Kevin Belton's New Orleans Celebrations

-Funding for "Kevin Belton's New Orleans Celebrations" was provided in part by the L.E. Phillips Family Foundation, Inc. and by New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corporation. New Orleans -- where stories are created. -Oh, it's all the madness -- little, sweet, red, delicious berry. Strawberry Fest! First up, I'm gonna do rib eye steak salad with strawberry balsamic vinaigrette. Next up, strawberry icebox pie. And how about this -- chocolate waffle bowl with chocolate-dipped strawberries. How can something so small be so sweet and delicious? Hi, guys. Welcome to my courtyard kitchen. And thank you for joining me for this celebration of New Orleans. During the peak of strawberry season, baby, we have a little town right across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans called Ponchatoula, Louisiana. Oh, man, let met tell you -- Ponchatoula is where they have the Strawberry Festival. And I tell you what, that little juicy fruit is so good! And today, I'm gonna make some of my favorite strawberry treats. I'm gonna start with a rib eye steak salad served with strawberry balsamic vinaigrette. Now, if you're wondering why my steak is covered, you know, you go out to eat at restaurants, and they always talk about dry-aging steaks. This is a way to dry-age in your own refrigerator at home. Basically, I take paper towels, wrap the steak in paper towels. Now, I usually buy my steaks two days ahead. Every day, I change out the paper towels, throw those away, because it takes the moisture out of the steak. If you look at our steak, our steak is nice and dry-looking because a lot of that moisture is able to come out of it. Now, I have a cast-iron pan heating up. I am going to put a little olive oil on our steak. And, you know, with a good piece of meat, you don't need a whole lot to it, you know? Just nice and simple. I'm gonna put a little olive oil on both sides. Oh, yeah, baby. Not much, just a little bit. I'm gonna use a little salt. Yeah. A little garlic powder on our steak. Now, if you want, you can put a little bit of Creole seasoning on your steak. All right? Look, just kind of get that on there. Let's do the other side. If you want a little fresh cracked pepper, you can put a little fresh cracked pepper on here. Oh, let's just get that on there like that. Oh, baby, you look so good. Look at that. That's ready to go. So, our pan's nice and hot. Come on. Oh, yeah.

Sizzling

You can hear that sizzle. Just don't touch it. So while our steak is cooking, something for our salad that I like to do -- we're gonna toast pecans. Now, pecans -- we don't have to toast them if we don't want. I just like to toast them because it gives a little different flavor. So I just put our pan on. All we're gonna do is let this warm up. The heat will cause the oil to start to come out of the pecans. That's gonna open up a little flavor. Now, you hear about people making candied pecans. Basically, take a little sugar. Just sprinkle a little sugar on the pecans or any kind of nut you might wanna use. We can also do just a smidge of our Creole seasoning. And as this heats up, we're just gonna give these a little toss. And that sugar is gonna attach itself, and that seasoning's gonna attach itself to the pecans. And now we'll have, like, a nice little, slightly candied pecan. Now, here for the strawberry vinaigrette. I have some of those wonderful fresh berries. Just go ahead and get them in the blender. I am doing a little balsamic vinegar. I'm also gonna do a little olive oil. You know, I could use a little sugar in here, but I'm gonna do a little honey. And I tend to like it a little sweet. That's why I like that little extra honey, because remember, we're gonna have savory from our meat. Matter of fact, it's time to go ahead and flip our steak. See that came off? That came off -- just came off the pan because it had time to make that crust. That's why when you are sauting chicken or fish, give it time to seal that crust, and then it turns right on over. So there we have our steak cooking. This is ready. Let's put our lid on and just go ahead. I think we've got everything in there. Yep, let's go ahead and make our vinaigrette. I tell you what, gang. I think that's gonna be great. Let's do this. Of course, let's take a little taste. Oh, yeah. That's good. That's good. That's good. Here. All we're gonna do -- pour our dressing right in that container. And even though I used that honey, it's not too sweet. Okay. Let's turn the fire off of our steak. We can turn the fire off of our pecans, as well. Look at that. I am gonna do just a little bit more sugar on them. If you notice, the pecans -- see how there are some places browned off? That was that sugar that melted on, that kind of caramelized on. Yeah, baby. So, our pecans are set. Let's take our steak. And we're just gonna set it right here on the plate to rest. That's what we want. Okay. Now, gang, I'm doing this with a rib eye steak. You can use any type steak you like. So, let's build our salad. So I'm gonna put our cutting board, because we're gonna get ready to cut our steak. I have taken a little romaine lettuce, given it a nice little chop. And see, you can just spread that out a lot or a little. Green beans -- Now, whatever green bean you like. I like fresh green beans. Pot of boiling water, drop the green beans in for a minute. Take them out, plunge them into cold ice-water. It shocks them. It stops them from cooking so they still maintain their crunch. Now, do you like a lot of green beans or a little green beans? See, I like to put the green beans all around the side. You know, you can make your salad however you like. I just like to put it on the sides because I'm gonna stack my steak in the middle. The other thing for a nice little color -- some cherry tomatoes that I've just halved. Oh, yeah, baby. Get on there. Do you like cherry tomatoes a lot or a little? Boiled eggs. I'm just gonna take our egg, cut our egg in half. Yep, there you go. Come here. One right there. We'll put one right here. Let's take another one. You can quarter them. You can cut them in half. You can do whatever you like. I have some blue cheese. Now, I'm gonna take a little bit of this blue cheese and just kind of sprinkle it around, just kind of put some. Notice it's all going to the sides. Now, I've been doing this while my steak is resting. You want it to kind of set and firm itself up a little bit. Now, here, I'm gonna take a little bit of salt......because our tomatoes weren't salted. There we go. We got a little salt. Now let's take our steak and bring our steak right onto the cutting board. Now, depending on how you wanna cut your steak, it's totally up to you. If you wanna just cut it in strips and lay it on, just take it, cut it in strips. Then we can just lay this on the top. Also, cook the steak to your liking, whether you like it rare, whether you like it medium-rare, whether you like it well-done. Whatever you like. Take your steak and just lay your steak right here on the top. Look how beautiful that is. That steak is still warm. So if you want, go with a little more blue cheese right over the top. But I'm gonna take our strawberry vinaigrette and just pour a little bit right over the top, right across that steak. Remember, you can always add more if you want. Whoa, baby. Stay out there. And last but not least...

Pecans rattling

...we're gonna put just a few of our pecans all around. Oh, baby, this looks so good! So here we have our rib eye steak salad with strawberry balsamic vinaigrette dressing. Whoo! Coming up, a perennial favorite -- strawberry icebox pie. Oh, it's cold. -It's the taste and the quality of the berries, 'cause we just picked them this day, a few hours ago, and we're bringing them right here to the festival. -Yeah, these are so sweet, and they're really soft, too. Like, I don't even wanna bake with them or anything. I just wanna, like, eat them as is 'cause they're so good. -Oh, baby! Strawberry icebox pie! Yes! Now, we're gonna make a nice crust for this strawberry icebox pie. Here I have some graham crackers that we're just gonna pop in. Oh, yes, indeed. Of course, pecans. I like to put nuts in a crust. Of course, we're gonna use pecans because we're in New Orleans. I have a tablespoon of salt. I have just a little bit of brown sugar, just to sweeten it. And, you know, it's packed. So there we go. Now let's put our lid on. We want this to be nice and fine. I like a fine crust. There we go. You know, a lot of you all probably remember as kids that this was something that Grandmother had us do. We had to stand here and crumble those graham crackers by hand into the bowl and all. So, always be careful of blades. Let's get that there. Let's get our blade back in. I have a little melted butter. I'm gonna just spread this out. Just kind of drizzle your butter all around. This butter, what it's gonna do for us, it's gonna get this to where it's gonna hold together. Just take your fingers, kind of work it, because we want to form this into our springform pan. Now, in the bottom, I like to put a little piece of parchment paper in the bottom of the pan. So, take some of your mixture, drop it in the bottom, and I'll show you what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna put enough in, and then I just work it on the sides. I work the sides. And I'm not making it too thick. All right. And then we'll go around. Come on, baby. Try to look even. Try to look pretty. You can see over here on this side, some is higher than others. Get in there. All right. See, you can take the back of your hand and just press it on down. Yeah. And remember, do you want it thick? Do you want a thin crust? Totally up to you. Totally up to you. So now let's go ahead and do one more thing to get ready to put our filling in. Let's go ahead and macerate our strawberries. So in our blender......I like a little frozen berries for this. Now, with the frozen berries, just go ahead and let them sit out to kind of warm up. Also, remember, to accent that sweetness, we're gonna do a little pinch of salt. Let's get this on. We want this to puree. That little bit of salt will add a nice little sweetness to our berries. So let's set this here. You can come with me. Be careful when you take your blades out. Always safety first. Now we can go ahead and start working on our filling. So here, have a little bit of cream cheese that I've just had sitting out. We're gonna start working this cream cheese and our condensed milk. Sweetened condensed milk.

Mixer stops

Look, let's take a second, because, you know, I don't wanna leave any of it in this bowl. I wanna get it all out. Oh, yeah. Okay. Let's get you mixed together. See, that's gonna just cream together really nice. So now that this is working -- everything's blending together and it looks really good -- we can slowly add our strawberries that we pureed into here. Get the strawberries in. And again, make sure -- oh, don't leave any behind. I tell you what, strawberries -- I can remember the first time Mom gave me a strawberry to taste. It was so good. Mom also would take strawberries and slice them, put them in the refrigerator with a little sugar on them -- oh, man -- for strawberry shortcake. Oh, it was just so good. And remember, again, I want to put just a little pinch of salt in here while this is blending. All right. Now that that's blended together, this is good. So let's take this off, lower our bowl. Come on, now. Yes. We're gonna take our bowl, and I've whipped cream. I've taken some heavy cream, and I've just whipped it. And now we're just gonna fold this right into this mixture. I don't know how many of you all like citrus. I've mixed strawberries with oranges. I've mixed strawberries and lemons together. So we just wanna fold this whipped cream in. You know, we don't have to mix it in. We wanna fold it so it holds its consistency, but we just want everything to be able to just kind of come together, just get worked out, to not break that cream down. And that's why we're gonna freeze this. Oh, baby, that's nice. So we'll take this, pour it right into the pan. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Now, something I'm gonna show you that I like to do sometimes -- I'll cover this with clear wrap and then put it in the freezer. Now, you can freeze it six hours. I like to freeze it overnight. But you can also take, like, popsicle sticks. Get the big popsicle sticks. Clear-wrap it really tight. Take a little knife, make a little slit, and insert the big popsicle sticks in. Because that way, when it freezes, you can cut it. And now you can give it to the kids, and they can walk around and eat it. So, I'm gonna cover this with clear wrap, get this in the freezer to firm up. Oh, baby. Whoo, this is gonna look so good! And, oh, it's gonna taste wonderful. Now, I'm just making little thin slices in the strawberries, just to fan them out. So, look. Let's put one here. Let's put another fan of strawberries right here. And just take a little paring knife, make your slices. Let's put one right here. So, oh, that looks so good! So we have our frozen icebox pie. Coming up, another fantastic strawberry dessert! We're gonna make a chocolate waffle bowl and fill it with chocolate-dipped strawberries. Yes. -Etoufe and nachos! -I think it's unique because it's a strawberry festival. I think it's a real Louisiana-feeling type thing, with the music and the culture. -All right, gang -- chocolate-covered strawberries! I am using a semisweet chocolate chip. Now, what I have -- I have water in my pot. I have a stainless bowl on top of it that has heavy cream inside. I'm gonna put in our semisweet chocolate chips. And we just want this to melt. So, as you see, this is gonna take just a second to melt. But we're getting there. So while this is melting, let me show what I'm gonna do for this batter. I'll start putting the ingredients for our batter together right quick. What I have for our wet ingredients -- two eggs. Into the eggs -- a little bit of vanilla. I'm gonna get a little milk in. Actually, I'm gonna use buttermilk. I just think it adds such a great flavor. Now, I love cooking with buttermilk. I am not the fan of buttermilk to drink it, but I love to cook with it. I'm also gonna get in some vegetable oil. Now, we could use butter. But I like using an oil in this, because as that waffle cooks, it gives it a nice crispness, and it keeps it from sticking in your waffle-maker -- that little bit of oil. So, here are our wet ingredients that's gonna go into the waffle batter. Now, let's check on our chocolate. Our chocolate is almost there. Now, I'm using a semisweet chocolate chip. You can do a dark chocolate chip. Look at this. That's melted really nice. Oh, yeah. Look at that, how it's changed colors. Now, here's what I want to do. All I want to do now is take our strawberries. We can actually turn the fire out. Depending on how many you wanna make, dip that strawberry in. Just kind of hold it by the stem and place it down. I just have parchment paper on a sheet pan. So, you can see the ones I did earlier, because now they just have to sit here and dry. Oh, let's get one more. Oh, look at this nice one. This is a nice one. Just roll it on in. Let it finish dripping. Now, let's get the container ready that we're gonna put these wonderful strawberries in. Let's finish off our waffle batter. We've mixed the wet ingredients, but now let's take care of the dry ingredients. For the dry, a little flour. Now, I am using baking powder, baking soda. About 1/2 teaspoon of salt. We're gonna get in some sugar. Come on out of there. And I have some cocoa powder. Now, I'm just gonna get all of these dry ingredients mixed right together. Just give them a little quick mix. Oh, yes. And you see, now it's just a matter of taking our wet ingredients and mixing them into the dry. Now, one of the things I find, when I'm doing pancakes, when I'm doing waffles, is that I don't like to overmix. So let's get all of that in. And we just want to get this mixed to where it's mixed thoroughly, but don't overmix it. Now, as you can see, what happens when you use a whisk -- it gets caught inside, but that's okay. Open it up. It'll smooth itself out. But it's nice and thick, and we just have to take our time to blend this together. See, as long as you don't see any dry spots, it's okay. See, that's what I'm saying. You don't want to overmix this. Oh, doesn't that look good? Now, I am using a waffle-bowl maker that I have heating up. Oh, this looks so good. Now, remember, I've had our waffle-bowl maker heating up. Oh, just take our batter, put it right down in the center. We'll just close this and let it cook. If you wanna do this for a lot of family and friends, make them ahead of time. I keep them in the oven just at 200 degrees, just to stay warm. So I'm gonna get the ones I've already made out of our oven. I just had them in the oven just to stay warm. And look at our beautiful strawberries. So we can take our waffle bowl, and we can grab some of our strawberries and just put them right down into that bowl. Oh, they're so good. Oh, come on. Lean that way. Lean this way. Pop in. You get right there on top. You can come join right there on top. We'll put you right in the middle. Here, let's stick you right there in the front. And let's get one more in. I think we have room, don't you think, gang? We'll put that one right there. And I have a little powdered sugar. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow! So there you have our chocolate-covered strawberries in a chocolate waffle bowl! You know, I just appreciate you hanging out with me today. Now it's time to get your family and friends and celebrate the spirit of New Orleans in your home. So, I'll see you next time for more New Orleans celebrations! -The companion cookbook to "Kevin Belton's New Orleans Celebrations" is available for $24.99, plus $6 shipping and handling. You can also order an hour-long DVD of favorite dishes from the series for $19.95, plus $4 shipping and handling. Both the book and "Favorites" DVD are available for $40.95, plus $7 shipping and handling. To order these items, call 1-866-360-4922, or order online at wyes.org. -Is everybody relaxed? Comfortable? When you're ready. I might just stop talking and collect my thoughts for a moment. Uh! Uh! Uh! Uh! Uh! Uh! Uh! Uh! Uh! Uh! Uh! Uh! Uh! Uh! Look, there's static in those headphones. I don't know what y'all are hearing up here. I am speaking perfect English down here. And the headphones are translating it into some foreign language, you know? It's like every word has a "T" on it. There's the thupid themple! Now it's time. Get your family and friends. Share the spirit of New Orleans, and --

Grumbling

I put it first. I got to put the first and I put the last, but then I put the back in the front and the front in the back. But we gonna get it right this time. -For more information about "Kevin Belton's New Orleans Celebrations," visit wyes.org. -Funding for "Kevin Belton's New Orleans Celebrations" was provided in part by the L.E. Phillips Family Foundation, Inc. and by New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corporation. New Orleans -- where stories are created.