-Funding for "The Dooky Chase Kitchen: Leah's Legacy" was provided by the... -Since its founding in 1941, Dooky Chase's restaurant has redefined the culinary and cultural history of New Orleans.

Despite having no formal training, Chef Leah Chase made it her mission to provide fine dining for Black patrons who did not have a first-class restaurant in the city.

A lifetime learner, she studied cookbooks, experimented, and began transforming the menu to include classic dishes.

Chefs Dook and Zoe Chase salute this culinary pioneer with two local favorites served with a quintessential mint julep from Eve Marie Haydel.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ We start with a classic dish introduced by Chef Leah -- flounder stuffed with crab meat.

-So, we'll get started.

I have a little bit of milk here.

I'm just going to pour this right into this bowl.

And all we want to do is just soak some of this.

This is old, stale French bread that we had from some of our po'boys.

And what I want to do is I just want to wet this bread, right?

It's not too much.

I'm not soaking it like if you're doing a bread pudding, but just enough just to wet so when I do add it into that, it'll go ahead on and mix well around.

So I got that soaking.

I'm going to put this to the side.

Right here we're going to start with this pot here.

I have a little butter.

Of course, you know we got to use some butter here.

Always have it on the side.

If you need more butter, add more butter.

Don't put in too much.

So, my butter is melting, and I got it on about a low to medium heat, not too high.

So a little bit of onions here.

Little bed of celery here.

And this is like if you're making any stuffing, right?

You have your celery, your onions.

That's always your base until you add your protein and what stuffing you're making.

And then a little bit of garlic.

We're going to add a little seasoning to this mix.

Salt.

Pepper here.

And this stage takes about -- probably about five minutes.

Right?

I don't want to rush it.

I just want it to cook down, soften up.

And this is the foundation of so many stuffings, right?

My grandmother always used to say... these Creoles, we stuff everything, right?

We got stuffed fish, we have stuffed bell peppers, we have stuffed chicken, stuffed fillet of beef.

So you can see this is kind of right where we want it to be.

I'll add in that bread.

And then we'll kind of mix this in.

And once you put that bread in, you're looking for about another 3 to 4 minutes as we add things in.

Of course, we got to season it a little more.

A little salt.

A little pepper.

And you can see I'm just using basic salt and pepper, right?

Because I want that flounder and that crab to speak for itself.

So this is looking great.

One thing I'm going to add to it after that salt and pepper -- And it's really just to give a little color to it, right?

A little tint.

That's just smoked paprika.

Now it's our time for our lump crab meat.

This is our Louisiana blue crab.

It's actually jumbo lump.

So we'll add in a little bit of our lump crab.

Got some beautiful crab here.

And that covers that up.

We'll season that with a little salt and pepper.

And I can tell you, this crab meat -- Oh, my goodness.

You know, my son loves crab so much, it's hard to have crab without him eating half the bowl before we put it in here, but that's just the beautiful thing about our Louisiana blue crab.

You can just go right in and have it, you know, as-is.

I do add a little bit of our green onions here.

This also adds flavor, but it also adds a beautiful color to it.

And this is the part where if you're seeing it's a little too dry, that's why I left this butter here, right here, just to pick up.

I'm not adding it yet, but I will get back to it.

♪ And I'm not working that crab too hard, right?

I'm just folding this in.

I don't want to beat it up or break it up.

I want you to see that beautiful lump crab meat as it is.

This looks like the right consistency I want, so I'm not going to add any more butter to it.

I don't want it too wet.

But what I do have to do is taste it to make sure we have our flavors there.

Look at this lump crab meat.

Mmm!

Right on.

I'm gonna put it and rest it in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes to cool down.

So while that's cooling down, I'll show you how we work this flounder.

So, now we got our flounder.

Beautiful fish.

Beautiful flat fish.

This is that fish -- If you can't find flounder, Dover sole is a good equivalent, good flat fish.

I'm going to show you just how we debone this whole fish, because what we're going to want to do is just open that baby up, take the bones out so we can make room for our stuffing.

One of the things we do is we work and we get these little fins off.

If you have shears at home, you can pick it up and just cut around the shears.

I'm going to just work it right here with my knife, pulling this skin off.

You can see here -- it's just coming around right on that backside and pulling that off.

What that does is it allows me when I go to open it up to take those bones right out a little bit easier.

So you can see here.

That's one side there.

Turning this one here.

And I'm just following that body.

A lot of times if you're buying fish, you know, your local market, they'll do this for you if you tell them what you're trying to do, right?

All you want to do is kind of butterfly this thing and get it ready for stuffing.

Somebody there will do it, and you can tell them what you want, get the fish first, go ahead and do the rest of your shopping, and come back and your fish will be ready.

So you'll start right here... and then just start working.

These fish have already been scaled, right?

So you're coming right here.

And you're following that bone.

Let that knife ride that bone.

And you can see how I'm opening them up.

And you can see the bones are right here.

That's what you want to do.

And you're going to keep opening them up, ride that bone.

And what you're doing is creating a beautiful pocket.

Turn them and come this way.

Ride that bone.

And you see this little part.

That's a collarbone that we have right there.

You want to nix that, get that one out of there.

And that's -- that's what you're looking for.

You'll flip him over and do the same exact thing.

Once you flip him over and do the same thing, I have some right here, right?

So you flip that guy over.

All you'll be able to do is pick that bone right up, cut that thing, and that's what you're looking for.

Now that we have our fish deboned and ready to go, I'm going to clean all this up, go get our crab meat stuffing that's been resting in the refrigerator, and get them ready to go right in this oven.

You can see we made this beautiful open butterfly where we're going to put that stuffing right in here.

We're just going to hit it with a little salt before we put that beautiful stuffing in.

Want to salt each side, each one.

And then a little pepper.

♪ I sprayed this pan, and you want to spray that so when you put it in an oven, that flounder, that skin at the bottom doesn't stick to this pan.

I mean, you look at this crab meat.

I mean, oh, my goodness.

Now you're going just right in that middle.

Look how beautiful that is.

You talk about a dish that the whole table will be envy of.

When you show up and you have this beautiful flat fish and all that crab meat just coming out and looking as beautiful as it looks here.

♪ Put that on the side, and then you just want to make a little -- little turn on it, right?

♪ And what I love to top it with is two things.

I have a little bit of Parmesan cheese.

♪ My lemon that I'm gonna just top right there.

We have our oven at a 350 temperature.

We're going to put those in for about 15 to 20 minutes, and they'll be ready to serve.

♪ Look at that beautiful color.

Now what you want to do is just create a great, quick, little brown butter here.

I'm going to throw in a little butter here.

I'm gonna hit it with a little salt.

A little pepper.

Like a little lemon in there.

Let's just let that baby brown up.

I'm gonna turn that on a little low heat, and you can see that color starting to form.

And then we're just going to come right in under here.

I pick the biggest one to try to move over, and I lost some of my... my crab right there.

I got to bring that back in.

I can smell my butter here.

That's kind of right where we're going.

I'm going to add in a little bit of that green onion just for color.

And this is all I want to do, is just drizzle that baby.

Oh, you can smell that lemon just coming through.

Got little sprigs of parsley right here because this is just one of those dishes that everybody needs to taste at least once.

This dish, it brings me back to how my grandmother treated us and treated every customer that came through that door -- royalty.

-Chef Leah Chase first stepped into the restaurant world as a waitress in a French Quarter establishment.

Waiting tables fostered her love for food and her determination to create an elegant sit-down restaurant in her community, white tablecloths and all.

-My mother waitressed for Miss Savoie at The Coffee Pot in the Vieux Carré near Royal Street, near where the cathedral is.

And Miss Savoie would depend on my mother a lot because my mother would always say, "Oh, Miss Savoie, I could do -- I could cook.

That man can cook?

I could cook, too."

She said, "But, Leah, honey, you can't lift those pots."

"If he can lift them, I can lift them."

-She loved waiting on tables.

She loved fine dining.

She loved cooking them because she experienced success cooking.

And so now she wanted to explore those things a little bit more.

-Buttery and spicy barbecue shrimp, a popular New Orleans creation, also made its way onto Chef Leah's expanding menu.

-Alright, now we're going to do a New Orleans classic barbecue shrimp.

It's not what you may be thinking.

It's not barbecue sauce, but it's a barbecue reduction.

So we have our beautiful Gulf shrimp here.

And what we're going to do is we're going to peel them -- like this.

And we're going to save our shells because that's going to go in our reduction.

We're going to get our shears, and we're going to cut just the top of the head.

Then we're going to devein it.

Take that vein out.

Voilà.

Alright.

So, to our pot here...

Going to have our fire going.

We're going to add a little butter.

To that we're going to add our shrimp shells.

A little Creole seasoning.

Our onion.

Some celery.

So we're going to mix this up.

And we're going to let this sauté for about five minutes.

We want the vegetables to get soft.

The shrimp don't have to be too big.

You know, your local grocery store might have a 16/20.

You know, you just want to get the head on with the shell, but any size can work.

They don't need to be jumbo shrimp.

So, to our pot, we're going to add our lemon juice.

Some hot sauce.

So, we want to use a lot of hot sauce because we want a kick there.

You know, a barbecue shrimp needs a good little kick.

And we're not adding cayenne, so that's where we're getting our heat, from our hot sauce.

We're going to add some Worcestershire sauce.

And a little bit of garlic cloves.

To that we're going to add some thyme and some rosemary.

If you don't have fresh rosemary or fresh thyme, dry rosemary or dry thyme works perfectly.

Smelling great.

So you want to let this get to a simmer.

Then we're going to add beer.

A dark -- Any dark beer will work... perfectly.

And after you add your beer, you're going to let this reduce for maybe 20 minutes will be good.

So, if you don't want to use beer, you know, you could always either just use water, a seafood stock.

A dry white wine would be perfect.

You know, we use the beer just to -- That's our unique flavor.

It gives it a great taste.

But, yeah, you could use water.

Doesn't have to be the beer.

Alright.

We're going to let this come to a boil.

Now that our reduction is boiling, we're going to turn it down a little bit.

We're going to add a couple of bay leaves.

Let that simmer in there.

Now we're going to get started on our shrimp.

So, to my pan right here I'm going to add a couple of cubes of butter.

While that's getting hot, we're going to season our shrimp.

Just a little Creole seasoning.

And a dash of salt.

Not too much salt because the Creole seasoning has salt, as well.

Alright.

Now that our pan is hot, we'll add our shrimp.

You don't want to add too many shrimp.

Don't crowd the pan.

Let's say about five shrimp will be perfect.

Let's give our reduction a taste.

Yummy.

So, with this reduction, when you do taste it, it's a very powerful reduction.

You got that lemon juice, you got that hot sauce.

It's going to be very strong.

But when we put it in this pan and reduce it down with the butter, it's going to be light and it's going to taste great.

We're going to cook our shrimp each side for about 3 minutes.

Now we're going to turn our shrimps.

Alright.

Now we have our ladle.

And we're going to pour our reduction right into our pan.

And we're going to let that reduce for 3 minutes.

Turn our reduction off.

We're just going to let that reduction coat those shrimps.

Now that's reducing.

Our last touch is to add a little bit of butter.

Maybe a splash more seasoning.

So, you're looking for your sauce to reduce a little bit more.

You want it to really coat your spoon.

See how that's coating it?

That's the consistency we're looking for, to still have a little bit of sauce on our spoon.

And that butter helps to get to that thick nappe stage.

Alright.

I think we are ready to plate.

So, I have some toast points here.

And we're going to lay those on the plate.

Gonna lay our shrimps.

And if you want to reduce your reduction even more, add a little more butter and really let that butter -- Get it to a great consistency where it's going to coat all of the shrimp.

Alright.

Now we're going to... glaze that reduction on top.

O-M-G.

So yummy.

Alright.

We have some lemon for our garnish.

And we also have some green onion.

So, for our last touch, we have some parsley.

And this -- You know, the toast points are here to soak up that beautiful sauce.

You're going to eat that with the shrimp.

Easy meal.

Doesn't take long.

And it's a crowd pleaser.

Barbecue shrimp.

-Chef Leah's ambitions for the restaurant were matched by her natural mastery of the culinary arts.

-Growing up like they did, they had to use what was around, make it work, feed all those children, plus themselves.

And they all grew up knowing how to do that.

And so she just took it to another level here.

She also was intrigued, like I told you, working in the Quarter, with these dishes that were not really part of the community.

She wanted to introduce people to new things.

Sometimes it worked.

Sometimes it didn't.

But you got to love that about her.

-The menu went from basics of spaghetti and hot dogs to her trying to really introduce something as far as the lobster thermidor and then to realize, well, you know, it was good -- I'm sure it was good, but it was a miss because it didn't connect with the community.

And so always wanting to present something that connected with the community where she was comfortable in serving and the community had pride in was foremost.

-That was her passion, of saying, "What is my community missing?

And let me be that person to bring it there so they can enjoy it just like anybody else can."

So, of course, that's when the menu just started to go elevated, right?

She brought in all of these classic Creole cuisines and just took it to a whole nother level here.

-Layers of mint infused into the Dooky Chase mint julep set this classic cocktail apart from its Kentucky Derby counterpart.

-Well, I was a little impatient teenager and then a young adult waiting on tables, and I would watch my grandfather take his time and methodically build these mint juleps in a glass.

And I kept saying, "What are you doing?"

Like, I never understood.

Well, I understood later, years later, down the line, when I decided off a whim to go to bartending school.

But this is what I would watch my grandfather do over and over and over and take his time.

And I'm getting impatient, so we're going to drop about four mint leaves at the bottom of this glass.

And then here's something we do at Dooky's, and this is all my grandmother.

So, she wanted to elevate the flavor.

You know, you think mint julep, usually mint juleps are made with just whiskey, water, and ice -- like crushed ice.

Well, here at Dooky's, we make it a little different because my grandmother wanted the more robust flavor of mint, so she would brew a mint tea in the back.

And now Cleo does the same for me, as my base.

So then we'll put our mint leaves down.

We'll put about an ounce of mint tea in there.

We're going to take our muddler, but we're not going to muddle it.

We're just going to press them lightly to just open up the oil and the leaves so the bottom of the glass and that tea can kind of steep with that.

And then we're going to go ahead and put our ice in a glass.

And let that sit right there.

So we can get a really cold, cold, cold whiskey and a mint julep, we're going to shake it and then we're going to pour it over there.

So we'll fill our tin up with our ice.

In this we're going to use some mint syrup.

So this is another layer of mint that we're adding.

So this is my element that I added onto this mint julep.

So this is just a mint simple syrup that I made in the kitchen.

So it's -- I just steep my mint leaves with some sugar and water and let it brew.

So that's about an ounce of that.

And then a whole lot of whiskey.

So this is Kentucky whiskey, of course.

The mint juleps are famous there for the Kentucky Derby, which is where the mint julep is most notable.

Then we're going to give it a good, little vigorous shake.

[ Rattling ] You want to shake it hard.

Nice and cold.

[ Rattling ] Alright.

We're going to strain our cocktail right over that ice.

You see the beautiful contrast from the tea at the bottom.

And then we're going to garnish with just a simple -- simple mint sprig.

A sprig of mint.

There.

And you can kind of just slap it a little bit to open up those oils.

So once someone hits the glass, they'll smell it come up.

And then we top it over here with some powdered sugar to add a little sweetener to it.

And there's our mint julep.

-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.

-It's big shoes to fill, you know?

Our grandparents reached a lot of people, and it was just the genuine nature to do that, is to serve.

And so it's like we know that importance, and it takes a lot of us to fill those four shoes, right?

-So, for us, carrying on the legacy and the tradition that my great-- my grandparents have put in place is everything.

And so it's with great gratitude and appreciation that we work together.

It's a blessing.

-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.

-Faith and family has always been the guiding principles for this family.

It has gotten us thus far.

It's going to continue on and get us through each and every thing that we face.

So, you know, we always have those higher powers up there.

You know, now my great-grandparents, my grandparents, and my aunt are looking down, making sure we're getting it right.

♪ -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...