-Funding for this program was provided in part by Bevolo Gas and Electric Lights and Lighting Museum -- Hand-crafting French Quarter lanterns since 1945.

-Renowned Cajun chef Paul Prudhomme helped ignite a revolution in American gastronomy in the 1980s when he introduced the regional cuisine of Louisiana to the world.

New Orleans bid farewell to the culinary legend following his passing on October 8th, 2015, but continues to celebrate the legacy of this self-taught son of a sharecropper who made the food of Louisiana a national treasure.

♪ -There have been Prudhommes in French-speaking Opelousas, the third-oldest settlement in Louisiana, since Michel Prudhomme arrived in 1760.

Born in 1940 to Eli and Hazel Prudhomme, Paul was the youngest of the hardscrabble tenant farmers' 13 children.

When he was 7 years old, Paul began helping his mother prepare gumbo and other family favorites on a wood-fired stove, a chore he relished.

Years later, as a celebrity chef and entrepreneur, he shared his incredible life story in newspapers and on television, explaining what he learned from a life that revolved around the use of fresh, indigenous ingredients.

-Welcome.

Welcome to Louisiana.

This is where I work and play.

This is where I have fun.

I would like to invite you to spend some time with me learning about cooking, learning about eating, and learning about Louisiana.

-Frank Brigtsen, chef and owner of Brigtsen's Restaurant, was a protégé and lifelong friend of Chef Paul, who worked with him during the early days of the Cajun-food craze.

-I think, you know, a part of Paul's enormous legacy is the way that he took the dishes of Cajun country and transformed them into a restaurant context because that kind of food is really home cooking, pot cooking, and things like that.

-Paul came from the farm.

He often talked about his upbringing and what an influence that had on his career, on his cooking, because, well, he grew up without many resources, but with food abundantly at hand if you knew what to do with it.

-Determined to become a cook, when Paul was 17, he opened Big Daddio's Patio, an Opelousas hamburger stand that failed in 9 months.

He headed west, cutting his culinary teeth for 12 years in a variety of commercial kitchens from truck stops and roadside restaurants to luxury resorts.

With a new repertoire of flavors and techniques plus a deeper appreciation of the unique food of his home state, Paul settled in New Orleans and became chef at the Maison Dupuy Hotel, where his Louisiana dishes caught the attention of local foodies.

In 1975, he was hired as the first American-born chef of Commander's Palace when Ella Brennan and her family took over the Garden District landmark and steered the venerable restaurant in a new direction.

Ella Brennan and daughter Ti Adelaide Martin, co-proprietor of Commander's Palace -- -I wanted the food to be the best it could ever be, and I was concerned.

I needed to change things.

I needed things to be different.

He just got the message where I wanted to go.

I think what we were trying to do together -- he wanted to do the same thing -- was put New Orleans on the food map all over the country.

-When Paul was given the job at Commander's Palace, that was a very bold move by the Brennans, by Ms. Ella and Mr. Dick, and it was very courageous because it showed their conviction that Creole cuisine stands with the best of cuisines.

And I remember seeing on the front page of the newspaper a picture of this man, Chef Paul Prudhomme, who got hired as executive chef at Commander's.

That was front-page news because that had never been done before.

Here was a Louisiana boy, no formal culinary education, not a European-trained chef.

It was a very bold move.

-Out of the push and pull between Cajun country cooking and the refined Creole cuisine of Commander's kitchen, magic was made.

-Paul, I think, really looked at the food here and the menu here and asked himself, "How can we make this more local, more Louisiana?"

And I think a great example of that is trout pecan.

And I think Paul looked at trout amandine on the menu and said, "Wait a minute.

We don't grow almonds in Louisiana.

Let's try this with pecans."

-You remember, like, the eggplant pirogue?

-Yeah, but I didn't like it.

-[ Laughs ] See?

It was the Cajun versus the Creole, and it was a constant pressure, but, I mean, really beautiful things came out of that.

-Well, we started whitening up gumbo a little bit, taking it a little bit more like a bouillabaisse, but that sort of thing.

This was when the battle was going on, all that, "It's got to be lighter, Paul.

It can't be that heavy.

Let's take this dish and make two."

-She also always wanted it to look good, right?

And so, Paul would bring a plate, you know.

And it was always just all this food all the time, "Try this.

Try this."

And she would just give him that look, you know, "Paul, it looks terrible."

And you know, Paul didn't care so much about how it looked.

You know what I mean?

And, you know, he'd go, "Did you taste it?

Taste it.

Taste."

He'd just kind of hit her, "Taste it," you know?

And she'd taste it, go, "Tastes really good.

But you got to make it look better!"

you know?

[ Both laugh ] -Years before the farm-to-table movement, Chef Paul insisted on fresh Louisiana ingredients, sourcing products from area farmers and fishermen.

K-Paul's executive chef, Paul Miller, an Opelousas native, worked with Chef Paul for 38 years, first as his sous chef at Commander's Palace.

-Chef was always about freshness and taste and to get as much taste as you could get out of that product.

But he always said, you know, "You can make things taste good, but you always have to start with the freshest product."

He had his family growing ducks and chickens and pigs in the country, cleaning them, bringing us the meat.

The food was incredible.

I mean, he even told them what to feed the animals.

-Liz Williams, president of the National Food and Beverage Foundation and the Southern Food and Beverage Museum.

-He believed that every part of an animal, every part of vegetables and fruits and everything needed to be used both because he was a frugal person, probably born of necessity, but also because he thought that it was just so bad to be wasteful and not appreciate all of those things that took time to braise or to pickle or to taste in different ways.

So, way before anybody was saying the words "tail to snout" or anything like that, he was practicing it.

-He was taking the food of the land that ordinary people in Louisiana could relate to, but just doing extraordinary things with them.

And that was part of the magic that he had.

That was part of his gift.

-Dubbed the gumbo guru by the Fourth Estate, the natural showman with a love of storytelling brought attention to the food of New Orleans and Louisiana as a featured guest on hundreds of network and local talk shows.

-He used to talk about wanting to see Bourbon Street and wanting to see -- you know, that was the first things they asked about.

And now, the tourist commission, the first thing people ask them about is food.

-Every time anybody met him, they fell in love with him.

And we did our best to situate him that he was becoming well-known.

-And talk about the ultimate spokesperson and ambassador for New Orleans and Louisiana and Commander's and Paul himself.

He was just so good at it.

And she was happy to push him out there and arm him in any way she could.

But it happened all the time.

But he was perfect at it, and everybody loved him.

-Fulfilling a dream of owning his own restaurant, Chef Paul opened K-Paul's Louisiana Kitchen in 1979 with Kay Hinrichs, who he would later marry.

With no reservations, no credit cards, no wine list, and communal seating, the 64-seat French Quarter establishment broke all the rules, but became one of the hottest restaurants in the nation.

Diners from around the world stood in line for a taste of his intricately seasoned dishes at the funky culinary Mecca.

-K-Paul's came along at a time when people were ready for this, even if they didn't really have a template for what it might be like.

Things were being explored in different directions all over American culture.

You know, this didn't start out as an empire.

This started out as a guy trying to do something new in the French Quarter in 1979.

So, they did what they could.

And it turned out that that synced up really well with what Americans were craving then.

What Paul did was show a different way of having this exquisite dining experience that was really all about the pleasure of the food and the company.

That stripped away some of the trappings of the fussy, fancy restaurant.

-It was all part of it.

I mean, you know, the rustic look and Cajun and, you know, the waitstaff was really very friendly and open and jokingly with the people.

And they had to be because they waited 45 minutes in line or an hour to taste the food.

And they'd get in, and they'd, you know, have to sit with somebody they didn't know.

And, you know, so, the wait staff would play with them and loosen them up.

-Kay ran the front of the house until her death in 1993, while Paul turned out innovative daily menus with Frank Brigtsen, who manned the restaurant stove for over five years.

-After lunch, he'd say, "Frank, go in the walk-in cooler and write down what we have in there."

So, I go in the walk-in.

I write down, you know, 36 pieces of redfish, 4 chickens, you know, 10 pounds of shrimp, and I'd bring him this handwritten loose-leaf sheet.

And we'd sit down, he'd look at it, and he'd start writing the menu, you know?

-Marty Cosgrove was a corporate chef and aide-de-camp to Chef Paul for over a quarter of a century.

The Opelousas native started in the restaurant's bakery.

-The first week I was here, Chef said, "We're doing a little event in San Francisco.

It's called "San Francisco By the Bay."

We need 5,500 pralines and 2,500 sweet-potato pecan pies in addition to our regular bakery service."

So, obviously, I was baptized by fire, literally, the fire of the oven and the fire of the stove making pralines.

Chef's palate was phenomenal.

If you brought Chef something to taste, he immediately could tell you if there was too much acid, if it was too bitter, if it was too sweet.

And not only could he tell you what was wrong with it, he could tell you how to fix it.

At K-Paul's, the larger-than-life chef introduced his most famous dish, blackened redfish, a totally original creation so popular, that the Louisiana legislature had to restrict commercial fishing of the species in order to save it from extinction.

There's no single dish I can think of that's had the impact or just the sustained legacy of blackened redfish.

It took the world by storm the old-fashioned way.

And it stayed.

It resonated with people.

The reason why is because the original, as Paul and his many lieutenants through the K-Paul's kitchen crafted it, it's an excellent dish.

-It has white, red and black pepper.

It has onion and garlic and various other herbs and spices.

-You're not gonna tell me what they are.

-[ Laughs ] No!

I'm not!

-Years before the pop-up restaurant phenomenon, Chef Paul took his show on the road to San Francisco, where his team set up shop for a month in 1983 with West Coast diners waiting in line for hours for a taste of his well-seasoned fare.

Two years later, Chef Paul's New York sojourn made headlines when the Board of Health closed his temporary location.

The city's mayor, Ed Koch, intervened, ending what the press called "the Gumbo War."

-The mayor felt I'd been unjustly treated, and there wasn't any reason to close the restaurant by the Board of Health.

So, when he found out from the Mayor of New Orleans and from Lindy Boggs and many of our good Louisiana people what was going on, he came to my rescue today.

-This goes back to his idea of being an ambassador, of showing people why Louisiana food is so good.

To actually bring it to people direct from that chef, back then, that was a revolutionary idea that had a broad impact, that had a huge impact on different chefs, on diners, on restaurateurs.

Paul was an innovator in that realm.

And it shows how his innovation went beyond the black pots and the skillets where he cooked.

It was his own way of expressing his pride, his enthusiasm for Louisiana cooking, and really promoting the idea of what Louisiana cooking was to America.

-In 1983, Chef Paul found a new creative outlet when he launched his line of all-natural seasonings, originally blended for restaurant use.

-He worked in the North.

He worked in Colorado.

And there was, you know, what he called a lot of bland food there.

So, he would make little seasoning mixes in his apartment, put them in little bags, and then when he went to work, he would start seasoning things.

And, you know, the customers loved it.

-In the early days at K-Paul's, we had two blends that we made -- seafood and meat.

And I would make them in a mixing bowl.

And until he opened the spice plant, that's how we did it, and gradually, customers started asking for samples.

And he'd wrap up a little bit and give it away again.

So, that's how that whole thing developed, really.

-Chef Paul's first cookbook, "Louisiana Kitchen," released in 1984, was a bestseller that made him a household name.

Eight other popular cookbooks would follow.

-He was all over the country.

The restaurant was open only Monday through Friday then.

But the weekends, we were flying to California and New York, you know, doing the "Today" show, "The Tonight's Show," Just, it was insane.

-The book tours were brutal.

We would do 26 cities in 2 weeks.

I mean, it was back-to-back-to-back.

And if we were doing a book signing at a department store, and there were 100 people in line, and we had to catch a flight, we would change the flight because Chef always said that if someone came to see him, whether they bought a book or not, he was not going to leave until they got a chance to do that.

-After a lifelong battle with weight, America's favorite Cajun chef went a healthier direction, streamlining his favorite recipes in his third cookbook, "A Fork in the Road."

This book was the companion to the first of five national Public Television cooking series taped at WYES-TV in New Orleans.

-He wanted people to learn from his books, and he wanted people to learn from his television series about not only his love of food, but the culture of Louisiana.

And the thing that I loved about Chef Paul was that he wasn't like a lot of chefs that wanted to be on TV.

In fact, he didn't want to be on TV unless he had something new to say.

But he only wanted to do a television series when he had been in his test kitchen for months or even years developing new thoughts, new ideas, new recipes.

Then he would say, "Okay, let's do another series."

-Welcome.

Welcome to my kitchen.

Welcome to my new kitchen.

We're starting a brand-new series called "The Kitchen Expedition."

And I'm really excited about this because that means I can do anything I want.

I don't have to follow any kind of sequence with the recipes.

I can do anything because what we're really doing is exploring foods, exploring flavors, and exploring tastes.

-The thing that made him so popular, not only as a person, but especially for the public television series, was that when he was talking to the viewer, to the home cook, it was as if he was just talking to them.

It was like he was in the living room with them or their kitchen and just explaining what he discovered in his test kitchen.

-Through the years, the ambassador of Cajun cuisine fed numerous heads of state.

Chef Paul and his staff led the Louisiana delegation at the 1985 inauguration of President Ronald Reagan, wowing Washington insiders with bayou-inspired dishes.

-By God, I'm a Cajun, and I'm just loving it.

I opened the letter, and it said I had a 24-hour military escort, and I kind of went, "I don't need that."

In 2005, Chef Paul and his crew returned to the nation's capital, adding a taste of Louisiana to the second inaugural bash of George W. Bush.

An international presence, Chef Paul made many personal appearances throughout Europe and the Orient, and in 1996, was one of 13 chefs invited to cook a kosher banquet in honor of Jerusalem's 3,000th anniversary.

Through donation by his wife, Lori Bennett Prudhomme, the culinary library of the Southern Food and Beverage Museum is now the repository of Chef Paul's cookbook collection, over 600 volumes that reflect his lifelong exploration of food and flavors.

-One of the things that Chef was always insistent on is that when we traveled to an international or foreign country is that if we were there to do a trade show, we did the trade show.

Afterwards, Chef wanted to take cooking lessons.

People always wanted to learn from him, but he always wanted to learn from everyone else.

-Chef Paul was known not only for his cooking, but also for his good works.

In 2004, he and his team packed up about 6,000 pounds of food and headed to the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he cooked his signature dishes for 5,000 troops.

-That's a huge sacrifice they make, and, you know, we want to appreciate that.

To see the smiles on their face and know that I'm doing the best I can to feed one small, small segment of the military, I'm a happy guy.

-After Hurricane Katrina, Chef Paul was one of the first restaurateurs to return to the city.

Within 3 weeks of the storm, he and his staff served over 6,000 meals to relief workers and first responders, earning him a humanitarian award from Bon Appétit Magazine.

He also did his part to restore New Orleans tourism.

-He opened up when there weren't any real visitors because he knew that people had to do that, and was doing it, maybe, against his own business interest just because it was the right thing to do.

-I grew up the last of 13 children, and I grew up on the farm without gas or electricity.

And, you know, after Katrina, I just felt like, you know, "I'm going back to work, baby."

-After Katrina, you know, Paul was his normal, heroic man, self.

He immediately -- The Monday that the streets flooded, he said, "I got to go back home," and he did.

And he wanted to open the restaurant.

But the city wouldn't let him.

So, he fed people out at the spice plant -- first responders, et cetera.

But when he did open K-Paul's, I remember we went down for dinner, and the French Quarter was pretty empty, and the streets were empty, and it was black and quiet... except for the music in front of K-Paul's.

He had musicians out front every single night, you know, and literally carrying the torch for this place.

[ Voice breaking ] And that was the most inspiring thing I've ever seen.

-Just a year after Katrina, Chef Paul taped his final television series in the stripped-down shell of the WYES Studio, which had been nearly destroyed by area floodwaters.

-And he said, "Beth, we have something unique here that is like nowhere else in the world -- our food, our culture, our love of life, our music.

We have to come back.

We have to find a way to come back."

And that's when the idea came, "Let's do a series."

Then, it became, "How do we do a series with no electricity, no running water, no homes to live in?"

And we did it.

We emptied out our flooded studio.

We brought in generators.

In the middle of all this vast wasteland and all this decimated area, WYES had, like, a ray of hope and a symbol of light.

And the series, I think, was one of the best he had ever done because there was so much riding on it.

So, it wasn't just a cooking series.

It was a message to the rest of the country, and it was a message to the rest of the world that New Orleans was coming back.

Our cuisine was here.

Come back, support New Orleans, and help us to rebuild.

And that's exactly what happened.

-Named as one of the pioneers of American cuisine by the Culinary Institute of America, this trailblazer remained on the forefront of culinary trends throughout his career, earning him many awards.

-He was like a sponge.

He was always absorbing, whether it was new trends, new flavors, new products.

He was never locked into the cuisine of Louisiana or the cuisine that made him famous or the cuisine that he grew up with.

-He touched a lot of people, and not only, you know, people that came here to eat, but the cooks that have worked through here and gone and opened their own restaurants or went out and did their own thing.

That's all from him.

And that's, you know, big deal.

-People who are much younger when he was doing these series first are now having the opportunity to see and learn from Chef Paul, and that really does just solidify the fact that he is just an icon and a legend.

And people are gonna continue years, years after his death, to continue to refer to him and learn from him.

And that's exactly what he wanted.

-Following a mass at St. Louis Cathedral, the beloved chef received a send-off with a traditional New Orleans jazz funeral procession from the church to his restaurant on Chartres Street.

The man with humble Louisiana roots who redefined American cuisine will be remembered by those who knew him best for his generosity and kindness.

-Well, number one, he was brilliant, he was lovable, and he was kind to everybody, and he really wanted to make people happy with food because he saw what it did, you know, at home when he was growing up.

-Chef Paul never forgot where he came from.

Paul Prudhomme was just as comfortable at the White House on the South Lawn cooking for presidents as he was sitting on the back of his pickup truck having boudin and cracklins in Opelousas because he never forgot where he came from.

And therefore, he always treated everyone with a huge amount of respect.

And he was very, very genuine.

-He had no idea that he was this extraordinary human being.

He was an extraordinary human being.

But he didn't tell anybody that.

I mean, he didn't act like that.

-I mean, to me, Paul Prudhomme forged a new path.

And he was on a mission to explain the food that he loved and all the culture that came with it, really, to the world.

-From such unlikely and modest beginnings, Chef Paul Prudhomme propelled Cajun food and the culture of Louisiana into the international spotlight.

He took the idea of a chef far beyond the kitchen, inspiring home cooks, and passing on his pride and enthusiasm for his native cuisine to the next generation of chefs.

-The man's character and personality can't be understated in the importance of his legacy.

He was a chef and philanthropist, an entrepreneur.

He was so many things.

And you can't contain that in one pot, much like the dishes that Paul made -- just layer upon layer of flavor, layer upon layer of character and personality.

That's who he was.

-And so, you know, the being together was not only just the boil of the seafood, it was the camaraderie and the family and everybody together.

And it was just wonderful.

It was one of my greatest memories.

And it will always be.

And that's good cooking, good eating, good loving.

We love you guys out there!

The thing that made jambalaya distinctive is that it was a rice dish, and it was just incredibly hot.

I love to eat hot, I mean, until it makes your scalp itch.

And it makes you sweat, you know?

And it just makes you just really excited about eating.

One of the things that I need to do now is to taste it to make sure that I have the right flavors.

And I don't need any more herbs and spices.

It just takes a little -- Ahh.

I mean, it's -- Ooh!

The taste is just -- Everything's perfect about it.

The taste keeps coming.

It's great.

Oh.

I don't know what to say except, "Go home and cook some chili."

If you're at home, get up and go to the kitchen.

Cook some chili -- this chili.

I got a fork.

[ Laughs ] A good cook always has a fork.

[ Singing "Allons dancer Colinda" ] That's really good.

-Funding for this program was provided in part by Bevolo Gas and Electric Lights and Lighting Museum -- Hand-crafting French Quarter lanterns since 1945.