Houmas House chef Jeremy Langlois releases new cookbook of restaurant and family recipes

As the longtime executive chef at Houmas House’s upscale Latil’s Landing, Jeremy Langlois had dreamed of publishing his own cookbook. But sitting down to translate restaurant recipes for the home kitchen was a task he kept putting off—until the pandemic came along.

That’s when Houmas House’s social media director encouraged Langlois to post live cooking demos complete with recipes. The chef’s easy manner and aww-shucks charm helped the videos garner a surprising number of views, and the series continued well after the shutdown.

The exercise had an important byproduct. It forced Langlois to document scores of recipes that would soon form the foundation of his first cookbook, Recipes for My Daughters, released in April.

The 80-recipe collection includes family favorites, along with Houmas House classics like praline duck, crab and mango cakes, tuna crudo, grilled sensation salad and Langlois’ well-known bisque of curried pumpkin, crawfish and corn, inspired by his interest in Caribbean curries and a menu staple since Latil’s Landing opened in 2004.

“I was just playing around when I created that soup,” he says. “And it’ll probably be on my tombstone.”

Langlois’ culinary career began at age 16 when he started as a dishwasher at Chef John Folse’s White Oak Estate and Gardens. Migrating to the catering team, Langlois’ cooking chops stood out and Folse stepped in as a mentor, shifting him to the kitchen of his flagship Lafitte’s Landing restaurant. Folse also arranged a scholarship for Langlois to attend the Chef John Folse Culinary Institute at Nicholls State University.

By age 21, Langlois was the executive chef at Folse’s Bittersweet Plantation in downtown Donaldsonville, a position he held until Houmas House owner Kevin Kelly recruited him to lead the plantation-turned-inn’s luxe eatery.

The self-published, Recipes for My Daughters, has been a labor of love, says Langlois, 47, who took on not just the recipe development, but also the page layout and most of the photography. Its title was inspired by a day when daughters, Piper and Parker, now 12 and 14, participated in one of Langlois’ cooking demos. His wife, Theresa, captured the moment on the Houmas House grounds with a picture that is now the book’s cover.

“It’s a perfect picture, and it’s my favorite of the three of us,” he says. “When I saw it, I knew that was what I was going to name it.”

The cookbook is available through Langlois’ website and in the Houmas House Estate and Gardens gift shop at 40136 LA Hwy 942 in Darrow.