Madisonville

Announcer: Funding for "The Dooky Chase Kitchen: Leah's Legacy" was provided by the Melvin S. Cohen Foundation, Inc. Narrator: Dooky Chase has served the Tremé neighborhood of New Orleans since 1941.

Chef Leah Chase, a James Beard lifetime achievement recipient, led the restaurant until her death in 2019.

Leah grew up in Madisonville, Louisiana, a small community on the Tchefuncte River.

Today, grandson Dook Chase and niece Cleo Robinson dive into their North Shore heritage with two dishes that bring it back home, while granddaughter Eve Marie Haydel mixes a companion cocktail.

♪ Narrator: Dook and Cleo kick it off with okra gumbo, a mainstay of Leah's family, featuring okra, a homegrown vegetable that was plentiful in the summer.

Cleo: We're going to take it back home to where we all began.

We're going to start out and sweat this veal stew meat here because we always started with some good old stew meat that the Creoles just swore they had to have in okra gumbo.

It was one of the richer luxuries that they afforded themselves when it came to Sunday dinner or holiday dinners.

We're going to fry our okra down, getting some of the greenness out of it, really.

And this was something that was done because okra is a summer vegetable, and we had tons of it in the country.

My grandfather grew it.

And it was always preserved by means of freezing or canning.

And they would sit around the table during the week while they were doing laundry or cooking dinner and sit there and cut this okra just by little--little circles.

They always liked the little circles.

And I picked it up when I started working in the restaurant and called myself getting a little fancy.

I went home and I showed my mom.

I said, "I can do that twice as fast."

And she's like, "That's not the way it's done.

You have to sit down and you have to cut it like this."

So here we go, we're cutting it like this.

Dook: Cleo's right.

I could remember the story of my grandmother coming in and just getting those long okra from Madisonville, and they sitting down and they're going this way.

Cleo: You sit and you cut and you watched the soaps or you did a little--a little cooking and a little laundry.

And this made their day.

I guess it gave them time to sit and reflect and think about their next strategy or what was going on, whatever.

They were happy.

It was worth every ounce of effort that they put into it, and it will take you back home.

And like I said, when it came to Sunday dinner, you knew you were in for a treat.

And the key to the okra not being slimy-- a lot of people like to shy away from it because they say it's slimy.

Well, it is a slimy vegetable, but if you fry it slowly, put a little salt on it with the vegetable oil, and let it go, and it will cook down, and you will get rid of the slime.

Dook: And you can start to smell that veal stew browning, right.

So right when you start to smell that browning happening, you know it's time that you can flip it over.

And that's what we're getting ready to do now.

And you'll see that beautiful color starts to pick up.

Cloe: There was something about the meat.

I don't know what was the relevancy of it.

It was never seasoned.

And you let it simmer in its own juices with the oil.

I'm just going to keep the tradition and the recipe going the way they did it.

And to that veal stew, now that it is going along, we're going to add some smoked sausage.

Doesn't take much.

So we're going to let it all marry together, and we're going to have some wonderful flavors there.

Our slime is coming out of those okra really nicely.

We came from the garden to the table with a lot of our dishes.

Everything was pretty much something that my grandfather had in the garden, or if they didn't have it in the garden, they were great borders.

I don't know that he swapped anything for any other thing.

He would just give it away.

I think he really enjoyed seeing things grow, and he was a great farmer, and he managed to feed his family, and we had wonderful meals.

Wonderful.

Dook: And you can see how that passed down to my grandmother, right?

It was about feeding and servicing the community.

And you talk about okra from Madisonville.

This is the same okra, right?

We got these in today from a cousin who's still out there.

Cloe: And after that smoked sausage has rendered off and given its fat, we're going to add a little onions.

And let those sauté for a little minute.

Dook: So when you think about gumbos and Creole gumbos and Cajun gumbos, sometimes you think about that-- that nutty or brown roux.

You know, if we're doing our Creole gumbo, we don't go as brown.

And you're thinking about that roux, sometimes people will use tomato paste, but with this particular gumbo, we don't need any roux, any thickener, because that okra is going to thicken up as much as you want to thicken here, and you'll see we won't use any roux for this particular gumbo.

And as you cook that okra down, you're getting to a point to right here, and then we'll place it on the side, and then we'll be able to bring it right back to that pot.

Cleo: Get just a little smidge of garlic.

Not much.

This dish is so tasty and wonderful.

I did try to add a few other things to it when I got, as my mother would say, fancy britches, and thought I knew something and started adding, and it wasn't right.

So I had to go back to the roots and say they perfected it, so why-- why reinvent the wheel?

So we're going to keep it simple, just like they did.

And to that, we are going to add some tomatoes.

The tomatoes were always canned and preserved as well for later usages during the year for the holidays and Sunday dinners, soups.

So this is working out really lovely.

And to this we can add in the okra.

We fried it.

And now we're going to really build up really good.

And as you can see, we still have some of the slime, but not much.

And as it cooks a little bit more, it's going to all come out of there.

We'll make enough.

Dook: You know, growing up in this kitchen, we eyeball everything.

We taste everything.

But I want you to look at that consistency because that okra is your real thickness, right?

That's your thickness to what we got going on.

Cleo: And right here, we will add the seafood stocks.

And of course, being from that very conservative side of the family, they didn't waste anything.

They had the crabs.

So we used some of the stock from the crabs.

And we have some shrimp that we boiled.

So we're going to use the little shrimp stock as well.

Dook: And the reason why we're adding a stock now and not the seafood is that seafood is going to cook quick.

But we want to have that stock in there to build that flavor along the way with your sausage and your veal stew.

So that's why that seafood stock is going in there now.

Cleo: Most of the time the crab was crabs that they had left over from the seafood boil during the summertime that they cleaned them and put them in the freezer for later use.

Nothing was ever wasted.

I think that's one of the most beautiful things that I love about growing up in the country is that we were taught never to waste anything.

And this is cooking nicely, so now we'll add some seasoning ham to it.

So we're just going to add just a little more flavor.

We're going to intensify.

A little fresh thyme.

Always had that growing in the garden.

And a bay leaf.

Pinch of black pepper.

Like I said, no other fancy herbs.

My aunt loved okra gumbo and the smothered okra, and...everybody went crazy for it.

I think we're to the point where we can add our chicken.

And I've taken the time to pre-cook chicken.

I don't like to use raw chicken in here.

Dook: We're using wings, your one and two sections, but certainly you can use your chicken breasts that you would cube up.

That's just looking beautiful.

And you can see the consistency, the thickness of it.

You can see why you don't need a roux in this gumbo.

That okra is doing everything.

It's not only flavoring it, it's thickening it.

And this is where we start to move into our seafood area.

Cleo: We have our nice fresh lake crabs, and it's always best if you can find the female crabs because they're always nice and fat, and that's just more flavor.

But we're going to use them all.

Dook: If we're boiling crabs, I'm always looking for the female crab because it just has that just extra flavor, a little more fat in those-- under those shells.

Cleo: And now we can add the shrimp, and we're almost ready to ring the dinner bell.

And these I've already peeled and deveined.

We're almost there.

We just waiting for that little shrimp to turn and give it a taste.

On Sunday, it was all out.

Sunday was never a skimpy meal.

You may have had the okra gumbo, rice, potato salad, panne meat, as they called it, the veal rounds, panne, or you had fried chicken.

It was big dinner.

Beans were never Sunday.

Sunday, I want Sunday dinner.

I want dinner dinner.

Dook: This is what you're looking for, where you know it's on those last stages, and you just need to taste it, make sure the seasoning is there.

the shrimp is cooking.

It's just, did we build enough flavor that we need or add to it.

And while that's doing it and we're tasting, I'mma clean some of this up, and we'll get ready to plate it up.

♪ Oh, man.

Cleo: I think I did it proud.

Dook: This is bringing me back home to Madisonville.

I got to get another spoon.

Cleo: And we are ready to dish it up and sit at the table and have great food.

Dook: Another thing that we grew up, they used to have these peppers, Cleo.

I can't recall which-- which one they were.

Was it a serrano or it was something else?

Cleo: It wasn't a serrano.

It was a... Dook: But they would top that okra gumbo with these peppers just to give it an extra little hit at the last second.

Cleo: This says home.

And home was somewhere that you always went to.

Narrator: Leah was one of 11 children in the Charles and Hortensia Lange family who lived across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans.

Her father worked at the Jahncke Shipyard, but he was known for his green thumb.

Woman: Madisonville was a journey of a trip for us.

You know, this was when the causeway wasn't two separate up and down sides, you know, back and forward.

So it was like an adventure.

Will we make it alive across to visit our grandparents?

And then when you got to Madisonville, at that point, it was a rural, you know, pretty rural.

We loved it.

We were city kids, you know, street lights and whatever.

And you'd get to Madisonville, and it was pitch black at night, you know?

And trust me, I'm like a light person.

They came from Madisonville.

Her father worked for Jahncke Shipyards, and he was a caulker, but he also was a man of self-sufficiency.

And he believed that I could be self-sufficient because God will always provide for me and my family.

Okra, you hear everybody talking about the okra gumbo because my grandfather grew okra.

And I will tell you, my grandmother cooked the best okra gumbo there was.

They were very of the earth.

They were very sustainable people with the foods they grew, the chickens they raised.

And that's a lifestyle my mother grew up in, one of working, going to church every Sunday, respect for all members of your family, and she had quite a few.

Narrator: Farm-raised catfish and grits is a variation on a breakfast dish from the Lange family's table that featured fresh fish from the Tchefuncte.

Dook: So we'll start with a little butter.

And as you can see, I'm not going to use all this butter.

I'm just going to use probably about one or two cubes, and I have this on low heat, and then we're going to move to this garlic.

And what I want to do is just to sauté that garlic a little bit.

And these grits, as I said, I like to call them Creole grits because we're adding a little flavor to them.

See, I just want that butter to melt.

I want that garlic just to start to cook, sauteed just a little, just to bring out its flavors.

That's exactly where I want that garlic.

And to that, I'm gonna add a little water.

And like I said, I like to use one to 4 with a cup of grits, right.

We're just using a cup of grits, and I'm gonna add some of this milk.

And what you're looking for is just to bring it to a simmer before you add those grits.

Now, grits are ground corn, right?

We have two here.

We have a stone ground grit that you can see is more yellow and a little more coarse.

And then we have a grit that I like to use because I'm gonna add a little more flavor profile to it.

This one, you'll taste that corn coming all the way through.

This one, I can flavor it up a little bit.

Both really work well with this dish.

Cleo: Leah's mother loved to fish.

Housekeeping and cooking was not her forte.

Although she had 11 children, she made no shame about it that cooking was not her thing.

When the children got of age where they could cook, she would gladly tell them, "OK, your assignment today is biscuits.

"Your assignment today is greens.

I'm going fishing."

And she and my Aunt Lucy and my Aunt Cloteal or Miss Odessa would gather their cane poles and go sashaying down the street and go sit on the bayou.

And she would tell them, "Y'all get the grits ready because I'm going catch the fish."

Dook: And while we're bringing that water and that milk up to boil, or to a slight simmer, we seasoned our catfish.

And the beautiful thing about this catfish and those local fish that we have here, they're farm-raised, are right out the Tchefuncte is all you need is salt and pepper.

That's all we're putting on this thing is salt and pepper.

What we use here as well is corn flour, right?

If you have cornmeal that you can find in your store, that works just as well.

We like to use corn flour.

We season both sides of the fish, right?

Because you're going to add it in that corn flour, which is going to bring down that seasoning.

So you want to season both sides, and you're just going to dredge it right in there.

We're lightly coating, we're not double battering.

You want that catfish to speak for itself.

And whatever fish you have that you love to fry, you know, whether it's trout or whether it's perch, sac-a-lait.

Oh, man, sac-a-lait is one of the great fish that we have down here.

But another thing, before I put those grits in, we have the heavy cream.

I did not put the heavy cream in this milk.

This is something I'm going to add towards the end with the cheese.

That's just going to cream it up just a little bit more for me.

And then we're just going to add it in, stirring it around.

And you can feel it, right?

If you're cooking grits for the first time, when you first put this in, you're going to think, "Man, this is light," right?

"It's not going to thicken up.

It's going to look like this."

You got to give that grit time to bloom.

So when you stir it in and you think it's light, it's not light.

You'll see it come to life.

I can smell this oil.

It's hot.

Another way to test it.

You grab a little bit of your corn flour, put it in.

You see those bubbles?

You're almost there.

You want to see an enhanced bubble?

Now on my test, you see those bubbles a little more pronounced.

That's what you're looking for.

That's when you know you're right where you want to be.

And you'll slide that baby on in.

I'm not going to crowd it.

I have 3 here.

We're going to cook two.

And you can see that oil just lightly covers that fish.

That's all you're looking for.

Cleo: In the Creole household, there was a pot that was pretty synonymous with everything you did.

When it was frying, you were in cast iron.

When you were cooking gumbo, it was in the Magnalite roaster.

When you were making a peach cobbler, it was in a certain baking dish.

When you made a cake, it was in a certain pan.

So they had pots and pans for every dish.

Dook: It's got about two more minutes.

Our grits are looking good.

It's about time for me to add that heavy cream.

And you can see this is the consistency over here.

I'm gonna add the heavy cream.

I'm going to grab-- thank you-- a little bit of that chicken stock.

A little pepper.

A little salt.

And then I'm going to save the cheese and the butter just at the last two minutes.

I can see it start to get golden brown on each side.

This is the point where you want to be careful, right?

We have to flip it over.

The grease is hot, it's sizzling.

You just can't splash because that grease will go over.

It might hit the fire and create a little fire.

What you're trying to do is let that pot help you, right?

I'm going to flip it onto the back of that pot, and then I'm going to come on and bring it back in.

So you can see I'm not really splashing any grease.

I'm letting the pot as another tool help me when I go on to flip it.

And that's another thing when you're not crowding the pot, it's easier to flip that over.

And you can see that beautiful color on that fish.

But you're going for about another maybe 4 minutes.

Coming back to these grits, now is the time that I want to add my cheeses.

I prefer cheddar and Parmesan.

And we'll add a little here.

And if you're a cheese person, add as much as you like.

And we got a little Parmesan here.

I'll get that.

And you stir that in.

And then I'm gonna add one more little piece of our butter.

So now we're ready to take this fish out.

And you can see I've got a pan with a little paper towel on there, because what I want to do is let some of that fry just kind of come off on that paper towel before I add it to those grits.

But you can see that golden brown color.

So now it's time to get these grits.

What we would do is just create a nice little bed, and you can see how creamy those grits are.

And then you just get your beautiful piece of this catfish.

It soaked up a little bit of that grease.

And right on top.

And this is the part where you can have fun with it.

This dish is beautiful just as is, but us growing up in Madisonville and that garden, you always had fresh herbs as a topper, right?

You had your Creole tomatoes, your-- great tomatoes is what I'm going to use here.

And really, I just created a salsa.

That's just a little olive oil, a little salt and pepper, a little garlic, just some minced parsley on there.

My grandmother always say 3 things.

You taste with your eyes, your nose, and then you actually taste the dish.

So it has to look beautiful.

And all we're doing is just adding a little color, a little topper right on the side here.

And that's just a beautiful dish that you can enjoy on a Sunday morning or any morning.

It doesn't take that long.

And you got something that everybody in the family will love and enjoy.

Hey, why not go out and spend a day catching fish in the morning and come back and have a good time?

Narrator: Leah's father believed in giving the best of whatever you have to give.

Leah carried on this goodwill throughout her lifetime.

Stella: My mother was the oldest living child at that time, so my mother had a lot to carry, actually.

She was smart.

She was a very smart person.

She was the first one to come to New Orleans to go to school.

Leah: Having this large family, I think they knew what it-- what generosity of goods, spirit, kindness could do for another person, another family.

And I do think they felt if they had it, give it, share it.

So that was his little lagniappe.

Everything they did had to be the best.

You know, they were a poor family, but they were taught that it didn't matter how poor we were, we all had talents.

And whatever we did, we were going to do it the best that we could do, and that's what they did.

Narrator: We'll round out our Madisonville stop with a Bloody Mary, an eye opener with ingredients straight from the garden.

We're going to finish up this meal with a great Bloody Mary.

Now I think about my grandmother in Madisonville, I think about okra and fresh tomatoes and all the spices that you put in a Bloody Mary.

And also just brunch.

It's a great brunch drink.

It's also the first drink I've ever had with my grandmother.

I just remember her, one, explaining to me how a Bloody Mary is, but going to brunch and feeling like an adult and finally having a cocktail, a real cocktail with my grandmother.

Here we make our mix in house.

It's tomato juice.

We have a little Tabasco.

We have some celery salt, Worcestershire, horseradish, all the fresh ingredients.

We let it sit.

It'll blend together.

So we let it sit in the cooler and marinate like this for a couple of days, and we're ready to serve it.

And then, of course, we base that with vodka.

So we're going to do two ounces of vodka in our glass.

It'll go right in our glass with that.

All right.

Then I like to just go ahead and add my ice.

So we just pour the Bloody Mary right on top.

And of course, if you're making this at home, you can add as much vodka as you would like.

And some people make it with tequila, and that's called a Bloody Maria.

But we stay traditional here, do it with vodka unless requested.

But then we'll go roll this one a couple of times just to blend those tomato juices and spices with the vodka.

And there it is.

We add a little more ice to top it off.

And to garnish our Bloody Mary, we're going to go with a lime.

And then all our favorite pickled items.

We have string beans, okra, olives, and onion.

But of course, the okra.

This is a great brunch drink.

And this absolutely reminds me of Madisonville and having brunch with my grandmother.

Narrator: 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."

Announcer: 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.

You talk about my grandmother at a young age and her father telling her 3 things to remember as she was going off to high school away from her family.

And that was work, pray, and do for others.

And you could imagine what those 3 things took in my grandmother listening and did what she did and accomplished throughout her life.

They both loved to fish.

So we would--we city children not used to getting up 5:00 in the morning, would get up 5:00 in the morning to go fishing with my grandmother Hortensia.

I'm no outdoors person, right?

So you throw in this just a cane pole.

No, we're not talking rod and reel, cane pole.

And I remember feeling something on my toe.

I'm like, "What is that?"

She had us a standing a little bit in the water, right?

And I lifted my toe and hanging on the end of-- I still had like a flip-flop on--was a crab.

You know, my--and I'm like screaming, "There's a crab on my"-- And all my grandmother said was, "Oh, when you looking for one of those, you never can find any."

Narrator: For more information about "The Dooky Chase Kitchen: Leah's Legacy," visit wyes.org.

Funding for "The Dooky Chase Kitchen: Leah's Legacy" was provided by the Melvin S. Cohen Foundation, Inc.