Kitchen Queens: New Orleans

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New Orleans" was provided by... -Today on "Kitchen New Orleans," three dishes starring eggplant, a versatile and tasty super-food. First -- charred eggplant, a stellar starter from Chef Amarys Herndon of Palm & Pine. Next -- eggplant fritters, a bayou favorite prepared by Chef Melissa Martin of Mosquito Supper Club. And finally, a classic French ratatouille, spinach, and goat cheese omelet from Chef Cara Benson of Toast. Stirring the pot with creativity and style, they're the New Orleans Kitchen Queens. Our first stop is North Rampart Street, the northernmost boundary in the historic Vieux Carr, and location of Palm & Pine. The restaurant, established by Chef Amarys Herndon, features a menu based on the cuisine of the South -- and south of that. Chef Amarys, who hails from the Lone Star State, put down roots in New Orleans after attending culinary school in the city. -And we're going to be making charred eggplant. We serve that on the shared portion of our menu. It's meant for the table, so a nice big piece of eggplant, whole chard, and then served with a bunch of accouterments to build your own crostini. So we're going to prick the eggplant first. When we char it on the grill, if we don't prick it, there's potential for hot eggplant lava explosion, which is not fun. All right, we're just going to get this eggplant started on the grill. That's just going to hang out there for a while. So we're going to make some fresh cheese for the charred eggplant dish. It's actually really easy to make fresh cheese. And it's kind of a fun thing, just a little party trick to show off if you have people over for dinner. "I made my own cheese." It's not that hard. So we're going to do a whole gallon of milk. You want a nice, tall pot. All right, there we go. One gallon of milk. So I got a thermometer in there, a candy thermometer. Those are really inexpensive. You can use a probe thermometer or any other kind of thermometer too. But these are nice because they just clip on the pot. And I'm going to put a couple teaspoons of salt in it. Now we're just going to let it come up to 165 degrees, and then we'll add our acid so that the cheese will set. And now we can move on to making our relish and just let that go for a little bit. So we have a bunch of cherry tomatoes that we got from Covey Rise Farms. I like to use different colors and varietals. They all bring a little different flavor. I use a cake tester. You can use a toothpick or anything else just to prick the flesh. That enables the oil and vinegar and all the seasonings to get into the tomatoes. I have a shallot that we're going to slice for the relish. It started out just roasting the tomatoes and then marinating them in oil and vinegar, but realized there is a better way to infuse even more flavor into them by heating the oil and doing -- it's like -- it's almost like the way you would pickle something, only with oil, so it's like a confit. And the oil just seizes into the tomatoes. So now I've got my shallots in here, too. Next, we're going to do a little garlic for the tomato relish. From New Braunfels, Texas, which is a little German town near Austin, small town, two rivers. Summertimes there are pretty -- pretty awesome. All the teenagers, you know, work at Schlitterbahn as lifeguards in the summertime. Or you get a job at a restaurant that's on the river. I think that's where my love of Mexican food came from, just growing up in Texas, being exposed to all that flavor all the time. So you got some sliced garlic now, too. Going in. And we're just seasoning the tomatoes. We don't need a lot of garlic or shallots, just getting some extra flavor in there. Next, we're going to do some dried oregano that we dried in-house. We like to hang them up over the range. All right, so a little chop on the oregano. The next ingredient for the tomato relish is these preserved lemons that we packed in salt for two years. There are Meyer lemons. They're really broken down from the salt. You can make preserved lemons in just about three weeks and have a delicious, usable product. But this just develops more umami flavor as they change. And I'm just removing any seeds. I'm going to use the flesh and the rind. But at this point, everything has just become gooey, delicious lemon pulp, basically. And you can use any lemons, but the Meyer lemons really, really add an extra umami flavor. They're just kind of more fruity, I think. Going to add a healthy amount of salt. And normally, you don't want to use super full containers when you're making things because you're trying to mix. This, I'm trying to keep it really concentrated so the hot oil just goes right over it and everything just seizes into the tomato. The final ingredient besides the oil is sherry vinegar. And that with the preserved lemon give a real brightness to this tomato relish we really like. So I have just plain white distilled vinegar here and then lemon juice. Remember, the salt's already in there. The salt encourages the curds and whey to separate as it's heating. When your cheese is done, you can always adjust and add more salt if you want a more seasoned product. All right, so I stir this in. And then as I was getting the acid, it's already come up to 185 degrees, which is the temperature you want for your cheese. And now we just let it sit until the curds and whey separate. So our oil is nice and hot. Now you want to pull it before it hits a smoking point, but when you're starting to see little... a little haziness on the surface of the oil, and it's like right before it starts to smoke. Something that experience just brings. Use a pure olive oil. Extra virgin olive oil is a little too bitter for this application. And now we're getting steam because the oil is reacting with the liquid and the tomatoes. You can even see some little bits of the shallot and lemon with a little fried texture to them. The oil's so hot. You just want to be kind of careful because we are in a nice crowded container. If we pour too fast, then you could get either steam burns just from the steam coming off or have the oil actually overflow, which would be...messy. Smells pretty good right now. And I'm just going to move a few things a little bit, but you can see the skin shrinking on the tomato, and that's all we're looking for, just softening up. So these will sit for 24 hours and just soak in all that flavor. All right, you can see the eggplant's kind of deflating. It's nice and squishy. I'm going to pull it off. There's some juices, and I'm just checking all throughout to make sure that it's nice and soft and tender. We want that, like, velvety eggplant texture. All right. Now I'm going to go ahead and cut a slit in it to release a little steam before I handle it so that I don't burn myself.

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So you can see the curds forming. We would transfer this into a chinois, or you can put it in cheesecloth and let any extra liquid drain out of it. So I usually let this mixture sit and separate the curds from the whey for about 30 minutes. So after it sits for about 30 minutes and the curds and whey have fully separated, we'll pull the curds out, which is the cheese, and we'll put it in something to drain. We use a chinois here, which is a really fine mesh sieve, and we just let it sit there for about 12 hours to let all the moisture come out of it. So that's another thing that's great to do in advance. If you make it the day you're serving it, you'll just have a little wetter of a cheese product. It will still be cheese. And then this is our finished product here, nice and crumbly. It's going to be delicious with the eggplant. Like to leave the skin really open so you can see the eggplant all splayed out. All right. So I just score the eggplant a little bit so it's easier to share when it's at the table, just picking it up with a spoon. And then you're definitely going to want to put some salt on that eggplant, bring out all its flavor right there in the flesh. Next, I'm going to put the cheese on it. I like to be pretty generous with the cheese. Ooh, that's there. Next, we're going to put on the tomato relish. This is some made a couple days ago. And I'll put some of that directly on the flesh. The acid is really delicious with the eggplant. There. And then I'll get some of the oil on top of the cheese and the eggplant. Next, I'm going to tear some herbs. I have basil. We go pretty heavy on the basil, and nice big pieces of torn basil. And I'm placing it strategically in ways for delicious bites, but also for presentation. I'm going to put a little bit of parsley on too. We use less parsley. The basil's the flavor we really want to come through. But a little bit of that clean, sharp parsley is nice, too. Just a little palate cleansing as you're eating all that rich, velvety, cheesy eggplant. And then we have some toasted crushed peanuts. I think this complements the dish really well. A little texture, a little depth of flavor. And then you can just drizzle it with some more oil from the relish or some olive oil. We have this really cool peanut oil that we like to use on the dish here. And I will wait till I put the bread on because I like to drizzle a little of it on the bread as well. All right, bread here. And then we just do a little drizzle of the peanut oil, a little extra intensity of peanut flavor. And there you have it. Charred eggplant. -Tucked away in the Milan neighborhood of Uptown New Orleans is the Mosquito Supper Club, a restaurant that celebrates the Cajun heritage of Chef Melissa Martin. A graduate of Loyola University, the Chauvin, Louisiana, native honed her culinary skills in Napa Valley before returning to New Orleans. Through a family style dining experience, Chef Melissa shares the dishes of her childhood on Bayou Petit Caillou. -So we're going to make eggplant fritters. We had eggplant fritters a lot on the bayou growing up. My mom made them mostly for my dad. So we already cooked our eggplant in, like, a 450-degree oven until it completely is soft and ready to bust open. These were in for way over an hour and a half. So I'm just going to open it up. And usually when you cook it this long, the skin should come right off. And just with my fingers, I'm just going to scrape out all the inside into a strainer on top of a bowl. I'm going to push out any excess liquid through the holes so it's not too liquidy. So, and this is just two. You could use one big one. You can use any different kind of eggplant. I've tried it with many different varieties at the farmer's market. When we fry eggplants, we'll use the smaller ones, too. In this case, there's not a lot of water. I'm just pressing it to make sure if there's any excess liquid, we're getting it out. You can set it to -- if you feel like there's a lot of water in it, you can set it to strain for a little while and then come back to it. In this case, there's not a lot of water, so we don't have to worry about it. To put together this recipe, it's really, really, really easy once you have the eggplant done. I like to use the fork as -- to put it together. So we're using regular AP white flour. And then we're using some freshly milled flour from Bellegarde Bakery. This is freshly milled Ruby Lee. One of the things I like to do with these classic recipes or these traditional recipes, is I like to try to back out as much of the AP flour as I can because the freshly milled flour has nutritional value to it that the white flour doesn't have. So we like to use this in as many things as we can. For this recipe, you could probably go 100 percent freshly milled flour. It would change the flavor profile that I am chasing after. And so we only use a little bit in it, but it definitely is a great addition. A little bit of sugar, not too much. Baking powder. And just take a fork, stir this all up. You could certainly sift it, if you want, together. I think a fork does a really great job. I just sort of make a well in the center the way you would when you would be making pasta. And I add my wet ingredients. So, milk. Egg. And then the eggplant. And we like it with vanilla. So a little bit of vanilla. Then you're just going to take your fork and bring it together. Once you have a batter, I take some extra AP and I just cover it, and this will help us scoop them. So this comes together really quickly, and then you're ready to fry them. If you wanted to make this ahead of time for a dinner party or something, you could certainly make it ahead of time, put it in the fridge. It will last for a couple of days. So now we're going to fry these fritters. I'm using a small scooper, a number 100, a 75. You can also make them larger. They take a little bit longer to fry. Either way, you're just going to scoop them, and you want to try to scoop them rather fast. And I'm going to probably try to get maybe 12 to 15 in here. My mom made them more like patties, so she fried them in a pan on the stove. So once you get a good amount in there, you're going to knock them. make sure they're not stuck. And get them all to come to the surface, and then we're just going to cook them till they're golden brown. It's going to take about five minutes. And we'll give them a little bit of time on this side and then we'll flip them over. So I'm just going to flip them. When I'm doing these, even though I've done these, you know, hundreds of times, sometimes I make a tester just so I can break it open and make sure they're done inside. But, yeah, we just flip them over. They're golden on one side, so we're going to give them a couple of minutes on the other side and then they will be ready. We're going to drain them. And then you can have these with whatever you want. You can serve them with powdered sugar, but I'm going to serve them with cane syrup. I think these are done. So take them out. Strain them for a second. And then......drain them again. So, yeah, really easy, simple dish to put together. Um, great appetizer. That's what we normally serve them at the restaurant. We send them out first, and people are usually not disappointed. And then......we like to -- and we like to drizzle ours with cane syrup. These are our eggplant fritters. -Our final destination is Uptown New Orleans and Toast, a bakery and breakfast spot opened by Chef Carol Benson in 2014. Chef Cara, who trained at the French Culinary Institute of New York, believes her greatest influence came from her grandmother, a native of Luxembourg who prepared traditional French fare at her home in Saint Francisville, Louisiana. -All right, now we're going to make our ratatouille. It's a stewed eggplant dish. We have our roasted veggies right here. We have squash and zucchini that we roasted together all at 350. They take about 15 minutes. We have our eggplant diced up right here. We roasted it for about 20 minutes. And then our whole garlic cloves and diced onion takes about 45 minutes till the garlic starts to brown. We have our roasted veggies that we're going to put them in the pot.

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-Diced, roasted red bell pepper is added to the ratatouille base. -Get those nice and mixed up. Once you have your vegetables roasted off, it's a pretty fast and easy dish. We're going to put some tomato paste in here. Just cook that for a couple minute. Okay. Then we're going to add our red wine. And that we're just going to cook for a few minutes to cook the alcohol out of it. So you want to stir it up so the bottom and the corners don't burn. We're going to do our ratatouille omelet, which is ratatouille, sauteed spinach, and goat cheese. And then we're going to serve that with our multigrain toast that we make here in-house and a fresh fruit cup. And then once the red wine is cooked down a little bit, you're going to add your water and just let that cook a little bit. And then that will cook for a few minutes, and we'll finish it off with some fresh tomatoes and basil. The vegetables are going to be seasoned, too, so when you get to this point, you're just going to want to taste it. And season accordingly. So this is our spice mix for the ratatouille. It's cayenne, paprika, oregano, onion, and garlic powder. Put a little salt. So we make all of our bread in-house. We have multigrain, sourdough, and brioche. Our multigrain that we're going to be serving with the omelet -- and we do a lot of our toast on -- we start with a soaker of cornmeal, oats, wheat bran. We let that sit overnight. And then the next day we mix it with brown rice, whole wheat flour, honey, brown sugar, yeast, bread flour. And it takes a few hours to make. You mix it, and then you proof it, you turn it, you proof it again, you scale it, shape it, proof it again, and bake it. So we're going to pull this off and then stir in our fresh tomatoes. And basil. We're just going to put this in the cooler now to chill for a little bit, and then we'll use it in our ratatouille omelet. I'm just cutting the multigrain for toast and then we just butter it and we toast it on the crepe machine. So now we're going to make our ratatouille omelet. I have some butter here. Put it in the pan. And then we just buzz our eggs, whole eggs in the blender. We don't incorporate any air, but just so that they're nice and yellow. You want to get your pan hot, your butter all the way melted. And then we do a rolled omelet, a French rolled omelet, where you're going to do, like, a soft scramble, spread it out, and then refill it. So once that's pretty hot, go ahead and put your eggs in. It's about three whole eggs. And then you're going to just quickly cook it. Put a little salt. Once it just starts to... look like a soft scramble, you're going to pull it from the heat. Just spread it out. And then we have our ratatouille that we made earlier that's nice and cool. Like that. Put some of that in. We have some sauteed spinach. And some goat cheese. Then we're just going to pop it in the oven to warm everything up. Okay, we're going to pull that out. And we're just going to roll it right onto the plate. Just tuck it in a bit. Give it a a little butter on top to shine it up. We'll put our multigrain toast on. Our fresh fruit. And that's the ratatouille omelet with spinach and goat cheese served with multigrain toast and fresh fruit. -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 WYES-TV on Facebook and Instagram. -Funding for "Kitchen New Orleans" was provided by...