Paula McIntyre’s Hamely Kitchen

Paula meets the Parton family cook, Rachel Parton George, Dolly’s youngest sister, who cooks catfish for her. Paula also enjoys the best of southern BBQ with pitmaster Ben. She heads to a family-run rodeo to enjoy the show and the many food stalls. At her outdoor mountain kitchen, Paula cooks river trout with grilled green beans, crispy country ham and almond dressing, and grilled peaches with bourbon-smoked salt sauce on waffles.

Paula visits Belfast, Maine. She meets a local clam-digger who is keeping up the tradition of digging for clams by hand and heads to a restaurant which specialises in New England’s famous clam chowder. Paula is a big fan of maple syrup, so it is a real treat to visit a maple syrup farm and museum. Her final stop in New England is for some delicious lobster rolls. In her outdoor kitchen on the Maine shoreline, Paula cooks coal-baked quahog clams with leek, apple and kelp butter and Scotch pancakes with blueberries and smoked maple syrup.

Paula’s next leg of her American food adventure sees her taking on a big breakfast challenge. She visits America’s oldest cast-iron forge to see how skillets are made, takes an unforgettable cable car ride above the mountains in Gatlinburg and tries her first taste of moonshine at a Smoky Mountain distillery. At her cabin kitchen, Paula makes a popcorn-topped pudding and Hush Puppies with a savoury relish.

Paula is in New England, where she is delighted to meet Brad McFadden, whose ancestors come from the same townland where she grew up. After sharing a home-cooked meal made by Brad, she visits a family-run distillery to sample the latest fruit-based liqueurs. Her final stop is at Mack’s Apple Farm which is famous for its apple cider doughnuts. At her cabin on the Maine shoreline, Paula cooks a mushroom-stuffed potato farl and an apple dumpling coated in hazelnut and cinnamon.

Paula heads to Kentucky to meet a food writer with Scots-Irish roots who shows her how to make the perfect buttermilk-fried chicken. She meets a chef at a farm to table restaurant who is putting mountain ingredients such as squash and buttermilk cheese on his menu. Paula’s last stop is at a dairy farm that makes an unusual but tasty buttermilk ice cream. Paula continues the buttermilk theme in her outdoor mountain kitchen. She makes a buttermilk, lima bean and bacon soup and skillet-cooked biscuits with watermelon, strawberry and coconut jam, and whipped buttermilk cream.

Paula McIntyre visits Nashville, the world’s country music capital. She joins the queue at Arnold’s Country Kitchen, a Nashville institution, to sample meatloaf, turnip greens and their famous fried green tomatoes. Paula then heads to a music venue to hear a special performance by Kirwan, a duo from Northern Ireland who left home for a new life in Music City. And she joins the congregation’s best cooks at the Second Presbyterian Church at a celebratory Scots-Irish pot luck lunch. At her outdoor mountain kitchen, Paul cooks a sugar plum and hazelnut cobbler and barbecued pork shoulder with corn on the cob, kale and squash.