Fashion
A New Orleans Legend’s Incredible Cornbread
The late Pableaux Johnson, a New Orleans fixture, was known for bringing people together at his beans-and-rice dinners.
Credit…Linda Xiao for The New York Times. Food stylist: Maggie Ruggiero. Prop stylist: Heather Greene.
When Southerners talk about cornbread, they’re really talking about where they come from. More specifically, they’re talking about the peoplethey come from.
You might think the differences in cornbread are marginal, the list of ingredients often identical. Yet the preparation, the kind of pan used, the type of fat, whether leftovers are crumbled into sweet buttermilk for days after until it is all gone, as my family did: They all tell a story about someone’s table and, quietly, something about his or her life.
Recipe: Skillet Cornbread
If there was one person whose cornbread told you about his life, and his table, it was Pableaux Johnson, photographer, writer and keeper of ties. Like many folks, specifically those he referred to as “my people” — the community he built across the globe — I called Pableaux a dear friend, in my case for over 15 years. I am honored to say I’ve made this cornbread with him many times, in many places, for groups large and small, over the span of those years. He and I were reminiscing about those times recently, on a sunny Saturday in New Orleans, as we talked about possibly publishing his recipe here in this column. It was the week after a great snow fell in the city where both of our hearts found a kind of love and acceptance they needed. The next day, Pableaux was gone. He collapsed doing what he loved: photographing a second-line parade, as he did every Sunday he could. Quite suddenly, this recipe became a memorial.
