Kitchen Queens: New Orleans

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New Orleans" was provided by... -Today, on "Kitchen New Orleans," it's a Mardi Gras celebration with three dishes that make the good times roll. We'll get the party started with chargrilled oysters by Becky Wasden of Two Girls One Shuck. Next, a seafood twist on a Mardi Gras favorite, crab boil dirty rice, by Ericka Lassair of Diva Dawg Food Truck. And finally, the quintessential carnival confection, king cake, by Megan Forman of Gracious Bakery + Caf. Stirring the pot with creativity and style, they're the New Orleans kitchen queens. Our first destination is the Bywater, a colorful area just downriver from the French Quarter. The bohemian neighborhood is home to Two Girls One Shuck, a full-amenities traveling oyster bar started by Becky Wasden, who works with Auburn University's shellfish lab on oyster projects and research. Joining self-appointed oyster ambassador Becky for chargrilled oysters are Shuckerettes Kelle Boyer and Jaime Greenleaf. -Two Girls One Shuck loves bringing our oysters to house parties and weddings. But one of our very favorite is a New Orleans favorite and a classic -- the chargrilled oyster. We use a wild-caught Louisiana Gulf oyster. They're big and meaty. The shells are nice and dense, so they can absorb a lot of heat and poach that little oyster right in its own plate. We line them up in a small-batch style on our grill. I was lucky enough to be mentored by Chef Frank Brightson on his chargrill butter recipe. It's a very, very simple recipe. Five ingredients. Technically six if you consider garlic one of the base recipes. You're gonna want salted butter, minced garlic, and four basic Italian spices -- black pepper, thyme, oregano, and basil. All dry, all simplistic. We previously melted our garlic butter in a pan here, which is ready off to the side. Kelle is gonna line the oysters up onto the grill and then very slowly kiss each oyster with a little bit of that garlic butter. One trade secret -- You don't need to use all the oil in each scoop. You want that nice, delicious, garlic-seasoned chunk to land right on top of the oyster. You will naturally have some oil spill over. And that's important because the reason why this is a chargrilled oyster is, that flame that comes up from below creates part of that delicious, smoky flavor. Oh, yeah. I wish you could smell this because it is a crowd favorite. There are times when we have to wait to melt our butter at weddings because it's too distracting even from the bride entering in. Once Kelle lays the garlic butter on top of the oysters, we close the lid. The hardest part here to come -- You have to wait five to seven minutes, depending on the size of the oyster. If you peek and open the lid, you're gonna lose all your heat. Before that, we're gonna do a Parmesan Romano sprinkle on top. That's gonna get nice and brown and crispy. And the other difficult part, besides waiting for the lid to come back up, is waiting for the oyster to cool just enough that you don't burn your mouth. -You're always warning people, and they're always burning their tongues still 'cause they won't wait. -There you go. And now... starting the clock. Gotta show some patience. -All right. They're smelling pretty good. We got some nice bubbling going on. I'm seeing some nice browning along the edges, some really good -- The butter's boiling. These guys are hot. So I'll just pull these guys off the grill. And I'm always warning people -- Wait a moment before you eat these 'cause you're gonna burn your tongue, especially to, like, fathers of the bride, who I know are gonna have to talk all night. "Wedding guests. You're gonna have to give a speech. Don't burn your tongue." -Uh-huh.

Laughs

Queens

-Nice and hot. There you go. And I usually end up with a giant line. A lot of times, we have to remind people that the raw oysters are ready 'cause when chargrill come up, they just fly off the table. We'll just throw some little forks in here 'cause you want to eat these with a fork. The meat is so hot. And we'll tell people a lot of times pull the meat off the shell. It cools a lot faster. Give them some tricks to be able to eat them faster. We just line them up, and folks grab them. Sometimes we'll have to remember who was in line 'cause they'll run off, and then we'll be like, "Hey, so-and-so, your oyster's ready. You better come quicker, or it's gonna be gone." -Mm-hmm. "Somebody else is gonna steal him." -There you have our classic New Orleans-style chargrilled oyster. -Eat 'em up. -Regulars in New Orleans' Central Business District head to the Diva Dawg Food Truck for the Creole-inspired hot dogs of Ericka Lassair, a.k.a. Chef Diva, a graduate of Delgado's Culinary Arts School. Chef Diva's catering enterprise reflects her training and professional experience, which includes work in the kitchen of Commander's Palace. -Today, we're doing the crab boil dirty rice, something you've probably never heard of before. I'm sure you haven't because I created it, unless you had it from me before. So, we have a lot of ingredients that go in it. But I'll explain to you why. So, we're gonna start with our crab boil right here. And you can get this in many ways. I have the little bag that you can buy. Easy to pop in. You can get the liquid. You can get the powder. Everybody has their own preference of what they like to use. I'm not really too particular or picky about it. So I got to bag this time. So, we're gonna pop that in the water, and we have hot water here. And get you a nice little strainer, as well, that fits good in your pot. And, also, I like to put a lemon in there. I like to roll my lemon first, then cut that in half, and giving another little flavor to the water. Kind of squeeze it. Just a little bit, but not much. Put it right on in there. And we have our red potatoes. We have a fresh ear of corn. Of course, cooked rice. I like to buy my carrots already shredded. Makes it easier for you. And then we have a white onion here, some celery, and we have our Creole seasoning and parsley in the back that we'll hit it with. And, also, I put some butter already in the skillet. Got that going. 'Cause every time we boil something, we're just gonna throw it right in the skillet so when we do the final touches on it. Now, the most important part is the seafood. So we have our crawfish here, our shrimp, and our crab meat. Everything is already pretty much peeled. Makes it easier for you. All right. So, we got everything. So I'm gonna start with the red potatoes 'cause those take the longest to cook. So we'll cut that up. And I like to cut them in just, like, little bitty cubes. It makes it easy for you to eat and when we stir it into the rice. So, I came up with the crab boil dirty rice because I am not really a fan of crab boils 'cause I don't like to peel my shrimp or my crawfish. But, you know, it's one of those things in New Orleans that brings people together. If you're mad at somebody, you're having a crawfish boil, ah, you might not be so mad at them afterwards. It's a really good way that we celebrate and we kind of gather here in New Orleans. When I go to crab boils, I like to just go ahead and eat all the potatoes and the sausage out of it and the corn. And that's everything that we pretty much have here today that's gonna go into the dish. And my dad kind of spoiled me a little bit as a child, though. He would always peel everything for me. So I just grew up not really peeling the crawfish or the shrimp within a crab boil, so... Or the crab. So I just don't like to do it now as an adult. So I was just like, "I'm gonna just make my own dish that's kind of like a crab boil, and it's everything in it that I like to eat and don't like to peel and makes it easier." So, we got our potatoes going in our crab boil water over here. as you can see, and then the water kind of, like, surrounds that, and we'll just let that boil up a little bit. I was living in Texas for, like, six years, and, you know, when Katrina hit, my parents and my little brother came to stay with me. And so I was just so accustomed to them being there after that time, after the storm, I kind of just -- They made me want to come home. They made me want to just come home and just start fresh here, 'cause I had been gone from home since I was 18 years old, 'cause that's when I left to go to college. And right after college, I left and went to Dallas to start my job in finance, where I was for, like, six years. And food was, like, the way I made friends in the office. They had what you call the potlucks. And I was always the one pretty much bringing in most of the potluck dishes 'cause people would pay me to bring their potluck dish. So it just became -- You know, people just asked me to do dishes for their baby showers or, you know, whatever party they were having. And that's kind of, like, how I started cooking more and creating more and finding myself in the cooking world. And when I became bored with my job and bored with living in Dallas after Katrina, I was like, "You know what? Let me do cooking." And so I went to culinary school, worked at a restaurant, and it went from there. So, we have our potatoes in. So, while the potatoes are in, let's get started with our onions. Chop that right on up. And then we'll have our celery going in and our carrots. We'll put all that in at the same time. But before I finish that onion, I'm gonna just give a little bit of chop to the carrots. Kind of slim them up just a little bit. Push that on the side here. And get our onions together. And you can chop your vegetables as big or as small as you want. Some people like their vegetables to be cut really small, or, you know, they don't mind being it big. I don't really mind. I love vegetables, and I love the taste of them, so I'm good either way. Let's get our celery. Get that in there, as well. And when you're doing a crab boil, they'll start off with the celery, the onions, and the carrots, and the lemon. In the crab boil, all of that will be in the water. So that's the reason why I'm putting all this in there, as well. But I'm putting it in separately so you can get that nice dice to it. Bring the color. The carrots will bring the color. The celery. Make it a nice, vibrant dish. All right. So, we have our celery. And while we're still waiting on our potatoes, I always like to do nice, fresh-shucked corn. I mean, what's better than that? Lookit there. Beautiful. And just take that off here. Let's twist the rest. And a trick that I learned -- When you're shucking your corn, just take all those hairs out a little bit. I put a towel in a dish or a bowl or however. Kind of hold the stem and cut it down right into the towel, 'cause when you finish, you just take that towel and pick it up and put it right into whatever it's going into. And today it's going into the water. So that will make it nice and easy for us. And get every bit of corn off of there. All right. So, you got that. So, we got pretty much all of our vegetables ready. So, I think our potatoes are ready. Ooh, yeah. But just make sure they're a little bit soft, good to go. You could even taste one. Make sure it's ready. You'll taste of flavor of that crab boil on it. And if you want yours just a little bit spicy, you can add hot sauce to your water, as well, and spice it up some more. Add a little bit more Creole season. No problem with that. So, we're gonna throw that in the skillet that has the melted butter in there already. So, let's go ahead and put our onions, celery, and carrots in this water. All right. You put it in there and make sure that it's covered with the water. And that'll soften it up a little bit. And I can even put the skillet it now... a little bit onto the fire. It won't hurt to have those potatoes cooked just a little bit more, so they'll be fine. Add Creole seasoning to everything. Make sure you season every bit and part of your food. And like I said, you can even add more seasoning right to your boil. Have it as spicy as you like. All right. So, just drain the water off like so and throw that right in the skillet. All right. So, now we'll add in the corn, and the corn doesn't take long. Not long at all. And just get that nice crab boil flavor on there. I don't really do this on the truck. I do this for catering because I am a trained chef at a five-star restaurant, so, you know, I have that behind my belt. I'm not just a hot dog lady. So, you know, I do this for the catering, and people love this dish. They're scared of it at first, 'cause they're like, "What is a crab boil dirty rice?" But once they taste it, they taste all those flavors together. Especially being that it's a crab boil and everybody loves that, it's a winner. So, I think that corn is ready. So let's throw that in the skillet, as well. All right. See how nice and colorful it is? I love for my dishes to have amazing color to it. And let's not forget our Creole seasoning. All right. It looks so delicious, so good. So colorful. Love that. So, let's put that crab meat in here. Shrimp. And this will probably take about a minute or two. Not very long at all. The thing is, there's a lot of steps to it, but everything doesn't take too long. But it's worth it in the end. So, we'll let that go. You want it all submerged in that water, so just make sure it's good in that water there. I need to add a little bit of Creole season to that top. I think we got it all in. And you can see that the shrimp are starting to turn a little bit pink, getting this color. So, remember that cooked rice? We're gonna add that to the dish. And then it's time to bring that seafood out, as well. So, I'm gonna put a little bit of Creole on this. Shrimp are nice and pink. Ready to go. All right. So, right into the dish. The shrimp, the crab meat, the crawfish, the corn, the carrots, the celery, onions, everything in there. And, of course, that Creole season to make it pop even more. And if you like, add a little bit parsley just for a little bit more color. And that makes a beautiful dish here. And so, we're gonna plate this right on up. Some nice little dish here. So good. Crab boil dirty rice. Look how delicious that is. Colorful, beautiful, delicious. All the poppin' flavor in there. -Our last stop is St. Charles Avenue, where one outlet of Gracious Bakery + Caf serves the Garden District. When pastry chef Megan Forman and her husband, Jay, established their first bakery in 2011, they made graciousness a goalpost. The artisan bakery's name reflects Chef Megan's commitment to team building and collaboration. -We have evolved over time and kind of settled on a dough that we absolutely love. It's a cinnamon-roll-type dough, brioche-type dough, but it's soft, and because of the natural ingredients in it that we use, the shelf life is a couple days, which everyone likes 'cause they like to eat their king cakes over a couple days with parades in and out. And we do different fillings. We do seasonal fillings. We do cinnamon sugar. A popular one is frangipane filling, which is an almond paste filling. We do a chocolate. We've done nectar cream, like the sno-ball; lemon curd, Meyer lemon curd since that's a seasonal thing during that time. So, I'm gonna go ahead and and put our flour in the mixer. This is a mix of all-purpose flour and a little bit stronger flour called bread flour, which helps develop the gluten and hold the proof when the cake proofs. So, I've got my flours in here, my salt, malt, and yeast powder. And the malt helps with caramelization, that nice golden-brown color that we get at the end of the bake. I'm gonna add my egg and my milk for the first mix. And I'm holding back on my sugar. So, I'm gonna go ahead and put this together, and then I'll explain why I hold back on the sugar. So, I have a dough hook here. If all you have is a paddle, that's not a big deal. We're gonna get the dough mixed, and you can use a paddle attachment instead. So, I'm gonna turn it on speed one and let the dough organize. That's something we talk about in bread baking, is letting all the ingredients organize. If you start on speed two, the ingredients will mix, but they'll be in different pockets, and you won't have, like, an even -- an even development of the dough. So, I'm gonna go ahead and get this mixing. When there's a high content of sugar in dough, I hold back on putting it in so that it doesn't interfere with the gluten development, again, that's creating strength for the dough. And in this mixer, just have to be patient because it takes a little while for the dough hook to gather all the ingredients. So, I'm gonna have my dough completely mixed. It's not shaggy. It's gonna be mixed together. And then I'm gonna add my sugar after that. So, shaggy is -- Actually the way it looks right now, this will all be, like, together and one happy dough ball by the end of the mixing. So it's coming together now. I'm just gonna make sure it's evenly mixed before I start adding the sugar. I'm gonna go ahead and do that. So, I'm gonna turn it up a little bit now to speed two. For sure, I use the refrigerator to determine my schedule and the dough, working around what I need to do. So, for me, I'll make a king cake dough the day before, just put it in the refrigerator, and forget it. And then, the next morning, I can shape it and then proof it and bake it. So it's a perfect way to think about how to produce it. You can see the dough is starting to be homogenous and soft-looking. It's gonna a soft, smooth, consistent all the way around kind of dough. So, now you can see the dough is a little more blended, and it's starting to develop what we call a window. So, when you pull it, there's a more sheer aspect to some of the dough. But I'm gonna give it a little more time. Just a little bit. Another 30 seconds or so. And I'm gonna add the butter. So, now we're just making sure we incorporate the butter into the dough completely, and then we will refrigerate it. I'm gonna finish this just in the bowl to finish it. I'm gonna finish it, just make sure it's incorporated. I'm just incorporating the butter into it, and I can show you the finish. So, I'm going to put the dough, cover it with plastic wrap in a bowl, and put it in the refrigerator, and forget it until tomorrow morning. So, my dough has sat for 12 hours in the refrigerator, and I've rolled it out to a long rectangle. It does not have to be perfect. We will make it look good in the end. So, we're gonna go with the traditional filling of cinnamon sugar. So I'm going to line one side generously with cinnamon sugar. I'm gonna do two to demonstrate. There can always be more. I think that's a rule, too, in pastry. There can always be more, especially cinnamon sugar. So, I'm gonna roll up from the side. Not too tight because this cake will proof and it'll fill in the holes, so we don't need to do it tightly. This dough will get nice and fluffy. And I'm gonna roll it up. Like this. And everyone says, "Well, how do you connect it?" So this is always what I find important to show people. Make sure the seam is on the bottom. That's gonna be important. And then I put the two together. I open one side and stick the other inside and squeeze it together like that. And then I pick it up carefully and put it on the sheet pan that I'm going to prove it on. So, I'll do another here. So, again, the seam on the bottom. And then I put it together. It's good to work with a chilled dough. Also, you don't want to let your dough sit out and then get to it and roll it up. It's much more manageable. So, there is my finished. I'll let these proof for anywhere from one and a half to two hours, depending on the temperature of my kitchen, or a lot of people use their laundry room for proofing. It's nice and warm in there when they turn on the dryer. So, anywhere between that time, and then I'll show you what it looks like when it's proofed. This is the fully proofed king cake. So, it has certainly doubled in size. Then we'll bake this at 350 degrees for 20 minutes. I have made an icing out of confectioners' sugar and water. I really like to spoon it on. Spread it over. I like it to be a little bit thicker than what I think it will look like in the end because it drips down and this gives me a little more control over it. So, we do all different kinds of fillings, but I feel like at the end of the day, a real king cake is gonna have purple, green, and gold, some kind of decoration. We make our own colored sugar, or we have our sprinkles. The sprinkles seem to be the thing. Like, they're very attracted to king cakes with sprinkles. So, everybody likes different amounts of icing. But this is always a winner, right? The mix of colors. We do opposite... colors. And don't forget your extra-large babies. And here we have Gracious Bakery's cinnamon sugar king cake. -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...