Backyard Wedding

Get ready to say I do, y'all

because my brother Bubba stops by to give you the inside scoop on his backyard wedding

I'm cooking up delicious pork griots and grits, martini style. Then it's chicken salad sliders

Mmm, mmm. And the wedding special touch, monogrammed sugar cookies and berries

Mmm, mmm. Yummy. and a toast to the witted bless with my brother Bubba

and spicy oyster shooters. Kick it back. Woo! Hey, y'all

I'm just standing here reminiscing over one of the nicest days I think that my family has ever shared

And that was my brother and Dawn's wedding. We had it here in the backyard of this house

It was fabulous. So I thought, you know, I want to share some of the recipes

because we had some fabulous food at this wedding. So one of the dishes that we made that I thought was especially good

was griots and grits. It's actually a Cajun dish, And I've started with a three-pound boneless pork butt

And I've cubed it up, and I seasoned it with my house seasoning and my seasoning salt

And I've just browned it off in a little bacon grease. A little butter

The bacon grease is just going to add a fabulous flavor along with that butt

All right. So I've cooked some off, and this is ready to come off

So I'm just going to dip this out and add it to our other. And like I said, I started with three pounds

Now, the beauty of this recipe is you can make as little or as much as you need

Now, I've got a little of that bacon grease left. So the next thing we're going to do is we're going to toss in our vegetables

Now, as you know, every Louisiana dish has the trinity in it

which is celery, onions, and bell pepper, and naturally garlic. Now, I'm using, like, one medium onion that I've already chopped

and then I'm going to quickly just dice up three cloves of garlic

a couple of ribs of celery, got one more little rib here

and I'm putting in one red bell pepper. So we're just going to roll it around in that bacon fat until it's tender

you know, just three or four minutes. Let's come up here and look in this front pot

because this is the pot that I'm going to be cooking our grits in

Now, in this pot, I've got water and milk because I want these grits to be extra creamy today

And naturally, I've got my milk and water salted because you've got to salt your grits from the get-go

or you'll never get them salty enough. So let's take our vegetables out

They have gotten nice and tender. That gets our vegetables. Now, our next step is to make a roux

and we're going to do that by using equal parts of flour versus fat

And I've got probably three tablespoons of fat that's in the bottom of our pot

Now I'm going to add about a fourth of a cup of flour to that bacon fat

Now it's very important when you're making a roux that you constantly stir it

because if you burn your roux, you just have to put it in the trash

I have spent as long as 45 minutes making my roux if I'm making like a bigger quantity

A perfect color for roux is like the color of, say, a new penny

About that color. All right. Well, our water is boiling now for our grits

so I'm going to see if I can't get all this going. I'm busier than a one-arm paper hanger up here, y'all

On a windy day. All right. Now, you want to make sure when you put your grits in your water

that you constantly stir it for just a couple of minutes because if you don't, you'll have big old golf balls for grits

and you don't want that. It's under control. All right. I've got our roux just the perfect color

It's about the color of that new penny. So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to add back our vegetables

Look at that. Ooh, yum. Now I'm gonna take our meat, and I'm gonna add it to the pot

Griots you can use any kind of meat that you like I just kind of use whatever I have Looks great smells great

All right, now we're going to add the rest of our ingredients, and then we're going to be ready for this to simmer for about an hour and a half

I'm going to start with our liquids, and I'm using two cans of beef broth

All right, now I'm going to add three bay leaves. I'm going to add one teaspoon of basil

Mmm, love the smell of basil. And I'm going to add one teaspoon of dried thyme

And thyme is always right on time for this dish. I'm going to add a tablespoon or two of Worcestershire sauce

some salt, and some fresh ground pepper. And then I'm going to add a little Louisiana hot sauce

And I'm not going to add too, too much, because the next ingredient that I add, y'all

is really going to give it like a sock. And that ingredient is one can of extra hot spicy tomatoes

All right, my griots are on the way to becoming fabulous. In fact, I'm gonna give it a little taste

Mmm. Mmm. It's hot. Michael Groover's gonna love it. Coming up, it's creamy chicken salad sliders, y'all

People loved them. Mmm. And later, monogrammed sugar cookies with berries. Such a sweet, romantic touch

and my brother Bubba stops by to help me with those spicy oyster shooters

Delicious. Woo! Woo! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! Hey, y'all, welcome back

All right, now to finish our brides, I am gonna throw some fresh tomatoes in

Now, depending on the size of your tomatoes, you know, two to four tomatoes will do nicely

and I'm just gonna quarter these up. I'm gonna drop them in, skin and all

So this dish is coming along. And you know what? A great way to cook this griots is in a crock pot

You can get all this in the pot before you go to work

and come in, and your house is gonna be smelling so good

So these tomatoes are huge. I grew some of the prettiest tomatoes this season

It's nothing like a homegrown South Georgia tomato. All right, I'm going to give this a little taste

Oh, my gosh, out of this world. So I'm going to cook it for, you know, an hour and 15 minutes, an hour and a half

So while that's simmering, come on down here, because I want to show you an old southern favorite

We can't have a tea or a shower or a wedding without serving chicken salad

And I like to keep my chicken salad very, very simple. Now, you can use any kind of chicken you want

You can use, like, a whole chicken and use a dark and a white. You can go to the grocery store and get a rotisserie chicken

Some of the best chicken salad I've ever eaten is made with fried chicken

you know, pulling off the crust and the skin. This particular chicken has just been poached in a little bit of water

So in the bowl that goes, and I'm probably using three pounds

and a little bit of celery. I love celery in my chicken salad

I love the crunchy that it gives it. If you don't like that crunchiness, you can substitute like a celery seed, and that's nice too

This is a very, very simple, uncomplicated, but good-tasting chicken salad. Now, I've got a lemon here

I'm going to just squeeze a little lemon juice. I'll probably use a tablespoon or two, about a half of a lemon

and that'll give it a nice little tart taste. So in that goes

And I'm going to use about a third of a cup of sliced toasted almonds

And then I'm going to add about a half a cup of mayonnaise. And, you know, you can do it to taste

Some people like there's more on the dry side. I'm kind of a wet girl

You know, I love my mayonnaise. This is such a simple, simple food

but the way we served it on the silver platters, it really brought the chicken salad up in a very special way I going to add a little bit more Now I going to grab my salt and pepper

Just a little bit of salt. It's not going to need much because I had salted the water

that I poached my chicken in. A little bit of pepper. Now for our bread for these sandwiches

We did not waste our time making homemade rolls. I just contacted the bakery department

my favorite supermarket here on the island, and I had them just make me up some wonderful little dinner rolls

to put my chicken salad on. It made the party go a lot easier

So all we did was just pile that chicken salad up on that roll

just like that. Yum. It's finger-lickin' good. So simple and delicious

And we dressed it up with our sandwich picks, and we have some beautiful little bamboo picks

and then we've got some of the paper frill picks. Now, chicken salad's a very humble food, isn't it

But by the time we put it on that beautiful silver tray, they looked like they were as yummy as any filet mignon

In fact, come on over here, and I want to show you. This is just what the trays look like

And we just used a leaf from my cast iron plant out in the yard and a little bundle of fresh flowers

And how beautiful and elegant that is, but very, very simple. and those yummy, yummy southern flavors

Mmm. Out of this world. Up next, monogrammed sugar cookies with berries

That's too pretty to eat. I know. And a toast with my brother Bubba's spicy oyster shooters

Aren't those good? This one's a keeper, y'all. Woo! Hey, y'all, I'm pulling everything together here

The griots look perfect. The grits are ready. Now, I'm just dicing up a little fresh parsley

I'm using a pretty flat-leaf parsley because I just want to throw a little bit of that in the pot

just, you know, to give it a little nice green color. Okay, there we go

That looks good. So in the pot that goes. And we served our griots and grits with some cheese straws

These are very easy to make. You can just use a puff pastry, cut them out in strips

and brush them with a little olive oil and sprinkle them with cheese

and bake them off, and they're just perfect for dipping. I've got my martini glasses ready

So let me look in here at our grits. Oh, they look so good. Now, when I'm serving a crowd, the last thing that I do is drop some butter in the pot

Oh, I'm making a mess. Mmm! Ooh, they're so good. But since I hadn't buttered the whole pot, I'm going to put just a wee little bit of butter on mine

Mmm! And now I'm going to come in here, and I'm going to take a spoonful of these wonderful griots and just put right on top of those griots

Look at that. Now to go along with this, I'm going to cut off a little bit of that cheese straw

Beautiful. It is stuck in the side of that glass. And naturally, we had to garnish them with rosemary

It is a sign for remembrance. So in that goes. How beautiful is that

All right, now here's the real test. Oh, my goodness, look at that butter

It's melted. You can see it all over those grits. And you can see that wonderful gravy that the grill is made of

You know, using that bacon grease. It is out of this world

No wonder folks are still talking about Bubba and Dawn's wedding. All right

One of the sweetest things that we had at this wedding was the monogram cookies with Bubba's initial H on them

Just made such a sweet, romantic touch. Now I'm gonna be using cookie dough that you find in your dairy section, and it's refrigerated

to firm up. So we just gonna roll these out to about a quarter of an inch So there we go Very very simple Now I going to use a cookie cutter

It's got the little fluted edge on it. You'll want to make sure that you dip your cutter in flour

so your cookie won't stick to the cutter. And I'm just going to cut these out

Just like that. Okay. So I'm going to move those to our cookie sheet

And I'm going to bake these at 350 for about nine minutes

You just need to follow the instructions on the recipe that you're using

Okay, so in the oven these go wonderful, basic, yummy cookie. So about nine minutes

Now, while those are baking, I'm going to come down here and I'm going to make our royal icing

And this is real easy to make. It just takes like maybe 8 to 10 minutes for it to get to the right consistency

So I'm going to start with one box of confectionate sugar, three egg whites

and then I'm going to add about a fourth of a teaspoon of cream of tarta

and that crema tartar is going to help those egg whites get nice and firm and stiff

Okay, it does take a few minutes, y'all, but to get to the right consistency

So why don't we take a little break and when we come back, I'll have some royal icing ready

Up next, my brother Bubba stops by to help me with those spicy oyster shooters

to a beautiful wedding. Hey, y'all, welcome back

You know, I couldn't do this show without the groom. Hey, sis

Hey, Bugs. What you doing, Bubba? I'm shucking some oysters, and we're going to have some spicy oyster shooters like we had at the wedding

And always use a rag when you're shucking oysters because these things can be very hard to open

Look at your cookie icing, Bubba. Now, I have used a whole little bottle, y'all, of this blue

You're doing a great job. Isn't that beautiful? Well, the wedding was, Bubba

Like I said, y'all, we had the wedding in the front yard, and we had the seats on either side of the flower beds

and when everybody walked up, there were servers there with glasses of wine and champagne waiting on everybody

So it was like the perfect wedding. We had a blast. Paula, I'm fixing to start preparing the shooters here

This is some celery salt and some cayenne pepper. Uh-huh. Ooh. And so what I'll do is I'll just take the shot glass

and I'm going to dip it in some water. Yeah. And then we're going to just put it in here

and get a nice little rim like that. My cookies are great

That color is so pretty. And you can see that this royal icing looks wet

So you don't want to draw the initial on these until they've dried

Well, I've got a plate over here that's dried, and I've got a little royal icing in a bag

So I'm just going to come in here and put an H on these

You know, I've got a pretty good handwriting. Oh, you have a beautiful handwriting

The H is for hires, y'all. Bubba hires. There we go. That's not bad

Let's see. Does that look like an H? Yes, it does. All right, Paula, I got the glasses all rimmed up

and now we're going to add one oyster per glass. And the liquor, oyster liquor

Here's our spicy Bloody Mary mix. Yeah, that's really good on it

Whoa, Bubba. I got a big mouth. I got a tinier one, so that's enough for me

Okay. To a beautiful wedding. May you be together forever. Mmm

Delicious. Woo! Aren't those good? This one's a keeper, y'all. Woo! Come on down here

Let's cool off that cayenne pepper. Because, you know, I forgot to tell everybody that at your wedding

we also had an ice cream bar. We would serve up everybody a dollop of ice cream

Mmm. Top it with the fruit. Stick a cookie in the side of this cup

and then we sprinkled it with edible silver, y'all. And look at this

It looks like diamonds falling from the sky. That's too pretty to eat

I know, but let's do it anyway. Okay, let's try it. Mmm, mmm

Mmm. Mmm. Thanks for popping in, Bubba. Well, thanks for letting me reminisce

And reminisce on that wonderful day. Thank you. I heard you was cooking

And I came... Give me a kiss. Give me a kiss. I came a-running. Y'all, we always send you best dishes and love

from our kitchen to yours