NARRATOR: Major funding for Dook Chase: A Chef's Journey was provided by the Melvin S. Cohen Foundation Incorporated.

Additional support by Zatarain's, bringing the flavors of New Orleans home for over 125 years.

Zatarain's born and raised in New Orleans.

From the spice of jambalaya to the flavors of a classic crab boil, it's a taste of New Orleans made at home.

And by Camellia Beans, rooted in New Orleans since 1923.

A family business with a devotion to beans spanning four generations.

Camellia Beans, a taste of home.

DOOK: This time on "A Chef's Journey," we're in Madisonville on the North Shore of Lake Pontchartrain, where my grandmother, Leah Lane Chase, grew up.

This is where the tradition of canning and preserving fresh food began in my family.

I can remember walking into Great Aunt Cleo's house and just being amazed by all the jars filled with colorful fruits and vegetables they grew themselves.

So let's join my cousin, Cleo Robinson, in her family's home in the River community to talk about garden-fresh goodness.

♪ (theme music playing) ♪ ♪ ♪ DOOK: I'm here in Cleo's family's kitchen, and, and really just bringing back those memories.

Tell me how it all started here in Madisonville.

CLEO: Well, we started with Charles and Hortensia, my grandmother and grandfather, and they had 11 children.

Your grandmother was number one on the list, and followed by my mom.

My mother was an avid preserver of all things that was grown in the garden, things that were given to her by family members, by friends.

If somebody had some figs and they didn't want them, they sent them down.

She had tomatoes; she sent those down, and they preserved them, and they had genuine ways of making good things out of them.

Our fig berry, and then our regular strawberry jelly.

Oh, you name it, if it was edible, it went in a jar.

DOOK: When they would grow in the backyard, my great-grandfather, Charles, and, and coming on down, they didn't keep the best of that crop.

They would give it to the community.

CLEO: And that's the way that the family worked.

It was always the best went out, the others stayed in, and they made the most of what they had, and we preserved everything that was to preserve.

DOOK: One of the things I could remember, too, is, is after you're walking outside, playing in the woods, you're going fishing with cane poles on the Tchefuncte River.

There's so much history with that river on everything you all did with it growing up.

CLEO: It was a gathering place where we went after school.

Summer months, we went down, and we used to swim.

We'd stay out there practically all day.

The greatest memories were my grandmother taking her cane pole, getting Aunt Lucy, getting Aunt Clotile, and they would go down, and they would just sit and fish.

Whether they caught any fish, I don't know.

It's a place they just really enjoyed.

DOOK: As we talk about, you know, farm-to-table and fresh, my great-grandfather, Charles, your grandfather, he not only worked in a shipyard, but he had a green thumb, is what we call it, that he gardened a lot and had the best of the best.

CLEO: The man could grow anything.

We had onions, we had garlic, we had green onions, we had parsley, we had okra.

When it was cabbage season, we had cabbage, and when it was greens season, we had greens.

And they preserved all of those things.

The onions would hang in the shed.

He would sit there and plait them.

The garlic, he would plait them, and they would just hang.

The hot peppers, he would thread them on thread, and they would hang in the shed.

And you would think he would give this to the girls to do, but the girls didn't do that.

You needed one, you went out, and you plucked one off of the little plait.

DOOK: I'll be.

I mean just hearing those stories and visualizing that, for me, you know, as we work hard, it's always that thing that finds your joy and peace.

Sometimes, for me, it's sitting on the bayou and fishing.

It sounds like for Great-Grandfather, it was threading onions, and preserving, and peppers, and all that other stuff.

CLEO: It was, I guess, when you see the fruits of your labor, and you see all of the vegetables that you have that's going to last you throughout the year, it was rewarding.

DOOK: I know another thing that's rewarding.

It's certainly this jam I'm looking at.

This is what it's all about, sitting at the table, having something you preserved, and diving right in.

Oh, man.

The sweetness, but more importantly, it's the memories that's coming back to me.

That, that, I'm sitting here, your mother would be sitting here doing something.

You know, it's hard to keep talking because you're just reliving those memories of the people that have passed on, but certainly left a mark on all of our lives.

CLEO: All of our lives.

DOOK: And really, the reason why we're continuing to do what we do.

This is fantastic.

Well, thank you so much, but I got to go walking down memory lane in that pantry.

CLEO: Anytime.

DOOK: I am in the pantry, and man, does this bring me back to my childhood.

For me, this was like a candy shop, right?

You saw the colors of the rainbow.

You would pick up some jam or preserve, get this on a hot piece of toast or biscuit.

You couldn't beat it.

I mean, this brings back those memories, just of having fun in the country, farm-to-table, really from your backyard, and now paying homage to those who taught me so much.

I got to get back in that kitchen.

Welcome to my kitchen, where inspiration and creation come together in a celebration of culture.

My earliest memories of Madisonville was at my Great Aunt Cleo's house, walking through her kitchen to the pantry on the left, you look up the shelves, just colors everywhere.

So I'm going to show you how to make this red plum jelly.

We have two quarts of red plums here.

What we did was we just peeled them, cut them, rough chop.

We took the pits out.

You leave the skins on.

That's important because that's going to create that color on this juice.

And to that, you're going to top it with some water.

Now, the amount of water that you need is just to cover your plums.

This is what you're looking for.

So, two quarts of plums, just so you know, that's roughly about 20 red plums.

We're going to let this come to a boil.

When you get to this stage, you want it to boil for 10 minutes, occasionally just moving around the ones at the top.

You want to get them to the bottom.

This is going to help break up a little bit of those skins, getting some of that inside and creating that full flavor, along with that color that you're looking for, that richness in color.

You want to boil on high heat.

That's doing two things for you.

That's reducing that juice to make more flavor, but that's also breaking up that plum.

This is what you want it to do.

Now I'll turn the heat down.

It's been 10 minutes.

Let that boil quiet down, come to a simmer.

And have gloves, because this is going to be hot when you move this out.

Strain just a little.

Not all the way out, because you want to shake.

You don't want to leave any juice in this strainer.

And if you can, take one hand, move it around.

If not, just shake a little bit, hold it up there, and you'll be fine.

I'm going to make sure we get all the juice we can.

Two quarts of plums will make five cups of juice.

So I have all my juice out.

This is what you're looking for.

Now to this, we have this on a low simmer now.

We'll start to stir in our powdered pectin.

This is one pack.

One pack of pectin will cover five cups of juice.

And just bring it in and whisk it in.

Constantly stirring here.

I'll bring that fire up.

We'll bring this to a boil right before we add in our sugar.

The pectin is going to give you the jelly of the jelly.

It's going to hold that juice together, right?

When you're looking at the thickness of it, that pectin is really what stiffens this up.

All right.

So you can see we added the pectin.

It's starting to come back up to a boil.

This is the stage where you slowly stir in the sugar.

We have seven cups of sugar.

I'll turn that heat down again, and then we just start adding our sugar, stirring in.

And as you're stirring, you will start to feel that consistency getting a little thicker, right, as you add in that sugar.

And just look at that amazing color that we have, the richness.

That's coming from those skins of that red plum.

And you want to bring that juice back to a rapid boil.

That allows you to know that the sugar is dissolved, and if there's any impurities in here, it'll rise to the top, and we'll do a skim.

And you can see just that little bit right in here that we'll go and just skim off the top right there.

That's all we're looking for.

And now we're at the stage where we can move to the canning process.

So now we're at the canning stage.

We have three quarts of water at the bottom of this pressure canner, along with the mason jars are filled halfway with water.

We're warming these jars up.

So as we start to put our juice in, we'll take one jar out at a time, go straight up, dump out that water, and we come right back to this table.

And what you want to do is ladle that juice right in.

And man, you just look at that color.

I'm looking for a quarter-inch head space, and I'm almost there.

And now I look at it, I see it on the line, I put that down here.

So, as we go, move this around the edge of that thing.

You want to get those bubbles out, right?

That's what we're looking for.

We'll move this over right here.

And you want to remove those bubbles, but you also want to make sure that these rims are clean before you put this lid on.

The most important thing is you want to have a proper seal.

So now we take that lid, and we go right on top.

Then we come with our rings.

And all you're looking for is fingertip tight, right?

You have to allow this to have some air to breathe out as it goes into this water bath.

And you go right back in.

And as that one goes in, I want you to notice that canning rack.

That canning rack does a few things.

It protects the mason jar from the bottom of the pan, but it also allows even heating all throughout this process.

And it keeps those mason jars in place.

Make sure that lid is right where it needs to be, and then you come with this ring.

Fingertip tighten, and we're going right back in.

Throw it in.

And now we have to get our boiling water.

We have a side pot of boiling water.

You want to make sure you have enough water coming to a boil to add to this pot to cover these mason jars by an inch.

And we come in right in.

And you wanna be careful when you do this, because this water's hot.

It's boiling water.

This has a line on it that lets you know that the water is covering the lid of that mason jar an inch.

So we're almost there.

I'm going to add a few more ladles to this.

And I think this one will do it.

The next part of this process is we have to add the lid to this.

But before I put it on, I want to highlight two things that's not needed in a water bath method.

These are those two right here.

One, there's a pressure regulator that goes right here.

You do not need that.

As well as there's an overpressure plug that would go right here.

That's another thing.

You do not need that.

We have markings.

You see a V right here, and there's a V right here.

You marry those two together as you put this on.

Now, we're not going to tighten it right now, because we want to make sure this comes to a boil.

The cooking time starts when this water is boiling.

So I can hear it start to boil.

I see some of the steam that's coming out.

You want to check it.

So we take this lid off, open that lid away from you, releasing some of that steam away from you.

And now you look.

You can see those bubbles are starting to come up.

This water is boiling.

This is where you match those Vs right back again, and then you turn it and lock it.

In New Orleans, our elevation is low.

We're going to let this go for five minutes, but check the recipe.

Up to 6,000, you want to let this go to 10 minutes; above that, 15 minutes.

So make sure when you're following these recipes, you also check where you are in the elevation.

That allows you to know the processing time of it.

We've reached our five-minute mark.

I'm going to turn the heat off, and then we're going to carefully take this lid off.

Take the lid off away from your face.

Let some of that steam rise out.

We'll take our jar lifter.

Straight up.

Move it over.

Straight up.

Place it down.

Now, you have to let these jars cool for a minimum of 12 hours.

When you're testing that seal, if it pops up, then you have to restart that process.

You know you don't have a great seal on it.

But these will sit, and we'll let these rest.

I have some over here that's already done, and just look at that jam.

Look at that.

So now you understand the canning process.

You can create the colors, as I call them, whether you want to do pickling, relish, jams, and go ahead and create some magic in the kitchen.

So what we're making today is ratatouille.

Growing up, we had the rainbow in that pantry.

You saw the jams, the jellies, the relish, the pickling, canned tomatoes, canned okra, and we were just able to taste it in so many dishes.

We showed you the water bath method to canning, but there's two methods.

There's the pressure canning, which is for low-acid vegetables and meats, and then there's the water bath canning.

Think of your fruits, your jams, and jellies.

But tomatoes can be used for both methods.

And now I want to show you, as I have some beautiful canned tomatoes here, how to start cooking with them.

But before that, I'm going to show you how to prep your tomatoes before you put them in the mason jars.

Here, what you want to do is you want to slit just an X, right?

Make an X on either end.

I have some water that's simmering right here, and what you're looking to do is just peel this tomato, and this process helps for an easy peel, right?

You're not just going in with a knife.

You're going to put that in simmering water.

This is really a minute process, right?

We're not looking to cook this tomato.

What we're looking to do is just really release that skin from this tomato.

As you can see, that skin started to crack and peel away.

This is the time where you want to put it right in that ice water bath, and look at that.

That's what we're looking for.

Let that go just a little bit, soak, cool it down just a little bit for you to handle, and now you take that paring knife, and you go right where you had those Xs.

And you come here, and look at that.

Just right on out.

That's how you peel that tomato.

Find that X that you have, and that skin comes right off.

Flip it over.

And then we come right at that end.

So now let's get started making the base for our ratatouille.

To this pot, I have heating up on medium heat, we're going to add some olive oil to it, and we're going to add a good bit, right?

This is the process where we're going to layer in flavor.

So I want to make sure I have enough fat in this pot to get through that process.

All right, so what we're going to do is we're going to add our onions.

And we want these just to become translucent, right?

We want them to release some of that flavor, release some of that liquid.

Then now we add in our bell peppers.

I love red bell peppers in this dish, not only for the color but for the sweetness.

At this stage, we're going to add in a little salt.

Going to add in a little pepper.

And now we'll marry our garlic to this dish.

Of course, you know tomato paste is a thickening agent, but I don't want it to brown.

I don't want it to burn at the bottom.

I just want it to start to marry with these vegetables.

We're using tomato paste because that's where the body of this sauce is going to be at the bottom that we're creating.

Try to work that tomato paste in with those vegetables that's sweating, moving it around.

The next step is we'll add these diced tomatoes.

Now these diced tomatoes are those whole tomatoes that are canned.

We just gave a dice to them, a rough chop.

And as you add, you want to add flavor, right?

Coming back with a little salt, coming back with a little pepper.

Now we're going to add a little dried thyme.

And you can see that thickening starting to happen, right?

Let that go just for about two minutes, thicken up a little bit.

This is where we want it to be.

We'll add a little chicken stock.

I'm not going to add all of it.

Oh, this smells so great.

Now, before we layer, I want to give this a taste to make sure we've created some magic at the bottom.

Oh, man, you taste that sweet pepper coming through, that garlic that's coming through.

This is perfect.

This is where we start to layer this dish.

I'm going to turn it to a low, low simmer because I want to show you how to use those whole canned tomatoes.

And look at that.

That's a beauty.

We'll get a few.

This is a process, a step that we're going to use to layer in.

Just look how beautiful these are.

So all I want to do is just lightly cut as we layer that there.

Look at that juice that's coming out.

You can see we turned this on a low simmer.

I have our eggplant that's in a saltwater bath, just to soften it up again.

Also, what you'll notice, and what I want to show you, is I tiger striped it.

I peeled away some of that skin.

As eggplant cooks, that skin could get a little tough, but I helped you out a little bit.

I gave it a little texture and release, so it shouldn't be as tough.

You can work your way through it.

And this is a dish where you're layering it in.

You're putting it in.

We want to layer that color, look.

We're going down.

Now again, I told you, you layer in at the time it takes to cook.

My eggplant is going to cook a little longer than the summer squash, so we're going to make that eggplant be the basis of this dish.

Coming in here.

When you add, you have to add a little bit more seasoning, right?

So we're coming in with a little salt, a little pepper, and we're going to let this work for two minutes before I add the next ingredient.

Now we come over here, and I like to just lift up a little bit and add a little zucchini in there.

Lift up a little bit.

Add a zucchini in there.

Now, as you go, you should already know the next step of what I'm about to say.

We're adding flavor to this.

We got to hit another season.

So we're coming back with a little salt.

We're coming back with a little pepper.

Now this has been going for two minutes.

We're going to add the tomatoes before we add the summer squash.

Now I notice you saw the tomatoes and they were soft, so you would say this was cooked faster than those summer squash, and that's absolutely correct.

But as we build and we get higher, we want that summer squash to have the same touch point as the tomatoes, as the eggplant, as the zucchinis.

So we'll start to bring these in here.

And I think that's where we need it to be.

I'm going to save a little more just to see.

So here we're getting ready to add our squash, and then we start to just marry in that green with the yellow.

And now you're looking at the beautiful colors, right?

And we're layering.

I have an oven that's preheated at 375.

We're going to let these summer squash float in here for two minutes, and we're going to put it in that oven for 15 minutes.

So I'm going to top it with a little salt.

We're going to top it with a little pepper.

I'm going to top it with a little more dried thyme.

I want to finish this topping with a little dried basil.

If you have fresh basil, that's fine.

Add a little bit of cayenne pepper just to come on the top.

And we're going to turn this heat up just to medium, let that summer squash that we added cook a little bit, develop that flavor for two minutes, and then we're going right into this oven.

Now we go into our preheated oven at 375.

And again, this is going in for 15 minutes.

While that's in the oven, I'm going to get all this cleaned out, and we'll be ready to pull it out and plate it up for you.

Ooh, that smell just hits you right when you open the door.

Oh, look at that beauty.

Now that's beautiful, that coloration that came on the top.

Now all we have to do is plate it up, and we're going to try to preserve those beautiful layers that we had just by coming underneath.

And I'm going to come right on top of that.

Phew, look at that.

This is the perfect time just to add those colors back in.

You see how soft that eggplant is?

That's what you're talking about staging and layering, and cooking.

And as we talked about fresh basil, I have some right here, just a little sprig.

We're going to put that right in the middle.

So thank you for joining me as we explore my food memories of Madisonville.

I'll see you on the next chapter of "A Chef's Journey."

NARRATOR: In his new cookbook, Chef Dook Chase explores the legendary dishes and unique food traditions of New Orleans.

This companion to "A Chef's Journey," with all the recipes from the series and more than 125 color photos, is available for $32.99 plus shipping.

To order, call 1-800-815-3153 or purchase online at wyes.org.

DOOK: We'll see.

It's just starting.

We'll see.

We got, we got, what, seven more to go?

Five more to go?

It can go downhill fairly quickly.

VENDOR: Some of the finest oysters that you got on the Gulf Coast right here.

Locally homegrown.

That's our headers right there.

It don't get better than that.

DOOK: Oh, you can't taste anything... VENDOR: With a cup of coffee.

DOOK: With a cup of coffee, I love it.

Breakfast of champions, all local.

This is one way to get your day going, highlighting that seafood.

Oysters are perfect.

That saltiness coming through.

Man, you just started my day.

CLEO: We just got critters everywhere.

We got duck, rabbits, quail, pheasant.

She said, "Go get that gumbo pot."

I said, "Oh, no way in the world."

She said, "That's it."

And she threw everything in, and I said, "Now, what do we call this?"

She said, "Critter gumbo."

VINCE: At the end of the day, a good farmer always puts his tractor UP.

DOOK: Okay.

Well, I'm going to get on this tractor, and I'm taking it all the way to the kitchen.

NARRATOR: For more information about "Dook Chase: A Chef's Journey," visit wyes.org.

NARRATOR: Major funding for "Dook Chase: A Chef's Journey" was provided by the Melvin S. Cohen Foundation Incorporated.

Additional support by Zatarain's, bringing the flavors of New Orleans home.

Rooted in the city's rich culinary traditions, Zatarain's is born and raised in New Orleans.

From rice mixes to frozen meals, it's an authentic taste of New Orleans.

And by Camellia Beans.

You shouldn't rush a red bean.

Let it cook, then you can gather around with family and share in its distinct culture.

Camellia Beans, a taste of home.

♪ ♪