hi I'm Darius Williams important brand in the great second city Chicago it's where I first learned I had a passion for food as great as the city was I wanted more so I set out for the Big Apple that's right New York City I've been here for a few years cooking learning and developing all my recipes my philosophy is simple I make great food with familiar ingredients and present them in brand new ways and here's my rule it's gonna be simple delicious easy and just the food here's what we're in for today so I try to make sure that Darius cooks calm isn't just any ordinary sight with any just ordinary recipes I mean I know what good food is I grew up eating fantastic food and sometimes I like to push the boundaries of creativity and that's exactly what we're going to do today I'm gonna push the boundary of creativity with a combo that's as rich and as true to my history as my history is to itself I'm kicking things off with my recipe for my collard green and cornbread cake this cake couldn't be any easier it's a savory version of four different recipes that we throw them together for a killer presentation we start by making the moistness cornbread you'll ever taste it gets his sweetness from a little sugar and what's great is that it's made with whole milk so it'll always be tender and moist then we saute collard greens and infuse them with flavor by adding red pepper flakes garlic and just a touch of apple cider vinegar it's on to the mashed potatoes they're super simple to make we boil up Yukon Gold potatoes add in butter salt pepper and whole milk along with fresh herbs and whip them to perfection the last piece is a simple one we fire up some chicken and make a quick pan gravy to go over top of the whole cake this whole thing couldn't be any easier and of course everything we do you know is going to be simple delicious easy and just good food so let's get started super excited to make this hologram and cornbread cake I gotta say I grew up eating collard greens okay every Sunday just about it feels like we had collard greens it was my cousin's responsibility to monitor she and I as we would sit on the living-room floor at my grandmother's house on a Saturday night with the newspaper and we'd have a big garbage bag and what we would do is we picked the greens the collard green leaves off of the stems and we would go for it so I grew up eating collard greens on Sunday after church and so I felt like a really good play on collard greens and cornbread was this cake and again I'm all about pushing the levels of boundary I'm pushing you know the envelope the levels of creativity and I know I'm saying cake but it's not really a traditional sweet cake it's just a presentation looks like a cake all right so what I'm doing is we got to have an icing or a frosting if you will for the cake right so I'm gonna throw together some whipped potatoes that are going to be super delicious and they're gonna go on the outside of the cake and they're gonna be our frosting all right so I'm just cutting up the last of my Yukon Gold potato I love making mashed potatoes with Yukon Gold potatoes they are super buttery super delicious they add such a great mouth feel and texture when it comes to making mashed potatoes all right a little secret I'm gonna do don't tell everybody because everybody's gonna be doing it all right I've got a clove or two of garlic you fit us on how big your clothes are that I'm gonna smash and I'm gonna put them right into the pot and they're gonna cook with our potatoes now remember potatoes are pretty bland right they have not that much flavor to them so whatever's in the water is gonna really season your potatoes so nothing in the water no seasoning in the potato a little garlic in the water a little garlic in the potato and I don't know about you but I haven't met a potato yet they couldn't use a little garlic so we're all good all right so here we go these are gonna go right on our stove and I'm gonna get those started that's gonna be fantastic all right let's talk about cornbread now I am a cornbread love I love love love cornbread so I like making it from scratch I got to tell you growing up we didn't always make it from scratch we use the blue box if you know what I mean okay they're not paying me so I'm saying no names but the blue box you know what it was or if you were fancy you go to somebody's house not the blue box but they have the white box with the lady on the front you know I'm talking about but cornbread it's a so much better to me when you make you from scratch so I'm doing a recipe that's super easy to do you've seen me make this core recipe so many times on Darius cook calm a little flour a little sugar and some cornmeal because it is cornbread after all go into a bowl all right three ingredients so far super simple all right I'm gonna add in a pinch of salt to this because whenever you're doing baking things like that the start really helps develop and bring out the flavor so it's really good now we need to make this rise is to make this fluffy so I'm gonna add in a little bit of baking powder about a tablespoon and a half or so of baking powder and that's it for the dry ingredients all right I'm gonna give this to Wis give it a stir and you can tell this is already gonna be so much better than at Blue Rocks situation right here all right so how's that stirred up let's talk about our wet ingredients all right just dump everything in and we're good to go all right I got two eggs here's the first one here's the second one all right and you heard the Dean of the microwave because I've got some butter one whole stick that I melted all right I'm gonna whisk a little bit so we don't have scrambled eggs in our cornbread is that ain't what's up all right so that goes in just like that one whole stick and there's one more oh my gosh it smells so good all right there's one more simple ingredient and that's whole milk all right I love what this does the whole milk does it makes it super creamy it makes it super light all right now I'm gonna add about a cup and a half or so my ball it cuz I've done it so many times and I'm gonna start about a cup and a half of milk because I want this batter to be a little bit looser pancake batter all right that's sort of the consistency I'm going for and I gotta tell you first time and I'm one of the money look at that all right this is our cornbread batter that we're gonna go for I've got our oven preheated 375 degrees okay this is going to go into a pan that's been greased or buttered and then flour so nothing sticks we don't want any Sikich and then it goes off and it bakes in the oven for about 25 minutes or until you take a knife and put a knife right down in the middle and it comes out clean we're all good all right so here is our cornbread look at that how simple was that to do so now that we got our cornbread off in the oven doing great things I've got these collard greens that are sauteed they smell so good all right and I sauteed them let me show you how I did it the collard greens are a super sense to me just chop them into small pieces and then wash them really good then saute them in olive oil and season them with salt pepper garlic red pepper flakes and just a touch of sugar and apple cider vinegar cook them for about seven minutes on a high heat until they're super tender once they're done put them in a bowl and set them aside until you're ready to use them sojung how simple was that super simple and the key that really makes this a little bit of sugar and the apple cider vinegar and you're going to be all good all right so our collard greens are going to go off to the side that's gonna go on the inside of our cake because every cake needs a filling and every filling needs a cake all right let's talk about these chicken wings all right so in this bowl I've got some chicken wings these are the flats and the drum ease that I have here nothing special all right but we're gonna fry them up mmm seasoned them really really well and they're gonna go right on top is the garnish of our cake all right so let's talk about our seasoning all right you know I love starzone I cannot get enough of this stuff okay so chill out don't write me talking about how much MSG is and I know what's in it it's delicious okay so if you find the size all good if in a minute all right a little seasoning salt will do you some good nice Cajun seasoning whatever you got laying around or however you season your chicken all right yeah a little bit of onion powder going in and a little bit of garlic powder into the situation all right I don't know when you get your chicken from but when I bought this one it was not cease until we got to add some salt because salt brings out the flavor and the chicken all right so a few pictures of that and a little bit of fresh cracked pepper all right and a chef's or cooks best tool are their hands someone to get in here and I want to massage all the seasonings on the chicken all right oh look at this this smells super fantastic and that's the thing about stuff like fried chicken you know like if you can smell it now you know it's gonna be super delicious and the longer this sits the seasoning sits it's gonna be great look at that look how well this is seasoned it's gonna be so freaking fantastic all right so let's get this sub dredged up and get it ready to go on the stove I got my trusty cast-iron skillet getting nice and hot for us with the grease the grease the oil heads the oil in there all right and I'm gonna put in about two parts flour and I like a nice crunch on my chicken wing right a nice sort of the textural contrast and we do that by adding a little bit of corn starch so two parts flour one part corn starch right with my clean hand and then with my dirty hand I'm gonna get in here and get all this mixed up and they get it ready to go into our oil [Applause] [Applause] all right so I think we're ready to rock and roll all right it's time to sort of a symbol our king first we're gonna finish up our frosting to our cake number these are those Yukon Gold potatoes with that garlic that's in there all right listen I don't know what you know about mashed potatoes but what I know is a little butter goes a long way all right so I've got butter I'm gonna throw in just a little bit not a lot a little butter okay a little bit as in a stick all right and then listen I'm gonna just start to sort of mash these up and get this butter really incorporated all right just like that alright and then I'm gonna add in salt and pepper a fair amount of salt and pepper [Applause] all right and then I'm gonna drop in some half-and-half all right and then just to make sure I get the right consistency I'm really gonna go whip these potatoes really really well because I want to get air incorporate it into the potatoes all right and if I feel like I'm getting a little thick on the potato a little bit of half-and-half not too much a little bit to even it out all right here we go all right this looks really great in terms of consistency look at that that looks nice and whipped I want to make sure we have enough salt and pepper right and our potatoes so here we go let's just do this mmm burger is absolutely perfect all right so let's assemble the cake first things first I want to put a little glue on the plate so that our cake has something to sort of sit on - all right so just like that all right now remember that cornbread we baked off earlier here we go all right here is the first layer it's cooled off a little bit so you can work with it all right and if we did everything right it should just slide out the pan with no problem look at that all right there's our cornbread layer all right that's gonna go down just like that all right and remember those collard greens that we sauteed those are gonna sit right here I want to just lob off some of the cornbread because I wanted to sit pretty evenly right so I'm just gonna take my knife and run my knife through so I get sort of an even layer of cornbread and don't throw this away this is some good eating all right look at that nice and even and there we go alright this looks pretty good to me pretty even there alright so then our collard greens right here right on top alright that looks pretty good it to me alright and then here's our other layer of cornbread that's gonna go right on top our other layer of cornbread it comes right out very easily just like that okay this goes right on top and we're gonna press it down a little bit and really get it in there alright so with an offset spatula here we go it's just like frosting a cake I'm gonna take some of these mashed potatoes and I'm gonna put them on top and then roll it down the side and I'm going to cross the cake here we go all right and then the last part for decorating I'm going to throw in the rest of our mashed potatoes and I'm going to put them right into a piping bag and I'm gonna pipe a little decoration right on top here we go just like this all right let's not forget our fried chicken that goes right on top just like this hmm super easy to do this fried chicken was so amazing it's super crispy because of that flour and that cornstarch and use your favorite whatever way you like to decorate or season your chicken decorate season your chicken you go for it all right I'm just dropping some pieces right around just like that all right look at that I look so great and then the last bit is our gravy that we made right and the gravy just goes right on top because gravy chicken and potato go so well together so you just put some light just like this right there's no right and wrong way to do this it's gravy potato collard greens it's the food I grew up eating serve all in one bite just like this all right can't wait to give this a try all right look at that [Applause] just like that all right and I know you want to see me dig into the cake and give it a try I want to give it a try here we go I'm gonna cut a little piece right there with the cornbread oh yeah look at this the cornbread and the collard greens right off on the inside and get the whole bite I'm gonna give it a face here we go here we go oh yeah oh yeah that's it that's it the cornbread super moist super sweet super decadent I get a hit of that gravy that's so good and delicious really savory and unctuous watch this here therefore the crunch from of fire chicken others world seasoned to perfection it's like so good hmm love them this is the cake you saw it go viral it's all over Facebook Instagram Twitter and it's now on my website it's Darius cooks calm things I will tell you all right food is my life light is my food until next time I got a wish you happy cooking from my heart to yours