Kitchen Queens: New Orleans

-Funding for "Kitchen

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New Orleans" was provided by the Melvin S. Cohen Foundation, Inc., and by the L.E. Phillips Family Foundation, Inc. -Today on "Kitchen New Orleans," it's a seafood celebration, with a medley of dishes that make a big splash. First -- shucked oysters with cucumber-ginger mignonette and cocktail sauce from oyster virtuoso Becky Wasden of Two Girls One Shuck. Next -- curry brown-butter scallops over bourbon sweet-potato mash by Chef Alison Vega-Knoll of Station 6. And finally, a taste of New England -- lobster roll by Chef Sue Zemanick of Zasu. Stirring the pot with creativity and style, they're the New Orleans Kitchen Queens. We head to the Bywater, a neighborhood bounded by the Mississippi River. The vibrant area is home to Two Girls One Shuck, an all-female oyster-shucking catering company established by Becky Wasden. The Utah native turned oyster- aquaculture-education specialist is a walking encyclopedia of oyster lore. Joining Queen shuckateer Becky for the oyster demonstration is Jaime Greenleaf. -Today I have two different oyster varietals. These are Louisiana wild-caught oysters that are grown on the bottom of the ocean. You will see that they're nice and craggy, very big and rocky. This is a farm-raised oyster from Alabama. These are grown in baskets on the top of the water column in an Australian longline system. These are cradled, tied, tumbled and hand-procured to make such a beautiful little oyster baby. They are the same species, but they shuck very differently. Shuckability matters to people like us. You don't want an oyster to crumble in your hand the minute you open it. I am going to open this Louisiana wild-caught oyster from the hinge. You can open an oyster from the hinge, the side, or the bill. I am definitely a hinge shucker. I enter the oyster from the hinge side. Once you pop it, you're gonna hear a little...

Pops lips

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and you feel the adductor muscles start to release. I'm gonna do a little side shimmy, Open the top shell, look inside, and I want to savor every single piece of meat. So I do a very strong slice to release that adductor muscle. And then, to release the bottom muscle swipe left or swipe right -- It's up to you. Voil. Every oyster tastes different from every location they are grown in. Our Louisiana wild-caught oysters tend to have a salty-sweet combination. The meat is thick and juicy. This oyster, which is the farmed oyster from Alabama -- much more petite in the meat, but it's still a very robust flavor. When I started shucking oysters in 2013, we didn't see these farmed oysters coming out of the Gulf South. So I took it upon myself to meet, greet, introduce myself to as many farmers as I could. I call myself a self-appointed oyster ambassador, so I try to advocate for both sides. There's room in the market for everybody. It's very fun to go to an oyster bar and have six different flavor profiles on one tray. That's the thrill of what's happening in the oyster renaissance, is what we're calling it, through the Gulf South, is you don't just have one variety. You can have several to choose from. Come with us to our catering kitchen here the Old Iron Works, and we'll show you some of our recipes for the raw bar. -Tag-teaming with Becky on a trio of sauces for the raw oysters is shuckerette Kelle Boyer. -I am not a trained culinary chef by profession. I am a shucker by trade. However, growing up in the Midwest, I learned how to become really good at food assembly. So most of our recipes have very basic ingredients that anyone from home can put together themselves. I decided for our cocktail sauce it would be three ingredients -- ketchup, horseradish, and lemon juice. You can add hot sauce, you can do Worcestershire, you can do salt and pepper and all kinds of craziness. We keep it simple at the oyster bar. I like the lemon to resonate in the cocktail sauce, and we have extra horseradish on the table so you can bump up the heat if you'd want. This is a 2-cup portion. I'm going to slice one lemon......and squeeze to taste. I like a lot of lemon, so I end up putting two or three. And lemons vary so much in size, it's hard to just say exactly how much juice you're gonna want for yours. If you don't have one of these juice squeezers, they're amazing. Oh. Note to self -- You put the fruit in upside down. Again, not trained as a chef. I used to squeeze this way. And that's how effective that is.

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I also do horseradish to taste. It's a very powerful condiment. So I'm just gonna start with a few scoops. And since you're making this at home, you can decide how hot you want it to get. You can look for the color to change. The more white texture you see in the red, the hotter it's gonna be. The heat component will change per brand with your horseradish also. I think I want it a little bit hotter. You can see the white flecks, but maybe just one more......heavy dollop. There it is. I'm a Mormon girl who grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah. I didn't know how to make cocktail sauce. Ooh. But now I do. And now Kelle is gonna make our cucumber-ginger mignonette. -We have just super simple cucumbers, ginger, some pepper and sugar, and some shallots and then some rice wine vinegar. So we'll start by prepping the cucumber. I'm gonna cut it lengthwise. So now we're just gonna peel the skin off. Trying to get most of the green off there. And that looks good. Get this out of the way. Take the seeds out. They water it down a little bit, so I like to get them out of the way. We'll just throw this on Becky's cutting board, keep it clean. -Mm-hmm. -All right. -So fresh. -So fresh. -I love fresh-sliced cucumber. -All right. All right. Try to whip this guy out real fast. -So, Kelle's doing a back-to- forward motion with the peeler, which I've found to be very helpful. I used to -- nn-nn, rnt-rnt-rnt -- and it wasn't very effective. So you see how quick and fast she can peel the cucumber. -Yep. Take these seeds out super quick. -Deseeding the cucumber takes a lot of the water content, because we really want the vinegar in the mignonette to shine. -Now that we've done the cucumber, we're gonna go ahead and peel the ginger. I prefer the spoon method. A lot of folks will use a peeler, but I find the spoon a lot more effective for me. And I'm just gonna take the outer skin off. Make a little mess of the cutting board, but that's all right. -So fast. It's very effective. -You might lose a piece here or there, but it's strong. -Ginger is also a flavor choice -- how much you want to put into this mignonette. -Yeah. -We do about two inches per cucumber, -That's your inch -- on the knuckle there. -On volume. -Yeah. Okay. Next, we're gonna go ahead and put it in the food processor. We're using a grating tool for this one. There we go.

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We'll just put this whole guy in. All right.

Whirring stops

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So it gives us the nice sort of sort of strings of the cucumber and ginger. We can get this guy out of the way. Get this off. So now we can kind of assemble, as it were, all of our ingredients. So I put the shredded cucumber and ginger in the bottom there. -Beautiful. -It's okay to get some of the juice in there. That's part of the flavor. And then you have your black pepper and sugar. Sugar's kind of the secret ingredient. You wouldn't expect it in there. Your shallots. And then rice wine vinegar. Traditional mignonette is gonna have red wine vinegar. Our twist has the rice wine vinegar with the cucumber and ginger. -We recommend making this a day or two ahead. So make it the night before. It's gonna get better the next day, the day after, and it lasts for weeks in the fridge. -Next, a garlic-butter sauce for New Orleans-style chargrilled oysters. -I used to be afraid of making my own charbroiled oysters at home until Chef Frank Brigtsen gave me a very simple recipe that made me feel very confident about doing it myself. The first ingredient is salted butter. Frank says the salt in the butter helps enhance the salt in the oyster, and he is correct. We buy our butter in big pounds, so it helps to chop it into smaller cubes. It'll melt faster on the grill. And you're going to want to find a pan that is metal that you can set on the grill itself and let the butter do its work over the open flame. Minced garlic. This is to taste. I'm a heavy-hander with the minced garlic 'cause I love smelling that garlic when it comes off the grill. Four basic seasonings. They are all dry ingredients. We have black pepper, thyme, oregano, and basil. You're gonna take this entire pan, set it on the grill, and close the lid. Check back every few minutes and stir with a ladle. It's gonna melt down in about 5 or 10 minutes. Once you put the butter on the oysters, you're going to want a Parmesan- Romano blend to shake on top. We just sprinkle about a tablespoon on each oyster and let the heat do the rest. -Our next stop is Bucktown, a Lake Pontchartrain fishing harbor and local seafood center. Tucked between lakefront levee walls is Station 6, a restaurant established by Chef Alison Vega-Knoll. The New Orleans native spent several years living and cooking in Antigua. Now she shares the flavors of the Caribbean with her guests during an annual island-hopping dining tour benefiting island-focused charities. -I'm gonna do seared scallops with a curry brown butter and bourbon sweet potatoes. It's one of the dishes that has evolved from one of my old restaurants. I used to do it with an almondine kind of curry and then with couscous, and now it's -- I do pompano, but I also like to do it with seared scallops, which is a really yummy dish. So we're gonna start by making our compound butter. So we're gonna put our butter, soften. Curry paste. I like to use red curry. I'm not really a big fan of powdered curries. I like the paste. So we're gonna put that in there. I've zested one lime. I'm gonna stick that in there. A little salt and pepper. And I'm gonna juice one lime. In there. Get some nice juice in there. And this is gonna be our compound butter that we're gonna put over the scallops when we're finished. It goes great on anything. Okay. And then we're gonna mix this.

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Okay. So we've mixed this really nice. And you want to make sure it's incorporated. At this point, we put it on a little parchment paper, and then I'm gonna smooth it out. Actually, I put it on pompano. I started doing the scallop, and everybody said, "Oh, my gosh. You've got to put this on the menu." We're just gonna spread this out. You can put it in your freezer. Okay. I'm gonna put that in the cooler, let it get hard, and then you can cut it up. Now we're gonna make our bourbon sweet mashed potatoes. I have peeled and diced some sweet potatoes. I've boiled them till they're tender and strained them. I'm gonna put them back in the pot. I'm gonna heat them up with a little bit of butter. You could also do this in a mixer if you would like. So I'm gonna add the butter and the cream. The bourbon, which is the best part. And a little bit of honey. I'm gonna whip that up. I think this complements the scallops with the curry, and it also makes for a really pretty plate with the colors. So we're gonna take this. I'm gonna whip our potatoes. You want to get them nice and whipped. And then we're gonna put that off to the side and we're gonna sear our scallops. Add a little salt and pepper. Perfect. So, I have some beautiful diver scallops here. Just season them up. I'm gonna put a little canola on there. I'm gonna get it so we can get some nice color on our scallops.

Oil crackling

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All righty. We are gonna sear that. Gonna get some nice color on that. For this, we're just gonna get a nice dark color, which you can see that they're starting to get. Then I'm gonna cook these about medium rare. So it goes fairly quickly. And we get a nice color. Beautiful. I'm gonna sear them on that side. So you're looking about two minutes' cook time on these, depending upon size. All right. So we're gonna pull these out. So I'm gonna take the scallops. Plate these up. So at this point, we're gonna......get all the oil out of that. We're gonna get it nice and hot again. So, the compound butter goes pretty quickly. So you want to make sure you have your cashews. These are some salted cashews that we roasted. So we're gonna put that.

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Get a nice color. It goes pretty quick, so I'm gonna add our cashews. And...just about right now, we're gonna take it off and add lime. That will stop the butter from burning. Okay. And a little parsley. And we have a beautiful, nice brown curry butter. And now we're gonna plate up. So, we have our sweet potatoes. I'm gonna put that right in the middle. Yummy curry brown butter. You can really smell the curry and lime. And I have just fried a little bit of leeks to put on there. I'm gonna do a little garnish, a little dill from my garden. And there you have it. That's our seared scallops with curry brown butter and bourbon sweet-potato mash. Enjoy. -In Mid-City, New Orleans, Zasu shines as a neighborhood spot with a seafood-centric menu. Founded by James Beard Award recipient Sue Zemanick, the restaurant's name means "once again" in Slovak, a reference to the chef's Czech heritage. When asked, the Culinary Institute of America graduate says she cooks the food she likes to eat and what she remembers. -So now I'm going to make a traditional lobster roll, which is one of my favorite dishes from my childhood. We'd always eat lobster around the holidays, and it kind of reminds me of growing up and special occasions. Traditionally, it is made with a hot dog bun. But today I'm gonna show you how to make it with a baguette. So to get started, I'm gonna take this beautiful baguette that we have and cut some rounds out of it. I like to cut them pretty thick -- I'd say about an inch and a half. And I'm going to put a garlic butter on these before I put it in the oven to toast. So I took about four cloves of garlic and 1/4 cup of butter and cooked this for about 10 minutes on the stove just to infuse the flavor. I put my rounds on a baking sheet and spoon some butter over the top. And do the same thing on the other side. This really helps to add a layer of flavor with the lobster roll. Lobsters aren't usually found in Louisiana, so if you don't have lobsters, you can use crabmeat. But I think it's really good to try it with the lobster. You can get some at your local grocery store, and a lot of times you can buy them precooked. So now that we have butter on our crostinis, I'm gonna put them in the oven to bake. So here we have about an eight-ounce lobster tail that I've cooked in salted water. I boil the water, and I drop my tail in for about six to seven minutes, depending on its size. So after it's cooked and shocked in ice water... I like to cut through the shell to remove my lobster meat. You could do this with shrimp, crabmeat -- anything that you really like. You can even do it with cooked scallops if you wanted to. So now that the lobster meat is removed from the shell, I'm gonna take a look at it and clean any of the things that might be in here -- just a little bit of roe, which is totally normal and natural. You don't want that in your lobster. A little vein here. So now we're going to chop the lobster to a small dice. Lobster is probably one of my favorite foods next to crabmeat. I just love the flavor of it, the meatiness, the sweetness, and everybody seems to like it. So, one of my favorite things about living in New Orleans is all the fresh seafood that we can get here. And growing up landlocked in Pennsylvania, even though we weren't close to the ocean, we would often eat a lot of seafood. And I fell in love with New Orleans when I found out that all the delicious crabmeat came from here. And that's one of the main reasons that I moved here. And my restaurant is very seafood-, vegetable-focused. I just think there's so many different flavors with fish and seafood that you don't get with pork or chicken or beef. To me, beef tastes like beef, but a lobster doesn't taste anything like crab, and crab doesn't taste like snapper. So you get a lot more flavors and a lot more interesting food from seafood. So I'm gonna take this lobster and put it in a bowl. And now we're gonna mix together some other ingredients to make our filling for the lobster roll. Here I have some finely minced celery. I love celery. My husband hates it. So I have to sneak it into his food when he's not looking. I love the crunchiness and the freshness that it adds to this dish. I'm going to add some finely chopped parsley. And you can use any herb if you'd like, but I think parsley is one of the more classic ones. I'm going to add a little bit of lemon juice. And...Dijon. And some lemon zest. I like a lot of lemon zest in my lobster rolls. I think it adds a lot of brightness to the dish. Sometimes I'll even use preserved lemon, which is made by salting lemons and letting them sit for about a month or so. And then I'm gonna finish with a little paprika. Salt. And a pinch of pepper. Now the most important ingredient -- homemade mayonnaise. I like to add a good amount of mayonnaise because I love mayonnaise and because it makes this dish really delicious. It also helps to soften the bread once we put the lobster mixture on our little crostini. You can do lots of different additions in your lobster roll. You can use different herbs. You can use different citrus. I sometimes like to make them a little Asian-flavored and use a little bit of fish sauce and lime juice and cilantro instead of parsley. It's just good to have a basic recipe like this in your back pocket and then you can build on it and play with it. Now our crostini should be done. So here they are. They're nice and golden brown. A lot of the butter has been absorbed by the bread. Now we're going to plate it. I don't know about everyone else, but I usually like to eat two of these if possible. You can also make this into a smaller version for an hors d'oeuvre or a small appetizer. So what I like to do is put this on a plate and put two heaping spoonfuls of the lobster meat. This is obviously something that you can eat with a fork and knife. The traditional one that's served on more of a hot-dog-bun style, you can just pick up and eat. But this way, you get even more lobster meat. And here we have my version of a lobster roll. You can serve it with a little side salad or just as is. -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 WYESTV on Facebook and Instagram. -Funding for "Kitchen New Orleans" was provided by the Melvin S. Cohen Foundation, Inc., and by the L.E. Phillips Family Foundation, Inc.