Hot Air Balloon

Hey, everybody. Y'all come on in. I'm Paula Dean, and today I'm going to give you the lowdown on low country cooking

But first, we've got to go down the road for some of my favorite farm-style sherbet, but that's just dessert

Next, it's back to the house to pop this big old ham and a couple of juicy yams in the oven

and let them set while we work on our turnip greens and some classic cornmeal dumplings that are simply to die for

And finally, the angels will be singing for these creamy squares of clouds and sunshine

So kick it into low gear and call in the neighbors, because today the lady is cooking low and slow

Hi, today's program is all about some favorite foods of mine that I grew up on in the South

But don't ever underestimate our sweet tooth. Before I get started, we're going to go get some heavenly treats

So come on with me. What you doing, Joe

Hey, Paula, how are you today? You making me a banana split

You betcha. You knew I was coming, didn't you? What kind of flavors do you have in there

Well, we have orange sherbet, raspberry sorbet, and strawberry ice cream. You're going to help me eat this, though, aren't you

Surely you didn't make this, but just me. Let me come down here and get some

Now, what did you say this was? Tangerine? That's orange sherbet. Orange sherbet

That's what I've come for today. I'm going to make you some fresh. Oh, that's too bad

I have to have fresh ice cream. The first thing we're going to do is put our ingredients in up here

and the first thing we're going to need is a little bit of milk. You're using whole milk, aren't you, Joe

Oh, yeah. We're going to add some water. Uh-huh. And then we're going to add our sugar

This is what gives us all our flavor. We're going to add those right in here also. I bet that's very, very powerful, isn't it

Yes, they both are pretty powerful. It's quite a bit of flavoring

because you want to really juice it up a little. All right. Ready

Is it soup yet, Joe? It looks ready, Paula. Come on

Put this inside for you. Pack that up. And you're going to be all set

Joe, you've got me a perfect ending to a perfect meal. Thanks so much

Thank you. I'll see you later. You come back and visit us again. I'll do it

Do y'all think I got enough ice cream? That will feed a family of four

All right, the very first thing that we're going to start with now is one of a southerner's probably favorite meats

and that's fresh pork. And I think we're going to go ahead and put him in a tray

so I can be just as sloppy as I want to be. This had to have been a mighty fat call

Isn't he just beautiful? What we're going to do to him now is very, very simple

I'm going to sprinkle him with soy sauce and just kind of rub that into him

Y'all know how I like to rub my meat and touch my meat. And I like to rub the seasonings into it

If I didn't rub my meat, look, it would just sit there and roll off

I want it to get into it. Now we're going to add our house seasoning

And y'all will hear me say a hundred times what our house seasoning is. is it's a cup of salt, a fourth of a cup of black pepper

and a fourth of a cup of garlic powder. So we're just gonna coat him good with that

Because like I said that salt is gonna kind of form a crust on him We gonna throw him in the oven and we gonna put him in a 325 oven and we gonna cook him approximately 20 minutes a pound

And because we're cooking him in a slower oven, we're not even gonna have to cover him

and I've got one in the oven that's been cooking for about four hours now, and how beautiful

Now you're going to want to open the oven periodically and just spoon your juices on top of him

Isn't he just beautiful? Can you tell why us southerners love pork

It's going to be so good. The reason I like this cut of meat is because three nights in a row you can have three totally

different meals. Tonight, we're going to slice it and serve it warm, but tomorrow at lunch

we're going to have a nice fat sliced pork roast sandwich with lettuce and tomato and onions

And then the next night, I can chop it up, toss it in barbecue sauce, and we've got barbecue

sandwiches. So it makes it so versatile. It's wonderful. And while that's sitting there resting

we're going to start on our sweet potato yams. Now, I have put these yams in the oven and baked

them for about an hour, and I've let them cool long enough for me to remove the skin

And see how it'll just peel right off for you. All right, and we're just going to line them up

like that. Then I just slice them all at one time, because we're going to be pouring sweet sauce over

them, and I want them to go all the way through. To make our sauces ever so simple, we are going to

make what they call a simple syrup. And we've started with boiling water, brown sugar, and

I want you all to take note of this now, I'm only using a half a stick of butter. Which

you have to admit is unusual for me. We're going to drop a couple of little pieces of

cinnamon stick in there, and we're going to put a little fresh grated nutmeg. Once I discovered

fresh grated nutmeg. I just can't use any of that packaged ground stuff. This makes it

so much better. All we've got to do now is add an orange strip, and don't leave this

out. If you have to run to the store to buy an orange, by all means do it. We've got one

last thing to put in here, old number seven. And we're going to put about a third of a

and I'm going to use our little butter cup to measure, and that looks just about right

So we've got all of our ingredients in there. All we're going to do at this point is put a lid on it

and let it simmer for about 30 to 45 minutes. We want this to start turning to a syrup

thickening up just like the syrup that we eat on our pancakes

cakes. Rennie! My cooking buddy Rennie. Actually Rennie's my eating buddy. Okay, I have a pot here

that already made a syrup. So all we're going to do now is pour our syrup over our potatoes

we don't want to be stingy with our syrup. We want to give those sweet potatoes

plenty of juice to cook in. Don't those look delicious? So we're going to put these in the oven

and we're going to bake these for about 30 to 45 minutes. But while we're waiting on that

I've got some ready over here on the counter that I think are ready for us to taste

Oh, and you can see how the tops have kind of caramelized on us

Oh, they look perfectly heavenly delicious. And you know I can't eat a yam without a little piece of pig to go with it

So far, so good. Oh, gosh

You know, this reminds me of my mother's kitchen at Easter. Look at that

It's out of this world. But now, just gotta taste some of that pork along with it

It just perfect along with the yams Y don leave me because next We gonna make some out of sight turnip greens and cornmeal dumplings to go along with this southern meal

So y'all come back. Look at all these beautiful greens I have over here

Wonderful fresh turnip greens. They do require a little care, though. The first thing we're going to do is strip the greens away from the stem

Where the green starts, you just stop and pull, and it's out of there

And before you know it, you'll have a big bowl full, and you're going to think, oh, my gosh, I don't have a pot big enough for these

Well, let me tell you, let me tell you a little secret about turnip greens. You can have a barrel this big and that deep

and when you get through cooking them, it's going to go down to about this size right here

The other thing I want to tell you about greens is they can be very, very gritty

because they grow down into the dirt. so you're going to want to make sure you wash them very, very good

get all that grit out of them. So we've got our greens, and over here in this pot

I've had ham hock cooking for about an hour and a half

Now, if you would like, you can certainly swap out ham hock for smoked turkey wings

and you can find these in most any of your grocery stores. They make a great seasoning

and you will have to cook them about the same length of time that you will the ham hock

Now these greens that I have up here that I've de-stemmed have been washed three times

They're nice and clean. So here we go, that water's boiling, and we're just gonna put them down in that broth

and you can see how quickly they'll break down. So depending on the greens

they could take anywhere from 30 minutes to 45 minutes to an hour, depending on whether they're young

or they're older greens. So you'll just have to test your greens

And while those are cooking, I'm going to be preparing the roots that we're going to put in there

So to prepare your root, just trim both ends off and peel them like so

These take about 12 to 15 minutes. So we'll add those towards the very end of our cooking time

And we'll just slice them just like we would a potato, a cottage potato

Just like that. Now I'm going to come back to our pot now that our greens have kind of wilted down

and I'm going to add a chicken bouillon cube. And remember, this contains a lot of salt, too, so I'm going to drop that in

And one other thing I'm going to do to these turnip greens that my grandmother Paul did not do

I'm going to put a little ground ginger in them, just a pinch

All right, so I'm going to cover these up, and while they're cooking, I'm going to go

on to make my grandmother's cornmeal dumplings. When I was cooking my turnip greens, I put in a little extra broth so that I could have

the extra broth to pull out. So we're going to mix up our cornmeal dumplings by starting with a white, medium ground, plain cornmeal

a little bit of salt, a little bit of chopped onion, and I like adding a little green onions

They just add a lot of interest in color. And one egg. All right, now we're just going to pour a little bit of that broth, and you'll want to

do a little bit at the time, because remember, you can always add two, but it's hard to pull

it back out. But see how simple that was? So all we're going to do is pick up a spoonful of our dough and mold it, and we're just going

to drop those down in the hot boiling liquor, and it seems to be holding together nicely

And we're gonna let those cook for, oh gosh, maybe about 10 minutes

It really doesn't take them very long because we're gonna let them boil pretty good

Oh, look at that pot of turnip greens. Now I've added those sliced turnip roots

They've cooked and look how beautiful they are. Now I'm gonna take our cornmeal dumplings

and I'm just gonna lay them around on the greens, just like Granny taught me to do

How wonderful do they look? I want to make sure I get me a little piece of everything

Talking about putting some south in your mouth. This is it. And then I'm going to grab me a corn stick

They so good But there still a sweet ending to all this so don y leave me

When I was a little girl, I think my very favorite ice cream in the whole entire world was called a Dream Sickle

It had a white vanilla center, and it was covered with an orange sherbet, and I just loved them

I thought that they were named appropriately. So we're gonna recreate that dreamsicle by very simply making us a layer of orange sherbet

Now we're gonna make our bottom layer, which is actually gonna wind up our top layer

we're gonna make it about an inch thick. I've softened this sherbet so we can easily get it into our bowl

And then we're gonna come with our next layer about an inch deep and do the vanilla ice cream

Just kind of take your finger and work your ice cream to form that next layer

All right, so here we go with another sherbet layer. We're just going to kind of slide him right off the spoon

All right, we're going to finish up now with the vanilla layer

and this is actually going to be the bottom. All right, we've smoothed him out

Now we're just going to cover him with wax paper and put him into the freezer and let

him stay until he's good, good and hard. And I have one right here that's ready

So we're going to see what our dreamsicle tastes like, see if it's what we remember

I'm going to invert him onto this plate. And you can see he's still sitting in the container

So just in case that happened, I had a rag over here soaking in warm water and I'm just

going to lay it on top of this and that should release the ice cream from the bowl

See how pretty and how easy he just slipped right out of our mold

All I'm gonna do now to garnish him is just put a little fresh mint in there and look

at this fresh orange zest. How pretty is that? This dessert looks like we've gone to a lot of trouble but in reality we haven't

And so before he melts, I think I ought to taste him though, don't you? And see if my dreamsicle is a reality or a dream

I'm six years old again. It's out of this world. Y'all stick around because coming up next

I've got a few tips to share with you. Before I leave y'all today

I wanted to share with you a few tips that might make your southern meal go just a little bit smoother

Moving on down to our meats, the kind of meats that you cook your greens in. My first preference is ham hock, but if you can't find it for some reason

and you can't find the smoked turkey wings, you can always get a nice smoked slab of bacon

You can slice this in thick strips and fry it up in your pan

Get the seasoning out of it, and then add your water. And to add just a little extra zest and crunch to your sweet potatoes, you can take pecans

or even walnuts and just crush them up and toss them over your potatoes

Let's talk about greens for a second. There's a lot of different greens that you can cook, but to be true to my heritage, I

have to say that I prefer collards, turnips, or mustard. The mustard green is even tarter than the turnip green and it'll make you a fabulous

pot of greens. I hope that I've managed to bring a little Savannah sunshine to y'all with my Southern Comfort food

The yams are so good. And the pork roast. And don't forget the turnip greens and cornmeal dumplings with that ham hock in there

And look at all the things that you can do with that pork roast. And don't forget the delectable dreamsicle dessert

so until we eat again America best dishes from my kitchen to yours