Long Lost Recipes

Today, we're making old things new again and reviving long-lost recipes

First, I'm recreating a recipe from one of Hollywood's most legendary restaurants

delicious grapefruit cake. Hey, Becky! Then, I'm helping a home viewer recreate a long-lost family recipe

Lips, smacking biscuits, and milk gravy. Thank you. And finally, I'm making a recipe from my childhood, fried crab

We're going to be kicking things off, y'all, with a delicious grapefruit cake

that was inspired by Hollywood's famous Brown Derby restaurant. And you know what? It's relatively easy to make

We're going to sift together three-fourths a cup of sugar, one and a half cups of cake flour

along with one and a half teaspoons of baking powder and a half a teaspoon of salt

Now, I've already got all those ingredients sifted in the bowl for you

because you don't want to watch me sifting, do you? The Brown Derby was actually opened

the year that my mother was born, 1926, and they closed in 1985

And as long as they were in business, they would not release or share any of their recipes

So I'm looking so forward to this one. All right. Now we've got our thing sifted

We're just going to make a little well because we're going to add our wet ingredients now

A fourth of a cup of water. A fourth of a cup of vegetable oil

About a half a teaspoon of grapefruit zest. You know, I love grapefruit

I think better than I do oranges. Oh, I just love them

And these bring back so many good memories for me. My grandmother and grandfather Hires lived in Winter Haven, Florida

and they had grapefruit trees and orange trees all over their yard

And my little grandmother, I can see Grandma Hires right now, teetering out in the yard in her high heels

I never saw her in any shoe other than a high heel

I never saw her in any clothes other than a dress. And she would teeter out there, 4 foot 10 inches tall

She would reach up into that grapefruit tree in the morning, pull down those wonderful grapefruits

and come back in the house and squeeze me some fresh grapefruit juice for breakfast

and there was just nothing better. So just the smell of grapefruit

brings back wonderful memories to me. So we're gonna need about three tablespoons

of grapefruit juice. So I'm gonna just juice that over my little strainer

to catch our seeds, and that looks like it should render about three tablespoons

Let's see what we got here. All right. Look, it's the color of my shirt

Because I'm using a pink grapefruit. Well, look, I had a little bit more than three tablespoons

So I'll just finish drinking that off. So good. All right, now I'm going to add three egg yolks

I have beaten the three egg whites that came off those yolks

along with a quarter of a teaspoon of crema tarta to make them nice and stiff

We just take our mixer, and we're just going to mix those ingredients

We've got our cake almost together. Easy, easy cake. You know, and it's not a big cake, is it

It's not like a lot of the cakes we make here in the South where they can be anywhere from 4 to 8 to 12 layers

So there we go. I'm going to turn it up just a little bit, making sure I mix those ingredients together real good

There we go. All right, we're going to come over here and we're going to take our egg whites

and we are going to fold those in to our batter. And you'll want to remember, you know, anything involving egg white, you might want to save

for a pretty day because rainy weather can really mess up meringues

So, we've got this all blended together. Now, I'm going to cook this cake in just one layer, and I have lined the bottom of my pan

with wax paper and I sprayed it so that our cake will come out nice and even for us I preheated our oven to 350 degrees and we going to bake this cake layer off

for about 25 minutes. So we just want to even that out

And I can see a lot of bubbles in this batter. So I'm just going to drop it

See, look at all the bubbles. See them bursting? So just a few drops on the counter

will cause those bubbles to rise and pop so we won't have those bubbles in the middle of our cake

after it's baked. So in the oven it goes for about 25 minutes

Up next, we're going to be making biscuits and milk gravy just the way Becky's grandma used to make them

And later, it's fried crabs, y'all, just like my grandma Paul used to make

Do you ever get too old to miss your grandparents? Hey, y'all, welcome back

I've got our cake baked, and I just cut that layer in two with a serrated knife

All we're going to do is take some fresh grapefruit sections, put this on top of the filling that we put on our first layer of cake

Now we're going to take our top layer and we're just going to put it on top of the grapefruit and the icing

Our icing is real simple to make. It's just one 12-ounce container of soft cream cheese

three-fourths a cup of powdered sugar, two teaspoons of fresh grapefruit juice

one teaspoon grapefruit zest, and six drops of a yellow food coloring

And we're just gonna frost this cake, tops and sides. I'm gonna be making this for my fat boy

Mm-mm-mm! So, I'm just gonna put a few pieces of grapefruit section just like this

It's beautiful, isn't it? I'm gonna taste that in a few minutes, but I want to share with y'all an email that I got from a viewer

It was so sweet. I get a lot of mail. And this email came from a young woman named Becky

Her grandmother lived in northeast Florida for over 40 years. She said every Sunday we'd wake up to the smell of her making her special breakfast

homemade biscuits and milk gravy. It was heaven, she says. And I can't tell you what I wouldn't give for just one more Sunday with my bomba

We're going to see if we can help her with some biscuits. Hey, Becky

You're going to make me cry. And listen, if you read that email, it made me want to cry

Listen, it's so sweet. So often we lose those recipes. So I'm going to see if I can't help you

Thank you very much. Well, thank you, honey. So let's start by making the biscuit

Okay. Now we have some flour, a little sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and buttermilk. Okay

And, of course, the thing that makes it so good, and that's the shortening

So let's measure out three cups of all-purpose flour into our bowl

I warned you I'm not a good cook. Listen, I bet you're a better cook than you give yourself credit for

I'm not. My husband is the cook in our family. I'm very blessed. He is. Now we are going to add two tablespoons of sugar

Okay. Now we need two and a half teaspoons of baking powder

Now because we're using buttermilk, we're going to add some soda to our biscuits

a half a teaspoon of baking soda. Alright. Now, the last thing we're going to add is

about a half a teaspoon of salt. Okay. So if you'll take your fork now and just

fluff all your ingredients together. Alright. We've got a half a cup of

solid shortening here. Put that into your flour. That doesn't look healthy

There we go. When you're eating a biscuit, you don't care, do you? Anybody really care

Does this look like I'm doing it correctly? It looks like you're doing it correctly

and maybe by tomorrow we'll have it cut in. There you go

You mean that to me, I can't cook. So you just keep cutting, girl

All right. And I'll start pouring in your buttermilk for you, and you can just work that buttermilk into your dry ingredients

There you go. And you can see that your dough is really, really wet now

If you want to wash your hands off just help yourself We going to move our bowl on over here Knead this dough just a few times

Okay. We don't want to overwork it, though, because that'll make our biscuits tough

Am I doing it correctly? Yes, you're doing it correctly. All right, that looks great

So we wound up using a cup of buttermilk. All right, so I'm just going to put that down just like that

Now, we're going to take our rolling pin. We're going to dust it with flour

and then we're just going to gently roll out our biscuit dough

Okay. May I do that? Yes, you may. Yay! Okay. There you go

I would stop right there if I were you, because I like thicker biscuits

I do too. All right, now here's your flour, and here are your biscuit cutters

So just dip your biscuit cutter down in there. Okay. And press it down into your dough

These are great looking biscuits, girl. So I'll spray the pan for you

And you just lay those biscuits out the way you like them

So now I'm just going to push down the middle of these because the last thing that we're going to do... Butter

You got it. Hit it, girl. I don't think you need any directions on that, do you

No. I like a lot of butter. Is that okay? That, no, that's not okay

Of course it's okay, girl. All right, our biscuits are ready to go in the oven

and hopefully these are going to live up to Becky's memory of her Bomba's biscuits

So we're going to bake these now. Put those in the oven. 450, and we'll probably bake them for about 14 minutes

Coming up, I'm making a milk gravy. It's delicious. Makes me want to cry

Tussie. It does. And later, fried crabs, y'all, just like my Grandma Paul used to make

Ladies, crab on your guest. And they will love them. Hey, y'all

I'm in here in the kitchen today with this cute young woman named Becky

Becky emailed me that she was having trouble with one of her grandma's recipes

So today's show is all about lost recipes. So I want you and I to be the first one to taste this grapefruit cake

that was inspired by Hollywood's famous Brown Derby restaurant. Mmm. It's delicious

Mmm. Mmm. This is delicious. I ate half the cake in one bite

Look at that big old bite, Becky. Mmm. Mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm

You know, we gotta make gravy. Your grandma made a milk gravy, you say

She did, and she didn't use sausage. So a lot of times they have, in restaurants, it has sausage in it

That's right. Oh, let me show you something, Paula. Okay. If you don't mind, before you get started

I brought this picture to share with you. It'll give me an opportunity to eat more cake. There you go. This is my grandmother

This is Bamba. This is Bamba. Her name was Cleo Moxley Bandy

And that's my favorite picture for her. I think she was 16 at the time in Kentucky

She was gorgeous. Just precious. Well, let's just prop that right there

So she can watch us make her milk gravy. And watch us make this milk gravy

So this is the bacon grease? This is the bacon grease. Now we're going to put a fourth of a cup

So that's quite a bit of bacon grease. Of course it is, child. Now we're going to add a fourth of a cup of flour

Smell that bacon? Yes. You smell that? That's the smell that makes this so good to me

Now, because this is a white gravy, we're not going to worry about browning it off

If I'm gonna eat a white gravy, I want it to kind of be white

All right. Open that milk, honey, and pour some milk in. It's about a cup and a half

There we go. I'm gonna change over to our whisk. All right, you want to whisk those lumps out, and you want to work with it pretty quickly

As you eat your cake. As I eat my cake. All right, so a little bit more milk, I think

A little bit more milk. Not too, too much, but a little bit more. Okay. All right, that looks good

Now, I like for my gravy to come to a good rolling bowl, you know, so that the flour taste will cook out

So this will get thicker and thicker, you know, as it cooks

Does that look like the color you remember? It does. All right, now see the way that's just cooking up

That really boiling I going to turn that down a little bit Becky Okay All right now let add our salt and pepper

That's delicious. Makes me want to cry. Tasty. It does. You know, the secret, Becky, is that bacon grease

Ooh. I would have never thought about doing that. Never, ever. Let the butter get too far away from you

Butter and bacon grease. Toot, toot. I mean, it's good, girl. All right, let's see if our biscuits are ready

Oh, Becky, they look so good. We did good, girl. We have done so good

I'm just going to split that biscuit. I can't wait to try this

Mm. Is it? I'm not going to cry on TV. And I'm not going to cry either

Oh. It's perfect. Becky, I hope that you go home and get in the kitchen on the weekends

and make these biscuits and gravy and think of all the times that you spent

feeling safe and secure with your bamba. Absolutely. You've got wonderful memories

Absolutely. That nobody can ever take away from you. As long as you're breathing

Y'all don't go anywhere. Today is all about long-lost recipes. Up next, fried crabs to remember

Well, I'm going to finish up today making deep-fried crabs

It was just something that my grandmother Paul used to cook. No matter where I've traveled, I've never seen this done before

Now, she used cornmeal for all her frying because she loved cornmeal

I've got a nice, fine, white cornmeal that I'm going to use

And I'm going to add a little salt to that. And Grandma loved heat

She was really into her black pepper. Now, I'm just going to take our crabs

So we're going to just parboil these for 10 minutes. It was a little work getting that off

I'm taking off the apron. I've backed our crabs. And I'm using blue crabs that we catch right out here in our backyard

Just going to pull the center stuff out. And you can see how the crab has an intention right in the center

Right down the middle. So we're just gonna snap those. All right, I'm gonna remove that little leg right there

And then Grandma would take the crab, run it through the meal just like this

and she would deep fry them. And they were so good. If you're starving, it'll take you a while to get full

but the flavor of these crabs are wonderful. It's just kind of a different way

I thought it was a very unique way that Grandma chose to serve crabs

Like I said, I've never seen anybody do this but my grandmother Paul

This brings back so many memories. Into the fryer basket. Uh-oh, I lost a piece of his crab, a piece of his claw

So drop those in just that quickly. We have got our crabs to go in

Listen to them popping, popping, popping. Oh, Grandmama, you know, do you ever get so old

Too old to miss your grandparents? I don't think so. Mmm, the smell is coming up

and it's only going to take a couple of minutes because when we steam our boiled crabs

we're looking at anywhere from 8 to 15 minutes. So they cook very, very quickly

You just want your meal to turn a nice golden brown. You know, if you're having a casual party out in the backyard

and you want a wonderful quick hors d'oeuvre, lay these crab on your guests

and they will love them. It'll certainly keep them occupied. I'm just going to transfer them to the paper towel for a second

and then I'm going to just move them right on over to our crab plate

How delicious do those look? Only my grandmama. I hope y'all have had a good time being with me today

It's been all about long-lost recipes. I send y'all loving best dishes out there to you

Until next week.