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 going to be a "berry" good day. We're going to make French toast that's going to be stuffed. How about a stuffed pork chop with bacon maple reduction? And the "berry" best shortcake with lemon biscuits. So, you don't want to miss this because it's going to be a "berry" good day.

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Hi. Welcome to my New Orleans kitchen. We're having another fantastic day here in the city. Something my mother started me off with every day -- French toast. And we're going to do a stuffed French toast. Have a little brioche. Use the bread that you have at home. You know, this is wonderful with raisin bread. But, you know, today it's about berries. Now, something to complement berries -- pecans. We have a lot of pecans, so I'm going to take some of our pecans and just get this whipped -- or, I should say, mixed and folded into our cream cheese. That's why we want to whip this cream cheese -- so it's nice and soft. Now, here's what we want to do to get this prepared, okay? We're using pecans. You can use any kind of nut that you like. We're going to take a piece, take a little schmear of our filling, get that in there. We're going to put another one right on top. It's almost like a little cream cheese sandwich. Even though we're putting pecans in here, I like sometimes to do this with our berries actually inside. Now we have to make our batter. I have about six eggs. Now, you know, French bread doesn't last long. We buy a loaf of French bread, and we have it for dinner, and then the next morning, because that bread would start to dry out, grandmother would make pain perdu. Pain perdu is our lost bread, okay? That's what they would do because it would start to dry out, and by dipping it in this mixture, it would moisten it. So, that's why I was saying you can use any kind of bread that you like. So, into our eggs, a little bit of sugar, not much, just about a tablespoon, a tablespoon of cinnamon, teaspoon of vanilla, and a pinch of salt. So, now I have a little heavy cream. If you don't want to use heavy cream, you could use milk. I've even used a little almond milk. You can use a little soy milk, whatever kind of milk that you like, whatever kind of milk you have. I have a little butter, and I just want to take this butter and just move it right along the top of the griddle. So, now we can go ahead and batter our bread. Dip in, and, you see, this is why this was often done with leftover bread because it had time -- It could absorb some. So, I like to take the fork like this, all right, stab it, and just put it right on. Now, we need to cook this just enough to get those eggs cooked. So, by the time our eggs cook and the cream heats up, it'll get a nice golden brown. We don't want the griddle too hot. Just always make sure you get that excess drained off. So, as our French toast cooks, we could always peek at it. Can you guys see how it's starting to brown off under there? That's what we want. We want that nice golden brown to it. So, when you see it's getting golden brown, just turn it over. Stand it up on the end just to make sure that those ends get cooked. By the time you get them turned, you can go back and now turn them the other way just to make sure you get that egg cooked. So, there. They are cooked. Let's turn this off. Now, we're going to take our French toast, just put a piece on the plate. Let's put one here. Oh, look how pretty that is. I have a few berries right here. Let's just sprinkle a few berries. These are blueberries and raspberries. Oh, they're running off. Come back here. Get here. A little syrup made from sugar cane that we're just going to drizzle right over the top. If you want to dust this with a little powdered sugar, that's fine. So, here we have my version of my mom's stuffed French toast with fresh berries. Coming up next, stuffed pork chops with a bacon maple reduction. Now, you know, I love pork chops, and we're going to top it with bacon maple reduction. Oh, I love bacon! So, here's what I'm going to do. In our pan, we're going to start with a little butter. Now, we're going to get in some pears. We're going to get in a little bit of diced onion. And you notice, I put the onions in, but I didn't put all the pears in yet. You know, this is a total texture thing. It's one of those things where, if you put it all in, it'll all have the same texture and the same taste. But you know what? Here. Let's do some more pears. We'll get a little more pears in there. Because this is gonna be for our stuffing. Little pinch of salt. And, you know, it's just something about, when you're cooking pork chops, having that fruit with it. It's just something about that sweetness that it brings that you really just can't describe. A little fresh rosemary. And we just want to put this in. See, this doesn't have to cook very long because this is going to go inside of that pork chop. So, from the savory of the meat and the sweetness of our onion and the sweetness from that pear, it's going to be a nice combination. So now we can go ahead and turn this off. Here, I'm using a boneless pork chop. You can use a pork chop with the bone in, but you want a thick cut because basically we're going to take a paring knife, make a little slit. Put your hand flat and just make a little slit. See, by keeping your hand flat, that way you make sure you don't cut yourself. And now we've created a pocket. If you can see, just take your knife, trim it out. Now we have that pocket made, okay? Just do that. Here. Let's do this one. Put your hand flat over the top, insert your knife, and just slice. So, once we get it cut, open it up and just take your knife, cut a little more in there. There we are. Now, here's what we're going to do. I like to take a little bit of our Creole seasoning. We'll put a little bit on the inside of each pocket. Okay. We're going to put a little pinch of salt on the inside. All right? Now let's get our stuffing to put in. Now, we don't need too much stuffing, but it just depends on how much you like. Just get that right on in there. Let's get some for the other one so that he won't be jealous. So, you can even hold it up and make that little pocket and go right in with it. So let's get a little more in this one. We just kind of turn it up. Now, I'm going to take a little oil. And you notice I've got a wet hand, dry hand. Just a little bit of oil on the top. We're just going to rub that around. And now we'll take a little more of our seasoning right on the top, a little bit of salt... a little bit of black pepper. We're going to make a topping to go on top of our pork chops. So, again, a little bit of seasoning just right over the top. And, you know, we've got that herb on the inside. So if you want to put a little herbs on the outside, sure. That's fine. So, now we can put these right on our pan. And, you know, some of that stuffing may come out. But you know what? That's okay if it does. All right. Now, of course, I have the oven preheating. We're preheating the oven to 350 degrees. We want to put this in the oven. This is going to cook for about 40 minutes because, by slicing the pork chop -- they were thick -- but by slicing them, it won't take as long to cook all the way through because we've made that pocket. So, let's get these in the oven. So, now that our pork chops are in the oven, let's get to some bacon! I have our pan heating up. And there's no need to put oil in this pan because we're going to use some of the oil from this bacon. As this bacon cooks, it's going to render some oil. Now, because this is going to be a sauce for our topping, if it's a lot of oil, we want to get rid of it. If it doesn't produce that much oil, it's okay. So, as you see, our bacon is starting to brown off. And I'm doing this in a cast-iron pan because that cast-iron pan is nice and hot. I have so many memories of my mom and my grandmother, even my great grandmother, cooking in cast iron. As you can see, it's starting to get little crispy edges. You're also noticing that it is rendering a good bit of fat. And that's fine. If you want it super, super crispy, that's fine. But I like that little combination. This is where we're going to be really careful. You notice I've gathered the bacon all to one side because I want to get rid of some of this oil. So, in our bowl... Because we don't want our sauce to be oily. We want the flavor, but we don't want it to be oily. So now let's get in some pears. And this little bit of pear is going to give a little moisture down in here. We'll get in a little bit of seasoning, a little salt, little bit of our all-purpose seasoning. Remember -- savory brings out sweetness. A little garlic. Let's get that garlic in. And we don't want to cook this garlic too long because we don't want it to dry out and burn. So, to help deglaze the pan -- you know, we had those little pieces of bacon starting to stick -- let's do a little apple juice. This apple juice is going to help deglaze this pan. And, you know, just be patient. Let everything do its job. We're going to let that apple juice heat up. We're going to use our spoon here to make sure that we get all the bottom of that pan, all that goodness up off the bottom of that pan. There we go. So, now we can also put in our cranberries. Now, I'm using a dried cranberry. By putting them in the apple juice, they're going to heat up. That heat is going to cause them to plump up. And they'll plump up. They'll be nice and moist. So it's okay if you have a dried fruit to use in here. So you see how this is boiling? We're reducing it. We're losing the moisture. The flavor is intensifying. So, to help thicken this up, last thing we're going to put in is our maple syrup. And just stir it around. And as this heats, this is going to thicken up really nice on us. So, while this cooks and reduces, let's get cleaned up because soon we'll be able to take our pork chops out of the oven and put this wonderful maple sauce right on top. Our filling has stayed in. You know, sometimes, when you do this, the filling will come out. So, now let's take our chop. We're going to put it right on the plate. And now let's just take our sauce and spoon it just right over the top. Let's get a little bit of that juice on there. So, here we have our stuffed pork chop with that bacon maple reduction. Coming up next, berry best shortcake with lemon biscuits. You know, I love some berries, and I love cake, so we're going to do cake, berries, shortcake, biscuits, all that above. So, here I have warm water. Into our warm water, I have a package of active yeast. Now, make sure you don't get the water too hot because if it's too hot, it'll kill your yeast. So, we want this to get mixed in. We're making dough for our biscuits, and we need this active yeast. So, now we have that in there. We're just going to let this sit to the side. And it'll do all the things it needs to do. The other thing we're going to do with this is for our milk. I'm going to take a little lemon zest and a little lemon juice and put this in our milk and let this sit. And basically you're going to see it's going to cause that milk to sour and curdle, and it just adds such a wonderful flavor to biscuits and things like that. That's one of those old tricks that we learned from grandmother. Now, what we're going to do with this is we're going to do some berries in here. I have strawberries. You know, what's nice is you can use whatever berry you like. Take off the tops. You can use berries that -- you know, if it's out of season, you can use frozen berries. But I tell you what -- our weather here creates such beautiful, wonderful strawberries. That's one of the nice things about living in our area. We're damp. We're humid. We get a lot of rain. And I think that's what helps our berries to grow. That's what helps our citrus to grow so well. So, we're going to get this into our bowl. And I have a little sugar. And this is something where I like to do a little at a time. So, we're going to get a little sugar on our strawberries. Let's get in some blueberries. We're going to get a little sugar on those blueberries. One of the other things that grow wild here in Louisiana that you don't think about are blackberries. Now, this is odd. A lot of folks leave blackberries whole. I like to give them a little slice. This just opens them up, and, by putting that sugar on it, it'll cause the juice to extract from the berries. Little more sugar. The other thing we're going to pop in here -- a little lemon zest and a little lemon juice. We want that lemon juice to just add a little pop to the sweetness here in our berries. You know, this is something where, if you want, you could do this ahead of time and just let it sit in the refrigerator. And it'll get nice and chilly in there, and the longer it sits in the refrigerator, the more sugar is going to come out of those berries. So, let's get this off to the side. Now let's take care of our flour. In our flour, I want to add a little baking soda and baking powder. We're also going to put in a little salt. And we're going to put in about 1/4 cup of sugar. We're going to take our mixer and start working in our butter and our flour together. Now, we just want this to start slow and basically cut that in. If you don't have a mixer, you can always use a fork to mix it in. Some folks will mix it in with their hands. I'm going to stop this and show you. See how we're getting little pieces? You see the pieces of butter down in there? That's what we call cutting in. By cutting that butter in, that's where we get our flakiness. So, here, let's get a little more flour in. And this is one of these things where you just have to take your time, be patient. All right. Let's get a little more flour in. I think we can get all the rest of this in. We always have to start off slow. So, now that our butter is cut into our flour, we can start adding our liquids. So, we can start with our yeast because it's activated. And since our milk has started to curdle, we can also add a little bit of our milk. Now, here, with this particular dough, we may use all of the milk, we may not. It's one of these things that we just have to look at it and gauge the texture of it. So, a little more milk. As you can see, this is starting to pull together. It's starting to get thick. So, now we're going to wrap this in clear wrap and let it rise. If you look in our bowl, our dough has risen. Wake up! Wake up! What I'm going to do, I'm going to put a little flour on our counter, and I'm also going to use a mason jar to cut out our biscuits. And I know it may sound crazy, but, look, I'm going to set it in there because we want the flour coating around the rim so it comes out of the dough very easy. Now, you can use a cookie cutter in your favorite shape, but watch this -- as we hit the dough -- Oh, look. See? That's called punching the dough, where it just comes down. And I'm going to put a little more flour on my hand because it's a little sticky. But that's okay. That's all right. Just, we don't want this to stick. Let's just pour this out, right onto our floured surface. Now, you know, a lot of times, folks will use a rolling pin for this. I find, with biscuits, I like to kind of knead it by hand. You don't want to overwork it, but I just think kneading it by hand is just a lot better. So, you just kind of press and stretch, press and stretch. I remember going to spend my summers with my great grandmother in Canton, Mississippi. And they would take berries and make preserves out of them, and I got to watch them make biscuits by scratch and all that. And they never used a rolling pin. They always used their hands to make out the biscuits. So, now we've floured the rim. Cut, press it, and twist. Just press and twist. That's all we need to do. Okay. Now, this is just a nonstick baking pan that we're going to get our biscuits on. And you see this dough? Roll it right back up, and then you can just work it out. And now you can cut some more, okay? So, don't think, "Oh, well, what am I going to do with all this left?" That's all right. We can go with right what we have right there and make some more. So, now I have the oven preheating at 450 degrees. We're going to bake these in the oven just for about 10 to 12 minutes. They're going to rise. As soon as they get nice, golden brown, guess what. They're going to be ready to eat. And that lemon flavor that we put in is going to be fantastic. Now, if you notice our berries, they haven't sat very long, but this is why we put a little sugar on them. Look at that juice that has come out of them. This is what that sugar does. It extracts all that goodness out of those berries. So, now let's go get our biscuits out of the oven. You know, that lemon zest inside -- you can smell it as soon as that oven opens. So, now let's take our biscuit. We're just going to take a little knife, and we're just going to cut it right on open. Oh, see how flaky that is inside? Let's put our biscuit down. Let's take some of our berries and just put them right -- right -- just spread it all out over the top like that. We can set our little biscuit on the top. Let's grab a little piece of mint leaf. And, here, let's just lay it right across the top of our biscuit. So, here is our berry best shortcake with lemon biscuits. You know, I really appreciate you spending your time with me. I've 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. -You hear that goodness in there? That is goodness in there. That's going to start. Come on, baby. Dance. You know you want to dance. Diddy-diddy-dum, diddy-do Hoo, good It looks fine We got some French fry, we got some bacon And we gonna make it wine I'm sorry.

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I appreciate so much your spending your time with me. I'm Kevin Belton, and we will see you next time. Oh, no, no, no, no, no! Okay. Come back. Come -- Come -- Get it right. Nrehhhhhhh! -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 louisiananorthshore.com. -Additional funding was provided by Welbilt -- bringing innovation to the table.