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It's a nice glass of liquor.
Whoo.
It's getting me into that New Orleans mode.
Welcome to brunch, everybody.
Today we are going to take a trip
to New Orleans, Louisiana.
You know, New Orleans is one of those places
that has its own personality.
You can't compare it to anything,
New Orleans is its own place and it loves being that.
So we're gonna make brunch today,
we're gonna make a few different dishes.
I'm gonna make something called grillades and grits,
a beef cutlet with lots of flavor, some tomatoes
and we're gonna make some
fresh corn grits to go with that
and I'm gonna poach some eggs
because we are cooking brunch, of course.
Ooh, those are good.
I'm gonna make a cocktail called Vieux Carre.
It's a pretty powerful cocktail,
so make sure that you're
drinking this on the weekends at brunch and you'll be fine.
We're also going to make bananas foster beignets.
Little crispy on the outside,
perfect little New Orleans donuts.
All right, so let's get going.
Let's get started with a cocktail.
We're gonna make the Vieux Carre
which in French basically means the French quarter.
So I'm gonna start with some cognac,
a little bit of rye,
which is kind of in the Bourbon family,
but a little harsher in a good way.
Some Benedictine which is a cognac that's been
made with some herbs, so it has a little bit of
a herbaceous flavor to it.
And then just a splash of Vermouth.
And then we have some bitters.
I like bitters because it kind of
cuts through things that are sweet
and it gives it a really nice balance.
We have some Angostura bitters
and then we have Peychaud's bitters,
which has a little bit of a fruity flavor,
almost cherry like flavor.
Okay, we're gonna stir this up.
Pour this.
A couple of cherries for the festivities.
This drink has got some power behind it.
Mmm.
That's a nice glass of liquor.
This is not something that you keep having
like three of four during the day
'cause your day is gonna get short.
Mmm.
We're gonna move on to our grillades and grits.
Don't be intimidated by the name.
The first time I heard it,
I didn't understand what it was either.
Basically think of like veal cutlets
or chicken cutlets,
these are actually beef cutlets.
And we're gonna serve them over grits,
some fresh corn grits with some poached eggs.
Now this is a top round of beef so unless you pound it out,
or cook it for a really long period of time,
like braise it, it's gonna be rather tough.
Now I don't have to go to the gym today.
So there we go.
All right, so now I'm gonna cut small pieces of this,
so I can sauté them individually.
I think it's nice to do some things
that are savory for brunch.
The lunch side of brunch I would say.
This is definitely one of them.
Okay, some salt and pepper.
And I'm gonna cook this with a little canola oil.
All right, so while we're waiting for the oil to heat up,
I'm gonna make a little bit of a spice rub.
Now this is sort of like a blackening spice
that you would find, of course, in New Orleans.
Blackened fish, blackened beef,
like they blacken everything down there.
So it's gonna be some Spanish paprika,
a couple of different chili powders.
This is a New Mexico chili powder
and some chile de arbol.
Now if you can't find those,
just use a good quality chili powder
from your supermarket and a little bit of cayenne.
Some dried oregano, some onion and garlic powder
and some black pepper.
You could put the blackening spice on the beef,
but what I'm gonna do is add it to the sauce
or the broth that we're cooking it in,
so that the spices actually cook out.
So we're just gonna dredge our beef
in a little bit of flour, get the excess off.
So the flour is gonna do two things,
it's gonna help brown the beef on the outside,
give it a nice little crust
and also the flour that remains in the pan
is gonna help thicken the sauce.
But see, I don't want to put any more than
that in right now 'cause I don't want to crowd it,
I want them to get nice and crusty.
If I crowd the pan, what's gonna happen?
It's actually gonna start to steam the beef
and we don't want that.
Well, we are riding New Orleans style today,
so we got to put some butter in there for sure.
See that, nice and brown.
The only way you're gonna achieve that
is if you have the oil at very high heat.
All right, so we're gonna reserve the beef
and then we'll put the next batch of beef in there.
While that's cooking, I'm gonna actually
chop up some vegetables, some peppers,
a red pepper, a poblano pepper.
And a Vidalia onion is a sweet onion from Georgia.
I like the natural sweetness for this dish.
I'm actually gonna sauté these in the oil
and the juices that I cooked the beef in.
See nice and crusty, that's what you want.
Crispy beef.
So in New Orleans,
I love going to Commander's Palace for brunch,
that's a place where so many great chefs have started.
Actually, Emeril was the chef
at Commander's Palace a long time ago.
When you think about places in America
that are famous for brunch, Commander's Palace
is at the top of the list.
So we're gonna reserve our grillades.
We have our peppers and onions, dice these up.
And this is good old school cooking,
you know, this is the way
you really build flavors in one single pot.
I'm gonna take a little bit of that spice rub,
that blackening rub
and sauté it with the vegetables as well.
So this will actually cook out those spices a little bit.
You want them to mellow, you want them to blossom.
I'm gonna take some crushed tomatoes,
canned tomatoes and a bay leaf or two.
Chicken stock.
I'm gonna add some fresh thyme,
I'm just gonna drop a sprig in there
we can take out later.
And now I'm gonna take the grillades that we sautéed
and we're gonna put them back into this broth.
I'm gonna let this braise.
All the ingredients meld together
and that's what we want.
So let's put this in the oven.
350 degrees for about 30 to 40 minutes
and when we come back,
we're gonna make some grits, some fresh corn grits
to go with these grillades and our poached eggs
and we also have some beignets.
Bananas foster beignets.
Good enough to stick around for.
Welcome back, everybody.
You're watching brunch, we are here in New Orleans,
we're not exactly in New Orleans,
but we're feeling New Orleans today.
And now we're gonna move on to some beignets.
When I'm in New Orleans, I drink chicory coffee,
so we're gonna make a chicory coffee creme anglaise.
It's a spiced coffee sauce
to go with our bananas foster beignets.
So the first thing we do is gonna get the sauce going.
I'm gonna take about 1/3 cup of chicory coffee.
This is that very robust coffee.
Put this in some milk and then a couple of cloves,
whole cloves.
Cloves are very strong, so I'm gonna put like
half a dozen cloves or something like that.
And then a couple of cinnamon sticks.
Just gonna stir this up a little bit.
So we're gonna bring this to a simmer,
we're gonna let this steep for about an hour,
so that all the flavors
are actually picked up into the milk.
While that's going,
we're gonna make an egg and sugar mixture
to be the base of the sauce.
So I'm gonna start with 4 egg yolks.
4 egg yolks and 1/2 cup of sugar.
So we're gonna whisk the egg yolks and the sugar
until it actually gets a sort of pale color to it.
Okay, here's one that I have
steeped for about an hour, okay.
This is the coffee mixture.
We're gonna strain out all those spices
and any of the coffee as well.
So you want a pretty fine strainer,
so we capture all the coffee.
I'm gonna heat this up just till it comes to a simmer.
Wow, it's got some serious flavor to it.
This chicory coffee has got some serious game.
So I'm gonna slowly add a little bit
of our coffee mixture, just a tiny bit at a time.
You want to be careful not to add
the hot milk mixture too quickly
'cause then you'll scramble the eggs
and we don't want that to happen.
There we go.
And then at some point like right now,
you can just add the rest.
But you want to go slow at first.
And then we're also gonna flavor this
with a little bit of brandy.
So we're just gonna add some orange zest here
to pick up the flavor.
And you want to heat this up slowly
until it gets a custard-like texture to it,
a very thin custard.
So basically, what you're looking for
is when you draw your finger across the spoon,
that it actually stays clean,
that the sauce doesn't spill into the middle.
That means it's time to strain,
so we're gonna strain this into an ice bath so it cools.
So just in case we curdle it a little bit
and any other sediment from the coffee
or the spices, that's in there,
we're just gonna cap that as well.
Ah, that's really good.
Let's check out our grillades.
It smells good.
There it is.
If you just joined us, we're making a brunch
with the flavors of New Orleans
and we started out by making some grillades,
very thinly sliced, pounded out
cutlets of beef with some New Orleans flavors.
We have tomatoes, we put poblano peppers,
some red peppers, some Vidalia onions
and then I made a blackening seasoning
that I actually put in the broth as well.
I actually want to taste the broth itself
'cause I know, I'll know by tasting it
whether or not those spices are cooking out nicely.
Ooh, it got some good heat to it too.
We are in New Orleans.
I'm just gonna let this cook for another
maybe 15 minutes.
It's getting there though, good flavor.
Let's move on to the beignets.
We're gonna make bananas foster beignets.
So in New Orleans,
you go to this place Cafe Du Monde
and people eat beignets with powdered sugar on them,
sort of like the donut in New Orleans.
So we want 3 ripe bananas,
I'll just mash them with a fork.
Bananas foster is one of those things
that you'll get for dessert
in lots of classic New Orleans restaurants.
So good.
All right, some banana liqueur,
about 2 tablespoons just to reinforce the flavor.
Some vanilla extract, 1/4 cup of sugar,
and then 2 tablespoons of brown sugar.
So I'm gonna mix this up and then we're gonna
get our dry ingredients going.
1 1/2 cups of flour,
3/4 teaspoon of baking powder
and then some nutmeg and some cinnamon.
And then I'm gonna grate some nutmeg.
And if you're just joining us
and you want to get on this train
of this New Orleans brunch that we're throwing together,
all you need to do is go to
cookingchanneltv.com/brunch,
you'll get all the recipes.
Nutmeg.
So I'm gonna mix the wet ingredients
into the dry ingredients.
And then I'm just gonna thin this out
with a little bit of milk.
I just want to see
what the texture looks like here before I do that.
Okay, yeah, so this is a tiny bit thick,
so I'm just gonna add a little splash of milk.
And that's what you want it to look like.
Man, you can smell the cinnamon and nutmeg so well.
We're gonna let this sit for about an hour
in the refrigerator.
We have the grillades in the oven.
We're gonna make some fresh corn grits
to go along with that.
If I was you, I'd stick around
'cause you land in New Orleans,
you don't know what's gonna happen.
Welcome back, everybody.
You have landed at Brunch.
We're cooking a New Orleans style brunch today.
Here's our grillades.
Look at that.
Now if you've just joined us,
beef, some Vidalia onions, some poblano peppers,
and some red peppers, I made a spice rub
sort of like a blackening New Orleans style spice rub,
put that in there as well,
some tomatoes and all these flavors
kind of meld together.
So I'm actually going to remove the beef now
'cause the beef is done.
And that's gonna be the gravy for the grillades and grits.
So I'm gonna put this back on top of the stove
and I'm gonna reduce my sauce.
We're gonna make our beignets now, not too big.
I like them to kind of be like bite size.
Oil should be between 350 and 360 degrees,
and that's a good sign, when they actually
start to come back to the top.
Oh, yeah, it's a beignet festival here.
Looking good.
The key to these beignets
is that you want them to be nice and golden brown
on the outside but at the same time,
we want them to cook through.
I'm gonna start taking these out.
Mmm, I can smell the bananas.
So we have our coffee sauce,
our spiced creme anglaise.
So just think about this, bananas, brown sugar,
and then you have that spiced coffee sauce
with the cloves and the orange,
that chicory coffee.
And I think a little powdered sugar,
right, we got to stay in that New Orleans flavor.
And you want a really simple presentation.
Tiny bit of fresh mint.
All right, I've been waiting for this moment all day.
Mmm.
So tender, little crispy on the outside
and that coffee is just cutting right through the sweetness.
Let's move on to our grits, our fresh corn grits.
I'm gonna start by sautéing a Vidalia onion.
Now in this case, we're actually
going to not only use dried corn or cornmeal,
we're also gonna use some fresh corn,
so these are gonna be fresh corn grits.
That's the thing I really like about these.
So I'm gonna start with a little canola oil,
Vidalia onions and then we're gonna take
the husks and the silks off of our fresh corn here.
Now if you can't find fresh corn,
you can actually make this dish
with just the cornmeal itself,
but if you can find the fresh corn,
by all means use it.
It's gonna add a different texture
and, of course, a much fresher flavor.
And when you're cutting the corn off the cob,
you don't want to go too deep 'cause the deeper you go,
the more starchy and bitter it gets.
So you just want the nice, sweet outside of the corn.
Corn goes right in with the Vidalia onions.
It's gonna lend a really nice natural sweetness.
All right, so we're gonna sauté the corn a little bit.
So we have 3 cups of water,
couple of cups of milk...
and then 1 1/2 cups of grits or cornmeal,
coarse cornmeal.
And this isn't quick cooking grits, okay,
so, I mean, there are instant grits
that cook up in a few minutes.
You know, so in this case we really
want to cook the cornmeal out and it's gonna take a while.
Each individual little grit here
is gonna flower and blossom.
It's gonna take about,
you know, a good 30 to 45 minutes.
We got a lot of good stuff happening here
at our New Orleans brunch.
We have our grillades and grits almost ready to go,
we're gonna let our grits cook.
While all that's happening, here's the good news.
We get to snack on our bananas foster fritters.
That's a good reason to hang around.
Don't go anywhere.
Welcome back, everybody.
You have landed on the New Orleans brunch train.
Now we're gonna finish up our grits.
Some white cheddar cheese.
So we're gonna melt our white cheddar
into our grits, our fresh corn grits.
A little bit of parmesan, some salt and pepper.
This is the way to finish up your grits.
Some green onions, some scallions,
okay, then we're just gonna fold this all together,
let the cheeses melt, become part of the grits.
How can this be bad?
Mmm.
Wow.
Ooh, those are good.
They're good all by themselves,
but we can't leave well enough alone.
We're gonna poach some eggs 'cause it is brunch.
So we have some water and the way that you poach eggs
is you put some vinegar in your water,
so that the eggs actually coagulate
and sort of get that poached egg shape.
I think I'll poach three, three is a good number.
I'm an odd number kind of guy,
one, three, five.
That's why I have a hard time with eggs Benedict.
It's two eggs.
While the eggs are cooking,
we're gonna put our beef back into our sauce here,
to sort of reconstitute it,
bring it back up to temperature,
it's already cooked.
We're taking our time with this, right.
The grillades is a very slow cooking dish,
but that's very typical of New Orleans.
And then when it's done, it unleashes all of its flavor.
So we're gonna take our poached eggs out,
let them drain.
Okay, so let's plate this up.
We're gonna start by
just taking some of our grillades.
Just gonna go sort of around the outside here.
And then I'm gonna take some of our grits.
Couple of poached eggs...
and more of our sauce,
so the sauce is tomatoes and onions
and peppers and it's got a blackened spice rub,
New Orleans style, some parsley leaves,
and some green onions, 'cause in New Orleans,
you got to have green onions.
Grillades and grits,
a classic New Orleans style brunch.
Mmm.
It's satisfying and it's comforting.
To top it all off, we are having brunch,
so a poached egg goes perfectly well with these.