♪ They say ye'are what you eat, so I don't eat chicken feet ♪ ♪ But I love me summa' Grandma's pickled beets ♪ ♪ Well, cut it up, put it'na pan ♪ ♪ Throw it on these sholders see where it lands ♪ ♪ Right here in Farmer's Kitchen ♪ ♪ Maters, taters, beans and corn ♪ ♪ The cow's in the barn and the sheep's been shorn ♪ ♪ Kids in the barnyard ♪ ♪ Chasin' Grandpa's chickens, chickens, chickens ♪ ♪ Spices, slices, cuts and dices ♪ ♪ Gonna slash your grocery prices ♪ ♪ Right here in Farmer's Kitchen ♪ ♪ Help you grow your garden good ♪ ♪ With recipes to suit your mood ♪ ♪ Try some grub you've never tried before ♪ ♪ 'Fore, 'fore ♪ ♪ Smash it with a wooden mallet ♪ ♪ Gonna educate yer palette ♪ ♪ Right here in Farmer's Kitchen ♪ ♪ In Tim Farmer's Country Kitchen ♪ We're gonna cook some good now.

Hello and welcome to the Farmer's Kitchen.

We're the farmers and this is our kitchen.

That's right.

This is not a set.

That's right.

This is what we do, and we're cooking dinner.

Now, I tell you what, when I think about it, most of the time we're cooking the big meal of the day, the evening meal.

But we went to a restaurant the other day, and what did you have?

I had mushroom soup that was amazing.

And what did you ask me to do?

Please make this for me.

[laughs] Which she does quite often.

So, I was trying to taste this soup at one of our favorite restaurants.

And I tasted this soup and I tasted certain things in it.

But I also thought, when you do this for a while, you can start adding up in your brain.

And my inner Raoul comes out.

You're good at that.

My old French buddy.

And I thought, okay.

When he was making any kind of sauce or soup, he started with maybe red wine, then a bouillon, and then a meat stock, that sort of thing.

And there's a magic thing there.

So, I thought, we can do that.

So, I'm going to make you some mushroom soup.

Thank you.

I love it.

Did you like it?

I did love it.

Was it as good as the restaurant?

It's better than the restaurant.

But don't tell him.

And she made something the other day that was just outstanding.

Most of the time, when we're in our kitchen, we look around and see what we have, and we think, "Okay, let's try this."

There's a lot of happy accidents that happen.

Every now and then there's something like, "Oh, that's probably not."

Let's not make that again.

Let's not make that again.

But the ones that come out really good, we're going to try to share with you.

And what is that that you made?

I actually made a strawberry bread.

It's delicious.

Because it's strawberry time.

So, it's a wonderful time to do that.

This is not a super sweet bread.

No, it's not.

But with a little bit of butter on it, right out of the oven, I don't know if I've had anything better in a long time.

There is some sugar, but not a ton of sugar.

Just show us how to do this, Mrs.

Farmer.

This is absolutely wonderful.

All right.

Well, I have a pint of strawberries here.

So, that's actually like 16 ounces of strawberries.

And I'm going to take my magical chopper.

Because what I want to do is I want to chop these down and kind of puree them a little bit because I'm going to boil them for a little bit.

That's going to be our base.

You know, we had a banana sitting around here.

I was wanting to do something like a banana bread.

But it had gone beyond its expiration date, you could say.

It was looking pretty poor.

And you had strawberries.

By golly, here's what we came up with.

This chopper is wonderful.

But I'm just going to end them slowly because they're too big.

And then I'm going to chop them all the way down.

And I've already washed these.

Now, something else that happens if you're not a member of a CSA in this great United States of ours.

Check around you.

I bet you somebody's got a way that you can get fresh vegetables if you don't grow them yourself.

We like to grow some stuff.

But a lot of stuff we get from our CSA, Community Supported Agriculture.

You could chop these by hand or use a blender.

But you know I love my little chopper.

You could use a potato masher.

Yes, you could.

I'm going to take these, and I'm going to get them all in there.

And if you will go ahead and get those going.

And I just want to bring these to a boil on like a medium heat.

Once they boil, we'll give it one minute.

Really?

No sugar?

No, nothing to this.

And then we're going to take them off, and we're going to chill them while we make the rest of our bread.

It's boiling.

That's it.

We've kind of boiled them, kind of got them to come together a little bit.

And we're going to go ahead and just put it in a different container.

And we're going to stick this in the fridge while we get the rest of that bread ready.

What's next?

See, it's almost two cups still.

Let's put it in this pan because we're going to stick it in the fridge while we make the rest of this.

Just chill it for a little bit?

We're going to chill it while we make the rest of our bread.

Our next thing is we have some flour.

I have one and three quarters a cup of flour here.

And I've already premixed my one teaspoon of baking soda, quarter teaspoon of baking powder, and three-quarter teaspoons of salt.

Spice.

I got pumpkin pie spice.

Or you could use cinnamon.

So, I like the pumpkin pie.

Pumpkin pie spice.

Yeah.

I'm just going to do half a teaspoon of that.

Say pie.

Pie.

Say it like you say it.

Say what?

Pumpkin pie.

Pie and pie.

That's not very nice.

But that's it.

That's our powder mixture.

So, now, if you'll be my helper with the mixer, I'm going to put two eggs in.

Once I get the two eggs in, we'll get this going.

I've got to watch it.

I put it on too high a speed and I end up.

It would fly all over the room.

Don't do it.

Wearing it.

Cup of sugar.

I mean, it's still a lot of sugar, but we're going to go with a whole cup of sugar.

Now, you know my lard.

I have to lard in everything.

So, I'm going to take a third of a cup of our lard.

Do a little research on pasture-raised pig leaf lard.

The science has changed.

I would much rather use this than a vegetable oil-based type thing.

Oh, yeah.

You smell that?

They're finding out that, again, pasture-raised leaf lard from a pasture-raised pig is absolutely pretty good stuff.

Our grandparents knew more than we thought.

And this is our lard that we got from our friend who raises his pigs, pasture-raised pigs.

All natural.

He gives us some of the fat.

Or we buy that from him.

And bring him to the crockpots.

We reduce it ourselves.

And it's just absolutely wonderful.

And I've gone through a couple jars already because I love this so much.

So, this is mixing up?

That's mixing up.

Now what we're going to do, I actually have a half a cup of heavy whipping cream here.

And we pour it in?

We're going to do back and forth.

So, now I've got my powder mixture.

I'll jump the gun.

Yeah.

So, you've been trying the powder.

You just put a little bit in.

So, pour this in?

We're going to go back and forth just a little bit.

Put about a third of that in.

And I'll put a little of mine in.

And a little of yours.

And I'll do a little of mine.

We're going to go back and forth.

Did we get it all in there?

Here's what I'm going to be wearing next.

Go ahead and turn that off for a minute.

I'm going to grab my strawberries.

Ooh, it already smells good.

If you want to turn it back on.

I'm going to slowly add back my strawberries.

And this turned out a lovely, dark color.

Yes, it did.

Go ahead and give that a good mix if you want.

And how much do you mix it?

That's good if you want to stop that.

Now the last ingredient.

Pecans.

Pecans.

You chop them?

Yes.

Half a cup.

And we're going to chop those up.

You go ahead and mix those, and that'll be it.

No wonder this was so good.

I didn't want you to make that.

What do you think?

Put in loaf pan and go?

What temperature?

I think that's good.

We're going to put 350.

I already have the oven going for one hour.

One hour.

Yeah.

350.

And I think we're good.

Thank you so much.

Oh, it smells good.

I have my loaf pan already.

Ready to go here.

I greased it.

And it does smell good.

I think it smelled good.

That's it.

That's all?

Do you want to open the oven for me?

Let this go for one hour.

That looks gorgeous.

[music playing] I'll tell you what.

Let's get this cleaned up.

And then I'm going to start the soup.

You know what?

I just thought of something.

Normally when you watch this show, it's a very meat and potatoes type of show.

And we're kind of in the south.

There's a lot of stuff that's kind of - some people consider heavy.

Do you realize this is a soup and salad show and bread?

It's not terrible, right?

It's not terrible.

It's pretty healthy.

It's good.

Let's get this cleaned up in mushroom soup.

[music playing] Now some people have told us here recently that they didn't like onions.

And so, I told them, somebody I know personally, I said, "You've probably had red onions or something very strong and you reacted to those if they were raw, so on and so forth."

You get a yellow sweet onion or a Vidalia onion.

The sugar in these things is outstanding.

The flavor profile is so different from anything you could imagine with a red onion.

So, for those out there who think they don't like onions or think they don't like mushrooms, I think this would be the entry level dish for you to rediscover I think you're right.

your taste buds.

Good idea.

Nicki loves, dare I say, really loves mushroom soup.

I do.

I like mushroom anything.

But mushroom soup is one of my favorites.

My old buddy, Raoul, he always said, "Trust your senses.

Trust your olfactory."

So, we came home and I started being the mad scientist.

You did.

So, let's start this recipe.

You know what?

I'm going to let you do that for me if you will.

I'm going to go ahead and put a little butter in here.

So, many recipes you have seen us begin with butter and onions.

And again, those sweet yellow onions, they add something that's almost indescribable.

So, that's where we're beginning.

I'm gonna take some baby portobello mushrooms.

I'm just going to cut those up into manageable sized pieces.

And I'm gonna sauté those with the onions.

Nicki, if you don't mind, would you pop those onions on over here and let them get.

Let them start to get going.

Do you want all of this or just a little bit?

What do you think?

Let's use most of it.

Now that's half of a very large sweet onion.

I was never a big mushroom fan until later in life.

And now that I've rediscovered them, I could eat them.

I could live on them.

Me too.

We took a walk around the farm today, hoping to find some different mushrooms.

And we looked and we looked, and that's all we came up with today.

Right at the end.

Right at the end.

And these are a type of coral fungus.

And you can see why.

They really look like a piece of coral out of the ocean.

We found a chicken of the wood.

We found a puffball.

And Rick down the road, we found morels on his place.

And on Kelly's place, we found a pheasant back mushroom.

All of which we have consumed on the show.

So, we're going to get our onions going pretty good here.

You know what?

Let's measure the mushrooms.

See how much we have here.

There's more there than I thought.

How many cups is that measuring?

That's four cups.

This is about four and a half cups.

So, one more thing that I'm going to do here real quick-like is I'm going to cut me some fennel out of this bulb.

Now tell me what these smells like to you, if you will.

Why can't I say?

What is it?

That little anise splashes?

Yeah, that's what it is.

It's like licorice.

And it really adds a subtle, interesting flavor to this.

I'm just going to go ahead and cut this up.

I'm going to throw this in with the onions.

It's not a real obvious flavor that you pick out, but it really does.

It's one of these things here, a lot of times you don't want to add too many flavors.

But these flavors all together are not too shabby.

It does smell like licorice.

For those who don't like licorice, you would not mind this.

You would not mind this at all.

I'm going to go ahead and drop this in.

Those are browning up.

I'm gonna turn it down just a little bit.

I'm gonna pop these in.

Pop some fennel in here.

You know, there are some real mushroom experts out there.

I know most of the basic groups, but sometimes I will send some of my stuff.

I know this is a private Facebook page, but I think they'd probably let you on if you asked.

It's called Official Kentucky Mushrooms.

And I talked to some guys over there, and I thought this was one thing, and they kind of steered me in the right direction.

But one thing about mushrooms, do not assume.

We could take that a step further, but we won't.

Do not assume on your mushrooms.

No, for sure.

It's up to you.

It's not up to me.

I can't look at your mushrooms.

If you put them in your body, then you're responsible for what happens.

And we know what these are.

We've got them at the store.

Baby Bellas.

So, what I'm gonna do is I'm just going to keep turning these around until they get a nice little brown.

And I want all these flavors to absorb together.

I'm going to put a little bit of salt in here.

I usually use kosher salt.

I just like the consistency and flavor of it.

A little bit of pepper.

And at this point, I'm gonna to put just a little bit of dried thyme in here just to get that flavor going.

The one thing I noticed when we were eating out the other day, when you said, "I really like this soup," the one thing that jumps out at you is thyme.

And with that earthy flavor with the sweet onions, something that occurred to me was I would really like to put some white pepper.

That white pepper and thyme together has a very interesting flavor.

And as you go along here, if you need a little more butter in here, pop it in.

I don't want to go too heavy on the salt or too heavy on the pepper.

But pepper really adds.

We like pepper in our soup.

You know what that reminds me?

We haven't seen him for a while.

But Glenn, the pepper bandit, he was in pepper prison for a long time.

Well, he went to the post office.

He was trying to send that pure Peruvian pepper in, which is illegal to ship.

Remember that camel he had a while back?

I do remember his camel.

He's still got the camel.

He rode over here.

He came through around the field.

You saw him?

Well, no.

I got him on camera.

Look, I'll show you some footage.

Here's him coming around the field trying to get around the dogs, snuck through the back door when we were up looking for mushrooms and stole our child's cherry pepper.

You are kidding me.

So, I hated to do it, but I called the pepper police.

Last time I heard he was in Paducah peddling pepper on his way to Peoria.

I don't know, but I'm just saying.

That's a crazy story.

You know how he is.

He's out of control.

And you know what?

I hate to say this, but sometimes he has an accomplice.

And the thing is we've never seen her face, but they have recorded messages.

Her name is Patricia, the pepper pusher.

That's what they call her.

Patricia the pepper pusher.

He has an accomplice then.

You remember when we first got to know them, we were on the Alaska cruise, on the Country Kitchen Alaska cruise, and we thought he was so nice and she was so nice.

He seems so sweet.

Yeah.

And he is.

He's just got a pepper problem.

Yes, he does.

And at this point, I'm gonna take a little bit of white wine and I'm just going to deglaze.

And I'm gonna just reduce that down because that flavor is really going to come in nice there.

And that was probably a tablespoon and a half, maybe two tablespoons.

And I'm gonna let that reduce for just a minute.

That smells good.

That does smell good.

All right, we've got a really good smell going here.

So, at this point I'm going to turn these off.

We'll set these.

I'll tell you what, we'll just put them back in the measuring cup.

Let them cool for just a little bit before we put them into our processor.

So, let's get that going.

So, we're going to take equal parts butter and that's, what is that?

A little more than a fourth of a stick of butter?

It's a third of a stick, I think.

And let's try to put in equal parts flour.

We're going to make kind of a roux and a thickener for our soup.

And I'm gonna put in this, because it's a soup.

You'll see me doing this a lot.

I'm going to take like half a cube of chicken bouillon and put in the stock as well.

I'm not going to put a whole lot of salt, but I am going to put some more thyme.

Thyme really adds a lot to this.

And we're gonna come back with our flour, and we're just going to thicken that up.

You'll go ahead and pour that chicken stock in here.

This is going to be a cup and a cup of heavy cream or half and half, whichever you prefer to your desired thickness.

Now, if you wanted to put a little more flour in there, you could do that.

So, we're going to let that thicken up just a little bit.

As we do that, I'm gonna ahead and put my bouillon cube in there, half of one.

I'm gonna put some more pepper.

Because we like pepper.

Now watch your white pepper.

Just a couple dashes.

It really, really adds something.

That in combination with the thyme.

I think makes this.

Now I'm going to take this.

Oh, the smell.

You smell that?

Yeah.

Let me get all of that in there.

All the good stuff.

Then I'm going to puree that.

Now you could use an immersion blender, but I don't like wearing it.

What do you think?

It looks yum.

Is that to your liking?

I think so.

At this point, we're going to add our mushrooms.

Man, oh man.

Now there was one point in time when I would not consider eating this.

And then, Miss Nicki came along and said.

Yum.

Let's try these mushrooms.

Now I can't live without them.

So, let's mix this in, slowly but surely.

Would you mind running out while I'm stirring this to get me some fresh thyme?

I will.

Just a couple sprigs.

All right, a couple sprigs.

I will do it.

I would so appreciate it.

Then there's one more thing, and I'm telling you, when all these flavors combine, it kind of turns magic.

So, we recently bought some smoked white cheddar cheese, and it's ended up in a lot of things, but I don't know if it ended up any better in anything than this right here.

Just go ahead and grate as much of that as you want.

We're almost ready.

Let's do a little more cheese right on top for the final presentation.

A little cracked pepper.

A couple of little mushrooms.

And look what we have.

Beautiful.

Look what we have.

The bread needs to come out.

Can we do that?

That was good timing.

Perfect timing.

That's right.

[music playing] It is perfect.

Yum.

Wow, that looks really good.

What would Sammy say?

Sammy would say yum, Papa.

I think he'd say yummy, Grandma Would he?

It's always yum, Papa.

What do you mean?

[laughs] Now I want you to try that soup.

I want to make sure it's up to your standard.

I see gooey cheese on there, too.

Does it work?

I could eat all that.

What are you going to eat?

You know what?

I need a spoon.

You did good.

[music playing] Now that might seem like a lot of flavors clashing around.

No, that's good.

But let me tell you what.

They combined into something.

Amazing.

I think it's kind of special.

It's very good.

Oh, I'm happy.

Delish.

I'll tell you what we're going to do.

Because we have a break.

We're doing things out of order here.

Normally we'd have our salad done, but I wanted to do this while all that was happening.

Let's take a break and eat our soup so we have the energy to make our salad, which we normally made first, but that's another story.

We'll be back in a minute.

[music playing] [music playing] So, not too long ago, I went to another restaurant, and we were eating with our friend Lisa.

And Lisa's been on the show.

She tried some fish.

She doesn't like fish, but she liked our fish.

She did.

We had a salad with them, and she liked it a lot.

And she likes pickled beets, which we have pickled beets right there.

She was having some friends over, and she said, "Tim, how would you make that salad?"

She put me on the spot.

So, I thought, okay.

So, I started trying to analyze it in my mind.

So, I thought, I think that was a fig, some type of a fig glaze or something like that.

And I knew there was probably olive oil in it.

So, there's your sweet, and there's your oil.

Now you need a little bit of tang, so I thought maybe a little red wine vinegar.

And this was a really sweet salad.

It was really good.

And I thought maybe just a little bit of honey.

And then there was some salt in there, so you've got to get all the savory stuff going on.

So, I thought, okay, I'm going to put just a little bit of Greek seasoning in there, and that would take care of the salt and the pepper and some other things.

There were some figs in there.

I love figs.

But the best part of it was the sliced beets.

It really made it.

Now if you don't like that, you don't have to put those in there.

You can put apples in there.

You can put goat cheese.

You can put all kinds of things in there.

And then there was some pecan sprinkle over the top.

So, I was on the phone talking to Lisa, and you were in the background writing things down.

Thank goodness, because we mixed it up after that, and it was really good, and it was really close.

Let's start with four tablespoons of fig glaze.

You can buy this about any store.

Two tablespoons of olive oil.

Three tablespoons of red wine vinegar.

And let's put some honey in there to thicken that up and give it some sweetness.

Now let's go two tablespoons of that.

And then we'll come back with just a dash of Greek seasoning to set that off.

And we'll go ahead and chop some figs up.

We can put those in there.

We're going to chop those up real fine.

These are two different types of figs that we're using.

You can use whatever you can find, but figs make a wonderful little addition to this salad.

They have a nice sweet taste, but yet the texture of the seeds is just wonderful.

[music playing] Let's put probably more on there.

I'll tell you what.

If you wanted to take and sauté some shallots in bacon grease, put it in there.

But go ahead.

I want you to try that and see what you think.

I'm gonna get ahold of a beat here.

Now this is a little bit sweeter presentation, but it really matches that with the nuts and the beets.

You like it?

Uh-huh.

Can you dig it?

And the figs.

That dressing is so good.

It's almost like dessert, isn't it?

It is.

That's great with spinach too.

I like that.

Wow.

That's a good salad.

That'll work.

That will.

With some soup.

Soup.

We've already tried that.

I'm coming back to that.

You try the bread.

With the bread.

Do you mind?

Go ahead.

I didn't even butter it.

It's so good.

Let me break a little piece off.

It is good, isn't it?

Wow.

That's our dessert.

You bite into that, and your brain's trying to turn it into banana bread.

It thinks, wait a minute.

There're beautiful, wonderful strawberries in here.

Yeah.

That's good.

Look at the color of that.

That's fantastic.

Glad you like it.

I like it better than banana bread.

Or zucchini bread.

It's kind of got both.

It's really good.

Fantastic.

Well, Mrs.

Farmer, hard to believe, but our half hour is about up.

That's right.

That being said, a lot of times I don't write recipes down, but you and Kelly make me write stuff down.

Once we write it down, where do you find it?

I go to timfarmerscountrykitchen.com.

And we have a Facebook page with a lot of friends on them.

We talk about stuff.

We share recipes.

We have fun.

But it's so difficult.

How do you get on that Facebook page?

You hit like.

You do that.

Yes, you do.

That's all there is to it.

Our half hour is up, but there's one thing I really need to say.

What is that?

It's all about... Good times.

Good friends.

And good eats.

Let's eat.

I wanna eat this soup.

You know what?

I want some of that, too.

We'll see you next week right here from the Farmer's Kitchen.

Yeah [music playing] [music playing] Funding for Tim Farmer's Country Kitchen is brought to you by Amerson Farms Country Store.

Something for every member of the family.

[music playing] Ephraim McDowell Medical Center in Danville, Kentucky.

[music playing] Gulf Coast Connection, seafood straight from the Gulf to you.

The Spine Center of Central Kentucky.

[music playing] Wilderness Road Hospitality, Stanford, Kentucky.

Visit Frankfort, Kentucky's spirited capital city.

[music playing] [music playing] To order a cookbook, email TimFarmerCK@gmail.com.