The Dooky Chase Cookbook

by Leah Chase

Overview

"Leah Chase . . . the Queen of Creole Cuisine . . . is one of the hottest chefs in town." -The National Culinary Review

"While reading the cookbook, I could not only 'hear' Leah talking to me about her food, heritage and family, but I could smell and taste the flavor from the great recipes and the great food that has made Dooky Chase's my favorite restaurant." -Joe Cahn, executive director, New Orleans School of Cooking

As the owner and chef extraordinaire of the popular Dooky Chase's Restaurant in New Orleans, Leah Chase has distinguished herself as a community and civic leader through her dedicated involvement with numerous charities and organizations. The preeminent chef in the Dooky Chase kitchen, Mrs. Chase has established a reputation as one of the best purveyors of Creole cuisine in the nation.

Leah Chase started out at the age of eighteen working in a laundry in the French Quarter, but soon found a job at the Colonial Restaurant on Charter Street. It was the first time she had ever seen the inside of a restaurant. In 1946, she married Dooky Chase, Jr., and shortly after entered his family's restaurant business, which would grow into the present day Dooky Chase's. Her husband's mother was running the restaurant, and as Leah says, "Black people had no other place to go, so she had a captive audience." Over the years, as Leah's expertise and popularity grew, she was able to exert more influence upon the cuisine and atmosphere at Dooky Chase's. She successfully grafted her country roots, both in ethics and food, to the black Creole tradition of the city, and soon the restaurant became a reflection of Leah herself, and of the black community as a whole.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780882896618
Publisher:	Arcadia Publishing SC
Publication date:	04/30/1990
Series:	Restaurant Cookbooks
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Loyal to the tenets of Creole cuisine and mindful of her country roots, Leah Chase has been featured in hundreds of publications, including Food & Wine and Saveur. In addition to having hosted her own television program, she appeared numerous times on NPR, CNN, CBS, the Food Network, and many other programs. She was a driving force in the culinary and cultural revival of New Orleans and in the international popularity of Creole cuisine. Leah Chase's accolades include honorary degrees from schools across the country. She received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Southern Foodways Alliance, the Ella Brennan Savoir Faire Award for Excellence from the American Culinary Federation, and the Outstanding Woman Award from the National Council of Negro Women. For her contributions to the culinary world, she was inducted into the James Beard Foundation's Who's Who of Food and Beverages in America in 2010. In 2016, just after her ninety-third birthday, she received the Foundation's Lifetime Achievement Award. As a cultural icon, her portrait hangs in the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC. Her beloved husband died in 2016 and Leah Chase reigned over her kitchen every day until her death in 2019 at the age of ninety-six, still surrounded by family and friends. Her joie de vivre remains as an inspiration to all in her cookbooks, a biography, Leah Chase: Listen, I Say Like This, and an inspirational children's book, A Long Way from the Strawberry Patch: The Life of Leah Chase, both written through interviews with the author, Carol Allen.

Editorial Reviews

The Dooky Chase Restaurant is a New Orleans landmark, famous for Chase's down-home Creole cooking. She offers her favorite recipes here, from Crab Soup and Crawfish Etouffee to Squirrel Pie and Stewed Snapper Turtle, and includes lively reminiscences of her childhood and restaurant experiences. Many of the recipes, however, are available in other regional cookbooks; for larger and area collections.

Library Journal