Leah is Dooky's daughter-in-law and got involved in the restaurant around 1946, melding her Creole country background with the restaurant's citified recipes. She didn't cook growing up on a farm, but began cooking in various coffee and sandwich shops when she came to New Orleans as a young woman. When she began to help out at Dooky Chase¹s, she recalls, Black men were beginning to have jobs in offices, and were going out for lunch. She thought Dooky's could serve hot meals and got in the kitchen to start developing recipes.

The recipes are at once simple and special, a melding of New Orleans myriad cultures and Leah Chase¹s own experience and taste. And they are easy to do. She says don't worry that you don¹t have time to cook something good...you just have to concentrate. She's right, we made many of these recipes after a harried day at work, and were glad we did. They were satisfying and soulful, and tasted great for lunch the next day.

We began with two bread recipes, Sweet Potato Biscuits and Herbed Rolls. The light and flaky Sweet Potato Biscuits are tinted an appetizing orange and made sweet and spicy with sugar and cinnamon. They would be a lovely addition to a dinner bread basket or with coffee for breakfast. Our dough was very wet, we ended up adding nearly a cup more flour than called for. But we used wetter, canned sweet potatoes, rather than fresh baked.

The Herbed Rolls are yeast-risen and flavored with canned cream of celery soup, which adds a savory richness. The perfume and flavor of caraway and celery seeds carry through each chewy shred of these rolls. We made them a bit less sweet than the recipe called for, adding enough sugar to feed the yeast, but not sweeten the dough. It's a matter of taste.

There is such a comforting hominess to these recipes. They called for canned soup or evaporated milk. Cooking them, you feel like you¹re in the kitchen with a friendly, fussy aunt, not hopping to the orders of a trained chef. Some of the recipes don¹t have exact rules, just steps like Cook until brown, but with a little common sense and attention, you'll know what to do.

Creole Meatballs with Gravy had everyone around the table smacking their lips and scraping their plates. The ground beef meatballs are flavored with onions, garlic, parsley, salt, pepper, and seasoned bread crumbs, held together with a little evaporated milk. Baked in the oven, sauced with gravy (here a tomato sauce with a roux base), and served over rice, they are a distinctly Creole dish.

Another New Orleans classic is Red Beans and Rice, and Chase makes hers by sauteeing the meat (ham and sausage) then adding it along with deglazed pan juices to the softened beans. Don¹t be afraid of using dried beans, they cook up in a little more than an hour and are savory and toothsome. One can see why this dish is a classic. It is inexpensive, based on beans and using meat for flavor, and doesn't require a lot of fussing over. Set it to simmer and let time do its job. And of course, every New Orleans cook has their own version, some using smoked meats, others using pickled meats. We'd like to volunteer ourselves as official tasters at the next red beans and rice festival being held anywhere in Louisiana.

It takes a special cook to make turnips appealing and Chase has done it. Stuffed Turnips are boiled until tender, about 10 minutes, then scooped out and stuffed with with sauteed sausage, turnip, onions, garlic, and cayenne, then topped with breadcrumbs and baked. Now, there are those among us that think adding sausage improves anything, but this is a truly inspired combination.

Turnips and Green Peas in Cream Sauce sounds like a dish dreamed up by the evil headmistress of a gloomy boarding school, but Chase pulls it off. Diced turnips are mixed with green peas in a simple cream sauce flavored with white pepper and Romano cheese, then baked until brown and bubbling. The casserole is rich and satisfying, a good accompaniment to roasted meat or chicken.

Chase's version of Shrimp Salad couldn¹t be simpler, but is a far cry from gloppy mayonnaise versions or the ubiquitous red cocktail sauce. She boils the shrimp, with shells on for maximum flavor, in a broth of lemon, salt, cayenne, and crab boil. Peeled and deviened, they are tossed with chopped, hard-boiled eggs and celery and marinated in a vinaigrette studded with olives and parsley. The salad is fresh and tangy, served with fresh sliced tomatoes.

Serve your guests Mirliton Soup and they be guessing all night what it was that they just slurped down. Mirliton are also known as chayote, light green squash with the ovoid shape of a mango. Here they are boiled until tender, their flesh scooped out and mixed with a roux-based flavored with onions, garlic, celery and the mirliton cooking water. The soup is tangy, fresh, and luxurious with shrimp and chopped ham.

Besides Chase's straightforward approach and way with local ingredients, the fundamental flavoring in this book seems to be her personality. Recipes are presented directly, sometimes prefaced with a family story or anecdote. As she says, listen to any black Creole person talk about their food and you will hear all the love in the world as they speak. Their food, that says it all. This is Chase's food and she¹s more than willing to share.

(c) 2000 Claudia Kousoulas and Sandy Tallant