by Paula Deen
They look at this door with a padlock on it, and they say, “Well, it’s in that locked room right there. We don’t have a cook on the weekends, and they feel they can’t turn us loose with the food, so they lock it up so we’ll have some for Monday when it’s time for the cook to come back to work.”
I say, “Okay, future Einsteins, can you tell me what would be in there if we could get to it?”
They say, “Yeah, there’d be some chicken and some lettuce and tomato and pasta.”
So I say to the crew, “What are we gonna do here, guys?”
And Gordon says, “We’re going to have to go to the store and duplicate what that locked room probably holds. There is absolutely nothing else here, and we can’t bust the padlock.”
I want to do this fair, so I make a list of the things that they said could be in the padlocked place and I go to the grocery store, trying to stick as close to the list as possible. I buy some chicken, canned biscuits, and tomatoes, and I fry up for those Einsteins the most delicious chicken fingers and put them on some kind of wacky-looking paper dish on top of the stove.
I’ve got two frat guys now who are gonna be my assistants, and they’re gonna be on TV, so their mommas will be proud. They’re half dead but I’ve got ’em standing up there helping me with the food. Finally, I’m flouring the chicken fingers, and I look over at one of these zombielike guys, and I just pop him square in the face with my floured hands. I leave a flour print on him. I say, “Wake up, son!”
That kind of gets his attention. Then I take those biscuits and tomatoes, and I make darlin’ little tomato tarts. Oh, and I bought dill pickles and ham because the guys said they usually had lots of sandwich meats. So I just spread a little cream cheese on the dill pickle and wrap the pickle in the ham.
And there, that was our meal.
Then it was time for us to take our food over to the sorority house because everybody was going to sit down and eat together. Well, the guy chef had prepared a great-looking meal from frozen breaded chicken cutlets in the freezer. Imagine—he had all that wonderful food, and he chose the frozen chicken. My head just about blew up. Still, he had some pretty china. Mine may not have looked as good because let me tell you what I had to serve in: a few paper bowls, some plastic silverware. Period. When I walked into that frat kitchen, the only thing I found to season with was dry basil, some salt and pepper, and some water. Period. My meal was chicken fingers, tomato tarts, and wrapped pickles. Dessert? Ain’t no way I could have plucked dessert out of nothin’.
We filmed.
When it was over, I said, “Gordon Elliott, you owe me!” He still apologizes for that show. It took me almost a week before I could smile again.
I didn’t know it, but I was being judged. The Food Network had somethin’ in mind for me, but I had to prove my mettle.
A few months after that, I guess they’d had some good feedback from the show, and they called and asked if I would come up to New York and appear on another show called Ready … Set … Cook! “I’m in,” I yelled! I liked this television business.
This show was sort of a contest, with two chefs in front of a live audience. There was a time clock, and when a bell rang, the chefs lifted their domes and found a big old platter of different kinds of foods. Then they had to prepare the best meal they could from the foods they were given to work with. Three people were pulled from the audience to judge the food each chef prepared, by the presentation, the flavors, and the uniqueness of each dish. They wouldn’t tell you whom you’d be competing against until like five minutes before you walked out onto the stage.
I never had a thought that I was being observed by some hidden producers; I was just tryin’ to have a good time on television.
Five minutes before we go out, they tell me, “You’re competing against Chef Ludivic Sump’n Sump’n Sump’n.” You hear that? Five minutes before we’re supposed to go out they also tell me that he’s listed as one of the top fifty chefs, not in the United States but in the world.
I thought, I am screwed.
I realized why they didn’t give you any warning, because if they had, my ass would have gone home. I wouldn’t have been there to put myself up for this kind of humiliation.
He was from France, a young good-looking man probably in his late twenties with the most beautiful eyes. I called him Lulu because when they told me his real name, I could not say it. I have to work on words to pronounce them when they’re not like normal words. You just try sayin’ Chef Ludivic Sump’n Sump’n Sump’n.
“Sorry,” I said on camera. “I just got to call you Lulu. That’s yo’ name. Tell yo’ momma.”
Well, we got out there. I was trying to have a good time, looking relaxed and playful with Lulu. The bell rings, we lifted our domes, and I didn’t recognize a damn stick of food underneath that dome. Not none of it did I recognize. They had a team that came in during the break to answer any questions.
Questions? “What is all this damned stuff?” I asked. And they had to tell me what everything was. If it was completely foreign to you, they would tell you, this is best sautéed, this is best fried, this is best grilled. So, they had to tell me how all these foods were generally prepared.
We go out there, and Lulu whips my ass. He blows me off the map. I was a good sport, though, but I took a break between that and the next show and went out on the streets there in New York on the corner. And I smoked me a cigarette, and I said to myself, “You have just let some kid use you as a mop. Now, you get back in there, girl, and you make up for that loss.”
It wasn’t easy. We did four shows. During the second show, I’d put something in the microwave, and I was so intense on getting my stuff ready, not knowing none of these ingredients, and what do you think this French Froggy boy, Lulu, did? He’d snuck over and turned off my microwave so my food wasn’t cooked right.
But good triumphs over evil. I think it was the third show that we did, we lifted up the domes, and I started cackling like an old hen. Under that dome was canned biscuits, black-eyed peas, grits, some ground beef. It was all Southern food. He did not have a clue what to do. You could see this very perplexed look on this boy’s face. Under my breath, I say, “Well, Lulu, look who’s screwed now!”
So, I’m keeping my eye on him as I’m putting my meal together. I look over there, and Lulu has got those canned biscuits. And he is using a can opener on them.
I say, “Lulu! Stop! Stop! They’re gonna blow up on ya!” Well, he looked over at me and kept on going. He thought I was trying to sabotage him. And about that time, those biscuits blew out of that can and hit him in the face. And I laughed my butt off.
Come to find out later, they said we were one of the highest-rated shows that had been on Ready … Set … Cook!
I told you Lulu and I had four competitions. I won three. He won one. Don’t screw with me, Lulus of the world.
The winner got a gold medallion like in the Olympics. They’d put it around your neck like you were this world champion.
I went on to do four more shows for Ready … Set … Cook! The next time, I was up against a great, big black chef out of N’Orleans, a giant of a chef. He was huge, and he was N’Orleans, and he did cooking classes for all the folks who came to visit the city. When the bell rang and we went to run to our domes, he got down in a football position and wouldn’t let me get around him to get to my food. He blocked me.
I said, “Oh, my goodness. This one ain’t gonna be easy either.”
But we had a great time. So, after that, Food Network sent the people from the show Food Finds to see me. This was a wonderful show hosted by my friend Sandra Pinckney. The idea of the show is to track down the long-lost favorites of America’s past—like kettle potato chips, homemade jam, or smokehouse sausage—by visiting small-town shops, mom-and-pop stores, and local vendors who take pride and pleasure making food the old-fashioned way. It’s so strange because that show is now Jamie and Bobby’s show. Sandra moved on to another network and Food Finds wanted to
jazz up this very successful show. What Jamie and Bobby are doing is just like Food Finds, but they’ve changed the name to Road Tasted.
So, Food Network was just trying me out, exposing me to different television food experiences and looking hard at the way I handled them because that doll Gordon, aiming to push me into the big time and maybe even my own show, had introduced me to his agent, Barry Weiner. (Barry is better known to my family as Barry Cuda. Perfect name for an agent.)
I’ll never forget the day I first laid eyes on Barry in the Greater Sheraton Restaurant. I was in Philadelphia doing QVC for my cookbook, and we made arrangements for Barry to drive from New York over to Philadelphia so we could chat in between shows. I never will forget when he walked in because when I had talked to him on the phone I could tell that I was talking to a smart New York Jewish man. Well, I was blown away when I saw him and realized he was Asian by birth. He had been adopted as an infant by a Jewish family who lived in like a seventh-floor flat in the Bronx. The man who walked into that restaurant in the Greater Sheraton with his fabulous Italian suit and fabulous Italian shoes just blew me away.
“You’re just not what I pictured,” I managed to say.
“I know,” he answered.
Barry and Gordon felt like there was a show somewhere inside this Paula character that could be very successful. They probably courted Food Network for two years trying to push me at them. Food Network kept saying, politely, “Call us later.”
Look—I didn’t cook or look like their other fancy chefs, and they didn’t think that America, in the throes of a health-food diet mania, was ready for this strange-talking, middle-aged, feisty, butter-wielding, mayo-spreading woman.
Gordon had come down and he shot a pilot in my kitchen at Turners Cove. It was so stinking bad that Barry would not allow the president of Food Network to see it. They had me in cashmere and pearls and high heels and this sleek hairdo. My stove was against the wall. It was a traditional stove, just like your stove at home. I’ve never seen a TV show that worked when your back was to the camera all the time, facing the stove. My niece, Corrie, was on the pilot with me, and she looked like a deer caught in the headlights because she was so scared. It was forced-looking, and Barry Cuda almost died when he saw it.
The president of Food Network at the time was named Judy Gerard. Barry and Judy were good friends, and he told her, “You cannot see this pilot; you just have to trust me on this one.”
So Food Network never saw the pilot.
Then, one day, something terrible, terrible, terrible happened in this country, something that devastated the whole world, not just New York. And that was 9/11.
We were literally shaking here in the South, shaken to our bones. Our hearts were naked, knowing the tragedy that our northern neighbors were going through. It made me very aware that one moment I could be laughing and on top of the world, and the next minute I could be gone. It was a very, very scary time. Think back: Did you ever want to get on an airplane again? Nine out of ten people would say no. Would you ever want to get on a crowded train? No. It had us all frightened at every turn. How could they get us? We fixated on our water systems. We fixated on our transportation and national treasures. We became conscious of every way that we could have been gotten.
After a while, Barry and Gordon went back to Food Network, and they said, “Listen, this country’s scared. We are all scared. We need comfort in our lives. We need to feel that safety again that we felt when we were home with our momma and our daddy with our feet under the table and we didn’t have a care in the world. We all need to feel that again. And this woman, Paula Deen, can make us feel that way.”
We never made another pilot. I got my show.
Paula’s Home Cooking was born. It would launch in 2002.
Georgia Cracker Salad
One of the most popular dishes on Paula’s Home Cooking is Georgia Cracker Salad. People are always surprised that it’s made out of saltine crackers, and we get so much mail from the Georgia Cracker Salad show, we need to have our own postal delivery person just for the one show! I’ve modified the dish I make on the show and in the restaurant by adding shrimp, which makes it positively irresistible.
This is a wonderful summer lunch or an easy summer late dinner, but you want to stir it all together and eat it immediately, or else your saltine crackers will get soggy. As soon as you fold the ingredients together, put the shrimp cracker salad on those lettuce leaves and sit down and enjoy!
1 pound shrimp (do not peel)
1 sleeve saltine crackers
2 cups mayonnaise
1 large tomato, finely chopped
3 green onions, finely chopped
1 hard-boiled egg, finely chopped
1 head Boston leaf lettuce, washed, dried, and separated into leaves
Pimiento slices, for garnish (optional)
Cucumber slices, for garnish (optional)
Boil up the shrimp for 2 to 3 minutes in salty or seasoned water in a pot; you can use crab boil if you like. Next, peel and clean the shrimp, removing the tails. If they’re large, you can chop them coarsely. Crush the crackers, combine the mayonnaise, tomato, green onions, and egg, add the crackers, then immediately fold the warm shrimp into the salad and serve on lettuce leaves. Garnish with pimiento and cucumber slices, if desired.
Chapter 13
BACKSTAGE SECRETS AND A WEDDIN’ TO BEAT ALL
There are spitters and there are swallowers. I’m a swallower.
They were going to give me my own cooking show! I couldn’t believe it. But before that even happened, I got a phone call that was almost as thrillin’ as being a TV star.
It was the middle of lunch at The Lady & Sons on 311 Congress Street, and we were working furiously. I wasn’t doing as much cooking in the kitchen as I had in the early years, but on that day in 2002, I was back there frying chicken because we had gotten slammed with guests and I was trying to help everybody get the food out. Girl, we were busy. Rance Jackson, who was now our manager, had his cell phone clipped to the waist of his pants and it rang, and he answered it. Something about his manner made me stop and pay attention, and then I heard him say, “Yes, please, just a minute.”
He handed me the phone, saying, “Paula. For you. It’s Oprah.”
Now, I’m standing there with flour and goop on my hands, frying this chicken, and I look at Rance and I say, “You just get the hell out,” and he grins and stutters, “No, Paula, it really is the Oprah show.”
Our kitchen was insanely loud, crowded, and tiny. You couldn’t have a private conversation in that kitchen if you were a deaf mute. I said hello, and, of course, it wasn’t Oprah herself but a member of her staff.
They had heard about me, she said. Oprah was doing a show on women who started successful businesses in their homes and she would like to invite me to be on the show, but before that could happen, they wanted first to interview me over the telephone. I thought I didn’t hear them right, so I asked them to wait a moment and took the phone into a quieter place. We made a time and a place to talk when it wouldn’t be so blasted noisy, and the next week, sure enough, a producer called with some questions about my life. Then another producer called with some more questions. Finally, they called me back for the last time and told me, “We definitely want you on the show.” Whoa! Oprah! She was my hero.
It was explained to me that five different businesswomen would be in the audience that day. Two, possibly three, of us would have the opportunity to come up onstage and sit with Oprah.
I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t sleep, I could think of nothing else for days. I wanted so much to go meet this woman, look her in the eye, and see if she was the woman who America thought she was because, to me, the eyes are the windows to the soul. It’s hard to be tricked by somebody if you’re allowed to see into their eyes. She’d become one of the most powerful people in the world, and in order to do so she had to overcome so many obstacles. I sure knew from my own experience that to be a poor little black girl
growing up in the South in the fifties was a tremendous challenge. Oprah had survived incest, rape, prejudices, many, many forms of heartbreak, and I’d always admired her.
The day of the taping, in Chicago, the other women and I took our seats in the audience. During a commercial break, one of the producers came over and whispered to me that I was the third one chosen to go up on the stage to talk with her, but they didn’t know how much time we were going to have. I almost screamed.
We were all seated in the first row, right in front of Oprah. The three of us who were going to get to go up and sit next to Oprah went one at a time. We didn’t have to compete with one another. Oprah gave each of us time to share our individual stories. That’s the kind of woman she is.
Well, when I got up on that stage, I felt that she and I immediately bonded. Look, I’m not terribly impressed with celebrity, and I’m not a groupie type of person. We all put on our britches the same way and we all pull ’em down the same way to go to the bathroom. But when I got up to that stage, I took her hand, and I think I kissed it—do you believe it?
I said the first thing that popped into my mind.
“I feel like I’m meeting the queen,” I stammered. She laughed and answered, “No, honey, I was with the real queen the other day.”
I knew she didn’t mean Elton John.
“And let me tell you,” she finished, “I ain’t a queen.”
How could you not be comfortable with someone like that? Yup, I decided in about two minutes that she was the woman America loved. I think she truly cares about other people, and you know what? Crazy as it seems, in that short time on her stage, I sure felt she cared about me. I have seen Oprah without makeup, and she kind of reminds me of myself, because we’re not at our prettiest without Maybelline magic. Oprah’s skin was just as smooth as a baby’s butt, the color of milk chocolate. Delicious. Her hair was fixed so nice and she was smaller than I thought—not skinny, not chunky, just voluptuous. She’s the kind of woman I cook for, sexy and sensual, not that pencil-thin type.