Chef John Besh’s cookbook is his love letter to New Orleans

Author: admin

3 Oct

The parade of local fall culinary books has a heavyweight in the lead this year.

Chef John Besh’s “My New Orleans: The Cookbook” has 374 pages and weighs 5 pounds. With 200 recipes and hundreds of color photos, the $45 book, published by Andrews McMeel, took Besh five years to write — in longhand.

What: Chef John Besh signs “My New Orleans: The Cookbook.”

When: Wednesday, 6-9 p.m. (A related “Lunchbox Lecture” — “Examining WWII through Cookbooks” by Lauren Handley — is Wednesday, noon-1 p.m.)

Where: National World War II Museum, 945 Magazine St.

Cost: Free admission to both events.

Call: 504.528.1944.

His previous writing experience?

“Are you kidding?” he says, laughing. Then he thinks a minute.

“My dad was an incredible letter writer, ” he says after a pause. “When I was away in the first (Persian) Gulf War, he would write these letters and we would pass them around the platoon. It was like reading Walker Percy. He would just tell these stories. He would send me a letter a day. And I would write back to him.”

Besh is arguably New Orleans’ most visible chef on the national stage these days. This year alone, he competed on Bravo’s “Top Chef Masters” and appeared on camera with Martha Stewart, Paula Deen and Rachael Ray. He’s been in every publication imaginable and is profiled in the latest issue of Men’s Fitness magazine.

Locally, his Besh Group’s fifth restaurant, Domenica, opened in The Roosevelt Hotel recently, and the sixth, The American Sector, is set to open in November at the World War II Museum, which will be the site of his first book signing Wednesday.

On the cover of the book, Besh is spooning up gelato. Turns out it’s not the strawberry and Creole cream cheese ice cream recipe on Page 70. It’s his favorite flavor, dulce de leche, from La Divina Gelateria on Magazine Street.

Besh constantly references everything New Orleans and Louisiana; growing up in Slidell; hunting and fishing; his family; his hunting buddies; his co-workers.

On the back of the book, chef Paul Prudhomme’s endorsement joins those of chefs Daniel Boulud and Mario Batali, along with Wynton Marsalis.

Besh says Prudhomme’s kind words are one of his favorite things about the book.

“When I was a kid and I wanted to be a chef at age nine, my dad took me to meet Paul Prudhomme. So that’s a wow. The first thing I did was call Dad and tell him all about it.”

Besh’s father was hit by a drunken driver and paralyzed when Besh was a child. Cooking for him made his dad happy, Besh said. For further encouragement, the elder Besh took his son to meet Justin Wilson, who lived on the north shore, and Chris Kerageorgiou of La Provence in Lacombe, who became Besh’s mentor.

“This is just my little story of how I grew up eating, ” Besh says. “The iconic seasons of my childhood influenced everything.”

Another couple of Louisiana factors helped lead Besh down his chosen path.

“The great chefs of France develop their great palates at an early age, and so do we, ” he said. “And it’s never been just the woman’s job to be in the kitchen. It’s as much the man’s job to cook the duck as it is to kill the duck to put in the gumbo.

“It’s not about me. It’s about the people, ” Besh said. “This place is much more important than one person.”

The photography alone took a year, because “we wanted to show the food fresh, all in season, in natural light. There’s no way to substitute. You can’t use frozen crawfish.” His editor was Dorothy Kalins, a founder of Saveur magazine.

The more he got into the book, the more he discovered how proud he was to be from here, Besh said. And the more he delved into writing, “the less chef-y the book became, and the more I wanted to distance it from restaurant cuisine.”

The book project was well under way when Katrina hit, but “the storm gave it a greater sense of purpose. Being a chef here, I feel a sense of stewardship, ” Besh says. “Some things are not meant to be deconstructed.”

Besh’s own well-documented rescue efforts are part of the story, too.

“The first time I served red beans and rice after the storm, on a boat, this guy said it wasn’t as good as his mama’s, ” Besh said. “And that signaled to me right there that we were going to be OK.”

In the book, Besh expounds on that feeling:

“The story of our city is greater than those storms. We have been here for over 300 years, and we’ll be here for another 300. Maybe it’s about my children’s generation, and their children’s. Will they still eat red beans on Mondays? Make St. Joseph’s Day altars? Will they still love the Saints? Will we ever win a Super Bowl? All I know is that I cook New Orleans food my way, revering each ingredient as it reaches the season of its ripeness. No other place on earth is like New Orleans. Welcome to the flavors of my home. Welcome to My New Orleans.”

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