Garden Club Meeting

Hi there y'all, I'm Paula Deen and I love to garden almost as much as I love to cook

And today I'm entertaining some of the ladies from my garden club

First I think we'll whip up this tangy shrimp marinade. And next I'll give you a recipe courtesy of a friend of mine for tomato sandwiches

that'll take just about all and every herb you can throw at them

And finally my minty watermelon salad. It's so refreshing. So prune back the front walk, because the ladies are coming to lunch

I started cooking when I was 18 years old as a new bride

I'm very lucky because I came from a family of wonderful Southern cooks

And at 42 years old, I was faced with having to support myself and my two sons

so I turned to my first love, which is cooking. And so I started cooking for a living

I think food is such a big part of family. And I hope that y'all can watch me and learn to have fun with yours while building wonderful memories around the food that you're preparing

Oh, hi. You caught me going through my herb cabinet. I'm having my girlfriends over today for a nice, healthy lunch

And I'm going to need some herbs. and I'm just sick of these dried herbs

So I think right here at the last minute, I'm going to dash out of here and try to find some fresh ones

and I hope y'all will come with me. The absolute best place to find anything fresh

is at the farmer's market. So I headed straight to the Monkhood nursery booth

where I knew my friend David Rowley would have exactly what I needed

Hello. Hey, David. How are you, Paula? I'm fine. How are you? Good, thank you

I'll be better if you can help me with some herbs today, though. Certainly. I am making a tangy marinated shrimp that I'm going to need some fresh parsley for. Okay

I'm making tomato sandwiches that I'll either use dill or basil with. I haven't made up my mind, so I want both. Okay

And I'm making a fresh watermelon salad. With some mint? Yes, yes. I'm putting mint in it

Okay. Well, let's start off with the parsley here. We have the regular curly parsley, which is great for decoration

And then we have the Italian parsley. Love the Italian. Which is stronger in flavor and has more vitamin C in it. Okay

For the mint, we have regular spearmint, which is absolutely great flavor-wise

A very profuse grower, helps settle upset stomachs. And you know what else

I may need some chives. Okay. I have regular chives, which is just the normal onion flavor. Yeah

And then I also have the garlic chives, which is garlic and onion together

Which do you like the best? I like the garlic chives. Oh, see, I love garlic too

And basil today, we have sweet genovese, which is a very sweet, tangy, the basil everybody

uses for everything. Then I have the spicy globe, which grows like a globe and tastes kind of spicy

Red Reuben. I just love the color of it. It's a great flavor and very attractive to add to like tomato salads and stuff

Well, before I leave today, I want you to show me how to put together an indoor herb pot

Very important to have a drainage hole to let the excess water out

Then we're just going to put in compost. We'll put some garlic chives in the side

So you're kind of putting the low growers down. Yep, the low growers in the sides

Then when these are in here, we're just going to fill it up with soil on top

Tell me just a few quick tips for people at home that don't live in the weather like I live in

To keep them in the house on the windowsill, Don't let them sit in water for too long

And harvesting, for example, basil to harvest, just pinch out just above the leaves there

and you'll get twice as much next time. I love big stuff. You know, big hair, big plants, big everything

Can you stick me some big ones in there? Yeah, we have this red reuben basil

It's going to get 2 1⁄2 foot tall. It's going to look huge in this part after a while

And the more you harvest it, the more it's going to get big. And we could put maybe some dill in the top, too

I love dill. And Dill is going to get to about three or four foot tall. Good

Now, you're going to help me get this to my car. Certainly. Because I have requested a big pot from you, and it's heavy

I sure do appreciate it, David. No problem. Thank you. Thanks so much

My car is right over here. Okay. We had great luck today at the garden shop, didn't we

I was so fortunate to run into David, and I was thrilled that he taught me

how to set up an herb garden for my house. All my herbs being outside, I just love this idea

I've got everything I think I'm gonna need for today's dishes. In fact, the first dish that I'm doing today

is a tangy marinated shrimp, and this is just a easy tasty recipe and I serve it at so many cocktail parties Olive oil

White vinegar. House seasoning. And we're just gonna blend that together like that

And the recipe calls for mayonnaise, but since the girls and I are thinking about our waistlines today

I'm gonna go with yogurt. Or if you wanted to, you could go with a lighter

a fat-free mayonnaise. We're gonna do a couple of tablespoons of coarse mustard

And that looks about right. And we're gonna do two scant tablespoons of anchovy paste

And we don't wanna put too much though because you know this is salty and we've already got our salt in there

So we can always go back and add a little bit more of that

We're just going to whisk that up, and we're going to use the juice of one lemon

This little reamer is just great. It'll get every drop of that juice out

And lemon is so, so good with shrimp. And for color, I'm going to just slice up some red bell pepper, and we're going to drop

the rings in there. Now you can do anything you want to

Lots of times I'll even put sliced fresh mushrooms in mine. And it just gives it a different texture

and just adds one more nice flavor to the pot. This is another one of those dishes

that you can just have fun with. And I'm going to put some green onions

just chopped green onions. And I'm using perfectly cooked boiled shrimp. And you see I'm leaving the tails on

because we're going to eat these with our fingers. So we're just going to toss all that in there

and I'm just going to toss those shrimp and vegetables in the marinade

Isn't that pretty? The red and the green and the coral color from the shrimp

Well, I think all this needs now is some coarse ground black pepper and, of course, the herbs that we went out to get

And I think I'm going to do chives. And let me show you while we're down here how to clip those

You clip them right at the top of the white. And then those will come back and give me lots, lots more chives

And I'm going to do some fresh parsley. And this dish is all done just in a matter of a few minutes

And you know I'm a snipper with scissors, so that's the way I'm going to do it, because

I want to kind of keep them in fairly big pieces. And I'm going to cut these at an angle

I don't know, that's just a polar quirk. That's just the way I like them cut

Okay, we've got those herbs that we went for. Now we're just going to top this off

with some fresh ground black pepper. So we're going to cover this and stick it in the fridge

and we're going to marinate it anywhere from two hours to overnight, whatever time it will allow for you

Okay, we're going to let that one rest, but I have another one over here ready for you

and I want to just show you how I would serve it and plate it

Yes, this one has been soaking, and he's just drank in all those wonderful flavors

Make a nice full plate of lettuce, and I'm just going to mound this up

and get a little of the marinade and drizzle over it, and that'll help dress that lettuce

because we'll be eating that too. I'm gonna stick a few more fresh chives on it

Aren't they pretty? And a couple of tomato wedges and a lemon twist

And it's ready to be eaten. These marinaded shrimp are a great start to a light lunch

Coming up next, I'm gonna be fixing Lucille Wright's tomato sandwiches. Savannah would never dream of having a party

or having the girls over without them, so stick around. The next dish we're going to be working on

is such a simple dish. It's just incredibly simple. But Savannah would not dream of having

the girls over for lunch or a cocktail party without these delicate, tasty little sandwiches

In fact, I don't know if you've read John Barrett's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

but it talks about the parties that Jim Williams used to throw

And there was one lady in town that was the only person that was allowed to cater his parties

And her name was Miss Lucille Wright. And I'm sorry to say that she's no longer with us, but Jim would not have a party without her

And people would just die to get an invitation to his parties

And we going to make Miss Lucille tomato sandwiches today I going to start by dropping our tomatoes in some boiling water just until the skin splits We not going to keep them in there very long And now we going to dunk them in ice water very quickly

because we don't want the tomato to cook because we're using a fresh, ripe tomato

This is just going to help us slip the skin off easier. And if you don't want to do this

you could actually peel the skin with a paring knife. Miss Lucille was so highly sought after

by Savannah Society that if a lady called to book a party with Miss Lucille and she was already

booked, the ladies wouldn't go find another caterer. They would reschedule their party

Now that's how much they thought of Miss Lucille and all of her food. All right, we can see that the

skin is split and that's the last one, so I'm going to turn that off. All right, we're going to get these peeled now. I've got them good and chilled

But these parties that Jim Williams threw were the height of Savannah society

Everybody sat around at Christmas time just waiting, hoping and praying that they wouldn't be called from the Christmas list

All right, we're going to take these out and let them drain a little bit

This is a very, very simple sandwich to make, but I just want to give you a couple of tips that will make your tomato sandwiches even better

You'll want to size up your bread with your tomatoes. So you wouldn't want to go out and buy a tomato this big

when you're making tomato sandwiches. And you can see that I've got my biscuit cutter over here

and you see that the sizes are going to match real good. So all we're going to do now is put these tomatoes

on a paper towel to drain. And we're just going to sprinkle these with a little seasoning

and that salt is going to pull the water out of the tomato

so that we won't have soggy tomato sandwiches. And plus it'll give it a zippy little flavor

We're gonna take our bread, and I like to do only one slice at the time

which is a little slower, but that's just the way I like to do it

And don't throw away these, because you can save them and put them in the skillet in the morning

put your child's egg in the center and have Popeyes for breakfast

And they also make great croutons. This is a nice fresh bread

Speaking of fresh bread, you have to be careful that it's not too, too fresh because it'll

be hard to cut. But this is just right. And you can do all this the day before

You can get you a plastic container and cut your bread and then dampen you very, very

lightly dampen some paper towels and cover them in that and they'll be just as fresh

tomorrow because you really don't want to make your sandwiches ahead of time. You want

to kind of do them at the last minute. In fact, I've done many a party where I'm behind

the scenes in the back putting these tomato sandwiches together just as quickly as I can

Now you can play with this, but I'm going to follow this just like Miss Lucille did it

And that's mayonnaise. A little salt. Fresh ground pepper

A little shake of accent. And some fresh grated onion will really produce

a lot, a lot of strong onion flavor. In fact, I can feel it running down my fingers right now

This one's got a lot of juice in it. So just a little

You know, I never knew Jim Williams. When I moved to Savannah back in the 80s

I can't remember if he had just gone to jail or he had just died

Either way, it was bad news. So we're just going to smear just a little on the bread

So this is all we're going to do. And just top them

And aren't they pretty? And I'm going to do one thing that Miss Lucille doesn't do

And I just found that this makes my plate pretty. All we're going to do is dab my finger ever so lightly in mayonnaise

Dab it onto the breads. and this is going to act as a glue

I'm going to take a little petal of parsley and stick on each of those dabs of mayonnaise

And it just adds a nice little touch of color. So that gets them all ready

And Rennie, you look so sad, girl, but I'm sorry. These are for me. I'm sorry

Stick around, because watermelon salad's coming up! I just gathering up the rest of my ingredients for this watermelon salad And we just gonna trim that meat

And I'm just gonna finish cubing this. All right, now we're gonna make our dressing

We're gonna start with an olive oil. A good olive oil. Red wine vinegar. Pepper

And I love the pepper. Love what it does to the watermelon

This recipe was given to me by Damon Fowler, a buddy that lives in Savannah

And I'm just crazy about Damon. We have the best time when we get together

Down south, we go watermelon crazy for a few months. We're going to let that sit and just mix up a little bit

and we're going to just slice some onion rings. A purple onion would be real pretty in this

if you had it. You could even add some green onion tops for color. We're just going to

drop those rings over in there, like so. So all we're going to do at this point is pour

the dressing over it. This is a great way to enjoy watermelon, especially if you get

tired of just eating it plain. And plus it's good for you. Let's see if we can just toss

that around and just let that watermelon get around in that olive oil. And we're going

to use some fresh mint. And I'm going to get that right now. Now to get the full flavor

of mint, you need to crush it. And if you want to, I like mine whole so you can see it

But if you want to, you can just snap those leaves off and just do a quick chop, chop

chop on them, and that'll also help release that flavor. So that's good. Now that'll give us

some different sizes of mint. And we're just going to toss that up just a little bit. Now we're going

to add the last ingredient that really makes this kind of a funky little dish, and that's feta cheese

Just going to crumble it up in there. Look what that does to that watermelon. And you can see I'm

I'm not doing it very fine. I'm leaving it in big chunks too

Doesn't that look so good? Such an interesting way to eat watermelon

Now I love, as I said earlier, I love the black pepper with it. So I'm just gonna top it with a little bit more

Mmm. The flavors are, between the mint and the cheese and the onions, you just wonder

what in the world is that gonna taste like? And the answer is wonderful

And what goes just perfect with this delicious salad is a cool fresh glass of my homemade

iced tea. How refreshing. It's so good

When we come back, we're going to show you how to use the right herb the right way

Before we go today though, I want to talk to you a little about fresh herbs versus dried herbs

The dried herbs that you get in the store, like the ones that I decided not to use today

like bees, are very, very potent. They're very, very strong. You would need to use twice as many fresh as you would the dried

And remember, when you're buying your herbs, to buy them in small pots so that you can bring

them into your kitchen and sit them in the window and you can enjoy them all winter long

And another way to preserve some of your fresh herbs is picking off your leaves, letting them

dry out, store them in a jar, and then you can pull them out on a cold, cold winter day

and enjoy them right on. And remember, when you're using dried herbs, to just kind of re-crush them with your fingers

to release that flavor. But do remember, these are twice as strong as these

I'm so glad y'all dropped in on me today. I really had fun hanging out with you

And I hope that I've given you some good ideas and some good tips for your day in the garden

with the girls. The tomato sandwiches and the marinated shrimp salad and the watermelon salad are all perfect

dishes for a nice summer day. And of course, don't forget a cool, refreshing glass of sweetened iced tea

And until next time, America, I wish you best dishes from my kitchen to yours

Thank you