“I’m outlined via two puts: New York and Kentucky,” says chef Edward Lee, who ran a a success eating place in his native land of New York Town, however discovered reputation via opening 610 Magnolia in Louisville, Kentucky, which honors and celebrates the traditions of Southern delicacies. On this documentary for YesChef, Lee visits two Kentucky establishments that affect the delicacies and the spirit of Louisville: Giant Momma’s Soul Kitchen and the Maker’s Mark bourbon distillery.
At Giant Momma’s Soul Kitchen, Lee describes his first time making an attempt dishes like collard vegetables, candied yams, and fried catfish. “There used to be one thing about it that simply spoke to me,” he says as he watches proprietor Jessie Inexperienced, a.ok.a. “Giant Momma,” batter and fry rooster, and pat croquettes into spherical, breaded orbs. He is going on to speak about how puts like Giant Momma’s Soul Kitchen are those passing recipes and traditions down from era to era lengthy earlier than Southern meals turned into “fashionable,” or featured in eating places around the nation. “My fried rooster doesn’t exist with out her fried rooster, and it’s nonetheless not so good as hers,” he says. “To me it’s our duty jointly to toughen those puts and provides them their credit score. To me those are like dwelling treasures.”
Rob Samuels, COO and grandson of the Maker’s Mark founders, then takes Lee during the historical past of bourbon in Kentucky. “It’s no longer an twist of fate that 96 % of bourbon is made right here,” he says, explaining how the Kentucky oak timber, water, and traditions of Samuels’s circle of relatives make the spirit stand out amongst different distilleries. “To me, bourbon now has change into an aspect, so it’s one thing I exploit so much in my cooking as smartly,” Lee says. “It provides a large number of complexity to meals if you know the way to make use of it proper.”
Lee’s inspirations then come in combination as he makes one in all his favourite dishes: oysters and grits in bourbon brown butter. Lee talks about how oysters was once ample within the space, making them a commonplace meals, earlier than they had been over farmed. Now that they’re extra uncommon, they’re observed as sumptuous. So for this dish, he is taking the substances with ties to Kentucky, and flippantly poaches contemporary oysters in a vat of steamy brown butter, bourbon, and salt. He then plates some slow-cooked grits, a dollop of butter, and tops the dish with the poached oysters, the use of one of the crucial closing brown butter and bourbon combination as a sauce to most sensible the dish.
“I like this position. It’s an excessively community-driven position. It’s no longer New York, it runs at a slower tempo,” Lee says. “As any person who desires to cook dinner for a dwelling, I couldn’t ask for a greater position to be in.”
