Working Luncheon

Hey y'all, I'm Paula Deen

And you know, just cause you're stuck at that desk at the office doesn't mean that you don't deserve

a good home-cooked meal. So that's what today's show is all about

Today I wanna share some yummy recipes with you like my curried chicken salad

and a corn avocado and tomato salad that I promise you just gets better

How about a delicious steamy bowl of BLT soup? And for dessert, a brown sugar chewy

that you're gonna just love. So today, y'all stick with me because we're gonna make lunch work for you

This first recipe that I want to share with y'all reminds me so much of the Bag Lady days

and I think you're going to just love these recipes as much as my customers did 16 years ago

Now, I'm going to be starting here with a bag of shoe peg corn, and I've just thawed this out

I've just finished slicing my cherry tomatoes in half. I'm going to dump those in with the corn

I'm going to zest one lime. I'm going to toss it in there

This is so quick and easy to make. Now I've got a purple onion that I've diced up fairly small

We're going to throw that in there. This kind of reminds me of a Mexican dish

All right, now we're going to just cut this in two. All right, we're just going to render the juice out of this lime

All right, there goes the juice. And next is our avocado. I'm just going to run the knife around the avocado until I cut completely around it

and then I'm going to give it a twist. And now I'm just going to come in here with my spoon and remove that avocado, just like that

All right, I'm going to pop the seed out of the other side and do the same thing

When I was running the bag lady, I used to make an avocado chicken salad

It was so good. Alright, now I'm just going to dice this avocado up

Just coarsely dice it. Throw it over in there. All right, now let's get over here and let's make the dressing to the salad, which is very

very simple. We're going to use just a little bit of olive oil and some nice chopped fresh cilantro

some salt, and pepper. I'm so proud of my little niece

She's a beautiful young woman, and she's getting very good in the kitchen

which just thrills me to pieces. I told her, I said, I told her, I said, you're going to be like your auntie if you're not careful

All right, now I'm just going to toss these together. Look how beautiful this salad is

And so, so simple. But it has got a flavor that you just won't believe

But to just dress it up for y'all today, I'm going to pile it up in this taco shell that I made earlier

And I'm going to show you how to make that taco shell

And the avocado is just... Mmm. I'm so glad Kari taught me this one

It's out of this world. The lime juices just makes your mouth say, wow, so good

Well, let's move on down here to this chicken. I have a roasted-off chicken here

and I'm just going to remove the skin and just take the meat off the bone

After I get this chicken picked we going to make just a curried chicken salad So you just want to debone de de your chicken

All right, I'm going to add a half a cup of celery that's been diced

And then I'm going to add, I love this ingredient, I'm going to add a can of diced water chestnuts

It's going to give it a crunch. and then I'm going to come over here and I'm going to cut these beautiful red grapes in half

and toss them in. And when we come back, we're going to be ready to finish this chicken salad

and I'm going to make a fabulous BLT soup for you. You're not going to believe how good it is

Bacon and lettuce and tomato soup. Yeah. Hey, y'all. Welcome back

All right, I finished up with our grapes. Now I'm going to quickly put this chicken salad together

I've got slivered almonds, and so I'm going to put a half a cup of those in

All right, now I'm going to mix up our dressing real quick. Got a cup of mayonnaise

About to get like the butter, isn't it, y'all? All right, I'm going to add a tablespoon of just a store-bought chutney

I'm going to add a tablespoon of soy sauce, one and a half teaspoons of curry powder, and it's strong

All right, and I'm going to add a little bit of lemon juice to give that a little kick

All right, there we go. And I'm just going to blend that together

There is no telling how many different kinds of chicken salad I have made

I know I used to make a chicken and rice salad that you ate cold

and I love that one, and I would put curry in that. But this one has the grapes instead, the fruit

And a lot of women like a chicken salad with the fruit in it

It's filling and just makes it a nice, balanced lunch. So we're just going to toss that in our curry mayonnaise

I've got some wonderful butter lettuce that's just, it goes down like butter

It's just so easy to eat. I just love it. Okay, but before I plate our chicken salad, I want to come over here, move right over here

and start the pot for our BLT soup. Now I've got a half a cup of diced bacon

and I'm going to throw this in here and just let it start browning

All right, we're going to let that brown and let all that pork fat come out of there

And then while that's browning, I'm going to just pile up our chicken salad

in that wonderful lettuce. Look at that, doesn't it look good

Real enticing. Mm-hmm. Curried mayonnaise is wonderful, but what makes this dish is those grapes and those crunchy almonds

It's so, so good. All right, now our bacon is browning, and you can see the fat coming out of the bacon

so y'all forgive me when you see me do this. But I'm going to add just a couple of tablespoons of butter

just to make sure our soup is nice and rich. All right, now I'm going to add a half a cup

of chopped green onions or scallions, whatever you call them. The next thing I'm going to do is I'm going to add a half a cup of self-blending flour

Now when I say self-blending flour, that's not like the flour that you would use to make biscuits or cakes with

And it's an extra fine flour. I don't know if you can see how fine it is on my finger

And this flour will not lump on you like a regular flour will

Alright, so I'm going to add three cups of shredded lettuce. Alright, now we're going to add our flour

And remember the name of this is instant blending flour That what you would want to look for in your grocery store Toss that over our ingredients

And in this other pot, I've got three and a half cups of chicken stock that's boiling

And now we're just going to take this. In fact, I'm going to, I think I'm going to get a rag and move this pot closer to me

and I'm just going to add the chicken stock. All right

Now I'm going to come over here, and I'm going to add an eighth of a teaspoon of grated nutmeg

That's not enough to say, oh, my goodness, I taste nutmeg, but it's just enough to give it a nice little, just a nice little underlying flavor

and I'm going to add about an eighth of a teaspoon of red pepper flakes, just to give it a little kick

and then I'm going to add one cup of diced fresh tomatoes

So there you have it, BLT soup. Look how good that looks

All right, I've got one more ingredient, and when we come back, I'm going to show you what

that ingredient is. We're going to make some brown sugar chewies. It's going to be the sweetest finish to this working lunch

So y'all stick around. All right, we've got one last ingredient to add to our soup

and that's some heavy cream, because you can see that that flour made it nice and thick

Now, if you don't want the cream, you could always use a chicken broth

So you can put this in the crock pot now. Let it stay on warm until everybody's home and ready to eat

Now, I'm going to ladle some of this up. We've got the B

We got the L and we've even got the T. But what do you eat on a BLT? Mayonnaise is right

So I've got some mayonnaise here and I've got some sour cream

Just to cut the richness of that mayonnaise, I'm going to blend a little sour cream in it

and garnish my soup with that. A few green onions, and then, of course, the last thing

is just a little bacon. And look how delicious that looks. You're going to be surprised and amazed

when you taste that soup and find out how delicious BLT soup is

All right, now we've got to have a happy sweet ending to our working lunches

and it's called a brown sugar chewy. And I think it almost might be dietetic

because I'm only using a half a stick of butter. All right, I'm going to let that melt

I'm going to add one cup of packed brown sugar, and I'm using a light brown sugar

And I'm going to beat up an egg. And take that off of our heat

and I'm just gonna let that butter and that brown sugar melt along with it

All right, while that's continuing to melt, I'm gonna come over here, and I'm gonna take three-fourths of a cup of all-purpose flour

and a teaspoon of bacon powder, and I'm just gonna mix these up together

All right. I'm going to add a third to a fourth of a cup of chopped pecans

I'm going to throw my vanilla in there. All right. So I'm just going to dump these dry ingredients in with our melted butter and our brown sugar

and I'm just going to stir this until it melts. And I'm going to be baking this in an 8x8 glass dish

Mmm I love the smell of this It almost smells like butterscotch right now I have lined my baking dish with parchment paper

And I'm gonna give this a quick spray because this is kind of a gooey batter

I've got my oven preheated to 350 degrees. We're gonna bake this for about 20 to 25 minutes

If you don't bake it long enough, it'll kind of fall on you

And if it needs an extra five minutes, then do that. This recipe is real easy to double

and if you doubled it, you'd want to cook it in like a 13 by 9 by 2 pan

But I didn't double it today, but I do have another pan ready in this other oven

Look at that. Don't they look good? All right, now I'm going to slice them up

and I'm going to make pretty good-sized slices. and they're going to come out of our pan so nice

This is going to make nine servings. This is kind of hot, so normally I would let this cool a little bit

That one goes right over there for Paula. All right, I'm just going to put these over here on the platter

dust it with a little powdered sugar or a lot of powdered sugar i've got some ice cream here in

the freezer any kind of ice cream would be good with this a coffee ice cream would be good

of vanilla ice cream, but I just happen to have some homemade butter pecan ice cream

in the freezer that's going to be just delicious with our squares

Almost looks like I put butter in my ice cream, doesn't it? I didn't put butter in my ice cream

And Michael tells folks that I even put butter and mayonnaise on my frosted flakes

And that's a lie. Doesn't that look perfectly yummy? Mmm

The butter pecan is perfect with that chewy. And I love my stuff like this warm

Oh, it's out of this world delicious. I'm going to clean up, literally

And when we come back, I'm going to show you how to make those taco shells

your serving bowl for that salad we made. I'll see y'all back in a minute

Now here's a great tip. How to make that edible taco shell

You can use any size tortilla shell that you want. So I'm going to lay that down in our grease

and I'm going to push the center of that down with the big ladle

See how simple and easy that is? So in no time at all

you've got the perfect shell for that avocado and corn salad. It's a little messy, y'all

but it's worth the effort. They're out of this world, and you can't get any fresher

I want to thank y'all for being with me today and hanging out in the kitchen with me

and listening to me and allowing me to reminisce about the bag lady days

And the BLT soup is so good. And the avocado and corn salad

And the curried chicken salad. And, of course, those brown sugar chewies are just over the top

So, you know, maybe you don't work anymore. Maybe you don't have to work

Whatever the case, don't short yourself. I think you'll love any of these recipes any time

So until next time, America, I want to send y'all best dishes and love from my kitchen to yours