001All right. Hello everybody. What do we say? Uh, so my name is Chef Rock Harper. My name is Rock Harper, but I'm a chef. Um, thank you all for having me here today. I appreciate it on this fine 13th day of Black History Month. Um, I'm going to make some mac and cheese and I'm going to do some talking. But the way I do my demonstrations, can y'all see this? Yeah. It's pretty cool. The way I do my demonstrations that, you know, I want them to be interactive. It's just like I'm in at my house and y'all came into my kitchen and uh I'm not going to make you wash dishes today. Well, some of y'all going to have to wash dishes, but um if you have any questions or like we talking about, you
002know, food, uh let's just have a conversation. I'm happy to to answer them. Who's made mac and cheese before? Yes. Yes. Okay. This is a mac and cheese crew right here. If if I if I could have if y'all weren't so young and you know we ain't have to do the insurance. I'll get you to come up here and show me. But we do that next time. All right. Uh what's your favorite cheeses? Just Yep. Give me one cheese. Cheddar. Feta. M cheddar. Okay. All right. So I'm going to put I have two I have three cheeses in here. One I'm going to use that good old American cheese. We like American cheese. Yeah. Yes. You said no. Somebody said no. So, American cheese, little fun fact, is not a real cheese. It's It's uh
003something called a processed cheese food. Um yeah, she turned her face up. American cheese is It tastes so good. It feels so good when when when we tasting it, but it's not a real cheese and it's not the healthiest thing, but we're going to use it today. The reason why I like to use it is because it's creamy, right? It's not going to separate. So when we put it in with the macaroni, it won't get all oily. You ever had one of them oily mac and cheeses? No. That's what your dad makes. Call your dad out like that. All right. So the American cheese is going to help. All right. Now, first, while I'm talking, I'm going to put this pasta in here. This is called kava tapi. Can y'all say kavatapi? Hey, sound like
004Italian. All right. So with pasta, we want to cook it until it's almost done. Anybody know the term for that? Al dente. Al dente. Come on now. All right, y'all. Some real cooks up in here. Um, so al dente, you know what it means? You know what it translates to? It's like um burn to the bite or something. To the bite. What's your name? Reh. Rehan. Okay. Rehan. I love it. To the bite. To the tooth. Al dente. Right. Dental dente. So, what what that means is we don't want that mushy pasta. We want um pasta that is cooked nice and firm. Okay? So, it's going to take a few minutes. And what I'm going to do here, oh, this is kavatapi. So, it's like a little spiral, right? Uh normally, what kind of uh
005pasta do we use in mac and cheese? kind of in the answer, but macaroni. Macaroni, right? So, elbow macaroni is traditional, especially in in most cultures, but definitely in African-American culture, we use elbow macaroni. Doesn't mean that you can't um change the pasta up, right? I've seen we were watching TV the other day. I saw somebody use spaghetti in mac and cheese, which is wild to me, but whatever. Um, but you can change the pasta up. The thing is what you want to do. Italians are very smart. They have a lot of uh shapes, but they also the shape is going to match the sauce, right? So depending upon what what you what dish you're making, you uh like you wouldn't put like um a rigeton in there. You know what a rietoni is? It's
006shaped like a tube. If you did this with a riotoni, you have a lot of cheese sauce just like in the middle, right? It wouldn't be a good It'd be too saucy. So, you want to do something mac and cheese. Those elbows, it grabs the sauce. It's nice and curvy. So, just a little fun fact. But, we're going to put that guy in there. We're going to let that cook. Now, here's another little trick. If you know exactly what do we do after this is cooked with the water? We drain it out, right? Go down the drain. Now, sometimes you can save the water because it's going to be starchy. So, we can save that water on the side. It's got a little flavor in there, right? But if you know exactly how much water
007that it takes to cook the the amount of pasta that you have, you don't have to drain anything off. I didn't do a measurement, but we going to figure it out. So, what I'm putting here, we're going to add some flavor is I'm going to put a little chicken buan, right? Some some chicken buan. It's like chicken bakes. You can use the powdered stuff if you want, but what that's going to do Well, what what do y'all think that's going to do to the pasta? It make it chicken flavor, right? It's going to It's good. No, that's good. It's It's going to season it, right? Normally, we put Walt in pasta water. What do What do I normally salt We normally put You should always put salt in pasta water, but I'm going to put
008a little bouan in here because I put it in the recipe anyway to season it up a little bit. Now, if you're vegetarian, you can always use a vegetarian one, but I'mma put that in there now. And it's going to start to season the pasta. It's a little trick. My grandmother didn't do that, but I'm doing it. All right. Okay. So, I'm going to put that in there. Boom. All right. We're going to let that go. Okay. Now, I'm shredding up some cheddar over here. Uh, this is white cheddar. White cheddar is pretty much the same as yellow cheddar except for it doesn't have the yellow. The yellow comes from this thing called renet. Um it's still good. It's still tangy. It's still cheddar, but uh it's just not it's just not um yellow. The
009reason why I use white is because it you know it looks a little it looks a little nice. I just like using different cheddars and sometimes they're aged a little different. White cheddar is a little stronger, a little tart. So I like it. All right. Do y'all have mac and cheese in the uh cafeteria? Yeah. Yes. Good. No. Oh, wow. They mix like little chunks of meat into it. Little chunks of what? Meat. Some type of random into the mac and cheese. Yeah. All right. We going to I'm not going to talk bad about the cafeteria on camera. Um cuz I know Arlington County is listening. All right. So, I'm going to continue and give this to you. Sorry. Release. Thank you. Okay. So, we got a little milk here. All right. Two cups of
010milk. Okay. And we are going to mix this with some eggs. You know why we put eggs in mac and cheese? Anybody? Uh, take a guess at It's a safe space. What? I I said this is a safe space. Take a guess. You can say anything. To help it stick together. To help it stick together and to make it taste good. Right. So, eggs. I love eggs. Um, definitely for flavor because of the rich yolk, but also it helps bind it. What's your name again? Kanye. Kanye. Yes. All right. Um, so it's going to help it bake into a casserole, right? And hold hold, right? So we, you know, we have it like um nice and nice and yummy. All right. All right. All right. So mixing this together. You got to leave us. Oh,
011good. Okay, so mixing the egg and the yolk. Anybody know what this is? Pepper. Pepper. Pepper. It's pepper. Grinder. Yeah, pepper. It's called a pepper meal. What's your name? Talia. Talia, come up for a second. I can get you to do this. She was the closest. All right, Talia. So, grind that right there. There you go. Tell me when to stop. You like pepper? I love pepper. Y'all like pepper? Yeah. Keep going. Can you smell that? Yeah. It doesn't twist. Three more. Oh, like that. One more. Boom. There you go. Good job, T. Thank you. All right. So, yeah. A round of applause for Ty. All right. So, look. onion powder and garlic powder right in there. Okay. Okay. Fresh garlic, fresh onion are great, but we don't want chunks of onion and chunks of
012garlic in our mac and cheese, do we? Right. We definitely don't want chunks of meat. Um, but it's going to go right in there and seasoning that on up. Okay. All right. Boom. Boom. Boom. This is a little heavy whipping cream. Now, this also is going to make it nice and creamy, but I'm going to start to heat this up a little bit in our pot. Okay. Now, welcome, Mr. Stewart. So, I am going to drain this out just a little bit, but um you shouldn't have to drain it out too much. Just a little bit. Okay. All right. Boom. Okay. So, we got pasta here, right? And that oven is on 375. You know how to work that oven? Push it up to 450, please. Bake. And then push it on up. Crank it
013on up. Who helps in the kitchen at home? Anybody? You help in the kitchen at home? Yes. Thank you. All right. So, American cheese. We going in. American cheese. Okay. Now, what this is going to do, it's going to start to melt and it's going to create like that. I was going to use half of it, but should I use all of it? Yeah. Ah. Yeah. I'm going to use all of it. Sorry. She loves American cheese. I took this from from the house. Yeah. Actually, this is supposed to be for this, but somebody took my cheese. All right, American cheese, y'all. Um, so when I was we were talking downstairs, some of y'all were downstairs, right? Or all of y'all. Um, I I told you I love Italian food. And it really The thing
014I love about Italian food, it's just super simple. It's fresh, right? It's it's it can be inexpensive to make, right? Doesn't it's not always cheap. I wouldn't call it cheap, but just easy. Um, so I love pasta, pizza, risoto. Uh, what about you all? You all Well, I'm curious if you like Italian, but also if you might take this off before it boils over. Um, if you also what other cuisines or cultures besides your own or if they're your own do you all like? You like Italian. What kind? And what other cuisines do you like? Anybody can shout it out. You like Chinese. Korean is a great Korean restaurant down the street from my place. Hi. So, we are here in Black History Month and I've been uh doing demonstrations. I just did three this
015week. They've been virtual, but um we going to uh New Jersey in a couple of weeks where I'm talking about um you know, educating people on African-American food and you know, black food ways. And I'm curious of what uh do you all know a dish called jumbalaya? Yeah. Yes. Yes. What do you know about jumbalayia? It's a food. It's a food. It's good. Right. I think I had it when I was little. I'm not positive. So it's a rice rice dish. Yeah. It's got meats in it. Sometimes a little shrimp or some seafood. This is a dish that comes traditionally from has roots in Africa. Where? Um where in Africa? Good. I love it. We got to Africa is a big continent, right? It's not, you know, one place. So, usually it probably came from
016synagogue. And there's this dish called chebu jan. Can y'all say che? There you go. It's a rice and fish dish. And then also there's a very famous dish that has rice in it that has roots in Ghana, Nigeria, Liberia, Sagal. Anybody know? Red rice. There's like wars about it right now. Who has the best rice? Jolof. Jol Oh, Jolof rice. Jolaf rice. So Jolaf Chebu Jan Sagal through migration, right? We had the slave trade which is a horrific event but people spices time technique travel continue to travel. So you have this red rice dish that was created centuries ago and because it was French influence and Spain influence and a little Mexican influence. It ends up in Louisiana as jumbolaya. Right? So when y'all get a chance, you look that up and it's very interesting
017how um food travels, right? And and with our people and how things change over time. Who here in their culture, in their household, grew up on or eats rice and beans? That's it. Yeah, that's about half the people. So rice, any sort of rice and bean is a dish that a lot of people eat around this world, right? So red rice and beans again down in Louisiana. And I just always found that interesting. That's why I love Italian food, too. And definitely I love, you know, uh the food that I grew up on. So I would ask my grandmother the stories about how this dish came to be. So heavy cream, we almost there, y'all. We good? We good? Yes. Listen, I can say anything. Y'all going to wait for this mac and cheese. Y'all
018say we going to wait for the M. All right. So, I'm putting the hot heavy cream in here. Okay. And I'm mixing this up. I put about half of the cheese there uh in there as well. And we got that seasoning in there. We have that black pepper freshly cracked. If you ever get a chance when you all cook at home, fresh pepper, there's little ways that you can make your food taste better, like restaurant quality food. Fresh pepper is one of the easiest ways to do that. You have to buy a pepper grinder. They're not really expensive or your parents can buy them, but it's the pepperc corns are very cheap. And when you want fresh pepper, it's different than that stuff that we see on restaurant tables or at the um off to
019the side at Cava, whatever. Just please pardon this interruption. For se sixth grade students who are in Miss Garland's sixth and seventh period class and Mr. Boil's seventh period class, all students who are going on to the planetarium, please report to the cafeteria at this time. Again, Miss Goblin's sixth and seventh period class and Mr. Boy, that's very hot. Thank you. In Oh, it smells good. Okay, so we got that garlic in there. All right. Boom. Very simple recipe. Only like six or seven ingredients. All right. Okay. Put this out. Boom. Boom. Boom. All right. Now that sits and then more cheese. More cheese. And then that's going to melt. And we going to put this on on top. Has anybody So mac and cheese fans, do you is it baked normally? Yeah. Do you
020ever have like bread you ever see breadcrumbs on top? Yeah. Yeah. So you could put breadrumbs on top. I've seen people put like Ritz crackers as a breadcrumb cuz Ritz crackers are buttery and flavorful. You do something. You can do whatever you want. Some people have put paprika, give a little color, little flavor, but we just going to rock with the cheese. All right. Now, if this is good, you get get a couple dollars in your pocket. You say that five $5, you don't come to my restaurant, right? Only if it's good. It's in Crystal City. It's in Crystal City. Thank you. I can come. Yes. Like I'll tell my parents after I want to go for my birthday and I'll come. There it is. Excellent. All right. We going in the oven. Boom. Boom.
021So, we put this in the oven. All right. To my bakers, where's the Where's the hottest part in the oven? Top. top the top usually. Yes. We going to put that one up there. Now, at this point, it's kind of done, right? Well, it's it's a little done. It's It's good enough to eat. We got to bake that uh egg up a little bit, but if we didn't have the egg, we could eventually eat it like a pasta right now. Yes. Uh what was the hardest dish you made in Hell's Kitchen? Sorry. The hardest dish I made in Hell's Kitchen. Good question. Um, so the Wellington is hard, right? Y'all heard of beef Wellington? Yes. Okay, so beef Wellington, let me do a demonstration here. All right, so beef Wellington is a either an English
022dish or or or French dish. I I think it's English, but either way, here's what beef Wellington is. First thing you got to do, there's a lot of steps in Beef Wellington. Let me see if I can put all this together. All right. That see that. That Okay. All right. We'll do a little imagination here. Okay. So, beef Wellington has so many steps. As a matter of fact, we made venison Wellington. Do you all know what venison is? It's deer meat. Deer. It's the opposite of vegan. Um, deer. So we made venison welling on our Wellington on our season and venison deer cooks different than beef. So traditionally a beef Wellington is this. You have the venison tenderloin, right? I'm trying to go through all the steps in my mind. Let's just say it's shaped
023like this. You must first get a hot pot, season the the tenderloin, sear it, right? Me brown it on all sides. Set it to the side. Once it cools down, we take Dijon mustard and we brush it. Right, that's one step. We got our venison loin there. The next thing, Bless you. Next thing we have is a crepe. Who knows what a crepe is? What's a crepe? Anybody? Dutch pancake. A what pancake? Dutch flat. Dutch flat French. Yes. It's a It's a little pancake. It's a tiny pancake. I don't know if yall ever seen uh the ballot of Ricky Bobby. Anyway, never mind. All right. Um, say you like little pancakes. All right. When y'all watch that later, it'll make sense. Uh, crepe. So, you got to make a crepe. Now, crepe is a little
024pancake, but it's hard because it needs to be really thin because we got to fold it, right? So, this is going to be our crepe. You got to make a crepe batter. You can't whip the crepe batter too much. You got to whip it and then you have to strain it. And then you make the you put the batter. It's not like pancakes that we make on Saturday morning. You got to put the batter in the pan and it's got to be just right. And then you can't brown it too much. And you flip it over. Boom. It's like this. All right. So, we put our crepe. Actually, we put plastic down first. Plastic wrap crepe. Then we put pudo. Who knows where is it? Pudo. Yep. It's pudo. What's that? Uh, I can't like
025describing it. It's like really thin. Really thin. It's kind of meat. Meat. Ham. Pjudo is like really thin. It's shaved. It's a a ham, right? Okay. Pjudo. And then we put cooked mushroom dukel. Chopped mushrooms. Right. And you cook them down to they're dry, really flavorful. A little white wine in there, some onion, shallot. Cook that down. This is a whole another thing. Then you put down as a layer. crepe, ham, mushroom, and then you put your venison on that. You put your cool down loin, and then you tie it up. Y'all probably seen this part. You put this. Now, this is too many layers. You can't have too many layers because it'll be too thick. So, this is where you mess up on Hell's Kitchen or anywhere. You put the layers and you make
026it nice. You cut the ends. You make it nice and pretty. All right. Then, you have to cook it in the oven. You got to bake it. Now, who's here cooked steak before? Yes. So, how do you know when it's done? What's some ways to tell if a steak is done? You could dump it. You could take the temperature, right? You could say it again. You could feel it. You could touch it. What's the problem with with both of those methods in this little steak purse? If you like poke temperature and ruin the outside, it would ruin the outside if you got holes in it. This is I know this is ugly, but imagine this is like a nice pastry like a croissant, right? You and you can't touch it. We normally touch it. You
027can't touch it. So, it's just in there. So, you have to perfect it in the oven 13 minutes because what happens is you cook it, right? Oh, and then you wrap it in plastic and put it in the refrigerator before you bake it. So, we do all of this in Hell's Kitchen and then what happens if it's cooked too much? If you send it up to Mr. Gordon Ramsay and he cuts it and it's overcooked, what's going to happen then? He's going to shout out, he's going to send it back. He going to shout at you, yell at you in front of all these people, front of millions of people, and then he's going to send it back. So, that was the who asked that question. The hardest thing that was the hardest thing that
028you cook on Hell's Kitchen because then even it's not even the dish. I still got to coordinate with my teammates. So, I can't cook the Wellington until I can't slice it until you're ready with the risotto, you're ready with the spaghetti, you're ready with the fish, and we all have to go together. So, that's the challenge with go Hell's Kitchen is it looks crazy, but it's really a beautiful u exercise in teamwork, right? I can be the best cook and I am the best cook now. I'm all right. But if you're I had people on my season, you go back and watch season three, there's this guy, they call him the Asian Cowboys, my man Aaron. He passed on, man. Rest in peace. He was not a good cook. Very nice guy. He was not
029a good cook, but I understood that our team would not win if the worst guy cannot if we can't work together. My Wellington could be great, but if he's cooking the potatoes and they're not there, right, we're no good as a team. So, it's just an exercise. We all got to work together no matter our skill level. That was a long answer, but did I answer that? Beef Wellington. You should try that at home one day. Yes. Another question. Yes. What inspired you to open up your business? What inspired me to open our business? Um, good question. Peek in that. Peek. Let's peek on that real quick. Make sure I don't burn. All right, that's perfect. Looking good. Yeah, we can uh can you bro times? Yeah, please. Thank you. What inspired me to open
030my business? I like working for myself. That was the first inspiration. I don't like working for other people. I don't like taking orders from other people. I shouldn't say taking for other orders. I like being in charge. Um, and I'm an entrepreneur. I'm an idea guy. So, I realized many years ago that I wanted to work for myself because the corporation I was working for, I was like, "No, you ain't going to talk to me like that no more. I got to do my own thing." That was the first inspiration. I am a I'm a I'm an idea guy. Right. The second on my my business Queen Mother's Kitchen was a tribute to my mom, my grandmother, the queen mothers of our lives, but black women in general, right? So I often chefs if you
031hear chefs talk chefs always talk about their moms their grandmoms and their aunts all the women in their lives but a lot of times you don't see that displayed in their restaurants. So I said in 2020 in the middle of the pandemic this is my time to pay homage to the women in my life and just uh the creators of our cuisine and culture in general throughout centuries. So, the restaurant is like a living example of we have to honor the original chefs. Um, so that's and that's what inspired me uh to start that. Y'all smell that? We doing We done. That's good. That's good. That's good. Do you want Uh oh. Y'all got the gloves ready? How's that look? Wow. Really good. Good. Good. Good. All right. Okay. It's okay, guys. The cool thing
032about macaroni is they last for a long time. Put it in the fridge. You can take it to work, school, heat it up in the microwave. They let y'all microwave stuff here. Like if you bring lunch. That's cool. That's good. Um, so the cool thing about this is it'll last a long time. And this what, you know, it's pretty inexpensive if you think about it. I probably paid see $6 for the pasta. The eggs are outrageous. If you buying eggs these days, actually the eggs makes me like this is a rich uh macaroni and cheese. Eggs were like $8. Super expensive. But relatively, I mean, I could probably eat half of this by myself, but this could probably feed. It's like 10 or 12 portions. So, not a lot. Maybe cost 12 bucks to make.
033So, a dollar a person. So, not a lot. So, it's an economical dish. Yes. Have you ever made macaroons? Macaroon? Never. You make macaroons? I make macaron. Yeah. Yes. That they're hard. They are very very finicky. I was in the kitchen one time. I used to teach culinary art. You like macaroons? You make them? Who Who likes I buy them? Oh yeah. They're expensive. That's why I make them. They are. I I thought they were too expensive when I first used to buy them. Y'all know macaroons. The little the little cup the little Okay. Of course y'all are so fancy these days. Um, I used to think they were too expensive. I'm like, that's ridiculous. French people doing too much. Until I saw a student try to make them and you got to like do
034the batter and then piping. So, it's it's it's a lot of a lot of folding and a lot of patience and a lot of trial and error. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, y'all made them here? Yes. I Well, I used to make them Yeah. Really? make a pair for like I've made them before with my dad and I remember the first time he was just like doing all these steps and I was like but like it actually worked and then when I tried making I kind of skipped everything he did and what happened yes so yeah macaroon I got a lot of respect for him I went by um I was at Tyson's the other day and there's a little macaroon shop they are expensive Yeah, that's crazy. You got to eat that one slow, too. It's
035the size of a quarter. Yeah. Like $3. I can get a whole pack of Oreos for that. America. All right. Uh All right. Let's uh we can start working on this one. We didn't eat it right out of the oven, but it's still I think it's cool enough, right? Um I need a spoon. And where are forks? Are there plastic? Oh, X right in my face. Yes, ma'am. Oh, that's the Chico right there. Do you She said, "Do we want pepper on top of the mac and cheese?" I'll let everybody put their own pepper on. How about that? If you'd like. My daughter, she's uh 22 now, but loves black pepper on mac and cheese. Thank you so much. All right. How many people we got? Come make this stretch. Four, five, six, seven. Okay.
036All right. This is what we going to do. Okay, I will. 32. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's not bad. Let me get 16 out of each one. Yeah, it's not bad. Thank that is so You are so kind and gracious. She said there's too much on you. All of y'all are so generous. Thank you. Like sneaks. All right. Okay, let's do this. Let's see. So, it's a little creamy. If it sat a little longer, it wouldn't be as um uh loose, but it's still going to be good. And I don't know teachers how you want to file them, but yeah, we'll get them. We'll have them come up and um Yeah, let's get let's get What's the best part of the mac and cheese? Cheese. Huh? You said the cheese. What's the best part in
037this panda, though? Oh. corner. Say corner. A corner cross, right? Yeah. Couple at a time. Not