Calas Tout Chaud!

Loretta Harrison of Loretta’s Authentic Pralines brings back rice calas at Jazz Fest.

When Loretta Harrison started Loretta’s Authentic Pralines 41 years ago, she did so on solid footing in the New Orleans tradition.

“I started this company with my mom’s recipe,” she says, “which she got from her mother, which she got from her mother... And I will one day leave it to my sons.”

Tradition, however, hasn’t stopped Harrison from cooking and serving up her goodies with a twist. There are quite a few versions of her pralines, and after she introduced beignets to Jazz Fest some years ago, she couldn’t make just one kind. She came up with praline beignets, chocolate praline beignets and crabmeat beignets. Ironically, her habit of serving with a twist also recently landed her in a gray plastic boot that keeps her foot immobilized as she hobbles around her busy kitchen preparing for this year’s Jazz Fest (as she does for every other festival in town).

“I have two stories about this foot,” she explains. “One, I was trying out for the Senior Olympics. But the second one is really the truth—I tore a tendon and never took care of it. I just kept working, and it got worse.”