hello tastorians welcome to a special
saturday episode
of tasting history and it is special
because i am here with a guest the first
time i've had a guest actually
on the show not in my kitchen this is
chef kiki from
chef kiki's kitchen owner and proprietor
and
chef to the stars including diddy
it's actually love now so ah so yeah
it's changed it's official it's on his
driver's license and everything oh my
god yeah
anyway what are we making today so we're
gonna be doing two versions of fried
chicken we're gonna do
my own modern version as well as a
recipe from the 1911
cookbook good things to eat as suggested
by rufus
rufus and kiki's fried chicken this time
on tasting history
[Music]
so chef tikki and i have been looking to
do something for quite a while actually
her mother reached out to me on
instagram uh which was which is so much
fun my daughter is a chef
so so we've been looking for something
to do together for
for months now and then you had the idea
to do it today
specifically on a saturday because today
is
juneteenth which is a holiday here in
the u.s that
a lot of people especially outside of
the us don't know about correct
it commemorates the june 19 1865
announcement of general order number
three by union army general gordon
granger
when he arrived on the island of
galveston texas and proclaimed
the people of texas are informed that in
accordance with a proclamation from the
executive of the united states
all slaves are free so once we decided
on a date to do the the episode
we wanted to look at some cookbooks
and and find a recipe of course and one
of the cookbooks that we found
was the first cookbook by an
african-american chef
good things to eat as suggested by rufus
cut up two chickens put a quarter of a
pound of butter mixed with a spoonful of
flour into a saucepan with pepper
salt little vinegar parsley green onions
carrots and turnips into a saucepan and
heat
steep the chicken in this marinade three
hours
having dried the pieces and floured them
fry a good brown
garnish with fried parsley so this is
rufus's chicken but what is yours like
so mine is very different mine's
buttermilk
a little hot sauce a seasoning i cannot
tell you
paprika garlic powder salt a little bit
of
tony's and that's it what is tony's
oh tony's is a creole seasoning really
really good
spicy it will make you that is tony's
there it is
i thought i saw that i was like i
recognized that let's see what's in
front of me for the last 20 minutes
no if you've ever used it so we're we're
going to use it when we fry the chicken
and i will let you know right now like
you will choke
like just by the way it happens what a
dork chef tony is i don't know if you
can see this oh my god wait let me what
a geek
that can't be him he's got those um i
don't believe it he's got those glasses
that you like used to wear when you were
playing basketball you had to wear
glasses back in the 90s safety goggles
that's what yeah
poor chef tony yes that's sad so that is
your recipe
for chef rufus's recipe what you'll need
is
two small chickens a quarter pound of
butter so we melted the butter um
it's a pikachu on the bowl cute you put
the flour in there
turnips carrots green onions
i feel like this is the healthiest fried
chicken recipe ever
it's all green and there's some butter
in it
i don't know it seems healthier than
well healthier than buttermilk but i
guess the vegetables yeah but when you
when you put in like the butter that's
in there it's not like you're actually
eating any of these vegetables it's just
in a
exactly it's just to marinate flavor
yeah and
i mean i'm gonna assume like vinegar
when he said a little bit
then just salt and pepper and then he
talks about additional flour
for flowering and then fried parsley
which he actually has a recipe for which
basically is just taking
parsley and throwing it into a deep
fryer right which there's nothing wrong
with that either
no looking forward to that
[Music]
and voila we have our already marinated
chicken thank you for doing that ahead
of time of course of course
um so yeah we it says on the recipe to
dry it
it doesn't say to rinse it um which
probably is because you kind of
want the chicken to still have some type
of
coating on there otherwise once you dump
it into the flour it's not
going to stick right so you know that's
probably why it's just a quick little
pat dry and then
into the flour so i'm just going to drop
it in there she sounds skeptical
i'm very skeptical because it's not wet
and it's like
it's working it is working though mr
estes knew what he was
doing he just might have been on
something was a chef
it is working it's very coated mine is
quite different face is still flour
though
so my secret that i
put in is also cornstarch are you ready
for this tony's because i'm telling you
right now when we pour it you are going
to start choking it is
jesus after you
die putting the tonys in the flour um
you want to add some paprika
a little bit of rosemary not a lot
ground sage
some ground thyme to add salt to
whisk it up and then he probably would
have used
lard to fry this
and so that's what we're going to be
using
[Music]
so you never want to crowd the pan when
you're trying and we'll get crispy so
we're probably just going to do these
[Music]
so while the chicken cooks let's look
into the life of one of the first
documented
black celebrity chefs
[Music]
so one of the cool things about rufus
estes cookbook is that
he includes not just recipes but a bit
of a biography
a sketch of my life and so that's
actually how we know
most of what we know about rupa zestus
in his own words
i was born in murray county tennessee in
1857
a slave after the war broke out all the
male slaves in the neighborhood for
miles around
ran off and joined the yankees this left
us
little folks to bear the burdens at the
age of five
i had to carry water from the spring
about a quarter of a mile from the house
drive the cows to and from the pastures
mine the calves gather chips chips
those would be cow chips if nobody's
ever heard of cow chips
you'd have to gather up the cow poop my
grandpa used to call him
cow pies it is also nasty which is also
nasty
like why are we equating cow poop with
food i don't i don't quite
why a pie it does kind of look like
maybe like a little chocolate pie but
someone had dropped on the ground
so during the civil war his brothers had
run away
and two of them ended up dying in the
war and it
obviously made his mother distraught and
her health started to fail
so they moved in with his grandmother in
nashville tennessee
and that's where he got his first job at
a restaurant and he worked there five or
six years
before getting a really good job at the
whopping sum
of ten dollars a week which actually was
a very
good salary at the time but the job was
in chicago and it wasn't long after
moving to chicago that he got a job with
a very prestigious pullman service
plumbing cars were these like luxury
train cars
that you could rent out and some people
would like rent them for long long
periods of time to take them all the way
across the country
and he was put in charge of some of
these cars and
this is this is where he like started to
become a celebrity
because he was a chef for other
celebrities
like someone else i know he gives quite
an exhaustive list
of some of the people that he cooked for
but they include presidents
benjamin harrison and grover cleveland
as well as henry morton stanley the
african explorer
famous for the line dr livingston i
presume as he rose to the top of his
profession he got a job on the empress
of china which was a steamer ship that
took him from vancouver
to tokyo where he got to visit the
cherry blossom festival
obviously in high demand he ended up
getting a job under arthur stillwell who
was
a railroad magnate and was put in charge
of a 20
000 train car and after that he was
noticed
by people at the united states steel
corporation
this is andrew carnegie and jp morgan's
people
and ended up becoming the head chef for
the united states steel
corporation in chicago now this of
course was a time before
food network or youtube where you could
be a chef on
youtube and uh so this was kind of
the top this was this is the end of the
line when it came to career unless you
were working like in a major hotel
in london or paris or new york but
just like celebrity chefs or youtube
chefs today he decided to top off his
career by writing a cookbook
and in 1911 he published good things to
eat as suggested by rufus
and it was the first cookbook by a black
chef there had been other
cookbooks written by african americans
before that but it was
never a professional chef who had
written them so it was
it was kind of a big deal and one of my
favorite things is that we actually
still have
the book announcement of when it went on
sale
mr rufus estes an author mr rufus estes
our congenial friend has completed his
book entitled
good things to eat the first copy was
auctioned off at the office of the
illinois steel company where mr estes is
employed
the assistant secretary was the
purchaser it brought 11
the book will be sold for 50 cents a
copy and can be secured at 3408
state street so the other cool thing
about his
cookbook is the sheer breadth of recipes
um everything from what you'd find in a
fancy hotel at the time
to things that were a little bit more
what pickled pig's feet are in here and
stuff like that so
things that you might not find in a
fancy hotel at the time
yeah so he really kind of covered the
gamut which i i think is
pretty awesome what is your story
because obviously when it comes to
tasting history the history portion is
what i'm so passionate about um and you
know i fumble along in the kitchen
but you are a trained chef and so i'd
love to find out kind of
what got you there and why
i just love food like i i mainly
so what really got me into it was my
grandmother's
my mom's mom she really
taught me how to cook and my dad's mom
taught me how to bake
and so i had like two different sides of
the spectrum
of of cooking um but baking was was
really my passion like if
even to this day if i had to choose
between baking or cooking i would choose
baking
it's just something about how much love
goes into desserts you know
you have to you you can't just throw in
you know as i said as you saw me earlier
you
just throw in like baking powder and all
it's a science like you really have to
have patience when you're baking um so
yeah food is just joy and happy i like
to put smiles on people's faces through
food you know food
brings people together and it does bring
people together
including you and i and chef
rufus estes yes though i don't have a
i don't have a recipe for fried chicken
only you two do
but i'm here to eat it and here we are
rufus's fried chicken
and kiki's fried chicken so first we are
going to try
rufus's fried chicken i cannot wait i'm
taking the leg
okay that's good because i wanted the
wing so we're insane that's still quite
warm
okay it's good it's really moist
it's
[Music]
i gotta say i'm not getting any one of
those vegetables that he put in there
yeah
and we that we merited she marinated it
for quite some time
i did i don't really taste
what am i tasting all i taste is flour
and salt
and chicken and chicken but it is good
though
i don't know if i taste the butter i'm
trying to figure that out
i don't hate it i don't hate it oh it
kind of taste the butter a little bit
and then we have chef kiki's chicken it
smells so good
can we get a candle of this like i would
burn a candle just
a fried chicken candle kiki's fried
chicken candle oh my god
marketing that's actually sounds like a
good idea you can crispy you're so
crispy
it's so hot love you rufus but
we have a clear winner here like this
snow contest
is amazing yes oh my gosh
victory is mine
so that is fried chicken two different
ways
both lovely one especially lovely
and if you want to see more of chef
kiki's cooking
yes i have my website it's
www.chefkikiskitchen.com
or you can find me on instagram at chef
underscore
kiki's underscore kitchen and her food
photography is beautiful i try
i'm so jealous i wish i had that talent
so
thank you to john poll for letting us
use his
amazing kitchen um i want a kitchen like
this someday someday
yes and that's it
so we'll see you next time on tasting
history
i'm finishing this chicken right now