Neighborhood Cocktail Party

Hey y'all, I'm Paula Deen

You know, do you really want to impress the neighbors? Well, how about a neighborhood cocktail party

Today, I want to show you an amazing menu that will leave them thinking you're the best cook in town

We're going to start off with an elegant poached salmon mousse with a yummy dill sauce

And then next, it's going to be fresh asparagus with a curry dip that's just perfect for snacking

and then my savory spinach and artichoke dip that's just over the top

And then I'm going to show you how to make one of my favorite appetizers, bacon crisp

You're not going to believe how good or easy. And then last but not least, for dessert

it's my sinfully sweet date nut sticks. So y'all whistle for the neighbors

because we're going to have a party. Hey, y'all

I'm getting ready to go to a neighborhood cocktail party. And the good news is that the cocktail party is not at my house

And, you know, it's kind of unfair for one person to have to host the party and do all the cooking

So my friend Barbara has agreed to have it at her house. So the least I could do was prepare some things to take to eat

I've got the champagne chilling. And I want you all to hang with me because you're not going to believe the dishes that I'm going to be fixing up to take to Barbara's

I know they're going to love them. And I think you will, too. Well, let's move right along with the first dish

that I'm contributing to the party tonight. We're going to start by making a poached salmon mousse

with a yummy dill sauce. But the only thing about this dish is you must make it ahead of time

A minimum of eight hours to overnight, this is going to have to sit for us

But it's so easy and simple to put together, and I love anything that I can make ahead of time

Now, I've got a bowl here that I'm going to add one pack of plain gelatin to

and then I'm going to add a fourth of a cup of cold water

and I'm going to let that start blooming. And then I've got some boiling water right here

and we're going to add a half a cup of this hot, hot water. Okay

and we're gonna add that to our plain gelatin. We're gonna add one tablespoon of grated onion

It's gonna give you a lot stronger flavor than it would if you were just chopping your onion

And next we're gonna add some capers and a half a cup of mayonnaise

and a tablespoon of fresh lemon juice

a tablespoon of fresh lime juice. Don't use the reconstituted. The fresh is so much better

Diceous salt, a little paprika to kind of boost the color of that salmon along

and I'm going to add one cup of beaten whipped cream. Because this is going to be a savory dish, not a sweet one

So we're just going to mix all of those ingredients together. All right, now to the rest of our ingredients

I'm going to add just a couple of dashes of hot sauce. Now you can add as much of that as you want

And now I'm going to come in here and I'm going to flake my poached salmon. I'm going to remove that skin

And your skin will just slip right on off. And then I'm just going to flake it into the mousse

All right, now I'm just going to fold that salmon into the other ingredients

and I've got a fish mold that I'm going to pour our mousse into

And this has been buttered very, very well because I don't want to have any trouble when I go to unmold it

All right now we just going to wrap this up seal this up with a plastic wrap and we going put this in the refrigerator and we gonna let him sit at least at least eight hours or overnight

Alright, so in the meantime, let's go ahead and start on our dill sauce. Alright

So I'm going to cut the tips off and we're just going to slip this skin off of our cucumber

All right, so we've got that peeled and I'm going to grate this cucumber and I'm going to use a

strainer because as you probably know, cucumbers contain a tremendous amount of water

There's really no pretty way to do this. Not all that easy to grate because of the seeds

There we go. All right. Look, I want to show you something

Look at all the water that has come out of that cucumber. When we come back, now that I finally got this bad boy grated

I'm going to finish showing you how to complete your cucumber dill sauce

And then we're going to make one of my all-time favorite cocktail foods

a spinach artichoke dip with mayonnaise. Okay, y'all, in case you've just peeked in on me, I'm planning some dishes for a cocktail party that I'm going to

And I want to show you how I put together this yummy cucumber dill sauce

All right, now I have drained my cucumber that I grated. And in the bowl that goes with one clove of minced garlic

a tablespoon of fresh lemon juice, and remember to keep it fresh, not a reconstituted

All right, a cup of mayonnaise, one cup of sour cream, a pinch of salt, and two-thirds

of a cup of diced fresh dill. And that's all it is to the sauce. We're just going to

stir this together, and I'm going to put it in the fridge so those flavors can marry

together, maybe 30 minutes. And this is going to be just a perfect sauce for our salmon

Mmm, it's yummy. All right, let's put this away. And I've got another one that's been

in here for about an hour. And our mold that I put in the refrigerator last night, so I'm

gonna unwrap this and you can see with it being a fish that I wanted to use some

type of seafood mold. Now I'm just gonna gently put him in a little warm water

I want to make sure that it doesn't get into our mousse. Okay and I'm gonna come

over here with a knife and just soften those edges a minute. Okay so I'm gonna

situate my platter on top of him. Okay. I'm gonna hope that he comes out. There he goes

Now I'm gonna garnish this by cutting the tip of this lemon off. So I'm gonna use that

as his eye. And then I'm gonna come over here and I'm gonna just cut some little strips

of lemon. Now I'm going to come in here and I'm just going to accentuate his tail with

these lemon strips. Alright, I wanted to add a little dill because I've got this wonderful

dill sauce that we're going to use with him and I'm going to just fill this bowl up with

our sauce. I'm going to nestle him right there. I'm going to take a little paprika and kind

of just do on his body. All right, now the only thing we need to eat this dish is a wonderful

cracker Now I got two or three different kind of crackers here Personally I love bagel chips So that all you need to have along with this dish Now I going to move on over here and put together a hot spinach and artichoke dip

That is so good. Now I'm going to start with two cans of artichoke hearts

I'm going to just put them in here. There's still a little bit of juice from the can, so I'm not going to pour that in there

Now, if you don't have a food processor, you could do this by hand, but I'm just going to pulse

I don't want to puree it, but I just want it chopped nice and fine

Because when I bite into it, I want to be able to get those pieces of artichoke

All right, we're just going to put our artichoke in our bowl. Now I have a package of chopped frozen spinach that I popped in the microwave and cooked him for like five minutes on high

And you'll want to make sure that after you take him out of the oven that you squeeze all that juice out of there

And you'll need to let it cool off before you can do this. Look how much water that one 10-ounce package of spinach yielded

It's just amazing. You know how much water vegetables have in them

All right. Now we're going to mix a half a cup of mayonnaise

It's got all my favorite condiments in it. A half a cup of sour cream

and a cup of grated Parmesan cheese. And we're just going to stir all this together

We're going to put this in a preheated 350-degree oven, and we're going to bake it for about 30 minutes

Now, I'm going to bake this in a cast-iron skillet. All right, so I'm just going to pile this into the skillet

All right, now I'm going to top it with a grated pepper jack cheese

And in the oven it goes for 30 minutes. All right, so in the oven it goes

Oh, and look at that. How yummy does that look? Mmm

This is so incredibly wonderful. When we come back, it's gonna be date nut sticks

so you won't want to miss it. You won't believe how good it is, how simple

Well, thanks for coming back and joining me. We're almost ready to wrap this cocktail party up

I can't hardly wait to fix these for you, but before we start this, I want to come down here

and get the date nut fingers started. I'm going to take a stick and a half of butter

and I'm going to put it in our saucepan, along with two eggs

two cups of granulated sugar. All right, now we're going to mix this up

and we're going to let that butter melt, and then I'm going to throw in one eight-ounce package of chopped dates

This is the healthy ingredient to this yummy snack. All right, now we would cook this for about 10 minutes

Once it comes to a boil, we would cut down our heat, stirring it constantly, cook it for 10 minutes

Well, I've already got a pot up here that I've cooked for 10 minutes. So all we're going to do at this point is add a cup of chopped pecans

and a cup and a half of a rice-type cereal and a tablespoon of vanilla

Alright, so we're just going to mix these up real good. Alright, so we're going to pour this in our bowl

Watch it Gertie. I'm not disturbing your nap am I? Alright, we're just going to let that cool just for a few minutes

Now there's a couple of ways you could do this. you could butter your hands so that it won't stick because it's a little bit of a messy job

But I got some ice water that I going to dip my hands in because when I go to pick this up it help cool off the date nut stick as well as keeping it off my fingers

Okay now what we're going to do at this point is I have some sweetened flaked coconut

and roll them in the coconut. See how pretty those look. And to let people know what they're going to be biting into

I'm just going to pile up some dates right in the center

And look how pretty they look. I can't wait to show you all this next little appetizer

They're so good. So I've gotten some fresh grated Parmesan cheese and I'm going to put about a tablespoon

on each cracker. Now I've gotten my bacon and I've cut them in two horizontally. Now

we're just going to take our bacon and wrap it around that cheese and cracker just like

that. We're gonna bake these at 250 degrees for two hours and we're gonna

bake them slow because we want that bacon to get nice and crisp

Yum. All right 250 degrees in a preheated oven for two hours and we're

We're gonna see if we can do this without disturbing Gertie's nap

All right. All right, I've got some that's been in here a couple of hours

I'm gonna set them over here. I'm gonna step over here and wash my hands

I can hardly wait for y'all to make this recipe if you've never had this before

going to be so surprised that something that simple, that easy, can have the kind of flavor

and taste that this has. They are truly spectacular and after all these years, remain one of my

favorite hors d'oeuvres. I can't describe how good they are. And I'm going to come down

here. Look at that. Very sweet and very healthy tasting. I'm gonna run for a minute y'all

Meet me back because I've got some tips for you. We're going to talk about dips and fresh

vegetables. So I'll see y'all back in a few minutes. So, you know, maybe you don't have a pretty bowl to serve your vegetables in

That is so easy to fix. I just happen to have some beautiful colored bell peppers in the refrigerator

I'm going to cut the top off of that and just pop the center out just like that

Oh, it smells so good and the color is so beautiful. I'm going to fill this with some blanched asparagus

And look how beautiful the yellow and the green is. together and I'm gonna put it on my plate and then I'm gonna come in here with a

red bell pepper and I'm gonna slice it the other way and I'm just gonna take a

little piece of it off just like that because I'm gonna need the depth of this

bowl, knock those seeds out, and I'm gonna fill this up with a dip

In two minutes we've got a fabulous vegetable plate. I hope y'all think of

this one when you're in a last-minute jam. My friend Barbara's having a cocktail

party and I know how difficult it is to get your house cleaned up and prepare

all the food. So I'm bringing her a few dishes to help her out. The poached salmon mousse with

the dill sauce, it's just such an elegant appetizer. And the date nut sticks are just a fun little

sweet finger food. And the artichoke and spinach dip is so over the top. But the one thing that I

really, really want y'all to try is this little appetizer that I've been making since I was a girl

the bacon crisp. You're not going to believe how delicious it is. So I hope that when y'all have a

cocktail party or you need a dish to take to somebody's house, that you'll think of one of

these. So until next time, America, I send you love and best dishes from my kitchen to yours