Nick Offerman & Helen Rebanks | Country Living

Country Living

8/1/2024

Transcript

00:00I'm going to go in close, it's going to go in your face if you're that close.

00:16I'm Helen Rebanks. And I'm Nick Offerman. This is a segment for country living. We will be

00:23making oatmeal raisin cookies. So how did the two of you meet? It was through Twitter,

00:28I befriended them and I had an acting job in Manchester, England. And that took me very

00:33close to them. And I started spending weekends there, had some of Helen's cooking and here we

00:38are. This cookie recipe is out of Helen's book, The Farmer's Wife. You chose to make oatmeal raisin

00:46cookies. I did. Why did you make that foolish choice today? I like to bake a lot at home. I

00:52think making things yourself, you know where the ingredients come from. And these keep us going

00:57in between jobs on the farm, gathering the sheep or moving the fences for the cattle. Come in,

01:03have a cup of tea, have a cookie. Let's get started. We're going to start with a bowl.

01:08If you pass me a bowl over, a large one. A large bowl. Please. And then the butter.

01:16So far so good. A couple of sticks unwrapped in there, it's going to get messy.

01:20I'm super good at butter. We call that a butter flop. Hi-ya. Two sticks plus two tablespoons.

01:27I have my pocket knife, but they probably don't want me to use that. I have a knife.

01:33Thank you. All right. Measuring off the label, which they cleverly marked for idiots like me.

01:40Oh, great. And then one final mini flop, we call this. Can you tell me, Nick, how much sugar?

01:46Three quarters of a cup plus one tablespoon. So far, I approve of these two ingredients,

01:52butter and sugar. In fact, we can stop right here and just mix it up.

01:56And the brown sugar, Nick? Three quarters of a cup of packed

02:01dark brown sugar. Do you mind if I measure this one? Certainly.

02:07Happy with that? I'm happy. Me too. That was a test you passed. Maybe you should,

02:14maybe you should. I'll keep control of this side of things. Okay, right.

02:18I'm going to take a mixer. Okay. You used one of these before? In the wood shop, yes.

02:24When we're mixing fillers with wood glue or a two-part epoxy.

02:32I'm good. I wasn't scared. You hold it steady, right? Okay,

02:38I'm going to go in. It's going to go in your face if you're that close.

02:43We don't want any butter and sugar in that beard. Not by accident, we don't.

02:50It's got a life of its own, this machine. I think it might be Canadian.

02:57Fairly happy with that. All right, then I am too.

02:59Okay, so we're going to pop a couple of eggs in here now, Nick.

03:02A couple of large brown, grade A, with outdoor access. That means that the chickens have a

03:08window they can open. Thank you.

03:17And then I just eat these. Not so good, not so good.

03:21All right. I mean, it's a Bolivian thing. You also eat the tails on the shrimp. I've been told

03:27it promotes virility. Now, what is this tincture? This is vanilla. Can you smell?

03:34Nice. Can you pass me a spatula so we can scrape the sides of the bowl?

03:38With pleasure. Scrape down the sides of the bowl so we've got all the mixture in there and break

03:43the eggs. Oatmeal. The word meal is one letter away from the word meat. Now, I would love a

03:50sandwich. That's good for now. I'm going to scrape that off there and use the mixer to just combine

03:56that a bit more. Let's mix.

03:58There it goes. I've prepared some freestyle rap lyrics.

04:18Stop. And that's the end.

04:20That's the end. This looks delicious. Like, I want to slather this all over my face.

04:27We want three cups of this all-purpose flour. You want to pop that in?

04:32Sure. Is this whole thing one cup?

04:34Yeah.

04:35Now, do you buy your eggs at the store?

04:39I haven't bought an egg from a store for years. We've got probably about 20 chickens now on the

04:44farm. How many eggs would you say your chickens produce per day?

04:49Each chicken lays an egg a day when they're in full production, so I'm getting 20 eggs a day.

04:54Can you imagine the indulgent luxury of 20 eggs a day? I can.

05:02Okay, so I'm going to get you to try and combine this with the butter and sugar.

05:06Okay. I got it.

05:14I got it. You might want to stretch out a little bit before you get to the combining.

05:20This is frustrating. I thought cookies were easy. I just want to pause for one moment.

05:27Would you maybe spell me for a second? Here are the things we could have been making in this

05:32segment. Spanish chicken stew, minted lamb steaks, lamb empanadas, roast beef and Yorkshire puddings,

05:42beef noodles with greens, lasagna, honey mustard sausages, steak and homemade fries,

05:52eggs six ways. I'm going to say that again.

05:57Eggs six ways. These are some items that we could have been making.

06:04I promise you they're going to be delicious. All right. I trust you. You've never let me

06:09down before. So we're going to need a teaspoon of baking soda. Do you want to have a go? Yeah,

06:13I'm pretty good at opening boxes. Not a big deal. One teaspoon baking soda. Perfect. I did audition

06:21to play Tinkerbell once. And a little pinch of salt. I'm going to pinch and just.

06:26Now some cinnamon. I'm going to go for about a half a teaspoon. Yep. Not too heavy. Magic. So

06:33we've got quite stiff dough now. It's coming together, but we need to put one and a quarter

06:37cups oats and some raisins in there. Conveniently have a one and a half cup bag of Thompson raisins.

06:47It looks about right. It's fine. All right. Go for it all. I like to sprinkle them in

06:52just so that the raisins feel appreciated. You know what I mean? Just combine all that mixture.

06:59OK, let's get a sheet pan. Let's get cleaned up and roll these into balls. Sort of a nice

07:05rounded teaspoon like this into that. No kidding. A full sphere.

07:13Right. How am I doing? Looking like a square there, but keep going. How am I making a cube?

07:20We'll get a few of these in and get them baked. What the **** is wrong with me?

07:26Why am I rolling a polygon? How's that going for you? I don't know. I found my weakness.

07:32I can make a snowball. That's looking good. Quite often when I get chores on the farm,

07:38when I'm visiting Helen and her husband James, this is how it goes. So I'm going to use a fork

07:44and just press gently onto the top of them like that. You don't have to spend so much time making

07:50a nice ball. We want a biscuit, don't we? This is cute. It's going to a good place.

07:55Yeah, that's a great core workout. We need to pop them in a preheated oven and they'll be ready

08:01shortly. Thank you, Nick.

08:08Nick, these look great. Well done. Teamwork. They look amazing. They look like I'm going to want a

08:13little bit of something to wash them down. Cup of tea? In my hometown, we don't have a cup of tea.

08:20Something to wash them down. Cup of tea? In my hometown,

08:24we call this Manuka. Manuka tea. Excuse me? Lagavulin Offerman edition.

08:37Cheers. Cheers, Nick.

08:44It's really more of a sipping beverage,

08:47but to each their own. These cookies are so delicious and it was truly easy to make.

08:52And you know what else goes great with this Lagavulin? Meat.

Nick Offerman & Helen Rebanks | Country Living

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