-Funding for "The Dooky Chase Kitchen: Leah's Legacy" was provided by the... -Holy Thursday is an important Creole tradition celebrated at Dooky Chase's Restaurant since 1973.

The focus of the meal is a hearty, meat-packed gumbo z'herbes served before fasting begins on Good Friday.

This jubilant gathering draws people from across the city who come to socialize and dine on what is truly a labor of love.

Chefs Dook Chase and Cleo Robinson prepare the unique gumbo and also offer up another Holy Thursday favorite -- fried chicken -- paired with a classic French 75 cocktail from Eve Marie Haydel.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Sometimes referred to as the queen of all gumbos, gumbo z'herbes is distinguished from other varieties by the many leafy greens used in its preparation.

-I'm sure you can guess what day it is today here at Dooky Chase.

It is our Holy Thursday gumbo z'herbes event.

Once you see all these wonderful, beautiful greens, you know what we're doing here.

This is a day that my grandmother just loved because she had all of her friends would come back, and she would just enjoy feeding them gumbo z'herbes and fried chicken and really getting out there and socializing with the whole New Orleans that came in town just to see her and eat these beautiful greens.

-This was the last big meal before the fasting began for the Catholic season.

Good Friday was the big day that they fasted.

They hardly ate anything.

So this had to be a hearty, hearty, hearty meal to carry them that whole day Thursday and ride it all the way till Friday.

And then, of course, on Saturday, it was still more fasting.

And then Sunday was the big Easter dinner.

-So we'll get started.

Our greens is the key, right?

We at Dooky Chase, we use nine different greens.

So I have a pot of boiling water.

Make sure your pot is big enough to fit all the greens.

But, of course, as greens cook, they release their water and cook down.

So we have our mustards, our collards, our turnips, our spinach, our Swiss chard.

We have carrot tops right here.

We have beet tops, all of which just go in that pot just to kind of wilt those greens down, because we're going to grind them.

I want you to notice that our onions are just kind of cubed, rough chopped, that we'll put right in this pot, as well.

So this is not only cooking our greens, but it's creating that stock, right, that stock that we call pot liquor.

I have garlic that's going in here, as well.

So in this water, I just have a pinch of salt.

You have some spinach right here.

Now, this red Swiss chard, I'm going to cut off some of these stems.

For the most, the collards and all that, I don't really worry about because we pass it through that grinder.

Reason I cut off some of these is I just don't want that red tint too much coming into our gumbo z'herbes.

Of course, we got to chop off our beet tops.

Put that there.

-And being Catholic and being from the old traditions, I guess, the odd number was relevant, wouldn't you say?

-Yeah, you know, it was funny.

They always used to say the amount of greens that you have in there is the amount of new friends that you will make.

And then at least one of them, I guess one of them will be rich or wealthy.

I'm still waiting on my one, but eventually, after cooking all these greens, I'm going to find that one person.

-It's been a long family tradition.

We've always had it, and our family line up.

So I guess it's something that was just passed and passed and passed.

And there is a dish that is done in the islands that is similar to this one.

It's called callaloo, where they use all of the greens, but they put no proteins in it.

It's a straight vegetarian dish.

-And now while those greens are sweating and cooking down, I'm just going to put in a little bit of oil here.

And, of course, we're going to make a roux, but we're not going to make as much roux as if you were doing your normal gumbos, your Creole gumbo.

This roux is just to thicken it a little bit at the end.

Of course, your greens is really your base and your body of this gumbo.

-Okay, here we have our chaurice sausage that has been our staple for many, many years.

We get a little bit of heat from it.

Not too much but just a little bit.

-In this part, not only are we sweating our sausage, we're flavoring our oil.

And the rest of the meat we'll start to add when we start to build this gumbo z'herbes.

You just want this to sweat maybe about 10 minutes.

You're looking to soften up those vegetables.

Your greens will start to wilt a little bit, just enough where you can put it through this grinder.

Back in the day, when you would come in and we would make gumbo z'herbes, and all the greens that you see -- I mean, we had bunches and bunches -- this would be the guy.

You would have it right here, and just somebody is working it, just boom.

And, of course, this was there all the way until the 2000s.

And when lazy old me came, I said, "Oh, no, I'm tired of grinding for a whole week of gumbo z'herbes.

There's the equipment, a grinder that I'll just go buy, and slide it through."

You remember those days?

-Do I remember those days, all week of grinding?

That's how you got your cardio in.

-A week of grinding.

-A week of grinding.

-Green after green.

So now we're at the stage where you can see our greens have wilted.

We're going to start to pull it out.

The sausage has rendered and flavored that beautiful oil that we'll use later.

And then you just start to come on out of there.

Again, I have a slotted spoon because I want to save that pot liquor that's in the -- in this pot.

And if you just smell these beautiful, fresh greens... And that is it.

I'm getting every bit of these onions out of here, I'm fishing for my garlic because that's all my vegetables that's going to flavor this gumbo z'herbes.

When you pull it out, that is warm.

You want to let it cool for about 10 or 15 minutes.

You can stick it in your refrigerator and let it cool down, and then it's cool enough for you to work, right?

It doesn't have to be cold-cold but enough for you to work it with your hands.

All you're looking to do is just grind your greens.

So when we put this in here, you're looking to grind up not only your greens, but your vegetables, your onions, your garlic.

Everything is going in here to create that fine green that we're going to go ahead on and make that gumbo z'herbes with.

So we'll go ahead on and get started with our grinding process.

Let's see how much mess we're going to make.

♪ ♪ But this is what you're looking for, that grind right here, that green, right?

You're grinding all your onions, your greens are in here.

And as we finish grinding these greens, we'll clean all this up, move this, and I'll show you how to bring this gumbo z'herbes into the pot.

-First, we're going to start by sweating down our meats.

We're going to get all of our proteins in.

-And you can remember that what started in that pot is our pot liquor, right?

That's the juice that we're going into.

-That was the smoked sausage.

And then we had the veal stew.

And, remember, we have to have a nice, hearty pot.

So we got to get a lot of protein in there.

And then we have some smoked ham that we've cubed up.

And then we're going to take this chaurice sausage out of here... ...and leave Chef the fat so that he may build his roux and put our stuff all together.

And we're not going to add any more seasoning to this because we had our onions and our garlic ground in with our greens already.

So we're just going to let this cook in this pot and get nice and tender.

Chef will start to build the roux.

-So I have a little oil here.

We're going to use just a little bit here.

And like we did for the Creole gumbo, we took it to, you know, that brown color.

Well, this one doesn't have to go too, too dark.

You're just really cooking that flour out and creating something that's going to pull this together.

That's enough flour that I have right there.

I'm going to just let that cook on a medium heat.

Our roux is right where we want it to be.

You can see it's not as dark as I would take a normal gumbo, but it's that cooking of that flour out that I want it to.

It's got a nice little smell to it.

Not too nutty, but right where I want it to be.

And you can see right here, this pot has come to a boil, come to a simmer.

Our veal looks like it's ready to start to add more stuff to it.

-So we're going to add our greens that we have ground.

We're going to add them to the pot.

And we're going to start making gumbo.

Gumbo z'herbes that is.

-This just brings me back to Holy Thursday, watching my grandmother cook.

-All right.

So we're looking pretty -- pretty full there.

We'll just let this come back up to a boil, and then we will add our chicken.

All of the Creole houses had this at home.

Tradition had it, and they had to have that hearty hold-over.

The younger generations, I don't think we do too much of the fasting as strict as the old ones did.

They really fasted.

So it's come back to a boil.

We're going to add some chicken to it.

-And now you start to see the richness of this gumbo z'herbes, right?

You have your nine different greens, you have veal stew, you have smoked sausage, chaurice sausage, you have chicken.

-Looks wonderful.

Chef, if you'd do me the honor and add the roux.

-And I may not add all this roux, right, one, because it'll start to burn up when you put it in.

It creates that little volcano when it's hot.

This one had a little time to cool.

So what I'll advise you to do is, as we did, cook the roux along with it, let it cool on the stove, and then you can just stir it in.

And as I stir it in, you can start to see it's starting to thicken already.

It's going to be a good pot, Cle.

-I think we did all right.

-I'm just moving it around, making sure no roux is going to that bottom or sticking.

And just stirring it in, mix it in, and you can start to see it tighten up and start to thicken a little bit.

And that's where we want it.

We're going to let that cook a little more.

I think I have enough roux in this.

There's salt in that pot liquor, but as we added the greens back, we added the meat, you do want to add a little more salt to this dish here.

And, of course, thyme.

We always use thyme.

This is dried thyme, whole dried thyme that we'll add in there.

I do have some cayenne pepper that I can add to this dish.

So if you're able to find chaurice sausage, you may not need the cayenne pepper.

If you don't, because that chaurice sausage has that cayenne pepper, those red pepper flakes, that heat to it.

Before we add the filé, I want to taste it just to make sure we're there on the salt.

And if we have to add a little cayenne pepper, I'm going to make sure we add it in before we finish it off with that filé.

Oh, man.

This is bringing me back to Holy Thursday.

Cle, taste a little bit.

I don't think it needs any cayenne pepper, but I'm going to get a second opinion here.

-I would like just a little hint of cayenne.

-A little pinch?

-Just a little.

-So we'll add a little pinch here.

And then you're right where we want it to be.

And the last thing that you want to do is add your filé.

So you can sprinkle it in and fold it in.

Oh, man.

Let's get ready to plate this up.

-So we always serve it with a little white rice.

-And, again, it's a hearty meal, so you better make sure you get all the right meats in here.

You want all the sausage, all the chicken.

You want a piece of veal stew.

You want each and every person to get just that hearty flavor of gumbo z'herbes.

Oh, my.

Just look how beautiful that is.

This is that Holy Thursday event that my grandmother loved.

-It's really an interesting day here, and we love it.

-There are superstitions associated with the number of greens used in gumbo z'herbes.

That tradition is part of the lore of this Creole dish.

-Gumbo z'herbes is a green gumbo.

And being superstitious as we supposed to be in New Orleans, we use uneven numbers of greens -- 5, 7, 9, or 11.

I use nine.

And we do that because they said, "Even numbers -- bad luck.

You can't do that.

You have to use the uneven numbers."

-Oh, there's certainly the superstition behind gumbo z'herbes.

You have to cook it with an odd number of greens.

That signifies all the new friends that you're going to get.

And one of them will be wealthy.

And wealthy -- We haven't really signified if that's wealthy in money or wealthy in love, but either way, you're going to be all right.

-See, this city was so Catholic.

Everybody was Catholic.

That was your last meat day before Easter Sunday.

So on Holy Thursday, you got these greens.

I don't know if that came by way of the islands, because down in the islands, they have something called callaloo.

That is something like a gumbo z'herbes, but it has okra in it.

And it was done on Holy Thursday because that's like a big thing, you know, like the Jewish Passover, you know, a Jewish Seder meal.

That was what you did on Holy Thursday.

But all they served you was gumbo z'herbes.

-The other Holy Thursday staple is fried chicken, expertly prepared by the Chase chefs.

-We're going to show you a little peek on how we make that delicious crispy gold-fried chicken.

-We have chicken that we've cut up, and we get eight pieces to the chicken.

We have just some eggs that we've slightly beaten and we pour over there.

And four little ingredients that we use.

We use some salt, some black pepper.

Enough black pepper.

Not overpowering, but a good little bit.

A little pinch of cayenne for a little heat.

And some granulated garlic.

And we mix that all up and make sure it's well-coated, well-marinated in the egg because we want the flour to adhere to it.

We don't use any cream because it has a tendency to fry dark.

Then we're going to start with our bigger pieces and our flour dredge.

And dredge it.

-When we first started, we would not only serve gumbo z'herbes and fried chicken, we tried to serve a few other of our dishes.

But you can imagine, as we grew and Holy Thursday grew, I mean, we're talking cases upon cases of chicken, gallons upon gallons of gumbo.

We just couldn't do any other dish.

So when you come to Dooky's on Holy Thursday, you're getting fried chicken, gumbo z'herbes, and cornbread.

And it is a meal that will fill your belly until you go through fasting on Good Friday and getting ready for Easter Sunday.

-I have them all coated up.

And, Chef, you can take them away and begin your frying.

-Now, the key to frying anything is to make sure that this grease is hot.

So if you have a thermometer at home, that's going to be the key.

You don't want it too hot.

You don't want it low, right?

So we're going to stick it in there and see.

What we're looking for here is I want it to read about 375, but you'll actually be frying at about 350, because when we put that chicken in, it's going to bring it down about 25 degrees.

So right here, we're at 325, you can see.

We're going to let this heat up to get us to 375.

I'll add that chicken in, and we'll fry at a consistent 350 for about 15 to 20 minutes.

And you put them in the order that it takes to cook, right?

I have breasts here.

I have a little legs, thighs.

I'm going to put those breasts and thighs in first because they'll take a little longer.

And right now I think we're at about 375, and we'll start to go right on in that fry.

And that's what you're looking for.

♪ Again, you don't want to crowd this pot, right?

As you put in this chicken, not only is it going to reduce the heat, if you crowd that pot, it's going to make it that much harder for that grease to maintain that level and to get back to where you want it to be.

So we're just going to add that leg, this wing here, and this wing here.

We'll let that fry for about 15 minutes before I start to pull out the first pieces.

If the breasts are pretty big, I'll let those go for an extra two minutes.

So you want to put it in, let that chicken fry for about five minutes, let that batter really start to get crisp and adhere to it, then you can start to flip.

But don't automatically go in there and start turning that chicken around.

You'll start to knock off some of that batter.

-My mother fried chicken.

This is the only way she did it, was in that that cast-iron.

And she would fry about three whole chickens.

Never once did the oil ever turn in.

You never had one piece that was more brown than the other one.

-We're about halfway through the process.

We'll start to turn them.

I'll turn that breast first.

And you can see that golden brown on that side.

Still got a few more minutes to cook, but that's what you're looking for.

You're starting to get to where you need to be, right?

And you just turn them over and flip them.

And take your time with it.

This is no rush, right?

You're dealing with hot grease.

Fried chicken and bacon -- that's two things that will wake up a neighborhood, a house.

When they smell it, everybody's coming over and saying, "What is that on the stove?"

And they know what it is because they can smell it a block away.

And you can see that beautiful golden brown that's happening.

What's also starting to happen, as you can see, is that chicken starts to rise, right?

It's starting to float to the top.

That's when you know you're just about ready to pull it out, right?

So, of course, we're going to pull it out the opposite way.

Right?

We went in with the breast.

We went in with the thigh, the bigger pieces.

Now you pull it out the back way.

You come out with your wings first and then your legs, then your thighs, then your breasts.

Look at that beautiful color on that.

Oh, man.

I just want to dive right in.

Beautiful golden brown.

-Looks great.

-Look at this texture, that crunch.

And, I mean, just look at that.

You smell this coming.

Beautiful.

Imagine that, next with that gumbo z'herbes and a little cornbread muffin.

Oh, man.

-We're going to make sure everybody gets a nice portion.

-You know, on Holy Thursday, we're getting you a platter of chicken.

So everybody has a bowl of gumbo z'herbes, and here comes 8 pieces of chicken, 12 pieces of chicken.

We really want you to dig in like you're sitting with your family and friends and enjoying every bit of it.

-Each year, generations of Catholics return to Dooky Chase on Holy Thursday.

It was one of Chef Leah's favorite celebrations, both for its religious significance and for the opportunity to feed all of her friends.

-All of my grandparents are rooted in deep Catholic faith, and that was one tradition that was inside the home, certainly shared and practiced with the family, that, again, was brought to share with others.

So I remember Holy Thursday when it was in just the main dining room.

And this is decades ago.

I hate to say that about myself.

But when -- You know, few would come, and a few ladies would come and have their special start of the Easter weekend and make it a big treat.

And then, as time grew, it just grew bigger and bigger, because the sense of community that people started to appreciate that Holy Thursday gave just increased, and more and more people would just come from near and far to be in fellowship and communion with everyone else that's in the dining room on that day.

It is such a spirited, lovely day to come.

-Holy Thursday gumbo z'herbes -- one of our biggest days here at the restaurant.

And that's a tradition that we have to keep not only for us but for the community.

They love the camaraderie of just having dialog and conversation with family and friends, because it gives that sense of, "Every Easter week, we know we're coming to Dooky Chase."

It gives a sense of normalcy, a sense of pride, a sense of let's gather together as a people, you know?

And that's why we keep it going.

We keep it going for the community.

People look forward to that day as much as we look forward to that day.

And you need those things in life, right, those somewhat routines, but, really, those traditions and that history to come through that everybody has in their culture.

This is just one we have here at the restaurant.

-Our Holy Thursday meal concludes with a celebratory cocktail that originated in Paris, the French 75.

-We're toasting.

We are celebrating.

So this is a perfect drink for Holy Thursday, which is the French 75.

So it's fresh lemon juice, simple syrup.

Simple syrup is just sugar and water.

It's one part sugar, one part water.

So you can make your own at home.

When it was made in Paris, at the New York Bar in Paris, it was made with gin.

Well, here in New Orleans, we like cognac because it's French.

It's all our French influence.

So we make ours with cognac.

So we're going to start, and we're going to do 3/4 ounce of lemon juice.

The same for our simple.

3/4 ounce of simple syrup.

And then we'll do about 1 1/4 ounce of cognac, because that's our main spirit.

We're going to shake.

All right.

So we'll blend all that together.

Pour it in our champagne flute.

And there's our basic base cocktail.

But then here's the celebratory part.

We're going to top it with some champagne, the sparkling.

And then to garnish, we'll garnish with the lemon zest.

And then, again, we're going to express our lemon oil on top, rim the top, and there's our French 75.

Happy Holy Thursday.

And cheers to all our new friends and old friends that are going to stay with us.

-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.

-My grandparents, just like my mother and my father, they were giving people.

They were loving people.

They were religious people.

-She didn't want to be just the cute little girl that sat on the porch in the city and waited for a boy to come and notice her and take her out.

She wanted to be a woman on the move that could set her own pace, determine her own life, determine her own direction.

-She didn't really come into the restaurant till I went to school, so prior to that, she was home, and she was a wonderful homemaker.

But I think -- I think she was happy to come and start getting involved and being part of the family more and battling her way in and then, ultimately, you know, turning it into what it has come to be.

-I hope she's proud.

I hope she knows that we're doing everything that my grandparents and my great-grandparents taught us to do and set that foundation.

And I hope when we misstep, it's a little birdie that comes in our dreams and say, "Hey, hey, get back on track."

-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...