“We had a disagreement. We had a difference of views because when I was a kid, my grandmother used to make a dish she called crab stew, but it wasn’t written down. I have no idea how you make that. And in Lafayette, there was this [cookbook] that came out, called Talk About Good. One [...]
“You know, we have a law in Louisiana. If you live here and you can’t cook, we make you move. That’s just written law. The way I learned how to cook was from everybody. I learned things from the Jewish lady around the corner, the Irish lady down the street, the Italian lady in the [...]
“Originally from Houston, I basically learned to make smoked brisket from everyone in the family. Most of my family comes from cattle barons; there’s always a bunch of beef around. It’s kind of like here, where everyone knows how to make red beans and rice. In Texas, everyone knows how to smoke barbecue.
I make smoked [...]
The Praline Connection
542 Frenchmen St.
(504) 943-3934
What do you eat here?
The fried chicken livers. Me being a Creole, I use my fingers. Make the fingers taste better.
Something on the side?
Depends how you want it, dahlin’. Sometimes I get the red beans, sometimes cabbage. The chicken salad is good, and the pork ribs too. The chefs over [...]
“First of all, I’m Italian. I come from a beautiful Napolitano family that settled in the area of Trenton, New Jersey, in a place called Chambersburg. And that’s where all of the Italians seemed to settle when they came to this country. My great, great grandfather, Gennaro Chianese, was the founder of the Italian festival [...]
When we came back after Katrina, we decided that we needed some social life. The city was so dead. Nine of us, all relatives, decided we’d buy Saints season tickets once the Saints were coming back, and then we started a poker group because we all played poker. My parents played poker. My mom was [...]
“This is definitely one of my favorite dishes. I guess I could trace the whole thing back to when my dad and I used to make fajitas. My dad used some
store-bought marinade, really close to a salad dressing, and when you’d cook it, it’d reduce to almost a paste and it’d latch on to the [...]
“I don’t think I ever did learn to cook, honestly. I just made up a bunch of stuff as I went along. It’s something I started doing out of necessity. Either because I was trying to impress somebody, or because I created small people who were hungry and I was obligated to feed them.
I started [...]
Catch the shots that didn’t make it into our February 2010 issue. Includes photos taken for the stories “Framed”, about Quintron and Miss Pussycat’s show at NOMA; “A Good Fit”, the Helen Gillet cover story; and this month’s The Gravy, “In the Kitchen with Debbie Davis”. All photos taken by Elsa Hahne.
“My family is from south Texas and my grandfather got a job with Gulf Oil. They had oil camps down in the countries where they had their oil fields, and my grandparents moved down to Venezuela. My father actually spent most of his childhood there. My grandmother started to learn all these Venezuelan recipes and [...]
