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. Dice of 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. Alright 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

All right. 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 gonna finish showing you how to complete

your cucumber dill sauce, and then we're gonna 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

refridged last night. So I'm going to 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 going to 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 going to garnish this by cutting the tip of this lemon off. So I'm going to

use that as his eye and then I'm going to come over here and I'm going to 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

gonna use with him and I'm gonna just fill this bowl up with our sauce. I'm gonna

nestle him right there. I'm gonna 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 gonna move on over here and put together

a hot spinach and artichoke dip. That is so good. Now I'm gonna start with two cans of artichoke carts

I'm gonna just put them in here. There's still a little bit of juice from the can

so I'm not gonna 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 gonna 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 wanna 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 finger 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

All right, so we're just gonna mix these up real good. All right, so we're gonna pour this in our bowl

Watch it, Gertie. I'm not disturbing your nap, am I? All right, we're just gonna 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 y'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

Alright, 250 degrees in a preheated oven for two hours

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

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

You're gonna 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

Mmm. 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 gonna 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 gonna 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 going to need the depth of this bowl. Knock those seeds out, and I'm going to fill this up with a dip

In two minutes, we've got a fabulous vegetable plate. I hope y'all won't 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 is 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

Thank you