good cooking, good eating and good loving. I think those are the three main stays of being a cook, and that is what is in my heart.