Kitchen Queens: New Orleans

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New Orleans" was provided by... -This time on "Kitchen New Orleans," 3 regal dishes that showcase the blue crabs of Louisiana. First, a savory take on an iconic breakfast treat -- beer-battered crab beignets by Chef Jana Billiot of Restaurant R'evolution. Next, a quick and tasty appetizer -- sauted crab fingers by Chef Tanya Dubuclet of Neyow's Creole Caf. And finally, Leah Chase's creole gumbo, a tribute to the culinary pioneer. Stirring the pot with creativity and style, they're the New Orleans Kitchen Queens. Our first stop is Bourbon Street, a place of revelry and sidewalk strolling. In the heart of the monumental strip is Restaurant R'evolution, a fine-dining establishment known for its imaginative reinterpretations of classic Creole and Cajun cuisine. Overseeing kitchen operations for the restaurant is Chef de Cuisine Jana Billiot, a native of Johnson Bayou in Cameron Parish, Louisiana. -Today, we're doing a beer-battered crab beignet. So, first, we're gonna make our filling for the crab beignets. Now, a lot of times, when people say "beignet," they think of sweet beignets you know, covered, doused in powdered sugar -- quite messy, but delicious. So we're doing, like, a savory take on that. Essentially, we're gonna make a crab and cheese herb filling that we're gonna drop into a beer tempura-type batter and then deep-fry. And the beauty of this filling is that it is mostly crabmeat.

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and we're using some jumbo lump, blue crabmeat. Now, first off, you need to make sure that you pick your crabmeat and get all those little bits and pieces of shells out, and we're also gonna use a combination of the lump with the claw meat. I personally really like the claw meat. It's sweeter, I find. It's got more flavor. And it's gonna be very impressive with the amount of crabmeat in these beignets, because in every bite, you're gonna just get this beautiful lump of crabmeat. So, we have our crabmeat here. We're gonna add some mascarpone cheese, as well as Creole cream cheese. Now, you can get both of these products in your grocery store, in the dairy section. Or if you can't find the Creole cream cheese, you can always just use Philadelphia cream cheese and you can add a splash of lemon juice to give it a little bit more of that acidity that the Creole cream cheese has. Now, ideally, these cheeses, they would have tempered a little bit so that they softened up for you so that you don't have to break up the crabmeat too much when you're mixing these. We're gonna add some brunoise -- very fine-diced shallot, as well as thinly sliced chives, along with some fine brunoise shallots. I'm gonna season with a little bit of, like, a Creole seasoning -- salt, pepper, cayenne. And now I'm gonna just gently fold this crabmeat in with the cream cheese. As you can see, it's really important to let that cheese sort of temper and soften up for you. It's a lot easier to work with. So I'm kind of just working that cheese right now to soften it, and then I'll work in that crabmeat by just folding it into the cheese mixture. I am from Southwest Louisiana -- Cameron Parish, a tiny town called Johnson Bayou. Yeah, it sounds like it's really small because it is.

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I graduated with 9 people, a public high school, so that's just an idea of how small this town is. There are no red lights in my hometown. There's 4 stop signs. There's Front Road, Mill Road, and Back Road. So, grew up hunting and fishing. I actually worked in a seafood market for a long time. The blue crab essentially paid for my college, in a way. I spent many of summers running crab traps, culling crabs, and then selling them in Holly Beach at a local seafood market. So blue crab means a lot to me. So, it's pretty awesome that we're doing a dish with that today. So, now that I've got my filling made, I would take this filling now and keep it refrigerated 'cause you're dealing with some fresh seafood here. You want to keep it nice and cold until you're ready. Now we're gonna make our beer batter. So, we have some all-purpose flour. Gonna add basically half the amount of the all-purpose flour. We're gonna add cornstarch. Get that all in there. And baking powder. For the beer, you can use whatever beer you prefer, but I like to use a local amber beer for the flavor that it provides. So, I'm just gonna whisk in my beer. Your batter should be a little lumpy -- not too thin, not too thick. You know, you can always add more if it seems a little too thick. You really just want it to be able to coat the crab cheese filling, but not actually create too much of, like, a dough on the outside. We're gonna season this batter, as well, with some salt, pepper, granulated garlic, cayenne. You know, I always really enjoyed cooking, especially, like, being in the kitchen with my memaw, preparing for the holidays and things of that nature. That's kind of how I fell in love with it. And then when I was looking to go to college, my mother heard about Nicholls State, Chef John Folse's Culinary Institute, and after that, we toured the university at Nicholls State, and I was kind of just sold on it. So I tried it out, and I happened to be pretty good at it. Alright, so, now I'm gonna season my batter -- salt, pepper, granulated garlic, little cayenne. Gonna whisk that up again. It's about the consistency that you're looking for there. I'm gonna check my oil before we get going. You're looking for about 365, 370 'cause the temperature's gonna drop once you put those beignets in, so you really want to fry it around 350. So, now I'm gonna scoop my beignets like this. Drop them in your batter. I'm gonna do 4. You can make these bigger if you'd like, but then you'd have to fry them longer, so then you'd have to adjust your temperature on your fryer. This is an ounce. You want to make sure that they're hot all the way through. These will fry for about a minute. You have to consider that the crabmeat is already cooked. It's just crab and cheese in the filling, so you really just have to make sure it's hot all the way through. Mostly, we're just cooking the beer batter, making sure it's nice and crispy. I'd say total -- about a minute and a half. I'm just gonna serve my crab beignets with a little what we call Mardi Gras slaw, 'cause it's got a little purple, green, and gold in there. We got Napa cabbage, a little yellow bell pepper, some shaved fennel, red onion, and chive batons. I've got a Creole mustard vinaigrette that I'm gonna put on this slaw. Now, you could serve these crab beignets with all sorts of dipping sauces. We do a saffron remoulade, a roasted red pepper remoulade, a salsa verde remoulade, and then just traditional white remoulade. This Mardi Gras slaw comes with the beignets, as well. So, I've got some different remoulades here that I'm gonna serve. That's a traditional white remoulade, so salsa verde remoulade, a roasted red pepper remoulade, and then I have a saffron remoulade. And here we are -- beer-battered crab beignets. -Moving now to New Orleans Mid-City, where Mother Nature is on year-round full display. The centrally located neighborhood is home to Neyow's Creole Caf, a family-run operation on Bienville Street. In the restaurant's kitchen, Chef Tanya Dubuclet draws from the food she grew up with, preparing the authentic Creole dishes of her grandmother. -We're going to saut crab claws. Actually, it's one of my favorites. Been loving sauted crab claws since I was about 5, 6 years old. So it's just one of my favorites. It's still my grandmother's recipes. I might have just tweaked it just a tad bit, but yeah, that's what we grew up on. You're gonna add the -- First, we're gonna add the crab claws. You're gonna add about 2 ounces of mixed season, which is chopped-up garlic, bell pepper, celery, and green onion. You're gonna add about 2 ounces of white wine. A little granulated garlic. You're gonna add a little Creole seasoning and a little Italian seasoning. You're gonna let that simmer for a little bit -- maybe about 2 minutes. May need to add just a tad bit more white wine. You can't taste it. It's safe for kids. Actually, this is one of my grandkids' favorites, too. This is an appetizer. You can either get it sauted or you can get it fried. I prefer sauted. Then you add a little butter. And once the butter melts, it's actually finished. You know, people like to say, "Oh, Chef," calling me Chef. I just -- It's just strange 'cause I don't consider myself as a "chef." I just follow good directions, I don't change anything, and I just love to cook. This has always been my passion. It's so funny. One of my kids asked me -- I give them numbers -- my actually number 5, the one who's in college, I used to be in the restaurant so much, she asked me did I actually live at the restaurant. I was like, "Oh." I was like, "No, I live at home." So I tried after that to start coming home a little bit. Once the butter's melted, it's ready to go. Sauted crab claws -- this is one of my favorites. You have to try it. -We end our dining tour in the Trem neighborhood of New Orleans, where Dooky Chase has welcomed diners since 1941. For seven decades, the culturally significant restaurant was led by Chef Leah Chase, who passed away in 2019 at the age of 96. Today, the classic New Orleans cuisine of the James Beard Lifetime Achievement Award recipient is faithfully prepared by her grandson, Edgar Dooky Chase IV and niece Cleo Robinson. Carrying on the legacy of the Queen of Creole cuisine at Dooky Chase is her devoted family. -Welcome to Dooky Chase Restaurant. Today, we're gonna be talking about Leah's famous Creole gumbo and all that history behind her gumbo in terms of bringing people to the table. We're gonna talk about the flavors, and while we're discussing the flavors and how we build and build upon flavor, we're also gonna discuss the saying that my grandmother also told me and her niece Cleo, that she changed history over a cup of gumbo -- a bowl of gumbo and some fried chicken. So we're excited today to kind of walk you through that process that she taught us many and many and many times over just to make sure we got it right. -We always started with a ham hock to make our stock, to start the stock up with the ham hock and the blue crabs from our Gulf right here. We stayed with the local shrimp. We were very, very proud to say that we never use imported products. We like to stay with our local fishermen and our local products. And a chori sausage that we have been having in the restaurant that this particular purveyor has been making for us and the community for over 70-some years. And our smoked sausage. And we have some chicken, and of course, our own fresh-ground fil from our gardens ourselves. -We're excited. We're ready to get started. If you all want to move on over to the stove, we'll show you how we make this great gumbo. So, now, as Cleo was talking about how we start off with the ham hock and we kind of make our stock in this pot, so here's the ham hock. We've been letting that go on about a good simmer for a while. We added those crabs, those Louisiana blue crabs in there. And what we do -- you see some smoked sausage in here, and then you see this hot sausage that's kind of going in its own fat. So what we do is, as we render that fat from the sausage, we take it from this pot, put it into this gumbo pot. We're gonna keep that good fat, all that great flavor in here, and this is the pot that we're gonna make our roux in. So this hot sausage, this chori sausage has been rendering for probably about 5 minutes. And it's alright if a little oil goes into that pot. As everyone knows, at the end of the gumbo, we're gonna wind up skimming it anyway. But the main thing is to keep as much of it in here, 'cause that's what you want to make that roux with, and that's gonna bring all that flavor into that roux, and that roux is gonna bring all that flavor right back into this pot. This was originally a family recipe, and I think as I got here, you know, I know my grandmother just kind of just went through the process, and I had to do it step-by-step. That's how I learned from her, right? We would go through the process, and she would say, "Wait, boy. Don't do that. You got to do this first" or "You got to do that." Me, first time -- not knowing -- I would try to get rid of this grease and say, "Alright, here's your new pot and some oil. Let's make the roux." "What are you doing? You just lost all the flavor." So that was my experience of growing up in this kitchen and learning, is you never want to lose any flavor. Anytime you can keep flavor or enhance that flavor, that's what you should be doing. So, now I'll come with the flour. And what I'm gonna do here is just add a little bit. I'm gonna get a whisk, ladle, or you can stay with this spoon. and kind of bring it in. And when you get to this point, after that, you can put this on a lower heat. And really, this is the part where a lot of people say you need to watch and kind of maintain, 'cause like I said, we don't want to brown our flour. We don't want to go too, too dark. We're just gonna make it a nice roux -- probably about this brown. And as you can see, as I stir this up, you're looking at, and you say, "Wow. What's that orange tint? What's that color already?" That's not the flour turning that color. That's all that flavor from the meat. That's what I'm picking up. That's that cayenne pepper that was in that chorizo sausage, that paprika, some of that garlic, that thyme. This is all the flavor that I did not want to lose. So that's the color you see right here. Now, as we'll let this flour go and cook, then you'll start to see the browning and the tanning of this roux come along. -Came in the restaurant with Aunt Leah, and it was an instant love affair. And as she said many, many times in the restaurant business, "This is a business. You either love it or you hate it. There is no in-between." And I worked with her for several summers, still going through school, and I did fall in love with it. And I just -- I fell in love with her energy, most of all. And it's the adrenaline -- it was the adrenaline rush. When she would get customers in, she didn't care if it was the president, if it was the mayor of our city, if it was a community neighbor across the street. When you came in, the smile was the same, the greeting was the same. She loved any- and everybody. And once you crossed her doorstep, that was it. You were company. And when company came, the show was on. Another one of her great, great things was that "If you go through life and you go through a day and you don't learn anything, then you've closed your mind." You had to learn something every day. And trust and belief, working with her, you learned more than one thing in one day.

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She came along and bucked the system, was her big thing. When she entered the kitchen, there were not many women in the kitchen. But she did buck the system, join in the kitchen, back in those -- what, 1947 or something like that? And she fought her way through it, and she was always in the books, always learning herself, and what she did learn, she did pass on. And she made quite a legend for herself. And we're trying to continue and see can we get in there and make some waves, too. -We grew up here in this restaurant. We all started busing tables, and I came back and started dishwashing, right? So I wasn't originally in the kitchen, but as you're dishwashing and you're washing pots and pans, you'll hear my grandmother call out, "Bring me this bottle. Bring me that pot." So as a hardheaded kid, for me, I would bring the pot and just stay here and kind of leave my station just to witness what's going on. And then she just started gradually letting me in, letting me in. So that's the way I found my passion, you know, working alongside my grandmother with Cleo and going home, trying to mimic what she was doing. I'll come back and say, "Hey, I tried to make that stewed chicken gravy, and it just didn't --" "Let me taste it. Okay, you didn't do this. You didn't brown this. You didn't add this. You need a little more salt, a little more thyme." And that's pretty much how I learned through the process. Then as I got older, I think she got tired of me being in the kitchen, so they packed my bags and sent me off to Paris, France, for culinary school. But soon as I got home, I made it back here, just to bug her again. So it's been enjoyment. I learned so much in this restaurant and in this kitchen. And it hasn't all been about food. You know, she had so much experience and knowledge about the history of this city, of this nation, how we should treat people. How does this restaurant make people feel when they come in the doors? You know, this was an extension of her house. Anybody knew if you wanted to find Leah Chase, it was at this restaurant and no other building. This is where she would always be. And we're gonna probably go for about another minute or so, and then we'll just let it go. And as it gets closer to that time, you really can lower the heat, take it off, and just let it brown and finish out on here. Now, the other major thing is you never want to take all of this hot roux and go into this hot pot. You will create a volcano mess that you hopefully will never have to touch or get off your hands. So, here -- I'm gonna just turn that off. I'm gonna let it finish browning here, and then what we'll do is we'll just gradually add this to our gumbo here. I'm gonna lower the heat on that gumbo, and then we'll just gradually bring it in. Alright, so, now it's time just to add a little bit, and you'll see what I say. See that bubble up? That's what you don't want. If I didn't let that cool, that would be much more than that. And you just add a little bit at a time, stir it in. And just add a little bit. And we're gonna bring that gumbo right back up to a boil as we come further with it. But this is the stage you want to be very, very careful on, 'cause you do not want to get burned by hot roux. So, you're looking at it now saying, "Well, maybe it's not the full-fledged color." That paprika's gonna add a little red tint that we have here. That fil is gonna add that little tint that we add here. And that's gonna bring it right to the color that we want our gumbo. Now, here, I let that go for about 5 minutes. Now I'm gonna add the chicken breast that we cut up just into little inch pieces, and we're gonna add that right in here, stir that in. And what we gonna do is we're gonna let that chicken cook just about 5 more minutes before we add that shrimp. We don't want to add the chicken too early 'cause we don't want it to break apart. So we let that chicken get a head start. Now we're gonna add this shrimp in here. And we're gonna let that go for a while -- probably just another 5 minutes. We're getting close to this finished product. Before we plate it up, I'm gonna drain off this ham hock and we're gonna slice that off the bone. So, this is the very beginning that created that stock. Now we're gonna take that off. We're gonna let that cool. We're gonna slice that right off the bone. We're gonna add that meat right back in here. As Cleo's cutting that off the bone, now I'm gonna move to the last step that we have in here. Right here is paprika, and that's a little bit of that fil. You don't want to add the fil straight to this pot, 'cause what it can do is has a tendency to clump up, and trying to knock out all those fil balls is gonna be a nightmare. So what we do is we add a little bit of the gumbo juice here, then we whisk it and stir it around, then we add that back into here, and you'll have a smooth consistency. A little piece of chicken tried to come in. So, here, I'm just gonna whisk this up. Then I'm just gonna slowly come on in with it. And you'll see that flavor, that color start to enhance in this gumbo, and that's what we're looking for. As you can see -- see this color? That's the color that we're looking for to get. And that's all through going with that roux, that's with adding the paprika, that's with adding the fil, and this is the color. And, I mean, it's an unbelievable smell. You smell the chori sausage. And this is that ham hock that we just cut off the bone. What we're gonna do is add that back in, and then we're just gonna let that kind of simmer. We'll plate it up, and we'll have some of the most flavorful gumbo that you ever had. Now we're ready to taste some of Chef Leah Chase's famous Creole gumbo. And as you can see, we're gonna get every bit of that protein in here. With a little parsley on the top. And as my grandmother always said, she changed history over a bowl of gumbo and fried chicken, so here's our bowl of gumbo and fried chicken of Dooky Chase restaurant. -Thank you for joining this dining tour spotlighting women who are changing the culinary landscape of the Crescent City. See you next time for more inspirational chefs on "Kitchen New Orleans." You can find recipes for all of the dishes in this series, chef profiles, plus more information about "Kitchen New Orleans" by visiting wyes.org. Like and follow WYES-TV on Facebook and Instagram. -Funding for "Kitchen New Orleans" was provided by...