Tapas

Hey y'all, you know if there's one thing I've learned when it comes to cooking that bigger doesn't necessarily mean better

So today in my kitchen, I'm going to show you how to make a big impression with some little bitty foods

I'm going to be fixing my own tapas bar, southern style, you know

First up, I'm going to be showing you how to make a wonderful collard green wonton

And then I'm going to show you how to make crab balls that just are perfect for popping in your mouth

Next, I'm gonna show you how to make some savory crawfish pies

And to finish, I'm gonna complete my tapas table. So stick around, y'all

It's a tasty sampling of South Spines. I'm just trying to harvest the last of the flowers before the season is over

and these are just beautiful. And I'm getting ready. I've got everything going inside, y'all, for a tapas party

I don't know if y'all are like me, but sometimes when Michael and I do go out to eat

sometimes I don't want a big, heavy meal. I just want a little bit of everything

So we'll order like three appetizers apiece for dinner, and that's what today's show is all about

Tapas in Spanish means small bites. So that's what we're doing today

Y'all join me in the kitchen because it's going to be so good. Aren't these beautiful

They kind of look like cattails. I'm going to lay them right there until I have a chance to do something with them

Besides get them all over me, I don't want these in our first dish

Well, actually, I've got a couple of different things that I'm going to start right now

When Michael and I got married, I said I wanted something that really, really says Savannah and Southern

So I said, we've got to do something with collard greens. And I said, why don't we make wontons and stuff them with cream cheese and collard greens

And Michael said, whoa, that might be a real winner, Paula. And sure enough, it was

Now, I'm going to start by cooking our collard greens. I've got a pot of water, and I've got three different kinds of meat here

I've got a smoked neck bone. I've got a smoked turkey wing

and then I've got a smoked ham hock. So it's really up to you

You know, if you want to stay away from pork, then go with the turkey wings

If you're looking for that little pig to go in those collards

you definitely want to go with a ham hock. So I think I might even mix them today

Now I'm going to add to this about a teaspoon of house seasoning

and just a little bit of hot sauce. So I'm going to let those meats cook for probably about an hour

and then we're going to come back and add our collard greens. Let's move on down here to the tartar sauce

It's truly one of those simple dishes. I'm going to start by adding a cup of mayonnaise

and I'm going to add an onion. I'm just gonna kind of quarter it up

All right, now I'm just gonna... All right, there we go. Since the onion was still in big pieces

I wanted to go ahead and add it first and pulsate it pretty good

Now add dill chips or dill pieces. And I'm gonna add a squirt of lemon juice

And I think a little extra pepper. And that's how simple it is to make tartar sauce

And that's it, we've got tartar sauce. I'm just gonna fill up our dish with a tartar

All right, so we've got that ready. The next dish I'm gonna be making is a crab bite

So for the crab bites or crab balls, I've got two slices of white bread that we've cut

the crust off and run those through the food processor. I've got a third of a cup of heavy cream

seasoning salt and a little house seasoning We don want to make this too salty because our crab

meat's already got that natural salty flavor to it. And a little Worcestershire, a little

fresh parsley, a tablespoon of mayonnaise, and one egg. So we'll just mix up our wet

ingredients. Now I'm just going to fold in the crab meat and I'm using a lump crab

and I've picked through this to make sure it was free of shells

Now I'm going to just gently fold that in to our wet ingredients

All right, now our grease is just about right. It's about 330 degrees

You can see I've got some balls already cooked up, but I'm going to form these into a ball about the size of a walnut

All right, we're just going to ease these down into the grease

And those are not going to take but a minute. And like I said, I've got some ready

And look how I decided to plate these. I've pulled out the deviled egg plate and a ball fits perfectly in each of the little

egg holders. Well, I've got to run for a minute and I'm going to be finishing up these other

balls. And then when we come back, I'm going to be making crawfish pies, little miniature

pies. And we're going to finish up our collard greens and cook our collard green wonton so

y'all don't go anywhere. Stick around because today it looks like it's all about seafood

and ham hocks. Okay, if y'all are ready to get started on the next dish, so am I

Our meat's ready, and I've got the collard greens cut. And let's talk a minute about what a collard green looks like

It's got this big vein running through it. So all you have to do is remove it just like that

and stack them on top of each other and roll them up

and then just come in and slice them like this, and you can make them as little or as big as you like

I don't like my collard greens chopped real fine, but I don't like them in great big hunks either

So we're just going to add these to our pot. I think these are going to do nicely

And you know I can't cook a vegetable without a little drop of butter

That magic stuff. All right, so we got those on and taken care of

and we'll be finishing those up later. Well, let's talk about crawfish pie

Now, y'all have seen me make this dough on my show probably three different times

and I use this because it's one of my favorite doughs. It's good for savory and sweet

And I've got my flour in my food processor, and I'm just going to add cubes of butter

Come on out, butter. And cream cheese. And this makes the nicest dough

And in a second, it's going to start making that ball. Okey-doke

Now that's ready. Well, I've got a piece here that I've rolled out

and I'm going to cut circles out of our pastry by using a cup

And we're just going to stick it in our muffin tins, kind of press it down just like that

and then take a biscuit cutter, and I'm gonna make six tops to go on top of our pie

But right now, we're gonna stick these in the oven, and we're just gonna bake these off for just a few minutes

until they're nice and brown. Let's get these in the oven, and then we'll start on our filling

Now, I'm gonna start by making a roux, and I'm gonna use probably about that much butter

and you all can see that I've got me some chicken broth

up here that we're going to be adding to our dish later on. Alright, we've got our butter melted. Now we're going to put in our

flour and we're going to stir this together until it's about the color of peanut butter and this is one of those things that you pretty much have to stand over and not leave it All right now I going to throw in our vegetables I got diced celery and you can see it diced very small

We're going to throw diced onions, diced carrots. Let me give that a stir before that starts burning

And then we're going to add diced shallots and diced bell pepper

And we're just going to stir that around and let our vegetables cook just for a few

seconds, not very long. Now I'm going to add the chicken stock

And it's gonna make the sauce that we want. Now I'm gonna add some Cajun seasoning, green onion tops

I just dearly love the crawfish. Right now we're gonna add those

Just gonna throw those in there. All right, and let's check on our pie shells and see how they're looking

Let me see. Oh yeah, I think those are done enough. We're just going to fill our shells with a little of this filling

Mmm. This smells so delicious. Alright, now the six tops that I cut out, we're just going to lay these right on top

Just like that. And we're going to stick these back in the oven

And we're going to bake them until the tops of our pies are just a golden brown

And that's it. So, so easy. Okay. So we'll just let those bake until the top is nice and brown on them

And you can see I've got a lot of filling. So if I don't use all this, I'm not going to worry about it

I'm going to just put it in the freezer, and then one night for dinner

I can make one big pie for the whole family rather than just a little bite

So let's see if these others are close to being ready. Oh yeah

Alright. Mmm. This may be one of those foods that you want to serve with a fork

I don't think this needs another thing. Now I've got to try it the right way

Mmm! I love it. When we come back, I promise you, we're going to have collard green wontons

While I was gone, I went through my pot and started straining out the collards and separating

it from the meat. All right. Look at that turkey wing

It looks like a big old leg, doesn't it? All right, and here comes our ham hock

Oh, my gracious. Look, that meat has just..

I bring tears to you guys. All right

But I had to taste it and it's so good

All right, now I'm going to put my collard greens in our bowl. So all I'm going to do is this meat is so tender, I'm just going to shred it

Now these are going to be nice and meaty as well as having the fabulous taste of those

collard greens. All right so I just going to mix that up just like that and I going to add just a little bit more salt to it just a little bit more for flavor All right now we going to take our cream cheese

and we're just going to kind of cut that cream cheese in there

I'm using just a regular wonton wrapper, and I'm going to just take my finger and run around

the edges of that wonton with a little water because we want this to seal nicely. And I'm

we'll put a scoop of that collard greens just like that. I may have to take some of it out

It may be too full, but I like mine fat. All right, so we're going to drop these over in

our grease that's gotten real, real hot. All right. Look at mine, y'all. Look at all the stuff coming out of it

Oh, these look so good, and they're so easy to make

And I had some that I fried up earlier. And all we're gonna do is just pile those up and let everybody just dig in

All right, let's see what we got. Hope it don't burn my pie hole

Mmm. Y'all stick around because just in case you want to have a tapas party, I'm going to help you set one up

So I'll see y'all back in a minute. Oh. I want to share with y'all a few tips just in case you want to set you up a little tapas bar at home

Now, if you go into a real tapas, you're going to find some cold items

So that's what I've gathered up here to complete and go with the hot things that I've done

I've gotten a Spanish sausage, and I've picked up a Spanish manchego cheese

and I've picked up a wonderful Spanish ham called serrano. It looks a lot like prosciutto ham, and I'm just going to roll this up

and this is going to be real, real nice along with the hot items that I've got

Now, I've got my sausage, and I've put some apples out. I've got my cheese, and I have some wonderful marinated olives

And look at that one with a big old clove of garlic in it. This is just going to be perfect to wrap up my tapas bar

Let's see, and I'm going to just add a little parsley to our ham

All I have to do is just finish up our flour arrangements

and I think we're just about ready for everybody to start digging in

and these are just real simple. These are out of my garden

Not going to a lot of trouble. All right, now I've got my hot things lined up over here

Last two flower arrangements to put on the table and you can just see how wonderful this all came together

Some store-bought and some things that I made which makes this party so easy

in case you don't have a tapas bar in your hometown that you can go enjoy little bites

You can do this so easily at home. I think that everybody will just love the blending of the two cultures

the Asian and the Deep South and these collard green wontons that are so fabulous

And, of course, all of our Spanish products that I picked up from the grocery store

the olives, the ham, the sausage, the Spanish cheese and the apples

and, of course, the crab balls. are so coastal. It's such a wonderful dish

And Louisiana crawfish pie. You can't beat it. And to go with all this, I've made some sangria

And I think it's time for the cook to have a sip

and send y'all best dishes from my tapas party to yours

Until next time