What they said: Emeril Lagasse

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CARY NEW: Emeril, we'd like to welcome you to the media center.

EMERIL LAGASSE: Pleasure to be here.

CARY NEW: First of all, thank you so much for being here on behalf of Viking and the Viking Classic. We all appreciate the time you've taken to be with us. So thank you very much.

EMERIL LAGASSE: Thank you. As most of you know, I'm fortunate to have a real relationship with the folks here at Viking, particularly with Fred and Margaret and Dale and Brenda. It's been a great relationship. Biggest problem, Dale and Fred have been trying to get me here for a couple of years, I don't know it's never worked out. The end of September, beginning of October is kind of a busy time in the restaurant world as we try to get back, but we managed to pull it off this year.

You know, I'm not only a crazy fan, obviously, about Viking, but I also have a passion for golf, and the combination of golf and I've been a follower of the PGA, I guess now, for about eight years, and we have a golf tournament in New Orleans called the Zurich Classic, and it just so happens that the big part of it is the Children's Hospital and so many organizations that benefit from Fore!Kids. Part of the Fore!Kids in New Orleans is the St. Michael Special School for special kids, which I've been a part of for 20 some years.

So I began the program in conjunction with the PGA where on Mother's Day, the program, I cook for the wives and do a little demonstration luncheon for them, and then the Pro Am happens. I'm usually not very good at the Pro Am because I'm so rushed and trying to get out there although yesterday my luck kind of changed here. I told Fred last night, I'm going to have to come back next year. I'm going to work the rig, and then maybe he'll let me golf. Instead of paying me, I'll work the rig, and maybe he'll let me play in the Pro Am again.

CARY NEW: Speaking of golf, you played with Boo Weekley yesterday.

EMERIL LAGASSE: What a fun guy, a Mississippi guy. Raised in the panhandle. Super guy and a great golfer. Really great team yesterday. It was a lot of fun. I had the pleasure of playing with some of Fred's clients from around the country, and it was a really great mix. I think we shot pretty well. We didn't quite make the awards party last night, but we had our own awards party for our team. We did really well. It was a lot of fun.

The course is in immaculate shape. The greens are very, very fast, and I'm so happy for Fred and all his team. We've got just outstanding weather. Yesterday was outstanding. Today looks like another outstanding day. Some of the scores that are coming in, they're doing pretty good out there.

CARY NEW: Most definitely. Now, was Boo able to offer you some tips, or did you give him tips?

EMERIL LAGASSE: No, no, he was very generous to our group about working with everybody and sharing equal time with everybody. He's really a character. He's a fun, fun guy to be with. Like I said, we had a very fun group, so it made for a great afternoon.

CARY NEW: Well, your latest book is "Farm to Fork," and why don't you tell us a little bit about it.

EMERIL LAGASSE: Well, as I just did in the cooking demonstration, which I'm proud to say that all the proceeds from that, thanks to the generosity of Viking, all of it is going to the Children's Hospital here. So I value the Children's Hospital, as with all the other things that I've done with Viking over the years, but also with Manning, his event the last several years.

"Farm to Fork," I find pretty in text book text form. As I told the group, I never really sort of realized, growing up as a child, that I grew up on a farm. My dad and my uncle had a farm, and I never really thought much of what we ate and what we harvested and we worked the farm on weekends. It was primarily about 75 percent agriculture and 25 percent livestock. So as a young guy, you know, it was kind of neat to go to the farm and the tractors and all the stuff that went along with that.

And then my life evolved, and I started cooking, and I realized I had memories, when I started working to become a chef, and I realized you get brainstorm memories of childhood about this farm and the ingredients and memories of either harvesting them or being around my family cooking them.

When I took over Commander's Palace in 1982, it's sort of like, okay, I'm taking over after Paul Prudhomme. Those are pretty big shoes to fill. And New Orleans being the great city of food as it is, how else are you going to make my mark? I started a farm cooperative actually in Mississippi, right outside a little bit outside of Meridian, and we began this huge farm production, and I began growing all of the produce and hogs and chickens and quail, et cetera, for the restaurant, mostly because I wanted to control as much of the quality of the restaurant and what was going on the plate to our guests.

But what I realized, as this whole thing started evolving, in my many, many, many trips to Mississippi, was that way back in my brain I had these memories of sort of growing up on the farm. And so a couple of years ago, I decided to put it in book form and sort of talk a little bit about those experiences as a child. But everything in the book was actually I went and visited several farms, not only in Mississippi and Louisiana, but in other states as well, and just inspired as I am about my style of cooking, I'm inspired by the soil. So hopefully, I gave a little bit of that in this book today.

CARY NEW: We're going to open it up to a few questions from you.

EMERIL LAGASSE: Yes, sir?

Q. Do you use all Viking equipment in all of your stuff?

EMERIL LAGASSE: I have probably 98 percent Viking equipment. I've been a fan of Viking for a long, long time. I've had the pleasure of spending lots of memorable times in Greenwood with engineers and, of course, with Fred and Margaret and Dale and Brenda. I think that they should be very, very proud of the true form of what an American company has evolved in this country.

And when you really think about the impact of what Viking has done not only in this country but worldwide, because they are worldwide, it's amazing, and it kind of makes me proud to be part of it. My wife's from Mississippi, and sometimes I take more credit than she does.

Q. This is your first visit here. What are your thoughts, your first impressions?

EMERIL LAGASSE: Not my first visit to Jackson.

Q. To the Classic.

EMERIL LAGASSE: To the Classic here. I'm very impressed. First of all, the course is in immaculate shape. But when you look around I don't know if you've had time to really walk the whole thing, as I did yesterday, and experience it, to see the commitment that goes with this from Viking and from the sponsors that are here through the PGA, it's really incredible. I've been fortunate to have been around the country and have been to a lot of these PGA events, and this is first class. I'm really impressed.

I was joking about doing food service at the rig, hoping to get invited back. I'm glad to be here.

Q. Did you shoot well yesterday?

EMERIL LAGASSE: Our team shot 16 under. We had a couple of really good shots. We had more good shots, probably as many poor shots. It was fun. We had a good time out there.

Q. And you know deer season starts tomorrow here in Mississippi. Do you have a good recipe you could share with our deer hunters?

EMERIL LAGASSE: Maybe you should come by the rig tomorrow. We may be cooking one of those things.

Q. I might hit one.

EMERIL LAGASSE: There's quite a few of them out there. The last couple of nights, I've been traveling back and forth in what we've been doing, so I saw a lot of deer out there. I didn't know the season opens tomorrow.

Q. Do you have a good quick recipe to share with us?

EMERIL LAGASSE: I'm a big braising fan myself. I think if you braise and braise well and braise slow and long, it's a good thing. Not so high heat, but longer cooking time is pretty much the way to go. It's really sort of the way that you want to flavor it.

I think one of my favorite ways is I'm not trying to pick one. I love grinding it and making chili. I think venison makes one of the most unbelievable chilis. And I do this thing called a Frito pie, which you're probably going to think is disgusting, but that's okay. I make a great venison chili and make it spicy, and you open up a bag of Fritos and put a ladle of venison chili inside of it, and then you have Frito pie. So try that sometime.

Q. Why did you want to be really the only chef donating the ticket sales, arguably $50,000, to this charity?

EMERIL LAGASSE: I can't take all the credit for that because I have to thank Fred and Margaret and the entire team at Viking for their generosity. I've been involved with the Children's Hospital on and off with Fred and Margaret for over the years, we've done quite a few things. And then, of course, I get involved with Eli some years ago when he stepped up and decided to make a huge contribution and help out. Eli asked me if I would help him out. Obviously, we have a New Orleans connection, and we've been friends for a long time.

So I decided to do that because my foundation is all about children, for me. I think that they're obviously the future, and so if we don't in no matter what way we can, to contribute, in any way, whether it's knowledge or money, to our young and our youth, then where are we going to be in our future? Because they are the future.

So I'm involved with, as I said, St. Michael's and Lions for about 22 years. My foundation started in 2002, in which we've raised, but more importantly we have given, over $4 million to children's organizations. It's all about children.

And I think that, when you really think about the heart and soul of what this classic is, besides great golf and great food and great weather and great times, I think it's about the seriousness in what this organization is contributing not only to the community but to such a great thing like Children's Hospital because it's truly state of the art.

Q. You know with the storm in Mississippi and Louisiana with Katrina, both of those states coming back and forth together and working, what does it mean to be here now with the golf classic? I mean, you're contributing to the children. You said it all. You said a lot.

EMERIL LAGASSE: I've been fortunate to not only have this incredible relationship with the folks here at Viking, but as I said, my wife is from here. She grew up in Gulfport. We have family in Indianola. So I've been fortunate to spend a lot of time here in Mississippi. We have a lot of friends and family here. So it's great for me.

In conjunction actually, again, in conjunction with Viking, we did a major project on the Gulf Coast in Gulfport and outside of Biloxi, where we have built a performing arts center for children there called the Lynn Meadows Discovery Center. With the help of, like I said, of Fred and Margaret and the folks at Viking, the team at Viking, we did an amazing if you haven't seen it, you should check it out. It's an amazing event we did with Viking and the Emeril Lagasse Foundation.

It's good. I love Mississippi. Unfortunately, I had a house in Mississippi, but it went somewhere else during Katrina.

Q. The Ryder Cup brings a focus on global golf, and it's kind of the same demographic that you aim at. Do you notice similarities between golfers and people who enjoy your food?

EMERIL LAGASSE: I had a hair piece that I was going to put on. Actually, it's amazing here, my time that I spent yesterday on and off the course, there were a tremendous amount of the golfers that are here that they like food. It's sort of like a scene with a lot of rock and roll people over the years that I admired and who I couldn't wait to see, and now they're coming to see me. It's because it's food.

So most of these guys on the tour love they're fit and take care of themselves, but at least one night, they're going to try to get away and have a good meal.

Q. Speaking of good meals, when you're out here in Madison or Jackson, do you find it hard, when you sit down in a restaurant, to keep yourself from going back and telling the chef what to do? Or have you found someplace good here?

EMERIL LAGASSE: There's a lot of good places to eat here in Jackson. I had a pretty serious lunch yesterday before I went out on the course. I didn't realize that my friend Dale was going to do to me. I've been joking about the rig I don't know if you know about the Viking rig, but there's some pretty good chefs. So I started out Mississippi tradition with chicken and collard greens and cornbread, and I went out and played golf. Maybe that's why I shot so well yesterday.

Q. The dishes that you made in your cooking demonstration, do they have specific names that you like to call them?

EMERIL LAGASSE: Well, I just sort of did what I felt was pretty seasonal right now here in Mississippi and in the area of Jackson. So there's some beautiful corn, as I said at the demo, that right now you wouldn't think about the end of September, the beginning of October, that sweet corn would be so good. It's delicious right now. It's probably better than it was in August, same thing with tomatoes. If you're a tomato lover, eat them while you can right now because they're right at the end and they're delicious. So that was that inspiration there.

I was going to use shrimp. I decided to splurge and use lobster just to give the folks a little treat there for their generosity of being here. I wanted to show the simplicity of just a simple cobbler, and so I did that, and I happened to find at the farmer's market some incredible blackberries, of all things, this time of year. So they were kind of this big, amazing. And the technique of pastry crust, or biscuit crust, if you will.

And the artichokes are kind of in season right now. It's kind of the second season for artichokes because there's a season they really harvest in the spring, predominantly in California. But right now this time in the fall, they're also not only from California but there's a lot of harvest not far from here that are doing them. Actually, one of my favorite kind of dishes, I love a good artichoke. So I wanted to do that and do something different than just boiling them or steaming them.

Q. Can I get a good kick it up a notch?

EMERIL LAGASSE: Sure, bam!

Thank you all for being here. Hope you have a good day and thanks for your support.

CARY NEW: Emeril, thank you for being here and being such a champion of the children and raising so much money for the Children's Hospital.

EMERIL LAGASSE: Thank you very much. Appreciate that. Thanks.

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