Kitchen Queens: New Orleans

-Funding for "Kitchen

Queens

New Orleans" was provided by... -This time on "Kitchen New Orleans," three dishes that represent the longstanding cultural and culinary connection between Latin America and New Orleans. First, Seafood Campechana, a Mexican seafood cocktail by Chef Susan Spicer of Rosedale. Next, a Cuban inspired dish, Habana salad from Chef Christina do Carmo Honn of Caf Cour. And finally, a meatless potato, squash, and poblano taco by Chef Maribeth Del Castillo of Taceaux Loceaux. Stirring the pot with creativity and style. They're the New Orleans kitchen queens. Our culinary adventure begins in New Orleans' Lakeview neighborhood and Rosedale, a casual dining spot established by award-winning Chef Susan Spicer. At Rosedale, and her flagship restaurant, Bayona, Chef Susan creates unforgettable Louisiana food in supportive environments that advance other women in the industry. This trailblazing chef with a passion for world flavors was inducted into the Culinary Hall of Fame in 2012. So today I'm going to do a Seafood Campechana, which is a lot like a just seafood cocktail. One of the things that we're gonna add to it is ceviche. This is black drum, which I've diced up pretty fine. And you can use snapper, mahi mahi, you know. Yeah, there's a lot of local Gulf fish that would work really well. And ceviche is essentially raw fish that's cooked with acid, either lemon or lime juice, and salt. This is kosher salt. Lime juice. And it wants to really take a good bath in that lime juice. This takes about, I would say, 10 to 15 minutes. So you want to make sure that you're starting that ahead of time. And just let that kind of bathe in the lime juice. One of the spices that we're going to use is toasted cumin. And I'm using the whole seeds. And when I want to chop the seeds, all I do is just put a few drops of oil. And that keeps them from jumping all over the place. You don't really want to use a grinder because it's a fairly small amount. You just get a little bit more bang for your buck. If you use the toasted seeds. You get that little tiny bit of texture, which I really like. So put those in there. Then one of the other ingredients that gives it, you know, a lot of flavor and also some heat are the toasted, charred peppers. This is a poblano pepper. This is a Hatch chili, which is available at certain times of the year and they're really good. So we're gonna chop those up. What you do, you can do this in the oven. You can do it, if you want to char it, you can do it even over an open flame, you know, a burner on your stove. But, yeah, you want to toast it until it's pretty, pretty blackened. Let it cool, peel away the skin. If you're doing a few, you can put 'em in a bowl, put some plastic wrap over it. Or just, you know, do it a few minutes ahead of time. We're going to -- If there's a lot of seeds, you can scrape the seeds. Doesn't matter if a couple of seeds get in there. No big deal. We're just going to use part of this one. Open it up. Hatch, it comes from Hatch, New Mexico, and usually, you know, somebody has them locally in season. So you're just going to dice that up. Everything is going to end up being diced up in here. And when you're roasting the chilies, you can actually smell the heat. But a poblano can be very mild sometimes and quite spicy sometimes. But you can actually smell even without tasting. So let's go ahead and start mixing up. We have some nice just ripe diced tomatoes. Ketchup, or if you have chili sauce, you can use chili sauce. We're going to put diced white onion. Red onion would be nice, too, if you want to use some red onion. Put our chilies in. More lime juice. I always love limes because they don't have seeds. So makes it a lot easier than dealing with lemons when you have to get those seeds. Speaking of seeds, we'll put our cumin seeds in there. We also have diced jalapeo. More heat. This is a pretty spicy dish. Jalapeos, serranos. If you like even more spice, you can use serrano chilies. Just cut them in real fine little rounds. But in this case, we're using the jalapeo. And when you're using chilies, if you're dicing them up, peppers, anything like that, usually the heat is kind of in this rib. So, you know, if you want them to be a little less hot, the ribbon. And this will be the hotter part, this little, you know, whiter part. You get down to the green, and it's going to be a little less spicy. And we've got olives, Manzanilla olives, stuffed green olives, any kind of green olive you want to put in there. This is optional, but I like to reinforce the seafood flavor. When we peel shrimp, we always save the heads and the shells and all you need to do is throw them in a little pot or pan, tossed him in the oven or over a burner on a burner. I used the trimmings from the tomato, some onion and celery, a bay leaf, a little wine and water. And I've got a really nice shrimp stock. I'm gonna put just a little bit of that in there. That just reinforces that good seafood flavor. But again, it's optional. It's always a nice thing to make in a bigger volume and then freeze it in small amounts so you can just pull some out of the freezer. And we're gonna add olive oil. A little bit of salt. We won't put too, too much salt because we're gonna have that ceviche in there, which is going to be salty and all our other seafood is seasoned. Gonna chop a little bit of cilantro. And when I use cilantro, I don't mind having a little bit of the stem in there. Wash it well, and then you just pick, you know, pick it. But if you're chopping it, a little bit of the stem is really good. I mean, in places where they use cilantro or fresh coriander, as it's known in a lot of the world, they use everything from the leaves to the roots, as well. So a little stem is not a big deal. I'm looking at this cilantro and I'm seeing a difference. Some of the leaves look like this, and some are more feathery like that. And that's what it looks like when it's about to go to seed. And it's less useful. It gets a little bit more sparse and feathery like that. But the seeds are also really great to use. And you can use them green. You can pick them while they're still green on the plant. Or you can wait until they dry. And then you have actual coriander seed, as we know it. We don't use coriander seed a lot in the United States. It's really used a lot in the Middle East and other places. But it's a wonderful citrusy flavoring. So, you know, and especially green, they're really fun to put in things like, you know, roasted cauliflower, a little cauliflower salad with some fresh green coriander seeds or something like that. So now we have our nice base here. I'm also going to add some garlic. I have garlic in a little bit of oil. That's pretty much the base. Let me put a smidgen more ketchup in there as a binder. And we're going to look at our ceviche. And when it starts to turn a little bit more opaque, a little whiter, that's when it's cooked. And if you're doing this ahead of time, you can put this in the refrigerator. It doesn't have to sit out at room temperature. That's tasting pretty good. We use a claw crab meat, which I think is really flavorful and nice. I tend to either use claw or jumbo lump crab meat because I find that the the lump crab meat in between for me has too many shells. It's cheaper than the jumbo lump. But the time it takes to really clean lump crab meat and get all those shells and little pieces out of there is not worth it to me. I'd rather pay a little extra and use the jumbo lump. Or, you know, I like a combination of the jumbo and the claw meat if I'm making a stuffing or a crab meat dip or something like that. So we're gonna go ahead and put our... ceviche. And I usually don't put the juice because it's going to sort of dilute the flavor. You don't want to dilute too much. We'll go ahead and put all that in there. And so we've got our crab meat. Our cilantro, everything's in there. I did grill some nice shrimp. They were head on. I took most of the heads off. You can -- we can take one or two and chop those up also, put those in there. Put some of that in there. What we do to finish is plate it in a bowl. And this is something you can serve individually or put a big bowl out with the chips, and that's kind of fun, too. I love avocado. I love fresh, ripe avocado with just about anything. But I love the contrast of it here. We'll put a couple of our......shrimp and our crab claws. I have marinated crab claws. 'Cause we love those in New Orleans. I have a little... extra virgin olive oil. Lemon or lime juice. Your call. Little garnish of cilantro. And I love scallions on everything. So I always sprinkle scallions with a little olive oil on there. So there you have it. Seafood Campechana. -Located in the heart of the French Quarter is The Historic New Orleans Collection, a world-class museum and research center. Chef Christina do Carmo Honn and her husband Dana operate the museum's restaurant, Caf Cour, an eatery that celebrates the food history of the city. Born in Rio de Janeiro, Chef Christina has spent much of her life studying and experimenting with recipes from around the world. -So I'm making the Habana salad, and we are going to start with the vinaigrette. A fresh mango. Fresh mango, some ginger. Then we have have some habanero. Black pepper. Red onions. A little bit of salt. Cumin. And the cider vinegar. And the last one, some olive oil. Forgot this sprig of fresh oregano. This is from our yard.

Chuckles

Queens

The mango should be very ripe because it is sweeter. Okay, so I put it here. And... Just blend, and voil! That's the dressing. We are going to need just a little bit. So that's the vinaigrette, and now we are going to make the salad. So we have some arugula. Everything from here, from New Orleans, sustainable and organic and local farmers, too. Just mix a little bit. Add some onions, red onions. Some cucumbers, sliced. Some heirloom tomatoes, too, very nice. And some almonds. Just use very toasted -- toasted almonds, yeah. And some cheese. This is fresco cheese, or you can use the vegan cheese, too, for vegans. This one is the fresco. And the last one, the avocados. And the dressing. And I think that's all. So that's Habana salad. -Our final stop is Uptown New Orleans, where we'll pull up a seat at Taceaux Loceaux, a restaurant on Octavia Street, owned by Maribeth del Castillo and her husband, Alex. Chef Maribeth started her culinary career in San Diego and landed in the kitchen of Emeril's restaurant when she relocated to New Orleans. At Taceaux Loceaux, Chef Maribeth showcases her imaginative, Mexican-inspired cuisine. -This dish is a Yukon Gold potato and poblano and acorn-squash dish. This is a little bit of a riff on one of the tacos that we've been doing almost since the beginning of the truck, certainly before we opened the restaurants. And the staple dish is actually just the potato and poblano. However, when we get closer to fall, we start using a little bit of acorn squash than we have, which we do now. But once we get to October, we do the Great Pumpkin, and we always add Cinderella pumpkins to it, as well. So we kind of mess around with this one a little bit. But the basis of it for us today is, Yukon Gold potatoes, which you'll take these and really just boil them. That's all you need to do. When we're finished, we're gonna actually have them diced. You could dice them before or after -- it's up to you. And then I'm gonna take these -- this acorn squash. All you do here is you halve it. So just be very careful while you're trying to get through this, because they're pretty tough. I'm gonna cut through that stem here. So, you see inside, you've got seeds that look a lot like pumpkin seeds, very easy to clean out. You just use a spoon. All I'm going to do is just kind of scrape these out. So, once these are both scraped, what we do next, in about a 400-degree oven is, I'm going to put a little olive oil and salt here. You flip them upside down, put a little more olive oil on the top. Pop them into the oven. They take about half an hour. Once they're really soft, you can get a fork through, you know you're good to go. So, once the acorn squash goes into the oven for about a half an hour or so, it's going to look like this. So you can see the skin is a little browner. And what will happen here is that this very easily peels right off. And so now you've got a nice cooked acorn squash that we can work with. You can also take the spoon that you just used earlier and scoop out the flesh. So just like an avocado. It's very easy to do. Yeah? So we'll get the flesh of these out. I've got some Yukon Golds that I've boiled already. These are already out of their skins. These will all go together. And we're just gonna do a quick dice on these. So, these are obviously much easier to handle when they're cooled, so this is something to think about for meal prep, just bake them in advance. And then maybe you're making potatoes one night, makes some extra, and then you've got them the next day, because it's a super easy dish once everything's cooked. So, this more kind of turns into a mash, this squash, that, you'll see in a minute, we're gonna mix together with everything else. And this dish is 100% vegan, which we like to offer. And our goal behind it is to make sure that no matter what people eat, they're comfortable. And it's not something that screams vegan. We didn't want to just do a bean taco We wanted it to be interesting and flavorful for everybody. And to not feel like they have to kind of search around to find something that they can eat. So, these will go right into a bowl. And then, the third main component is a roasted poblano pepper, which we've done. So these just get peeled, as you can see, just like normal. These will get peeled, and they'll get seeded, and they'll get stemmed. So that's gonna come out super easy. Again, if these are done the day before, these are cool, very easy to work with. You're just gonna slice these down. Most of the seeds are gone. You don't need to rinse them off because there's a lot of flavor that comes off of it. If you rinse them off, you actually kind of lose that. This is one of our staple peppers. We use it all the time. It's a very mild pepper. It's kind of sweet. It's fruity, also. It's really, really a nice, versatile pepper that we use for this dish and a couple of the other vegan dishes that we do, as well. And it's great in eggs, too, for breakfast. This is actually really good in breakfast, too. So, this is just a rough chop. It's very rustic. And so what'll happen next is, we'll put a little bit of cumin in. And I've got a little bit of chili powder, as well. We've got some salt. I'm gonna put some olive oil in, too, because we are going to saut this to heat it back up before we eat it. And I've got garlic, as well. And so, again, this is very simple. You're gonna smash your garlic, and you're gonna mince it. We like to use fresh garlic. We use it a lot. You could use garlic powder if you prefer not to use fresh garlic, but this is what we typically use. And if you want it a little bit milder than raw, what you can do is, when you throw all of your ingredients into the oven to roast them, you can add garlic cloves, as well. You could even leave them in the skin, and they'll roast really well. Okay. So, this is kind of a "get your hands dirty" kind of dish. So we've got everything in here now. We're going to mix all this around. So you can see it's a little bit messy, but there is no better tool than your hands sometimes. So this will get us going. So, we'll heat a pan with a little bit of olive oil. Get this warm. And then we'll add what is actually a hash. So we'll add that here, too. So, everything except the garlic is already cooked through. So, this is heated through and ready. I've got the heat off. And so, locally, we use a company that makes us some corn tortillas, which come in looking like tortillas. And what we do for this particular dish, because it's so soft, is we fry these, and we use these fried. Now, because it's hot in Louisiana and because we started on a truck, we've always used cabbage as a base instead of lettuce for our tacos. So I'm going to put a little bit of shredded cabbage right at the bottom. So we'll take some of our hash... and we'll put it right inside. We like to top this with some sprigs of cilantro. So pretty. We'll add some cilantro. And then, we've got a fresh salsa verde that we make, as well, to go on top. And this keeps it vegan. So if you wanted it vegetarian, you could certainly add some sour cream or even some cheese. All right. And this is our poblano and Yukon Gold and acorn squash taco. -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...