Paul Prudhomme - The Prudhomme Family Cookbook: Old-Time Louisiana Recipes by the Eleven Prudhomme Brothers and Sisters and Chef Paul Prudhomme

When I was eight years old, I remember a family gathering. I was sitting away to the side, just listening, because you were not seen at eight years old when adults were talkingyou didnt say anything unless somebody asked you something, and you didnt walk in front of the adults. So I was sitting in the corner daydreaming, and I overheard a conversation about a relative who had been a cook in the navy during World War II. He was now working in New Orleans as a cook, and he was making one hundred fifty dollars a week! In 1948, that was a huge amount of money. And I had this wonderful image of me dressed in white with a big hat on and making one hundred and fifty dollars a weekthat would be the fantasy of my life.

I think the reason this was so attractive to me was that for several years I had already been cooking some of my own food; Id cook pork chops and other things I really liked, and liked cooked a certain way. Cooking and food were a major part of my family life. And for me, cooking something that was good and making it better than I had tasted it before was really important.

I had the inspiration of a family that had nothing but food as their pleasure and as their entertainment and as their most important thing in life. My mom and dad were sharecroppers, which meant they farmed on someone elses land and gave the landowner a percentage of the cash crops they raised. We were very poor, and we lived off the land. The greatest, most prideful thing Id hear my dad say when I was growing up was that, Well, we dont have nothing else, but we have plenty to eat. But it hadnt always been that way.

To understand the importance of food in our lives, you have to go into a part of the family history before I was born because, from what Ive heard other members of the family talk about, we were so poor that there were times when there wasnt enough food, or there wasnt the right kind of food. Dad had only one mule back then, he and Mom had a big family to feed, and they were the only ones capable of working. When my oldest sister, Darilee, was seven years old, there were six kids. Everybody had to work as best they couldMom had to work in the fields with Dad, and that left my brothers and sisters to take care of each other. I think its hard for people to understand the pain and frustration of parents working year after year trying to raise this huge family and just sort of making an incredibly slow climb up a very steep mountain to try to get out of poverty and to get beyond just barely being able to feed the family properly.

As each one of the brothers and sisters got old enoughand old enough was eight or nine years oldthey began to help Mom and Dad with the farm work. Each time that happened, it seemed to give the family some kind of relief because there were so many close together that came to that age. As more people were able to work, Dad could go to bigger plots of land. He moved frequently during the early years, always trying to find a place to sharecrop that had a better house for the family and better soil to farm and more acreage to farm. The family kept up this slow but steady climb for more than twenty years, until World War II.

The war years were watershed years, because several of the boys were in the service and their allotment checks were sent home to the family. Dad used that money to buy cattle and chickens and hogs and horses and mules, and by shrewd trading and bartering, he was able to use the money to make more money. And when the boys returned home, I remember so well, Dad paid back every cent that had been sent home by each one. He was really proud of that.

By the time I came along and was growing up, the family was really well off for that area of the country. But Ive heard Mom and Dad and my brothers and sisters talk about when there just was not enough to go around. I think its impossible for someone whos never been hungry to understand what it is not to have enough food. There were times when the family had to put water and sugar in the milk to make it go further, and when there was no meat for days because there werent enough chickens to kill and there was no meat left from the last butchering. If you live through those kinds of times, you remember it alwaysyou can never forget it.

As things progressed and the family got better off, we still didnt have money for clothes and automobiles and other things, but we could produce enough food to feed the family well. And food became our pridewe even had enough to feed other people. My family fed other families who didnt farm for a living, who lived in the city and didnt have enough to eat. My brothers and sisters could have their friends over at the house, and there was enough food for them.

Mom Prudhomme

Mom and Dad loved having lots of people over to eat. We were often between fifteen and twenty people on weekdays and over thirty people on weekends. I remember my mom saying to my sisters and sisters-in-law when the house was full of people, Well, well have to put the little pots in the big pots today! No one could stretch food like my mom: She could take one old hen and a little bit of Cajun andouille sausage and make an incredible gumbo. Then she made a big potato salad and cooked some fresh vegetables from the garden, and she could feed twenty people wonderfully. Mom kept track one time for a period of almost ten months, and we never sat down to a meal with only members of the family present! So food was our way of sharing with others and our social identity and our entertainment, as well as our nourishment.

Over the years, we became like rich people, we were like the elite. What made us wealthy was that we had a storehouse full of food, and we had a hundred and fifty or two hundred chickens in the yard, thirty or forty hogs, and cows and calves and horses. And we had land that really produced well. That was rich for us; that was like a person today having two or three cars, a nice big house, a hundred thousand dollars in the bank, and huge insurance policies. Thats why there was so much pride in being able to say, Well, we dont have nothing else, but we have plenty to eat.

In 1951, when I was eleven years old, Bobby and I were the only children still at home, so Dad couldnt farm sixty acres of land anymore. Ours had always been a people and animal farm, no machines of any kind, so our farming days were over. Mom and Dad sold everything they had accumulated over the yearstools, farm animals, and equipmentfor six thousand dollars. That was an enormous amount of money for us, and Dad took four thousand dollars and used it as a down payment on a grocery store in the nearby town of Opelousas.

Mom and Dad loved the grocery store. We cooked food for people to take home, and we cooked for people who couldnt afford to buy food. And my wanting to be a cook stayed with me the whole time. I even learned how to cut meat in our meat market. And thats where everything started for methe farm and the grocery storeit was sort of a destined education for what would come later.