- [Narrator] "New Orleans food memories" is made possible by the WYES Producer Circle, a group of generous contributors dedicated to the support of WYES's local productions.

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(jazzy music) - [Man] Winn-Dixie, local flavor since 1956.

- [Narrator] And by contributions to WYES from viewers like you, thank you.

(jazzy music) - We really did have chicken and do a gumbo one day a week we really did had seafood gumbo one day a week and they were two completely different things.

(jazzy music) And bread pudding and lost bread and all of those things that just sound almost much too much to be real, but we really did eat it, this was what we grew up with.

(jazzy music) - We used to eat something also called creole cream cheese because we just called it a cream cheese back then.

We would put sugar in it and bread, put the sugar and bread and mix it up a little bit, and would eat it, like it was very nice, it was a sour dish, but it was an acquired taste and we all loved it.

(jazzy music) - We'd go out fishing, we bring the fish home and if it was speckled trout, the mom would cook it.

(jazzy music) And the smell of brown butter and almonds kind of wafting through the house and smelling that I think is probably the most vivid and perhaps the earliest food memory that I have.

- I am Peggy Scott Laborde, it's so easy to take local dishes for granted.

Seafood, fresh fruit and vegetables all with an easy reach.

Anyone who's spent time in New Orleans likely has great memories at that first poor boy, that first bowl of gumbo.

Let's look back at some of those special moments thanks to our local cuisine.

♪I got okra ♪ colored greens ♪ I have spinich ♪ I have broccoli ♪ And I have orange and bananas ♪ ♪ I have New Orleans' cucumbers ♪ - [Peggy] Local vegetables, including okra, are common ingredients in many New Orleans recipes.

- When I was a child, I never understood why the movie theater didn't have fried okra as opposed to popcorn.

That's how much I loved okra, I swear to you.

And still to this day, I'm trying to get my kids to love it as much as I do.

- I know a lot of people even who grew up here find okra too slimy, I love it.

It's one of the most interesting foods to me in general.

I mean it's beautiful looking, this pod with these perfect ridges and a little cap and a tip and it almost is too perfect to even cut up and I like pretty much in every version.

- The name gumbo comes from one of the African words in the Bantu tongue for okra, king gumbo, very important ingredient that always at my grandparents house, there was always fresh okra steamed and served with a vinaigrette, that's how we had it, plenty, plenty, sometimes smothered.

- [Peggy] In Spanish speaking countries, it's known as chayote in some English speaking countries vegetable pear, but we call it... - How many ways are there to say mirliton.

No thanksgiving's complete without mirliton to stuff them with seafood dressing, little shrimp, crab meat, lots of onions, celery, a little bit of bell pepper and lots of Italian bread crumbs stuffed into the mirliton, into the oven bake them, Lord have mercy, they're so good.

- One thing that I find really unique about New Orleans is that the stuffed culture.

People love stuffing things here artichokes, shrimp, meat, mirliton, and most of the time the stuffing in whatever it is you're making involves a lot of breadcrumbs.

- We had mirliton all the time, and it surprised me to see how it grew because mirliton was something, how we grew, it was on the fence.

It's a vine, vegetable, I guess you would call it and I learned later down that some people know it as mirlingtons, never knew what a mirlington was, it was mirliton.

- My mother never liked anything that came from nature.

She wanted it from Schwegman's (laughs.)

I remember my dad he grew tomatoes and she refused to eat them because they were coming out of the ground (laughing).

So she always liked her stuff wrapped and coming from Schwegmann was never from trees and vines and all that stuff.

(laughing) (jazzy music) - [Peggy] One native dish is so popular.

It even has its own day of the week.

Monday, local legend is that red beans and rice was a dish that could be left to simmer for hours while the lady of the house did the laundry.

This dish is also inexpensive to make.

As one New Orleans born jazz legend who grew up poor vividly recalls.

- love a good cocoa butter red beans and rice or courtbouillon or grill gumbo, all that stuff, and she could take 15 cents make the biggest pie that you've ever had.

- [Interviewer] People don't know how to do that today, do they?

- Well they got (mumbles) get out (mumbles) (laughing).

- [Interviewer] (mumbles) - Oh in New Orleans anybody can cook with a little money.

- [Peggy] On concert tours Armstrong even traveled with a supply of red beans and rice and signed his letters, Redbeans and Riceley yours.

- Right everybody made him different especially in the (mumbles) because he had people in the counrty.

he had people right in New Orleans living like it was like a mesh of things and he had people, Cuban people, I mean was a real hip blend of people.

- [Peggy] The choices of meat to accompany the dish depended on your pocketbook.

- Pickle meat was the best because pickle meat it's like the backbone and the least expensive cut of the pig and you just kind of pickle it slightly.

- You make dew with what you got.

- [Peggy] Today the dish remains a staple in many local household.

- Every Monday I eat red beans and rice, my children eat red beans and rice they have no choice.

I've made a deal with my wife and she eats red beans and rice on Monday.

Our children are gonna be brought up knowing who they are and where they come from.

- One thing about red beans is everyone has his condiment that he would put in, I'm afraid mine was ketchup, I grew out of that.

I know people put chow chow, mustard.

- [Peggy] When the calendar says it's Holy Thursday for Mrs. Leah Chase, proprietor and chef of Dooky Chase's Restaurant, it's the busiest day of the year.

This restaurant tour is about to serve the pre Easter dish she grew up with, and shares the traditions that come along with it.

- Gumbo Z'Herbes is a green Gumbo and being superstitious as we're supposed to be in New Orleans, we use uneven numbers of greens five, seven, nine or 11.

I use nine and we do that because they said even numbers is bad luck, you can't do that you have to use the uneven numbers and they used to say to old Creoles say, you will acquire a new friend, but every green I have in the pot.

(jazz music) - It was a delicious dish because you will forget that you're eating greens as a kid, (laughs) and just thought you were some sort of exotic gumbo basically.

- [Peggy] Gumbo represents a melting pot of cultures, French, Spanish, West African and native Indian.

While most are made with seafood, or chicken and sausage, the ingredients can vary.

- I love everything from gumbo Z'herbes to poodle gumbo, each one of them is very unique and I think each gumbo truly if it's made from the heart tells a story.

- [Peggy] Kenneth Palmer grew up in and around families that were on a tight budget.

- So Ms Teresa Isaac when she made her gumbo, she put wieners in it.

She'd buy a whole pack of wieners and she cut those wieners up and when wieners went in liquid they float and everybody shared it.

So they had the wieners in it and the gravy it was a different color.

My mother's gumbo was sought on the darkest green side from the filet, whereas Miss Isaac's gumbo was kind of on a brownish side, but it was very good.

(jazz music) - [Peggy] Some early dining memories originated on the bayous.

- The thing we had on Easter Sunday was what we call cowan, it's a snapping turtle stew always had that because the spring is when the turtles came out, so they were plentiful.

- And the big prize with cowan is when you cut the turtle shell and you clean him out, I didn't eat it but a lot of people there were the undeveloped eggs inside the female turtle.

So you will cook that too and eat that, like what you made stew out of it, it was turtle stew, or turtle soup which made a big stew out of and eggs was something like the the fat, the yellow in crabs that's what the eggs were.

- [Peggy] Unlike turtles crawfish are plentiful, but one dish made from the criters is practically extinct.

- Crawfish bisque, the reason that it's almost gone is you have to find some body who wants to actually touch that crawfish head seven times, from the time that you pick it after it's boiled and clean the head and stuff it.

- The old fashioned way of making crawfish bisque is starting with the live crawfish.

And I decided that I wanted to do that I went through the purging process in my front yard where you soak the crawfish or make them swim around a little bit in a saltwater bath to sort of clean out their intestinal tract and kind of have to stir them around.

I used a broomstick and a couple got free and one attached itself to my hand and their claws they really work, I can tell you that.

And I did scream when that crawfish (laughs) latched on to my hand.

- And I can't tell you how many city dwellers describe for me starting off their crawfish bisque by purging the crawfish in the bathtub.

And I have clear memories of my aunt's third storey apartment in the French Quarter on Royal Street with the bathtub filled with crawfish.

- [Peggy] An important distinction and local cooking is Creole versus Cajun.

- Cajun food is your country food.

And this is the food from the kissing cousins way out in Southwest Louisiana.

The food is spicier generally, and it's also one pot meals as opposed to being beautifully finished things with sauces.

In Cajun country, the food is all about the pig and the chicken and the seafood is a special event.

Creole food is the food of the city of New Orleans.

It is our indigenous cuisine.

It is really the first indigenous American cuisine that came from the blending of the Spanish, the French, and the Africans.

- [Peggy] One dish that doesn't fit into any of those categories is an example of cultures blending in more recent times.

- I tend to pronounce it phonetically yakamein, although most people who make and eat the dish regularly say something that sounds more like yakamein most widely available variation is based on sort of a bouillon type broth, like a kind of beefy, very thin broth, and then it's a soup that contains spaghetti noodles, some kind of meat.

- You had shallots in it which as old folks know it shallot as new people might call it green onions, it was a noodle in it and you definitely had the half a boiled egg in it, and it was all mixed together, it was fantastic.

You couldn't eat with a spoon, you had to eat with a fork because of noodles, and when you got down to the sauce, the juice of it you just turn it up and drink it like a regular drink.

- [Peggy] Theories of the origin of the dish are as varied as its ingredients.

Locally, it's found in Asian owned neighborhood grocery stores and small restaurants, in primarily black neighborhoods, and also in black bars.

- People who have a hangover always were looking for yakamein.

(laughs) Before they went home after a night of heavy drinking, they would stop somewhere and get yakamein so they wouldn't get a hangover.

So I always had it in mind with the thought of medicinal (laughs) remedy.

(jazz music) - [Peggy] A True New Orleans staple is the poor boy or is it Po' Boy, roast beef, oyster, shrimp, ham and cheese, whatever your preference, the poor boy is one of the city's culinary contributions, that embellishes a universal dish, the sandwich.

One way the sandwich got its name can be traced to an event that took place in the 1920s.

- I say poor boy, and I'll tell you why.

It is well known that the originators of the poor boy sandwich were Benny and Clovis Martin, who owned Martin's Restaurant on the corner of St. Claude in Turo Road back into the '20s.

They were certainly around when the streetcar strike started, everybody knows this story that they they made the sandwiches and originally without meat on them except for the meat that was in the gravy, it was basically a debris sandwich.

And they would sell these or give them away as the case seemed to justify to the striking streetcar workers for either free or a nickel, they were very inexpensive but they were filling and they were good, and they were named for the poor boys that were out on the picket lines.

And I started eating at Martin's Poor Boy Restaurant back in the early 1970s when I was going to college until they closed in 1973, I was there about two, three days before they went out of business.

And the name on the sign was Martin's Poor, new word, Boy restaurant.

On their menu, they called them poor boys.

They invented it, they get to say how it's spelled and pronounced.

- I say Po' Boy, because that's how I thought you were supposed to say it.

That's what I heard most when I came to town, and that's what all the signs said.

I know there are good arguments for saying poor boy, but it took me so long to be able to say poor boy that I just I can't go back.

- [Peggy] The essential ingredient to the poor boy is French bread.

New Orleans style French bread is lighter, less dense.

What makes it unique explanations vary, but they include the use of local water, climate, and lots of skill.

The Martin brothers to get more out of a loaf, decided they needed a slightly different shape from typical French bread.

thicken the middle with pointed ends, they turned to Baker John Gendusa for help.

Inspired by a shape he saw in his native Sicily, he created a loaf of uniform size with rounded ends.

- The Gendusas are still baking New Orleans French bread.

And I think it's remarkable and typical that in New Orleans, you've got Italians or Leiden Heimo, Germans baking French bread, but that's because this is the original melting pot.

- [Peggy] While there are still plenty of places today to order a poor boy, one from the past left quite an impression on a longtime local food critic, it was called Clarence and Lefty's.

- That was my first restaurant experience and one of my most cherished food memories.

My godfather, my paren and that is what I called him was a longshoreman, and he was a real salt of the earth guy, and one day I happened to be visiting over there and he was stuck with me, but he wanted to go out and have some beers with his his buddies.

And so he says, "You're coming with me just come along."

And we went to Clarence and Lefty's, that was his hangout, he used to go there all the time, he lived not far away from there.

And he sat me down at a table and he says, "Okay, this is gonna be supper, "I'm gonna get them to make something for you."

And they brought out a roast beef Po' Boy, the first one I'd ever seen or heard of.

And he said, "Okay, go ahead and eat that "and I'll check back with you."

And I was about 11 years old, I guess, 10 or 11 years old, And he came back a few minutes later and the sandwich wasn't there.

And he thought that I had thrown it away or something, and he said," What happened to that sandwich?"

And I said, "I ate it, it was great."

He says, "Really, I think so too.

"You want another one?"

And I said, "Yeah."

(jazzy music) - [Peggy] Another neighborhood joint that had a city wide following was the original Parkway Bakery.

Initially a bakery as well as a sandwich spot nearby St John, it was owned by Bobby in Dutch Timothy.

- My daddy used to send me to Parkway bakery, that's where we used to get some of our bread from.

So when we had a busy day or running out in the evening, he'd sent me over there on my bike.

He'd call up and say, "Hey, Thomas's coming over, "give him 20 loaves of bread."

I would go there and they would bake the bread in this brick ovens and aroma was magnificent.

So I put it in the bag, and I put it in my basket and I drive it right back to the restaurant.

Well I got the habit of eating the tops of the bread, and one day my daddy caught me and he let me have it.

(laughing) - That was one of my favorite things in the 40s to eat at Parkway was Boer wieners and tomato paste dress with the mayonnaise thing on it, that was slammin'.

- [Peggy] Parkway Bakery closed in 1995.

Eight years later, it was reopened and renovated by Jay Nix.

The new owner has filled the place with enough New Orleans mementos to make it feel like it's always been there.

(jazz music) And we mustn't forget Domilises.

For over 60 years this unassuming uptown corner has been home to a long list of poor boys that once included the Pepper Wiener, now extinct since the restaurant supplier no longer makes it.

(jazzy music) Besides the poor boy, yet another local variation of a sandwich is the muffuletta.

(jazzy music) - When we're talking about New Orleans, Italian, we're talking Sicilian.

The French Quarter was really the Italian Quarter from the early 1900s.

They took over the French market, and the muffuletta is one of their greatest contributions to New Orleans cuisine, created out of convenience because the Sicilian truck farmers have been working hard since 2:30 in the morning in the French Quarter, they need a big sandwich.

And they are the ones who instead of just having all the bits and anti pasta, they would take it all put it on that round seated loaf that gives the muffuletta its name.

Before there was a muffuletta sandwich that round loaf was referred to as a muffuletta, and that's where it got its name.

- [Peggy] Salvatore Lupo, sold muffuletas from his Central Grocery, which he opened in 1906.

His family continues to combine marinated olive salad with such meats as capicola, salami, mortadella along with emmental and provolone cheese.

(jazzy music) - Found on many New Orleans menus the olive salad on lettuce is today called an Italian salad.

But the dish was once referred to by another name.

- You'll find you a Italian restaurant in the 40s they didn't say a wop salad, tell me which one it was.

I'd like to know which one it was.

- [Peggy] Wop would come to be considered a derogatory term, yet the name was once innocently a part of many local menus.

- Everybody had it on their menu, I don't know if anybody still does maybe one or two restaurants do but we had on our menu as wop salad and one day somebody came in, I don't know this was 30 years ago maybe and said, "that's kind of offensive."

I said, "What's offensive?"

"Wop salad."

I didn't know any other name for it.

He says, "Why don't you put Italian salad?"

So eventually reprinted the menus, we put the Italian salad.

- [Peggy] While the Italian contribution to New Orleans cooking continues to be strong, there's another Italian dish that came close to becoming extinct.

- I mean, you say Bruccialone, and that's the most common way of pronouncing it as far as I can tell.

Some people though I've heard say Bruccialeni Brucciola, like tons of different pronunciations, and it took me a long time to figure out that they were all the same thing.

- Well, my daddy started making that years ago, I remember when I was a kid, he was pounding the veal out and of course my chef isn't though makes it but it's a very simple recipe.

You take some spinach and you cook with some seasoning, you let it cool down, you get some nice baby veal and you pound it out and you put your spinach dressing in there and you fold it over and you just cook it off as some red gravy.

And voila, there it is.

- Bruccialone has come back into Vogue in recent years, "Everybody Loves Raymond" and "The Sopranos" both of those shows, people are constantly talking about a dish called bruccial, and people ask me often, "what is that?

"I've never heard of bruccial, what is it?"

Bruccial is a small bruccialone.

- [ Peggy] Another dish that can sometimes be found on menus around town is dob.

- So actually it's just a piece of meat cooked in a red gravy for a few hours.

So it can be a roast beef, we use the beef brisket which I like 'cause it's fatty and sweet.

So it can be either that or roast beef, some type of roast beef inside round or something like that.

- [Peggy] And speaking of red gravy.

- Red gravy red sauce, marinara, it's all the same.

In New Orleans we say red sauce or red gravy, and you just let it cook down with a little sugar and you just let it cook for hours and hours.

(jazzy music) - [Peggy] surrounded by water, New Orleans's reputation as a seafood capital is unquestioned which makes the story of a local steakhouse and a woman from the New Orleans area who built a nationally known Empire on beef, all the more remarkable.

- After the fairgrounds let out after their day of racing, everybody who was heading uptown would just go right down Broad Street.

And so a lot of people said," Well, what the heck, "we've made a few hundred bucks at the track today, "why don't we stop and have a good dinner somewhere?

Anybody can get his head around a steakhouse, and anybody can even get his head around the really best steaks money can buy.

And that's what they were always offering and they got it.

- [Peggy] Croatian born John Vojkovich opened Crescent City Steakhouse in 1934.

It continues to be run by his family.

- You feel like you're in the '30s '40s '50s in New Orleans, It's definitely old style it, they've got the little boots on the side with the curtains and so you can sit in there and whether you bring your girlfriend or if you cut a political deal, whatever, they've got those curtains which you don't see in a lot of restaurants anymore.

The way the tables are set up the chairs, it's very nostalgic.

(jazz music) - [Peggy] And just a few blocks away on North Broad Street was Chris Steak house, owned by Chris Matulich also with Croatian roots.

In 1965, after over 40 years in the business, he was ready to retire.

Ruth Ann Udstad Fertel, whose family was from Happy Jack Louisiana in Plaquemines Parish, was divorced and wanted to provide a better life for her two sons.

- My mother was working as a lab technician, at Tulane for George Birch an eminent cardiologist.

But she had seen this little tiny ad, three line ad in "The Times-Picayune" and it said, "Steakhouse for sale by owner retiring.

"Call this number."

So she did and it was $18,000, so she went to George Birch and said, "I'm gonna leave and open a steakhouse."

And he said, "Are you crazy?"

(laughs) So she went from a cardiologist's lab to a cardiologist nightmare.

(laughs) - [Peggy] A little over a decade later, a fire forced to location change, just down the street Fertel encountered an unexpected hitch when naming the new location.

- When she moved, I guess, they looked at the contract and they realized I can't call it Chris Steakhouse.

And so she added her name, that New Orleans tradition of just stringing names, putting on marquees, like Pascal's McNally restaurant and I'm sure there are others, but Ruth's Chris it's a difficult name to remember but once you learned it, you never forgot it.

One of our advertising slogans was a steak so good it deserved two names.

- She made Chris's Steakhouse famous, she took an old Croatian restaurant made it famous, but the actual sizzling of the plate the cooking of the butter on the plate was invented by John Vojkovich from Crescent City Steakhouse across the street.

- [Peggy] Another slogan was the steak that sizzles.

Fertel had stoves made that could go up to 1800 degrees.

- They had these really hot stoves, the Montague stoves, which my mother worked with the company to make even hotter.

And before you put the steak out, you would put the platter up on top of the stove to warm it.

I mean, there wasn't a special effort to make it sizzle, but my mother loved hot food, and as I remember it when we were kids at Crescent City, it would be warm, and maybe there would be a bubble or two when they brought it out.

But sometimes, if the timing was such that the platter stayed up there extra time, it came out really hot and sizzling.

And at some point my mother realized, that's really great, and it became again, an advertising slogan, the stakes that talk for itself.

that speaks for itself.

- [Peggy] Business grew with a little help from some friends.

- Friday afternoon was the power lunch par excellence and as the political hang and would do 150 covers for lunch but often are many who stayed through the afternoon and had dinner.

- She would sit at the desk in the front of the place, very nice lady, very attuned to what she was doing, very businesslike, very motivated, just right on top of it.

- She was not pretentious, she treated everyone equally, she had a great presence, she was there in the moment, and she didn't go one up on you, and people really appreciated that.

- Steak dinners or bet on games, not chicken dinners or fish dinners.

So steak has always been in steak and potatoes, and I think steak and potatoes will always be in.

- [Peggy] Ruth Fertel died in 2002.

Three years earlier, she had sold her business which had expanded to include franchises around the country.

Corporate headquarters were moved to Orlando, Florida in 2005.

(jazz music) Also achieving famous chef Paul Prudhomme worked with his nationally known restaurant, famous blackening method of cooking red fish and numerous cookbooks along with a national cooking series.

- Paul Prudhomme if he's not the single most influential chef in the history of New Orleans, he certainly in the top two or three or four.

He made such a difference.

When he showed up at Commander's Palace, he had all ready been around town a little bit.

I first remember meeting him in '74 or '75, I think.

Anyway, he turned up over there, and he and Ella Brennan had a meeting of minds right off the bat, and they came up with the idea that really turned the restaurant business here totally around.

And that was...

I could sum it up in one quick anecdote.

One of the other of them said, "Why are we making trout amdean?

"You don't grow almonds around here, "no almond growing out here.

"Why don't we make it with pecans?"

And so they made it with pecans and gave it a little Cajun touch to it, so it became a totally local dish.

And they did that to the entirety of the rest of the menu.

And if you've ever listened Paul talk, he's always talking about that, the more local the better.

If it comes out of your backyard, that's the best of all.

- [Peggy] The Cvitanovich family of Drago's Restaurants has locally achieved their own star turn with the oyster.

- Our charbroiled oyster sauce today that we use is virtually the same sauce that we used on our drum fish tummy and our barbecue drum fish and red fish dish that we would do on a half shell.

The only thing different now with the oysters is we add a little bit of cheese so I was kind of thinking, I said well oysters and oyster water, oyster water is really great to cook with and the flavor that comes out of the the oyster and it's kind of half shell already.

I wonder what it would be like if I would take an oyster, put it on a barbecue grill and put a little bit of the butter garlic sauce on it.

And it was almost an instant hit.

(jazz music) - [Peggy] And speaking of oysters as a specialty now gone but finally remembered is a restaurant that belonged to another family with Croatian roots, Uglesich's.

- They have that oyster Croatian connection, where the dealers and the fishermen, they knew Anthony, Anthony knew them.

Their families and friends came from the same places in Europe and Croatia.

And just a traditional New Orleans restaurant.

- Uglesich's was there for a very long time since 1924, and nobody paid much attention to it, it was not particularly busy.

And then sometime in the mid to late '80s, it just snapped and the sleazy sheek aspect caught on and it became a phenom.

And Anthony and Gail just started cooking all of these specials that I don't remember their ever having before, and it became the legend that it became later.

- And on my first trip I had sauteed softshell crabs with a mint vinaigrette which was a special and it was just one of the most refined dishes that I'd had in New Orleans period.

I mean you could also go there and get a fried oyster Po' Boy and gumbo and some of the New Orleans standards but I didn't do that that often because the creativity in that kitchen was really remarkable to me.

(jazzy music) - [Peggy] As recently as the early 20th century, black women selling pralines were a familiar sight on the streets of New Orleans.

Eventually the sugary confection was sold from stalls in the French market, and continues to be a popular souvenir.

But for many locals most pralines came right out of their home kitchen.

- My mom was an avid baker, and so I grew up with the best pralines.

Mom had a big cloche, a big glass cloche and a platter and she would have always some cookies and pralines there, and I'd love stealing praline.

- [Peggy] There was another bait good, that was also once sold on the streets, calas.

- It's a rice fritter that is made with leftover rice of which we always have plenty of and sprinkled with powdered sugar, in conclusion.

The street vendors from the earliest days of the city would go through the streets of the quarter calling out "Cala cala."

"Bell cala to show my damn bell cala to show."

Beautiful calas is very hot.

And around World War II when the street vendors went away, the cala went away too except in people's homes.

A lot of people from the seventh Ward will remember them.

Before the Louisiana purchase, the code Noir said, "slaves had to have a day off."

A lot of them became street vendors, a lot of them sold cala.

Number two, if a slave came to you and demanded his price and could pay it, you were required by law to take his money and let him go.

Consequently, it was the sale of the cala and the proceeds from it that ended up buying freedom for a lot of the enslaved peoples and their families.

So a dish that still exists in Africa has its original name, and helped free people from slavery.

I think is important enough to be kept around.

- [Peggy] Once made at home, another popular dish eventually became available from local dairies, Creole cream cheese.

- It was something you would eat anytime of the day.

I mean, you could eat it for breakfast, you might eat it as a snack, you would eat it anytime and it wouldn't last long in my house because we're five children, we all love it, so whoever had a little job that would be like the treat your body.

- [Peggy] With the decline of a local dairy industry, commercial production of Creole cream cheese became almost non existent.

In 1999 Poppy Tooker started a campaign to revive interest in this once cherished local dish.

- I began to teach people how to make Creole cream cheese.

I had gotten the Cent'anni recipe from the "old gold seal" dairy from my friend Diane's Cent'anni but it's very easy to make.

I did an event in August at the Crescent City farmers market, August of 1999.

So there at the Crescent City farmers market was an old gentleman, dairy farmer, Henry Motek, and he remembered that when the Moteks had dairy on the south shore, Creole cream cheese had been part of their product assortment.

He saw the crowd, he saw the commotion, he went home and he told his son Kenny, "Son, I have seen the future of the family dairy farm, "and it is Creole cream cheese."

And that began appraise that resulted today in Creole cream cheese not really being so endangered anymore.

- [Peggy] One local dessert that has become nationally famous is Bananas Foster, created in 1951 by longtime Britain's restaurant chef Paul Blange, it was named after owner Owen Brennan's friend Richard Foster, a frequent customer.

Among its ingredients, bananas, ice cream, butter, and oh yes, rum.

- I think it's one of the greatest desserts in the world, It has spread all over the world.

My backup for saying that was that a French chef that I talked to once who worked at another restaurant, didn't really like adding all of these New Orleans' dishes to his menu.

He was trying to keep a pretty much French menu, but he put that on because he says, "This is really very good."

And for a French chef to say that especially that French chef, that really is a statement, it's a great combination of flavors.

(jazzy music) - [Peggy] Food memories during the holidays, maybe universal, but in New Orleans, it shouldn't be a surprise that they have a different twist.

(jazz music) - Like we had oyster dressing and oyster paddies in the paddy shelf, Christmas, thanksgiving and New Year's, you didn't see them anytime else.

Like New Year's Day, you better have that cabbage, not green cabbage.

You get the green cabbage and you cook the green cabbage.

We joined the cabbage with black eyed peas, but we always say the black eyed peas, it sort of can have little change but we bought the big green dollars.

The funniest thing you'd go in all the creoles houses and guess what they did?

They pinned the cabbage to the curtains, the cabbage was on the table, you ate it, cooked it, you decorated with it and you're pinned it on your curtains, so you could have luck all the way (laughs).

- [Peggy] After New Year's, there's 12th night January 6, the beginning of the carnival season.

Today there are many variations on this pastry that has ancient origins.

- Well, my favorite style of King Cake depends on who's watching (laughs).

If I'm buying for a crowd of people who might be a little snobby about pancakes, I go for the more refined style.

If it's just me, and I'm filling my main craving it is going to have cream cheese filling, tons of icing, and as much sticky sugar on top as possible, - Well I was raised on McKenzie's King cakes, (laughs) So I can't get used to all these flavors of king cakes.

I don't know where all these flavors came about.

And they may actually taste better but I don't like the idea of changing the king cake.

Mackenzie's king cake in a lot of ways was the Danish pastry dough that was rolled out with lots of cinnamon, lots of sugar, butter, by the time I would eat them they were actually quite dry, (laughs) sometimes stale, but they were Mackenzie's King cakes and that's how you ate a king cake.

- I got take them anyway you got them with or without the icing, got an extra sugar I don't care if it's green sugar or purple sugar, put apples in it if you want, you can have it plain, I don't care what the filling is, with filling without a filling, I love king cakes.

(jazz music) - [Peggy] Once Carnival has passed, there's the period of Lent, when as penance before Easter, some Christians make sense sacrifice, often by temporarily abstaining from eating a favorite food.

- Yeah, I always gave up candy for Lent, because by Easter I would just od on all this stuff anyway, but candy was a big deal for me.

- [Peggy] Two local companies make candy that merits tradition status.

- Merlin's.

It was always a Merlin's rabbit sitting center stage, and always heavenly hash, eggs and Elmer's gold bricks, and Pecan, those Pecan eggs with the cream in the middle, but those three things were like if they weren't in the baskets, something happened, something went terribly askew.

(laughing) - My mama would make five different baskets for all of us.

We got the Pecan Egg, which was the most expensive so you only get one of those, you got the Gold Brick you got two although that was straight chocolate with a few nuts in it, and with the Easter bunny you could eat anything you wanted, if you ate your rabbit you could have to eat it in sections you could the ears this time, the head this time part of the bodies, you just couldn't sit down eat all this candy she would let you eat certain parts of it.

- Oh yeah Gold Brick Eggs we still have I never knew that Gold Brick Eggs only occurred here I thought that everybody around the world knew what a Gold Brick was.

- [Peggy] Elmer's was founded in New Orleans in 1855, Merlin's Candies began production of those bunnies in 1947.

For some local youngsters, there was often more than candy in their baskets.

- The Circle Food Store was our real supermarket coming up as a kid.

But I remember every Easter they had... For the whole period they had these wonderful, multicolored little chickens that you could buy for Easter and every I had two or three.

One lasted for me and I had him for about seven years.

He was raised with my dog and he would follow us to the grocery and he was like a dog.

He would just walk around and do things and I'd take him up to the roof and throw him off and let him fly down to the backyard.

(laughing) - [Peggy] On March 19, many local Catholics mainly of Italian descent, pay homage to St. Joseph, with the construction of altars filled with non meat dishes, often fish and vegetables.

Chef John Besh provides dishes for some local altars.

- I support the St. Joseph's altar, and in part, it's an arrangement that I have with St. Joseph himself, you see, and so once you make an arrangement with St. Joseph, you can't go back on it.

He had been a saint that I turned to when my sister was first diagnosed with cancer years ago.

And so since then, and since he helped extend her life by years, then it's really been a commitment of mine to make sure that I honor St. Joseph by helping ladies cook on their feast day.

- [Peggy] On those hot New Orleans summer days, there was a cold desert that came right out of the icebox - Uncle Sidney live in the (mumbling) ward.

So we went there and had the huckabuck and he say, "Y'all want to huckabucko?"

We like, What's a "huckabuck"?

We never heard of that, and come to find out it was just a regular old coke... First you had to have your Kool-Aid, you bought your pack of Kool-Aid that you made.

So you got your Kool-Aid, you mix it up.

And you got to some Dixie cups.

You got a Dixie cup, you fill 'em up, and you have to make space in your mama's freezer.

So we'd make some space... And we can only make about 15 at a time.

- [Peggy] For over 65 years and uptown New Orleans, Mary and Ernest Hansen sold snow-Bliz, created from finally shaved ice by a barrel shaped machine that was invented by Ernest Hansen, and with Mary Hansen's personally made syrup's their motto was "there are no shortcuts to quality."

- Well, Ernest built it himself from scratch, he was a machinist, so he knew what he was doing and he grossly over built it.

There's nothing like it out there, and he told me once that the bit that grinds the ice was made out of something that is used to dig holes through solid rock.

And I asked him at that time, how often do you have to change the bit he says, "I've never changed it."

(grinding) The product was distinctly different.

I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that they store their ice at an extremely low temperature, So it would make that snow like effect.

- Mrs. Hansen and Mary was really friendly.

One thing I loved about her was that she never no matter how long the line was, if someone wanted to have a conversation with her, she would have it.

Sometimes people in line would get angry that the line was taking so long, and Mary would say, "These are my friends, I'm talking to them, "if you don't like it, you can go to a different stand."

And their granddaughter Ashley now runs the shop, and she's the same way.

- If there were two people that more people loved in this city, I don't know who they'd be.

They were just the nicest people in the world.

Mary Hansen, who had a single minded goal of putting out the ultimate in quality in a snow ball.

Lord knows if she had done anything else, if she had been a chef or who knows what she would have done, but she said, snow ball this is it.

- And a lot of people come in here and ask me, "Why do you use your snow ball in layers?"

That's because the ice is so fine, I want it to penetrate through there, and they can't understand it but after they get it they're happy.

(jazzy music) - [Peggy] Well, it seems to take forever, and New Orleans summer it does eventually give way to cooler weather in fall and winter.

As the holidays approach, there's often the urge to bake.

- You had many desserts.

When holiday time come there was no such thing as one dessert.

So you made strawberry layer cake, and you made the cake and you put strawberry jam and coconut in it, then you would make sweet potato pies, you would make apple pies, you would make all kinds of things.

So it's like you wanted to put everything on the table and the desserts were everything.

And then if you had your relatives that came, well then they would bring desserts too, the all kinds of desserts.

And that still goes on, you have all kinds of desserts, cookies is everything.

- [Peggy] New Orleans kitchens provided many popular baked goods.

At home it was bread pudding, utilizing leftover bread and adding milk sugar, cinnamon and raisins or pain perdu, lost bread made from stale bread, soaked in milk, egg and then fried in butter.

But if the budget permitted local bakeries were often just around the corner.

- They had a light the when the doughnuts were hot, and when the light was on everybody ran in (laughing) they get the hot fresh doughnuts.

And we also had Dixie Anna's Bakery which had a wonderful Russian cake.

Russian cake is when you take all the cake you have, leftover and put it into one big vat and add some red dye and mix it all together and re-bake it and you've got a brand new cake.

And covered with a sort of Creole cream cheese frosting.

It was beautiful on 4th of July to have a Russian cake because you had your red white all you needed was a blue tablecloth.

- [Peggy] If there's one pastry that has certainly become associated with New Orleans, it is the doberish, also referred to as doberge, and we have Mrs Beulah Ledner to thank for it.

This confection consists of many layers of white cake separated by a filling.

Among the most popular flavors, chocolate and lemon.

- Instead of using the traditional European and Garen doberge dough, which is it's really the basis of the cake to begin with, in Europe they use the buttercream as a filling between the layers and my mother decided that was much too heavy for New Orleans.

So she thought that the custard would be a much lighter taste and had more meaning than the buttercream.

- [Peggy] As a marketing tool Lednar Frenchified the name dobos to doberish.

During the depression to help make ends meet, Mrs. Ledner decided to open a tea room in the basement of her uptown home.

- Some of the people I remember from Newcomb would come over for lunch at the tea room and then we had several people come in in the evening for their evening meals at the tea room and we would be having our family meal in a tea room too.

(laughs) It was sort of a menagerie(laughing) of things going on and it was great really to grow up in the atmosphere.

- [Peggy] Ledner eventually opened a bakery at various locations.

In 1946, after a heart attack, she decided to sell her business to Joseph Gambino.

A year later, feeling better and unable to remain idle, she opened a bakery in Jefferson Parish.

Since the terms of the sale temporarily precluded her from operating in Orleans.

Lednar was in business for almost 50 years.

- Hey, I'm proud to say that, yeah, I've had doberge cake and I've had doberge cake that Miss Beulah Lednar made, her bakery was right around the corner from our Metairie restaurant on Hessmer where Maurice's is today and she was was just a great lady.

Very friendly, kinda like the same type of mold that maybe Miss Leah Chase is in today.

- I tell you what I grew up on was Beulah Lednar pie.

We didn't really make any desserts in the restaurant when I was a youngster and would buy Beulah Lednar the pies.

A very kind nice lady that really had a feel for baking, she just had a touch, just wonderful.

When I would go out there, she'd always give me a little cake or something.

- When we had a birthday party for one of my nephews, And everybody asked, "What do you want the chocolate side "or the lemon side?"

And I said, "You know what, cut mine from right around "where that line is, so I can get a little bit of both."

So yeah, I love doberge cake.

(piano music) (violin music) - While we all have food memories, Hurricane Katrina in 2005 literally washed away many locals cookbooks.

Cooking up a storm a compilation of recipes by "The Times-Picayune" has become a treasured source.

New Orleans cuisine provides histories of 14 of the city's signature dishes, and there are other books.

Since its inception, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival has featured dishes such as yakamein and huckabucks to help preserve the food culture.

In 2008, the Southern Food and Beverage Museum opened specifically with a mission to savor and sustain our food heritage.

And what can we all do to save local dishes?

Remember that there are beloved memories attached to each one, and enjoy as often as possible.

- There's no such thing as Louisiana crab cake, I've never heard of a crab cake, I've been crabbing my whole life been here, my whole life, I've never heard of a crab cake, and yet we always had these double crabs.

- We climb up in our fig tree, purge ourselves and just pick figs and eat 'em.

Just pick and eat all day with the ants and everything else because you know ants love fig trees, and we did that for like two years, two summers.

I ate so many figs, I'm 53 years old, it's been about 40 years since I've ate a fig.

- I walk near Clancy's and I can smell them cooking down their cabbage.

I love being able, you know often times in all over the country there'll be the barbecue grill smell but here you can smell catfish frying and red beans simmering and just walking through the neighborhoods, you smell tons of smells.

- My poor daddy never ever stopped being ripped about the first time he ever came to dinner at my grandparents house when he was courting my mother.

They had really put on the dog for him that night and my grandmother served vanilla ice cream topped with the Gold Brick sauce, one of the most magical things we ever had here in New Orleans, that Gold Brick sauce when it was heated on top of the ice cream would harden up hard making a great candy coating on the outside.

And the story goes that daddy picked up the ice cream spoon went to break the chocolate coating and the spoon went right through one of Nana's very fine ice cream dishes and he never heard the end of that.

- [Narrator] New Orleans food memories is made possible by the WYES Producer Circle, a group of generous contributors dedicate to the support of WYES's local productions.

Major corporate funding is provided by, Dreams.

Dreams keep us going.

Dreams keep us growing.

Dreams keep us thriving.

Hancock Whitney.

Your dream.

Our mission.

(jazzy music) - [Man] Winn-Dixie local flavors since 1956.

- [Narrator] And by contributions to WYES from viewers like you, thank you.