It’s Christmas morning, and the fireplace roars. A grand table is set for visiting family and friends, and the scents of sweet ham and savory pork roast waft from the kitchen. Music drifts from the piano. It’s the quintessential scene you’re likely to spot at houses across the country on Dec. 25.
But this is the scene at Chef John Folse’s home, and a closer look at his table reveals stories only he can tell. The food is cooked in cast-iron pots more than 100 years old, inherited from his Uncle Paul. The dishes are made from recipes that have been passed down for generations, and Folse can recite by heart the origins of each dish. The meal is plated on antique china, each piece representing a precious memory.
If Folse serves goose on a specific platter, he says, it’s not just because the platter fits the goose—it’s because he has a memory of serving another goose on it somewhere down the line.
“In today’s world when everything is so disposable, I think to myself, ‘That little green bowl has traveled three lifetimes to be on my table,’” he says, gesturing to a piece he inherited from his grandparents. Today, he’s using it to serve corn maque choux. “And that’s the way that I think about food all the time, whether anybody knows it at the table.”
At 71, Folse has lived an amazing life—he’s cooked for presidents, opened a culinary institute in his name, written several popular cookbooks and is heralded as “Louisiana’s Culinary Ambassador to the World.”
But even after all that, there’s still nothing quite like Christmas dinner. He can’t prepare a holiday spread without thinking back to his childhood.
Back then, presents were few and far between, but for Folse, being with family was the true gift.
He smiles as he recalls the traditions: The smell of Reveillon dinners warm in the oven after midnight mass. The children gathering firewood for Christmas Eve bonfires. The adults laughing and drinking homemade ratafia cordial.
But the tradition that had the biggest impact on his life was helping out in the kitchen. In his family, if a child was big enough to wash the dirt off the end of a green onion, they could help cook. So he’d peel and chop onions, and one year he was even allowed to help pot-roast some small teal ducks. He remembers learning to brown them in hog lard, smother them with vegetables and arrange them over rice dressing.
What he didn’t realize back then was that his family was preparing him for his future.
“When I look back at it, I just think about what geniuses they all were,” he says. “Because had they not done that, none of what I’m doing today would be happening.”
And what he’s “doing today” is continuing to preserve those traditions passed on to him from his family.
“That’s why I write the cookbooks and do the TV shows,” he says. “Most people now would look at that meager existence back then as a pretty lame Christmas. We looked at it as just the opposite, because it was all about family. It was all about church. It was all about the traditions.” jfolse.com
THE BIGGEST HOLIDAY MISTAKE
The one thing you shouldn’t do this year? You guessed it: procrastinate.
Start planning holiday meals Dec. 1, and get grocery shopping done early. Knowing that he’ll need to brine certain cuts of meat like pork roast three or four days in advance, anyway, Folse says you won’t catch him anywhere near a grocery store the week before Christmas. Instead, he spends the last week before the holidays entertaining and spending time with family.
“When people say, ‘Oh, I hate to cook,’ they hate to cook because they don’t plan to cook. They don’t organize themselves to cook,” Folse says. “They push meal planning all the way past shopping or writing cards or calling their friends because they think they can get to it the day before. Well, you can’t get to it the day before; you are miserable if you get to it the day before. That’s the biggest mistake people make—and they make it every year.”
Instead of last-minute planning, he says, Christmas Eve should be spent on chopping and final prep work before settling in with a glass of wine. That way, when morning arrives, all that’s left to do is put food in the oven or on the stove.
THE HOLIDAY SPREAD: What’s on John Folse’s table on Christmas Day
Every item Folse serves during the holidays has significance. Whether it’s a dish’s roots in Cajun and Creole history or a personal tradition, he shares the story behind each one.
Hover over the image to read about each dish.
Click here to read more from our Kitchen Confidential cover story.
This article was originally published in the December 2017 issue of 225 Magazine.
