Cooking School

Hey y'all, I'm Paula Deen and today y'all better sharpen those pencils and grab

yourself a piece of paper because we're going to school. Cooking school that is

You know recently I started teaching classes here at the restaurant and I

thought it'd be fun to bring y'all along. First we're gonna enroll in French 101

and use my favorite condiment to make a delicious grouper fromage. Then we're

going to move on to a little bit of arithmetic when I teach you how to combine

lace hoe cake with a little fried okra to equal Kay's okra fry bread

And for our final course of the day, it's a sweet science

behind a Tennessee black walnut cake. You're not going to want to play hooky today

So y'all get ready, because class is in session. I'm running so late today, and let me tell y'all why

I let two of the staff at the Lady and Sons restaurant talk me into doing a cooking class there in the restaurant

Well, they really had to twist my arm, but once I got started, I had the most wonderful time

I'm going to run in and dice up these onions, and while I'm doing that, I'd love for y'all to take a look at a little of the footage from the cooking school today

We had a blast, so I'll see y'all in the kitchen. I feel like I'm doing the Jerry Springer show

Hey, y'all. How are you? I'm so glad that y'all are here

We're going to have fun tonight. Does anybody want to volunteer to help me

Come on up here. All right, get over here and help me because let me tell you something

I can't see Jack Dookie. My husband is down there looking for my glasses

Use mine! For the first lesson of the night, Kathy and I showed the class how to serve up a sweet and creamy brie on croup

a wheel of brie topped with sweet candy pecans and then baked off in a puff pastry

All right, here's our brie. Kathy, thank you so much. Thank you for the pleasure

The pleasure was mine. Next came the salad, where, as always, the secret to any good dressing was shaken, not stirred

Diane, thank you so much for your eyes. And welcome to Savannah

Boy, thanks. And closing out our side dish triple play was the perfect ham and biscuit recipe

And then we're going to add a cup and a half of whipping cream. And we're not going to add any butter or anything

Yeah, right. We all know the secret to this fat cat's biscuits

Does anybody want any butter on their biscuits? I can handle that

Don't leave, because the party's just started. And no party could be complete without dessert

My simple yet elegant chocolate ice cream box recipe proved to be the perfect classroom closer

I am so glad I was able to do this. Who knew, again, a teacher could be so much fun

I hope to see y'all again the next time class is in session

All right, let's just get our fish out of the refrigerator. It's been washed, and it's nice and chilled

And this first dish is called grouper fromage. Now, I'm just gonna rub a little house seasoning in it

Now, house seasoning, you know, is salt, black pepper, and garlic powder

Now, I'm using a nice fresh grouper today, but you can really use any kind of fish

So we're just gonna put this in our pan and let it sit there in the seasoning for a minute

And then I'm gonna come over here and I'm gonna give my hands a quick wash

to get that fishy off. Just get rid of that fishy smell

and you can rub your fingers with lemon juice will help that too

All right, so I'm gonna just put a pat of butter on each of our fillets

And now I'm gonna squeeze just a little bit of lemon juice over it

All right, we're gonna run this in the oven, preheated at 350 degrees

and we're gonna bake it until it's just about half done. And while he baking we gonna mix up our sauce that goes on it Now I gonna put a little butter in this pan and I gonna saute about half of a diced onion a large diced onion And we just gonna saute that just for a couple of minutes

Love the smell of onion. All right, so while that's sauteing, I'm gonna come over here

and got one of my favorite condiments, mayonnaise. And you wanna use a good quality mayonnaise

I've got about a cup of mayonnaise and about two cups of shredded Monterey Jack cheese

Just to kick it up a little, I'm gonna put a pinch of red cayenne pepper

and a couple of dashes of Texas Pete. And I'm just gonna mix that up

I can't tell y'all how good this is. The oils from the mayonnaise just release into that fish

Oh, these onions smell good. All right. That takes care of that

And when our fish is about half cooked, I'm gonna pull it out and I'm gonna put this on top of it

and run it back into the oven. And it's just gonna kinda melt and go in all into our fish

and it's gonna be delicious. All right. I wanna move on over now to a bread

that is so, so good. Now, you've heard me talk about lace hoe cakes

My mama cooked them when I was growing up for lunch and dinner every day of her life

Well, today I'm going to do something a little different. A couple of girlfriends from my hometown of Albany, Georgia, make okra fry bread

Now, when they were telling me about this, I said, y'all are talking about hoe cake cornbread with okra in it

And they said, exactly. So, that's what we're fixing to make. We're going to start with a cup of self-rising flour, and we're going to use one cup of plain cornmeal

And I'm going to add a little salt and a small diced onion

And here's the ingredient that makes this cornbread so unbelievably good, and that's sliced okra

And you want to slice it while it's frozen. Now we're going to want this batter very, very thin

so I'm going to put two and a half cups of water

and we're just going to mix this up. And it's really best if you let it sit for a few minutes

because it'll thicken up a little. Isn't that pretty? All right, I'm going to give this a quick stir

and I'm going to let it sit here on the counter and rest a few minutes

And in the meantime, we're going to check on our fish because it's probably about half done

Oh, look at that fish, would you? Oh gosh. All right, I'm gonna finish topping this

and I'm gonna throw it back in the oven. Let it finish cooking

When we come back, you're gonna find me frying up this okra fry bread for you

Oh, and I forgot while we're on break, I'm going to share with you some more home movies from the cooking school

So I'll see y'all in a few minutes. What happens to all the leftover food when the show's over

Honey, that crew eats it. I think I smell grouper fromage

Oh, and I do. Oh, look at it, y'all. Look how good that looks

I'm gonna sit there and let it cool for a minute because I wanna start our okra fry bread

Now I'm gonna fry these in clarified butter because I don't wanna run the risk of that butter burning

So let's see what we've got here. This is the prettiest batter

It almost looks like it has eggs in it, the way it's pulling, but it's not

It's from the okra. At this point, you could add a little bit more water

and thin it out, but I think this is gonna be pretty good. All right, and I'm just gonna move it around

just a little bit, just like that, and it's looking wonderful. I love fried okra

and this is like a bonus. Fried okra and hoe cake. All right, I'm gonna start flipping them

And you see the way I'm picking up my frying pan? I'm letting my grease drain to that side

so when I flip my hoe cake, I don't have to worry about them splattering up and burning me

I think I'm going to come down here and plate up our fish. Our fish just looks divine and smells even better

What a great meal to impress your guest with. Oh my goodness I think I just put a lemon I just stick a little parsley for color in there And I think maybe a few tomatoes and some okra fry bread

and we're gonna be ready. While those are cooking, I'm gonna come over here

and see if I can't pick me out a bite. Succulent looking

It's one of my favorite ways to eat grouper. It's out of this world

All right, let's check on our okra fried bread. When I have my cooking schools

I try to introduce all of my family. And the last school I did, my Aunt Peggy was there

and I was able to cook and introduce her to everybody. And we just had a wonderful, wonderful time

So I wanna thank y'all for those of you that might be watching that came to the cooking school

And I hope that those of y'all that didn't Enjoyed seeing the clips

All right. What a meal. Hey, Gertie. It's unbelievable, Gertie

We've got something almost as good as that okra fry bread. We've got a Tennessee black walnut cake with the caramel icing

We're going to start with a half a cup of shortening, one and a half cups of granulated sugar

And we're just going to beat that up until it's creamy. We're going to turn that up a little bit so we can get it to go

All right, now we're going to add one egg at the time

I have one in there, and here goes the second one. We're going to cream those up

and I'm going to add a fourth of a cup of buttermilk

and a teaspoon of vanilla flavoring. All right. And to this, I'm going to add two ripe bananas

Now, I like to kind of mash my bananas up in their skin

And if you find that you've got bananas that's getting dark on you, all you have to do is throw them into your freezer

And on the days that you want to make banana nut bread

or a Tennessee black walnut cake, you can pull them out because the darkness won't hurt it at all

And we're just going to let our beaters mash those bananas up

All right, I've got two cups of all-purpose flour. I've added a half a teaspoon of baking soda

Now I'm just going to stir that in together. And we're just going to put our flour into our mixture

We're just going to beat that up. Now, before we get started on the nuts, I think our cake has beat enough

So let me come over here and turn this off. Okay, black walnuts have a very distinct, strong

sharp taste that your English walnut doesn't. Don't even bother making this cake

if you don't have any on hand because it will make all the difference in the world

in the flavor of your cake. So we're gonna take our batter and we're gonna

it's such a different odor. I wish I could describe it to you. but the flavor of this cake is gonna be very memorable

and distinctive once you taste it. All right, so we just folded those in

and we're gonna spray our pans really, really good because we don't want our cake to stick

Now, if you're frightened of that, you can always dust your pans with a little flour

All right, now we're gonna divide up our batter and put it into our cake pans and put these in the oven

And while I'm doing that, I think we've got some more footage from cooking school

So I hope y'all enjoy them. And when you come back, we're gonna be making caramel icing

and we're gonna frost these sweet cakes up and we're gonna taste a Tennessee black walnut cake

We're gonna play musical chair. What are you already doing now? What are you doing now

All right, I have to tell y'all, as a young bride, one of my favorite cakes in the whole world

was a caramel cake. Well, years and years ago, I discovered this recipe

and caramel frosting now is just a snap. Now all we're gonna do is we're gonna melt a stick of butter

and light brown sugar. So we're gonna add a cup of sugar

And to that now I'm gonna add a third of a cup of heavy cream

And we're just gonna let this come to a boil because we wanna dissolve our sugar

We want this to be nice and smooth. And I'm gonna just be on the safe side

and I gonna bring out a little extra heavy cream and I gonna have it to the side So what I gonna do now is I gonna take one box of confectioner sugar

All right, we've removed it from the heat. And now all we're gonna do is take our mixer

and just beat it until it's smooth. Can you believe what an easy recipe this is

If you try it, you're gonna love it. Now I'm gonna add a tablespoon of vanilla

Give it one more quick beat. All right, it looks out of this world delicious

I'm just gonna lay a few strips of wax paper around my cake plate

I'm gonna stick a little icing right there so my cake will stick to the plate

And then when I get through icing this, I'll just pull these out and my plate will be clean

All right, so we're gonna stick that in the very center. Mmm

And you'll find that this frosting, as it cools off, it'll get real thick on you quick

So if you need to, all you have to do is stir in a little extra cream

And I like a thick layer of my caramel icing in between my cake layers

All right, gonna stick our other cake layer up there. Now I'm gonna take some skewers, gonna break it off

Now these work better than a toothpick because you're so much more sturdy

Okay, we are ready to finish frosting our cake. Those skewers are gonna keep our cake from sliding on us

Ooh, I can't hardly wait to cut into this cake. Now when I get all the frosting on this

you can see how this gets tight quickly. So I'm just gonna stick my knife down in my cream

and smooth it out just like that. Now we wanna very quickly get our nuts on here

while our frosting is still damp. So we're just gonna take our nuts

and we're just gonna go around and press them into the side of our cake, just like this

All right, now all I have to do is gently pull out the wax paper

dump back the rest of the walnuts into the bowl, because I can use them another time

Now look how easy and simple and pretty that cake is. I think all it needs is just a few strawberries

say, right in the center. Michael's gonna be a happy boy. And when we come back

I'm gonna share some of my favorite gadget tips with you so y'all don't go anywhere because we still got cake to eat. Paula, how did you get

started in this business? I would lay in bed at night and dream up ways that I could take care of

my children. So I decided that I would start a business and I would name it the Bag Lady

I would make bag sandwiches and my kids would go out and sell it and I started with $200

and that was 15 years ago. If you're like me and you like to cook

there's a very good chance that you like kitchen gadgets. And I have to tell you, I'm a sucker for them

I like anything that's going to make my cooking a little bit more fun and a little easier

I want to talk about my little chopper. These little things are great

They work wonderful on nuts or onions. and the thing is, you never have to move it

It actually rotates itself and just a few hits and you've got nice chopped up nut meat or onions

The one thing I'd probably grab if my house caught on fire is my microplane

I love this. It's wonderful for nutmegs and for cheeses and just look at the pretty slices

of tiny, tiny cheese that you get. Isn't that beautiful? So whether you're an old veteran cook like me

or a brand new cook, hopefully these tools will give y'all some ideas and whatever it takes

to get you in the kitchen to cook yourself a good old homemade meal, it's all good

Just look at all of our wonderful food that we made today in cooking school

Before I go, I've just got to taste our Tennessee black walnut cake

Look how delicious this looks. Can hardly wait to taste it. Well, I hope that y'all enjoyed everything today

Hope you liked the menu, and I hope you enjoyed the home movies from our cooking school

So until next time, y'all, I want to send you love and best dishes

from my classroom to yours. See you in Savannah. Thank you