Paula And A New York Legend

Part Two - Exciting Paula

Paula's Best Dishes with Paula Deen

Taste Of Class with Liza Minnelli

German Chocolate Cake with Coconut-Pecan Filling

Creamy Lobster Rounds

Rib Eye Steaks with Mushroom Sauce

We find out that Liza records Paula’s show and wanted to be on it. Paula is thrilled and is making one of Liza’s favorites - German Chocolate Cake. THAT sounds good.

Do you see what’s already happening here? Paula TRIED to present healthy food last week and it was dullsville. HERE she’s making an appallingly (and appealingly) high fat, red meat based, simple carb menu and I want to watch it. NOT cook it or EAT it, but WATCH it. She can’t win.

Liza and Paula meet up in the dressing room with great fanfare. Liza says she loves watching someone making other people happy. Liza looks great, by the way. Paula tells us that she was so excited that it took her a few minutes to settle down.

They go into the kitchen and Liza is completely thrilled to be actually standing in the space that she’s seen so much on TV.

(Who do you think is older? Paula is acting so mother-like, but is there really that much difference in age? LISTEN TO THIS. If online sources can be believed, Paula was born in 1947, Liza in 1946!!! INTERESTING! Again, Liza looks amazing. And can some math whiz please tell me how old that makes them?)

It’s funny that Paula says “we’re like sisters almost.” Liza concurs. They ARE.

Paula gets Liza started on the custard filling for the cake. She mixes sugar with milk and brings it to a simmer, while Paula separates eggs.

Paula remarks (to us) that sometimes you meet people you admire and they fall a little short, BUT NOT WITH LIZA. Liza was everything that Paula had hoped for…and more.

Paula adds egg yolks into the mixture and Liza cooks it, stirring all the time.

Paula tells Liza all about her chicken coop. Paula wanted to raise them in the yard and husband, Michael, said NOPE. So she came up with the revolutionary idea of housing them in a coop! (Cuckoo, cuckoo.)

Paula says that her chickens love to be rocked and have their ears scratched. Does a chicken’s ear wax have diseases in it? Does a chicken even HAVE EAR WAX? I’d proceed carefully with the whole thing. Paula says she sings them to sleep. Oh boy, do I hear a song coming? Paula says she bets Liza could “sing them slap into a coma.” What are we in for? Paula tells us she has no males, just females, “cause roosters are mean”.

Before they actually go out to the coop, they get back to the cake. Paula adds 6 tablespoons of butter to the custard with some coconut and A LOT of nuts. (I would toast them first.) Liza tastes the filling and goes, “Oh, Mommy!” which prompts Paula to ask if her mother was a good cook. Liza says she was a short order cook. (Did the brat pack need some fried food to sop up all that alcohol?) Liza says her mother “could cook anything really well”, but that HER job was always cleanup. Wow, I wish I could have trained my kids like that.

Paula says her mother was a great cook too, but she lost her so young. Liza says she was 22 when her mother died. Paula was 23! Paula is amazed by how much they have in common.

They fill the already baked layers of chocolate cake and Paula puts it in the freezer to set for an hour. Oh good, that will give them plenty of time to contemplate the age old question “Do chickens have lips?”

Liza is super-impressed by Paula’s refrigerator and freezer drawers.

We come back from commercial to Liza singing, “He’s a tramp” to Paula. Paula is enchanted.

Next Paula makes creamy lobster rounds. Liza chops up scallions, and Paula chops red peppers. Paula heats 6 (or 8, who’s counting?) tablespoons of butter in a pan to cook the lobster tails. Meanwhile, Liza is telling a story about cooking an unsuccessful dish for her husband, but she doesn’t say which husband. This one, maybe? There are so many to choose from.

Liza says she decided to learn how to cook and then talks about how everyone needs his or her privacy. Huh? What does privacy have to do with cooking? I get not wanting every dish one cooks be public knowledge, but I have no idea if that’s what she means.

Back to the lobster…Paula throws in a cake of cream cheese. Let’s compare this recipe with this one. Which one would you rather watch being made, even if it’s obvious which one will keep you alive longer?

Paula wants Liza to help her top the toast rounds with the lobster mixture, but Liza (rightly) wants to taste it first. Paula loves that and Liza loves the lobster. This is just an old-fashioned love-in between the two of them.

They toast each other with the lobster-topped toast rounds - “To my new friend Liza, who I feel as if I’ve known forever.” Sweet. And from Liza, “That’s stupid, it’s so good.” (I guess that’s how they tawk in New Yawk.)

They make this beef dish and then finish the cake. But the main event is Liza singing to the chickens. Oh wait, before that though, is kind of an icky moment…literally.

After they ice this fabulous cake, Paula cuts wedges and they eat them out of their HANDS. That’s no way to really enjoy cake. I certainly don’t mind fried chicken or asparagus or even a slice of pizza topped with a huge salad eaten with hands, but German Chocolate Cake? Actually, her cake has so much ganache and nuts and sticky filling, that it’s all holding together quite well.

Then Paula tells Liza it’s time to see the chickens. Finally!

Paula announces, “Hey girls, it’s LIZA!” Has that EVER been said to a house full of chickens before?

Paula says the chickens love her cakes. WHAT?!!! Doesn’t that make their eggs particularly high in cholesterol? Also, isn’t there a bit of a moral issue with having chickens eat something that has EGGS in it? Oh gosh, once animal rightists (I include myself) get a hold of this, Paula could have even more PR troubles.

Liza says the chickens look so happy. We see them eating Paula’s cake (if only they knew). Paula gives Liza a chicken to hold and sing to.

Liza says if she could describe the whole day in one word it would be “Luscious.” The first word I think of is “strange”, but then, by the end of the episode, I would say affectionate, complimentary and enthusiastic to describe their newfound relationship and the bond between them.

So what have we learned from these two Paula shows?

Conventional nonstick pans kill birds. (Well, that wasn’t from Paula, actually…)

Healthy food CAN be dull. If the host had been half as enthused about the food, as she was about the body of her guest, the show would have been fine.

Liza is a gal’s gal and doesn’t mind eating food from her hands.

And, most importantly, chickens like to be sung to. Who knew?

Paula, Lettuce Wraps And Groping Cute Guys

Part One - Boring Paula

Paula's Best Dishes with Paula Deen

Getting Healthy with Daniel Green

Tomato and Crab Spaghetti

Orange Banana Bread

Chicken Lettuce Wraps

The only thing stranger than Paula cooking with Liza Minnelli (with a finale of Liza singing to a chicken) is Paula cooking healthy. These were the subjects of her last two shows.

About the Liza show, it was…well, odd. I was trying to think of analogies that could explain this unusual pairing.

Paula Deen is to Liza Minnelli as…let’s think about this…as lard is to schmaltz? As a BBQ pork sandwich is to a mile-high Reuben? As a hound dog is to a Chihuahua? As diabetes is to a hip replacement?

I dunno. I just know for some reason Liza lost her way and found herself in Paula’s kitchen. They’re both good old gals, full of pep and fun. But I don’t think anyone would have thought they were a natural pair. More about that show in Part Two…

THIS week’s show with Daniel Green was about healthy cooking. I guess that when this show was conceived, Paula probably knew about her diabetes (for years!) and thought it would be a good idea to have a few “healthy” shows in the can...for when the news was revealed.

Paula was excited to meet cookbook author, Daniel Green, because she thought he was really cute in his cookbook cover photo. She meets him in the makeup room and just stares at his hotness. (Daniel is okay-looking, but he’s no Bobby, Tyler or Curtis. He seems nice, though, so I’ll try not to objectify him…the way Paula is.)

WAIT A SEC, she actually starts to undress him. She reaches under his shirt and asks him if he’s wearing an undershirt.

Look, I love cute guys as much as anyone, but he’s a professional, trying to take advantage of his big break with Paula Deen and I don’t really think she should be groping him (on camera).

They start with chicken lettuce wraps. Paula slices up mushrooms and shitake mushrooms. Daniel says he needs some olive oil and tries to get Paula to say olive AWWWLLL. He laughs, she laughs. Did I mention he was British? So he talks funny too.

Daniel adds olive AWWWLLL to a really cheesy-looking nonstick pan. It looks like one of those old fashioned ones with the very chip-able, thin, enamel coating outside.

I have stopped using just about all Teflon nonstick pans, or whatever else they’re called. Birds dying alarmed me. I always had 3 sizes of nonstick frying pans, which I would replace every couple of years. But now I use an 8 inch Green Pan, which I love, for eggs and small amounts of things. I do use a nonstick spray, but one problem is that it makes these burned on drips of stuff that can never be really cleaned off. So now I spray a big gob in the middle of the pan and use a paper towel to coat the entire bottom and sides. It doesn’t seem to cause super-duper burned-on drips that way. (Of course, you could also use oil.)

When I need a bigger surface, I use my stainless-steel-with-an-aluminum-core sauté pans and do the same thing with spraying just the middle with nonstick spray and wiping it all over the inside. I do use olive oil too, but I can use less if I spray first.

Daniel sautés onions and mushrooms in that bootleg pan and adds ground chicken (at least, I think it is). Meanwhile, Paula is peppering him with questions, mostly about his body. He was a hefty teenager, lost a lot of weight with healthy eating (or it could have been the 12 inches he grew. Just saying) and he became a model. (If Paula asks to see his portfolio to check if there are any underwear pictures, I’m turning this off).

Daniel says to brown the “mince”. It doesn’t look browned at all. It actually looks anemic. They add garlic, scallions, mirin and sesame seeds. Thankfully, he adds oyster sauce and soy sauce, which will give the mixture some color. Daniel says he likes to caramelize the chicken, to get some color on it, but THERE IS NO COLOR.

He should have started with a hotter pan. But, of course, with that nonstick pan, you have to be careful not to kill any neighboring parrot life. Ground chicken is tough to get browned, but he could have done a better job. He adds more scallions in a fruitless attempt to add some color.

To serve, Daniel has Paula add plum sauce to the insides of some radicchio leaves. He tops them with the chicken filling. It probably tastes okay, but it’s not that attractive. How about adding some grated carrot and slivers of peppers to beef up the vegetable quotient and add some color? And, of course, he should have started the sautéing hotter and faster.

Actually, THIS is the way I think he should have proceeded. By cooking the onion and mushrooms first, there was too much moisture in the pan, so I would BROWN the chicken first. Then remove it, turn down the heat, add the onions, soften them a bit, turn UP the heat and brown the mushrooms. THEN add back in the chicken. OR you could just use a steel wok and cook everything speedily at a higher temperature.

NOTE: Here is PF Chang’s lettuce wrap recipe (supposedly). The chicken breasts are cooked whole and THEN minced. Interesting.

Next Paula and Daniel are making a tomato and crab pasta. He’s really proud of himself for using sundried tomato pesto. Daniel also adds cherry tomatoes and a few chopped sundried tomatoes. That’s fine, but why is the crab necessary? It sounds like one of those dishes that comes from a Knorr soup packet.

I do like the way Daniel throws the cooked pasta into the pan to absorb the juices from the quick cooking of the cherry tomatoes. He adds some useless crab. Whatever. Paula doesn’t actually rave over the dish. She says a quick “good” and remarks that the tomatoes are hot. She gets much more excited over the video of his pretty little girl.

I don’t want to exaggerate here. Her reaction was definitely not as bad as the time Giada served Oprah chocolate with basil, WHICH DID NOT PLEASE HER ONE BIT. THIS clearly wasn’t that bad, but Paula gave a pretty lukewarm response to his dish.

You know what? I hate to say this, but this is boring. I really was trying to avoid saying that Paula doing “healthy” dishes is a yawn, but, actually, it is. Let’s move on to Paula and Ms. New York, New York making artery-busting, clog-inducing fun food that I would never in a million years even think about cooking myself, but love watching in Part Two...

Easy Brunch, Cheap Runners And An Awesome Napkin Trick Plus Egg Issues

Barefoot Contessa with Ina Garten

Brunch Bunch

·         Baked Blintzes with Fresh Blueberry Sauce

·         Apricot Butter

·         Roasted Hazelnut Granola

·         Fruit Platter

I’m here! I’m here! I had a few things to attend to, but they’re out of the way, so here I am. The Barefoot Contessa has been wonderful lately, even if we have to agree that what she’s been doing isn’t exactly brain surgery. But as long as we buy the premise of her signature phrase, Ina should make any home cook happy.

This week, Ina is doing an article about the perfect brunch, so, guess what? She's going to THROW the perfect brunch to test it all out. She’s bringing in some heavyweights to help – her buddy, Miguel Flores-Vianna, to do the table settings and take the pictures and Michael Grim to do the flowers. I DO love Ina’s bouncy intro music. It matches the verve of her shiny pageboy.

Ina says she loves entertaining during the day – people come when they have lots of energy and then afterwards, they go on about their day. Well, that probably depends on the strength of the cocktails. Ina’s making a roasted hazelnut granola. It would take a super-duper recipe to make me not serve my own, but let’s see what makes hers special.

Ina chops lots of roasted hazelnuts and cashews into big pieces. She adds 1 cup of old fashioned oatmeal and some slivered almonds. This is not sounding too different from mine. Oh, wait, next she adds some coconut. That’s fine, but there are plenty of folks who don’t like coconut, so I never put it in (and I’m happy to avoid those calories, actually). Then she adds 3 tablespoons of vegetable oil. I know most granolas have that, but I avoid it like the plague. If you don’t HAVE to add it, then why do it?  Ina measures the honey AFTER she’s measured the oil, so it comes out neatly. (That’s still not reason enough to add oil.) She stirs it with a big spoon.

Next Michael is doing the flowers, using blue and white tablecloths that Ina has provided. He decides on blue muscari. Pretty, although I don’t know a blue muscari from a blue muskrat, but they look nice. Michael likes that they’re “blue and low” and “not so formal, which is perfect for brunch”.

Miguel is setting the table. He’s using the white tablecloth as the base and the blue one as a runner down the middle of the table. THAT is a superb idea.

                                                                                       

THEN he’s putting woven place mats on top of the tablecloths. Really? I guess he’s aiming for different layers of crapola accoutrements on the table. He appreciates that they’re “nice and chunky”, (the very reason I DON’T like them), and that they contrast with the soft linen tablecloths. I guess that makes sense.

Strangely, Michael is threatening to use an egg crate for a vase. Really? Meanwhile Miguel is using oversized Delft blue teacups as cereal bowls. He says Ina likes different things used in place of the usual.

Back to Ina, she spreads out the granola on a baking sheet and cooks it at 350°F. for 20 minutes, stirring it a few times. Ina is so happy that Miguel will be taking pictures of the table setting. Is Ina ever NOT happy? I love her. Miguel places differently sized pitchers on the table for juice and adds modern glasses for “contrast” with the oversized antique teacups.

Out of the oven comes the granola. Ina tosses it one more time.

Next up is a fruit platter. I love Ina, but is this really worth our time to watch? Ina tells us to test the ripeness of a pineapple by smell. If you pluck a leaf from the middle of a pineapple and it comes out easily, that may mean that it’s actually rotten. Hmm, I usually do both.

I think I was right. We could have skipped this. On top of fig leaves go the quartered pineapple, which she cuts right on the plate to avoid moving the juicy pieces. Ina places all the fruit in blocks, which any Ina-lover knows is her philosophy for many food items – crudités, antipasti, etc. She likes the fruit in big pieces, so it’s not like fruit salad. Okay, that was a worthwhile observation.

Ina spills blueberries over the top and then adds strawberries and raspberries in blocks. I take it back, it does look really good and it was worth a moment of our time. It looks Barefoot Contessa lavish.

OMG! Next Ina shows us something that will change my bread-basket-lining forever! I’m not kidding. I DO line baskets with napkins for baked goods, but I’ve never taken it to the level that Ina does. 

She places the napkin in the basket and folds it down the center to make a pleat, so the napkin fits nicely in the basket. She turns it 90 degrees and does the same thing again, so she’s basically making a smaller square out of a larger napkin, which results in the napkin not flopping over the edges. She places these big fat croissants in the basket and the edges of the pleated napkin perk up and it looks very special. (I think SHE does the pleating to make the edges stand up, but I like the extra bonus that it makes the napkin fit whatever size basket you’re using.) How easy is that and HOW did she think of that?

My mind is spinning with all kinds of basket-lining possibilities. I could use a RECTANGULAR pretty dishtowel and only make one pleat to get it into a square. I could use even a tiny basket and be able to line it attractively with any sized napkin. How did I manage this long without this information? 

Next, Ina tells us how to make apricot butter for the croissants. She beats a stick of room temperature butter (remember that Ina often leaves her butter out overnight – I can never bring myself to do that) with ½ cup of “good” apricot preserves and an 1/8 teaspoon of kosher salt. (I would kill the salt, although Ina says it DOES make a difference.) She tells us you can use the same recipe to make raspberry butter, honey or marmalade butter. That sounds SOOO good.

Next we find out what Michael is doing with the eggs in his flower arranging. He’s not using the egg CRATE, he’s using that actual EGGS. Michael says to cut the tops off the eggs and fill them with water and put a small bunch of the muscari inside. I’m guessing he means to get rid of the actual egg first. That would be a great idea if you were making something that used a bunch of beaten eggs. I like that. He places each flower-filled eggshell in a little egg cup. Cute.

Ina moves on to the blintzes. She’s making them differently, though, in one pan that can be cut up. That means she doesn't have to fry separate blintzes. (How easy is that?) She mixes milk, sour cream, melted butter, vanilla, eggs, flour, sugar and baking powder in the food processor. She pours half the batter (made in advance is fine) in the bottom of a 9 by 13 pan. She bakes it at 350°F for 10 minutes until just set. That’s stage one. (Ina pours the batter in a big measuring pitcher, to divide up the batter more accurately.)

Next Ina whips up the filling. She mixes 24 oz. of ricotta cheese (why do I think it’s whole milk?), 8 oz. mascarpone (the container is a little over, but she says it’s fine to add the whole thing…natch), 2 extra large eggs, 1/3 cup sugar, 1 tablespoon lemon zest, fresh lemon juice, “good” vanilla and salt. This sounds awesome, even if I would leave out the salt. BUT here we go with the eggs again when Ina insists on using extra large eggs.* For only two extra large eggs, just fuhgeddaboudit and use 2 large eggs.

Miguel places a thermos of coffee, plus milk and sugar on the table. He’s happy that Ina is serving apricot butter, because, by coincidence, he's chosen apricot napkins.

Michael has the flowers ready and he’s excited to see what’s for brunch.

Ina finishes the blintzes by pouring the ricotta filling over the bottom layer and spreading it out evenly. Then she pours the remaining batter on top without mixing it into the cheese layer. She pours it over a spoon to accomplish that. (I remember that trick for Irish coffee from many decades ago.) She bakes it for 35 or 40 minutes at 350°F. 

The last thing to be done is the blueberry sauce. Into a pan goes freshly squeezed orange juice, sugar and cornstarch. Ina mixes that together and brings it to a boil. When it’s slightly thickened, she adds blueberries and simmers it for 4 to 5 minutes. Lemon zest and juice go in and it’s done. Ina pours it into a pitcher. She cuts the blintzes into EIGHT squares. Even she admits that they are BIG squares, but it IS the main course, she says.

The table is finished, the food is brought out. It looks GORGEOUS. Ina is thrilled. Miguel takes the pictures and then they chow down. They giggle (a lot) and decide they’ll switch roles for the next meal they produce together.

As usual, Ina has produced a lovely, EASY to do meal that would impress anyone, with a couple of great tips thrown in for good measure.

* The most important part of that post as far as egg sizes go is this:

If the recipe calls for 4 extra-large eggs, you can use 4 OR 5 large eggs. After that, use one more large egg than extra-large. Thus, if the recipe says 5 extra-large eggs, use 6 large and so on.