Southern Cocktail Party

Hey, y'all. I'm Paula Deen, and today you're in for some good old Southern hospitality

because I'm throwing a cocktail party. And before we get started, I've just got to head down to one

of my favorite shops here in Savannah called Kitchen Caboodle, and I'm going to be picking

up an ice ring that I've just got to have for my punch. And what a fun surprise it was to bump

into my boys. It looked like they were planning a little party of their own. Well, I'm going to

have to hurry if I'm going to get everything on the table on time. To start, I'm going to create

my creamy onion canapes and pecan stuffed dates that are simply scrumptious. And then it's my

cedar plank salmon topped with a wasabi cream that's going to be the main attraction for today

And finally, no southern cocktail party would be complete without my perfect punch. So y'all put on

your party dress and grab your favorite friend because we're gonna party

Hey, y'all. I'm finally taking time out tonight to have a cocktail party for a few friends

And I've gotten everything working and underway, but I've scoured my cabinets, and I can't find my ice ring

And I can't do this party without one. So I'm going to see my friends down at Kitchen Caboodle

And I hope you'll come along with me because their shop is just adorable

What in the world? I thought I recognized those voices. Hey, Mom

What are y'all doing? What's going on? I'm having a cocktail party tonight

You are. Zoe? We are, too. You are. Doing some martinis. Great, great

We're going to grill tonight. Bobby's actually. What are you cooking? I'm gonna cook tenderloin and fire roasted corn and make a tomato pie

This is what y'all ought to be buying. Nothing could be truer. My family tree is full of nuts

Or at least one big one. I'm actually making a southern comfort punch

And y'all saw me a few years making those ice rings. I cannot find my ice ring anywhere, so I said, well, I knew I could run down here and find them from Janice, so that's what I'm doing

There's plenty here. Well, that's great. It's so good to see my boys. Good to see you

Mama loves y'all so much. Ain't we lucky? Ain't we lucky? All right, Mama

I got to get going. All right. Get up. Y'all have a great night. All right. Oh, hey

Want to get that for Mom? Yeah, I think we should. Hey, how are y'all

Hey, honey. How are you? Good. What do we got here? I hope that you have a full set of these boxes maybe in the back

Oh, I'm sure we do. Sure we do. Awesome. Okay. We'll sit back. If we want to get this for Mom, make sure and ring this up

We'll stick it in her bag. We'll just light it in there so she won't know about it. Thanks a lot. All right. Let me go look for those glasses

Okay. Thank you very much. I can't tell you. I've looked everywhere for that. Hey, Mom

Well, listen. I have got to run. I'm running so late. I'll get this for you

Y'all get that for me, please. All right. And tell Amy, I'm sorry I couldn't wait

Okay, Mom. I'll see y'all later. All right, Mama. Y'all have a great party. Love you. You too

Have fun. And tell all your buddies I said hey. All right. We'll do it. Love y'all

Love you too. Bye. Bye. Can't wait to see the expression on her face once you see Zanette

It'll be fun. How'd y'all like Kitchen Caboodle

Isn't it the cutest shop you've ever seen? And naturally, I can always count on them to have just what I need for my kitchen

They know that I'm just a nut over tea towels. And look at this one that they stuck in my bag

Isn't that cute? Well, I'm gonna do a little twist to our salmon

for my cocktail party tonight. So we've got our piece of cedar that has been soaking

about four or five hours. And we go all our board with a little olive oil

Now he's ready for our fish. We're just gonna transfer our fish to our piece of cedar

Just wipe a little olive oil on him. All right, now all we're gonna do is salt and peppering nicely

and he's ready to go in the oven. Now this is a great dish prepared on the grill outside over charcoal

but I've opted to just throw this in the oven and cook it. And he's gonna take probably 12 to 15 minutes total cooking time

All right so we going to let that cook for about 10 to 12 minutes And while our fish is cooking I going gonna come over here and make a wasabi cream sauce to serve along with it And this is really really tasty

if you like really kind of hot, hot stuff. So I have just poured my whipping cream in here

And in this dish, I'm gonna make my wasabi paste. And in order to bring it from this state

to the state that you see on your plate in the restaurant, you simply add water to it

And it only takes a little bit. And get that going until I have a paste worked up

All right, so we got our wasabi going on, and I'm going to just beat this

until it forms nice, soft peaks. All right, that looks good. Now we're just going to come over here and fold in some fresh lemon juice, a little salt

and our wasabi. Now you can put as much or as little as you want, but Michael and I really like it with

a lot of kick. See, I'm going to pile this up to sit along with our salmon

Oh, it looks really, really good, doesn't it? All right, now smell our fish, and I'm ready to see if it's about ready

Oh, it's just sizzling. Smelling so good. And the aroma from the cedar coming up into the salmon is unbelievable

and it requires so little garnish. This dish really stands on its own

I'm gonna get me just a little bit. I'm gonna cut this tail very, very neatly

so nobody will know I've been there. Wow. It looks and smells like perfect salmon

And then I'm gonna come back over here and get me just a little bit

of wasabi cream. It's incredible. In a few minutes, I'm going to be showing you how to make those wonderful pecan stuffed

dates wrapped in bacon and creamy onion canapes. Hi, I ran out of bacon

I had to run and get some more. This next appetizer that I want to show you

I've been making since I was a young bride in my 20s. Now, all we're going to do is start with a whole date

You may find that some of the dates have seeds in them, and you'll just have to remove the seed

but these have already been removed. And I'm going to take a pecan and just tuck right in that fat, rich date

And then I'm going to come over here, and I'm going to get my bacon, and I'm going to cut this into fourths

I'm going to cut it right down the middle first and then go to my other two pieces

and cut those right down the middle, giving me four equal pieces. And I'm going to take my date

and just wrap my bacon and toothpick it, holding that bacon on

and onto the tray they go. All right, we've got enough to go ahead and cook

and the great thing about these is we can cook them early in the day

because these don't have to be served hot. I have to tell you though, they are good warm

So you'll just need to watch your oven and bring the bacon to the degree that you like it

We're gonna put these in a 400 degree oven and I'm gonna bake them about 10 to 12 minutes

So while those are making, we're gonna start our caramelized onion canapes

Now I've got my pan nice and hot and I'm gonna put a couple of tablespoons of olive oil

and we are gonna use just a regular onion, and we're gonna slice it into onion rings, just like that

You can hear our pan sizzling, and we wanna cook these over like a medium heat

because we don't want them to burn. We just wanna caramelize them. In fact, I've already got some that I caramelized

Now, I did up my bread earlier and toasted it, and I chose to use a very thin slice of bread

The thin works very nicely, because it kind of gets like a cracker

And just choose the biscuit cutter of your choice, and I kind of rather like the small

ones for this appetizer. I can actually almost get two rings out of there, and then I'm going to throw those to

to the side and I'll use those scraps as croutons later on

So you just wanna put these on a cookie sheet and put these in the oven and dry them out The main thing about these is you want them crispy Now we going to go in for the good stuff that makes it rich and a little sinful

And we're going to do that by mixing up an eight-ounce package of cream cheese

with a little seasoning salt, a teaspoon of Worcestershire, and you can use your imagination on this

you can kind of put this together any way you like. I'm gonna put some cracked pepper

and for a little heat, I'm gonna put in just a little cayenne pepper

And just mix that together. And I've got my cream cheese at such a soft state

that you don't even have to use a mixer. You can just do it right up with a spoon

All right, I'm gonna turn these off and move them out of our way, and I'll finish those off in a little while

But I wanna go ahead and put these together and get these in the oven. Now I'm gonna take our bread

and just smear a little of the cream cheese on it. I just love making appetizers with breads

They're hearty and filling and everybody loves good bread. So I'm gonna move this out of our way

and bring our onions up here. Right now we're gonna take our caramelized onion

And we're gonna place a little bit on those bread round. And aren't they pretty

They're kind of interesting on those little rounds of bread. Now I'm still not quite finished with these

but I smell this bacon, so I've got to check these dates and see if they're ready

Oh, and they are, I knew I smelled them. Look how yummy those look

All right, now we're gonna finish these off quickly by just putting a little dab

of one of my favorite condiments, mayonnaise. All right, right now I'm gonna sprinkle them with paprika

because the paprika is gonna give them a nice brown look. And these truly don't take

but just a couple of minutes in the oven. And that's it, just that simple

All right, I'm just gonna loosen these from the pan and put these right up here

And by the time I get through doing this, our creamy onion canapé should be ready

All right, let's see if the mayonnaise is kind of melted down

Oh yeah, they look good. All right, these look so good

And you see those truly don't take but just a minute. I think they're just gonna love these two dishes

Just gotta try one

The onions and the mayonnaise and the cream too is so, so good

But this is people food, Rennie. You don't like dates. Mmm. After all these years

these are truly still one of my favorite little appetizer bites. Y'all stick around because we're fixing to whip up

the life of this cocktail party. Hi. Hi

You know, every time I make something like this, I can't help but think of my mama and daddy

They used to make what they called a sledgehammer punch. And I asked them one time, I said

well, why do you call it a sledgehammer punch? And they laughed and said, because when it hits you

it feels like a sledgehammer hitting you upside the head. So I can't help but think of them

Now, the first thing I'm going to do is take my mold that I found from Kitchen Caboodle

and I'm going to put a few rings of oranges in the bottom, just a few

and I'm going to stick a cherry down there. I'm not going to put too much because this is actually going to float a little bit on us

and I'm gonna pour just a little bit of lemonade. Just a little

And we'll move that cherry back up there. And now I'm gonna put this into the freezer

and I'm gonna freeze just this little bit. And I have one here that I've already frozen

And I'm gonna come back and I'm gonna put another layer of fruit

and I'm just gonna kind of mix things up I'm gonna put some lemon slices and some lime slices

because when we unmold this onto our punch, we just wanna see lots of layers of colors

Gonna put a little mint and I actually gonna slip that mint inside the orange so it won float I gonna finish putting some cherries around it and a little bit more mint over here

And you can kinda shake this up any way you want to

I'm gonna pour another layer of lemonade and then this will go back into the freezer and we'll freeze this top layer

Isn't that pretty? I'm gonna stick, I think, just a few more slices around

And you wanna use a lemonade or even a ginger ale. You don't wanna necessarily use water

As your ice ring melts, the water will weaken your punch, and you don't wanna be serving a weak punch at your party

So this is ready to go into the freezer. Isn't that pretty

It's gonna look luscious on top of our punch. And speaking of punch, I'm going to start this particular punch with an orange concentrate

and some banana daiquiri mix and some fresh lemon juice. All right, so we're going to add some ginger ale

I'm going to start with a two liter and maybe add half of another one

All right, and I've got to wait for that fizz to go down to see where we are

All right, now I'm going to put a little bit of this bottle in there

And now for the Southern Comfort. Look, that's going to kill those bubbles

Now, on your Southern Comfort, you can make this as strong or as light as you like

I've used about a half a bottle. All right, now I'm going to come in and taste that and see if it's strong enough

Actually, I don't believe that's strong enough for the men, so I'm going to go a little bit more

Oh my goodness. That little bit turned into the whole stinking bottle, didn't it

All right, that foam, you can see since I put the alcohol in, it's really starting to

disappear on us and it's ready for our ice ring. Oh and it's pretty, pretty, pretty

pretty. And this should come out very, very easily. And it did. We're just gonna

We're gonna slip our ring right down into our punch. And you can see how pretty that is

And I think the cook needs to have a glass, don't y'all? Get that juice that's been right around the ice ring

Looks good and so quick and simple to make. Here's to ya

Oh, it's delicious. I'll see y'all in a few minutes. I'm going to give you some tips on how to make your cocktail party go smooth as silk

All right, for a few quick tips that's going to make your party go smoother

you can actually take your bacon-wrapped dates and pop them in the microwave

and get your cooking time down to about two minutes. And on your creamy caramelized onion canapes

if you don't have time to fool with the bread, you can actually do this on a cracker

But while we're talking about bread, I want to show you the set of biscuit cutters

They actually come in a little canister, and they range in little to big

and these are a wonderful investment that would last you a lifetime

And on your salmon on cedar, check with your grocery stores or the fish market

because you want to be careful where you get your cedar because you certainly don't want to get any that's got any chemicals in it

that could actually harm someone. I'm getting so excited about my cocktail party tonight

I stay so busy that sometimes I don't get to do this as often as I'd like to

But I'm looking so forward to having a few friends in tonight, and I hope that they're going to just love the cedar salmon with the wasabi sauce

and the creamy onion canapes and one of my favorites, the bacon-wrapped pecan stuffed dates

And I know they are going to love this Southern Comfort Punch with that pretty ice ring in it

I hope that y'all have a great time at your own cocktail party, and I'll use a few of these things

And until then, America, I wish you best dishes and love from my cocktail party to yours