Southern Brunch

Hi, I'm Paula Deen, and today I'm expecting some neighbors for brunch, so I thought I'd really put on the hog and pile my table high with southern delicacies

But first, I'm going to get out to the farm to gather some of my ingredients

And then I'm hightailing it back to the house to show you a simple egg casserole

I mean, no fuss at all. And then next, there's French toast stuffed to the gunwales with bananas and walnuts

And finally, there's these light, bright vegetable pancakes. I could eat about a hundred of them

So wear some stretchy breeches, y'all, and belly up to the brunch, Savannah style

Here in Savannah on the weekends, we just love being lazy

We like sleeping late and then getting up to a scrumptious, sinful brunch

And today I'm going to be working with different types of sweetenings

Instead of our normal syrup, we are going to change to honey

And I went on a field trip to find out how these bees actually make the honey, and it was so fascinating

So later on today, I'm going to be showing you some great dishes, introducing that fabulous sweetener, honey

My buddy Ray at Toosie Honey Farm is the king of all beekeepers

He took me out to show me where all his yummy honey comes from

Well, let's take a look. And I have to tell you, I am a little scared

All right. But I'm going to... What we do is we put a little smoke in the hive

Bees communicate with pheromones, with odors. Am I submitting a scared odor right now

Well, I would say don't breathe heavily in the hive. Breathe slowly

And what I do when I come in and present a little smoke on the top of the hive

that confuses them. It breaks their lines of communication. I would be ever so grateful if you would do that for me

All right, so we'll just open this up. See how they calmed down? Yes

Went back down in there? Except for this one around my face. What kind of honey is this

The flavor of the honey is dependent on the flower that it comes from

For instance, if you take buckwheat honey, that's very strong. Clover honey is very light

The flavor tends to be stronger as the season goes on, a lot like maple syrup

With maple syrup, the first flow is the lightest, the last flow is the heaviest, and the strongest in flavor

Well, tell me, when you buy honey that has the beeswax in it

now are you to eat that or do you chew it and get out the flavor, or is it just there to keep the flavor going

What's the point of that? You can eat the whole thing. The whole thing is edible. You can chunk this up and barbecue with it

You can put it on a pork loin for the last few minutes of the baking cycle. I've seen people do roast peaches with it and desserts

You can put a slice on a piece of hot apple pie. That sounds great

Well, Ray, let's head back and get some honey, because I've got to start cooking

We're going to begin today's menu with an egg dish. The beauty of this dish is not only is it good

it's easy you can prepare it the night before. So I love those kind of dishes

especially when I know I'm going to be sleeping late and I'm going to be a little on the lazy side

All we have to do is take our boiled eggs and slice them long ways

and line our casserole dish just like this. You know, a brunch just isn't a brunch

unless you involve an egg dish. And we do a lot of those in the South

All right, we've got our eggs in a greased casserole dish and this has been buttered with butter

and we're going to make just a simple white sauce. Over medium heat, we've melted our butter

and we're going to add our flour, and we're just going to stir that until it becomes pasty

just like that. All right, now we're going to add our half and half

and we're just going to stir this until it begins to thicken

and starts to bubble. We're going to add a little salt, pepper, and garlic powder

These are just great fun to do when I do have a weekend off

And it's so relaxing. The time of the day is just perfect

It's not lunch and it's not breakfast, it's brunch. See how nice and thick this has gotten

And now I'm going to add a fourth of a teaspoon of dry mustard

And for the best part of this dish a cup of Gruyere Look at that It looking sinful isn it

Look at it. The cheese is starting to melt. Oh! Now, to complete this simple dish, all we're going to do is pour this luscious white sauce

right on top of those eggs. Wouldn't you love to be an egg about right now

Just drinking up all that luscious cheese. All we do now is just top it with some grated Parmesan cheese

and we're ready to go into the oven. So, so simple. Now, if you're making this the day before

wait and top your Parmesan on it right before you get ready to bake it

We're just going to pop this into a 450-degree oven until hot and bubbly

which won't take long because you saw our sauce and the cheese. It was already nice and hot when I covered the eggs

So it won't take but just a few minutes. Now I have one ready here for us that's been in the oven about 30 minutes

If you make this dish the night before and it comes out of your refrigerator cold

you'll want to give it a little longer. Like I said, about 30 minutes will do the trick

But if you're putting it together that morning and all your ingredients are nice and hot

then it probably won't take more than 15, 20 minutes. So let's see what we've got here

Oh, it looks like a cheesy lasagna, doesn't it? On Sunday mornings at our house

Mother made sure that we had fresh sliced tomatoes with every breakfast

So that's what I'm going to serve with this. And just because it's Sunday and Sunday is a special day

I think I'll put just a little parsley on the plate just to satisfy Paula

Looks delicious, doesn't it? And you saw how very, very simple it was

So hot. And so sinfully wonderful

Y'all pour yourself a cup of coffee so you can stick around with me because next I'm

going to be making a fabulous banana walnut stuffed French toast to go along with that

extraordinary honey I found. The next recipe we're going to be making is going to make your family or friends feel like you've really indulged them and are really spoiling them

You know, we all love French toast, the hot, goopy, buttery toast

But we're going to take this French toast this morning and send it over the top

with just adding a couple of very simple ingredients. I've started here with a challah bread

It's nice and fresh and just rich in flavor. So again, this is another one of those simple, simple dishes

And your family's going to feel so very spoiled by it. And we're going to start just by beating up some eggs

You could actually use any kind of bread, whatever your favorite bread is

But I do like to use a whole bread so that I can slice it myself

I don't necessarily like the thickness of a bread that you buy that's pre-sliced

So we've gotten our eggs beaten up. All we're going to do is add a little milk

And we're going to take our bananas and just quickly peel them and mash them up

You'll want to use a nice ripe banana. You won't want to use a banana that's green

But this is the stage that I like to use my bananas in

You can see it's getting just a teeny bit of brown color on it

Your real, real overripe bananas that you can see. Sometimes they'll bundle them up and put them on special

They're in the produce section of the grocery store. Those are great for banana breads

a nice, ripe, soft banana. Wasn't it Elvis that loved fried banana sandwiches? I believe it was

He would have loved this dish, I bet. Now, you can use your fork. You can use your hands

or you could even use a pastry cutter, or you could even throw them into a food processor

Like I said, I love touching my food and feeling of it. This is a good one for the children to help

I think sometimes I'm still got a lot of kid in me

And I'm not gonna do it too, too smooth. I'm gonna leave chunks of bananas because when I bite into that toast

I wanna know that it a banana And I gonna add just crushed walnuts And going to take some fresh nutmeg and it makes all the difference in the world And I normally cook with real

butter, but I'm going to fry these up today in margarine because margarine has less tendency

to burn. So now we're just going to stuff our sandwiches. So we're just going to take

this and we're not going to take it to the edge because we're going to be kind of smashing

him down. That looks good enough to eat just like that, doesn't it? And we're going to

top him with the other piece, and we're going to sit him over here in our egg and milk mixture

Did I tell y'all where I got this recipe from? I don't know if I did or not, but before I moved

to Wilmington Island onto the water, I lived in a great little dollhouse downtown, a little

pre-Civil War house, and it sat right behind this huge mansion, and here I was in this little

bitty dollhouse. And I got to know the girl that turned this old home into a B&B. And her name is

Donna Sparks. And Donna takes the most beautiful care of her guest. In fact, one morning I was

I had run over to see her and we were sitting there giggling and laughing and doing the girl's

stuff. And I said, Donna, what are you cooking up in the morning for your guests? She said, Paula

I'm making them a wonderful banana walnut stuffed French toast. She said, you've got to have the

recipe. So she shared the recipe with me and I just couldn't believe it. And as I said, normally

I use butter, but this morning I'm using margarine because I don't want my French toast to burn. I

want it to just brown. And you can see this one's really, really sopped up that egg and milk

I mean, he's slick in my hand. He's like a, kind of feels like a fish, almost like I can't even

hold on to him. We're gonna cook these on each side for about two minutes, just

long enough for that egg to cook and to get the insides warm and steamy. And I

think these are probably ready to turn, and they are. I don't know what I would

do without my grandmother's spatula. You know you just can't find tools like this

anymore. I just love it and that allows me to get down underneath there and I'm

gonna add just a little bit more butter now because we don't want the other

sides to dry out. How delicious does that look? You know if it's yellowing in a

stick I call everything butter and I think I just said I was adding a little

bit more butter but I really didn't. This is margarine that I'm using because I

I don't want it to burn that bread or that delicate egg coating on the outside

So I think these are ready. Like I said, your family or your friends are going to feel like you've really gone to a lot of extra trouble for them

And you can see we didn't go to any trouble at all just throwing in a couple of ordinary ingredients that you have around your house anyway

So let's cut into him and see what he looks like. Oh, I bet Elvis would sing for this one

I'm going to just dress him up just a little bit. I love powdered sugar with my French toast

But now for the finale. some of that beautiful honey that I found

Look at the color of the honey on the toast. It's actually much prettier

than a dark syrup would be. You know I can't wait to taste it

Mmm. They're gonna love ya. If Elvis loved fried banana sandwiches, this would be the king right here

Stick around, cause coming up next, we're doing fried vegetable pancakes. This next dish that we're going to be making is just made to order for the vegetarian

This dish is wonderful in the fact that it has so many different uses

You can serve it as an hors d'oeuvre or a side dish to a meat entree

It's great served with scrambled eggs. As an hors d'oeuvre, it would be great topped with sour cream and caviar

and you could do them in little bites for your guests I love having a dish that will work in more than one way and this is definitely one of those dishes Now you can see I sliced up some green onion

and I've started on a carrot. I've started grating a carrot to go in there, and I'm going to finish

him up just very, very quickly. You're going to see that this is a little different from an ordinary

pancake. We're going to take our zucchini, ordinary zucchini, and you can see the colors

are starting to already come alive. I'm going to go ahead, my plate's getting full, so I'm

going to go ahead and dump them in there and just kind of toss them together. See all the

pretty colors and the different textures that your onion gives it? Simple, simple, simple

So we're going to take our milk and an egg. We're just going to whip those together just like that

and toss them into our vegetables. We'll give them a quick stir

And then we're going to come over here and mix up the ingredients

that's going to actually make our pancake. and that's going to be flour

and a half a teaspoon of salt and a half a teaspoon of baking powder

and that'll give them just a little fluff. I think I'll use this

And I smell our pan, it's starting to get hot so I'm going to go ahead, I have sprayed this pan

with a non-stick spray which works great in your cast iron. We're going to put just a little oil in there

We're going to mix up our dry ingredients and we're just going to toss this in with our

vegetables and our eggs. And I think our pan's ready. I see that our grease is starting to move around in our pan now, so we're going to come

over here and see what we've got. See how simple that is

And most of you would have these ingredients in your kitchen as well

something that you have to go out and hunt high and low for. And like I said, you can

make these any size that you want, depending on how you're going to use them. And you can

see how I'm rotating these around my pan. And let's see if we're ready here. Look how

pretty. It gives the word pancake a whole different meaning, doesn't it? Our vegetable

pancakes are almost ready to serve up. You think these look good? Wait until you see

my fresh peach smoothie, and that's next. I thought this yummy mouth-watering breakfast deserved something

rather than a glass of just ordinary coffee or juice. So I've made a delicious, cool, refreshing peach smoothie

All you do is peel your peaches, put them in a blender, and add ice

And today, I'm going to sweeten it with honey rather than sugar or a sugar substitute

I'm going to just drizzle a little down in the center so that that sweetener can go all the way through and then finish topping

And speaking of honey, sometimes if you don't eat it quick enough, you'll notice that it'll crystallize on you

Well, to fix that, all you have to do is pop it in the microwave just for a few seconds

and all the crystals will dissolve. And by the way, remember to store your honey at room temperature

And one last thing before we go. I'm real bad about letting bananas get too ripe on me

and when that happens, all I do is put them in a Ziploc bag

throw them into the freezer, and on the day that I've got time, I'll pull it out and they're ready for my banana breads and my muffins

I'm so pleased with my brunch menu today. I think that I really and truly have something for everybody, for all taste

beginning with the banana walnut stuffed French toast. I don't know who could resist that

And the egg casserole and the bacon. And I even had a chance to get some popovers in the oven

and I can't wait to bust it apart and drizzle it with honey. And, you know, I never did get to taste that vegetable pancake

I think I'll just quickly get a nibble before everybody comes to the table

Mmm, it's delicious. So until next time, America, best dishes from my kitchen to yours