ROUSES_JulyAug2019_Magazine

InMemoriam: Leah Chase

by Lolis Eric Elie, photo by Cheryl Gerber

With Leah Chase’s recent passing I’ve had occasion to reflect on her legacy in and out of the kitchen. When talk turns to her cooking, much of the conversation is about gumbo z’herbes and stuffed shrimp and fried chicken and other mainstays of the Creole/Southern culinary canon. The point often missed in such conversations is that Leah Chase was a creative, dynamic cook who wasn’t constrained by the dishes for which she was best known. She was clearly ready and willing to branch out, make something as unexpectedly wonderful as her cauliflower and crab soup. In 1997, Chef Joe Randall teamed with Marriott Corporation on a fundraising dinner for the Taste of Heritage Founda- tion, an organization that sought to identify and celebrate our nation’s greatest African American chefs. On the night before the event, Chef Leah hosted the chefs at her restaurant. The star of the show for me was a strange meat stewed in a tomato gravy. It tasted sort of like chicken, but what strange bones that chicken had! Finally, when Chef Leah came out of the kitchen, she answered the question we’d all been asking each other. The wonderful stew she’d served was made of cowan, or turtle. She promised to make some more of it especially for me if I brought her a cowan. But if I did, she said, it had to have the feet

Now that cauliflower is being used to make everything from pasta and pizza dough to “rice,” it can be difficult to remember that bygone era when cauli- flower was not counted among the nation’s most popular vegetables. I remember that time well. Back then, I had only tasted cauliflower when it was served as the white presence in a bland, steamed medley with carrots and broccoli. I dismissed it as being unworthy of my attention and palate. That might still be my position had I not tasted Leah Chase’s cauliflower and crab soup. Chef Leah always said she did not like serving buffet-style. Nonetheless, that style became the signature lunch service at Dooky Chase when the restaurant reopened after Hurricane Katrina. There and elsewhere, what was once rare became the “new normal.” Chef Leah’s nod to the tableside service she preferred was to insist that waiters serve the gumbo or soup as an appetizer before diners joined the buffet line. I was there one lucky day when the cauliflower and crab soup was the soup du jour. For me, that soup was a revelation. How much of the wonderful richness of that soup came from the cauliflower itself versus from the techniques and seasonings Chef Leah applied to that vegetable, I cannot say. But I have never looked upon cauliflower with the same jaundiced eye since.

still on it. She wanted to be sure it was what it was supposed to be and not some random roadkill. Like all great chefs, she had her standards… The late Rudy Lombard grew up going to Dooky Chase’s Restaurant. When he opened Lombard’s, his own restaurant, in Oakland, California, one of his chefs thrust a spoon toward him and said, “Taste this.” “What is it?” Lombard asked. It turns out the chef had re-created the steak sauce Chef Leah had served at her restaurant years before. We sometimes forget that, long before Dooky Chase became associated so closely with Creole cuisine, it was just a great restaurant where gumbo and stuffed shrimp shared the menu with steaks and lobster Thermidor. So powerful were that chef’s memories of those times and that flavor that he had worked for years to re-create it. Now that Leah Chase is no longer with us, we have not just lost a library of old recipes, techniques and flavors. We have also lost something of ourselves. But we’ll have the memories of the great meals this esteemed chef served us, and they will have to suffice.

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JULY•AUGUST 2019