>> male announcer: Funding for Chef Paul Prudhomme's Always Cooking was provided by: >> Prudhomme: [laughing] Delancey Street chopped liver: oh, I love New York.

Avocado-stuffed crabmeat salad: ooh, I love that too.

St. Louis peanut butter banana cream pie.

Hey, we're cooking in a processor.

I'm Chef Paul Prudhomme.

We're gonna do all that plus more.

[lively Cajun music] ♪ ♪ [laughing] Delancey Street chopped liver: yeah, we're gonna food-process this liver till it's chopped.

There ain't no doubt about that.

Actually, the food processor was invented in the early '70s and has more blades and attachments than a blender.

But you know, they're kind of the same thing.

We have always--always use sharp blades.

That's really important.

And you really can sharpen those.

I mean, if there's somebody in the house that can sharpen a pocket knife or sharpen the kitchen knives for you to cut, they can take this blade off and sharpen it.

So you know, you should keep it sharp, because if you don't, all it'll do is mash things.

When, you know, you put something in there, it'll just pulverize them.

And that changes the taste.

And that's the truth; that really does change the taste of stuff if you pulverize it instead of cut it with a spinning blade.

I've got some onions.

I got a fire going.

I've got the pan a little warm.

I'm gonna turn it up.

Now, you know, I'm gonna continue with this process of-- instead of using all this oil.

Now, this is olive oil, and it's good olive oil.

So you know, it's better not to put it in the pot and heat the pot like the instructions.

But we can change those instructions on there.

But that was the way it used to be.

But since then, I've learned that you just take the oil and just put it right there, and instead of having all this amount of oil, you can just put a little bit of oil in, like a teaspoon, and it'll work for the same thing.

So we're gonna start cooking the onions.

And we're gonna do the same thing with the celery.

I won't put quite as much oil in the celery.

And we're gonna cook it.

Now, the idea is to get some color on it, because color is what?

Yeah, you guys have been around long enough to know what color is?

Color is flavor.

Color is taste.

Color is yummy stuff.

And so we want to build color in it, and we've got one of the wonderful deep pans that's got-- that's thin.

This pan is thin, and so it really--it really pushes the heat.

In other words, the heat is so much closer to the onions and the celery because of the thinness of the pan that I've got to--I've got a big burner and it's going full blast, so this is gonna move very quickly.

And the goal is to give extra flavor to the onions and to the celery.

And so that's my goal.

What I'm gonna do is, I've got some seasonings here, and I'm gonna blend them out.

I got a little bit of nutmeg I'm gonna put in.

I got some mustard, some dry mustard I'm gonna put in, and some sugar.

And that's gonna blend out this seasoning blend.

And so I'm gonna take it and stir it, but I want to mix it really good, so every time I put it somewheres, it's gonna be blended, all gonna be all the same everywheres.

And so I like to mix them up real good.

See, I was smelling this.

We're gonna just let it cook a little bit longer while I stir this.

Now, the rest of the ingredients that I'm gonna put in here: I got some parsley, and I got liver because we're doing--we're doing actually a pâté dish, or a liver--a ground-up liver dish.

And I got some garlic, which I'm gonna put into the pot now.

And I got parsley, which I'm gonna put in later because I want the colors.

And at this point, I got the vegetables starting, the onions and the celery.

Now I'm gonna finish them real fast by adding the seasoning to it.

And of course, the seasoning has all those ingredients that I just put into it, including the sugar, so it's gonna start browning very, very quickly.

I'm putting the parsley in.

All right.

I'm gonna add the liver to it.

And I'm putting the chicken liver in second because the chicken liver is gonna cook quicker.

And so--hey, I got a thing going.

I'm gonna turn the fire down a little bit because I need to stir, stir, stir.

I don't want it to stick.

I don't want it to burn.

But it's cooking; there's no doubt about it.

I'm gonna put the--I'm gonna put the chicken livers in.

And then the next step is, I'm gonna put the stock in.

[sizzling] Yes.

Give it stirring.

I got the fire down low.

So now--so I need to--oh, the sides are sticking, and that's the best flavor you can get is the brown on the pan.

And if you go too far, of course, it's gonna get bitter, but I mean, that brownness on the pan is what really is gonna give you huge amounts of flavor.

I'm gonna put the rest of the seasoning blend in, and then-- but I'm gonna let it cook a while.

And I'll put the eggs in, and then we're gonna put it in a food processor.

And we're gonna make a pâté with it.

All right, the next step is, we're gonna put the eggs in.

And we're not gonna break the eggs; we're gonna just set them in there and let them cook.

And they'll basically be poaching in all that wonderful juice in there.

And then we're gonna go away for a while, let this simmer.

We're gonna come back and put it in the blender.

We're gonna have this wonderful chopped liver that we call Delancey Street because there's a lot of delis on Delancey Street in New York, or there used to be a long time ago.

I see it's done.

The eggs have gotten--I mean, the eggs are cooked.

There's no doubt about it.

There's probably just a--yeah, a little bit of give in it for the yolk.

I'm gonna shut the fire off, and then I'm gonna put it in this blender.

And I gonna do it in stages because I don't want it to splash out.

The blender top is kind of a different size here than my pot is, so I'm gonna take it and put it right in like that.

Ooh.

Ooh.

I mean, look at that, guys.

Oh, is that beautiful or what?

Actually I'm gonna have to blend it a little bit because I got more stuff than I got space.

But that happens when you got more stuff than space.

Now, we're gonna make some noise, so excuse us.

[food processor whirring] All right, so I've got--I've got the--I think I can probably put the rest in.

Let me go this way, so you can see it going in.

I got some juice, and I've got the rest of the livers.

Ooh, this is gonna be full.

I love full ones because that means a lot for everybody.

All right.

So now again, we're gonna just take this and crank it up.

[food processor whirring] Now, I'm holding it down, and I'm doing that for a specific reason, in my head anyway.

I wanted to blend it to a point, and so, you know, I mean, I know that as soon as it gets to that point, I can stop by just removing my finger.

[food processor whirring] Only because it's so full, I'm gonna--I'm gonna give it just a little bit of a stir.

But it's there.

Oh, look-a-there.

Look-a-there, oh.

Man, that's pâté, pâté de foie gras.

You know what that means?

"pâté de foie gras" means "a liver mélange," like this, or mixture, "of fat."

"With fat."

[food processor whirring] Now, it's ready, so you make it into a mold, but you gotta cool it down a little bit.

I've got some reccia.

And we're gonna take this and show you what the--and you spray the mold.

You spray the mold first with a little bit of some kind of vegetable oil or whatever you want, or you just take a paper towel and put oil on it and just wipe it down.

You can use olive oil.

And then you get the pâté, and you just even it out with a knife.

And then you get your crackers.

Then you can have some Delancey Street chopped liver that you made.

And you're gonna really enjoy it because once you make it fresh, you'll never want it any other way.

Oh, just get a bite of it.

Mmm.

Ah.

Yum.

Best thing I can say is yum.

You gotta do this, guys.

You gotta try it.

It's delicious.

Avocado stuffed gently with crabmeat salad; it's absolutely wonderful, darling.

Avocado stuffed with crabmeat.

Man, that makes a salad that's just unbelievable: the crabmeat salad in an avocado.

Oh.

And we're doing food processors and blenders, and this time, we're gonna do the blender.

So we got a medium-size avocado, and, oh, it's got to be ripe.

It's very important.

But the first thing we're gonna do is, we're gonna start cooking because I got some onions and bell pepper, and you know me: when I got onions and bell pepper, I'm gonna fire 'em up because I want to make 'em good.

I want to make 'em delicious.

And so put a little bit of oil in the onions.

And I've preheated a pan.

Now I got the heat all the way up.

And we just want to cook this a tad here.

And I don't want to put too much oil in it, so instead of putting the oil--instead of putting the oil directly in the pan, I put it right with the onions.

And then I'm gonna put the bell peppers in just to caress the onions, just to caress the onions, to make the onions happy.

Now, I've still got other ingredients, like garlic and green onions, but I'm not gonna put those in now.

I want to brown this.

While this is cooking, I want to show you how to clean up an avocado.

And there's a lot of ways to do this--to do it.

You know--it's--we're gonna just cut it down--cut it down one side.

And let me see where I cut it.

Hey, this avocado's really neat because it's tight.

And we're gonna cut it here.

Now, I want to peel it.

And so in the peeling process, you have options.

And one of the easy ways to do it is just cut it in half and then just take the peel off.

And then when you've got it cut evenly, you take--and the skin's still on--and you twist it, and it comes right out.

Let me see if I can get this avocado out of the--ah, look at that.

Ooh, it's got a dark spot on it, but that's okay.

We'll take care of the dark spot.

And so we've got this off.

We're gonna peel the dark spot off just by taking this and getting a little bit of it down and getting some more, one of the--one of the measures of dealing with avocado and very fresh fruit.

We got the end of the avocado here, and we can just cut this off to kind of clean it up.

So we got--we got an avocado shell, or half an avocado.

And we got the onions cut.

We want to cool them down.

Then we're gonna make a dressing.

And we're gonna take the other half of the avocado, and I'm gonna cut it like I did this one.

And then I'm gonna take the nut out, and then I'm gonna take it and then drop it in the blender, because I'm going to use it to make this mayonnaise with.

And so the next step is to make some mayonnaise.

And I was so enthralled, I didn't put any seasoning on, so I'm gonna put a little seasoning on, because that's real hot, and it's got oil on it, so it's gonna be better than just not putting any seasoning on at all.

We got the egg we're gonna put in.

And then we got a little bit of pepper sauce, good stuff.

We've got a little bit of mustard, good stuff.

And got some dill to put in.

I'm gonna start the process of making the mayonnaise.

And I want to take that off, so I got a hole in it.

And then I'll just drip things in.

And of course, it makes a lot of noise, but we all know that.

So we're gonna just go ahead and start.

[blender whirring] If it starts splashing on you, don't be afraid to cover that dude up, and don't let it splash on you.

I want to put some herbs and spices in here, and I'm gonna add some avocado in it.

And I've got some cut up.

I can use the one that I've got half here, or I can do the cut-up one.

And actually, I'm gonna use a little bit more.

I love avocado in this.

I mean, it just really gives it such a great flavor.

[blender whirring] Gonna add some seasoning to it.

[blender whirring] How many times have you heard me say, if you don't taste it, you don't know what it tastes like?

And so I want to to make sure that I've got a reasonable taste here.

Look at that: nice, stro mayonnaise.

Yeah.

But homemade and oh so fabulous.

I mean, I need to put a little more seasoning in it.

And the reason: it's actually got enough seasoning, but the reason I want to put more in is because it needs to carry the crabmeat, and the crabmeat need to have--you know, it needs to be happy with seasoning too.

[blender whirring] Now, I got a really nice, thick avocado mayonnaise, and so I'm gonna finish this.

And what I'm gonna do is take my vegetables--my onions and bell pepper--gonna put them in this right here and mix it.

The last thing I want to do--the last thing I want to do is put the crabmeat in too soon because the crabmeat will break up too much.

Got some green onions I'm putting in.

I've got the blender here, and it's got this incredible avocado mayonnaise.

And I'm gonna put it down in here with the vegetables that I browned off.

And they got seasoning in them too, and we're gonna mix them all together.

I need to get everything out of here because, man, this is--this is A1 stuff.

This is the kind of things that make you come back home real early, real early in the day when you know you're getting this.

I'm gonna set this aside, mix it together, and then I don't want to break up my crabmeat or break it up as least amount as possible.

So this is going to be a turning affair.

And so I want to take my spoon and just put it in.

Yup, it's ready.

A little taste, little taste to make sure that the seasoning is right.

Oh.

Crabmeat.

And then we're gonna do a method, we're gonna do a method called folding.

And it's--a folding method is just exactly what it sounds like.

And so I've got this wonderful, thick dressing on the bottom, and I want to introduce it to the crabmeat, but I dot want to break up the crabmeat any more than necessary because, I mean, it's so beautiful, the crabmeat, and it's got such great lumps to it that you don't want to mess it up by putting too much ripping of it.

We've got the crabmeat dressing all over the crabmeat now, and it's ready to do the next step.

And I've already got the next step done because we took a half of avocado and we filled it up.

And I think it needs more, don't you?

Yeah, I think so.

We're gonna take this, and we're gonna add a little bit to this avocado because the avocado's not that big, and we want enough to munch out on.

And so just put a little bit more crabmeat.

There's nothing you can say about this except it's a wonderful stuffed avocado stuffed with crabmeat.

And it's all stuffed together because I'm gonna stuff it in mouth-- [laughing] St. Louis peanut putter banana cream pie.

Get you some, and you'll be a happy human being.

St. Louis peanut butter banana cream pie, boy.

It's one of those that it's really good, and I'm gonna get to work right now.

The first thing I'm gonna do--and when you get the recipe and you follow it, this won't be the method, but don't worry about it, because what I want to do is television time, and I want to get the cream going.

And I've got canned milk and cream.

And canned milk comes from when I was a kid.

A lot of times, that's all we had was canned milk, and so I learned to use that and like it.

And a lot of things that I do with it really makes it better.

And I put sugar in there, so there's whipping cream, canned milk, and sugar.

And I mean, like, you know, in a can in the store.

Now, I'm gonna make--I'm gonna make the mixture that's gonna make it just incredible, I mean incredible pie, I'm gonna-- I got eggs here and some extra egg yolks, and I'm gonna put some butter in.

You can put all this at one time.

That's a neat thing about it.

I got brown sugar, and gonna put the brown sugar in.

I've got some peanut butter, and, oh, I've been resisting eating this peanut butter for the last few minutes while we're getting set to do this.

And so got the peanut butter in.

We've got some honey.

And, oh, the honey is good, yes.

Look at that beautiful honey.

I mean, that's really great stuff.

Putting the honey in.

There's not much sweetness in this, as you can tell, you know?

I mean, I got sugar in the cream over there, and I got honey over here, and I got bananas.

We're gonna put vanilla in.

Oh, yes, good old vanilla.

And some bananas.

And now the processor is gonna take us just a couple of minutes, and we know it makes a lot of noise, so we're gonna just go to it.

[food processor whirring] I want to make sure that we're looking good here, and the only way to do it--oh, it's creamy.

Still got some--still got some little bumps in it, so I'm gonna--I'm gonna-- [laughing] It's an excuse to taste it again, but I'm gonna let it go.

[food processor whirring] All right, now I'm gonna check the temperature, because I should be cooking this at 165.

And what I want to do is get this warm so I can put the eggs and everything else in here and finish it off and finish cooking it, because it's a custard.

And when you have a custard, you can't use very, very high temperatures.

You gotta use reasonably high temperatures.

I just turned the temperature up, and I'm up to 140 degrees.

And so I'm gonna--I'm gonna turn the fire down a little bit, because if I go too quickly, when I put the eggs in, they're gonna break, and then they're not gonna--they're not gonna be solid.

So I'm gonna take the thermometer out.

I know that I'm getting close with the temperature.

All right, I'm gonna check the temperature one more time, just to see how we're doing, and I don't want to get too high a temperature because when you put the eggs in, it's gonna break it down.

And I'm gonna stir and watch the temperature I need to get, around 160, 165.

You know, I should talk about bananas a little bit because they're so high in potassium that they really are good.

And for this, you need some really, really wonderful bananas that are very, very ripe.

We're working with the double broiler, and it's a homemade double broiler.

They're so easy to make.

I mean, just any pan that you do, any--literally, any pan, and just put another pan that fits on the inside--I'm doing the cornstarch here--and fits on the other side, you know, you can make a double broiler.

And it's very effective, and it just works.

And if you want to buy a double broiler, you're certainly welcome to.

I'm putting the cornstarch in, and I'm gonna shake it up, and it's gonna start getting thick.

And let me check my temperature because I got to get to 165, and that's very important because I've written in the recipe, and I'm telling you guys to follow it, so I gotta follow it too, right?

Now I'm seeing the cornstarch starting to get thick.

Really is.

All right, I'm at a good temperature.

I'm gonna take everything out of the blender and put it right in there.

Oh, look at that custard.

Look at that, oh.

I just love that.

The riper the bananas, the better this is going to be.

And thers just no doubt about that.

I'm gonna taste this, see if I need any kind of adjustments.

Need to let it keep cooking.

And so--but I've got some already done here, and so I've got a pie crust.

Isn't that beautiful pie crust?

Look at that.

We put beans in it.

That's why it's full of those little indentations, but it's gonna make a really wonderful refrigerated pie.

Oh, look-a-there.

I gotta scrape all of it out.

Can't leave any of that in there.

Yes, yes, yes.

All right, now, at this point, we gotta put it in the refrigerator and let it set.

And you have options.

And I'm gonna get--I have one in the refrigerator.

I'm gonna take it out and show you the options that you have.

I'm watching the pot; I'm watching the thermometer; and I'm right at 160, roughly that.

And so I'm gonna let it sit there for a couple of minutes.

In the meantime, we've got this pie, which we've cooled down the--we've cooled down the filling in it.

But we had one in the fridge, and it's already cold, and all I'm gonna do is just sprinkle some peanuts on it because I like roasted peanuts on top of this particular pie.

I mean, it's gonna have a crunch, and it's gonna be absolutely spectacular.

And you know what?

You go out there and get your St. Louis peanut butter banana cream pie, and you love it.

Make it yourself, though.

That's important.

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

We love you guys out there.

>> 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.

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 gotta put 'em on there.

And then they-- [clattering] [laughing] Oh, and then the crash.

We're gonna put the--we're gonna put the plantains in.

And I'm gonna start-- hey, did you see that?

Oh, man, never thought I could do that.

There it goes; all right.

[laughing] Put your best ugly face on.

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