-Funding for "The Dooky Chase Kitchen: Leah's Legacy" was provided by the... -During the Civil Rights Era, Dooky Chase's became a gathering place where people of diverse races could hold strategy sessions.

Today, the restaurant is one of the sites that make up the Louisiana Civil Rights Trail.

A historic marker also honors the Chase family's contribution to the state's civil rights fight.

We explore the role of the restaurant in the social history of New Orleans with two dishes by Chefs Dook and Zoe Chase, plus a companion cocktail by Eve Marie Haydel.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Chef Leah led change by inviting everyone to eat Creole gumbo, a dish with history and tradition.

-So let's get started in making this pot a better pot by a good old Creole gumbo.

I'll hand this to my sous chef, Chef Zoe, that's going to help us out.

That chaurice sausage has a lot of fat already into it, right?

It has the cayenne pepper.

It has some good old seasonings, Creole seasonings mixing to it.

We didn't put any oil in that pot because that oil is going to come off from that sausage.

That oil is going to come off from the smoked sausage.

We're going to add in a little bit of this veal stew.

What you're looking for is just to brown that meat, get that flavor going.

And you can see, as we put in that meat, this gumbo is not a hearty dish.

This is a very hearty dish.

You hear about the stories of the civil rights and the Freedom Riders and all the people that strategized that came through these doors.

You think about the AP Tureauds of the world or Oretha Castle Haley, you know, Dr. Martin Luther King, who ate at our upstairs dining room.

You think back to a time where it was illegal for both Blacks and Whites to meet together, but it was never illegal at Dooky Chase.

You can see now, at the bottom of that pan, that fat that's starting to render, and that's good.

Now we got our meat going.

We'll add some of these blue crabs in.

And we'll start to just brown those crabs.

And all that doing is just flavor upon flavor.

You got the smoked sausage going, the chaurice sausage.

The fun is getting ready to start here.

I just turned the fire on to this little pot.

You can't think of a gumbo without thinking of a roux, right?

And that's where the magic is also created here.

It's going to happen right in this pot.

I'm going to add a little bit of oil.

It's amazing that gumbo, you have all these different proteins, right?

You have shrimp, you have chicken, you have crabs, you have chaurice sausage.

This is one dish that ties everything together.

And they all work to make one great dish.

So I'm gonna add a little more flour.

This is that consistency I want it to be, right.

Not all the way dry, not all the way wet.

Just enough where I can still move it around this pot, brown it, and let it go.

My grandmother would love to say she does her roux the color of her skin.

Right?

So I think I'm close enough to her.

We'll try to match that with mine.

So, when you're browning this roux, it's not only changing the color of it, it's changing the flavor profile, right?

The darker you get, the nuttier it'll be, the more pronounced that roux will be.

You know, funny story.

I went to culinary school in Paris, France.

I made gumbo one time out in Paris, France.

I made gumbo and jambalaya.

And when I made it, it was their Bastille Day, right?

And we would do a big old celebration.

And each culinary student had to prepare something for that celebration.

And for me, when I'm thinking celebrations and festivities, we don't start a party unless we have gumbo, right?

So I said, "Guys, I'm cooking gumbo."

I was bringing a little bit of New Orleans, a little bit of home to Paris, France.

-Our meat is looking good.

It's browning.

Perfect.

We're almost to the stage where we're going to add our chicken and our shrimp.

-So this is right where we want to be.

And then, I'll add in my onions and we'll slow this puppy down.

Now, when you add the onions, you can turn the heat off, right?

We'll take this here and we'll start to work it over our mixture here.

So, once you got your roux in here, you're going to add a little bit of chicken stock.

But you really just want to add a little bit in here.

Let's get Zoe to add in a little here, because I'm not leaving that good roux this pot, right?

We're going to give it a little bath.

And you can see how hot that roux is.

Right?

Hasn't been on the stove, has been away from the heat.

I picked it up, added some in, and it'll still sizzle.

I'm going to add it all in.

And you can smell all those beautiful flavors to come in.

-All right.

Now we're going to add our boneless chicken breasts.

And, you know, my grandmother actually would use chicken necks, chicken wings, because they had whole chickens to use.

And that would just add great flavor, as well, coming from that bone.

So we'll let this chicken cook in there.

We'll also add our ham.

And you could also -- Grandmother love to add gizzards.

I personally don't like gizzards.

It's an acquired taste.

So we're just looking for our gumbo to come up to a boil.

Now we're going to add a little salt.

♪ Some black pepper.

Some of our minced garlic.

Two bay leaves.

-Another thing that we do a lot in our Creole cooking is thyme, right?

You have the dried thyme, but for this particular one, we use that ground thyme.

And the reason we use the ground thyme is you don't want it to show up as a thyme leaf in your gumbo, right?

You want that smooth, velvety-looking brown flavor profile going through without people saying, "What's this speck in my gumbo?"

or "What's this?"

So that's the reason why we use ground thyme.

And this process here has to go for another 20, 25, 30 minutes.

-All right.

Now we're going to add our liquid gold.

And you know, the original recipe, grandmother's recipe, she had actual oysters in it.

We'll add a little bit more chicken stock, as well, just to loosen it up a bit.

♪ We'll also add our Gulf shrimp.

♪ -So, these Gulf shrimp that Zoe has has been peeled and deveined, right?

And this is about a 21, 25 shrimp.

You can any size that you like.

Go ahead on and add.

It just adds that great flavor to this gumbo.

-So we're going to let this cook for about 20, 25 minutes, come back.

We're going to add our smoked paprika, our filé, and then we're going to plate.

So we added filé to the bowl.

We're going to add some smoked paprika, and we're going to stir that around.

We're going to add some of our gumbo juice to our filé and smoked paprika mixture.

-And you can see the reason why Zoe is doing that.

If you just add that filé straight into that gumbo, sometimes you'll get it to clump up in those little balls, and trying to break up a clump in your gumbo pot, that's not going to happen.

So she'll add that back to that gumbo, and that just adds the finishing touch to a great gumbo.

That gumbo looks superb.

I am ready to sit down, ready to taste it.

But before we sit down, we get to taste it.

Oh, my.

So, before you get ready to serve it, what you want to do is just give it a good little, nice little skim.

Try to just pick up just the fat on top of that circle, and then you discard it.

There we go.

Put that crab right in there.

Look out.

I mean, just look at this.

And you talk about all the beautiful protein here.

-And a little parsley to give it that beautiful color.

-The Chases offered a safe haven and nourishment when Jim Crow laws restricted race mixing in public places.

Recalling planning sessions at the restaurant, led by civil rights leaders, including Martin Luther King Jr., Chef Leah Chase said, "We helped change the world over a bowl of gumbo and some fried chicken."

-So the bowl of gumbo was a little bit of everything.

And, you know, that's one of the meals that we're known for, the gumbo.

And was one of my mother's special dishes.

So, because of that, she wanted to serve it to everyone.

So she served that many times to our Freedom Bus Riders or to all those who came upstairs because everybody loved Creole gumbo.

So she's saying she changed the course of America because so many civil rights leaders came here and ate that.

I pay homage to my grandparents and my parents.

Their love for the community, their love for social justice, their love for doing what was right is what made this restaurant what it is today.

They allowed this place to be open when it was against the law for people of all races to meet, to strategize, to do next steps on how life could be better for all of us.

-Next, stew chicken, a comfort food staple that fed people who were fighting for equality.

-Now we are going to make a staple -- stew chicken.

We have some beautiful bone-in chicken.

We have a breast, a thigh, a leg, a wing.

And, first, we are going to season our chicken.

So we have some cayenne pepper.

♪ A little Creole seasoning.

Some salt.

And some garlic powder.

And of course we are going to flip that chicken over and season it again.

♪ ♪ We're going to add a little oil.

♪ So we're going to put it skin down so our skin could get crispy first.

You don't want to crowd your pan.

So just four pieces will be fine.

We'll add our seasoning.

-You want that browning to happened on that chicken.

Because not only is it sealing in that seasoning, it's creating that color at the bottom of the pot that's going to stick that you'll bring up and deglaze, whether it's with stock or, for us, it's going to be with your vegetables, your onions, and all that picking that up.

You want that to take its time and really turn that color and that flavor profile that you're looking for.

You know, you think a lot about doing the civil rights, and we talk about serving that dialog over a bowl of gumbo and some fried chicken, right?

I also think about those times where you had the Freedom Bus Riders who we would have to feed.

And you think about the stewed chicken and the baked macaroni and really just comfort food to give you a good-tasting food and fill your belly up 'cause you were getting ready to do some real important work out there.

You know, a lot of those people were very courageous to go out there and fight for all of us.

Right?

Fight for a better community.

You know, back when my grandmother was doing stewed chicken, she would do a stewed hen, right?

They would get those little guinea hens and really cut it up into eight pieces.

And see how Zoe's holding up that breast.

Sometimes they would chop that breast up into two pieces, split it if they're feeding a family, right?

Or if you got the whole chicken, you would cut the back, and then you would cut the breast, and you would just make what we call an eight-piece cut chicken now into 10 pieces or 12 pieces, just spreading that along and feeding the family.

But look at this color on this chicken.

That's what you're looking for.

That's beautiful golden brown.

And you can see, not only is it golden brown on a chicken, but you can start to see the bottom of that pot, right?

That's what you're looking for.

-And you don't have to cook your chicken all the way.

We just want to get a good sear on it because we're going to take it out and we're going to build our roux.

And after we build our roux and build our gravy, we'll put our chicken back in and it'll cook in the gravy.

We use the bone-in chicken because that bone just gives it a great flavor.

And this is really where we're getting our flavor from.

That's why we brown the chicken, because our roux is going to get all that flavor, and that's what's going to make our gravy taste so great.

-You know, the beautiful thing about when you're smothering or stewing or creating a sauce with that dish, you know, you think about making stocks and whether you had browning bones and all that.

That bone just adds so much flavor.

So this stewed chicken, we're browning it, but then, when we add that chicken back, we're creating a chicken stock within this dish.

So, you know, that bone, you want that flavor just oozing out, those juices coming out of that chicken, going right into that sauce.

You know, as I was learning to cook this as my first dish, my test person was my mom.

And she would say everything tastes great.

My poor mom.

The first couple of ones I know was really bland.

And she said, "Oh, Dook, this one was great."

And then, I would bring another one.

"Oh, this one was a little bit better."

I'm like, "What's better than great?"

Because the last one was great and this one was a little bit better.

But I tell you, that's a mother's love, right?

I could do no wrong or cook nothing that didn't taste great.

And then, I'd bring that dish in.

Old Miss Tracie'd be like, "No, that's not great.

You got to cook that roux a little bit more.

You got to do this, that, and the other."

But now she got it where I'm spot on with it.

-Now that our chicken has a great.

color on it, we're going to take it out, and we're going to build our roux.

And you want to turn your heat down... ♪ ...to like a medium-low heat.

And then, we're going to add some flour.

♪ -And another thing is, Zoe is building this roux while we put this chicken in the bowl.

As it rests, it's going to still release some of those juices, right?

You want to make sure you maintain that because that flavor you don't want to lose.

You want to add that back into this pot.

-Now we're going to add our onions.

♪ ♪ We'll cook this for about three minutes.

Then we'll add in our bell peppers and our garlic.

-And you can see, as Zoe added in those onions, it just picked up the bottom of that pot, right?

It deglazed it.

And each time, as that goes down, we'll add in that bell peppers, that bell peppers, that little water coming out is going to pick that right back up.

And that's what you want, right?

You want to keep that flavor.

It goes down, you pick it back up, and then you just keep adding more things and layering flavor upon flavor.

-All right.

Now we'll add our bell pepper.

[ Sizzling ] We'll add our garlic.

We'll let this go for about two minutes, and then we'll add in our chicken stock.

All right.

Now let's add our chicken stock.

We'll just add a little bit at a time.

♪ And we'll stir in our roux.

♪ -And, again, you can see that's our third deglaze, right?

It stuck back down and now it's glazing it right back up with that chicken stock.

-We're going to add a little bit more seasoning, some of our Creole seasoning.

And, remember, you don't have to add too much because you seasoned your chicken and your chicken was in there browning, so that seasoning is still in there.

♪ We're going to let this come up to a simmer and then we'll add our chicken back.

To give it a nice color, we'll add some smoked paprika.

♪ We add a little thyme, as well.

We have some dried thyme.

Fresh thyme would work great, as well.

Now our gravy is simmering.

We'll add our chicken back.

♪ ♪ You see all those juices?

We're going to add that right into our gravy.

♪ All right.

We're going to cover our pot and we're going to let that go for 20 minutes.

All right.

Our chicken is smelling ready.

Let's see how it's looking.

Oh, wow.

Beautiful.

-That looks beautiful.

-Let's taste it.

-Smells beautiful.

-Perfect.

Stewed chicken.

-Ooh.

I'm ready for it, Zoe.

-Delish.

All right, let's plate.

Let's get our thigh.

A leg.

-Look at that leg just falling off the bone.

How tender it is.

That's when you know it's ready.

-Wing.

-[ Singsong ] And it's gravy time.

-Mm-hmm.

-Whoa.

-It's my favorite part.

Grave and rice.

Grave and macaroni.

Gravy and gravy.

Just gravy.

-[ Chuckles ] -Look how beautiful that looks.

-Put a little parsley to give it some color and a little parsley on our mac and cheese.

-And this mac and cheese, this is how we serve this stewed chicken.

-One-pot dish.

Delicious.

-Finding ways to improve their community was a priority for Chef Leah Chase and her husband, Edgar "Dooky" Chase Jr. Today, the restaurant Civil Rights Legacy Walk honors historic men and women who fought for social justice and economic betterment for all Americans.

A Juneteenth gathering celebrated the installation of the Dooky Chase Historic Marker and kicked off construction of the Legacy Walk.

-The Chase family has created a Civil Rights Legacy Walk to recognize all the iconic leaders, whether they were politicians, whether they were jazz musicians, who led the way through their music to communicate civil rights, or whether they were artists, great artists who adorned our walls with their art, whether they were notable judges who came by here.

We wanted to put their names in stone to tell people who came after us, next generation, these people are important to your liberty.

You would not have all the freedoms in America but for these people.

-But look how we come together when we have to work for our city.

We have to get together and do things to make our city better.

We can come together.

Blacks and Whites together.

And I always think about Martin Luther King.

That's what he wanted.

That's what he died for.

And when somebody gives up their life for you to change, you had better do it.

-The Grand D Cocktail by Eve Marie Haydel is a riff on an old fashioned, named for her grandfather, master mixologist Dooky Chase Jr. -All right.

Now we're going to finish off the day with The Grand D, which is a cocktail we love here at the bars.

So, basically, it's rye whiskey.

We make an orange syrup here in house, which is we're taking the orange zest like you would in an old fashioned when you muddle it down with a cherry.

So it's a newer version, kind of a cleaner version of an old fashioned.

But let's just start.

So we're going to start with the Angostura bitters.

So, in a regular bottle, you'll do about 4 or 5 dashes.

And then, we'll do a few dashes of orange bitters.

In there.

And then, we'll do a half ounce of our orange simple.

This is a cocktail you want to build in a mixing glass because you want to blend the -- blend it together.

So this is your main spirit, your main ingredient, and that's two ounces of whatever whiskey you like.

I like a rye whiskey.

It blends well with our orange syrup.

So I named this cocktail after my grandfather, who I called Grand D. I watched him make many old fashioneds waiting on tables, but he would take forever muddling the cherry and the orange at the bottom of the glass to make that little gucky stuff.

And I'm like, "What are you doing?"

Well, I guess he did know what he was doing, but I'm going to do it my way, so... All right.

So, then, we blend that together.

We're going to stir it vigorously, and then we pour it over our large cube.

The large cubes help.

It doesn't melt as fast and it preserves your bourbon.

So just like any old fashioned, we're going to add our orange rind in there.

And express the oil on top from the glass.

So, when you touch the glass, you'll get that flavor profile as soon as your mouth touches it and you smell it, you smell the oil off the orange.

♪ And there's our Grand D. -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 the 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.

-She wanted to make sure everyone's experience at the restaurant was personalized, and she remembered every detail.

She remembered everyone's favorite drink, everyone's favorite dish, and what their guests enjoyed or not.

-When Nat King Cole came, or when I was certainly here with the Jackson 5 would come, or whoever would come, she would know -- my mother, Chef Leah Chase, would know what their favorite meal would be.

Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, whomever.

And she would make sure that she had that ready for them.

This is what she did.

But she would do that for our everyday customers.

-Her natural -- Everything about her in this business was hard work, but the things that were wonderful about it were just natural to her.

From the hospitality to people to the food she cooked.

And I'm glad of that.

♪ -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... ♪