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. -Hi, I'm Kevin Belton, and today on "New Orleans Celebrations," I salute festivals of the Vieux Carr. My specials of the day are cheesy mac fingers, fried green tomatoes with lemon aioli, and banana-foster bread pudding with rum sauce. So, step right up. I'm open for business. Hi. Welcome to my courtyard kitchen. I am so happy that you're here with me to celebrate my city of New Orleans. We're gonna get started with mac-and-cheese fingers. Ooh, that's gonna be good, yeah! As a kid, who doesn't love mac and cheese? So, I wanted to do this mac and cheese, but we're gonna do them a little bit different. So, in our pan -- Oh, let's get a little butter in. So here, we're making butter and a little flour to make a roux. Yeah, it's a blond roux. Most rouxs in Louisiana are cooked really dark, where that flour gets really dark, but this time, this is gonna add body for our mac and cheese. So, I had 1/4 cup of butter. Oh, doesn't that look good? Whatever butter you have at home -- salted, unsalted -- whatever's there, that'll work. We got 1/4 cup all-purpose flour, and you're gonna see how this is just gonna smooth itself out. Most of the time when I make a roux, I always like equal amounts because if you have too much butter, it'll be greasy. If you don't have enough butter, it won't smooth itself out really good. And you can see how this has just smoothed itself together. Now, a lot of times, folks, when they make a roux and you're making a little gravy -- that's what we're doing here, a little milk gravy -- we can use a stock, we can use regular milk. For this recipe, I like a little bit of evaporated milk. I have about 3 cups here. It just depends on how much sauce you want to make, how thick you want it. So, we'll get in some of our evaporated milk, and you're gonna see, as this heats up, it starts to smooth together. Oh, this will just smooth itself out. It'll lump up a little bit, but that's okay. Just get that on in. Yeah. You know, I just love my city. I love my New Orleans. My hometown is the festival capital of the world. We have over 130 festivals each year. There's a party nearly every weekend in our city. That's the great thing. So when you come, you're gonna probably come here and there's something going on. We celebrate everything -- our food, our culture, our neighborhood, music. Today, my inspiration -- French Quarter, which has its festival of its own, so that's why I wanted to do this. Here, I have a couple tablespoons of Creole seasoning. We're gonna get that in. Oh, baby. We have a little dry mustard. About a tablespoon of dry mustard. And, of course, we need a little salt in here. We're gonna do about a tablespoon of kosher salt. Yes, indeed. Oh, the smells that start to come out. And we're gonna do about a teaspoon of white pepper. Mmm! Ee! Ee! Ee! Perfect. There we go. Now, I have elbow macaroni. You can use a spaghetti if you want. But look at this. See how this got thick? Our seasonings have blended together. I've just cooked this al dente, rinsed it so it would stop cooking, just a touch of oil on it. Now let's get this in. I have a pound of elbow, and, you know, it just depends on how much you want to put in. You know what? Yeah, I'm gonna use it all. Go ahead in there. Come on in there, baby. Get together. Make new friends. And now we're gonna start getting some cheeses in. I don't know about you all, how much cheese you like, but I have some shredded cheese and I have some that I've cubed. So, we've got cubed cheddar, we've got gruyere, we've got Colby Jack, we've got some gouda, we've got a little shredded provolone, we've got mozzarella. Look, see? Some are cubed. And the reason why I cube them is that it's different. You get little pockets of cheesy concentration. I guess that's a word. I guess you could call it "cheesy concentration." All right. Oh, now we can put in the shreds. Can you see in there -- especially with the colors of it -- see how we get little pockets? So that means, when we make these fingers and we bite on them, you're gonna get that little "Oh!" -- that little extra pop of cheese. Oh! Now, if you're not a cheese fan, I'm sorry. You know, this is the time you might want to do something around the house and just wait till the next recipe. But this is all about the cheese, baby. All about the cheese. Let's get that in. Oh, yeah. And this is where, normally, I turn the fire off. Now, these two would typically go on top -- the shredded cheddar and a little mozzarella. Normally on top, but we're gonna go ahead and mix them right on in. Now, I'm gonna show you what we're gonna do to make our fingers. Ohh! This is so gorgeous. I want to eat this just as it is. You know, this is a little hot. I always believe in tasting things when they cook, but for this particular one, let it cool a little bit before you taste this because we can always make little adjustments. Now, this is just a baking dish. If I were gonna go ahead and bake this off, I don't need the parchment paper. I could just butter the pan or spray the pan, put it right in, put our cheese on top, and bake it off. But since we're making fingers, here's what we want to do. This will make it easier to pop in this. Because what we're going to do with this -- Ooh, look at that cheese. All over. I'm gonna put this in the freezer for about two hours. So, here's what I'm doing. I'm just spreading this out, nice and smooth, and we're gonna pop this in the freezer for two hours. Now, this is what it looks like once it's been in the freezer. And you see what's nice? Look. By putting that piece of parchment paper underneath, flip it over onto your cutting board, and this just peels right off. Look at that. Now take our knife. I said fingers, but some people have larger fingers than other fingers, so you can make long fingers, you can make small fingers. I like to cut it in half, turn it on its side, cut that again. Okay? And you see, this is why we want this frozen. Because, as you can see, it's not frozen solid, but it's solid enough for us to work with. There, we have that. And let's just cut this right in half. And look at this. See the chunks of cheese in there? That's why I left some of the cheese chunky -- so when you bite it, you get a nice, little full bite of cheese. Of course, the whole thing is gonna be cheesy, but this way -- Here's another little one. Right there. That's a nice chunk of cheese right there. So, we have our flour. Into the flour, just a little bit of Creole seasoning. Little white pepper, little bit of salt. Not too much, but just to have a little flavor there. We're gonna take a little milk and eggs for our wet. And so, just like a lot of things that fry, you want a dry, wet, dry. We just want to beat this just a little bit to get that mixed together. Now, if you like, you can put a dash of hot sauce in this. But you know what? This is seasoned really, really good because, remember, pasta has no flavor. That's why I used the mustard in there, I had the Creole seasoning in there, I had the white pepper in there -- because this is gonna have a nice, little bite to it. So, here's what we want to do. Go into your flour. Just get these coated. And shake off the excess flour. All right, just shake off any excess that you have. Just knock that off. Now we go into the wet, because this is gonna act like the glue. All right? Now I'm gonna use a fork. Just get those down in there, and we have our bread crumbs sitting right here. See, this is the glue to keep the batter on. So, let that drain, right into our bread crumbs. This really won't take that long to cook. I have my fryer pre-heating to 350 degrees. Now we can just kind of take your hands, shake them around, just to get them coated. You know, the popular thing is panko bread crumbs. Yeah, I like the seasoned bread crumbs. Any kind of bread crumb that you like. Okay? All right. So, here. Our oil is ready. Shake off the excess bread crumbs. But shaking everything off, this also helps keep your oil clean. Look at that. Oh, yeah. Now, this just has to fry for just a few minutes. So while these are frying, let's batter some more. I think they're ready! Ohh! Golden brown. So, we've got that. Just a little sprinkle of salt. And this is what I want to do. Look at this. This is the way I would serve them. I just drop them right on in, and now you can just walk around with your little basket of mac-and-cheese fingers. You know what? I always think about the kids, but I have a funny feeling that a lot of adults are gonna be eating this as well as the kids. So, now we have -- Oh! -- great mac-and-cheese fingers. Yes! Coming up next, fried green tomatoes with a little aioli. Yeah. Do you prefer a green tomato or a red tomato? -I prefer the fried green tomatoes. They are my favorite. They're totally different than what you would expect, I think. Yeah. -And I'm gonna show you my take on that fried green tomato, coming up. Something we celebrate here are our fried green tomatoes. Oh, they have become a staple for us. So, I want to show you how we fry some up. So, I have a little flour, little bit of Creole seasoning. And, you know, I like to season flour because it doesn't have any seasoning in it. We're gonna do a couple of teaspoons of kosher salt, we're gonna get in a little bit of white pepper into this. And you might ask, why am I putting it here? Because I'm not gonna season the tomatoes, okay? Now we have this mixed up. You notice I have a couple of eggs, little bit of milk. We're just gonna mix this together right quick. Because, yes, here we're gonna do a dry-wet-dry batter. I'm just gonna pour this right here. Lastly, for our coating, combination bread crumbs and a little ground cornmeal. The cornmeal and the bread crumbs will give a nice, wonderful combo of flavors because we want that crunch. Let's just get these mixed up. Let's take our green tomatoes. We can get a couple in the flour. And it's always important -- shake off the excess. Now, you know, if you've come to our city and you've had the fried green tomatoes, you may have seen them with a little shrimp on top of them. Some of them are served on top of shredded lettuce with a little bit of -- if you've had remoulade sauce. Remoulade is like a salad dressing. And folks will make a fried green tomato with a little shrimp remoulade on top of it. Let's get two more in the flour, because we don't want to go into that last dry until it's time. You know, I can remember the first time Mom made fried green tomatoes. I also remember the first time I had a bite of a tomato. It was so good, and that's something that's celebrated, not only here in New Orleans, but around the state, we have these celebrations of the tomato because it was so important and such a big part of our cooking down here. And this is just something that I wanted to do as part of this Vieux Carr celebration because, you know, you have to have a little something for everybody there. So, we had our mac-and-cheese fingers for the kids that I think probably more adults would eat, and now we're gonna have fried green tomatoes for that more sophisticated palate. But it's okay. Look at this. Shake off that excess. Now, our oil is hot. You can always take just a little pinch of flour. See how that dances right on top? That means the oil is hot and it's ready. These are not gonna take very long. Shake off the excess. We'll lay it right into the oil. Right into the oil. These aren't gonna take long at all, so I have to work quick. By the time we get these bettered, it'll be ready to turn our other two. Matter of fact, before I can get them battered. Look at that. See, that's the nice thing about having the oil nice and hot. And you can see they don't take very long at all. Oh, yeah. You can pop in. And if you want to use the fork to lower them down, that's fine. But let's go ahead and actually... Oh. Look at that. Just gonna drain it right here on paper towels. You can see how quick this goes. It goes fairly quick. Those are ready to turn. Let's get in this last one. You know what? It's just like a slice of bread in a toaster. The longer it cooks, the darker it gets, the more toasted taste it has. So if you're one of those that like that dark, toasted taste, cook it longer. Let it get a little darker. But you can see just how quick these are to make. Fried green tomatoes aren't one of those things that you can really bake. But if you want, instead of frying them, you could put a little butter in the pan and pan fry them in a little butter. Get that fire off. Get these last couple seasoned. Now I want to make an aioli to go on top of this. It's basically like a mayonnaise, but it's more like a homemade mayonnaise. But for this one, I want you to do it nice and easy, so we're gonna have a prepared mayonnaise already. Now, here we have a little lemon juice. We have a little garlic. That's just minced. I also have lemon zest. And, you know, you see me use a lot of lemon zest because I just love lemon. Plus, lemon brightens things up. Now, if you've ever been to our city, we are a mayonnaise kind of town. So, let's get some in. And, you know, you don't have to use all of it, but we just want this -- This lemon will loosen this up a little bit, plus it's gonna make it pop. That little bit of garlic that's in there also is gonna give us a nice pop. Now, of course, pinch of Creole, pinch of salt, little pinch of white pepper. Just to give that a nice, little flavor. But I tell you what, if you haven't gotten a zester, get yourself a zester and zest those lemons. Now, let me show you what I like to do to serve this, okay? Take your plate. Get your tomatoes if they're cooled off, and I'll start with the biggest one on the bottom, then I'll take the next one, put it right there, and then we can pop the next one right here. Come on. And then the next one right there. Make like a snack. There we go. We're gonna take our aioli. We can get cute -- like a little dollop there, a little dollop right there, a little squirt here. And, you know, just to drive them all crazy, do a little drop on the top, little dollop! Ohh, here we have our wonderful fried green tomatoes with that lemon-garlic aioli. Coming up next

exhales

banana-foster bread pudding. Yes, I said banana-foster bread pudding. Y'all made bread pudding? -Yes. -Why is this bread pudding so good? -This bread pudding is so good because it's made with love. -You know, in New Orleans, we always had bananas, and the other thing we always had was great French bread that would turn into bread pudding. See how this crumbles? That French bread gets dry, and this is one of the things that all grandmas would make the next couple days. You'd buy a loaf of French bread, and then they would turn that into bread pudding a couple days later. So, I want to make a banana-foster bread pudding. I'm gonna start this off with a little banana liqueur. Instead of using all milk in this, I'm using that banana liqueur because that's gonna give us a nice depth of banana flavor. I like to start with dry bread so it can totally, totally absorb. We're gonna do a little milk. We can always add as we need to. So, we'll stir some in, and let's get this starting to work in, because I want the texture of oatmeal, all the bread nice and absorbed. You know, one of the great restaurants we had here in the city, they came up with a dessert called bananas foster, and it was basically sauted bananas in butter and rum, and they were served over ice cream, so I thought this would be great flavors to do in a bread pudding. Now, we're gonna make a rum sauce for this bread pudding. In the rum sauce, I'm using 3 egg yolks. So, what I've done, I've used my whites from the sauce along here with our three other eggs for the bread pudding. I like putting those whites in. By using that little extra egg white, it keeps it nice, light, fluffy, and you can see in our bowl how this is starting to break up. This is starting to get nice and soggy. That's what we're looking for. Now, we're gonna do a little sugar. If you notice, I have a little cinnamon -- have about a tablespoon of cinnamon. I'm gonna mix this right into the sugar. The reason why -- Often, if you're doing a dessert or you're putting something like a powder into something, it can cake up. So, here, I'm just gonna give a little quick mix right here into the sugar. This way, it won't cake up on us. We won't get a little pocket of cinnamon. So, let's get our sugar in. I know you just said, "Look at all that sugar." Yes, because French bread is plain, so we need that sugar, all right? Let's get a little vanilla in. And this something you can always add. That's why I'm gonna do a little more milk, because I'm looking for a certain texture. Oh, look at this. This is so good. I don't think there's anyone in this city that did not grow up eating bread pudding. Now, the one other thing we want to put in are our bananas. With our bananas, I'm just gonna take a paring knife. Let's just kind of open this up. I like to just go ahead, take your paring knife, cut it right in the peel, and then just make little slices. And this way, pick up the banana, and it just falls right in, right out of the peel. Come on, banana. Cooperate. It's going all over, but that's what happens. Come on. And I have a little softened butter, and we're just gonna get this butter right on in. Yeah. And I tell you what -- Now, let's go ahead and get this in the pan to put into the oven. What I am doing -- You know, often, when folks make cornbread, they do it in a cast-iron skillet. I've just sprayed it with a little all-purpose vegetable spray. Let's go ahead and get this in. But the pan is already warm. You know, when you pour this in, you could smell the cinnamon, you could smell the sugar, you could smell the flavor coming from the banana liqueur. Stay right there. Just kind of smooth it out. The other thing I like to do is, since bananas foster is made with butter and brown sugar, okay, and then the rum and the banana liqueur, I like to take brown sugar, crumble it on top. All right? But with this brown sugar, this will give us a nice crunch on top. Now, let's go ahead and get ready to put this in our oven. I have the oven pre-heating at 350 degrees. This amount of bread pudding is gonna roughly take, eh, about an hour and 15 minutes, hour and a half. So always check it. Basically, if you get a little shake, it should just quiver, it'll get nice and golden brown on the top. That's when you know it's done. Now, for the sauce we're gonna make for this, I've got the fire on. We're gonna go in with some butter, okay? Come on. And, basically, this is butter, powdered sugar, and egg yolk that we're doing. Our butter's melting, all right? And this is a nice, simple, quick sauce, because once we get the butter melted, we're gonna turn the fire off. We're gonna have our pan hot, our butter's gonna be hot. We don't want our egg yolks to scramble. We just want them to heat up and to get a little bit warm. So, there we go. We can turn the fire out. Let's get in our powdered sugar. So, cup of butter, cup of powdered sugar. See, the reason why I'm spreading it out is that we don't want to drop those egg yolks in the hot butter and they scramble. Now let's put our egg yolks right on top of that powdered sugar. Now we'll just whisk this together. And, you know, use light rum, dark rum, whatever rum you like. Or you can even do this sauce with a little banana liqueur if you like. Let's get in our rum. See, just like I was telling you -- The pan is hot, the butter's hot. There was enough heat to cook the egg yolks, but not scramble them. Now we just have to smooth our sauce out. Now we can set this on the side and get ready to serve our bread pudding. This smells so good! Now, let this sit just for a little bit, and I just like to use an ice cream scoop, get a nice scoop of that. Oh, look at that. Ohh, look at that. Now, if you're not a fan of a soft texture, you know what you can do? Make a thin layer of bread pudding, and it'd almost be like a bread-pudding cookie. Now let's get a little rum sauce on top. Not too much. Like I said, I just want the sauce to complement. I don't think the sauce should cover up, because this is just so good on its own. Thank you for hanging out with me today. Now it's time for you 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. -We're gonna get started -- Oh, dang! I knew I was gonna mess it up! I knew it! Today, I'm gonna use top soyloin, but -- Today, I'm gonna -- Today, I'm gonna use sirlain. Sir-- Today, I'm gonna do beef. Just...cook the pizza till it's done. When you see it brown and bubbling, it's done. It's ready. I don't care how long. You might have one little gerbil in there with a lighter, and that little gerbil -- that might take an hour to bake. But if you got 20 gerbils with a lighter, it's gonna bake in 10 minutes. So, however long your oven takes to bake it, that's how long we gonna bake it. Oh, and you can tell when shrimp are happy, okay? Look at them. They're all smiling. See, so they go from like... to... They're smiling. That's how shrimp smile. A lot of people don't realize that, but that's how shrimp smile. -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.