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02/26/2000 Archived Entry: "Chef Paul Prudhomme"

Chef Paul Prudhomme is the only person I know who can cook on the radio and make you smell and taste his food. It’s not just his vivid descriptions of what he’s doing either. He dips the microphone into the skillet so you can hear his vegetables sizzle as they hit the hot oil. He lets cream lug out of the container so you can hear its rich consistency. He proves the rule that you need to listen to your food as well as see, smell, and taste it as you cook. You get the picture. Well, you get the picture and the taste as well as the sounds when Paul cooks on the radio.

Paul was in my radio studio yesterday apropos two things. His new book, his eighth, Louisiana Tastes, has just been published, and he was being honored at the Philadelphia Book and Cook Fair with the KitchenAid Philadelphia Toque Award, which is given for “exceptional achievement in culinary writing and accomplishments.” Paul knows that whenever he’s in the neighborhood of New York he is more than welcome as a guest on Food Talk. I relish the opportunity to see him and talk to him (and gossip with him off the air) as much as I salivate over the thought of eating his food.

One of Paul’s great media skills is being able to cook over a hot plate as well as he does in a kitchen. It was one of the first things I learned about him way back in the days of yore when hardly anyone in America knew who he was. That must have been at least 20 years ago, and we were attending something together. I can’t remember exactly what. Perhaps it was the FMI convention in Chicago. That’s the Food Marketing Institute’s annual trade show; essentially the country’s largest supermarket trade fair. What I do remember is that we had neighboring hotel rooms and that Paul managed to gather the leftovers from a party he had catered in the hotel earlier that day. Near midnight, Paul knocked on my door and invited me to his room for “a snack.” I figured I was going to get cold Cajun shrimp, but no, he was transforming the leftovers into entirely new dishes, doing it all on the portable propane burners he continues to carry with him wherever he goes.

This time, Paul made Bucktown Soup on the radio, a creation he named after a small town on Lake Ponchartrain that is famous for its seafood markets and restaurants. Louisiana is also famous for its sweet potatoes, which, Paul says, are not nearly as common across the U.S. as New Yorkers might imagine. I can’t remember a time when New York did not have sweet potatoes. In fact, I grew up at the very end of the era when sweet potatoes were roasted on carts, on coal fires, on the streets of New York. My father always talked about coming out of school and buying a hot potato as a snack, sweet and caramel-y, from one of these carts. There were still a few around when I was young. Certainly, we ate them at home, whipped and baked with a marshmallow topping for Thanksgiving, candied as a side dish for ham steak, and plainly baked when my father had a craving for the cart-roasted potatoes of his youth.

In Bucktown Soup, Paul uses sweet potatoes cut into 1/4-inch dice for their undercurrent of sweetness and for their starch consistency. As is typical in a Paul Prudhomme recipe, he layers flavors by cooking the first addition of potatoes (and onions and celery) until they brown and become very soft, then adds the remainder of the potatoes so that they retain their shape in the final soup.

The recipe in Paul’s book is slightly different than the following in method, but I have recorded what he did in my radio studio rather than give the published version. Checking his book this morning, however, I had to laugh that he assumes many readers will have to smoke their own fish, noting that “Many markets also sell presmoked fish.” Naturally, in New York, buying smoked fish is no problem at all. Our Jewish population dotes on smoke fish, and almost any one will do for this recipe. Paul does not suggest this, but I do: If you really love the flavor of smoked fish: Use the trimmings from the smoked fish to make your fish stock.


Bucktown Soup

2 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon Chef Paul Prudhomme’s Seafood Magic or your own seasoning mix (see note)
3/4 teaspoon dry mustard
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 cups chopped onion, in all
1 1/2 cups chopped celery, in all
2 cups sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1/4-inch cubes (about 1 pound), in all
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
4 1/2 cups fish stock, preferably, or chicken stock, in all
2 teaspoons minced fresh garlic
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lime juice, about 1 medium
2 cups heavy cream
8 ounces good quality smoked fish filets, such as trout or mackerelor or whitefish, cut or shredded into 1-inch pieces

Combine the seasoning mix and mustard in a small bowl. Set aside.

Heat the oil in a heavy 3-quart pot over high heat just until hot but not smoking. Add 1 cup of the onions, 1 cup of the celery, 1 cup of the sweet potatoes, and saute until the vegetables are tender and lightly browned, about 10 minutes.

Add the remainder of the onions, celery and sweet potatoes and stir well into the already cooked vegetables.

Add the flour, stir well again, and cook about a minute.

Add about 2 cups of the stock. Stir well and simmer about 5 minutes.

Stir in the garlic and the seasoning mix. Simmer another 2 minutes.

Stir in the lime juice and simmer another 2 minutes.

Stir in the heavy cream, and the remainder of the fish stock. Bring to a simmer and simmer another 5 minutes.

Stir in the smoked fish and heat through, returning the soup to a simmer.

Note: Paul Prudhomme’s Tastes of Louisiana offers the following seasoning mix as a substitute for his commercial product. There’s no need to add dry mustard to this.

1 1/2 teaspoons onion powder
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon cayenne
1 teaspoon dried oregano
3/4 teaspoon dried mustard
3/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon white pepper
1/2 teaspoon dreid thyme

Chef Paul Prudhomme’s Magic Seasoning Blends are available in many supermarkets and specialty food stores, but they can also be ordered by mail. For a mail order catalog that lists the spices along with Chef Paul’s many other products – books, videos, skillets, New Orleans coffee with chicory, etc., call 1-800-457-2857 or go to Paul’s website: www.chefpaul.com.