July_Aug_2015_FINAL_62215_bleedless REV

the Anniversary issue

Much like the culinary institute and Nicholls, Rouses has evolved over the years, especially since the market opened its first café. Rouses is always my first stop to shop no matter the length or variety of my scribbled shopping list. It’s where I buy comfort food for my family and lunch prepared by some of South Louisiana’s best chefs, who happen to be Nicholls culinary alumni and students. Rouses carries the freshest local produce and trendy groceries, while consistently supplying local restaurants and our own culinary institute’s classroom operations with top-notch ingredients. As you can tell, Rouses and the Chef John Folse Culinary Institute feed my soul and passion, and Nicholls provides me the opportunity to influence young, aspiring chefs. These students, in turn, unknowingly influence culinary evolution through their expressions in the kitchen and desire to ingest any morsel of information that is fed to them. It is this fervency that has joined Rouses and Nicholls in creating a partnership that continues to yield innovative, one-of- a-kind opportunities for students at the culinary institute, located in the heart of the Bayou Region. The small town of Thibodaux, where Rouses and Nicholls call home, provides a bountiful natural pantry and deep-rooted Cajun-Creole culture, making it the ideal community in which to immerse culinary students in the art of cooking the Louisiana way. Even Jimmy Buffett knows Thibodaux is a special town. His lyrics to “I Will Play for Gumbo” suggest he has had a good roux or two: “A piece of French bread with which to wipe my bowl, good for the body, good for the soul ... you should never know when you’re gonna get it next, at midnight in the Quarter or noon in Thibodaux.”This joie de vivre is part of a Nicholls student’s daily life. It is also what attracts renowned regional and international chefs to visit the Chef John Folse Culinary Institute, only a short 45-minute drive from New Orleans. Being so close to such a large culinary and cultural Mecca means Nicholls culinary students are able to acquire externships and employment in some of the country’s finest kitchens, all while pursuing a Bachelor of Science in culinary arts — the first degree of its kind in the country and the only one currently offered in Louisiana. Getting into dream kitchens starts by clocking countless hours in the six kitchens of the Chef John Folse Culinary Institute, which recently moved into the new 33,000-square-foot Lanny D.Ledet Culinary Arts Building on the Nicholls campus.This state-of-the-art facility opens to Nicholls’300-plus culinary students inAugust and upholds the culinary institute’s fine tradition of educating and developing the industry’s next leaders in a region that maintains respect and appreciation for the Cajun-Creole tradition,amission that began in 1995when the institute was founded, incidentally over a few bowls of gumbo.

Gettin’ Schooled on Food by Monica Larousse

A searing 101 degrees — that’s the temperature registered by the thermometers living in most chefs’ left shoulder pockets at this time of year, when the trenches of South Louisiana kitchens are tempered à la Dante’s Inferno. When I enter the much cooler 85-degree kitchens of Nicholls State University’s Chef John Folse Culinary Institute, where the students know me as Chef Monica Larousse, I wear my chef ’s whites and thermometer proudly, ready to instruct culinary labs that last as long as the day’s recipe requires. For some culinary students, the lessons I share in these labs are the introduction to techniques they will use for the rest of their lives, both in their professional and private kitchens. My role as educator doesn’t end with the Chef John Folse Culinary

Institute. As a mother to two beautiful girls and wife to a professional chef, I am challenged constantly to give my best both at home and at the university. What keeps me going is the realization that I get to live the dream that I have spent over 20 years working tirelessly to achieve while always being surrounded by a culinary-minded family. It’s a unique lifestyle, and unique lifestyles tend to attract curious questions. “Where do y’all shop for groceries?” I get asked most often. My instinctive reply is a no-brainer: “Rouses, where the chefs shop.”

Speaking of gumbo, the classic Louisiana-style soup isn’t a cooking technique, but a way of life, one of the important concepts that Chef John Folse Culinary Institute students come to learn while receiving a quality liberal arts college education at Nicholls. Hey, at least all that learning no longer takes place in a 101-degree kitchen.

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MY ROUSES EVERYDAY JULY | AUGUST 2015