Chef John Folse seeks pictures for vegetable cookbook

Can you dig it? With book lovers, home cooks and food aficionados still reeling from Chef John Folse’s last cookbook and PBS series, “Hooks, Lies & Alibis,” Folse and his team are finalizing the next tome in the Cajun and Creole series, according to a news release from Chef John Folse & Company. The new cookbook, which is expected in bookstores in December, is dedicated to Louisiana’s love affair with gardening.
As with the last volume, Folse is inviting gardeners to submit recipes, but more importantly, he wants photos of vegetable gardens for possible inclusion in the book.
“I want recipes that I don’t have and I want unique photographs that I don’t have,” Folse said. “I want people pictures, photos of farmers, of kids in the melon patch, of vegetable-stand signs, and young entrepreneurs selling tomatoes on the roadside.”
While full garden shots are wonderful, the greater impact photos include the gardener with hoe in hand, kids helping in the garden, an up-close shot of a corn or okra stalk, antique farming tools and even John Deere tractors. In other words, Folse is seeking “the dirt on Louisiana vegetables,” so dig deep, the news release states.
Treasured photos of gardens and gardeners past are especially welcome. Photos should be submitted to vegetables @jfolse.com.
Cooks and readers can expect to find chapters on the swamp floor pantry, root vegetables, leafy greens, off the vine and exotics. Recipes focus on vegetables as the primary ingredient in appetizers, soups, sides, entrées, breads, desserts, breakfasts and even drinks.
“Louisiana is blessed with fabulous gardeners who also happen to be fabulous cooks,” Folse said. “Gardens speak to our past: where we lived, what we ate, the professions we held. This vegetable cookbook will be an excellent venue to preserve heirloom family recipes and photographs.”
Folse proudly confesses that tomatoes will take center stage in the “Off the Vine” chapter. “I don’t care if everyone else in the world thinks tomatoes are fruit. In Louisiana, a tomato is a vegetable, and we will give it due homage.”
Submit photos to vegetables@jfolse.com by Aug. 3. Clearly identify individual’s names as well as the city or town in which the photograph was taken. Folse’s vegetable cookbook will be the fourth in his “Big Book Series.” For additional information contact Michaela York (michaelay@jfolse.com) or Danling Gideon (danlingg@jfolse.com) at 225-644-6000.
Folse is the owner and executive chef of his Louisiana-based corporations including Chef John Folse & Company Manufacturing, White Oak Plantation and Exceptional Endings Bakery Division. He is CEO/CFO of Home on the Range: A Restaurant Development company, parent corporation of Restaurant R’evolution, New Orleans, and Seafood R’evolution, Ridgeland, Mississippi. He is the author of numerous cookbooks and hosts a nationally-syndicated television cooking show, A Taste of Louisiana. Additionally, the Chef John Folse Culinary Institute at Nicholls State University is named in his honor.