Easter/Spring

Hey y'all, I'm Paula Deen and what a wonderful day. The birds are chirping and the flowers are blooming

Easter is finally here. Today the whole family's coming over and I'm gonna make some of my holiday favorites

I'm gonna be making a creamy zucchini custard bake. Y'all, it's so rich and creamy you're gonna be eating this by the bowl fools

and I'm going to be serving up some fresh vegetables from the garden

in a tomato mint salad, which is going to go perfectly with the main entree

A succulent roasted rack of lamb. And then last but not least, we're having Easter eggs

And believe it or not, y'all, these eggs have my favorite ingredient in them, potatoes

So whistle for the family, gather around the table, because we're fixing to celebrate Easter

Y'all, I had to just make myself leave that garden and come inside

We've got a beautiful, perfect day for Easter, but I got to get started on these dishes so that I can enjoy the rest of the day

and hide those Easter eggs. Now, the first dish that I'm going to be sharing with y'all is a zucchini custard bake

and it's going to be really, really good with the rest of our meal

Now all I'm going to do is cut up my zucchinis into a dice, just like that

And in my pan, I'm going to melt a half a stick of butter

Now while that's melting, let's come down here because, as I said, this is a custard bake

so we're going to create our custard for this dish. which is a half of a cup of evaporated milk, not condensed

All right, our butter is starting to sizzle down here, so I'm going to go ahead and throw in that zucchini

and let it start doing its thing. And to our evaporated milk, I'm going to add three eggs

I just love Easter

My Aunt Peggy and Uncle George was in the toy business, and my Aunt Peggy made every Easter basket that was sold at the toy house

And she made, without a doubt, the most beautiful Easter baskets you have ever seen

And I, over the years, was taught by her how to put together an Easter basket

I would help the Easter Bunny put these baskets together. I would put just a lot of little neat things along with candy

And the baskets were just out of this world. All right, now to this I'm going to add two tablespoons of breadcrumbs

a half of a large onion diced. A half a cup would be fine

If you like a lot of onions, you know, go ahead and put a cup in there. And I'm going to put about a fourth of a cup of grated Parmesan cheese

All right, let's come down here and see how this is doing. So my children, as it turned out, I'm going to cover that and let it cook for about five minutes

As it turned out, my children became really, really excited at Easter time

because they never knew what the Easter bunny was going to put in that basket

It was just really, really fun to watch them go through these baskets

because it doesn't have to be just all candy. Okay. All right, now to our custard

I'm going to add some black pepper and some salt, probably about a teaspoon

We don't want that under-salted. I'm going to give it a couple of shakes of a hot sauce

and then I'm going to put about a teaspoon of Worcestershire sauce in it

And all we need at this point is our zucchini Alright, I think our zucchini's ready

Yeah. Because this has eggs in it, and I don't want the heat from the zucchini to cook these eggs and turn them into scrambled eggs

So I'm going to slowly kind of temper those hot pieces of zucchini into that custard

If you're like my family, sometimes it's not always easy for me to get them to eat like their vegetables kind of straight up like this

But when I tempt them with all the custardy goodness, then I can get them to put it on their plates

Like I said, I'm just slowly adding that. Okay, I think it's going to do fine

I don't see any evidence that the eggs are curdling up on us

Okay, there we go. We did it. Okay, now I'm just going to transfer that to my buttered casserole dish

And I'm going to bake this in a preheated 350-degree oven for about 35 minutes

until it's a beautiful golden brown. and that custard around all that zucchini has set up

So I'm going to sprinkle it with the rest of our parmesan cheese

And I've got a good healthy vegetable that I think I'm going to be able to get everybody to eat

All right, so into the oven it goes. Now, when we come back, I'm going to be making our entree rack-a-lamp

So I'll see y'all back here in the kitchen in like two minutes. So I'm going to take my rack of lamb and I'm going to season it with some house seasoning

All right, now I've got my black cast iron skillet heated up over here, and I'm just

going to brown these racks of lamb off. We're not going to cook them totally in this pan

We're just going to kind of sear them off, you know, and that'll hold the juices in there

And I'm going to come down here and start making our tomato cucumber mint salad

I have four thinly sliced cucumbers, and I'm going to dump those in my bowl

along with a couple of thinly sliced onions. And about four tomatoes

All right. I'm going to add some pepper. I'm going to mix together a half a cup of white vinegar

a half a cup of olive oil. I'm going to take one log of goat cheese

and just pinch it in pieces. and if you're not a big fan of goat's cheese

don't shy away from this recipe. Just make a substitution because this is gonna be really, really nice

with our rack of lamb. All right, now this is nice and browned off

and now I'm gonna transfer this to the oven. Doesn't that look good

I'm putting it in a preheated 375 degree oven, and I'm going to let it continue to roast off

until it's the temperature that I like it. And I prefer my lamb medium

where I eat my beef a medium rare. Because of that stronger flavor in lamb

I like it cooked a little bit more. And it really not going to take that long because those lamb racks are really not that big All right so let finish on up with our salad I probably going to take 20 mint leaves

If y'all have a little patch of yard that you can throw some mint in

you'll enjoy it so much, and this mint requires very little love and care

All right, now I'm just going to pile this up. kind of like I would if I was doing collard greens

And I'm just going to cut these in little bitty strips, being careful not to get my digits

The crushing of that leaf is going to allow all the flavors

to come out of that piece of mint. All right, so I'm going to go ahead

and toss that over into my salad bowl. And then I'm going to give our oil and vinegar a little stir

And then I'm just going to drizzle this over, this salad. And I'm going to let it marinate until we're ready to eat

But look how pretty that is. Now, you can use your imagination, but don't drop that mint if you're serving lamb

because that's really going to be a nice complement with that rack

So, let's check on our zucchini custard bake, see if it's ready, and I bet you it is

Ooh, it's bubbly and it looks, yeah, you can see I'm giving it a shake

Ooh, and it's set up nicely. Let me see if I can reach in here and get me a little bit out without, ooh, look at that

good as new. Ooh. That is wonderful

I taste the heat from the hot sauce that gives it a little kick and the

eggs that are so custardy in it, they're wonderful. Okay, so our meal's coming along

I'm gonna cover this and put it in the refrigerator and let it marinate while I finish up the rest of the meal

And when I come back, I'm going to take the rack of lamb out of the oven. And let me just say that Paula's two favorite food worlds collide

So that'll keep you guessing. That's your hint. So I'll see y'all back in a minute

I want y'all to come on in and see this one because this recipe is so intriguing and interesting

The two foods that are fixing to collide is sugar and mashed potatoes

It doesn't sound logical, does it? But you're going to be blown away by the flavor and the taste of these little chocolate eggs that I'm fixing to make for us

Now, I'm going to take two one-pound boxes of confectionate sugar. I have taken mashed potatoes from yesterday, and I have added a stick of butter

So I'm going to take these mashed potatoes, and I'm going to work them into our confectionate sugar

And I'm just going to work that in. and I'm gonna add about a teaspoon and a half of vanilla flavoring. If you want a chocolate egg

sift about a fourth of a cup of cocoa powder in with your confectionate sugar. You could take

candied cherries and chop them up and have a cherry cream filling on the inside of these

All right, I'm diving in with my hands now, y'all. And the heat from my hands is going to break down that buttery mashed potato

And you can see how it's already starting to stick together. You may find that you need to add a little bit more powdered sugar or a little bit more mashed potato

But either way, it should come out the consistency of marzipan. So see, any way you go, your problems can be remedied

So, I think I'm going to make mine very close to the size of a real egg

All right so does that kind of look like an egg Now you can make almost eggs the size of a jelly bean

So now we're just going to take our eggs and dip them and you can see the ones that have

set how much better they dip than the softer ones. So I would say to form your Easter eggs

into the desired shape and then maybe put them in the refrigerator and let them harden

a little bit and then dip them. But you can see I have taken just a plain flaked coconut

and I've tossed it in a little green food coloring, so it looks like the eggs are sitting on grass

I love melted chocolate, y'all. So instead of getting one of those that's set up

I'm going to get this one with the soft chocolate. It's delicious

You can see the creamy inside. The important thing on your eggs is that you be creative

You get in there with the children and let them create their own eggs. If they're beautiful, that's a bonus

If they're not, it's memories. So let's move on down here. Our rack of lamb is ready

This whole meal is almost totally together. I just love all those little bones coming out

And let me pull out our salad. This looks good

I'm gonna just take some and pile it on our plate. And this is gonna be so easy for me to slip in here

and have a taste of this, and nobody know the difference. While I'm tasting this, y'all, go get you something to drink, take a little break, and when we come back, I want to meet you out in the backyard because I want to share a tip with y'all on mimosas

It's going to be perfect along with our Easter meal. Cody and I have worked ourselves up a powerful, powerful thirst this Easter

Between cooking and hiding Easter eggs and running to find them, we are worn out

We're going to start with one large can of thawed frozen orange juice concentrate

We're going to add one liter of club soda. And then we're going to add one to two bottles

and you can determine how much you want, of champagne or a sparkling wine

And I'm going to give that just a little stir around

And fill up my champagne glass. And tuck an orange in it

Mmm. That's really, really good

I wonder what some orange sherbet would do to this. I think next time I'll try that

Well, y'all, I finally got my Easter meal pulled together, and in a few minutes, my family's going to come in here

and purely bombard my table. And they're going to love this rack of lamb roast

They're going to love this zucchini bake. And the crisp tartness of the cucumber, tomato, and mint salad

is going to go just fabulous with that meat. And how about our chocolate Easter eggs

Potato and chocolate. Can you believe it? And the mimosas are going to be just what the doctor ordered

to wash all this down with. it's Easter y'all and I hope

that the renewal and the celebration of life lives in every one of your

hearts out there and until next time I send y'all love and best dishes

from my kitchen to yours Happy Easter