Big Easy

Y'all, when I think of the Big Easy, the first person that I think of is my brother-in-law, father Hank Groover

Hank is paying me a visit today, y'all, and we're gonna make some traditional New Orleans dishes

We're gonna start out with a scrumptious crawfish etouffee. I wish y'all were right here in the kitchen

And then, y'all, a Louisiana favorite, Hank's Shrimp Stuff Millitons. I can't wait to see what you're gonna do with that

For dessert, you can't think of New Orleans, y'all, without thinking about beignets

I love it, I love it, I love it. Hank is home for a week or so

Even though he was raised on this property the last, what, six years you've been in New Orleans

And I just love getting in the kitchen when Hank comes home and making these Louisiana dishes

because it's my second favorite cuisine, I think, after Farmhouse Southern. Well, they sure know how to cook seafood

No two ways about it. They absolutely do, don't they? So what are we going to make today

We're going to do a crawfish etouffee. And we're going to do stuffed melatonnes

What is a melatonne? Is that a fruit or a vegetable? It's a vegetable

It's like a squash. They have a bunch of different names they call them

Almost looks like a pear to me. Well, they call them alligator pears or vegetable pear

It's a real mild flavor. I can't wait to taste those, but the first thing we're going to make is the crawfish etouffee, right

Yeah. And you know one thing about Hank? You have been everywhere in this world, haven't you

I have gotten a... Is it because of your job is sending you to, like, different churches

Well, yeah. I'm a Dominican fryer, and we're in a hundred... Chicken fryer

Yeah, you are. So what do you want me to do? I need a half a cup of red and a half a cup of green

Okay, I can do that. And to go with our bell peppers, we've got one cup of celery and a clove of minced garlic

All right, now I've got the red bell pepper done and the green. You don't want it, like, minced

No, that's good. I like the little chunks. A little chunky, yes. And we are doing, what

What Louisianaans refer to as the trinity, right? The holy trinity, yeah

Pepper, celery, onions. Oh, onions. We need to get our roux started, get the pot hot, and add a stick of butter to it

Can you do a stick of butter? I think I might. Seems like a lot. I love my brother-in-law

I'm chopping half a cup of bacon now to add to our étouffée

Now, our butter's melted, y'all. All right, you've got to make a roux

Almost everything in Louisiana starts with a roux. Yes, so one stick of butter

Three quarters of a cup of flour. Okay. One stick of butter. Now let's talk about roux

Roux should be cooked slow and for probably about 40 minutes, 30 minutes

Oh, it depends on how fast it browns. There's no time limit

But you want to get the flour taste out. Yes. While Hank is tending to our roux, I'm going to chop up some parsley

You want to stir and me cut the onion up? Yes. This is starting to get a kind of a beige-y look to it

Do you think this is about the right color? I think it's about ready. I think so, too, so I can start putting in the vegetables

When you start adding vegetables, the roux almost stops cooking. It does, does it? Yeah

So we've got half a cup of red and green bell peppers, half a cup of chopped bacon

two cups of diced onion, one clove of minced garlic, One cup of celery and a fourth of a cup of parsley

All right, this is looking good already. Can y'all see down in the pot

We got some more ingredients to add to this, don't we? We do. The wet ingredients

Okay. And the spices. This is the secret ingredient here, holy water

Oh, holy water. We need a cup of holy water here, of beer

Any kind of beer? Any kind of beer. It doesn't matter. Four cups of clam juice

Each one of these is one cup. Okay. You can find clam juice right there in your grocery store

And it really is great. I found that it's a very quick substitute for stocks, seafood stocks, or things like that

So bay leaves. Just one? I'm going to just put one in. You want about a tablespoon of Cajun seasoning, any kind, any variety

A pinch of cayenne, a little more if you want it spicy, and a little bit of white pepper

A little bit of white pepper? Yeah, about a quarter of a teaspoon. Okay

And the difference is that the pepper hits you in different places, a white pepper, a black pepper, and a red pepper

Y our dish is really coming together beautifully I wish y were right here in the kitchen Let add one cup of half and half OK And I going to get the water boiling for the melatonnes Oh OK

Mm. Oh, Hank. I could slap you, honey. Is it good? You dadgum skip it

Yeah, you want all those flavors. They call it Mary. You want your flavors to marry

20, 30 minutes, even 45. Uh-huh. toward the end, you add the crawfish

Now, Hank, what are we going to do with these militants? Do we need salt in the water

I sometimes put a little Cajun seasoning. Do we drop them in just whole

Drop them in whole. Now, how long would these take to cook? Between 30 and

45 minutes. You want them soft, and you have to test them with a fork

I'm going to find the lid for this. And you're talking about these

need to be married. Why don't you All right. Why don't you marry him

Say a blessing. Give it a little blessing for him. Can we put butter in there

Sheesh, I reckon we can. Hank and I are gonna put his shrimp stuffed melitons together

Then we're gonna put the finishing touches on our crawfish etouffee. Beautiful

Over some rice. Whoa. And later, it's gonna be a French Quarter Classic

You did good. Isn't that yummy? Hot pot coming through. Hey, y'all

In the kitchen with one of my favorite brother-in-laws, Hank Groover, Father Hank

And we're doing recipes today that connect us to the Big Easy

New Orleans. There's no place like it. And we've got crawfish chateaufe going on

And Hank is getting ready, y'all, to make shrimp stuffed melatonin. And they look like, kind of like a pear, y'all

Now Hank has boiled those. It's about 45 minutes. Yeah. It should feel like a potato when it's ready

So Hank, while you're getting those ready, I'm going to come down here and chop what you need

You want green onion and the green bell pepper and then I guess a regular onion

Yes, ma'am. To go with it? Okay. Any particular size? Just chop them kind of fine

Okay. Not too big. Because we've got to stuff them into our melaton. Okay

Now, I can't wait to see what you're going to do with that. See the little crease in the bottom

And cut it in half. See the seed? Oh, yeah. So you were able to cut through the seed

Right. The seed's not really hard. You just want to pop that out. Uh-huh

And then what I'll do is, you can eat the seed. Oh, you can? Yeah

It tastes good. Scoop the pulp out. Uh-huh. You can just use a spoon

I'm going to leave at least a quarter of an inch around. Okay

Yeah, it's got to be hardy enough to hold the stuffing. Right. The inside looks like the fruit of a pear

Mm-hmm. And what I do, too, is I turn them upside down. Mm-hmm, so they can drain

So they can drain a little bit. Okay. So can we get these outside of Louisiana

You can. They're in almost every grocery store, but they call them chayote, which is the Spanish word

Now, how would that be spelled so I could... C-H-A-Y-O-T-E. Okay, I have mine done

All right, we did good. So let me go back to chopping. Chop those up. Does this go in the pot yet

Sure. I can go ahead and get it off my board. We need butter, Paula

Well, you know, I was wondering. Can we put butter in there? Shoot, I reckon we can, honey

How much you want? Go ahead. Okey-dokey. Is that right? Yeah. Hey, here's some celery, Paula

Okay, good. You chop that up. And you're going to chop the bell pepper

I am. Now, I've added half a cup of green onions and half a cup of yellow onions to our butter

So I'm going to get the celery done. All right. Get the celery in there

You get that cooked down until it's soft. Now I'm going to throw this in, the green peppers

I'm done with the celery. We're coming right along. Oh, this looks beautiful, Hank

Now what's next? You'll take your squash that we scooped out. Yeah, the meat

Right. Do you need a fork? No, I'm going to chop it with my knife

Yeah. That's going to make a wonderful filler. You want me to just dice up the shrimp? Yeah

Those are pretty big shrimp. We want them to look nice and..

It's kind of chunky like that. Light-sized, right. Not minced, okay. And we've got a fourth of a pound of shrimp here

All right. You want to put that in now? Sure. So some of the water can cook out of it

Yeah, they have a lot of water. Right. A lot of water in them

All right, we want to add our Cajun seasoning. Okay, how much? Oh, let's see

About that much. A spoon Yeah Yeah that kind of looked like a half And what else salt a little pepper All right now we using breadcrumbs y as a filler to bind our stuffing together

Are we using seasoned or plain? These are not seasoned, but you can use the seasoned breadcrumbs

So either one, depending on what you like. Right. I'm going to throw the shrimp in first

Yeah, I think that's soft enough. It's looking really good. In just a minute

Yeah, it won't take them long. And then this is what ties it all together

A heap and half a cup of breadcrumbs. Okay. So there you go

Okey-doke. I like the looks of this. Oh, you'll love the flavor

It's really a nice dish. Those breadcrumbs soaked up all that liquid pretty quickly, didn't it

They did. All right, now I'm going to reach in here and just give it a little taste

and see if we're right with the seasonings. Okay. That tastes like delicious

So are we ready to stock? I think we're ready. I'm getting hungry

So you got a spoon? Uh-huh. I love this. And you know what

What? It's got a little bite to it, Hank. Yeah. Oh, it's great

There you go. All right. So we're going to bake these, right

Right. For about 30 minutes. Everything's already cooked. You just want it to all come together in the oven

To kind of marry together. And our oven is set at 350, Hank

Yeah. Now we need our crawfish. Okay. Where are those? Over here

All right. We're ready to put those in the etouffee? We are. Okay

So our crawfish went in our etouffee last because they're fully cooked

And how much was that, Hank? That was one pound of crawfish

Okay. And look at this. You see the nice, beautiful, kind of light, caramel-y color y'all

Beautiful. Over some rice. Oh, it's not a meal without rice. No, it's not, is it

All right, so we're pulling this together. Up next, we'll start fixing a classic New Orleans dessert, French Quarter Beignets

Oh, that looks great. Doesn't that look great? So, to finish up this fabulous meal that we have

we are going to fry up some beignets, y'all. Nolan is known for their beignets

That and a cup of coffee at Cafe Dumont. Dumont. Dumont. So, to start our beignets

I have one and a half cups, y'all, of lukewarm water. I have a half a cup of just white granulated sugar and one envelope of yeast

So that's simple. You can see that this is coming to life

It's bubbling over in there. You see it making the bubbles. We're looking at about 10 minutes, Hank, for that to sit like that

To this, we're going to need two eggs slightly beaten. We need about one and a fourth teaspoon of salt

And then I'm going to measure out the one cup of evaporated milk

And don't get confused now. That's evaporated, not condensed. All right. So just keep on beating

So we're just going to add that to our yeast mixture. I'm just going to mix that up

Now, in this bowl, y'all, I've already pre-measured our flour, and we're going to need seven cups of bread flour

So what I'm going to do is just measure out three cups, and if you would whisk it together as I add

You smell that yeast? Mm-hmm. I love the smell of yeast. All right

So we've got our three cups. We've got four cups left. So I'm going to take some shortening, like a fourth of a cup, and I'm not going to melt it

I'm just going to add the solid shortening to our wet ingredients, not our dry, like you would normally think of doing

And if you just take that whisk and cut this in, all we have to do now is finish adding our final four cups of flour to this

I remember I was probably 27 or 28, my first visit to New Orleans, and my first time ever tasting a beignet

Were they still speaking French then? Just teasing. He's such a smart aleck

You know what? It kind of runs in the family. If you would just spray that bowl because after I knead this we going to put it in that bowl And we gonna cover it Ooh I got something What you got Got some melatons ready to come out Oh gosh honey Let see

Aren't they pretty? Great time of day. They look wonderful. I can't hardly wait

They smell good, too. Ooh. I'm going to sit them over here. So I think our dough is kneaded enough

Isn't that pretty? In the bowl, this goes that we sprayed so it won't stick to our bowl

Now you can use a plastic wrap or a towel. Here's the towel

Yeah, just throw a towel over it. And while you're doing that, I'm going to wash the goof off my hands because it's almost time to start tasting, isn't it

All right. We got our rice. We got our etouffee. Right. You got some spoons

I think I do these. Look at that bacon. Ooh, well

Dig in. Mm-mm. Oh, that's hard to beat

Mm-mm-mm-mm-mm-mm. Wait, you can taste this. Oh, my goodness

You know what? What? You hungry? Come, Dougie. I love you, too

Where there's something sweet, you can bet my husband, Michael, isn't far behind

I want some of those. Mmm! That's getting hot. It is getting hot

In fact, it's there. It's at $3.50. We're going to fry up these veignets

You want to grab me the dough that's been sitting in like it's about two hours, y'all

That looks good. And I'm just going to put that on the board

And for those of you that maybe just tuned in, I'm in here in the kitchen with my brother-in-law, Hank Grover

And we are doing Big Easy dishes. And everybody knows that the Big Easy, we're talking about gnawlins

and a favorite New Orleans dessert is French Quarter beignets. Hank, get your knife ready, honey

And we're just going to roll this out, and we're going to cut our dough into squares

So come on over here and start dropping it in the deep fryer

Uh-huh. And I've got you a spider. I see it. so that you can start flipping them

As soon as they pop up, Hank, this is like any other donut

You'll want to make sure you start flipping them because if they get too brown on one side

they can be testy and not want to flip over for you

All right, now I'm going to take a paper sack, and I'm going to do these just like my mother used to do

and I'm going to fill it with powdered sugar. Look at that

Just, uh-huh. All right, you can put them up here, Hank, and let them drain a second

And I'm not going to let them drain long, because I want them still kind of damp

so that that powdered sugar will stick to them. Here we go

Ha-ha! I love it, I love it, I love it. When you go to cafe... Dumont

How many do they give you? Three. That's what I thought. They look great, don't they

They sure do. Here's to you. Here's to you, Hank, and the Big Easy

Hey there. How could you all have beignets without Captain Michael's coffee

Mmm. That's for me. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Mmm. Oh, Michael, that's perfect

I've got one. Mmm. Speaking of perfect, I got the perfect gift for you

You had me a gift? I did. Thanks for having me on your show

And I want to show you a picture of your two favorite men

Oh, my God! I love it! Y'all, look at this. This is two of the Groover men

This is Hank. And this is Michael. Look, I was already working on my physique

Uh-huh. You were already working on that 12-pack, weren't you? Yeah. And so was Father Hank, I might add

Oh, my goodness. I just love that. In fact, I love you, too, fat boys

I love you, too. I love y'all. Thank you so much, Hank

You're welcome. And you know, we always send y'all our love along with our best dishes from Savannah, Georgia to yours

We'll see y'all next time. Come find your fat boy girls.