-Funding for "The Dooky Chase Kitchen: Leah's Legacy" was provided by the... -Dooky Chase's restaurant has been a long-standing hub for civic activities in New Orleans, a welcoming spot where community leaders meet and forge connections over soul-satisfying food.

For nearly 10 years, Chef Leah Chase prepared dishes for an annual duck dinner hosted by New Orleans' first Black mayor, Ernest "Dutch" Morial, a family friend and restaurant regular.

Today, chefs Dook Chase and Cleo Robinson prepare a medley of duck dinner themed dishes, paired with a New Orleans specialty mixed by Eve Marie Haydel.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ We start with an entree inspired by the mayor's duck dinners -- citrus-glazed roast duck leg.

-Today we have a beautiful duck leg quarter.

And when I look at this duck leg quarter, it brings me back to the duck dinners that my grandmother did for Ernest "Dutch" Morial.

And there was so many, you know, dinners that she did over the years as he was mayor.

And I would just grow up hearing stories of, when I would see people, "Man, that duck dinner, that duck dinner."

So, this is something that I want to bring back and we will bring back to Dooky Chase.

I'm gonna start off showing you how we prepare the duck here.

We have a little bit of salt.

A little pepper.

And this is a citrus-glazed duck that we're gonna do, right?

So we are gonna get it with a little orange marmalade, a glaze that we put on at the end.

So, I'll season it lightly, knowing that I'mma come back to it towards the end.

This is a little granulated garlic.

You want to season both sides.

♪ Got my pepper, and then I'll hit it with a little salt.

And all you want to do is get a half pan.

We sprayed it.

We're gonna put that duck right on in.

♪ I'll move this guy out our way.

We'll top that with just little cubes of butter.

And like we always do, that butter, as it cooks -- that butter is gonna ooze out along with that duck fat, and it's just gonna create a wonderful flavor that we'll later use when we go to do our citrus glaze.

Now that we have our duck seasoned and we topped it with butter, we're gonna cover it.

I have my oven preheated to 350, and we're gonna let it go for 45 minutes, covered.

♪ And as that's cooking for 45 minutes, we're gonna start to work on our sides that we serve with our duck.

And we're gonna start with our greens.

-The dinner tradition began when Mayor Dutch Morial asked Chef Leah Chase to cook 40 ducks for a special men's-only confab in the restaurant's upstairs dining room.

Thanks in part to the culinary skills of Chef Leah and her daughter, Emily Chase Haydel, the event quickly outgrew the restaurant and was later catered offsite at both Gallier Hall and the Municipal Auditorium.

-I started in the kitchen when I came here.

I didn't know anything, so I started just doing whatever they did in the kitchen.

And then I decided, "Well, wait, we got to change."

You know, people began -- men began to have office jobs, like lawyers, like Dutch and those people, and they began to have professional jobs.

So, that's when I changed and we got a head start getting lunches at first, making lunches.

Then we started to put the dinner menu on, you know, because people were beginning to eat out, Black people.

You know what I do?

Okay.

I get in here and I do what I have to do in here.

Then I work the total community.

-During that time, that was her and my grandparents, and that's that foundation I'm talking about, right, from my great-grandparents and my grandparents.

It was the love of people.

That's exactly what it was.

It was the love of community.

No matter who was in their community, it was the love of community, so we never had a problem of servicing everybody here in this restaurant.

-We actually stood out of politics.

We were about getting people to vote, and that's pretty much what we did.

Dutch Morial was gonna be our first African American mayor, and we knew he was qualified.

He had everything.

There was no reason why he couldn't be mayor.

And, of course, this was a time to forget about what you don't do and do what you can do.

And my mother and father loved Dutch Morial.

They saw him come here as a lawyer.

They saw him strategizing upstairs with the great lawyers, with everyone.

And this was the time that they said, "We're going to back him."

In fact, he was our family lawyer, which we had to lose him to the city.

But they were going to back Dutch Morial because they felt that we couldn't have had a person that was more qualified than him.

I have never seen my parents so joyous and happy than I've seen them when he was elected mayor.

And they were -- they participated.

They contributed.

They did whatever they could do to make that happen.

And that was a joyous time for us.

-Among the hearty side dishes featured at the dinners were mixed greens flavored with a smoked ham hock.

-So, we have our fresh mustard and collard greens and we're gonna take those.

We're gonna take the big stems off and we're just gonna do a rough chop, just so that we can blanch them.

And I have the majority of them already done, and we will add them to that.

And then we'll put them in our hot water to blanch.

-So, when you think about greens, right, what we're doing here is parboiling them.

If you're at the grocery store and you're buying frozen greens, which is perfectly fine, this is the step that we're doing right here, right?

Those have all been parboiled.

Those have already been chopped.

We're just creating that step right here.

The beautiful thing about allowing you to create this step right here, you're creating something that we call pot liquor, right?

You're creating that good old green stock that as you blanch those greens, we're gonna use some of that stock as we cook those greens.

So, you want those to blanch for about 10 minutes.

Then you'll strain them out, keeping that liquid intact in that pot, and you'll let them cool and come out with something like this that we have here.

So, these have been blanched.

We came out with them.

You can see that rough chop like we did here.

So, we have our pot that's right next to the greens being blanched.

It has a smoked ham shank in there.

And what we're doing is we're creating that stock with that flavor from this smoked ham shank.

So, right when you're starting to blanch your greens, you want to put that smoked ham shank right in that pot and just let it boil with some water about halfway up.

If you don't want to use a ham shank, smoked turkey, turkey necks, all that adds great flavor to this pot.

So, we have some of our blanched greens that we already have, and Cleo will add that to our pot with the ham shank.

♪ ♪ And the reason why we use spinach -- a lot of people say, "You put spinach in there?"

It's just a little.

It's to soften those greens up a little bit.

So, we have a mixture of greens in here that we're cooking with that we added to that stock with the ham shank.

And this is where we start to build that flavor of the greens, right?

We're getting ready to add the onions and the garlic and all the great spices that we really love here.

-Onions and garlic.

-We added our onions.

We added our garlic.

And this is a dish that, you know, when you're talking greens and you're talking duck, you're talking slow cook, right?

This is something that you're not rushing.

You're building those flavors and you're just gonna let those greens simmer on a low to medium heat for about 30, 35 minutes in this pot.

-And to that, we'll add a pinch of salt.

Some dried thyme.

And a little bit of cayenne pepper.

-And you can see that pot.

I'll turn this one off.

That's the color we're looking for.

Those would have been blanched.

At that point, you would have strained those out and you would use some of that pot liquor just to go in.

-I was definitely around for the duck dinners.

Morial had just started his administration when I got here, or there shortly afterwards.

But the duck dinners was quite... quite an experience.

And it was all men.

No ladies were invited.

And the ladies that did work the kitchen -- the only lady that worked the kitchen was my aunt and her daughter Emily at the time.

And as I came in, I got all excited because all of the products were coming in and we were cooking, and something got left at the restaurant.

So, smart me, I said, "Well, good, I get -- This is my chance.

I get to go see what the duck dinner is all about."

So, I drove over to Gallier Hall and I'm delivering, and Miss Chase told me, "That's it.

Now you have to go."

I went, "Oh, no, I'm here now.

I want to see what's going on."

She said, "No, no ladies.

No ladies.

Just us, and that's it."

But I did get to stay and help out and watch it all unfold, and it was a beautiful thing.

It was just a bunch of men and their camaraderie and talking all of their little politics and all of that.

And this dinner grew to such great proportions that it was unbelievable.

We went from doing just duck...

It was sacks and sacks of turnips, sacks and sacks of sweet potatoes.

Then the next thing you know, here comes the alligator, and here comes rabbit, and here comes squirrel, and here comes pheasant... -Yeah.

-...and here comes dove, and here comes this big, gigantic tuna.

I went, "Oh, there's no way in the world you're gonna cook all of this stuff."

She said, "Throw it in a pot.

Guess what we're gonna call it.

Critter gumbo."

The biggest hit.

They loved it.

So, we had all of this stuff going.

And I did watch it grow, and it was very, very enlightening.

And I hope we can bring it back on an elevated level to pay homage to it because it was a great event.

-That's how you've evolved that duck dinner into a wild-game dinner.

And that's the stories that I grew up loving and hearing.

And, well, as Cleo said, we're gonna bring it back.

We have to, 'cause I have to be a part of it now.

You know, I want to experience all the great wild game that we have here.

Now, as you see, we added that pot liquor to those greens, and that's gonna cook for about 30, 35 minutes.

And this was how the duck dinner worked, right?

Everybody started to bring in things.

We were cooking the duck in the oven.

We started to get the greens on.

Now we start to move on to those sacks and sacks of sweet potatoes.

So, as we move these pots over, now we got to put these sweet potatoes on.

-The bounty of the Sportsman Paradise turned the duck dinners into wild-game dinners when Dutch Morial's friends contributed pheasant, deer, rabbit, and other game.

Jefferson Parish Sheriff Harry Lee even brought Chef Leah an alligator.

-We changed the world over a pot of gumbo.

So, we would have the gumbo, and then from the gumbo came the duck dinners when Ernest Morial was the mayor.

Dutch had the way with people in high ranks and people in low ranks.

He related to them all, and they loved him.

And so, that was the celebrity of Dutch and his duck dinners, and that's why he had so much political clout here.

Luke Petrovich, who came from down along Buras and Plaquemines area, would catch the alligators.

And Harry Lee, 'cause he liked to duck hunt, would bring the duck, and other people would bring... Battistella would bring all the fish that he caught from Battistella Seafood, and others would bring turtles, and my mother would skin them and clean them alligators, cook them and do... She would do everything.

There was nobody doing all that but my mother.

And then she would cook it, and Dutch and all his crew would come.

It was the biggest duck dinners you'd ever want to experience.

But the one thing Dutch would say is, "Leah, the only woman that's gonna be there is you."

-Candied sweet potatoes, a wonderful complement to game, also appeared on the menu.

-We have our sweet potatoes and we just peel them up.

Put it on the side.

And I like them cut on a bias.

-And the key when you're cutting them on a bias is you want to maintain that similar size, right?

Which we have here.

So, however you like to cut them, just make sure they're about the same size so they all cook evenly in there.

But this recipe, I love it.

It's fairly, really, really simple, and the kids gonna love it 'cause you see this bowl here -- it is full of sugar.

And we'll show you the one thing that you want to look at when you're putting the sugar in, and as well as the cinnamon and water, is gonna be that water level that you want to come up to, 'cause that really determines how you're gonna create that syrup.

-I am no stranger to putting sugar into dishes.

And they all look at me like I'm crazy when I'm adding sugar, but you can't be afraid of sugar when you're making this dish.

And I always put the water level right below the potatoes.

That way, I allow the sugar and the water to combine and get thick enough.

And then when it begins to boil, it's gonna boil right over the top of those potatoes and it's gonna be just enough to candy them where they won't be boiled -- they will be candied and nice and thick and soft.

-And that's really, really important, so I'mma repeat exactly what Cleo said.

The idea is you want that water right underneath the top of those potatoes 'cause what you're trying to do while it's cooking is create that candy, right?

That sugar and that water creating that candied syrup.

And if you have too much water, you're not gonna get that candied syrup.

You're just gonna get a little bit of sweet water.

You want to create a candied sensation while those sweet potatoes are cooking.

-And I let them go.

I don't get a spoon and stir in them.

The more you stir in them, then you're gonna wind up with smashed sweet potatoes.

So, if you let them just boil on their own, once that syrup comes over the top, and then it'll boil about another 10 minutes, making sure we don't boil over.

But it should stay all within there.

And as you can see, it's coming up to a boil already.

So it doesn't take long.

But when it comes up, it'll come up and it'll go right over those potatoes and coat them.

And we have enough sugar and we have enough cinnamon and we're gonna get a nice candied sweet potato.

-So, when you're thinking about the duck dinner that you're gonna do at your home and invite everybody over, these are the steps, right?

Prepare that duck first, put it in the oven.

Then you can move on to preparing your greens, and then you can move on to preparing your sweet potatoes.

And the reason why we did it, 'cause it's that order.

That duck's gonna cook the longest.

The greens is second in line.

The sweet potatoes are candied.

So, as that cooks, I'm starting to smell that duck and I know I'm getting ready to pull that out so I can uncover it, create our glaze, and put it in for its last 15 minutes.

-Alright.

So, we have our sweet potatoes going, and this is what I was telling us about, where the sugar has candied and it's coming up right over the tops of those potatoes.

And as I said, we're not gonna stir in them, 'cause we don't want them to smash.

And we're just gonna let them cook there for about 10, 15 minutes until they're nice and tender and they're gonna glaze over.

As you can see, I have enough sugar, I have enough cinnamon, and we've made a nice candy syrup.

-So, now sweet potatoes are candied and the greens smelling great, and I can start to smell that duck.

I know it's time for me to uncover it and start to create that citrus glaze.

So we'll pull them out of the oven.

Put them right up here.

Oh, and they look beautiful.

This is what you're looking for.

As that duck slowly cooks, you can see it start to peel back a little off that bone, but not too much.

We want to keep them intact.

Now I'mma put those here.

Look at that beautiful color on them.

And we'll let these guys rest.

And this is what I want to keep -- that butter, that fat from that duck.

We'll start to create our sauce, our glaze right here in that pot.

So, we're gonna start off with a little bit of butter.

Not too much.

Then I have a little bit of brown sugar.

So, I have my butter melting here.

We'll have a little brown sugar.

And what I want to do is I just want to start to caramelize it just a little.

Not too quick.

And I'mma give it a little bit more of that.

♪ And what you're looking for is just a consistency that'll caramelize that sugar with that butter 'cause we'll finish it off with a little bit of orange juice, and I have a little orange zest right here.

And you talk about a glaze that's just gonna coat that duck leg.

You can see right here, this is almost where we're looking for, right?

We're not -- we're not making pralines, but we're creating that caramelization here.

And that's where I want it.

I'll add just a little bit of this orange juice to mix in there.

Mix that in.

I have my orange zest here.

And you can start to see that consistency that we're looking for, right?

That's what you want it -- you want that glaze to just come right over that duck leg.

Of course, I can't lose any of this, right?

That goes right in here.

We'll set this guy on the side.

We want to start to plate this up and just showcase the treat of that duck dinner that we had here at Dooky Chase.

I mean, look at this glaze.

That's beautiful.

You're gonna come right on top of that.

And that's what you're looking for.

-Beautiful.

-We'll get a scoop of our sweet potatoes.

And these sweet potatoes are nice and candied.

You can see that candied syrup just coming down.

And as she get those, I'll get the last, and one of my favorites -- those greens.

And if you're talking about a duck dinner, you're talking about the leg quarters with that citrus glaze, candied yams, greens, and you name it.

We would have venison and rabbit and quail and pheasant, and you'd just sit down in fellowship and strategize how we're gonna move this city forward.

-When Dutch Morial's term of office ended in 1986, he hosted one final dinner, held at New Orleans' Hellenic Cultural Center.

The huge event was attended by over 600 people.

-He wanted to bring people together because he took people from all regions.

And he would have Harry Lee knocking on his back door, bringing the ducks that he'd hunt and he caught and he killed, and different other politicians from all over our region.

And he's, again, a person before his time because he realized that, okay, here's New Orleans, but we have to have all of us together.

We have to learn to get along together and to work for each other if we're gonna grow and be better.

And that was his duck dinners.

My mother loved it.

And of course, you know, a country girl -- this is what she could do, too.

[ Laughs ] Yes.

-She loved this business.

It gave her life.

It became how she saw herself, I think, in a way.

-We conclude this duck dinner menu with the official cocktail of New Orleans -- the Sazerac.

-Here in New Orleans, we're really serious about our local politics, but we're very serious about our cocktails.

And so, the official cocktail of New Orleans is the Sazerac.

And so, that's the classic standard cocktail of New Orleans that every bartender should know how to make.

Well, I think mine is the best here, and I get a lot of compliments on it, so I'll just start making mine.

We're gonna start our glass.

We're gonna put a little Herbsaint, which is -- used to be absinthe in the glass, but that is illegal 'cause it's a hallucinogenic.

So it's been modified a little bit with Herbsaint, which is an anise liqueur.

So, we're gonna put that at the bottom of our glass and add our ice and just let that sit and marinate in that glass for a minute.

At the same time, we're gonna build -- start building our Sazerac.

So, we're gonna use our Peychaud's Bitters.

Antoine Peychaud was -- is the founder of the Sazerac.

He was a Haitian Creole apothecary that had a pharmacy down on Royal Street.

And at the time it was founded, it was French, so we use Cognac as the main ingredient.

Here we were whiskey drinkers, so now people use both.

So, we're gonna put an ounce and a half of Cognac and an ounce and a half of rye whiskey in our mixing tin.

And again, we're gonna mix that and still allow our Herbsaint to marinate in our glass.

I'm gonna give that a nice, rigorous stir.

I think I'm gonna add some more ice so I can chill it some more 'cause this cocktail isn't served over ice.

So you want to chill it really, really well in the mixing glass.

If you don't have one of these at home, you have a glass, I'm sure, so it works the same way.

So, we're gonna blend all those flavors together.

And now we're just gonna roll this around and kind of rinse and discard the excess ice.

And now we have a nice frosted glass that's frosted with our Herbsaint, and we're going right in that glass with our Sazerac.

The garnish for our Sazerac is just a lemon zest.

So, we're gonna express the lemon right on top to give that oil, and then rim the glass with it.

And there you are.

Here's our classic New Orleans Sazerac.

Strong and serious, just like our politics.

-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.

-I think she's smiling.

And I laugh all the time.

I was like, "This is all you.

It has to be all your doing, 'cause I have nothing to do with this.

I just kind of showed up like you taught me to show up."

Yeah.

So, I think both of them...

I think my grandfather has that little -- that little laugh-smirk right now.

-It would be great for her to be able to walk in that door right now and see all of her grandchildren around and her children, hopefully, keeping this legacy going.

-Every time I walk in this restaurant, I say a little prayer to her.

I say a little prayer for my grandparents and all of them and say, "Look, we need your help today.

Guide us through.

What should we be doing?"

-What they are smiling at now is the fact that we have everyone buying into the restaurant, everyone helping us out because of them, because they want the legacy to continue, because they saw the hard work that my mother and father put into the business, and the blessings that we're now getting because of their hard work.

-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...