>> male announcer: Funding for Chef Paul Prudhomme's Always Cooking was provided by: >> Prudhomme: Hi, I'm Chef Paul Prudhomme.

One-pan wonders is what we're doing today.

I'm always cooking.

We got West Coast egg foo yong-- oh, you'll love it-- fried green tomatoes--oh, man, is that great--and a different kind of French toast.

So we're working.

[lively Cajun music] ♪ ♪ Hi, I'm Chef Paul Prudhomme.

We're going to cook for you today, yeah.

Actually, we're going to start with an omelette, and, you know, omelettes are so versatile.

You can put anything in an omelette, and it really works well, you know, if your imagination flows correctly with the ingredients.

And so this is a West Coast egg foo yong omelette, and I know I'm a Cajun, but you know, occasionally, I've traveled outside of Cajun country and learned a few things about cooking.

But one of the things that's just fascinating to me is other cultures.

I've always loved other cultures and especially their food, you know, because it's so different, and yet it's the same thing.

I mean, they all use chicken, and they all use pork, and they all use beef, and they all use-- but they make it taste different, which is--I mean, it's really, really amazing.

One of the things--I've got an omelette going, and I got some ham.

I got some green onions.

I got some sprouts.

I got some ginger.

I got some garlic, and of course, I got seasoning.

And normally, most people would put the oil right in the pan, and I've figured out that if you use much less oil, then it's more effective if you put it right on the ingredient like this.

And so you probably should have a bigger bowl to sort of stir it up, but that's okay.

It gives you the idea.

And the oil goes down, and you use much less oil.

And so I preheated the skillet, and preheating the skillet, to me, is very important, because not only does it cut the time, but it also builds flavors.

When you've got a skillet--see that there's oil on all the ham, but there's no oil here, and if there was oil here, it would start burning or super-heating or overheating.

And so this way, it's just on the ham, and it's going to work good.

We're starting to get just a slight bit of color on this.

I want the ham to be browned.

I just think that when you take ham and brown it, it just makes so much difference.

I mean, the smell is already changing.

You know, I mean, I can smell the brown start coming on the ham, if you do it right.

So we're starting to get just a slight bit of color on this, and we're going to let it cook as long as it takes to get the color.

I got a hot fryer, and you can see it popping.

You know, you can see it popping there, and I'm going to start adding ingredients to it.

I'm going to put a little bit of garlic in with it.

Oh, I love that popping.

Look at that just jumping up and down, yeah.

And so we put garlic.

We're going to put the green onions in, going to give it a stir with the green onions.

And see, I don't have to add more oil, and now, with the new ingredients, look how the pan is really free of oil, and you know, since they got such great pans today, they got, you know-- I mean, it's great to have a pan that, you know, that cooks well and doesn't stick a lot, and this is one.

I just added ginger to it.

Now, this part is going to go really rapidly.

See the color of the smoke?

I hope the camera's showing you.

There's the color of smoke coming up, and as that color changes, that's important to me.

I think I use a lot of--I use a lot of information off of that, and the smell--oh.

You can tell if you're doing well with something with the smell.

So I've got a measuring cup.

I'm going to put a couple of teaspoons in the eggs, and I'm going to whip those in just a second.

And then I'm going to take this and put--well, I'm going hold putting the seasoning, and I'll whip the eggs first, because I don't have quite enough brown, and so we're going to whip the eggs.

Whipping the eggs is really important to me, because what it does is that the more you fluff them, the more that there's air in the eggs, the lighter the omelette's going to be.

So we're whipping the eggs, and I'm getting a foam going, you know?

And the foam is, I think, super important, and what we're actually going to do here is--to give those colors to the meat and to the vegetables and everything is very important to the end flavor of the dish, and of course, we're using a pan, and we're frying it, so we're doing panfrying.

Look at the bubbles that are coming up.

Those are very, very important, and if you're going to make a great egg dish and you want it to be light and you want it to have a lot of flavor, you know, the more bubbles you do and the smaller the bubbles are, the better off you are.

See some of them in there are big, and some are small?

So I got my ham going.

It's starting to brown.

It really has a great taste to it, a smell to it, I should say.

I'm going to put that away.

I'm going to take some of the seasoning and put it in the bottom of the pan and just give them a little bit of roast, and that's really, really quick.

See how quick that is?

Look at the color change on that and all the dark smoke coming out.

Those seasonings are going to be really great, and you don't really have to do it that way, but it really--I mean, it's just one of favorite things to do is to get a lot of flavor into the herbs and spices as well as into everything else, and so we've got that going, and I'm going to stir that together, and I actually could've put it all in together if I wanted to.

All right, we've got the skillet getting hot.

We're going to do the eggs in a second.

I'm going to take this and put the raw materials in, and I'm going to gently, gently put this together, toss it together.

Spread the seasoning out.

Spread the ham out, and just gently do that, because I don't want to break up the crab meat too much.

I love big chunks of crab meat.

We can get those here.

It's kind of hard to get them around the country, but they're really wonderful.

Oh, if it falls in the skillet, just take it out and eat it.

Mm, that's good.

I'm going to put this in here, because it's easier to handle in there.

We're going to finish the mix.

Now we've got great heat going.

Going to add a little bit of oil to it.

We won't need much, because it's a nonstick skillet.

I'm going to put the eggs in.

Ah, isn't that pretty?

Ooh, yes.

And it's going to be all one huge omelette, which will be very interesting.

I'm going to spread this as well as I can across with the seasoning.

And I think what I'm going to do with the omelette now is just mix this up with the good Louisiana shrimp and the Louisiana crab meat, and I want to make sure that I leave enough of the liquid down to make the omelette or make the base for the omelette, make the eggs consistent on the bottom, even though there's going to be stuff showing.

And so you've got to turn it over every now and then, and so I'm going to do that right now.

And so the crab meat's already cooked, so we don't have to worry about that, and of course, the sprouts are beautiful.

They're nice and green, and they should be, and the seasoning's already been toasted.

The ham's already been cooked.

So all those things are ready to go, and I'm watching the shrimp.

I've got one little piece here, so we're going to see if we can toss it one more time.

I'm pushing it, and I know I am, but it's okay.

You know, it's okay.

All right, look-a-there.

Isn't that beautiful?

I mean, that's really great.

Now, the last turn is going to do it.

Now, one of the things that I feel that's very important is not to overcook things, and that's why I put the shrimp in raw and the crab meat.

I didn't want to overcook it, and this is ready to get out of the pan.

I'm going to cut the fire off.

I'm going to put the--right on top of here, and then we're going to take this and just put it right out.

Now, that's a wonderful, incredibly tasting, messy omelette.

And that's West Coast egg foo yong.

You can do it too.

Kentucky fried green tomatoes with cream gravy: delicious.

Oh, we're going to fry some tomatoes for you, and they're green, because it's very important to use green tomatoes, and this is Kentucky fried green tomatoes, and we're going to do a cream sauce to put on top of them.

Ooh, they're going to be good.

They're going to be really good.

Yum.

So we got to do some bacon, and I'm going to start that now.

I preheated the skillet, and I'm going to really crank it up a little bit more, and I'm going to put the bacon in, and the bacon's been cut into about a 1/2 inch to an inch strips, little, bitty small strips, and that really makes it come loose quicker, or it makes it to where the oil comes out of it quicker, and so what we're going to do is render the bacon.

We've got some battering we're going to do, and so we got a little bit of cornmeal, and we're going to put that down in here and a little bit of flour, and I'm going to mix those together with some seasoning.

And that's what we're going to use to get the tomatoes to be nice and crisp on the outside, and we need to put a little herbs and spices in there.

You know, measuring, to me, is, you know, after almost 50 years of cooking, it's sort of like, you know, I can do it, but it's really just easier to do this and just put the right amount of seasoning in.

The next step, while the bacon is cooking, that I'm going to do is, I'm going to season the tomatoes, because I like a little bit of seasoning on each step of the way, and if you put too much, you know, it's going to be too salty, or it's going to be to peppery or, you know-- but if you put a small amount--if you put a small amount on each side, or if each step, you take a little bit of--it really gives you a great balanced flavor.

I mean, it's just wonderful, the flavors that come out of it.

And so if you feel like you're putting too much on one side, just take it and just, like, tap it.

Just hold it like this, and, you know, do like that, and see if the seasoning will move, and it did, not totally, but it's got some--it's got more on the side that had less, and so--ah, the bacon's doing really good while I'm seasoning this, and I'm going to turn it over and put a little bit more on the other side.

Now, I've got a stock.

I've got some oil.

I've got some cream.

We got some muffins that we're going to put the fried tomatoes on.

So all those things are part of the dish that's going to make it really taste good, and you know, if you're in the grocery store and you're looking for green tomatoes, don't hesitate to have someone help you find them, and you may find them in the back room, and so don't hesitate to ask.

I'm going to really turn the fire down low.

This is--I mean, look at that wonderful--see the smoke coming up?

But it's going to be really crispy bacon, and I think that's really important to have is crispy bacon, because once you've got the oil in, you don't want the bacon to add more oil to your dish, and so we've got that, and we're going to put it here and drain the oil off the pieces of bacon.

And we're going to take the oil out of the pan, and we're going to put some aside.

And then we're going to have--I'm going to, actually, take it all out, so I won't have any floating things in there.

And then I can put a little bit of the oil back in.

I'm going to take the towel and just go one time around, because I don't want the pieces of bacon to get too dark, and if they get too dark, they're going to be bitter.

And if you want to--and I think it's good to do that, because bacon oil is not real stable, and so you put some of the bacon oil back in for the flavor, and then you put some of the cooking oil back in with it to fry the green tomatoes.

And I don't want to have more than necessary, because this is not deep frying.

You know, it's panfrying, so panfrying is just a small amount of oil.

Now, we've got the seasoned mixture of cornmeal and flour.

I want to continue to mix it, because that didn't mix it really well.

And now I'm going to put the tomatoes in it while the oil is heating, and one of the things I really don't like to do is to leave this in here too long, and what I mean by that is that is that if you leave the tomatoes in the flour too long, it's going to start building.

It's going to have too much of the batter in it or too much of the flour and the cornmeal in it.

And so we just want it to be nice and crisp, and we don't want to put more of it in than it's going to take in the skillet, because I've got to fry these.

I'm going to add a little bit more oil to it, and it's sort of one of those things you do when you know you made a mistake and you heated it too much, and that's what I did, and I actually had enough oil in.

I don't like to lie to you, but this is a great way to cool your oil down really quick, and so put a little bit in.

We've got to put the tomatoes, and to fry it, I successfully cooled the oil down.

It's not frying too fast, and I'm going to turn the fryer up a little bit, because now I'm going to put all the tomatoes in.

And, now, you can use tongs, or you can use a spatula, and I'm going to prefer to use a spatula.

Oh, it's just got a really nice color to it.

I'm going to let the others cook a little bit longer, because I think that I'm going to have to turn them twice anyway, and so we're going to start turning the rest of them now, and you just flip it over.

And you want better color than that, but it's really great to cook it both sides and get an evenness going about it.

Be careful when you put your hands in a pan, like I just did.

You know, if you've done it for 50 years, then go ahead and do it.

If not, if you haven't done it for 50 years, then don't do it that way.

Get something else to flip it with.

Look-a-there.

I turned that one back over, because I like the color that's on the--and the oil is heating up.

See, that's a perfect color for me.

I mean, I really like that color.

Oh, this one's going to be gorgeous.

I like this one.

And when it's a little bit smaller, that might cook faster, so be aware of that.

If it's a little bit thinner, it's going to cook faster, so be aware of that.

And so we're going to take them out now and let them drain.

Now, two of these slices--and I'm not going to continue to cook it, because it's no use showing you the same thing over again--but two of these slices I'm going to take and cut up to put in the sauce.

So I'm going to take this and put it right back in, and again, I've got a towel here.

I'm going to wipe the cornmeal out, because I think it's going to overheat, and so you can switch the skillet or just take and--take the cornmeal out and just get that pan clean.

All right, and so we're going to take a couple of the fried tomatoes and cut them up, because I'm going to put them in with the sauce.

And, of course, they're hot, but that's all right.

We'll deal with that.

And I think you can cut them in four, or if it's a little bit bigger--one's bigger than the other, and I'm going to cut it in six or eight, and maybe I'll cut this one a little bit more.

So I'm going to take a spatula and put this back in, and we're going to start the sauce.

Oh, this is going to be good.

We're going to add some stock.

[sizzling] I'm going to stir this before I put any more in it.

I think I'm going to need a little bit of the--we're going to use a little bit of the cornmeal mixture.

It's got seasoning in it, so that's going to help also.

I'm going to put a couple of tablespoons in there.

Then we're going to whisk the sauce.

It wasn't quite full, so I'm going to go to another one.

All right, so we got the green tomatoes in.

We got some cream in.

We got stock in, and we want to put our bacon back in.

I want to make sure that the starches, or the cornmeal and the flour, don't stay on the bottom while this is heating, because I got the heat up going high, and so we're going to bring it to a boil.

Ah, there's my bubbles.

So I'm going to add the bacon.

I wish I could give you a taste.

And it's just getting to a beautiful thickness, and the flavor, the bacon, is just starting to come through.

The next step is, we got to finish the product, and this is cooled down, so I can just reach over here and put a green tomato here and put a green tomato here, and then we're going to take a ladle, because the sauce is just about done.

We're going to take a ladle and put bacon and cream gravy, Kentucky style, on top of it.

Oh, by the way, if you wanted to just make it a stack, you could do that too.

Once you've put some on, you could just take it and put it to the middle.

And, oh, I got to turn the fire off, because it's getting--that's the perfect texture for the gravy.

See how that thickness is there?

And that comes from the cornmeal and the corn flour.

So it's going to have some of that cornmeal taste, and I just think it's--oh.

And that's fried green tomatoes, Kentucky style.

Coming up: French Quarter French toast.

French Quarter toast, yeah.

I mean, the French Quarter toast, that's wonderful.

It is, and we got some ingredients here.

We've got--of course, you've got to have French bread, and we got French bread.

And we got some eggs.

Now, this is sort of like lower-caloried, and so the eggs are not real eggs.

They're eggs that don't have a lot of cholesterol in them and those kind of things, and so-- and we have seasoning blend.

We have nutmeg and cardamom and cinnamon with a little salt in it.

We've got some grape juice that's concentrated.

We got some prune juice that's concentrated.

We've got some powdered milk.

And so we're going to start doing this mixture.

We're going to put the powdered--I don't really have a particular kind of way to put it in, so I'm going to put the thinnest thing in.

We've got the apple juice in, and I'm going to stir that first, because everything else is thick, including the eggs, and so it won't dissolve the powdered milk as easily.

I'm going to put the seasoning in, and then we just stir and stir and stir.

We've got a grill, and it's a great grill.

It's 325 degrees, and it's ready, and like I said, we got French bread.

I'm adding the white-grape syrup.

This is really nice and thick, so it's going to really be a contributor and the prune syrup, the last ingredient besides the eggs to go into it.

And we're going to mix this up.

We're adding a liquid-egg substitute, and it's ready to go.

I want to really mix this good.

It'd be really wonderful to have kids work with this.

I think this is a perfect thing for kids in the morning, especially a Sunday morning, when the whole family's there.

You know, you can make this dish.

It's easy to make.

There's several ways you can work on finishing it.

One is that you can use the bread.

This is a French bread, and that works, or you can use some smaller pieces, if the kids are helping.

And so we're going to put those in.

I like to soak them really well, because if they get a good soak to it, then it's going to have a better taste.

It takes a little bit longer to cook when you have a good soak to it, but I like it better.

It just tastes better.

So we're going to put just a little bit of oil where each one of these are going to go just to make sure the grill won't stick because of the powders in this.

So I'm going to take this and just move it right over.

I want to make sure--and I'm using the weight as to make sure that I got enough juice in it.

You can see it also, because it has--I mean, it has a mark on the bread, but the bread's getting soft, so I got to get with it.

I got to put them on there, and we're going to put the long piece, and, I mean, it's really juicy.

It's going to make a great--you could put a weight on it if you want to.

You don't have to.

You can just kind of press it down.

Let's see what these are looking like.

You know, and they're not sticking, so that's good, because I don't like it when it sticks.

And so see the little one's starting to get a little color?

So here in New Orleans, we call this pain perdu, and what that really means--and I've been calling this pain perdu since I was a kid-- pain perdu means that it's "lost bread" or bread that's not really good for almost anything, but you make this with it, with the egg in it, and it's really good.

So you're using lost bread in order to feed the family, and when I grew up on the farm, that was very important, because you didn't throw anything away.

I mean, it just wasn't--the bread should be a day old.

If it's really dry and hard, it's even better, because it's going to soak more of the mixture up, and it's going to have a better taste, a better texture in it.

I'm going to flip the big one again.

I like the big ones, because you know, when I was a kid, that's the way we did it.

We made it with French bread that Mama made, and it would get real dry.

And so, I mean, I think of it as a long piece of bread as pain perdu, or, as we say, French toast.

It's real--I mean, as you see--it's real simple to do.

You can put any kind of syrup on it at this point.

I think if you use fruit-juice syrups, you're better off with the sugar and the calories instead of cane sugar or other kinds of syrup, and so we've got it.

Look at that.

Isn't that pretty?

Just pour the syrup on, and you've got it.

Well, that's our pain perdu, or French Quarter toast.

That's different.

Yes, it really is, because the mixture that goes in here is different.

And that's good cooking, good eating, good loving.

We love you guys!

>> announcer: A cookbook featuring all the recipes from Chef Paul Prudhomme's Always Cooking is available for $15.95 plus $7.95 shipping and handling.

The cookbook features 97 recipes, color photos, and cooking tips from Chef Paul.

To order a copy of the companion cookbook, call: And pay by credit card.

Or send a check or money order to: Captioning by CaptionMax www.captionmax.com >> Okay, look here.

Don't look at me.

Look at-- >> Prudhomme: I didn't look at you.

Why would I want-- [laughing] Oh, does this smell good.

But I don't know what it is.

>> Soy sauce.

>> Prudhomme: [laughing] Oh, this is wonderful soy sauce.

I got to put them on there, and then they-- [laughg] And then the crash.

We're going to put the plantains in, and I'm going to start--hey, did you see that?

Oh, man, I never thought I could do that.

There it goes, all right.

Put your best ugly face on.

>> announcer: Funding for Chef Paul Prudhomme's Always Cooking was provided by: