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. -Today on "Kitchen New Orleans," we explore another cultural connection through three robustly flavored Hispanic dishes. First, an easy and versatile salsa verde by Maribeth del Castillo of Taceaux Loceaux. Next, pierna de cerdo, a traditional pork dish by Melissa Araujo of Saveur Catering. And finally, a wonderfully complex Oaxacan mole with braised duck tamal by Amarys Herndon a Palm & Pine. Stirring the pot with creativity and style, they're the New Orleans Kitchen Queens. Our culinary adventure begins in Uptown New Orleans with a visit to Taceaux Loceaux. The restaurant features the inventive Mexican-inspired fare of Chef Maribeth del Castillo and her husband, Alex, who established the eatery as a spinoff of their well-traveled local food truck. -Today, we are making a very simple green salsa verde. So I'm using hatch chilies, which are in season for us about one month out of the year. Ordinarily, we would use poblanos, but when we get an opportunity to use these, we kind of jump on it. So what we'll do with these first is put them on the stove, and we're just going to blister the skins and cook them a little bit before we move on. So the hatch chilies originate in New Mexico. And like I said, we do get them for about a month out of the year. The interesting thing about them is it depends on the sunlight as to whether or not they're going to be spicy or a little bit more mild. So we really don't know what we get until they actually show up. So it's kind of fun. And these will just sit on the eye of the stove until the skin starts to blister, and then the insides will cook a little bit, at which time we'll take care of the rest of it. But if you don't do it this way or you have an electric stove, just put them in the oven. You can put them on broil. A little bit of olive oil, and they're ready to go. So you can see that this is what's supposed to happen. Salsa verde today is more of a Southwestern type thing. So a lot of times you will see it in New Mexico, Arizona, places like that. And we are a Mexican restaurant in Louisiana, but we take a lot of liberties with what we do and we kind of borrow and sort of experiment with a lot of things from different regions of not only our country, but also Mexico. So these are going to take a few minutes, so I'm going to pull these off because I've got a few that are already finished. But for you, once these are finished, what you would do is put them in a bowl or a container and seal it with Saran Wrap or some sort of plastic wrap and then put them in the fridge until they're cool and ready to handle. And so, as I mentioned, once they're cool enough to handle, the skins come very, very easily off, as you can see, just like this. We can take these down. And scrape the seeds out as well. The seeds are a little bit bitter sometimes, so we always take those out. For us, when we make salsa verde, we usually use poblanos because they're in season for us all year round. However, when I do have an opportunity to use hatch, we'll switch over to hatch. Now, I do supplement sometimes, and in this case as well, these hatch chilies aren't as spicy as normal, and I do like to make a spicy salsa verde. So we've incorporated a couple of jalapeos as well, and we've treated them the exact same way. So we've thrown them on the stove. You can see that the skin's blistered. I'm going to stem them and seed them and do the exact same thing. For the jalapeos, if you wanted them even hotter, you actually could leave this white membrane in. And there's a lot of heat in the membrane, so you could certainly leave that there. But we're going to take that out today. So now we're ready to put these in the blender, and everything just basically gets dumped in together. You would just hit it on blend for about 30 seconds. It's going to be ready to go. So what I'm doing is I'm starting with the chilies that we de-seeded and we de-stemmed and took the skin off. They go right in. To that, I'm going to add some beautiful cilantro. I've got some apple cider vinegar as well. You could use lime juice if you prefer. I'll do a little bit of water, so it cuts the vinegar a tiny bit. We've got some salt. And then I add a couple cloves of garlic also. You don't have to really mince it too much to put it in because the blender will take care of some of the work, but do flatten it a little bit and give it a rough chop before you put it in. And that'll go in as well.

Whirring and grinding

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And like I said, it just takes a few seconds. It's almost smooth. This is extremely versatile. We use it with chips. We put it on a couple of our tacos that we use at the restaurant. You could put it on eggs. It works on just about everything. And we're ready to go. -Farm-to-table is the mission of Saveur Catering, a New Orleans-based operation that reflects the varied culinary influences of chef Melissa Araujo. Born in Honduras, Chef Melissa learned to cook from her grandmother, who owned a farm there. As a teen, her family moved to New Orleans, and she began working in local restaurants. The well-traveled chef cooked in Italy and later ran a catering kitchen in Mexico, where she says she found a second home. -Today, I'll be cooking pierna de puerco de cerdo, which is roasted pork leg. -Chef Melissa is roasting pork butt instead of the traditional whole pork leg. -So we're going to make holes, deep ones with your paring knife. The reason why we do the holes are to put garlic in it and also let the sofrito, the mojo, and all the juices just get into the pork. So think about a marinade that you're doing, basically. You know, you want them to be a good medium size cloves. You're going to stick them in. It's a very messy process. This dish I learned to cook from my grandmother and my mother. -Marinated pork leg is a traditional Christmas dish in Mexico and Central America. -So the next process is basically salt and pepper. I don't measure. I just by eye. You know, you spread it out, then you massage it. And then black pepper, you do the same. -Next, the pork is rubbed with adobo, a chili-based sauce used for marinating meat. -My grandmother one time grabbed me and she's like, "All right, you're going to learn how to do this dish." We did it in an open fire. Modern times, you know, you don't do that anymore in an open fire, but that's the old-fashioned way to do it. She also passed down our culture. She was a Native American Mayan Indian woman. It reflects deep down who we are, you know, as a people because we utilize every part of the animal. And this particular one's the old-fashioned way. You wrap it up with banana leaves and you dig a hole and put it in the ground and then put coals on top of it. The next process, after you put the adobo, it's tomatoes with peppers in it. And you roast the tomatoes. You put chili guajillo, chili ancho. You roast them, and then you put them in the blender and you just blend it. This is a mixture of culantro. And it's light, different. The leaf for this is much bigger. It looks like lettuce. And then you have garlic and bell peppers. The traditional way, it's a whole leg of pork. This is two pork butts. All right. So like I said, it's very messy. Right before you put it in the oven, you throw in a couple of bay leaves. And after that, you open your oven. -Roast the pork in a 325-degree oven until the meat is fork tender, allowing about 45 minutes of cooking time per pound. Then cook another 30 minutes or so at 375 degrees until nicely browned. -So after eight amazing hours and cooking it slowly, this is the finished product. So...I can't resist it. So you just take a little nip out of it. It's amazing. If this was Christmas in Honduras, you would serve this in the middle of the table, and next to it would be a huge bowl of German potato salad. Number one thing Hondurans are obsessed with is German potato salad? I mean, I don't know why, but it's amazing. If you don't finish this in the 24 celebrating Christmas, this will become actually pulled pork sandwiches the next day. The flavors of it, the whole combination, the next day. This brings me so much memories as a child. -Our final destination is North Rampart Street, a historic French Quarter thoroughfare, and location of Palm & Pine. Established by chef Amarys Herndon and her husband, Jordan, the restaurant offers inventive reinterpretations of Southern, Caribbean, and Mexican food. A native of New Braunfels, Texas, Chef Amarys attended culinary school in New Orleans and spent seven years working with Chef Susan Spicer in the kitchen of Bayona. -This is Oaxacan mole with chili-crusted duck breast and a duck-braised tamal. So right now we're working on the Oaxacan mole, and we're charring some of the ingredients on the grill. -The mole contains several flavor components that will be pureed into a sauce. Chef Amarys starts with charred vegetables and fried chilies. -So we have our chilies for the Oaxacan mole here. I use four different types of chilies. We have guajillo chilies, we have pasilla chilies, or chili negro, mulatto chilies, and then the little chili moritas. So right now we're going to fry these chilies in duck fat. So I have some duck fat, nice and hot, and I'm going to do like half at a time. And we see them soaking in the grease here. Now we're going to let them sit for a second until they start to actually fry. The flesh will start to curl, and it will get really aromatic. You'll smell the chilies. And we're getting pretty hot now, so I'm just going to turn my oil down. I'm going to pull these guys. If a little oil remains in them, it's fine. All right, I'm going to turn this oil off, and I will reserve this for when we make masa dough in a little bit. All right, so these chilies are nice and bright. If you touch them, they're firm to the touch. They've actually crisped up. Now I'm going to add a little water to them to soften them back up. We've developed flavor by frying them, but we don't want to throw this right in the blender and be hard on our blades, so we want to soften them up with some water and give them something to puree with. And I'll just weigh it down with the other bowl and I'll let that sit. -Roasted peanuts, pecans, and almonds will go in the sauce, along with chili seeds that are toasted with sesame seeds in a dry skillet. And we're going to start with the chili seeds because we want to get some pretty dark toastiness on those. All right, you can see them getting darker and they're starting to pop as well. Toss, toss. That's what I want to see. Like 50 percent of them are that dark color. Gonna add the sesame seeds. Toss, toss. And there they go. Boom, boom, boom. -A combination of spices flavors the mole. -Cinnamon, clove, allspice, cumin, and coriander, Mexican oregano, avocado leaves, and bay leaves. -Finally, raisins plus overripe plantains and bananas add sweetness to the sauce. -We use plantains to garnish the dish. So we buy them, we let them get really ripe. Whenever any get overripe, they go in the freezer and we save them for mole. -The mole ingredients will be combined with duck stock and pureed until smooth. -All right, after it's all been blended, you'll end up with a paste. This is pretty nice and smooth, and it spreads on the plate well. The next step is the frying of the mole, and then we'll add chocolate, honey, and salt to season. All right, so we get a little bit of oil in our pan, and we want to get it nice and hot. So when we make the mole in the restaurant, we're making huge batches, it'll be a big rondeau. We would do it on our big stock burner or it would take up the whole range. But we're just going to do a little bit to show you so that it's a little less messy. All right, so you got a nice, hot pan. You can hear that sizzle.

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You can see it sticking to the pan a little bit, getting some caramelization. We would add a little more stock back into it, because we're going back to the consistency we're looking for now that we've intensified those flavors. So a little stock. So next, we add in our chocolate drink mix. We'll bust it up into some pieces. We'll just do a little bit since we're doing a tiny batch. And we stir that in and let that melt. We would also add a little honey and salt to adjust the flavor. All right, our chocolate is melted. We're just going to add a little honey, sweeten things up. Little salt for seasoning. And then this will go on the base of the plate for the entire duck dish, and also it will get smothered on top of the tamal. We're about to make masa dough for our tamales. we're going to start out with masa, which is ready to go. It has already been ground. And you can buy it at any grocery these days. You can find masa anywhere. And then we have our chili duck fat that we use from the mole, frying the chilies before. And then we have a little baking powder, and we have chicken stock getting hot. I just like to use a stock to add extra flavor. So you got masa. A little salt. Baking powder.

Taps

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Some of the chili fat. And we're mixing.

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And we're just going to incorporate the fat into the masa a little bit, get a little aeration, and then we'll stream in our hot stock. All right, here we go. All right, and we just want to add a little more stock, getting it nice and moist. We're looking for it to be bound together, soft, and moist. When we pull it out, you'll see. And then we're going to let it go for a little bit. So I can see it all coming together now and can see some masa dough kind of sticking to the sides of the bowl. So it's nice and wet. And we're essentially just kneading the masa dough a little bit. So tamales are near and dear to me from my time growing up. We would always have tamales around Christmas. Usually that was a way to -- for people to make extra money to buy Christmas presents for their kids around Christmastime. So my dad worked in restaurants in Texas, and the cooks that worked with him, their wives would make tamales and send them with their husbands to work to sell so that they could buy Christmas presents. So I got used to eating tamales on Christmas Eve and Christmas every year. And when I moved to New Orleans, that was something I was really homesick for. I kept finding a lot of good Honduran food, but I wasn't really finding the tamales. So that's when I first started making tamales at home and in restaurants. So you can see it's a really nice, pliable, soft dough. It's got enough oil in it where it doesn't stick to my hands, but it's nice and soft. We're going to make this in banana leaves. So you can buy big packs of banana leaves, and it's just these long strips. And you just cut them down to the size you need. I do wipe them off. Sometimes there's a little dirt on them, just like anything else you get from out in nature. And then we do -- In the restaurant, we do 2.8 ounces of masa dough. My hands know it pretty well. This is 3. Now it's 2.8. Oh. Now it's 2.8. And we're just going to flatten it out. We're not trying to make a perfect circle or square, we're just trying to get some space, not mess with it too much. The more you touch it, as it is a nice, wet dough, it will start to stick to your hands. As you continue to make them, if you have to put a little oil on your hands, that's okay, too. And so it's pretty even. It's not perfectly even. That's fine. We're going to add our braised duck filling. So this is the duck legs. We get in the whole ducks for the mole dish, and we use the carcasses for the stock, the breast for the presentation, which you'll see, and the duck legs we put a little cure on, and then you can either braise or sous vide them and we do it with a stout beer, carrots, smoked onion, and some spices. And then after it's done, we chop up the skins, reduce the braising liquid, pick the meat, mix it all together, and add some raisins, which we also put in the mole so we're reinforcing that raisin flavor. So you use your banana leaf as the guide. And we just fold it over. And then I take my fingers and I tuck the duck in. And then we're just going to seal it around. Pinch the edges. And then you make a little fold. And just fold it over. And it's a nice, beautiful little package. And then we will steam these for 30 to 35 minutes until they're done. If you're doing less tamales, usually you have more steam, so they cook faster. If you're doing a bunch, sometimes you need to go a little bit longer. Let's see your duck breast. So we have a duck breast here. In the restaurant, we sous vide the duck breast, so that's cooked under pressure at 134 degrees for an hour. So you can definitely just cook this duck from raw on the stove -- that's no problem. I first did this dish when I was working at Bayona. We didn't use immersion circulators there, and we would start the duck in the pan and then finish it on the grill. It worked out great that way too. This dish was actually on the menu at Bayona for --

Sizzles

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...see, I love that sound -- um, for I believe about two years. I was sous chef there and had been playing with this mole and went to Susan and let her know that I was thinking about doing it with duck. And she was like, "Hmm, I was thinking about changing the duck dish anyway. Work on it. Let me taste it. Let me see what I think." So I did. She gave me feedback, continued to perfect it. And then one day I walked in, and this duck dish was on the signature side of the menu, which was pretty cool and a lot of trust because that's her putting her name on something that she definitely guided me and then helped me make. So because this has been cured and sous vide'd, the duck fat is nice and tight and well-rendered already, so we're just getting a little crispness to it and rendering it a little farther. If you were cooking it from raw, you would want to start with a warm pan where you hear that sound that you heard when it hit the pan, the like, pfft, you know. And then you want to turn it down and let it slowly render, and you'll see the fat seize up, slowly rising, and then you'll see the flesh start to cook. And only then would you even consider flipping the duck breast to the other side. You want to cook it like 90 percent of the way on the skin side, if you're cooking it from raw, because you don't want to have that gummy fat. All right, we're going get a little sear on the non-skin side, the fleshy side. Yeah, we're really nicely rendered. The fat's super tight. Got some good golden color. And that is going to be delicious. All right, we're ready to plate the Oaxacan mole. Here's the mole that we worked so hard to make going down on the plate first. And take this really rustic, homey dish and give it a little bit of plating technique, but not too much. We don't want it to feel forced. We want it to feel natural, to feel like it was made with love and not that someone was, you know, picking at it with tweezers. All right. So we're going to slice the duck breast. We serve half a duck breast on it in the restaurant. The tamal is pretty filling. So you can see that's sous vide'd to a nice medium. Nice and pink and juicy. I like to plate with a little bit of the banana leaf on the plate so you know where it came from, how the tamal got to your plate. So I'll usually do, like, a little triangle, sometimes a rectangle, whatever, whatever comes off nicely. And then... we move... the tamal onto the plate. And we're going to put a little more mole right on top of that. Because you want to make sure you get the mole in every bite. And then the plantains. They've been fried and then seasoned with a little of the cure that we use on the duck breast -- it's a cocoa chili rub. And then chimichurri. We want to be really liberal with that. It brings nice brightness to the dish. The chimichurri is really heavy in lime, cilantro, and cumin, and we use white onion in that for some nice, sharp flavor. So we're not messing around. We're putting a bunch chimichurri on there, keeping it super bright. And this is probably the dish that means the most to me and expresses who I am as a cook. The absolute most. This is Oaxacan mole with chili-crusted duck breast. -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.