Friday, May 13, will be Dowagiac’s lucky day when passionate New Orleans Chef John Besh presents his live cooking show at 7:30 p.m. at the middle school Performing Arts Center.

Besh considers himself a “steward” of the “only indigenous urban cuisine left in the country.”

Whether his television show “John Besh’s New Orleans” on PBS or “Inedible to Incredible” on TLC or his cookbook — with a second on the way in November, drawing on the leadership skills the Marine Corps imparted, the Desert Storm veteran has rebounded nicely from a failing grade in junior high home economics, which ranks right up there with the high school basketball coach who cut Michael Jordan and the Newsweek critic who panned “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”

“I wasn’t good at following recipes” at Clearwood Junior High in Slidell, he ’fessed up in a phone interview Wednesday afternoon. “I always wanted to make it my own.”

“Cuisine, like music, is the expression of a culture,” the father of four sons said. “I’m really looking forward to working with students.”

When Besh was a teenager, there weren’t many avenues that led students into culinary arts.

The Times-Picayune in a report last September followed Besh to Lakeshore High School near Mandeville, where he gave back by “teaching culinary arts students the intricacies of using a knife. There were lessons on how to dice a potato, there was the Julienne cut and the Tournée. Oh, and most important, he taught them how not to chop off a digit. However you slice it, the students were eating it up, learning from a master who grew up about 15 miles from their school.”

Lakeshore is one of seven St. Tammany high schools that take part in the Louisiana ProStart program, a two-year food-service curriculum in place in 49 high schools across the state.

The 1,250 juniors and seniors of the program “learn all aspects of operating and managing a food-service establishment” on a daily basis, as the class is an elective which could transfer into college credit as part of the school system’s dual-enrollment program.

Besh said it is important for children to have positive reinforcement, and if he can be a mentor, even if just for a day, that’s a step in the right direction. He wants to make it easier for kids than when he was learning from a guy on TV who “garonteed” his gumbo would turn out just right.

“Yeah, it is a little more involved than watching Justin Wilson on TV,” he said with a laugh. “But if these kids can master these fundamentals and gain the passion one can learn from watching Paul Prudhomme and Justin Wilson on TV, then we really have something. And that’s the thing: We’re merging education and soul together.”

Besh, who has fixed food for three Presidents, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, said Wilson was an “iconic figure I somewhat idolized. What a character. Then I got to know him as a friend. He lived two bayous down.”

Besh seems amused that winter’s grip has not quite relinquished its hold on southwest Michigan’s neck after another white carpeting April 18. It reminds him of time spent in mountainous Germany, where “good snowfalls after Easter” occur frequently.

Besh muses, “As a cook, nobody knew who I was. As a chef, I’ve gotten a little bit of notoriety. Once you’re ‘ordained’ a chef, your cooking is limited. I’ve been there for a while, conducting and creating, then I find the right people to put it together” from his tight-knit professional family who helped him establish six New Orleans restaurants that are like strands in a tapestry of the Big Easy’s cuisine.

Who cooks at his house? “My wife didn’t marry me for my good looks,” he said. “I love it when she cooks, but her life is crazier than mine by taking the lead on raising the four boys” and the blur of activities that entails.

“I might have one” son interested in following his career path.

In the days of Justin Wilson’s Cajun cooking, “You could actually learn how to cook by watching TV,” Besh said, reminded of watching a “big name chef” prepare ham and cheese sandwiches,” smearing mustard and mayo on bread with a flourish for his finale.

The sight made Besh “giggle.”

“I learned to love cooking through my mother and grandmother, even my dad for that matter. Men in my family were all hunters and fishermen. Mom cooked the fish and Dad cooked the game. In our culture, both men and women cooked. Cooking wasn’t a sissy thing, but highly respected.”

He figures he was no more than 9 years old when he realized he loved to make people happy through food.

His dad was a fighter pilot who later flew for Delta.

John joined the Marines right out of high school. “The leadership I was taught and mission awareness and the drive I wouldn’t be a success without were key components the Marines added to my life.”

Leadership by example. Going into “battle” with a plan to execute. In a previous interview Besh, who has made gumbo with James Carville, noted that the French term for kitchen staff is the “brigade,” since the original chefs prepared meals for kings and generals.

As for his restaurants, August is fine dining with flair from local ingredients; Besh Steak is his take on a steakhouse; LaProvence incorporates a farm producing livestock such as chicken and pigs and fresh produce; Luke replicates French and German brasseries that reigned in NOLA; American Sector is a sort of diner based at the National World War II Museum serving vintage comfort foods to the Greatest Generation; Domenica features the influence of Italian immigrants; and Luke River Walk in San Antonio is an extension of contacts made with Texans who didn’t “cut and run” after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and helped the drowned city regain its footing.

While German influences don’t get the attention some others do in Crescent City lore, Luke has an Oktoberfest menu featuring lentil soup with bacon and homemade boar sausage and roasted potatoes; in Texas, quail and wild boar.

As his empire expands and “explodes” into such new endeavors as farming and catering, Besh, the former football player, talks about more growth in grid terms: “I can’t outpunt my coverage.”

Of his trusted “family” from the restaurant world which operates in his name, “It’s very important to choose the right people to work with,” by which Besh means similar passions.

“They must be humble enough to learn and grow and want to make people happy. Humility allows you to absorb great lessons. Being a steward (of New Orleans cuisine), you have an obligation not just to preserve, but to see that it continues to evolve.”

Of American Sector, Besh said, “It’s fun food. We didn’t grow up with meatloaf. That’s exotic for New Orleans. It’s in the warehouse district, where Americans were accepted after the Louisiana Purchase.”

Diner dishes include hot dogs made by hand, sloppy joes and cheeseburger sliders.

Each half-hour episode of Besh’s show, shot at the WYES New Orleans studios, draws from his cookbook, My New Orleans: 200 of My Favorite Recipes and Stories from My Hometown (McMeel), which was nominated for a 2010 James Beard Foundation Award.

He releases his next cookbook, My Family Table, in November.

Besh has been the recipient of numerous top industry accolades, including the James Beard Award for Best Chef of the Southeast, Food and Wine magazine’s “Top 10 Best Chefs in America,” Food Arts Silver Spoon Award and the Louisiana Restaurant Association’s “Restaurateur of the Year.”

Gourmet magazine twice rated August in its “America’s Top 50 Restaurants.”

He has represented New Orleans on several popular TV series, including “Iron Chef America,” “Top Chef,” “Top Chef Masters,” “The Today Show,” “The Paula Deen Show,” “CBS Early Show,” “Martha Stewart” and the “Rachael Ray” show.

After attending the Culinary Institute of America and apprenticeships in Germany and France, Besh led a squad of infantry marines in combat to liberate Kuwait International Airport during Operation Desert Storm as a non-commissioned officer of the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve.

Besh, like his city, relied on resilience to rally through first Katrina and, a year ago, the Gulf of Mexico BP oil spill which walloped fresh seafood for which they are famous.

That’s why you’re as likely to find Besh on CNN with Anderson Cooper as on a foodie channel.

After Katrina, “We didn’t have as much physical damage as others,” though it ran into hundreds of thousands of dollars. “But we lost our entire city,” which was slow to return let alone ready to dine out at regular rates.

Though “it’s taken years to get back on our feet,” not staying in business was never a consideration. Besh’s mantra became “doing what I could to do right by the community,” which early on meant feeding first responders, from National Guardsmen to firefighters and police.

With refineries down, gas prices “went through the roof.” That’s where catering entered the picture, with profits split “even steven” with workers hired back.

Colleagues tease him about his “little bout with communism.”

Besh figures such tragedy called for extreme measures and thinking outside the box, “creating ways to stay afloat. With the Gulf oil spill, fishers, crabbers, shrimpers, those are all family businesses. Each shrimp boat is like a family farm in your neck of the woods,” their financial futures bound up in the vessel.

“All these folks out of work hit us out of left field” so soon after the hurricane and its aftermath.

“The seafood has rebounded in a major way, but too much oil hit our shores. You’ve got to harp on the need for responsible oil companies and government,” Besh said. “A lot of the Gulf wasn’t affected and is doing well. It will be nightmare a couple of years longer.”

Gulf seafood is closely scrutinized, but longer-term effects remain certain.

“We’re very resilient people,” he said.

www.chefjohnbesh.com