Kitchen Queens: New Orleans

-Funding for "Kitchen

Queens

New Orleans" was provided by the Melvin S. Cohen Foundation, Inc., and by the L.E. Phillips Family Foundation, Inc. -This time on "Kitchen New Orleans," the chefs embrace down-home cooking with three Southern specialties. First, crispy jalapeo and sweet corn hushpuppies by Chef Christie Plaisance of Bouligny Tavern. Next, Southern-fried chicken wings, a fuss-free favorite of Chef Nicole Mackie from Ma Momma's House of Cornbread, Chicken & Waffles. And for dessert, a twist on a New Orleans classic -- apple-pie bread pudding by Chef Ericka Lassair of the Diva Dawg Food Truck. Stirring the pot with creativity and style, they're the New Orleans Kitchen Queens. We begin our down-home dining tour in the oak-shaded Garden District of uptown New Orleans. Our destination is Bouligny Tavern, a gastropub featuring specialty cocktails and expertly crafted small plates. The chef de cuisine of the retro style eatery is Christie Plaisance, who learned all about Southern food in her family's restaurant in Luling, Louisiana, where she grew up. In New Orleans, she worked her way up the kitchen ranks to become the first female line cook of the venerable Commander's Palace. -So what we're making right now is the jalapeo and corn hushpuppies. We're going to go ahead and make the creamed corn that goes in the hushpuppies first, and then we're going to start our butter. You don't need to worry about sauting anything. This is all going to come together. Sugar. The flour. The cold water. The heavy whipping cream. And your corn. Now, when you shuck your corn, you want to make sure you run the back of the knife off of the back of the corn cob so you can release some of that corn milk, we call it. What you're going to do is mix this up. Let it come to a simmer on the lowest setting that you can get it to keep simmering. And then you're also going to season it with salt. And pepper to taste. So you see it's starting to simmer around the outside. We're going to go ahead and lower the heat. This is going to go for about 20, 30 minutes. After this becomes creamy, what we want to go ahead and do is take it off the heat, and we're going to chill it for the next part of the recipe. So now that we have our creamed corn that's nice and solid and set up, we're going to go ahead and make the batter. Go ahead and take all of your dry ingredients. So your flour... Corn flour. So a lot of recipes use cornmeal. I like the corn flour, it makes it really nice and bright instead of that really, like, a heavy feeling that you get with a lot of hushpuppies. Go ahead and put our baking powder in. And the sugar. I'm going to go ahead and mix this up so that when we add our wet ingredients, it's dispersed thoroughly. This is the jalapeo that we're going to add. We dice it really small so there's not a lot of really big chunks. You're not really going to get really big bites of really too-spicy flavor. Add that in. This is diced white onion. It's diced white onion, as small as you can get it. One egg. And then we'll add our creamed corn in. We'll go ahead and work this all together. So this recipe I learned growing up with my grandma. We'd go to Northern Louisiana and have our little vacations. Her recipe was a little different. She would use canned creamed corn. And here, obviously, we made our fresh creamed corn. And granulated onion -- we use fresh. And then it was definitely the heavy cornmeal. We'd always served it with fish that we caught on the lake right outside of our camp. Now what you want to do, too, when you're doing this is make sure that this is really well mixed. After you get it started, you kind of want to put your hands in it and really work it together. And you're going to get to this batter and it's going to start appearing clumpy like this, you want it to be wet but still stick together. So this is a really good consistency. And what you want, it's got all your nice colors in it, all your nice chunks. So now we have our batter where we want it. We're going to go ahead and get the oil ready and we're going to make some hushpuppies. Now our oil is ready. We have it set to 350 degrees. You can use a candy thermometer. We're going to go ahead and drop some of the batter. You want to make sure that it's an even amount so it's an even cooking. So see if you can you find a scoop. Something like this. And then very carefully -- you don't want to do it from high up, but close to the bottom. Go ahead and drop. Be careful of any splash. I'm from St. Charles Parish, which is about 30 minutes on the outskirts of New Orleans, so if somebody asks, I just say I'm from NOLA, little tiny town called Luling. My family owned a restaurant. Our restaurant was one of the only -- like three one of three restaurants there. We cook it at 350 degrees so that the inside has the chance to cook because these are a little bit bigger, and they're actually really fine because of the corn flour instead of the cornmeal. All right, so we're going to let these go, kind of flipping them around as we go just so they have an even coat on them. And in about four minutes or so, we'll take them out. I probably got started in cooking around the time when I was four years old or so. I would always go into the kitchen. I was always looking at my grandmothers, my mother. My dad was a great cook as well. Still is a great cook. -When she was six, Chef Christie prepared what she calls an epic Mother's Day surprise. I almost set the house on fire. I did not set the house on fire. And I made it all the way through five courses to the dessert, which was Bananas Foster. I probably should have told my mother that I was cooking with alcohol in the house. But good thing we had high ceilings. What I always like to do is make a couple extra. So when you think that they're about ready, take one out, open it up, and make sure that the center is cooked all the way through. Because it does have raw egg product in it. All right, so it's always important to test these, to make sure that they're done all the way. Be really careful. These are very hot. We're going to open it up. There you go inside, completely cooked all the way through. An important thing to notice here is there's a ton of texture going on. You got your jalapeo, your onion, and then since we're only using the corn flour, it's really smooth and velvety all the way through instead of that crunchy texture that you get when you use cornmeal. Taking a slotted spoon or a spider, like I have, you want to take these out very carefully and put them on a parchment to get any excess oil up. All right, now what we're going to want to do is make sure we give these a nice, good seasoning of salt and pepper while it's still hot. You don't want to wait until they're cold. The salt helps it stick to them. Okay, now let's get to plating it up. I like to serve these with honey butter. Depending on how sweet you like your butter, you can decide. I don't like mine that sweet. So I do about a teaspoon of the honey, and it's going to be about one-to-five ratio to butter. Now we're going to put our hushpuppies with our honey butter, and there we have the jalapeo sweet corn hushpuppies. -Our next stop is New Orleans East, a diverse section of the city whose landmarks include the Audubon Louisiana Nature Center, NASA's Michoud assembly facility, as well as a thriving fishing community. Located in the suburban area is Ma Momma's House of Cornbread, Chicken & Waffles, where Chef Nicole Mackie, or Ms. Nicki, as she is known, dishes up down-home Southern cuisine based on family recipes. Hey, my babies, guess what we got today? It's New Orleans deep-fried Southern chicken from Ma Momma's House of Cornbread, Chicken & Waffles. So how we do our chicken at My Momma's House? First of all, we have a secret blend of spices that we marinate the chicken in for 24 hours minimum. -At home, use your favorite spicy seasoning blend to marinate the wings. -And it's important that you marinate the chicken for 24 hours because you want the seasoning to seep all the way down to the bone. And that's why we say Ma Momma's has the best fried chicken to the bone because of that marination process. Right? So as it's been marinating, We're going to take our wings and we're going to dip it into an all-purpose white flour. Whole wing one, whole wing two. And we're going to make sure that they are breaded it really well. And it's important that we get the excess flour off. So we're gonna bump, bump, bump. And...we're going to do all... eight of them. So make sure it's floured up really good. And of course, my cooking oil, which is a vegetable frying oil, that's been preheating at a temperature of 350 degrees in my deep fryer. And I feel like you have to have a commercial deep fryer. You can get the little ones at a lot of the department stores. So you can deep-fry, too. And there's typically a dial on the deep fryer, and you want to make sure you turn your dial to 350, and take your handy-dandy... thermometer... and make sure that the temperature is at 350 degrees. and the reason why that is so important is that if the temperature is too low, the chicken will come out really oily and soft, but at three hundred and fifty degrees, it's going to be crispy and cooked throughout and still juicy. And we're going to cook the chicken for about eight minutes. Okay? Okay, so now we're going to put our breaded chicken into the basket. And we don't want the chicken on top of each other because then it sticks together and it's just not good. All right, and we're going to drop our chicken in just a minute. We're you going to set the timer to make sure that we have our eight minutes set and it could come out just right. All right. This timer is going. It's going. And I'm going to shake it so it doesn't get stuck to each other and that they fry independently. And we're going to let that go for about eight minutes. When I was a little girl, fried chicken was my absolute favorite. And I know this isn't a word -- my favoritest, most favoritest food, and my grandmother one Sunday had cooked baked spaghetti and fried chicken. And everybody went to sleep. It was my grandmother, my Uncle Papa, my Auntie Anna Maria and myself. So all the adults were asleep. And while they were sleeping, Nicki was eating. And I ate the entire chicken, all eight pieces, two legs, two thighs, two wings and two breasts. And I was like six years old. So, yeah, I love chicken. A lot of our guests travel from all over the world to come to taste our chicken, waffles, and cornbread. When people come to our restaurant is that they feel like they at their momma's house, right? Because momma love all of her babies, whether it's Little Boopie around the corner or the president of the United States. Momma love everybody. And we want to make sure everybody feels welcome. It's a family recipe, the seasoning. Everybody loves the chicken. They they love it with the waffles or the cornbread. You talk about a party in your mouth. It is delicious. We only serve whole wings, party wings, and chicken strips from the breast of the chicken. And we do the wings because they cook faster. It's easier to prep and easier to cook. It takes less time. The proper piece to serve with a waffle are wings because they look so cute on the plate with the syrup and the waffle. Then you have people that don't like bone-in chicken, so they want the strips. And then you have people that love legs and thighs. So they want the legs and thighs. So it kind of just depends. Looking good. So now let's take the chicken out. Ooooh-whee! Get all that excess grease off, and we're going to plate in just a little bit. All righty. And here you have Ma Momma's House of Cornbread, Chicken & Waffles Best fried chicken to the bone. Mm-mmm! -The culinary Mecca of New Orleans now features a fast growing food truck scene. One of the best known of these mobile purveyors is the Diva Dawg Food Truck, an on-the-go eatery featuring Creole-inspired hot dogs, founded by Chef Ericka Lassair, a graduate of Southern University and Delgado's Culinary Arts School. Chef Diva was selected as a Tory Burch Foundation fellow in 2016. -Today, we're going to be doing my apple-pie bread pudding, and we're using Granny Smith apples. So, apple-pie bread pudding. Why? Because there is a liquor that has apple in it and it makes my sauce taste so much better. And bread pudding is not bread pudding without the sauce. Okay, let me tell you. So traditionally in my family, we make bread pudding with raisins and pecans. And I did that at the restaurant when I first had a restaurant, and I would do like a brown sugar glazed crust over it. It was amazing. But when I found this new liquor that had apple flavor in it, I wanted to do that. And this has become so popular from my truck. People love it. They get one piece and then they get two. And then those that come up and want to share a piece start fighting. So, hey, when you come up to the truck and get the apple-pie bread pudding, make sure you get your own. So we're going to start with five eggs, right? I'm going to put that in there and make sure we whisk that up. Get that nice and whipped. So then we're going to add a cup of whole milk. Put that right on in. Heavy cream. Another cup. Put that right on in. I think it's a teaspoon or tablespoon of vanilla. I always go overboard, so, you know. And then we have a little bit of cinnamon and nutmeg. Add that in as well. And I'mma mix this up a little bit before I add the sugar. Get a good old whisk to it. Now... I'm going to say add two cups of sugar, but I definitely go overboard on my sugar, so I just -- However sweet I'm feeling that day is how much sugar goes in there. So, put the sugar in here. Mix that all up. Nice and sweet, so for my bread pudding, I use my brioche buns that I have on the truck. I have buns left over because we had a storm -- People were scared of a storm. So we had to be in for five days. We couldn't go out on a truck. So I don't want to waste the balance. I just threw them all in the freezer, save them up. They're super simple to just kind of crumble up once they come out the freezer. Just kind of take them, and they crumble right on up right into your bowl. And you could just get brioche bread. They might have brioche buns at the store. But just brioche bread will be just fine because it's a sweeter bread, and I like using that one. So, add all that to our mixture, our custard is what we call it. Take your spoon, kind of just fold this all in, and you can add more bread as needed to your custard because you don't want it to be too runny. So I'm going to add more bread to this. And you can kind of chop your bread up as much as you like -- you can chop it up all the way like bread crumbs, or you can have big pieces. Your bread pudding is your bread pudding however you want it. So this is looking so delicious. And I like to let my custard and my bread sit on the side a little bit, kind of soak in there. So we're going to let them sit while we cut up the apple. So I just cut both sides off the apples here, kind of just take that skin off a little bit with the knife. With some people, just using a peeler it might be easier. For me, I'm just so used to somebody taking my peeler or being lost to where I just became accustomed to cutting my apples just like so. And so just take a little bit of the skin off, push that to the side here. And I just cut down all four sides. Cooking was not always my thing. You know, growing up, I didn't really cook until my mom -- I was a teenager. She was like, "You're old enough to cook for yourself." So I started cooking for myself at that point. But it wasn't something that I had to -- I was like looking forward to doing. But once I started to do it and I saw how creative I was with it, it kind of brought up my creative juices because I never saw myself as a creative person. just cut it into little cubes. You come to my house, there's no food in the refrigerator because I'm not cooking. I like going out to eat. I like trying other chefs' dishes and their creations. So my cooking is mainly for creating something different that you'd never heard of before, never tasted before anywhere else. Just kind of chop it. You can make it as big or small as you like. Add that to your custard mix and your bread. Put that right on in, and we're going to cut this one and save this on the side for that delicious sauce. All right, so we'll leave that right there. So mix that on it. And if you're at home, I like to get my cute little dishes like this. Makes it cute. or you can get a large pan or you can get like a little bitty tiny bread loaf, whatever you like. So we're going to use this like tiny Bundt-cake pan here, put a little pan spray in there to make it easier when you're trying to get it out. And just line that in there. And make sure your oven is preheated before you start. 350 is good if you have a quick-cooking oven, or convection, 325. And sometimes either you want to take it down and let it cook slow, you can even cook it at 300. So you put that in there. We're having a little party. Everybody can have their own cute little style dishes. Just make it look really cute for a party. You know, if you're just doing it just for the family for Thanksgiving holiday or Christmas, put it in a nice large pan and everybody can scoop it on out. And there you have it. And you put that in the oven and you just kind of wanted to cook to where you'll see that brownness, but you don't want us to get really dark on the outside and then it's not cooked in the middle. So kind of watch it. So just take your temperature down. If it's cooking fast on the outside, just kind of take temperature down. That way everything will start to be even. This will probably take about 20, 25 minutes. Kind of watch it. A large pan, 30 to 45. So just watch it and be good to go. So while there's food in oven, you can get your sauce ready. Get you a nice little skillet, put about a tablespoon of butter in there. Make sure your skillet is nice and hot. So that butter just goes right on in. Add some sugar to that. As much sugar as your family likes. If they're big sweet eaters like my family, add all the sugar you like. All right. And let that melt down. And you can't forget the most important part, the apple cognac. Ooh! Brings all the flavor to the sauce. Let that melt down. Oh, and we can't forget about the extra apples we set to the side. Add that to the sauce. It'll just dress it up a little bit as you put that sauce on top of your bread pudding. And you can add just a pinch of your cinnamon that you have sitting over, left over. This is just going to cook down just a little bit. It's going to cook the graininess out of the sugar, just kind of pretty much almost making like a simple syrup. Now, who's ready for the apple-pie bread pudding? All right. Out the oven comes the bread pudding, in these cute dishes. You can see the apples right inside here. So delicious and gorgeous, and you see where I put a lot of sugar in here, so it kind of caramelized just a little bit on top. Deliciousness. So I'mma take a plastic knife here... to kind of help that out so it can come out evenly. We're going to see which one comes out the prettiest for us. Let's get under that bottom. There we go. Have a nice, cute little shape to it. All right. This one might give us a tough time. That's all right. Stamp that down. Let's see. Ooh, came out cute. And you can have it on either side And it looks like a little bread pudding Bundt cake. So delicious. And we have that sauce over here, don't forget the sauce. You can tell that the sugar has cooked down, you don't feel the graininess when you put your spoon through there, have those apples nice and cooked. They still have a little bit of crunch to it. Kind of drizzle that on top here. Here in New Orleans, we like a lot of sauce, so don't skimp on people's sauce because they get a little angry. So we have the sauce, and just dress it up with a little powdered sugar to make it look even prettier. And we have our apple-pie bread pudding. It's so moist and delicious. You can see the moistness is kind of -- The Bundt cake of it is kind of falling down. So I can't wait to bite into that. -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.