Rouses_May-June-2018

the Eat Local issue

CAJUN NINJA by DavidW. Brown

“P iyahhh!” shouts YouTube sensation Jason Derouen, and recipe ingredients are suddenly chopped through the magic of video editing. It’s become his trademark phrase, heard by hundreds of thousands around the globe on his Cajun Ninja cooking shows. The videos run the gamut from traditional New Orleans cuisine (red beans and rice) to first-order comfort food (baked macaroni and cheese). They are filmed in his home kitchen and

involve the sort of everyday hardware and ingredients that remove the intimidation factor from the recipes. You watch him cook and you say, “Wait — I could make that, too!” And then you do. There’s a charming simplicity to Derouen’s show. Each week he evokes the very earliest cooking shows of Emeril Lagasse, before he “kicked it up a notch” — before “Bam!” and adulatory studio audiences and superstardom. Derouen cooks with a sort

of placid exuberance. He knows what he is doing, and yet seems as happy as the viewer that the recipes are turning out as intended. His food is beautiful. It’s appetizing. He cooks and, look! It’s all coming together — just look at that! You can almost smell the kitchen through the screen. And he’s serving up Southern fare, so you just know it’s good. “I’m touching a lot of people who have struggled in the kitchen,” says Derouen,

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MY ROUSES EVERYDAY MAY | JUNE 2018