Mexican Fiesta

Hola, y'all. I'm Paula Deen, and I've been brushing up on my Spanish

because today the lady is going to be going south of the border with a Mexican fiesta

I'm going to kick this party off today with my spicy chicken empanadas

and then I want to share with y'all another festive recipe. Tay's Hot and Spicy Salsa, and this one is sure to blow the doors off this little shindig

and for a sweet ending Mexican style, churros. So y'all go find your sombreros

because today we're gonna spice things up. Hey, y'all

I was just outside checking out the weather. It's pouring down rain here, and it's kind of nippy

So I thought, you know, I really need to fix something for my family that will kind of

heat up their belly. And there's no better way than to do that with a Mexican fiesta meal

And I was going through my files and I found a recipe from the cutest little girl

Look here, y'all. Her name is Taylor. So what y'all say let's move on into the kitchen and make Taylor's hot and spicy salsa

and a few of my own favorite Mexican recipes, too. Let's move on to the kitchen. Come on

So let's get started, y'all. My appetite is really, really growing here

So the first dish let's start with is the chicken empanadas. I love these. I just love them

And you know why? Because it has dough, it has cream cheese

and it has chicken, and it has cheese. All of my favorite foods

So we're going to start with three cups of chicken, and to that we're going to add one eight-ounce package of cheddar and jack cheese

We're going to add a fourth of a teaspoon of diced red bell pepper

we're going to add one jalapeno that's been diced. And I've seeded this one so it won't be quite as hot

as it would be if we had left those seeds in. And to this, I'm going to add a tablespoon of cumin

And that's going to give it a nice spicy flavor. I'm going to add a little salt, a little fresh ground pepper

and now I'm going to add a four ounce block of cream cheese

And we're just going to mix these together. We want our mixture to be nice and stiff

We don't want it running because we're going to put these in the pastry

and we're going to bake them and we don't want all the insides running out

So this is going to be nice and stiff. and I think the best way to do this

is maybe just kind of get in with your hands and the heat from your hands

will soften your cheese and your cream cheese so that worked nicely

you can see the warmth from my hands soften that cream cheese

and the cheese and that made it real real easy to mix up

All right, now we're fixing to use another one of my favorite ingredients

You know, out of all the convenience foods, this is definitely up there at the top as

far as I'm concerned. And I am using a refrigerated pie crust dough

And these work just wonderful for fried pies, for regular pies. Now I'm going to take a biscuit cutter, and you can see that I'm using a rather

large biscuit cutter because by the time we fold our empanadas in half, they're going

to get a lot smaller. So we're just going to come in and cut our dough out in circles

just like that. Okay. So we're just going to come in here now and take a little filling

and we're not going to be able to put much even though I'm very tempted

to overfill it. I'm going to try not to do that. And I'm going to get just a little bit of water

and I'm just going to run around the edge of that so that that water

will dampen my crust and make it adhere to each other. And

we're going to just dip our fork back into our flour. We're just gonna make sure that we've got it sealed very, very well

And I gonna just give our cookie sheet just a light spray because when I go to remove these I don want them to stick So you can see what an easy easy process this is And you can do

this part up earlier in the day and then have them all ready to pop into your oven. But

the beauty about this particular dish is you can use whatever leftover meat you have. If

If you have some pot roasts that you've got from the night before, it'd be fabulous in these

Really, kind of whatever you've got left in your refrigerator. All right, a little bit more

And you can see, you know, how quick and easy this just moves right along

This is one of those great dishes that the children can get in and help you with

There's no way that they can hurt themselves because there's nothing dangerous at all to

the dishes, no cooking involved after you get your chicken together. So now it's time

for us to beat up an egg and brush it over our pie crust. Now if you go to your refrigerator

to grab an egg and you're out, don't worry about it. You can use melted butter or you

You can use heavy cream or milk if you have it, whichever you have

But this does make it so pretty and shiny. And just makes it just a little bit more appetizing looking

So we're going to put these in a 400 degree preheated oven and we're going to bake them

for about 15 minutes. And now when we come back, we're going to be making a little Taylor's recipe

And I'm going to tell you what Taylor's secret ingredient is as soon as we come back

Well, hey, welcome back. So now it's time for the recipe, y'all, that I've been waiting on

And that's Taylor's hot and spicy salsa. And I tell you what, to be 11 years old

Taylor's got a really hot, tasty tongue because in her recipe, she's really putting the heat to it

She's using two whole jalapeno peppers. And guess what, y'all? She's not seeding them

I mean, she's putting the whole thing in there. So I'm going to do just like Taylor said

and I'm gonna throw them in along with one clove of garlic

And this, you can see, this is a really, really big clove of garlic

Now, I just smashed it a little bit, and I'm gonna just break it up a little bit

And I'm gonna throw in a little bit of banana pepper. It's got a lot of flavor to it

So we're just gonna dump those in, and we're gonna add one teaspoon of house seasoning, her secret ingredient

and the juice of one lime. Now, Taylor says to mix all this in the food processor

and then stir in her tomatoes. Well, the tomatoes are just a bit, bit chunky

so I think what I'm going to do is blend all these together

and then I'm going to put the tomatoes in just at the end and pulse them to just chop them up a little bit better than what they are

Okay, so here we go. All right, I'm going to take the spatula and, oops, and just push everything down

Ooh, Taylor. Taylor! Great time of day, kid

Okay, that's hot, y'all. All right. Now I'm going to take our tomatoes

And like I said, these have been drained, and they've got a little juice left in them, but that's all right

I'm just going to let that little bit of juice stay there. All right

So in go our tomatoes. and then we're gonna throw in a little cilantro

I'm just gonna kind of rough chop it, and then the food processor will do the rest

Okay, that looks delicious, Taylor. I hope I hadn't messed up your recipe in any way

by changing it just a little bit You know if you like your tomatoes really really chunky you can do it just like Taylor says

You know, and just stir those in. But, you know, I kind of like them a little bit finer

I think they're going to be easier to eat along with our chips

Going to pour this salsa into the bowl in the center. I can't hardly wait to taste this, Taylor

But I have to tell you, you've got me scared to death with those seeds

Normally when I eat these salsa dips, I scoop in there and I get a whole bunch

But you got my attention on this one, so I'm just going to kind of rub it through

I don't know if I trust you yet, Taylor. Holy camoly, Taylor

Oh, you're more of a woman than I am. Damn, that's hot

Oy, oy. Taylor. Y'all, I think we need to stop right this second

and talk a little bit about this recipe. Taylor, now, I don't see how you eat anything that hot

I really don't. So you, those of you at home, you might want to take the seeds out of that jalapeno

and you might want to throw in another can of tomatoes because this is some of the hottest stuff I have ever tasted

Taylor, I'm going to give you a spanking when I see you, girl. Michael's going to love it, though

He really will. Great time of day. I hope these empanadas are not as hot as your salsa, Taylor

Mmm. That's a little bit cooler. Mmm, they're good. I gotta go find Michael because I'm fixing to blow his head off, Taylor, with that stuff

So while my tongue's cooling down, I'm gonna eat this empanada, And when we come back, I'm going to make the sweetest thing that I've ever tasted that came out of Mexico

Okay, welcome back, y'all. It's time for me to move on to Michael's favorite part of the meal, which is the sweets

And you know, when we go into Mexican restaurants, it seems like that we fill up so on all the food that we never order desserts

So I don't think of desserts as being a big part of Mexican menus

But the next thing I'm going to make is churros. They're much like a hot donut or a beignet

Now, I've melted a half a stick of butter, and I'm going to pour in a cup of water

And we're going to bring this to a bowl. I'm going to add two teaspoons of sugar

All right, our ingredients have come to a boil. Now, I've got this on high right now

but I'm going to turn it down to kind of a medium-moderate heat

And I'm just going to dump in that all-purpose flour, and I'm going to add the zest of one orange

and I'm going to continue to cook this and mix it until it kind of comes away from the pan

and forms a ball. And you can see it's following the spoon around

and I've got everything mixed up. All the flour has disappeared. So now I'm going to transfer it to our bowl

and that's going to help cool it off. You can see how stiff that is

All right, now to help it cool down a little bit faster

I'm going to just give it a little mix with an electric mixer

And like I said, that's just going to move that batter around and cool it off

And after it cools off a second, I've got four eggs. And I'm going to add those eggs one at a time to our batter

So one at the time, I'm going to drop in the eggs

So I kept beating until I have a smooth batter for us And now I gonna move it over into our piping bag And this is barely warm now from all that beating

And that orange zest smells so nice in there. All right, now we're gonna move down to the deep fryer

Now the recipe calls a temperature of 350 degrees, degrees, and we're gonna come down here and we're gonna drop these into four-inch

pieces in the hot aisle. I think these are gonna be delicious. I don't think we can go wrong with fried

dough at all. All right, now the first two are starting to brown a little bit for

us, so I'm making sure that I keep them turned so they don't brown too too bad on

on one side. All right, we're going to take these up and let them drain for a second on

a paper towel. And since I forgot my nutmeg, I'm just going to come down here. You know

no harm, no foul. I'm just going to add it in the last step. All right, and I've got

plenty of nutmeg in it, but put this in your batter because it'll be even more intense

And I'm going to take a half a cup of sugar, one teaspoon of cinnamon, and that was probably

a fourth a teaspoon of fresh grated nutmeg. And I'm just going to mix that all together real good

And then we're going to take our churros, and we're going to toss them in that sugar

while they're still warm. You know, once you use fresh nutmeg, you never want to go back to that ground nutmeg in the can. Mmm

You can see how quick and simple and easy that was. All right, so don't these look wonderful

And you can see why a cup of coffee or a glass of a mug of hot chocolate

would just be wonderful to eat along with these. Mmm

They're not too sweet. The sweetest part is the sugar that we rolled them in

but the actual cake is like just right. It's just strong with the orange zest

Mmm. And when we come back, I'm going to show you how to mix up something

that's going to wash all this flavor down good. Margaritas, four different ways

Y'all know I've told you a hundred times I'm not much of a drinker, but margaritas I really like

the taste of, and they can get me going. In case you're not able to make a frozen margarita

I'm going to show you how to mix up a thick margarita on the rocks. Now here I've got a

strawberry margarita, I've got a regular lime margarita, and I've got a peach margarita. Now

And we're going to start by adding ice in our shaker. And I'm going to add not quite a cup of strawberry mix

I'm going to add a couple of shots of tequila. And you'll want to use a good tequila

No rot guts on this drink. a little splash of triple sec. Now the important part about this drink is your shake action

You want to make sure you shake it until you almost have ice crystals in it. Alright, so

I'm shaking it up real, real good. Okay. I had shaken it so much it was like it had a

vacuum seal to it. All right, I'm going to take our glass and I'm going to run a lime

around the rim to moisten it so that that salt will stick to it. Now, if you want to

stay away from salt because it will dry you out, you can use sugar in the place of that

And right into our glass it goes and we have the perfect strawberry margarita on the rocks. delicious

Ooh, what a feast, y'all. Some of my family's favorites. We've got that precious little Taylor's

hot and spicy salsa. And for a little bite of something sweet

we've got churros that's very, very much like a donut. And to finish off this wonderful Mexican fiesta

we've got chicken empanadas. So if you're craving something hot and spicy

to serve your family, try some of these recipes because I think you're going to love them

So until next time, America, I send you loving best dishes from my Mexican fiesta to yours