A Taste of Louisiana with Chef John Folse & Co.

louisiana she's the exception and never the rule she's a mystery that asks not to be solved but simply to be experienced louisiana where you can come as you are and leave different whether you're planning a louisiana convention family reunion or a southern vacation the louisiana association of convention and visitors bureaus connects you to information sources throughout the state the louisiana association of convention and visitors bureaus the baton rouge area convention and visitors bureau welcomes you and yours to baton rouge louisiana state capitol from the old governor's mansion to fabulous dining and sonico dancing baton rouge authentic louisiana at every turn popeyes chicken and biscuits featuring cajun style chicken red beans and rice and buttermilk biscuits all flavored by the memories and imaginations of louisiana chefs popeyes chicken and biscuits committed to preserving louisiana's flavor heritage here in louisiana we have a saying we don't need to live we live to eat and y'all that could have a double meaning in every bayou village and home we visited we found one thing to be true although all of our dishes taste great they're not all good for us so my mission today is to take our time-honored recipes and make them a little healthier for us i'm chef john false welcome to louisiana cooking with a change of heart all right how y'all doing hello hello how are you hello oh look at this gorgeous hat right here love that chapo hey y'all how are you welcome welcome everybody to my home kitchen it's so nice to have you all here today what a challenge i have to cook for some of the greatest cooks in louisiana today the people who live near are on lake disarmament in the little town of vashri louisiana it's wonderful to have you all here and you're all here for one reason this gorgeous lady and i'll throw tony and as uh well here florence and tony gravwa from bachelor louisiana she submitted to me a recipe for one of the most famous desserts of louisiana tigato our petit gator the little bitty cakes are cookies that we serve not only for christmas but also for cajun weddings and holidays all year long my challenge today to take her recipe made with all those good things y'all and modify it slightly so i went over to florence's home she opened up the kitchen for me and gave me a great lesson in making tigato's the old way why don't y'all join us and see what i learned that day had a great time didn't we huh when you visit folks in louisiana during growing season the first thing you do when you get down from your car is to go and see the garden visiting with the gravois was no different from bush beans to eggplants and sweet corn and the tomatoes over there if they they food the first time back on their celebrity ah that's a good tomato yeah y'all mr gravois garden was beautiful i walked everywhere but i couldn't find a blade of grass you could live in this garden that's the way the old timers used to make a garden you don't see a garden like this and y'all look at this beautiful crop of sweet corn and all days corn was probably the most important crop it fed the family but more than that it fed the livestock too mr gravois was full of great stories and great thoughts to him a pecan tree of garden and kids that makes a backyard and y'all i know he's right now on to the kitchen with miss gravois in those fantastic high toasts now just about just about everybody who lived in south louisiana made these little yes for the holidays they all had that did they make them any any other time other than the holidays or normally just for like the christmas season we make it to children's falls a tigato or sugar cookie dough is made simply with butter sugar baking powder eggs and flour the secret is getting to the right consistency now these are going into the hot into the oven what 350 degrees 350 for about 12 to 15 minutes 12 to 15 minutes that's all you don't want to overflow you just want to kind of keep them nice get them too hard if they were overcooked now this is a look at this here it doesn't want to have to sample one you must you know guess what they look how nice and thin they are too nice enough you don't want yeah overcooked would get them porn

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look like the pig toes i remember brings that memories doesn't well the family gathered around the table for tiga toes coffee and conversation about one of the mysteries of saint james parish the mad stone advisory and this man the stranger with an indian i think he gave him the stone to keep because he had been so fortunate that year right and he said it came from the stomach of the dead so to start so the story is that his grandfather was was sick or bitten or whatever then and an indian came to the door and brought the stone and said that they could use it to take the venom from the snake bite out and actually saved his life right and then the indian said that it was that the stone actually came from the stomach of a deer and i had heard it was a that somewhere along the way there's a stomach of a white deer or just you said oh i did always show you this isn't some urban legend or country folklore the stone has been in the family since the early 1800s saving the lives of numerous family members and even strangers the stone is placed on the bite in sixth air until the venom is drawn out while in the area i toured lake to sally mall the lake of the germans where my ancestors settled back in the early 1700s i even paid my respects to my grandparents at our lady of peace cemetery visited the school that my dad attended advisory and even took a look at what was once my grandparents home there's nothing like going back to our roots to remember how close to home we always stay oh i tell you y'all that was a fantastic trip wasn't that nice huh uh y'all not not only not only did it go on the viceroy did i not only going to vascular did i get a great lesson in tigato's but of course i went back uh in family history because my grandmother's from there in fact in fact florence i wanted to introduce a couple of people now i know you and tony here by the way y'all celebrating this year 68 years of marriage 68 years of marriage

Applause

uh he he was he was okay for 68 years you think he can continue to go on with him i don't know about that

Laughter

y'all i should also introduce uh a couple of other people because uh rex rex is my camera operator here y'all my main guy rex i want you to take a look at this picture here because this wonderful couple had three sets of twins in the family three sets of twins you see the two little guys right here that will last the two girls here and the two girls here and i have two of the twins the two of the twins i have the twins uh the first set of twins sitting right at the front counter here iris to the right right in that gorgeous blue and linda in the green the first set of twins let's give them a hand right there now uh now that's pretty rare to have three sets of twins and a family right yes that's right they're rare especially back in those days many many many years ago i don't mean to say that y'all over you know what i mean y'all are just beautiful y'all a couple of other quick introductions here in the room is five i think of the daughters maybe more another set of twins right here all the daughters raise your hands and wave huh there you go another set of twins there and then one of the younger daughters here y'all my dad is in the room back there look at roy lee falls he's sitting in the back of the room right there all right yeah we went to die at his school we went to all of his places too it's uh really it really was a fun uh trip to viceroy that day and one more person at the front counter here and i uh this is my aunt tim my mother's youngest sister saint thompson i want you to give me that book real fast i need to get cooking here y'all but this is so important uh this is so important when i was uh six years old rex look at that gorgeous child right in the front there you see see that gorgeous young man right there huh you see that beautiful face that's me at uh six years old in aunt todd's wedding i'll tell you i made the wedding party i'm happy to say huh

Applause

all right y'all uh rex i'm sorry i have to introduce two more people before i start cooking right here in the front sister colleen and marna from st michael special school in new orleans two wonderful people who do so much work with special children and look at my sister i forgot my sister back there look at that smile my sister back there you're going wave go ahead and wave yeah there you go my sis all right y'all the show's over we can go home now huh uh tiga toes one of the most famous desserts in louisiana now you've been doing tigato's for how many years oh ever since i had my first child was about seven years old so you've been doing it for like 180 years every bird didn't want to get red and have it oh yeah and now you could decorate the tiga toes in any fashion with any color but y'all rex let me show you uh first of all some of the ingredients and then i want to get out there and show you how i lay it up i'm going to do mine in a food processor normally you do it in a mixer but i have low fat margarine right here light margarine and sugar louisiana is the sugar state and we really use a lot of sugar in our desserts as well i'm going to use all kind of evaporated skim milk right here evaporated skim milk which is like cream and then egg substitute i'm going to put all of that together in just a second but let's come right over here and look at these the dough here because this is a kind of a complicated dish it's a very sweet dough and i roll the dough out like this y'all get it about a half inch thick some people put it about a quarter inch thick and get it really nice and uh and uh uh thin and then you of course cut the cookies you bake them in an oven only for about 10 minutes they're very tender like this you can see and then wrecks our column with all these beautiful pastel icings and of course different times a year you call them with different icings red or green for christmas and we also have mardi gras so let's get over here uh right now y'all in here i have my now you always do yours in a mixer or a hand mixer or what what do you normally do again mixer a hand mixer okay so i'm gonna go ahead and mix my sugar here tony's getting up to make sure he likes to what i'm doing here giving me his approval that's what i like now into this y'all now that the sugar and the uh uh the uh light margarine is in here now i'm gonna add a couple of other key ingredients to this dish first of all egg substitute egg substitute 99 egg white 99 egg white no fat and of course a little yellow food coloring it does the same thing egg yolks will do in a recipe and now i'm going to blend that around and just blend that until it gets nice and um michelle was trying to show me something y'all but she had it upside down over there i got yeah hey rex hit michelle over there get that cute card down no that's look at that yeah hit michelle over there that's our cue card see okay y'all now once all of this is in now i got to put a little vanilla in here sister colleen i have to put a little vanilla in here you know i make my vanilla homemade y'all i use a bourbon or brandy a pint with two vanilla beans you buy them at the store split them in half put them in here for about six months uh the alcohol steeps the vanilla it's absolutely fantastic i'm going to put a i'm going to put a tablespoon and tony a tablespoon for you okay and and now teague i told you tito's y'all normally have a little almond extract in them too a little almond extract to give you that little almond flavor just like a wedding cake wedding cakes have that beautiful almond flavor and now i'm gonna pulse this around for just a second to blend that now now the tough part we have to add to this the baking powder i'm going to put the baking powder in like this get all that baking powder that's going to make them nice and fluffy rex and my little green ball of flour now see look i came from a poor family rex you know i can't have stainless steel you know i can't uh hey uh a family rich in love rex huh but right you know what i'm talking about okay now i'm gonna put my flour in here just like that and i'm going to whisk this around electronically here i'm going to whisk that and the flour will start to mix pretty quickly in the egg and rex if you look down in there you can see how sugary that dough is you see how sugary that is down in there y'all i'm gonna add the rest of my flour and this will be a pretty rich sweet very tender super tender dough and i'll tell you it is a dough that's a little tough to work with so you want to refrigerate it for a while now once this is all uh mixed together and i'll show you this see how fast it comes together if you look down in here y'all you can see how the dough is very light see that now if you don't refrigerate this you'll never work this dough and as i uh and i want to go back to that cutting board for a minute there y'all cause this is done right here and i'll move this out of the way on the cutting board right here you notice that once you refrigerate it you can actually uh cut them out and then start to move them this has been sitting on the counter for a little while but you see how it starts to break with the heat the butter starts to melt and the sugar starts to melt right away and it's hard to work with you have to roll them quickly after you cut them and put them on the sheet to bake them now once they bake they're only enough in about 10 minutes in wrecks i want to show you something very quickly here you see all of these cookies right here look at the gorgeous colors here the beautiful colors of those cookies i make my icing just by taking confectioners sugar a little bit evaporated skim milk and then of course i can put some flavorings and icing as well you notice the mardi gras colors here this is purple the bright green of carnival here in the gold because this would be on the tables during carnival season you see the red and green well we know that's christmas right and then of course the pastel colors over here all year are that we use all year long egg substitute y'all light margarine and skim milk makes this seventy percent fat free a hundred percent less cholesterol in that particular dish right there let me have yours now i know you made a good platter for me today right rex take a look at hers right there just beautiful see how nice they are just gorgeous you see how it's a little bit thinner and you see how her icing has all the pastel colors on it did you ice these yourself or did iris do them fine linda did them oh i'm sorry iris in florence huh linda had the job today i'm going to give this to you right here let me show you that icing real fast y'all rex if you come right over here i have a nice little bowl and i have some confectioners sugar in here now you would put this into a pot and i'm putting the evaporated skim milk you would put this into a pot right here and put it on heat until the sugar starts to melt totally and it'll thicken up just as that icing is uh on the cookies over there but the confectioners sugar and the evaporated skim milk and a little bit vanilla here y'all just a little touch of vanilla makes this dish a real masterpiece and again one of the greatest and most flavorful dishes of all of louisiana cooking i should also mention y'all that you notice the sugar in this dish remember how much sugar we put in here a cup and a half there's 14 million diabetics in america and we're constantly fighting diabetes but i want you to all remember that i've learned through modifying recipes that just because people are diabetic especially the type 2 diabetes which is directly related to overweight obesity and those issues just because people are diabetic doesn't mean they can't have a little petite got toe every now and then it's when you try to do too much or you over splurge and all of those kind of things so the the theme of the show today y'all just remember it it's going to be how sweet is sweet enough that's the most important thing you want to remember because we're the sugar state and we need to remember we can also cut back sugar in our dishes as well plus you can bake with sugar free items or less sugar items that are really good like and i don't want to use brand names but i think you know what i'm talking about here how sweet is sweet enough y'all who wants a petite gato huh who wants one huh you wanna i'm gonna send you one on ice you ready huh hey if you love me something mister hey oh hey doesn't continue hey right here on the twins table huh that one move hey there you go hey who says throwing food can be fun uh who want the icing

Laughter

nobody's gonna get the icing y'all okay the next dish well i'll tell you that was a that was a prayer now i'm going to crab meat y'all oh i'll tell you the crab meat uh but while this pot is heating up y'all i want to talk about the mad stone of ashrae i was the mad child of asia huh i was written up in papers far and wide but anyway let me iris let me see the mad stone right here i'm gonna just take it out of there i want to show everybody i know they got a close-up rex let's get a good close-up now this i said it's not an urban legend but that's a fact iris i mean this stone has been used for how many people maybe maybe 200 at least a hundred years with my grandfather mr ernest dragwa ryan has possession of it and when it was given to him it was three inches long and about thick as a man's thumb right right however through the years it fell and it broke into two sections now it's more four pieces they're all effective and they all stick to the wound it's a porous um stone right so and it sucks the venom out and it sticks there until there's no more poison on the wound that is really incredible you know i think most people listening to that wouldn't believe it but how do you think people lived for the last 3 000 years they lived with medical facts like that that actually worked so yeah they didn't have physicians they didn't have doctors and all of that absolutely and it's really the engine that brought this to the family right and he gave it to them as an appreciation they had taken care of him when he was ill and then in appreciation he gave him the stone well i tell you that is that's a fantastic story i've been hearing about the milestone of asher for generations y'all so now i get to see it in person rex talking about the milestone of ashrae you saw that beautiful picture of lake desirement a minute ago well these are crabs out of lake disalmond catfish out of lake design look at all these beautiful dishes all these beautiful ingredients i want to show everybody this is a male crab you see how the apron right here is elongated this is a female crab right here you see the wide apron but always tell people you can tell a female crab from a male crab just by looking at it from the top because the female crabs fingernails always painted red most people don't know that but it's a fact yeah ah they might not believe that rex i'm going to show them right here look at that rex get a close-up of that wreck right there in front of a floor and see that the female crab is always has a fingernails painted red right there who wants a crab huh and rex look at this crab meat here i'm doing crab meat or gratin y'all so i have beautiful jumble lump crab meat this is that gorgeous jumbo lump the car crab meat the closer the bone the sweeter the meat and then of course y'all the wonderful uh uh white crab meat from the inside of the crab rex come on over here and let's cook this thing right here i'll tell you this is going to be a great dish crab medigra normally made with a lot of fat oh talk about a lot of fat i'm using light margarine here y'all light margin because i want to remember my dishes still have to taste as good as the original so i'm gonna light margin is fifty percent water they actually take margarine put fifty percent water in it high speed blended and of course the water is gonna evaporate very quickly so you wanna throw your seasonings in right away so i'm throwing in my onions my celery this is lake the salmon crab meat y'all onion celery look at those gorgeous bell peppers i tell everyone that when you're modifying fat you want to make sure you add things that are good for you pile on those beautiful yellow orange red bell peppers throw in the garlic is how much garlic i threw in there because that's going to really be wonderful right here and y'all in this recipe since i'm using evaporated skim milk and egg substitute light margarine and of course low-fat cheddar cheese 70 y'all 70 percent less fat now rex into this i'm going to throw some of my crab meat see this is my call me the nearer the bone the sweeter the meat i'm going to put it in there and sacrifice it because i need to add crab flavor here now i'm going to put in a little bit i'm going to make my white roux i'm going to put in a little white flour and i'm making in louisiana we normally make a brown room but i'm going to use my white root just enough flour to thicken this up nicely and once this is thick and remember this is to bake so you don't have to cook all of this totally in the pot so once the roux goes in now i can add my evaporated skim milk i love evaporated skim milk a low fat to no fat and of course it's as thick as cream so nobody would ever know that you don't have cream in the dish so i'll kind of swirl that around a little bit it's going to thicken in that white roux right away now evaporated skim i mean a egg substitute remember that egg substitute y'all right down in there again and that's going to thicken beautifully and give it that nice egg look to it now of course i can put in my jumbo lump crab meat oh rex oh rex i'll tell you have to mortgage your home for this one huh right there i'm going to put green onions in it a little bit uh always use a little nutmeg in a white sauce y'all just a little bit oh yeah a little nutmeg it's really great and then y'all with that i'm gonna add a little pepper right into that like that how much salt a little salt substitute just enough to kind of uh spice it up with the salt and then when using salt substitute put a little bit on top of the dish now let's say that this is cooked for about 15 minutes or so you don't need to cook it long take your little bowl rex like this oh gorgeous lump crab meat look at that i'll fill it up this is for florence look at the crab meat in there oh rex you see that oh rex you see that huh yeah oh i bet you do rex now into this a little salt substitute a little low-fat cheese for tony right there oh a little little fatty in the oven y'all 350 degrees reckless walk that other side of the counter you're going to see what it looks like it looks gorgeous here in antarctica i'm going to give you a bowl right here of it oh well you know i love my tatsu she made me a star huh and i'm going to give one of these to tony as well over there give one to tony and i'm and i think you all have a spoon and a fart right over there y'all y'all taste that right there it's really good now y'all a couple of other quick dishes look right here rex very quickly my stuffed bell peppers the stuffed bell peppers of course have lean beef and turkey in it 20 percent less fat with a little tomato sauce and look at these gorgeous meatballs every cajun wedding had meatballs y'all i want to know one thing who says mama's cooking can't be healthy huh nobody right thank y'all hey i'm gonna feed everybody going to feed everybody here today hey guys are you ready pass that back with a cracker on it right there all right y'all

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louisiana she's the exception and never the rule she's a mystery that asks not to be solved but simply to be experienced louisiana where you can come as you are and leave different whether you're planning a louisiana convention family reunion or a southern vacation the louisiana association of convention and visitors bureaus connects you to information sources throughout the state the louisiana association of convention and visitors bureaus the baton rouge area convention and visitors bureau welcomes you and yours to baton rouge louisiana state capitol from the old governor's mansion to fabulous dining and sonico dancing baton rouge authentic louisiana at every turn popeyes chicken and biscuits featuring cajun style chicken red beans and rice and buttermilk biscuits all flavored by the memories and imaginations of louisiana chefs popeyes chicken and biscuits committed to preserving louisiana's flavor heritage something old and something new louisiana cooking with a change of heart is available for 29.95 this companion book to the television series features over 150 recipes to order please send checker money order to the address shown on your screen a taste of louisiana louisiana cooking with a change of heart is available for 19.95 this vhs video contains one episode of chef john fultz's new television series please send check or money order to the address on your screen and mention the show number with your order