GCIA, Leah Chase Interview in New Orleans

food is about everything to be is my life as a child everybody came up in the kitchen really particularly an african-american community your mama doesn't kitchen you in the kitchen but I didn't pay that any attention when I was coming up I didn't like the kitchen I didn't stay there I did what they call housework you know you go and you make the beds you duck your mop you scrub the floor do that kind of thing my sister was always the one in the tops I never liked the pot that's what shocked my whole family and everything they couldn't believe I had come to the kitchen but what I went to work in the frig quarters and I worked as a waitress I love to wait tables I just think it's just great to wait table to serve people then you get to go in the kitchen you see what's happening in kitchen and I just thought that was just a wonderful thing it made me want that want a restaurant of my own wanna cook for myself but then I didn't have anybody but I was fortunate enough lucky enough to marry a man whose mother had you know back then you didn't have restaurants like you have today and in the black community had nothing but little sandwich shops because everybody cooked at home nobody ate out well then there was segregation there was nowhere for you to eat when I started out years ago would you believe in this city we only had about three or four black doctors so you see blacks were not in profession they cook they sold and the men were carpenters or bricklayers or iron workers that kind of thing you know nobody was in the in a restaurant business but my mother long he started making sandwiches so that I had to start there that was fun so when I got in that restaurant I say here's my chance I'm gonna do this I'm gonna do that think you know you're young and stupid you think and this is what I thought no difference in people with the color of their skin why we can't cook this trip Newberg in this restaurant and I didn't realize that no it's different cultures you have different tastes more than different colors of your kin that I had to go back to what I knew I had to go back to like oyster dressing and stuff in that chicken breast with oyster dressing make it the shrimp creole what he called that shrimp stew and in New Orleans it was a whole different thing for me because I didn't have the French vegetable then I came up with my daddy grew the greens we do the okra we do things but you had other things belly told people was vines everybody's backyard in the seventh Ward had a mullet on fire and they have another thing the gourd like and we called it a Chinese okra and you could take that gourd and right - that's right so you learn different things and how to prepare different foods and now you can run it again now it's fun now it's really fun because you get a mixture of everything I came up either a lot of pork a lot of poor what we raise those pigs for was but the Lord know if you've got a hog up to 300 pounds then you had you could get a hundred pounds a lot off of that three here I come I learned about coffee - coffee something is - prepared in its own juices into the we've been coffee in this talk and it's all this time we coffee in the poke we put it in the log that's how we keep it we didn't have a freezer and when you wanted that porkchop he went in that log and got the culture up coming up as a child was depression I was born in what I 2:23 depression hits 1929 so it was hard times people at nothing but my daddy is a gross things he would fall and his big thing I don't know why they they like to grow onion so much onions we had onions all over the points we could give the whole town onion that's how many onions red I'd be the support sometimes in the evening all we had for our dinner really was a pot of grits and what because smothered onion just written under we ate that we were never hungry we didn't have fancy food then I grew up and now the mother onions my dear are caramelized onions they got all fancy except really this when I was poor 42 caramelized so you know that we grew strawberries that was our big thing in Madisonville was to grow strawberries we had what 2850 20 acres now you gotta get up in the morning 4 o'clock in the morning do all over the place told you got to get up there and pick the strawberries that is not a fun job to look at 20 acres and though you got to get it all up out of there before the Sun gets too hot so and then you hear the quails the bobwhite quail is I could remember those trails you know but they up in the trees they whistling that Bob Bob Bob white but when they come on the ground it's another two and they whistle another so you know with a couple of the ground you get the pic in your strawberries you're gonna get that shotgun and they're gonna kill those quail so you have quails you know you picked the quills bring them home and mother would sauteed them and one thing about the government back then you you got commodities from WPA workers and commodity it so again but they never gave you margarine he gave you wouldn't bother so I came up with to it but I'm a bus person mother put those bloke wheels in that butter and then our backyard we had plum trees just a plain little red plum and the trees mother would make gelatin so here we had the quail Qurayza butter jelly if that was grits now that's hot served at the President Bush he said me I never had grits and twirl before but I liked it I said well I gave up on grits and queer but it's just fun to see what you can do with you how you can bring it together how you can get different cultures to come in and work with their food in and mix it up with yours the chefs of today have to really concentrate on what that for one thing do not go in that kitchen with money on your money and I told that to people look at Vandy job don't go in there money on the line go in there doing what you love to do and do it well you do what you love to do I don't care for digging ditches if you think you can dig that ditch perfect do it well the money will come when I was coming up I was looked on it how nothing nothing I couldn't even fit in high society community I'm just a cook but now chefs they get notoriety they get fame for their work but you have to do it well and you have to pretend it's all I don't care if you cook a pot of green put it on that plate and make it look good and that's important it is so important you know to do this you make so many people happy and if you can make people happy that's a wonderful thing that's a great thing

Channel: kevinlryan

Views: 9,626

Rating: 4.9622641 out of 5

Keywords: Leah Chase (Chef), Cooking (Interest), New Orleans (City/Town/Village), CHEF, GCIA

Id: uSXaKU0y17Q

Length: 9min 2sec (542 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 08 2015