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 K'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. Hey. How are you? Great. 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, honey. 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 Brion Crude

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, it was a 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

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'm so glad I was able to do this. able to do this. Who knew being 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 going to put this in our pan and let it sit there in the seasoning for a minute

And then I'm going to come over here and I'm going to 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 gonna start with a cup of self-rising flour

and we're gonna use one cup of plain cornmeal. And I'm gonna 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 wanna slice it while it's frozen. Now we're gonna want this batter very, very thin

So I'm gonna put two and a half cups of water. And we're just gonna 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 gonna give this a quick stir

And I'm gonna let it sit here on the counter and rest a few minutes

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

Oh, look at that fish, would you? Oh, gosh. All right

I'm going to finish topping this, and I'm going to throw it back in the oven

let it finish cooking. When we come back, you're going to find me

frying up this okra fry bread for you. Oh, and I forgot, while we're on break

I'm gonna 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. Ooh, 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 going to be pretty good. All right, and I'm just going to 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 going to 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 kind of just stick a little parsley for color in there And I think maybe a few tomatoes and some okra fry bread and we 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 want to 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 gonna start with a half a cup of shortening

One and a half cups of granulated sugar. And we're just gonna beat that up until it's creamy

We're gonna turn that up a little bit so we can get it to going

All right, now we're gonna add one egg at the time. I have one in there and here goes the second one

We're gonna cream those up and I'm gonna add a fourth of a cup of buttermilk

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

Now, I like to kinda 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 wanna 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 gonna 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 gonna stir that in together, and we're just gonna put our flour into our mixture

We're just gonna beat that up. Now, before we get started on the nuts

I think our cake is 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

Alright, 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 going to taste a Tennessee black walnut cake. We're going to play musical chairs

What are you already 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 bowl, because we want to 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

Alright, 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. Mm

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 going to take some skewers, going to 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 going to 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 going to stick my knife down in my cream and smooth it out just like that

Now we want to very quickly get our nuts on here while our frosting is still damp

So we're just going to take our nuts and we're just going to 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

cause 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 you 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