-Funding for "The Dooky Chase Kitchen: Leah's Legacy" was provided by the... -Dooky Chase is a restaurant space that became a gallery space through Chef Leah Chase's love of art.

The culinary icon began collecting works by African-American artists in the early 1970s, and, today, the restaurant is a visual feast.

In a salute to her lifetime membership on the board of the New Orleans Museum of Art, Chefs Dook and Zoe Chase revisit three dishes that were art-patron favorites.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Curry chicken salad was always included on the spread that Chef Leah made for museum functions.

-Now we're talking about one of my grandmother's eye for not only beautiful food but for art, you know?

She would always go into a room and look and say, "That art's speaking to me.

It's telling me something," you know?

She would stand and look at a piece and just fall in love with it.

And the beauty about it is, she would say every art piece talks to that person.

We all see different things in art.

So when I think back of art and her involvement not only in collecting art here at Dooky Chase, but her involvement in the New Orleans Museum and Art and all the other museums that we have here, we would go and really start to prepare dishes for the board meetings of the Museum of Art or special little openings for them, and they would always love cold trays.

We would do chicken salads.

We would do crab-meat salads.

So Zoe's going to show you how we did the museum's curry chicken salad.

-All right.

So, right here we have some chicken tenders.

And you also could use chicken breast and just slice those up and cut them up.

Here we have some water getting to a boil, and we're going to season our water.

So we're going to add a little salt... and a little pepper.

♪ We're going to add our, chicken tenders to the water and we're going to let this boil for about 10 minutes until the chicken's all cooked.

-You know, one of the beautiful things that this dish allows you to do and what we're doing here, as you boil that chicken breast, you're actually creating a stock, right?

So, you know, as it boils and the scum rises, we'll start to skim it off and make sure we want to maintain the purity of that stock so we can use it for later when we're cooking something.

My grandmother started collecting art on her walls way back in the day when African-American artists had little places to showcase their art.

And that was her mission to say, "Wait.

You need to show this beautiful art all over the world."

So any guests that came into her dining room, she wanted them to see that art first.

And, you know, that's amazing, not only to showcase her talent here in the restaurant but to help showcase the community's talent, right?

"Look at all this beautiful art."

As soon as you walk in my dining room, you're just awestruck by it.

People stop before they get to their table and just start looking at the art on the wall as a museum.

And that's beautiful growing up with that because we all grew up appreciating art and appreciating the arts.

And, you know, there's a few paintings and pictures out there that we look at in the restaurant, and you can say, "What does this picture mean to you?"

And you will hear those different stories, because she was exactly right.

Each piece will speak to that person differently.

-And we'll start to skim some of this fat that's collected at the top.

And of course, we'll save this stock because we could, you know, make this into a soup and use this chicken stock for one of our recipes.

-You know, my grandmother had a saying -- "Looking at art is like dealing with people.

You may look at a piece and you may not understand it, but if you look long and hard, you start to see what that artist is trying to tell you."

And so when you first come across somebody that you may not understand, ask them questions, dialogue, have that conversation, and then you start to see where they're coming from and you start to see, "Oh, you know, we're not that far off, and maybe a little here and there, but I appreciate your point of view."

You know, that was an amazing thing she always had was, "Let me understand where you're coming from.

You know, we may still disagree at the end of the day, but I'm going to hear you out, and I'm going to listen, and I'm going to get your point of view, and you'll get my point of view."

-Now that our chicken is done boiling, we'll turn it off, strain your chicken out, and you'll put it in the refrigerator for about six minutes, and let it cool off.

We actually already have some pre-boiled chicken.

So what we're going to do is, we're going to rough chop our chicken.

And it doesn't have to be too small.

Just a little rough chop so that we can mix it all up with all our ingredients into our chicken salad.

-You know, this is the beautiful part of where you get to do it your way at home, right?

We like you to get still a little bit of bite of that chicken, but if you like it to be a finer chop, chop it up.

If you like it to be a little more hunkier chunk, chunk it the way that you like it and you want your guests to taste it.

-All right.

So we'll add our chicken to our bowl.

♪ Into this, well add some mayonnaise.

Maybe like two scoops.

That should be enough.

Some chopped celery.

♪ Of course, our curry powder.

And that's going to give it that beautiful yellow color.

Some white pepper.

♪ Some garlic powder.

And, of course, a little bit of salt.

♪ We're going to mix this up.

-You can smell that curry just starts to come out.

And like Zoe said, that beautiful yellow tint that it'll have to it.

-And I'm actually going to add a little bit more to really let that color show.

-And as we discussed, you know, there's dishes that you use the white pepper in when you don't want to see that black pepper flake but still get that heat content.

-We'll add some parsley.

And let's give this a taste just to see where our seasoning is at.

-I want to sneak in behind you.

-Yummy.

I'm actually going to put a little more curry because I want to get that curry flavor.

-You're right there.

I can remember tasting this, bringing a big bowl and setting it up at the museum.

And everybody's coming, and there's crackers and there's toast points and there's just a bunch of cold salads and little sandwiches and people enjoying the art.

-So now I'll add my sliced green grapes.

And the reason why I added this last is because we don't want to mix the grapes up too much.

It'll create a juice, and it'll just make our mixture and our salad too watery, and we don't want that.

So we'll add our grapes, and we'll gently fold those grapes in.

-You know, when you add those grapes, it just balances well with that curry flavor, right?

That that curry is going to hit you with that spice, then you get that grape coming.

Another thing that you can add that people love is almonds, just to give you that extra texture.

You're looking for those balances of textures and flavors, so that grape helps to balance that curry.

-All right.

Now it's time to plate.

We'll clean our board off.

-I mean, just look at that tint and that color.

So a lot of our museum buddies will come in and say, "Oh, I would love if you had some of that curry chicken salad."

So if we know you're coming, and we know that you're from the museum, we're going to add that curry chicken salad, you know?

It's a winner.

-Delicious curry chicken salad.

Easy to make.

A great crowd pleaser, great appetizer to make at home.

-In her early years of collecting, there were few places for African-American artists to exhibit their art.

So Chef Leah displayed their work on the walls of her restaurant.

Her criteria for collecting was simple -- "If it talks to you, that's what you should hang up."

-African-American artists had no place to show their work in the '40s and the '50s.

Even as late as the '60s, they had no place.

So I started buying the art and putting it on the walls here.

Of course, my own people didn't understand it.

I got criticized for it.

But I thought I liked it, and I thought that was a good way to go.

-She went out of her way to help all the artists that she could.

The way she could give of her time and energy was through food, was through, "Come over here for this dinner, meet this person over dinner."

And she loved to do that for artists, especially maybe someone just coming up, just starting, needing that push.

She just -- She just truly enjoyed being in that creative world -- right?

-- some little bit vicariously through them, and anything she could do to help, she would.

-She was saddened because African-American artists were very talented, but they had no place to showcase their talent.

So she said to them, "When I expand, your art will be on the wall."

And so, therefore, it is on the wall.

-Late '60s, early '70s, the artwork started to adorn the walls of the restaurant, and it's been valued and cherished by all of us ever since.

It went -- You know, the artwork goes hand in hand with the food that's served on the plate because the art warms and opens up people to conversations and to each other as the food warms the soul.

-Another cold dish that was popular with art movers and shakers is the Dooky Chase crabmeat salad.

-So another amazing cold salad that we did for the museum was our famous crabmeat salad.

So, right here, we have our lump crab meat, and we have some jumbo lump crab meat.

So we'll add some crab meat to the bowl.

You want to make sure you go through it and you pick it because you could have some shells.

So, to this crabmeat, we'll add a scoop of mayonnaise.

♪ We'll add some Creole mustard.

♪ We'll add some parsley.

Some celery for crunch.

Also some red onion, or purple onion, for crunch.

Some green onion.

And of course, our seasonings.

We have garlic powder.

I'm going to add a little seafood seasoning.

We'll add our Creole seasoning.

And also a little pinch of salt.

We'll give this a good mix.

You know, we have our family crab boils, and we always have a bunch of crabs left.

So if you have some time the next day, you could gather your family up again, and you could pick those crabs, and we'll use that for the crabmeat salad.

And now we're going to add a little lemon juice.

♪ And we're going to mix that all up.

Lemon juice gives it that great, you know, bright flavor, and it just wakes up that beautiful crabmeat.

So let's give this a taste.

So yummy.

So now we'll plate.

And, you know, this is perfect for if you have some friends coming over.

So easy to make.

It's a beautiful crabmeat salad.

We have some crackers.

You could also eat it with some toasted bread.

Anything would work.

Make a little crab sandwich, the whole nine yards.

Beautiful crabmeat salad.

So delicious.

-In the art world, Chef Leah found a new passion.

Her appreciation of art and artists took off when she became a New Orleans Museum of Art board member.

She even testified before Congress in support of the National Endowment for the Arts.

-But I got to talk to people about -- especially the Congress -- about how important art was.

And you have to spread it out because it is something that uplifts people.

You know, by the art, they learn, and they see this, and they like what they see, or sometimes they don't understand what they see, but they learn.

And it's all about learning.

When you give a person an opportunity to learn, that is so important.

-Not only did my mother provide a place for African Americans to then put their art on the walls, but she herself got more involved into the art world and became a board member of NOMA, which she was very, very proud of.

As I told you, my mother was a lifelong learner, so my mother began to learn everything she could about art and, even more so at that time, was determined to make sure every wall was covered with art.

But not only did she do that, she knew that this was her opportunity to bring African-American art into the museum, and that's what she did.

And for her 75th birthday, actually, it was a fundraiser to raise money to bring African-American art, to buy an art piece for the museum, which they did buy with that money.

And then she kept on really talking about the importance of the art because she wanted to pass that love down and that beauty.

She wanted everyone to realize the beauty in art.

-She loved being around all of this art, and she loved when you could introduce other things to that rarefied world sometimes, you know?

And, yeah, it's really interesting.

I think it's because of the upbringing where they wasn't -- you know, had to work hard.

And there weren't, you know, just, like, museums around the corner they could go to and things and see.

So it opened up a whole new world to her, just like working in the French Quarter did.

Opened up a whole new world of a dining experience to her that she clearly never knew growing up as a kid, right?

And she embraced that and just felt it was something she wanted to introduce to people who would not normally see it.

-John Scott did this painting for her, full of colors, and he called it "The House of the Rising Son."

So it spoke to the next generation about how a matriarch keeps the next generation together because there would be no next generation but for the woman carrying the spiritual house of the values and virtues of the next generation.

We have a John Biggers painting as you walk into the Victorian room that shows matriarchs holding a spiritual house up, lifting the house up.

So they don't show the man in that regard of lifting the house.

They always show the woman, and my mother likes those strong women that can lift up the whole house and get it up there and carry the whole family with her.

-A sweet treat for the art crowd was peach cobbler, based on a recipe from Chef Leah's childhood.

-So now we're at the best part of any meal -- the dessert.

And, you know, as we would get down that line at the museum of those cold salads, you would always see them come and try to skip the line to get to the dessert first.

But this is a dessert that I just loved working with my grandmother, peach cobbler.

You know, I can remember we're going back and forth and creating some of this recipe.

And she had a recipe that she grew up with.

And I wanted to add a little bit of a cookie feel to it.

So we'll get started, and I'll let you know what I mean by that.

Here we have a little bit of all-purpose flour.

And I'll let you get in there, Zoe, and kind of add some of that sugar in there for me.

-All right.

We'll add a little bit of sugar.

And not a little bit -- a lot.

'Cause I remember my first time making peach cobbler.

And, you know, Grandmother tasting it, she said, "Girl, what you doing?

Put some more sugar."

So it takes a lot of sugar.

-And as you know, when you're mixing this, you're mixing all your dries together at first.

So we have the flour, we have the sugar.

-Some baking soda.

♪ -And this is the part where you make that well in the middle, right?

And the well is important for this particular dessert because it tells you how much of what you need in there.

So you're going to go halfway up with your oil and butter and then the other half with your milk.

-So a little oil.

Some of your melted butter.

-And you know that's going to be flavorful.

-Some of our milk.

♪ -This is not your traditional rolled-out dough.

This is that marriage that we like that I say between cake batter and a cookie dough.

That's what I'm looking for.

And the reason why we do that is because I like to have texture with my dessert.

So when you get that top and that crisp and that crunch, then you get into that middle layer that's cakey and has that -- that great syrup coming through with those peaches, and then you get to the peach.

And exactly what Zoe was doing here is, we just want to slowly add that milk in because we're not looking for a wet, wet batter, like if you would with a cake, and we're not looking for a tight, tight dough you would if you were doing for a cookie.

We're looking for that good in-between.

-We can't forget our vanilla extract.

♪ -I gotta taste it.

I think that's right where we are.

So, this is the key, right?

When you're baking, you better taste it before you go in.

-And hope that you have enough sugar.

-That's it, though.

That's what you're tasting.

You want that sweetness to come through.

You want it to taste like cookie dough.

That's what you're looking for.

If it tastes like cookie dough, you got it right.

You can see this texture that we're looking for.

Not too loose like a cake batter, not too tight like a dough.

Just right that in-between balance.

-Next, we'll create a little cornstarch mixture with some cornstarch.

And the reason we're doing this is, we have our canned peaches, and we're going to add that to the peaches to thicken it up a little bit.

We're going to add some cinnamon and, of course, some sugar.

Going to give that a little mix.

-And as Zoe said, those canned peaches already come in a light syrup.

And what she's doing here is going to help and thicken that syrup.

Now, if you had fresh peaches, you would do that on a stove with a little bit of water and some sugar and a little cinnamon.

You use the same dry ingredients in the water, and then you're able to boil that down and reduce it to create that thicker syrup that you're looking for that we're getting ready to create here.

-So, now we're at our peaches.

And we'll get some of that juice.

We'll add some of our cornstarch mixture.

And we'll mix that up.

-I know some recipes or some of you all may be familiar with putting that dough at the bottom of the the cobbler and letting it rise through.

The reason why we put it at the top is because of that layered texture that we want.

We want that cookie crisp up top, and then we want that cake to cook down into that peaches and into that great syrup that Zoe's making with that cornstarch and that sugar and that cinnamon.

-And you'll just layer it on.

♪ -Your dough will hold in your refrigerator.

Just cover it up.

And, you know, the great thing with this cobbler, we're doing it with peaches, but apples work perfect, pears work perfect.

I've seen blueberry cobblers, all these different type of cobblers.

But you can make any fruit that you want because this dough, this texture, is going to make anything shine.

-All righty.

-Heat your oven to 350 degrees.

And a key thing -- before you put this cobbler or any cobbler in that oven, you need to put a pan at the bottom of it, because not only will that great syrup start to boil and bubble, it's going to boil and bubble over a little bit, and you don't want to ruin your oven by that getting to the bottom of it.

So we'll get a pan to put that at the bottom, put that in our 350-degree oven for about 35 minutes, and you pull that out, and it'll be ready to serve.

Right out the oven with our peach cobbler.

And this is what I'm looking for.

You hear that?

That's the crisp of that cookie that we're trying to do.

And all you're doing here to serve it up, you just break it in, and you can see how it breaks.

And that's what you're looking for, that texture.

And then, as you go down, you can see that cakey part coming.

Then you get your nice scoop here.

I'mma hold that up because I didn't get the peaches that I want under there.

Get some more peaches in here, and now you're looking at that beautiful dessert.

And you can see that syrup... coming through right here.

It's thick enough.

That's what you're looking for to hold it.

So you see the texture, the cake, the peaches at the bottom.

And you got to have this dessert with a little bit of this ice cream, and you're talking about something that's just fantastic.

This is our salute to all the wonderful artists that have graced our walls here at Dooky Chase and so many museums across this world.

You know, this showcases exactly and it speaks to you as your art does to us.

-Yes.

And we are ready to dive in to this delicious peach cobbler.

-Chef Leah Chase spent a lifetime uplifting the community and building bridges through food.

For more meals that bring people together, join the Chase family next time on "The Dooky Chase Kitchen: Leah's Legacy."

-Leah Chase's iconic book, "The Dooky Chase Cookbook," has been updated and includes all-new recipes from this series you're watching.

The cookbook is available for $27.95, plus shipping and handling.

To order, please call 1-866-388-0834 or order online at wyes.org.

-Whatever my mother decided to do, she wanted to be the best at it, and so, therefore, she would never give up.

She would read books.

She would associate herself with people who knew about the culinary world and how you can make different dishes.

And that's what she did.

She was a lifetime learner.

-I don't care where I would take her or where any of us would take her, she'd come back and try to put her twist on it.

And she was definitely a natural, a natural cook, right?

-My grandmother was a student of food.

She read magazines, she studied people's culture, she went out and tasted different cuisines.

And she loved to dig in and put her spin on those cuisines.

-She would love to hear of people that traveled from Australia and what was the latest cooking trends wherever the people were coming from.

She thrived off of that.

And then you would see her creative juices going and go, "Okay, she's going to try this.

It's coming soon, so let's just brace ourselves for it."

♪ -For more information about "The Dooky Chase Kitchen: Leah's Legacy," visit... Funding for "The Dooky Chase Kitchen: Leah's Legacy" was provided by the...