Kevin Belton's New Orleans Kitchen

-Funding for "Kevin Belton's New Orleans Kitchen" was provided in part by the L.E. Phillips Family Foundation, Inc. and by the St. Tammany Parish Tourist Commission. Located 40 minutes from New Orleans, the Northshore's Tammany Taste features the chefs and farmers, brewers and bakers of St. Tammany Parish's culinary scene. Learn more at louisiananorthshore.com. Additional funding was provided by Welbilt -- bringing innovation to the table. -Hi. I'm Kevin Belton. Today, in my New Orleans kitchen, it's all about that Louisiana yam. You know, I'm gonna show you today how to do a roast chicken with a sweet-potato casserole. We're also gonna make some ravioli, with a sweet-potato filling. And, finishing it off, sweet-potato mash with bananas and a crumble topping. So, whether you call it a sweet potato or a yam, it's gonna be good.

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Lion snarls

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Hi! Welcome to my New Orleans kitchen. We're having another great day here in New Orleans and we're gonna start off with a Creole brine chicken with collard greens and yams. I've taken this chicken and made a brine. Basically, a brine keeps it nice and moist and tender. Water, salt, get it boiling, okay? Sometimes, people put herbs in it. You wanna put that in a bag. Once it cools, put your chicken in, and so you wanna turn it often. I like to do it overnight. So what I've done here, I've taken it out of that brine and I've just patted it off with a paper towel to get it dry. Now, we're gonna take a little butter and we want to rub our chicken with this butter. Basically, the whole reason for roasting this in the oven is to go ahead and get that brown crispy skin on it. Now,

remember

everything we cook has two sides to it. Even though this is gonna be down, we want to make sure we get both sides, okay? The other thing we're gonna do, besides outside, we're gonna take the rest of our butter and plop it on the inside. Now, some folks like to take a little bit of this, take your fingers, run it under the skin, break it loose a little bit, and tuck some under the skin. So now we've got some butter inside; we've got some butter outside. This is what we want. Now, let's go ahead and start putting a little season to this. Let's take a little black pepper. We're gonna do our black pepper, both sides. Come on. Roll over, baby. We're gonna do a little salt. We're gonna do a little Creole seasoning. Not too much. And we're gonna do the same thing to the top side. As much or little seasoning as you like. Now, going on in the inside... We have bay laurel trees growing wild, so we throw in some bay leaves. I've taken a shallot and chop it up really fine. That shallot's going in there, some rough-chopped rosemary in there, a little marjoram, and just some parsley. I've just taken off the stems. You notice I didn't chop it, just taken those stems off and put that inside. And if you notice, our chicken, it's kind of sitting flat. He's kind of laying out in a relaxed position. Let's take a little kitchen twine. We're gonna slip this underneath his bottom. Let's just pick him up a little bit. Get this twine underneath him. Because, if you ever wondered, "Wow! My legs just fall apart. My wings fall apart. My legs fall apart." Just take it, pick it up. Tie your shoes. You can make a nice bow. All right? But just do like that.

Same thing with our legs

slip that twine underneath. Kinda hold it together. Now, I have had the oven preheating at 475. After 20 minutes, Imma turn the oven down to 350 for another 20 to 25 minutes because we want the internal temperature to be 170. Now, to go with our roasted chicken, we're gonna do a combination of collard greens and yams, okay? But, to have some extra flavor, I have a little chicken stock on the fire. Into this chicken stock, we're gonna put in some bay leaves. The stems from the collard greens. That's in there. 1/2 cup of dry sherry. Some thyme. I have a little rosemary here, and we just need to break off a piece of this rosemary. That's going right on in. The juice of a grapefruit. Look at these flavors that we're putting in because, you know, collard greens and yams, they go so well together, but, to help them cook, a lot of people, when they cook greens, they boil them. Well, we're gonna bake them in the oven, but this reduced stock here is gonna help steam those collard greens. Plus, it's gonna give our potatoes such a great flavor. Now, here, we'll take an apple. Take your apple. Cut it on its side. Cut it again. One more time, and the last time, and here's the core of the apple. Let's drop that in. Red onion, little different flavor. You know, we use a lot of white onion and a lot of yellow onion, but we're just gonna cut off the top and the bottom. Cut that in half. Now, we're gonna take off the outside layer. Right into the stock. So, with our onions, we're just gonna give a little nice thin chop to make some rounds. Just more flavor. You know, that's probably enough. So, now, to start to assemble this... Let's just take casserole dish. We can put in some of our collards. Let's put in some of our yams. You know, if

laughs

Same thing with our legs

you hear me talk about yams. My son, his wife, Christina, is from the town of Opelousas, Louisiana. Opelousas is the Yam Capital of the World.

And let me tell you something

you haven't gone anywhere until you've gone to that yam festival they have in Opelousas. Some of y'all might know the name Opelousas, Louisiana, 'cause Chef Paul Prudhomme was from Opelousas. And those yams, I tell you what, that they produce up there, they are so good. And you see? That bright-orange color. So all we're doing now is putting flavor. And, of course, you know, I lov to cook with bacon, so I've taken some bacon and just cut it up very small. We're gonna put that right on the top. I think that, if I just take our ladle and just tilt it, I'll be able to get some up without any seeds. Without any stems. But look at the flavor that we have. We have the thyme. We have that rosemary.

I tell you what

that's about good. That's -- that's all we want in there. I saved that grapefruit. We're gonna take and just run a little grapefruit zest right on the top. We just wanna zest it. See, just tap that down. See? That zest just gets all over the top, gives us nice little flavor. I've preheated the oven, 400. We're gonna cover this. Let it cook for 30 minutes. Then we'll uncover it for the last 15 minutes. Look at our beautiful chicken. You know, I've taken it out of the oven and we want our chicken to sit for about 15 minutes, just to rest. Now, let's go ahead and check on our collards and yams that are in the oven. Ohh! Look at you. See, I removed the foil because we wanted them to get a nice little -- I like it a little crispy on top, a little brown on the top, so let's place this chicken on our plate. Look how beautiful and crispy that is. So, now, our vegetables. Can you see the moisture? See? Remember that stock we reduced down and all those goodies that was in that? That helped our yams and the collard greens cook. So I take a slotted spoon and just let it drain just a bit. Place this all around the sides. We have those beautiful red onions. We have those little pieces of bacon on the top. We've got the parsley on the inside. We have thyme, marjoram, on the inside. Oh, this is beautiful. And you see, our chicken has stayed together because of that little bit of twine. Personally, I don't like to untie 'em until it's time to eat. Or actually, I'll leave 'im tied and bring 'im to the table just like this. So here we have our Creole brine chicken with our collards-and-yam casserole. Coming up next... sweet-potato ravioli with a nice brown-butter sauce. With pecans. Who doesn't love pasta? And you know what? It drives me absolutely crazy, all these people trying to, "Oh, I don't eat carbs. I don't eat carbs." Give me some carbs! I'm sorry. I like carbs. And we're gonna to use our yams and make a filling with the sweet-potato ravioli. Now, sweet potatoes, yams, what do you particularly like, okay? Yams are really golden. Sweet potatoes are a little pale inside, but guess what. They're both sweet, what we call in Louisiana patate douce, baby. They're sweet. They're potatoes. They're sweet. Use the one you have. So let's start this off. 1 egg yolk. About 1 teaspoon of thyme. And, you know, this is something where we don't need a whole lot, but it's gonna give us a little bit of flavor. Now, something you may not think about going into a filling, but, you know, with sweet potatoes and yams, I love things like cinnamon and a little nutmeg. Flavors that just enhance, for some reason, that sweetness in that potato. And look, this is just kind of making a slurry down in here with that yolk. We're gonna get in, ah, about 1/4 cup of Parmesan cheese. I love cheese. About 1 cup of ricotta. Just right on in there. Now, just take your time. Get this mixed in. I have baked off some yams. I've taken the yams out of the skin and this is just fresh-cooked yams right out of the skin and we're gonna put in about 2 cups in here for our filling. Just, yeah, that's about 2 cups. You know, I like to do this when it's still a little warm because everything blends just so much better. In the meantime, while I'm working on the filling, I also have a pot of water coming up to a boil. Only thing I've put in here was some salt. Now, let's get ready to fill our pasta. We've taken this beautiful pasta sheets and we only wanna put a little bit of filling in because, if we put in too much filling, it's gonna ooze out and I have a bad habit of doing that. So I'm just gonna put about 1 teaspoon of filling right there... 1 teaspoon of filling right here... Another teaspoon right there. Okay. That's good. Now, here's what we're gonna do. I have a little egg wash, just a little egg and water. We want to brush our pasta because this is gonna help our pasta to seal, okay? You often hear about folks taking a pasta and brushing it to seal it. Well, that's what this egg wash does. Now, don't forget to also catch in between the sheets because we also have to seal this in between. And this is just a little egg and water. That's all this is. Now, we take our other sheet and we're gonna place it right over the top. Press that down. Press that down. Okay. Let's take our crimper and just kind of -- You know, sometimes, I try to get them straight and it doesn't exactly come out straight, but, you know, there's no such food as being perfect. Now, I want to take our fork, just to make sure that this is sealed, and just pinch this down to make sure that it's sealed in tight and we don't lose any of this filling inside, okay? You can serve this as a little appetizer and just do two of them. So now that we have our ravioli filled, it's time to get them cooked. Our water is boiling and basically, remember, just 6 to 7 minutes. So take the pasta. Just gently drop them in. I've salted this water really well, so that they don't stick together. Sometimes, I drop one in, just to see what's gonna happen, and, you know, you don't wanna overcrowd this,

but I tell you what

I think this is gonna go just fine. So, while this is boiling, let's make a browned-butter pecan sauce. So I'm heating up our pan and, as we put our butter in, as butter starts to melt, you'll notice it'll look a little cloudy. That's the solids; that's the fat. And there's a nice trick to this because, if you let this cook long enough, we wanna brown it, but not burn it, okay? Little bit of thyme. Just a little touch of thyme in there. We can go in with our pecans, but our pecans don't need much, so I want you to see how this butter is gonna start browning off. And we want those butter solids, those fats, just to cook long enough to get brown. Let's just stir this. Let's make sure our ravioli is going fine in here. Just kinda stir them around loosely. We don't want them to come apart. All right. That's fine. See, it's bubbling. It's sizzling. We can get our pecans in now, with this butter. We don't want it burned, but we just want it browning off. So let's get the nuts in. And also into this, we're just gonna put just a pinch of salt, okay? We need a little salt in here with these nuts. All right. We're gonna let this cook for just a minute. Let's check on our pasta while this is still browning off just a smidge. Our pasta, as you can see, is floating to the top. It's a little al dente. It's a little too al dente, so we just want it a little bit more. Oh. Look. See how this is foamed up? That's one way to tell. When butter is browning off, it kind of foams. That's what we want. So let's turn this off. Matter of fact, let's turn them both off. Now, this'll just sit here because this is ready. So with our pasta, let's take our pasta and let this drain a little bit. So let's just take this out. Let these drain. We just want to strain this. If you get a little bit of that liquid out of it, that's fine. So, now, we need to get ready to go ahead and plate this up. I'm gonna take this. Remember, it's been draining. We want that to drain because we want that extra moisture in there. So, on our plate... Let's just take our plate. Take one of the raviolis. Lay it there. Take another ravioli. Oh, c'mere. Come here. I like to just kind of fold it over, to where you could see that filling. And now, let's take a little bit of this brown-buttered pecan sauce and we'll just put this right over the top. So let's put a little piece of parsley right in here, just to give us a little color. So here we have our sweet-potato ravioli with pecan brown-buttered sauce. Coming up next...sweet-potato mash with crumbled topping. Sweet-potato mash with pecan crumble! Now, what I have in the oven, I have sweet potatoes and bananas, 375. I put them in the oven for about, ah, 40 minutes to get the potatoes cooked, and then I put the bananas on for about 10 or 15 minutes, to get those cooked, because we just want that sweetness to come out of that banana. You want to let them cool long enough to handle to the touch. Ah,

guess what

this is okay. Basically, take your potatoes. If you just take a fork or a knife, just open them up. Peel that skin back. Yeah, they're a little warm. Ooh, they're warm! Take that. The reason why I wanna get them in here while this is still a little warm is because it helps melt the butter. See, we just want that banana to warm up just a slight bit, just so it releases and brings out that sugar out of it. So, here, take your fork. Make a little cut. And, you know, if you roll your potatoes over, see how that brown side, that bottom side, gets nice and brown? That's basically the sugar in this potato caramelizing, okay? So let's, again, take off this skin. Take your little patter and we'll just kinda scrape this out. Just...there we go, all right? So we ended up with a couple of cups of the potatoes, couple of cups of bananas. We're gonna do a little salt. Little bit of kosher salt, just about 1 teaspoon. That brings out flavor, all right? In something sweet. That little bit of salt makes it even sweeter. The other thing we're gonna put in here is honey. Honey has a wonderful flavor. So let's get in about 1 cup of honey. And, of course, if you like it sweeter, you can use more honey. You can actually make this for your honey, honey. See, that honey helps smooth this out. It's creamy. But look how smooth a texture that we have. So now I just have an ovenproof baking dish and we're gonna put our mixture right into this. You know, another thing I do sometimes with sweet potatoes, I put a little lemon juice. If you do this with pumpkin, pumpkin needs a little brightening up, so that lemon juice helps brighten that up. So if you don't have a sweet potato and this is a recipe you wanna try, try it with a little pumpkin, all right? Oh, look at this. Sweet potato and banana, we're doing. Sweet potato and pears, that would work fine. So, now, to top this off, we're gonna make a crumble. I have some soft butter and about 6, 8 tablespoons of butter, about 1/4 pound of butter. We're gonna get into this about 1 cup of flour. And we just wanna mash this together. Brown sugar. Brown sugar adds a nice little depth of flavor. So about 1 cup of brown sugar. Now, this is dark-brown sugar. If you wanna use a light-brown sugar, that's fine. Besides the pecans, we're gonna do some oats. So I have about 1/2 cup of oats we're gonna put in and we're gonna get in about 1.5 cups of pecans. Now, I have our oven. Remember, we baked off the sweet potatoes and the bananas in there, 375, so that's heating up. So leave your oven on. We're gonna take this and we're just gonna sprinkle it on the top. Do you want a thick layer or a thin layer? Totally up to you. If you wanna do this with a different nut, that's fine. I like a lot of topping on it just because, you know, we have a soft texture and this topping gives us that little crunch. So we're gonna put this in the oven just for 20 minutes. It is so worth making that crumble on the top, that brown sugar, those pecans. Look, let's just take a little bit. Take a spoon. Get a nice scoop of this. Drop it on the plate. Here's our wonderful sweet-potato mash with that crumble topping. You know, I appreciate you spending your time with me. I know it's important.

I'm Kevin Belton and remember

the absolute best place in the house is sharing your table with your family and friends. So I'll see you next time. -The companion cookbook to "Kevin Belton's New Orleans Kitchen" 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 1-866-360-4924, or order online at wyes.org. -

baritone

I'm Kevin Belton and remember

You know, I remember the days you used to have to take two pieces of wood, rub it together, and get fire. You know, the first time my cousin O...g made fire for the very first time, we all burned ourselves. There were no hospitals, but, back in those days, we didn't have to eat that pterodactyl raw anymore. This time, we're going to do a little pork sausage. Yes, similar to like a breakfast sausage. This is what's going in now.

Sizzling

I'm Kevin Belton and remember

-Start again, please. -I know. I'm coming. We have to take a break because I have to get a plate to put the steaks on once they come out. So, stay right there. Don't go nowhere. We gonna be right back, once we get a plate. -For more information about "Kevin Belton's New Orleans Kitchen," visit wyes.org. Funding for "Kevin Belton's New Orleans Kitchen" was provided in part by the L.E. Phillips Family Foundation, Inc. and by the St. Tammany Parish Tourist Commission. A short drive from New Orleans, the Northshore offers epicurean experiences, as well as kayaking, cycling, and tours of the Honey Island Swamp. Learn more about the Tammany Taste at lousinananorthshore.com. Additional funding was provided by Welbilt -- bringing innovation to the table.