Greg Pollan

Greg Pollan of Calhoun City  does a lot of experimenting in his attempts to duplicate things he’s eaten, but the kitchen agreement at the Pollan house is whatever mess he makes while cooking, wife Andria has to clean it up. And he says he makes a lot of mess.

He can usually figure out how to make something he’s eaten by just tasting it. He once did this with Crawfish Pistolettes that were served at a Sturgis bike rally.
His winter time hobby on Saturday is cooking things like gumbo, which is his “go-to” in cold weather. It is one of his favorite that he cooks and says it reminds him of that from Middendorf’s in New Orleans.
He started cooking about age 12 while living in Louisiana. His step-father showed him how to make gumbo and chicken sauce piquante. He lived there nine years and friends and neighbors were always having backyard crawfish

Sheriff Pollan

boils and fish fries.

His mother, Sandy Byrd, of Hattiesburg is “the world’s best biscuit maker.” His father, Les Pollan, is a good cook also and likes to cook on a smoker, which he got Greg in to. Now he has made his own rub recipe, and one of his prouder moments was when he smoked a perfect rack of ribs, saying it was challenging.
He gets pointers from mother-in-law, Jo Tedford, and they also share recipes. Besides cooking in cast iron 99% of the time, he uses Tony Chachere’s gravy mix in his roast, which is the recipe she asked him for.
He recently got her chocolate chess pie recipe, and although he doesn’t cook a lot of sweets, his top three favorites are the chocolate chess pie, pecan pie and banana pudding, which he just started making.
“Rita Cole makes the best banana pudding on the planet,” he said, and that he’s getting his close to tasting like hers.

In addition to cast iron cooking, of which his Dutch oven is his favorite, he uses “tons of Tony Chachere’s”–from a first edition cookbook, to ordering seasoning and roux mix by the case.
Greg couldn’t really recall but one kitchen disaster, and it was tomato and shrimp stuffed bell peppers. “They  were really bad. We had to just throw them out because even the dogs wouldn’t eat them.”
He uses the internet a lot for recipe searching, especially www.realcajunrecipes.com, but he saw the crawfish cornbread recipe on Facebook posted by a high school classmate.

He thought it looked good, and decided to try it. He started with a couple of Mexican cornbread recipes and others, and combined them for his final one.
Andria’s favorites are the shrimp and corn chowder, and also red beans and rice, with Cajun cornbread. Daughter Katherine likes anything spicy, and loves the chicken sauce piquante.
Company favorites are shrimp and grits, and crabmeat dip, and he also makes jambalaya and shrimp etouffee sometimes.
“I just love food,” he said, and “we cook what tastes good!”