Engagement Brunch

Hey y'all, I'm just standing out here on my back porch, you know, trying to get my thoughts together

Just thinking about the day ahead because I'm throwing an engagement party today for my brother and his girlfriend, now fiance, Dawn

And today I'm going to be making a wonderful peanut butter glazed ham that's just going to knock his socks off

A fabulous brion croup full of walnuts and fudge brownie bites with a cherry mousse and then some homemade pork rinds

So I hope y'all will come on into the kitchen with me and let's get started because we've got a celebration today

I just love celebration foods, y'all

and can't wait to share this recipe with you. You know I am preparing for the party

that we're gonna announce the engagement of my brother Bubba and his girlfriend Dawn's engagement

And so this is a perfect dish that I'm gonna prepare, and everybody will eat this up

The recipe is baked ham with a peanut butter glaze, and it's out of this world

So I've got a wonderfully smoked ham here, and it's about 9 pounds

But you can see on my ham, it's got a great big skin cap

Now what I'm gonna do is remove that skin, and I'm gonna just come in there with a knife

and just cut it away from the fat, just like that. And I wanna leave a little fat

I wanna get a little fat along with that skin. You can see how easily that skin just slips right off there

Look at that, just that simple. And you can see how when I trimmed it

I left some fat on that skin, and I'm gonna tell you why later

But in the meantime, I'm gonna just throw that in that dish. All right, now all I'm gonna do

is transfer my ham to a baking dish, and I'm gonna put it in the oven

a 350-degree oven or 325. You can actually bake this a little lower

And I'm gonna bake it for 20 minutes a pound, which that means this one's gonna be in the oven about three hours

I'm gonna start out by baking my ham uncovered. If it starts to brown on you too much

just cover it with a foil and it'll be fine. So in the oven it goes

and I want you to come on down here to the other end of the counter

because I want to share with y'all a recipe for a glaze

that I'm going to glaze this ham with now I'm going to start with one cup of chicken stock

I'm gonna add 1 1⁄4 of a cup of peanut butter, and it's amazing what that peanut butter

is gonna do to that pork. All right, now I'm gonna add 1⁄4 of a cup of honey

to this chicken stock and the peanut butter, and it's gonna give it a nice sweet

but not overpoweringly sweet taste. I'm gonna add one clove of minced garlic

And then I'm gonna add two teaspoons of soy sauce. Now, this is better to do it in the blender or a food processor

because believe it or not, that peanut butter can be kind of hard to work in

So we're gonna quickly just mix it up in the blender. Mmm

That smells really, really, really good. All right, now I'm gonna set that to the side

because I'm not gonna start glazing our ham until the end of three hours

but what I am gonna do right now is I wanna start on the next dish

and it's a delicious brie en croup. I'm changing this plain old wheel of brie cheese

into a tasty appetizer using walnuts using walnuts and raspberry preserves. So I'm gonna start by adding a tablespoon of butter

and I'm just gonna saute off our walnuts just for a few minutes, just long enough

for that heat to pull out those oils in those walnuts and really bring out the flavor

So when we come back we gonna start glazing our ham we gonna put together a brionne crout and later I gonna make scrumptious little brownie bites with a little cherry mousse topping and then Bubba favorite homemade pork rinds

Hey, y'all, welcome back. Now, while we were on break, I went ahead and roasted off our walnuts

and that only takes just a couple of minutes, and they're ready. And these are gonna add such a great flavor

to our brion crud. Now, to move on with our dish, I'm gonna move down here

and I have some puff pastry that's been sitting out on my counter for about 20 minutes

straight from the freezer to the counter. You wanna make sure it's thawed enough

that you can unfold it without it breaking your dough. I'm gonna spread a little flour on it

because I've got a little rolling I wanna do to it because at this size

it's not big enough to go around my wheel of brie. So I've got to just roll it out just an inch or two in all directions

Okay, so an inch or two this away, and I think that's probably big enough

Okay. Now, I'm using a small wheel of brie. Now, I'm going to take this ryan off

and this is really not necessary. This is just something that I like to do

because I'm going to be putting some preserves and nuts on top of this

and to me, you know, if I just take that ryan off, it allows that preserves and nuts

to melt down into the brie. So I'm just going to take a little bit of that off

Like I said, you could leave it on, and that's just, you know

one of those quinky-dink things that I like to do. So, all right

Now, we want to make sure that our pastry has a pretty sheen to it

or a pretty shine. Now, I'm going to bust up two eggs. You can also use heavy cream

or you can use butter, but I found that the whole egg along with the yolk makes it

a pretty yellow color and it really gives it a nice shine

So I'm just going to beat this up. Now there's a couple of different ways you can do this as well

You can go ahead and brush your pastry on both sides, or you can just brush it after you get it done. I think I'm just gonna brush mine when I get

it all together. So I'm gonna put my brie in the middle of my pastry, and I'm gonna top it

with some raspberry jam. Gonna kind of spread that evenly over the top of that brie. Now you

can use any of your favorite jams or preserves. Preserves are nice because they've got the whole

berry in it. All right, now I'm gonna take my nuts and just put them right on top of those preserves

just like that. The next thing that I'm gonna need for the next step is some twine

and I'm using an ordinary kitchen twine. and now I'm going to bring up the four corners of my puff pastry

Just like that. Now I'm going to come in here with my string and tie it up so it won't collapse on me

And I'm gonna just take my fingers and kind of bundle it all up

All right, now I'm gonna move it to my baking dish. And I'm gonna come over here, and I'm gonna take my eggs

and I'm just gonna brush that pastry with those eggs. Now, the reason I like doing this last is because the pastry is just easier to work with

you know, if it doesn't have the sliminess of the eggs. Okay

So he's all ready. Now I'm gonna put him in the oven and I'm gonna bake him at 350

for about 25 minutes just until it's nice and golden brown. Okay so in the oven

this goes. Well now let's come in here and see how our ham looks because it's time for us

to pull it out and just swab him with that peanut butter glaze that cannot be pretty whoo all right So let take a look at our ham and see what we got

I know he is smelling to the high heavens. Ooh, look at him

Now it's time for us to just slather our ham in that peanut butter glaze

Mmm. It's looking and smelling so good. All right, now I'm gonna put this back in the oven

if I've got enough strength left in me. This is a heavy dish, y'all

Yeah! I just feel like my britches are gonna bust. All right, 20 minutes

That's all my ham needs. And you know what? I can't have an engagement party

without having a fabulous sweet dish. So I'm gonna be making them fudge brownie bites

with a cherry mousse. And later, Bubba's favorite, homemade pork rinds. So I'll meet you back here in the kitchen

Y'all don't go anywhere. Well, hey, you caught me. I didn't think y'all were ever coming back

and I was going to go ahead without y'all. Oh, but I'm glad to see you're here

because I want y'all to see this fabulous grill crew as I cut it

Look at that. Don't you fall. Mmm. You can see the nuts and you can see the raspberries

You can see Paula's mouth going in on it. Everybody's gonna love this

I'm not gonna be able to keep folks out of it. For the time being, we've got to move down here

because I've got that special dessert that I have to make them

And it's a fudge brownie bite with a cherry mousse. Now, I'm gonna start with one box of traditional brownie mix

I'm gonna add one-half a cup of oil, a fourth of a cup of water

two eggs, one teaspoon of vanilla, and I'm just going to mix this with a whisk

probably maybe 50 beats. You know, you don't have to beat this too much

You really just want your ingredients moist. You can see how quickly that moistens right up

All right, now I'm going to pour in one cup of semi-sweet morsels

There we go. just that quick and easy. All right, now I have prepared a jelly roll pan

a 15 by 10 pan. I've sprayed it, and now I'm just gonna pour out

our brownie mix onto our pan, and I'm gonna put this in a 350-degree preheated oven

and I'm gonna let it bake for about 18 minutes. Okay, you just wanna level that out

Make sure it's even in its pan, just like that. All right, so let's run this in the oven

Like I said, 18 minutes in a 350-degree oven. And, boy, I just got a bonus

There was a little bit of chocolate on my thumb. All right, now it's time to make the mousse part

I've got some unflavored gelatin, and I'm going to add a third of a cup of boiling hot water

And the correct term for this is called blooming. That hot water is going to activate that gelatin

and then bloom it right on out. Now I'm just gonna stir this until it's dissolved

Okay, that's got it. All right, now in this bowl, I have two cups of heavy cream

and I'm gonna beat it just until it's foamy. Now I'm gonna add a half a cup of sugar

You want to be careful that you don over beat it because it literally turns back to butter Just remember don overbeat

All right, so now I'm going to add a half a cup of maraschino cherries

Now, maraschino cherry can be made from any variety of cherry. This has just been emulsified, though, in sugar

Now I've reserved three teaspoons of the maraschino cherry juice. Going to add to that, and it's going to make it a pretty pink color for us

All right, now I'm going to take our gelatin that's dissolved, and I'm going to just fold it through our cream

Doesn't that look pretty? Looks like you could just kind of throw your face in it

Okay. All right, now I'm going to put our mousse in the refrigerator

because it needs to be chilled. Now, I've got some already chilled

and I've already put it in a piping bag because this dessert is going to have to be put together

completely cooled. I've got, look-a-here, y'all. I've got my chilled brownies. All right, now our brownies are nice and cool

and I'm going to use one of my smaller biscuit cutters to cut out little rounds of brownie

All right, now let's get in here and let me gently remove some of those rounds

Look at that. Isn't that delicious looking? And I have chosen to serve these on one of my favorite old mirrors

that I got from an antique shop. And our cherry mousse is nice and chilled

I've got it in a piping bag. And I'm just gonna pipe a rosette on top of that brownie

The mousse is so nice and cool and refreshing, and the richness of the brownie, mmm

When we come back, I'm gonna introduce you to the most wonderful homemade pork rind

you've ever put in your mouth. So y'all meet me right back here in the kitchen

There's more good things happening. There ain't nothing more that a Southerner loves, y'all

than homemade pork rinds. Now I'm just going to take that skin

I'm going to salt it, and I'm going to throw it in the oven, 325, 350

and I'm going to let it bake until it's nice and crispy

But let me tell you a way that you can do it

like my friends, the Neelys, that are in the barbecue business in Memphis and Nashville, Tennessee

They deep fry it, y'all, and it is so good. I popped in on them last Thursday, and guess what

They would not let me leave without some of their homemade pork rinds

Look at that. Listen. That's music to a cracker's ears. Mmm

Mmm. You're out of this world. But if you don't have a deep fryer, let's do it this way

Bubba Hires is going to love these. Y'all, I can't believe I finally got this engagement meal together

I'm getting rid of my brother, y'all. He's all Don's now. But before he completely is handed over to Don, I had to cook him some of his favorite foods

And this ham, y'all, that I baked Bubba, that peanut butter glaze just does something to that ham

It is so delicious. And the Brion Croute with the stuffed raspberry preserves and the buttered walnuts, he's going to love that one too

And for he and Dawn, I've specially made them a fudge brownie bite with a little bit of cherry mousse on top

But you know what? This will be his favorite. So remember, you hang on to that ham skin like it's gold

Because you can enjoy the most fabulous homemade pork rinds you have ever put in your mouth

Well, it's time for me to go, y'all. But I want to send you love and best dishes from my kitchen to yours

Right now, I've got to go give my brother away