Paula Goes International

Hey, y'all

I'm Paula Deen. And today, I'd like to share with y'all ways

that you can help yourself to some international cuisine without ever leaving the comforts of your home

I'm going to start with a Cuban sandwich with homemade chips. And then what do you say we run off to Europe

for Alice Jo's spaghetti sauce? It's so sweet and savory. And arriba, arriba

How about we head south of the border and munch on a wonderful, fresh taco salad

and Mexican wedding cookies. So y'all make yourself comfortable, because today, we ain't going nowhere

We're going to start today with a Cuban sandwich, but no sandwich is complete without a fabulously

wonderful homemade potato chip. I'm going to start by slicing a potato very, very thin

Now this is the secret to wonderful homemade potato chips. Just make sure you have a good sharp knife

Okay, so you can see how thin that is, and I really would have liked to have gotten it thinner

than that if I could, but I don't have my glasses on, so I'm doing the best I can

All right, I've got a pot of oil here that's heated to about 350 degrees

so we're just gonna drop our potatoes in there. There's nothing, nothing quite like a homemade potato chip

All right, so we're just gonna let those bubble, and I'm frying these in peanut oil

And I'm gonna keep that on pretty much a high flame because I think I'd really like my oil

to be up somewhere around 375, so we can fry them kinda quick and crisp

And you don't wanna overstuff your pot. All right, I'm gonna let those brown on off

and we're gonna come down here and start on our Cuban sandwich. Any kind of good soft but yet crusty bread

will work fine for this sandwich. Today I'm going to be using French bread

Now for our Cuban sandwich today, all I have is just a regular ham, which is certainly okay

But if you have the opportunity to go out and find a Cuban ham

it is so awesome. And I've heard that in Cuba they really

an original Cuban comes with like three different meats. Well, today I'm only going to use one

All right, so I'm going to put mayonnaise on one side of my bread. I'm going to come over here on the other and put some Dijon mustard

And I'm going to come in here with pickles. And just line that totally good with pickles

All right, and the next thing I'm going to come in here with is ham

You know, a Cuban sandwich is nothing like I had ever served in any of my restaurants before

So now we're going to add our Swiss cheese. It was so different from what I was accustomed to in the way of a sandwich

Now, at the restaurant, I have one of those little mini grills. It has a lid for making grill sandwiches, and that works great if you have one of those

but I don't have one here at the house, so I'm just going to butter this a little bit

put a little butter there. All right, I'm going to put that buttered side down

and smear just a little butter on this side. And since I don't have a weight

I'm going to take the next smallest down cast iron skillet, and I'm going to weight this sandwich with that skillet

If your pot happens to not be heavy enough to hold it down

I'm going to come in here and I'm going to add a teapot. So that's going to help weight that other side down

And look over here, y'all, at our potato chips. I'm going to cut them off

Don't those look just scrump-delicious? All right, now I'm going to take my seasoned salt

and I'm going to sprinkle our chips with a little of that

and I'm gonna kind of toss them around. And this gives our potato chip a barbecue flavor taste

All right, now here our sandwich just a sizzling now that we've got some extra weight on it

Now it's time to flip our sandwich. And I'm gonna come in here and just take my spatula

and flip it over. While that grilling on off I gonna come over here and start putting our plate together for our Cuban And I got some beautiful Boston lettuce

All right, so I'm going to just pile up my slaw. Add a few extra pickles to that

And I'm going to come over here and grab me a handful of potato chips

Oh, and I love them while they're still warm. Oh, hear the crunchiness

Mmm. So, so good. I'm going to take our sandwich out now

Oh, and it's hot, hot. How's that for a Cuban sandwich

I love the bread because it's like real crispy. Mmm. And the mustard and the pickles and the mayonnaise

are all perfectly yummy together. Mmm. I don't know about y'all, but I think it's time to leave Cuba

and go on to what they say is one of the most beautiful countries in Europe

Let's eat our way through Italy. You want to try? So while y'all are gone, I'm going to be browning the ground beef for Alice Jo's spaghetti sauce

So I'll see y'all back in a few minutes. Hey, welcome back, y'all, to international meals today

And as promised, I've got my ground beef brown while y'all are away

Now, I've got about an extra pound here that I'm not going to need for our spaghetti sauce

So I'm going to pull out about a pound, leaving us approximately a pound and a half

because we're going to use this in a few minutes in another dish

Alright, now to our ground beef, I'm gonna add one onion that's been chopped, one green

bell pepper, one clove of minced garlic, and we're just gonna saute that off just

for a couple of minutes. The name of this spaghetti sauce is Alice Jo's

spaghetti sauce. This is what Alice Jo cooks for the seniors at the church

Everybody has their own way of making spaghetti. I have my own personal way, the

way I like to make it, and you know it's just one of those dishes that you can

personalize and make your own, but today we're gonna do it Alice Jo's way. Now to

I'm gonna add a tablespoon of Italian seasoning. Miss Alice Jo puts in two tablespoons of sugar

which I don't normally do when I make spaghetti, and I'm gonna use a tablespoon of Worcestershire

All right, now I'm gonna add two six-ounce cans of tomato paste

All right, now I'm gonna add a can of diced tomatoes or stewed tomatoes

All right, now I'm gonna put a little bit of salt. I'm gonna add a can of tomato sauce

And then I'm gonna add a cup of water. And I'm just gonna clean out that tomato sauce bowl

by pouring my water over in there and just rinsing all of that sauce out of there

So I'm gonna bring this back to a rolling bowl, and then I'm gonna cover it

and I'm gonna let it simmer for about 30 minutes. So I've got another pot ready down here

So I'm just gonna take this lid and cover that. So you can see what our spaghetti sauce looks like

after simmering for 30 minutes. It's rich, thick, just loaded with flavor

All right, our noodles should be ready. And I'm using a box pasta, y'all

And I'm just going to drain this. A few shakes, and back in the pot it goes

Oh, it's so good. Miss Alice Jo takes some of her sauce and tosses everything together Oh it looks so yummy

Okay. Now to plate this, I've got my spaghetti spoon. These are wonderful

If you don't have one of these, you'll want to see that you get you one

and you can buy them at the grocery store, you know, in that section where they have different utensils

Okay, all right, now I'm gonna just add some extra sauce to that

Mmm. All right, that just looks perfectly yummy. Gonna just dust it with a little Parmesan cheese

and I've got a little mozzarella salad over here, and some French bread to go with it

Mmm. Look how yummy. I can't hardly wait to taste it

And I'm gonna put some butter on it and eat it the way I like it

Mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm. Mmm

That fixed it right up, Alice Jo. You forgot that stick of butter, honey

So good. Well, this end of the counter is Italy, y'all. Follow me down to this other end, and we're going to Mexico

We're going to make a taco salad today. Now, you remember when I said I was going to pull out about a pound of ground beef from earlier

Well, that's gonna go in our taco salad. So I've got some lettuce that I started shredding

And then I'm just gonna finally shred our lettuce. All right. So we've got our lettuce all shredded

And there's a number of ways that you can make this salad. I'm gonna add just some diced sharp cheddar cheese

And I'm gonna add one onion that's been diced. Diced tomatoes

Alright, now I'm gonna add some ground beef that I reserved

And I'm gonna toss it. when we come back I'm gonna finish fixing this taco salad

and then I'm gonna be making us Mexican wedding cookies to eat along with our buttered spaghetti sauce

Welcome back, y'all. While you were away, I polished off my buttered pasta

and it was so good. So we're gonna work our way through

the rest of our international meals, and I'm gonna finish up this taco salad

Now I've got our cheese in it, I've got our ground beef

I've got tomatoes, and I've got onions. Well, next I'm gonna add a flavored tortilla chip

and then I'm gonna add about a cup of salsa. And then I'm gonna add about, well, yeah, about a cup or a little over a cup of Catalina dressing

So we're gonna keep it all kind of red. Just gonna give this all a toss

And if you have just a little bit of lettuce, naturally you wouldn't want to add that much

wet to your salad. or if you had more lettuce than I have, then you'd want to add more

All right, now I'm just going to pile this up on our platter. Now, all I'm going to do to this is add some just shards of fried tortilla chips

We're just going to kind of stick them around in there because they make the best spoons

And now I want to move y'all on down to the dessert that I'm fixing for y'all today

Now this is called a Mexican wedding cookie. It's a very simple cookie. It takes very few ingredients

I'm going to start with two sticks of butter. I'm going to add half a cup of powdered sugar

I'm going to add one and three-fourths cup of all-purpose flour. And a teaspoon of vanilla

And we just going to beat these together until they smooth This cookie has been given more names than any other cookie People everywhere have a different name for this wonderful rich cookie

All right, I'm going to turn this up a little bit. I think I've got it where I'm not going to spray myself with flour

All right, now the rest I'm going to do by hand. I'm going to add a cup of finely minced pecans

And then I'm just going to come in here with my hands

and the heat from my hands is going to finish softening that butter up

See how it's already sticking together? Now, you can make this cookie in a lot of different shapes

You can make them in fingers. You can make them in balls

But today, I'm going to make these in the shape of a crescent. and you just start off by giving them the shape of a finger

and then give it a little twist and you've got a crescent. And it really doesn't matter how you shape these

They're delicious. Any shape you can get them. I remember my grandmother Paul making these so often

and grandma would make them in different shapes depending on the mood she was in

All right, that completes our pan. Now, I'm gonna put these into a preheated 275 degree oven

and we're gonna let them bake for about 40 minutes. The reason we're gonna bake them so long

is because they're a very dense cookie. They're kind of a heavy cookie

All right, so our oven is preheated. It's set on 275 degrees

and we're gonna let those bake for about 40 minutes. And I've got some in the other oven that's been baking

and they should be ready, and they are. You don't want this cookie to get too dark

You want it to be just a nice light brown. All right, now to finish this cookie off

I've got some powdered sugar here. And while these are warm, we're just going to pick them up

and just roll them in powdered sugar. And that's how we get them sweet

So I'd be willing to bet that if you had a sweet tooth

that you could go to the cabinet and find all of these ingredients right in your own pantry

Nobody will know that I slipped one. I don't think I'm doing a good job of slipping this cookie

I think it's going to wind up all over me. I'm going to clean up

I'm going to get rid of all the evidence. and when we come back, I've got a tip for y'all

that's going to make your international traveling and eating easier. For those of us that like international flavors

but don't get the opportunity to travel internationally, I've got a few tips that you can use to make your foods taste a little bit more international

If you love olive oils, these are some great tips. If you don't like olive oil, you can use a nice light vegetable oil

But if you'll learn to flavor your olive oils with different flavors, you'll just find more ways to use them

In this bottle, I have heated red pepper flakes along with the olive oil

and it turns the olive oil red and it's just wonderful on lettuce leaves or anything that

you want a little bite to. And in this jar I have olive oil, lime and mint. It would be wonderful on

fish. And in this one I've added lemon and fresh dill that will also be great on fish. And over on

this side I've got a basil olive oil and I've got a rosemary flavored. And in this last beautiful

I've emulsified a variety of herbs and I heated them up with the olive oil

And there's just going to be all kinds of wonderful flavors in this jar

So if you're looking for a way to make your meals a little bit more international

I hope these tips are going to be just the trick. Munga, munga

Well, y'all, I've had such a good time today. You know, I feel like we've been all over the world, and we never even left the kitchen

I didn't really have to because we had that fabulous spaghetti and the taco salad and the Mexican wedding cookies

and ooh, that Cuban sandwich that I so do love. I'm so glad y'all were with me today

This is going to have to do, y'all, until we can do the real thing together

So until next time, I send y'all loving best dishes from my international kitchen to yours