“You don’t need a silver fork to eat good food.” – Paul Prudhomme
About Paul Prudhomme
Paul Prudhomme (July 13, 1940 – October 8, 2015), also known as Gene Autry Prudhomme, was an American celebrity chef whose specialties were Creole and Cajun cuisines, which he was also credited with popularizing. He was the chef proprietor of K-Paul’s Louisiana Kitchen in New Orleans, and had formerly owned and run several other restaurants. He developed several culinary products, including hot sauce and seasoning mixes, and wrote 11 cookbooks.
The youngest of 13 children, Prudhomme was raised on a farm near Opelousas, the seat of Saint Landry Parish, Louisiana. His father Eli Prudhomme, Jr., was a farmer, but the family struggled to make ends meet during Prudhomme’s childhood.
Prudhomme opened his first restaurant in Opelousas in 1957, a hamburger restaurant called Big Daddy O’s Patio. The restaurant went out of business in nine months, which also saw the end of his first marriage. He became a magazine seller initially in New Orleans, and afterwards several restaurant jobs took him around the country. During this period he began creating his own spice mixes and giving them away to customers.
His cookbook, Paul Prudhomme’s Louisiana Kitchen, was published by William Morrow and Company in 1984. It was given a Culinary Classic Book Award in 1989 by the International Association of Culinary Professionals.[8] Prudhomme has been credited with having popularized cajun cuisine and in particular blackened redfish during the 1980s.
Prudhomme died in New Orleans on October 8, 2015, after a brief illness. He was 75. After his death in 2015, Prudhomme’s personal library of nearly 600 cookbooks, food reference books and technical books on food science were donated to John and Bonnie Boyd Hospitality and Culinary Library, affiliated with the Southern Food and Beverage Museum.
(Source – Wikipedia)