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Full Episode Fridays: Paula's Take On Italian Food | 3 Italian-Inspired Recipes
Dec 19, 2025
3 Italian-Inspired Recipes - Paula's making a pasta dinner featuring stuffed shells with meat and cheese, chicken Spiedini, and a tiramisu cake. Paula’s Home Cooking, Season 3, Episode 6.
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00:00 Intro
3:04 Dustin's Chicken Spiedini Recipe: https://www.pauladeen.com/recipe/dustins-chicken-spedini/
7:23 Northern Italian Pasta Shell Stuffing Recipe: https://www.pauladeen.com/recipe/northern-italian-pasta-shell-stuffing/
12:32 Savannah Tiramisu Recipe: https://www.pauladeen.com/recipe/savannah-tiramisu/
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For more episodes of Paula’s Home Cooking, click here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2LHabI5sYyFJ8aWpcpr9ivq9xrVV7Z-q
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Show More Show Less View Video Transcript
0:00
(soft music)
0:01
- Ciao.
0:01
Y'all, you know, just cause I can't speak Italian
0:04
don't mean I can't cook it.
0:06
So I'm going to prove it to y'all today
0:08
by taking y'all on a tour of Italy
0:11
with just a few of my recipes.
0:13
But first we're going to have to stop
0:15
by Davis Produce to pick up some tomatoes and onions.
0:18
And then we'll head back to the kitchen
0:20
where I'm going to put together
0:21
some wonderful chickens spadini.
0:23
And then next up
0:24
is a Northern Italian favorite stuffed shells.
0:28
And this recipe comes from my friend Barbara.
0:32
Last but certainly not least, it's my tiramisu.
0:37
but this time it's Savannah style.
0:40
So y'all open up a bottle of your finest Italian wine
0:44
and manja manja.
0:48
Hi, y'all you caught me looking through my drawer.
0:52
I'm looking for a picture
0:53
because I wanna show you one of my computer friends.
0:57
Oh, here it is.
0:59
I'm actually making this lady's recipes today.
1:02
My life is so blessed
1:04
and so full in the fact that I get to make
1:06
so many friendships,
1:08
with so many people across the United States
1:11
that watch my show.
1:13
And Barbara Platoni had noticed
1:15
that I didn't make a lot of Italian dishes.
1:17
So Barbara wanted to share with me
1:19
some of her mother-in-law's recipes,
1:21
just in case I ever wanted to do a show
1:25
about Italian cooking well guess what?
1:29
Today is the day Barbara and you are a lifesaver.
1:33
So we're going to make these recipes today.
1:35
But before we do that, we're off to Davis produce.
1:41
Randy and Sheridan at Davis produce,
1:43
carries the freshest veggies from all over the South.
1:47
So I know they'll have just what I need.
1:50
(soft music)
1:52
How you doing baby?
1:53
- Oh hey miss Paula. How are you today? I'm good.
1:56
- Good to see you.
1:57
- You too.
1:57
- I got a tag at night going on at my house.
2:00
- Come on back, I got the best size for you. come on back.
2:03
- I was trying to see if I can scope out,
2:04
make some ball peanuts.
2:06
- we don't sell them or I eat them all.
2:09
- I need some tomatoes, Randy.
2:11
- Well, I got a couple for you here,
2:12
- Alright.
2:13
Tell me what you got today.
2:14
What you got in?
2:15
- We got these pretty red ones right now
2:16
that are coming in from Ruskin, Florida.
2:18
And then I got these Roma tomatoes.
2:20
Which you're doing a little Italian cooking.
2:22
- I love Roma tomatoes.
2:23
- They are the best.
2:24
Some people prefer those all year
2:25
because they are consistent
2:27
and the taste and its a good farm tomato too.
2:30
- And when are the Texas sweet onions coming in.
2:32
- They coming in right now,
2:33
they just started up.
2:34
I think Sherry's got you a basket of brasseries.
2:35
- Oh good. Thank you darling.
2:38
- There they are.
2:39
- Well, I will see you'll later
2:41
- Well thank you, miss Paula.
2:42
- Good to see you'll
2:43
- I gotta go cook.
2:44
Good to see you'll.
2:44
- Bring us leftovers
2:45
I love you all.
2:46
- We love you too.
2:47
- Bye bye.
2:48
- I'm really excited to try
2:49
these Roma tomatoes in some sauce.
2:51
In fact, it's going to go on top of one of Barbara's recipes
2:55
and I also picked up some onions for the first dish
2:58
that I'm preparing today.
2:59
So what y'all say, let's get back to the kitchen
3:02
and start cooking.
3:04
All right, this dish I'm going to be making
3:06
is called spadinis.
3:08
And I'm going to serve this as an appetizer today.
3:11
I've never eaten these
3:13
or fixed these before in my whole life,
3:17
but Dustin Malls a young man that's very near
3:19
and dear to my family and I loves these.
3:22
And he was telling me about em one day and I said,
3:24
well, I'm going to be in the kitchen
3:25
doing some Italian cooking.
3:27
So, so tell me about these little puppies.
3:30
And he described them to me
3:31
and I said, well, sounds delicious.
3:34
So I think I'll try my hand at that.
3:36
So we're going to see what we come up
3:40
with these spiedinis.
3:43
Laughing.
3:44
foreign languages get me y'all.
3:47
All right.
3:48
So we're going to start with a strip of chicken tinder
3:50
and I've got some ICI goat cheese.
3:53
And from what I understand,
3:56
you can use different cuts of meat for this.
4:00
I understand that veal is real good,
4:01
but as you can see, I'm using chicken today.
4:05
All right, we've got those rolled up.
4:07
I'm just going to roll them in olive oil
4:10
(oil splashing)
4:12
and then I'm going to roll them into seasoned breadcrumbs,
4:16
and then put them on our baking sheet.
4:20
( water splashing)
4:22
All right, I'm going to saute these off.
4:24
Now, Dustin told me to just put them in the pan
4:27
and put them on into the oven.
4:29
But I think I'm going to Brown these off just a little bit
4:32
and saute the onions a little bit
4:34
and then let them just finish it in the oven.
4:36
They won't take them, but just a minute.
4:38
So we got our pan going and we're going to let that heat up.
4:41
I'm going to add just a little olive oil.
4:46
(phone ringing)
4:47
okay
4:48
Where's the phone.
4:51
Hello?
4:52
- Hi. This is Mario Batali, Molto Mario,
4:54
from the food network,
4:55
- Mario.
4:56
- I just wanted to call and say,
4:58
not only do I love you, but I want to help you.
5:00
I'm watching your show here and I'm bleeding,
5:02
- Who's telling you what I'm doing.
5:05
- The whole world knows what you're doing, Paula,
5:07
particularly as Italians.
5:09
- Well, what's wrong now, Mario?
5:11
- This dish you're cooking.
5:12
You're killing me with this pronunciation.
5:15
- I'm cooking spadinis yeah, ain't that what I said
5:17
. - No, Paula it's spiedini.
5:20
- I called it spandinis,
5:22
laughing,
5:24
- Ah spiedini, It's Italian. It's a beautiful word.
5:30
- Spanino
5:32
- Ah spiedini.
5:33
- Spadino
5:35
- Spidini.
5:36
- Is that right?
5:38
- Uh,
5:39
- Laughing.
5:41
- Ciao baby. We'll see you soon.
5:43
- Bye,
5:43
Laughing.
5:44
I think you just ought to come down here
5:46
and let me cook and him pronounce the words for me.
5:51
Laughing.
5:52
He's on my case.
5:53
I bet if I brought him here in the South,
5:55
he couldn't say some of our words
5:57
the way we say them either could he?
5:59
I just wanted to Brown those off.
6:00
Now I'm going to put them on our baking sheet
6:02
and we're going to stick these in the oven
6:05
and let them finish cooking off
6:06
because they're not done on the inside,
6:09
but they're nice and Brown and pretty on the outside.
6:13
And before I do that,
6:14
I'm gonna toss in our onions
6:17
and just roll them around in that olive oil,
6:20
and those little breadcrumbs, it's fallen off.
6:24
(Onions frying)
6:28
That looks like they'd make some good gravy to me,
6:33
and just kind of pour those right over the spiedini,
6:40
hope that was close.
6:42
All right, just distribute those onions
6:44
and drop on the Bay leaves.
6:48
And in they go, looks pretty good, doesn't it?
6:55
And when we come back,
6:57
we're going to taste this
6:58
and we're going to taste Northern Italian stuffed shells.
7:07
I so hope y'all are enjoying the show.
7:09
And if you do.
7:11
Be sure to click like, subscribe and
7:14
notification bell so you'll never miss a video.
7:18
And we'll be right back after the break.
7:25
Okay.
7:26
We've got our Spiedini in the oven
7:27
and I'm going back to a recipe
7:29
that belonged to Barbara's mother-in-law
7:32
and it's Northern Italian stuffed shells.
7:36
And we're going to start by browning,
7:39
our hamburger meat, our ground beef.
7:43
We're gonna kind of just crumble that up
7:46
and I'm going to go ahead
7:47
and season this with a little salt and a little pepper.
7:54
(meat sizzling)
7:56
I think I'll drizzle just a little bit of olive all over it,
8:00
just to make sure it doesn't stick too bad.
8:03
All right.
8:04
And I'm going to toss in some chopped onions
8:08
and I'm just gonna let that brown away
8:12
while I'm putting together our other ingredients over here,
8:15
I've got three boxes of frozen spinach.
8:19
Now you'll want to make sure that you drain this really,
8:22
really good because you want this to be nice and thick.
8:27
Here's a tip for dishes like these,
8:30
the frozen spinach worked so much better
8:34
because in order to yield this much spinach,
8:37
I would have had to cook this,
8:39
probably a sack of spinach that big,
8:41
and it still got that real strong spinach flavor.
8:46
Okay.
8:47
I'm going to take our meat,
8:49
and just add it to this bowl for this particular recipe.
8:54
I've used a leaner grade of beef
8:57
because I'm actually putting more fat in this.
9:02
All right.
9:03
Now I'm going to just take our softened cream cheese.
9:06
Kind of just work that in there.
9:10
I love do ahead things.
9:13
You can do this actually the night before or the morning of,
9:17
and stick it in the refrigerator.
9:18
So you can have all of this part done.
9:25
(water splashing)
9:25
Alright I'm probably going to have to wash my hands
9:28
a couple of times on this dish,
9:31
but we're almost there.
9:35
I'm gonna throw in a couple of eggs.
9:39
Just break those up a little bit.
9:41
And I'm going to add the Parmesan cheese.
9:46
You can put as much of that cheese as you want.
9:51
All right, that's ready.
9:52
And all we're going to do is take our shells and stuff em.
9:57
I bet you could even freeze these, just like this.
10:00
I bet that they would freeze well to this point
10:02
and then just pull them out,
10:04
let them fall and bake them off right now.
10:09
Alright I think that'll get it one more hand wash.
10:13
( water splashing)
10:18
All right.
10:19
Now I put my tomato sauce in one of my canon jars.
10:22
And I'm going to just pour it all over those shells.
10:30
All right.
10:31
I'm just going to finish up a little cheese
10:32
cause I love a lot,
10:33
a lot of cheese,
10:36
sprinkle this with a little extra aziago,
10:41
then we're going to cover it with 10 fall
10:43
and bake it for about an hour. Okay.
10:45
I think our spiedini is probably ready.
10:48
So let's check on it.
10:53
I think this spiedini is ready.
10:56
So let's see what we've got here.
10:59
Can't wait.
11:00
This is the first time y'all
11:04
for spiedini to hit these Southern lips.
11:07
Wait, it looks really, really good.
11:16
Mh, that's really, really good.
11:20
I love the flavor of the breadcrumbs
11:23
and that delicious cheese.
11:25
I've got to take a quick break.
11:26
I'm going to put our pasta shells in the oven
11:29
and I'm going to give this one more taste
11:30
and when we come back.
11:32
We're going to taste this
11:33
and we're going to taste Savannah tiramisu.
11:37
And that one's mine, Mario.
11:40
Laughing.
11:45
I hope y'all are enjoying the show
11:47
and I want to hear from you.
11:49
Tell me what recipes or videos you'd like to see me
11:52
make by just leaving a short comment below.
11:56
Now, let's get back to the show, y'all.
12:02
We are back and I'm ready to take the stuff shells
12:04
out of the oven and I can smell them
12:06
and they smell heavenly.
12:09
Oh, all right.
12:12
Let's take a peek and see what we've got.
12:18
Oh gosh.
12:19
( foil crackling)
12:19
They look delicious.
12:22
And I can see that that's way too hot to put in my mouth.
12:26
I won't have any lining left in my mouth.
12:28
So I'm going to let that cool.
12:30
And while it's cooling,
12:32
I'm gonna to be showing y'all my recipe
12:35
for savannah tiramisu.
12:36
And it's very simple and very delicious.
12:39
Now I'm starting today with some store bought macaroons
12:44
that have been dipped in chocolate,
12:45
and I've crumbled those up,
12:47
and I'm gonna take my bourbon,
12:49
and let that sit
12:51
while I'm putting the rest of our dish together.
12:53
And over here,
12:54
I've got two sticks of softened butter,
12:57
and we're going to throw those in our mixer,
13:00
along with some sugar,
13:02
and we're just going to cream those two things together.
13:07
(mixer rattling)
13:09
Now to the creamed butter and sugar,
13:12
I'm gonna add six egg yolks.
13:17
Now, if you're wondering where the egg whites went,
13:20
I beat them up earlier into the state of a moraine
13:24
and I've got them in the refrigerator.
13:26
When we get through,
13:27
we're going to be folding the beaten egg whites
13:29
into our yolk mixture.
13:32
I'm going to add about a teaspoon of vanilla
13:35
and a half a cup of nuts.
13:38
I'm going to beat in our chocolate macaroons
13:41
that have been soaked in that bourbon.
13:43
All right now, to this,
13:45
we're going to add a melted chocolate
13:48
and the chocolate that I'm using is unsweetened.
13:56
Okay now I'm gonna go to go to the refrigerator
13:59
and get our egg whites,
14:01
and I'm going to fold them in to our chocolate mixture.
14:10
(cabinet door slams)
14:12
I'm gonna go to just fold this in,
14:16
and look how good that looks.
14:21
Now, we're gonna come over here
14:22
and we're gonna be using a spring form pan for our dessert.
14:27
And I'm going to need to spray our pan
14:30
because when we, the side off,
14:32
we wanna make sure that nothing sticks.
14:37
All right, we're using a plain store-bought lady finger.
14:41
So I'm going to take them apart
14:43
and just cover the bottom.
14:49
Now we're gonna come in here,
14:50
and layer it with our chocolate mixture.
14:53
And I'm going to spread that around evenly,
14:56
over those lady fingers.
14:58
And then we're going to come back in here
15:00
with another layer of lady fingers.
15:08
Now we're gonna come in here
15:09
with another layer of the chocolate.
15:11
Just keeps getting better, doesn't it?
15:14
We're gonna spread that out.
15:17
Now we're gonna put our last layer of lady fingers on it,
15:21
and put them up close enough
15:23
to almost make the size of a serving of pie.
15:28
Now I'm gonna cover this
15:29
and I'm going to put it in the refrigerator
15:30
and we're going to let it sit overnight,
15:33
but I have another one that's ready.
15:36
So we'll go in with this one
15:39
because I really do want to show y'all
15:41
how I finished it off.
15:50
And you can see that this has sat up nicely
15:53
and I'm gonna gently remove our spring form pan.
16:00
Looks good.
16:01
All right.
16:02
And I think I'm gonna move it to our pedestal
16:04
and finish it up.
16:10
And I'm just going to take our whipped cream,
16:12
gonna come in between each of those lady fingers.
16:16
And you can do this any way you want it.
16:18
There's really no right or wrong way.
16:21
And now for the center,
16:23
I'm just gonna come in here
16:24
and build it up with stars.
16:26
And then I'm going to take
16:27
one of my little leftover chocolate macaroons
16:30
and drop right in the center,
16:33
and she looks beautiful, doesn't she?
16:36
And now all I'm going to do to finish her off
16:38
is just dust her with a little cocoa powder.
16:42
Look how pretty.
16:44
Well she's done.
16:47
I think it's time to taste.
16:49
With stuffed shells,
16:51
I'm going to come in here in the middle
16:52
and get me a piece with a lot of cheese.
16:56
It's still steaming hot,
17:00
not bad for a first timer.
17:06
(Paula chewing)
17:09
Hmm can't hardly think about leaving these stuffed shells,
17:15
(cutlery crackling)
17:16
but I just gotta try the tiramisu just looks sinful.
17:25
So very good.
17:26
I know y'all are gonna love it.
17:28
I'm only gonna leave for a couple of minutes.
17:30
And when we come back,
17:31
I want to take y'all outside
17:34
and show y'all the neatest trick
17:36
about how to plant your tomatoes.
17:38
Y'all not going to believe it.
17:40
I learned this from a country boy from Mississippi.
17:47
I so hope y'all are enjoying the show.
17:50
And if you do.
17:52
Be sure to click like, subscribe and
17:54
notification bell so you'll never miss a video.
17:58
And we'll be right back after the break.
18:05
I can't wait to share this little tip with y'all.
18:07
from what I hear,
18:10
all Italian families
18:11
or most of all Italian families grow their own tomatoes
18:15
because they take them very, very seriously.
18:18
What I want to show you a trick
18:19
that Brandon Branch taught me,
18:22
ah, a little country boy from Mississippi.
18:25
This is a great way to grow your own tomatoes.
18:27
If you have a very limited amount of space,
18:30
all you have to do is go find you a couple of bales of hay,
18:36
and you can get this from your A.G White,
18:37
possibly even a hardware store.
18:39
And you can see how it's bundled up with twine.
18:42
Now you want to leave that twine own your hay.
18:46
And all you're going to do is take you a sharp knife,
18:52
and just cut through that hay.
18:55
And that serrated knife works real good.
18:58
It'll kind of just cut right through your hay,
19:03
and then we're just gonna dig it out.
19:08
And then we're gonna put up some dirt in there,
19:11
just gonna, pour a little real good soil.
19:17
You wanna make sure that you use a soil
19:19
that's good for growing vegetables in,
19:22
and I'm gonna take our tomato plant
19:24
and gently pull it out of the container.
19:30
And I'm going to just break up some of that dirt
19:35
and then just tuck it down in that hole
19:38
that I made in the hay.
19:40
And these are going on the patio,
19:43
and I'm just going to water this.
19:47
And I'm gonna to wait about a week before I fertilize it.
19:51
And before you know it,
19:51
we're going to be eating tomatoes
19:53
and to give my precious little tomato plant,
19:55
a little extra added protection,
19:58
I'm gonna just stick a few marigolds around in it
20:00
Cause the smell will keep the bugs off.
20:07
I've had so much fun in the kitchen today with this meal,
20:10
it was really fun,
20:11
kind of getting outside my box,
20:13
and fixing other people's recipes.
20:15
Barbra's stuffed Shells is so good.
20:19
And Dustin spiedino is delicious.
20:22
And I really liked the tiramisu cause it was my recipe.
20:26
And I hope that y'all will try some of these
20:28
and love them as much as I did.
20:30
And so until next time America,
20:33
I send you love
20:34
and best dishes from my kitchen to yours.
20:39
Ciao baby.
20:43
Hey, y'all, it's Paula Deen.
20:45
Now, if you enjoyed this video, be sure to like it
20:48
and click the subscribe button as well as the notification
20:52
and bell to be alerted when I post a video.
20:56
Love and Best Dishes Y'all.
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