Kitchen Queens: New Orleans

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New Orleans" was provided by... -Today on "Kitchen Queens" New Orleans," three star-studded dishes from the Pelican State. First, Maxine's shrimp okra gumbo, straight from the bayou home of Chef Melissa Martin of Mosquito Supper Club. Next, Louisiana crab and corn maque choux dip from Becky Wasden and Jaimee Greenleaf of Chicks With Dips. And finally, an award-winning version of a Louisiana classic, shrimp Creole, from Chef Tia Henry at Caf Dauphine. Stirring the pot with creativity and style, they're the New Orleans Kitchen Queens. We head to Uptown New Orleans and Dryades Street to pay a visit to the Mosquito Supper Club, a family-style Cajun restaurant in a 19th-century home. Established by Chef Melissa Martin, the restaurant celebrates the seafood recipes of her childhood on Bayou Petit Caillou in Terrebonne Parish. -So today we're going to make my mom's shrimp and okra gumbo. My mom grew up in Cocodrie, Louisiana, and this is the gumbo that I would have eaten in Chauvin pretty much every Sunday and then as leftovers during the week. The okra gumbo that I'm making has traditions heavily steeped in a Senegali African stew. Okra and gumbo are the same word. They're synonymous. "Gumbo" is French for "okra." And so this is really exciting, when I started doing research on gumbo, to find out how far back this technique went and how we used okra different from the way other folks used okra. When I started eating gumbo in New Orleans, I saw okra in larger chunks and different applications, but I've never seen anyone apply it the way that the ladies did on the bayou who I learned from, which is super exciting. So, my mom and her sisters would get together during okra season. I think that one of her sisters would trade shrimp for okra. They only used Texas longhorns, which was the okra of choice. There is no other okra but that one. And okra field, okra gardens were lined up, up and down the bayou in Chauvin and still are. People still swear by okra. They would all get together and chop down bushels, or cases and cases, of okra into these little pieces. And then they would use big pots to smother their okra for the year. So, you would smother tons and tons and tons of okra and then put it away in your freezer. So when it wasn't summertime and you didn't have it, you could have okra gumbo all year long. So it always gets a little unnerving at the end of the year, before okra has come back in season, when you use your last bag of okra, because then you know you can't make any more gumbos if that's the gumbo that you're making. We just take the okra. We cut it into these small little discs so it breaks down easier. And then you just put it on the lowest possible fire that you can put your stove on. You put the okra in, and you put a cover on it. And the smothering -- "touffe" actually means "to smother" -- is actually, you know, you're choking the air out and it's going to sweat. The pot will sweat on itself to sort of lubricate it. You want to lift the lid, and you want to stir probably about every 35, 40 minutes, to make sure you're not sticking. Everyone's low heat is different. If you're sticking, you can add tiny bits of water. You don't want too much. Keep stirring it, and essentially, you just keep smothering it until you have this. About an hour before you're going to take it off the stove, we add a tomato, and that tomato neutralizes the slime in okra. A lot of people are really scared of okra because of the slime. But an acid will really neutralize it. It could be a tomato, it could be vinegar, it could be lemon. For us, it was a tomato. Depending on how much tomato you add, then I may or may not put tomato in my gumbo. In this case, I will. But, yeah, so, then you get this sort of sludge, and you can take this and do just shrimp and okra over rice. You can use it as a base for a chicken gumbo. I always stick some in my gumbos' herbs. Whatever you want to thicken. And okra is so good for you that it's great to have. So, the ingredients are really simple. Once you have the smothered okra, then it comes together pretty quickly. I'm using one large onion -- as my mom would say, a softball-size onion. So, I cut up and diced really small an onion. We have 2 cups of the smothered okra. I'm going to put a tomato in it, and we're going to cook all this down together. First is going to be the onions. So we can go ahead and get that started. So... I'm going to use some canola oil. This is about 2 tablespoons of canola oil. You can use any oil you like that is neutral. I wouldn't suggest using olive oil if you want the flavors, if you're chasing the same flavor I am. But I oftentimes use leaf lard, because I really love the way it cooks. But canola oil is just fine. So, just enough oil to cover the bottom of your pot. Let that heat up a little bit before we add your onions. When you put your onions in, you want to hear some sound.

Onions sizzling

Spoon clanging on pot

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I always say that these are the sounds of my childhood. When I was growing up, I was one of six kids, and my mom was cooking lunch and dinner before we were even up in the morning. So I would always hear the...

Spoon clanging on pot

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...and the stir and the sound of the onions hitting the oil before I actually got out of bed, when I was just sitting in bed. Oh, you're going to cook these down until they're translucent and you can see through them and they start to get a golden color on them. So, once you have your onions -- once they're golden brown and translucent, you're going to add your smothered okra. So -- And some bay leaf. It's funny, I always see everywhere the different Cajun spices that you can purchase and procure and everything. For us, we used very simple ingredients. We used salt, pepper, cayenne, hot sauce -- it was always Louisiana -- and bay leaves. That was the only thing that my mom used. So, I'm adding the okra.

Food sizzling

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I'll let these guys smother together on the lowest heat for about 20 minutes, and then I will add my tomato to it. I always just break my tomato apart and sort of squeeze the juices and then let it break itself apart. I don't dice it or anything. I think you lose a lot of the liquid, and that liquid really helps to neutralize the okra a little bit more. And it's delicious. So, yeah. And then, again, you're going to stir it. And put the lid on, and let it smother together until the tomato is completely broken down. That's probably about another 30 to 40 minutes. So, we let our okra and tomatoes smother, and now we're ready to add our shrimp. So, I'm using about a medium-size shrimp right here. They've been peeled and deveined. So, I'm going to season them with salt......pepper -- black pepper, freshly ground -- some cayenne......and hot sauce. So, this is the first time that I add any salt or pepper or any of the spices to the gumbo. I wait to add it with the shrimp to deliver the spices. So I'm just going to mix that up. So, we seasoned our shrimp, and now we're going to add them to the pot. So, give them a really good stir. You really want to mix it all up together. If you have anything sticking on the bottom of the pot, usually the moisture from the shrimp will help release any of that. So... And then we're going to cover them again, and we're going to let them cook for 10 minutes. And now we can give it a stir, and we're going to add water. Right here, I have 3 quarts of water. Go ahead and add it in. And to give it just that extra shrimp flavor, I'm going to go ahead and add these shrimp heads. And we're going to give it a stir and turn the heat up just a little. And once it comes to a simmer, we're just going to hold it at a simmer for a little while and let all the ingredients marry together for about 20, 30 minutes. So, this is my grandmother's Magnalite pot and my mom's gumbo that she would make on Sunday. So it's a very simple shrimp okra gumbo. You have to go fishing again for the shrimp in your gumbo. Super simple. If you want to, uh, pull the heads out, because they have these really nice antennas. Or you can leave them in. And then you want to put some rice in there. And then we always garnish it with parsley and green onion. So, here we are, Maxine's shrimp okra gumbo. -Next stop, the colorful Bywater neighborhood, a mix of arts, industry, and residential life in the shadow of the Mississippi River, near the French Quarter. The area is base for Two Girls One Shuck, a traveling oyster bar operation, and its seafood and sides spin-off Chicks With Dips, operated by Becky Wasden and her all-female team, including shuckateer Jaimee Greenleaf. Today's crab and corn maque choux dip begins with melted butter. -So, get that going. Here we have some precut onion or shallots/ And we want to go ahead and let them get tender. -This is the first stage of the recipe. This is the corn maque choux. It is a Native American recipe that has been translated in both Creole and Cajun recipes. We keep our maque choux extremely simple. Once again, with food assembly, all you'll need is four ingredients. Let this go for a few minutes, and then we're going to add our corn. This is drained corn. Very important, you don't want that extra water, or it'll taper down the flavor of the butter. -So we're going to let this saut for a few minutes. -We make the hot portion of the dip first so that, once it sauts, we set it off to the side as it cools. We'll then come to our dip base. And in stage 3, we fold them together. -You're going to be tempted to add the red bell pepper with sauting, but we like to remove this from the heat so the red bell pepper keeps a little bit of the crunch. So, this is smelling really good. That's how I like to tell if it's been going long enough. So we're going to go ahead and take it off of the key and set it aside. -With the skillet off the heat, the diced red pepper is added, keeping it slightly crunchy. -So while our maque choux is cooling, we're going to go ahead and make the other base. Here, we have cream cheese, mayonnaise, and sour cream. So, we're going to use a hand mixer to blend these together. We're going to do 3 tablespoons of fresh lemon. -And, again, every lemon varies in size, so try to measure out the best you can. Smells so good. Fresh squeezed lemon, mmm! There are a variety of Cajun seasonings to be found out there. We like a nice, well-balanced seasoning that's not too spicy, it's got a little salt. -We're going to use one teaspoon of this. -To start -And then we'll add more to taste later. You're going to want to start on the lowest speed.

Mixer whirring

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I'm very proud that it's not going completely everywhere. -

Chuckles

Mixer stops whirring

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Okay, so, once this is all nice and blended, we're going to add a pint of fresh Louisiana crab. -And we intentionally didn't use the hand mixer with the crab, because you want to hand-fold it in to keep your crab intact. -Correct. Green onion. So, you want to fold in the lump crab meat with the cream base and green onion. And now our cooled corn maque choux goes into the mix. Mmm. This is looking great. -You can get creative on serving methods. We use saltine crackers, little melba toasts, you can do tortilla chips, pita bread. Some of you may even bake your own bread. This is also a recipe that I would recommend making a day ahead and letting it chill in the fridge overnight. And the taste is fantastic. -And there you have it. Louisiana crab and corn maque choux dip. -We end today's tour in the Holy Cross section of the Lower 9th Ward, where resident families go back several generations. Caf Dauphine is a gem in the historic neighborhood, showcasing the good Southern comfort food of Chef Tia Henry. -Today I'm going to be preparing for you one of our popular dishes that we serve here at the restaurant. The star of this dish is the Louisiana Creole tomato. Louisiana Creole tomato is a tomato that is a locally grown tomato. It's grown along the river parishes here. So, St. Bernard Parish, Plaquemines Parish, St. Bernard Parish is just a short walk from here. So this is why I chose to prepare this dish for you and also because I participate in a local festival here called the Creole Tomato Festival. And I won Most Traditional Dish for this dish. I'm going to make a blond roux first. And I'm going to start with a stick and a half of butter. And I'm going to add all the components of the roux all at one time. So, I'm starting with the butter... the flour... minced garlic. And to this blond roux, I'm going to be adding chicken base. Chicken base is just a concentrated chicken stock. It just takes up less room in my refrigerator to have the base on hand, instead of gallons and gallons of chicken stock. So I'm going to get all of that well incorporated. And now I'm going to add my water. I want to stir my water and my roux constantly, because I don't want that roux to clump at the bottom of my pot. I'm also going to add in my browning sauce, and crushed red pepper flakes to give it a little heat. Two bay leaves. So, we're just going to let this simmer and reduce. We're going to turn it off when it starts to thicken and boil. For the second step of this dish, I'm going to melt butter into my pot. Into my melted butter, I'm going to add onions, bell peppers. I have red onions that I sliced julienne style. I have green bell peppers that I've also sliced julienne style. And I use -- mix mini sweet peppers. I prefer to use the mini sweet peppers because they're more tender and they have a sweeter flavor and they give you a different flavor as to just using the colorful red and yellow peppers. So, while those are sauting, I'm going to dice my Creole tomatoes. Shrimp Creole is a traditional New Orleans and Creole dish. It's usually made with a tomato gravy and tomato paste. I am not really a fan of tomato gravies and tomato paste. So this is my spin on shrimp Creole, when instead of using the tomato paste and tomato sauce, I stew fresh tomatoes instead. Caf Dauphine located in the historical district of the Lower 9th Ward. My husband's family is originally from the Lower 9th Ward. He grew up right across the street from the restaurant. So, following Hurricane Katrina, we purchased this building, which was a former corner store. This building was flooded with about 11 feet of water. So, after our purchase, it was gutted, but we had to completely renovate and put it back together. This is the first time I ever worked in a restaurant, let alone own a restaurant. I have a degree in biology/pre-med. I have no restaurant experience. However, I have a love for cooking. And when we decided to open up a restaurant here, it was just supposed to be a sandwich shop, and the concept just evolved into a full-service restaurant. We are one of very few businesses that are here, so the neighborhood is enthusiastic to have a full-service restaurant here. I don't think ever, probably, in the -- in the history of the Lower 9th, they've had a table-service, white-linen restaurant right in the middle of the neighborhood.

Food sizzling

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So, now that the onions and peppers have sauted down very nicely, I'm ready to add in my diced tomatoes.

Food sizzling

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Have to give that a stir. And the tomatoes are going to stew down and kind of make a gravy itself. And that's where we're going to get that nice tomato flavor infused in our brown gravy for our shrimp Creole. My brown gravy has cooked long enough, it's thick enough, so this is the consistency that it should be. So, just about the consistency if you were making rice and gravy at home -- the consistency that where it would stick to your rice or stick to your potatoes, because this gravy alone is just great by itself, just even over rice or over potatoes or over some type of meat. So, even if you have some extra gravy left over, by all means, freeze it and keep it to maybe use for another dish. So, we have this beautiful bowl of Gulf shrimp that had been peeled and deveined. I like to use a medium- to large-size shrimp. They're just more fun to eat. Now, at this point, I'm ready to add my shrimp to my stewing tomatoes. And this is about 2 pounds of shrimp that I peeled and deveined. Feel free to use bigger shrimp or a smaller shrimp, if you would like. Maybe even add some crawfish or crab to this recipe. It would be delicious, as well. Or if you're not a fan of seafood, you could even dice you up some chicken and put in this tomato stew. So, we're just going to cook all of this together until my shrimp are cooked. They'll change color from this gray color to a more white collar whenever they are done. So, our shrimp are almost cooked, and you can see that our shrimp looks to be white, with maybe some pink veins in it, and that's the way the shrimp is going to look. It's going to shrink a little bit and tighten up, as well. And we don't want to overcook our shrimp and let them get tough. So, right before all of the shrimp are finished cooking, we're going to add in the brown gravy so that everything can stew together. So, you can use as much or little of that brown gravy as you would like. I like my shrimp Creole to be really thick and chunky, so I don't use that much gravy. So, at this point, we're going to cover up our shrimp Creole dish and let this simmer for about 10 minutes, and whenever we come back, we'll be able to add rice to that and we'll be ready to eat. So, this is what our finished product looks like. So, you can see that the tomatoes have cooked down nicely, but there are still a few pieces in there where they're still visible. And I like to julienne my onions and peppers because I like to get nice whole pieces in there, because the flavor is just magnificent. We're going to serve the shrimp Creole over white rice -- or brown rice, if you would like. And I want to finish it off by garnishing it with some green onion to really make it pop. And you're gonna want some bread with this, 'cause I promise you, the gravy is so good, you're going to need something to sop it. And this is what the final product of our shrimp Creole looks like. It looks amazing. Those peppers and tomatoes and the gravy just looks delicious. Look at those beautiful shrimp, y'all. -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

Queens

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...