(gate creaking) (funky upbeat music) - I am Trace Barnett from "Garden Party," and the garden is finally mature enough to give you a little tour.

So this side garden here is my kitchen garden.

It's where I grow corn and beans and squash and tomatoes, eggplant, and just a variation of herbs all in between.

So I have just the perfect amount of runoff from my chicken pen.

So we call this, like, nuclear soil here, believe it or not, because stuff just grows right up into the sky.

Come on through and meander around the turtle turds.

I love the beans here.

And that's the wattle trellis that we built just a few weeks ago, believe it or not.

My okra here.

You can see there's a few little places where there's some okra missing.

And so me and Cecil have a little trade-off.

He gets to have a little okra, some beans, and then he helps me weed around here, too.

And this is one of my favorite summer vegetables of all: crookneck squash.

I just love the leaves; I love the texture.

And I also love the flowers, which are wonderfully edible.

Now we got a new tour guide.

This is the tomato area, and I grow a variety of tomatoes.

I always start out starting them by seed.

And this is my raised bed garden.

This is where I grow a really big concentration of herbs.

I also grow my peppers here too.

Got some broccoli, carrots, basil's really starting to shoot up.

Then one of my actual first plants that I remember as a child, like, really being into was poppies.

And so this year the poppies have been so nice.

This is our little seating area over here.

This is where we, you know, do all the hanging out.

I typically only grow flowers out here that are in pots.

It just makes things a lot easier.

And this is just the last little bit of our collard greens, and I'm just letting them go to bloom so I can just pop this little seed head off, and then I can use those for next year.

And over here is my little fire pit area.

Actually, are not able to use the fire pit right now because of my Purple Martins.

So the Purple Martins are a very important thing here in the garden.

There's quite a lot of flies and mosquitoes, as you would expect, and they really do a number on keeping them down.

Let me show you my favorite part of the whole garden.

Check out my pollinator garden.

One of these plants that I have literally carried around for years, and it's this phlox here.

It's just starting to open, so you can really just kind of see the depth of pink color there.

So I like to make varying heights.

It's not only visually appealing for us, but it's great because they can kind of meander throughout and pollinate things.

And that concludes our garden tour, before I turn more into a sweaty mess.

Also, Francine's about to have a heat stroke back there.

That's a little bit 10-cent garden tour.

I'm gonna hit the air conditioner.

(jars popping) I'm Trace Barnett, and welcome to "Garden Party," a show where we dive into my favorite family recipes, garden tips and tricks, and Alabama specialties, all with a swanky Southern twist.

(light jazzy music) As you can see from our quick trip around the garden, we have an overabundance of flowers, herbs, and vegetables growing around here.

But don't worry, we'll put them all to good use and still have plenty left over to enjoy for the whole season.

Today, I'm gonna show you two of my all-time favorite recipes to celebrate the flavors of summer.

(light jazzy music continues) (items popping) If you've ever grown zucchini or squash, you know that once they get going, those plants can quickly turn into a runaway train.

But I think that's a good problem to have because there are so many delicious ways to utilize them in your summer dishes.

Here's one of my favorite ways to prepare zucchini, and I bet you ain't heard of this one.

Today I'm gonna show you what to do with an overabundance of zucchini.

It's a really tasty recipe, too, that's gonna take us on a little world tour.

So today we're gonna make zucchini tikka masala.

That sounds so good in an Alabama accent, huh?

So first things first, let's start with zucchini.

Again, I have picked zucchini that is not massive, still soft skin to the touch, and rather small.

I want zucchinis that are, like, one portion for one person.

Take your zucchini, and I'm going to remove both ends, and I'm gonna slice it right down the middle.

You're gonna need four small- to medium-sized zucchinis for this recipe.

Just think of one person eating this whole half, and repeat the process.

So once we have halved our zucchini here, and this is my favorite way to do zucchini, whether I'm making it tikka masala style or not, I'm simply gonna take my knife, and I'm going to score it just like that.

It doesn't have to be perfect at all, but I'm just really opening up that zucchini there to soak up the goodness of the flavors we're about to pour on top of it.

It's also gonna really help it to release a lot of that residual water, and then it's also going to help it brown up really nice and pretty for us.

So it looks good on the plate too.

So I'm just going to lightly salt this just to pull out some of that residual moisture.

And I'm just gonna sit this here in front of us and let some of that water come out while we prep the rest of our ingredients.

(chickens clucking) So you're gonna need 1 1/2 to two pounds of chicken breast cut up here.

And I know we're only using the breast, but I prefer to use a whole chicken versus buying it skinless, boneless, all of that.

You're gonna be able to make chicken broth from this.

Of course, I love a little bit of dark meat chicken.

It's just a little moister than breast.

So buying a chicken that's whole is a little bit cheaper, and it's also gonna give you a lot more kitchen use versus just a breast.

So if you're cutting up a chicken, you should just take it and just follow the natural lines of the chicken.

So follow the back, cut that off, follow the natural lines of how the chicken's wings come through, and just cut that off.

I'm also gonna pull the skin off here because we don't really need that for our tikka masala.

Now I would reserve this skin and throw this in the pot with our chicken carcass later because that's gonna make some really good broth that we can can up and use for soups, stews, or whatever we might be cooking later.

Use a good, sharp knife for this.

And again, just follow the natural lines of the chicken, just kind of cutting that breast away from the bone.

So after you've removed your chicken, I'm just gonna cut this chicken breast up just into strips or chunks, just depending on your preference here, just smaller, thin strips, because that's really gonna impart a lot of good flavor and sauce right onto our zucchini.

(items popping) So now that we have our chicken in a medium bowl, I'm going to just cut up a few cloves of garlic.

You can always throw in a little more garlic if you're trying to save yourself from vampires or if you just like to have stinky breath, or both, really.

Throw that in there.

And then I'm going to put a fourth a cup of yogurt.

I'm gonna go ahead and give that a little stir.

What this is gonna do is this is gonna really flavor our chicken.

It's also gonna tenderize it, and it's gonna brown it up really nice for us, too, when we add it to our pan.

So, to our chicken yogurt mixture, I wanna add just a little bit more acid.

So I'm gonna add three tablespoons of lime juice.

And I've simply just taken my limes and gave them a good, forceful smush down.

If you have a microwave, it's also great to pop those in the microwave, especially if they're a little hard; it'll make them extra juicy.

I'm using my favorite juicer here.

It reminds me a lot of people in my life.

(horn honking) Really nostalgic when I'm juicing limes here.

And the limes really make this.

So, tikka masala is an Indian dish, and it really makes the flavors of everything just marry together.

You just really need that tart lime juice here.

And pour that right in the chicken and give that a good stir.

That's gonna help tenderize the chicken, too.

And it's just gonna melt in your mouth after it's cooked.

I'm gonna let this just hang out while we're prepping the rest of our dish, and we'll come back to that over by the stove.

(items popping) So after our zucchini has set for a brief moment, I'm just gonna take just a clean rag here.

You can also use paper towels if you're a consumer and just pat those dry and remove any of that excess liquid.

And our spices here.

I have coriander, cumin, cardamom, smoked paprika, and just the aromatics from the amount of these spices alone, just makes me wanna dive in and just play around in these spices.

Just the best thing.

To that, I'm going to add a little grated fresh ginger, just a tablespoon or so, not a ton, but I really love fresh ginger flavor.

Fun fact is, you can actually take these ginger roots, pop them in the garden, and they will grow.

They're gonna shoot up all these nice, pretty ginger fronds, and you can actually use those to flavor dishes and also use it as a garnish with a little bit of ginger flavor.

(grater tapping) Let's get just a little bit more there.

(ginger scraping) I'm gonna add those and use those shortly when we start cooking up our masala.

You need one Vidalia onion.

So that's gonna be our really good Southern flavor there.

So now that we have our Vidalia onion roughly chopped, let's head on over to the stove and cook those down somewhat.

(apple popping) (apple crunching) I really love Indian cuisine in general.

So Indian cuisine and Southern cuisine both have an emphasis on fresh ingredients, you know, ingredients that are just plucked right out of the garden.

Also, I love that they're, for the most part, really kind of spice-heavy.

They're really flavor-forward and using herbs.

And of course, that savory-sweet flavor is a really big component of Southern Appalachian dishes, too.

So they kind of fuse really well together.

(items popping) So now comes the time that we brown up our zucchini.

I've preheated the oven to 450 degrees, and I'm about to place our scored zucchini in a cast-iron skillet, any kind of skillet of your choice.

And I just have a general oil in here, just a vegetable oil.

You don't wanna use olive oil or anything like that.

And I'm just gonna drop our zucchini directly in there.

Now you want to cook your zucchini face side down for the entirety of the cooking process.

(pan sizzling) Real eager oil!

(pan sizzling) So make sure all of your zucchini is face side down, and making contact with the skillet itself.

After about five minutes, let's take a look at our zucchini, and that is the perfect golden brown that we are looking for.

And I'm gonna resist the urge to turn it over, and I'm gonna pop it in a 450-degree oven, and I'm just gonna let that finish cooking off for about 10 to 15 minutes.

(pan sizzling) (clock ticking) The mode of cooking zucchini like we cooked it for the tikka masala, you know, you score it, and then you brown it on top, which gives you almost like a browned crust, which kind of holds in the creamy zucchini without it soaking everything up and being soggy.

So, you know, a simple way to do that would just be to, like, crush up feta and herbs.

And you can throw on some fresh tomato on top of that to just kind of re-envision that zucchini.

So it doesn't necessarily have to be tikka masala.

That zucchini boat, in a sense, is the vessel that can transport you to any kind of zucchini dish that you really want, especially when you have 300 of them in your garden at any given point in time.

(items popping) So after we pop our zucchini in the oven, I'm just heating five tablespoons of butter up, and we're gonna brown our onions and make our tikka masala sauce.

So add our Vidalia onion into our heated butter.

A quick tip here.

Whenever you're throwing onions into heated oil or heated butter, always make your pot wait on you versus you waiting on it.

Don't throw your onions into a pot that's insufficiently warm.

What that's gonna do is it's gonna pull a lot of water out of your onions, and it's gonna make it a little bit soupy.

We want to throw those in there so they kind of brown and caramelize.

(pan sizzling) We want to hear that sizzle.

So I cooked these onions down roughly three to four minutes, five minutes, occasionally, just until they're translucent and a little bit golden.

To that, I'm going to add our wonderful spice mixture here.

(sniffing) I'm just gonna go ahead and smell it.

So again, we have coriander, cardamom, cumin, smoked paprika, and a little bit of ginger.

It looks like a lot, but we really want all those spices.

And if you're probably wondering on the amounts of spices, why don't you go ahead and click below on the link, which will take you to the recipe, and you can see all the measurements there?

Of course, you can always alter the measurements to your taste buds.

I'm gonna give that a good stir until it toasts up just slightly, and it kind of marries together, and all of the onions are really coated.

It's also gonna make it have a really pretty color.

I'm gonna add in some of our canned tomatoes.

You need about a 15-ounce can of tomatoes.

(pan sizzling) I'm gonna add in two tablespoons of tomato paste.

And the tomato paste is really going to cook down and make this sauce extra rich for us.

Give that a good stir just to combine everything well.

And now I'm gonna add one of my favorite things to cook with in the kitchen.

That's a little bit of heavy cream.

(pan sizzling) Roughly three-fourths a cup of heavy cream.

And now I'm just gonna add in a tablespoon of brown sugar.

The brown sugar is just gonna act like a binder, add a little bit of sweetness to our recipe here, and it's just gonna kind of amalgamate everything together.

We want a good, rich, bubbly sauce so it really grabs onto the chicken and our zucchinis.

You want to bring this to a boil, and then once it's to a boil, we're gonna reduce that to simmer, and we're just gonna let that simmer away until everything is perfectly married together and our chicken is ready to join in into this bath of masala.

(chickens clucking) So while our sauce is simmering away over here, now's the time to cook the chicken.

And I have heated some olive oil up in a pan, and I'm gonna transfer our chicken in the yogurt mixture directly into the pan.

Go big or go home.

(pan sizzling) Just spoon the chicken out in an even layer in the skillet and cook just until it's browned.

So it looks like our zucchini is almost done, while the rest of our dish cooks up here.

So I'm gonna remove it from the heat, sit it to the side, and allow it to cool before we assemble.

(pan clatters) I'm gonna transfer our chicken here into our masala sauce.

(pan sizzling) And I'm gonna give that a good stir.

So now comes the final addition to our masala sauce, and that is chickpeas.

So you need roughly 16 ounces of chickpeas, and whenever you are adding any kind of bean, chickpea, or legume, I would suggest that you start out with dried beans, legumes, and cook those yourself, rather than just pouring them out of a can.

Because when they come out of the can, they already have a mushy texture anyway.

So we really want that full flavor bite from the chickpeas.

So now that we have everything stirred up, cooked up, so now let's plate up.

Let's add this to our zucchini and get our munch on.

(items popping) So now that our tikka masala is all cooked and ready to go, now it's time to plate it up over our zucchini.

Take your zucchini boat that's taken us over across the ocean without leaving our kitchen, plop that down.

I'm gonna do two because I'm a little bit hungry.

Throw two zucchinis on there.

This is another good thing, too.

You could plate this with basmati rice, whatever your taste buds are screaming at the moment, and just simply take that tikka masala sauce and do a generous helping directly onto that zucchini.

I'm gonna go ahead and top that with a little, or maybe a lot, of cilantro.

I'm a cilantro lover here.

And then why not a couple slices of fresh lime, too, just so we remember that it's in there And now comes the fun part, the taste test.

Mm.

(munching) Such a good Southern fusion of a dish that you don't really expect Stateside, and especially in Alabama.

It's also an escape from the boring zucchini dishes that I think we're all used to.

This makes me wanna plant even more zucchini, so I can come up with some creative ways to cook with it.

So happy zucchining and traveling, and cooking.

Unless you're chained to the stove like me, you can escape through food.

(items popping) Now, as much as I love an unexpected twist in a recipe, there are a few out there that have to stay tried and true.

Southerners have perfected the cobbler.

It's unfussy, forgiving, and the perfect accompaniment to any summer gathering.

Keeping it simple and uncomplicated is what makes this dessert a classic staple.

Today, we are making the absolute dessert of the South, which is cobbler.

And the great thing about cobblers is they are extremely versatile.

So you can use whatever fruits you have on hand or whatever's growing out in the garden in your yard, or what's fresh and available at the farmer's market.

Today, we are making the classic peach cobbler.

We're also throwing in just a few blueberries and blackberries 'cause I really do love a little mix of fruit inside of a cobbler.

You are going to need four cups of fruit, and that roughly equals to about four large peaches.

These are smaller early-season peaches, so I'm gonna use six to eight.

The key here is you really can't have too much fruit.

So go ahead and just throw it all into the bowl.

So to get started, let's pour our fruit into a bowl, and I'm going to remove the skin off of my peaches.

If you have a really good vegetable peeler at home, go ahead and use your vegetable peeler because it removes the skin of the peaches without removing any of the flesh.

If you have peaches that have any kind of blemishes that may have fallen to the ground, they're perfect for cobblers.

Just cut the blemish off, remove any kind of bad bruising or anything like that, and no one will ever know.

And now we just remove skins.

(bright tinkling music) So while you are peeling your peaches, go ahead and throw a whole stick of butter in a cast-iron skillet and put that in your oven.

And I really just want that butter to melt, not burn inside the oven.

So be sure you put your oven on about 350 and keep a check on that butter, too.

I love cast iron for cobblers because it really develops that good crispy crust.

It also creates this wonderful, juicy, like, almost... What's the word I'm looking for here?

(bell dings) Gooey, that's it.

So if you are making a cobbler out of peach season, it's super easy just to use canned peaches as well.

And the canned peaches work perfect, especially if they are in the heavy syrup.

Don't drain any of the syrup off.

Just let it kind of melt down and marry in there with the crust, and it's super good.

No one will even know they're canned.

(items popping) (light jazz music) So now that we've got our peach skins removed, let's just cut our peaches in half and remove the pit.

And I'm just gonna slice them into just small slices.

A good paring knife works well for this that we don't worry about cutting your hand or scraping your nail against the knife.

And just get that pit right out as I stab my hand with the knife.

(Trace laughs) Small little slices here, and they don't have to be pretty.

That's the perfect thing about cobblers, is everything can be just a little bit rustic in there.

So now that we have our fruit all nice and ready for our cobbler, a few of them are trying to escape there after all our hard work.

I'm just gonna take a little bit of sugar, and I'm gonna sprinkle it right onto our fruit there.

And I'm also going to use the juice of a lime.

You can use lemons as well, but I've used all my lemons in limoncello.

I'm gonna give that a little toss with my hands, and I'm just gonna set that to the side.

So what that's going to do is it's really gonna bring out the natural sweetness and juices that's in the blueberries, the blackberries, and the peaches.

So I'm just gonna let that hang out while we make our batter.

(items popping) (light jazz music) So this batter is the traditional cuppa cuppa cuppa, which I'm sure your grandmothers made, and it's still my favorite today.

So we've got one cup of self-rising flour, and I always use self-rising because I feel like it gives just a lot of lightness to the cobbler.

I feel like some of the ratios when you're adding your baking powder into the all-purpose flour just sometimes make it a little stodgy.

I stole that from a British show.

I'm gonna add in a cup of sugar, and I'm just gonna whisk those together just to evenly distribute those dry ingredients there.

And now comes a cup of milk.

You can use buttermilk, too, if you have that on hand.

I love that little bit of buttermilk bite that it gives it.

And use a whisk when you are mixing together your batter.

The reason being is because you don't want any flour clumps, sugar clumps.

A clumpy cobbler's a no-go in the South; you'll get shunned.

(whisk rattles) (batter sloshing) I'm gonna add a little bit of vanilla, and when I usually say a little bit of vanilla, I mean I like a lot of vanilla, so I'm really gonna go in.

A little bit of vanilla adds a little bit of flavor there.

And then I'm gonna add just a little pinch of allspice and just a little bit of cinnamon.

And that does deviate somewhat from the cuppa cuppa cuppa method.

But I really just like that little bit of flavor and spice that it gives.

It also makes it have a really pretty color too.

Now I'm gonna make this up, and if you have time, let it kind of just hang out for a couple minutes.

The reason being is because you can see that it's just starting to have some little bubbles formed there.

We really want that little bit of aeration because that's what's gonna give our cobbler the lift.

(items popping) (light jazz music) So now comes the fun part, and that's when we are going to assemble our cobbler.

Now there is a question in the South about whether you add your fruit first and then the batter, or the batter and then the fruit.

And so what I typically do is I'll remove my skillet from the oven, and I'm gonna pour my batter in first.

Look at all that batter goodness flowing into there.

And the butter, we're not gonna stir this.

We really want the butter to kind of float up to the top.

And then directly in with the fruit.

And we're just gonna place the fruit directly on top.

And I know if you've never made a cobbler before, it's gonna sound a little wild and crazy.

But that's the beauty of cobblers is they rise around the fruit.

Now, we're not gonna stir this, but what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna take some of the fruit that was right there in the middle, and I'm just gonna push it out to the sides.

And the reason I'm doing that is I just want that even ratio of fruit throughout our cobbler.

And, I mean, look how beautiful that is already.

And just for a little final touch and just for a little bit of beauty, 'cause we like living in beauty here, (bright tinkling music) let's just sprinkle a little bit of cinnamon on top.

And so that's ready to go into a 375-degree oven.

I'm gonna cook it for 40 to 50 minutes, but I would go ahead and check it at 30 to 35.

You're gonna know that your cobbler is done when everything just starts to bubble up, and that crust on top is nice and browned.

So let's get in the oven.

Let's take it to the oven.

(laughs) I'm not actually getting in there.

(apple popping) (apple crunching) (light groovy music) You know, you don't want a cobbler where it's too cakey, like, you don't want it where you're biting into this thick layer of cake on top.

I call those fobblers.

Faux cobbler.

(chuckles) You know, there's a ton of new restaurants around town that always want to come up with a new concept of a cobbler.

And there's just really no way that you can reinvent the cobbler.

It's just a cobbler.

You know, cobblers, if you start to move around with them a lot, like, change them up, I think it turns more into a crisp or a cake, or a piece of (beeps).

(laughs) (items popping) (Trace claps) (skillet scrapes) There's nothing better than fresh out of the oven, ooey, gooey cobbler.

And the best time to eat this obviously is right when it's out of the oven.

Since I made it, I'm diving directly into the middle.

Look at all that.

And I love the combination of fruits because you really get that contrast of color, which I think is just so festive.

I don't even know why I'm bending down to do this.

I just wanna be close to it.

(laughs) Let's garnish it with just a little bit of mint.

And this is perfect if you are serving this outside to serve with just a little bit of ice cream.

You can also make it a day ahead of time and just warm it up, right?

I'm gonna risk my tongue safety to dive into this.

(blows) (Trace munching) So peachy.

(laughs) Maybe some smoke just outta my mouth.

Did you see?

Yeah?

It was hot.

(laughs) Do you see the smoke coming?

- [Crewmember] (laughing) Our host is steaming.

- So be sure and let your cobbler cool good eight to 10 minutes before, unless you wanna go to the ER with a burnt tongue.

We used a prosthetic tongue for this video.

Make the most of the summer garden bounty.

Whether you're trying a new twist in your recipe or enjoying a timeless classic, highlighting the flavors of the season is what it's all about.

And it's pretty delicious too.

Thanks for joining us today.

We'll see you next time on "Garden Party."

(light jazzy music) Insert clever phrase here.

(laughs) (pan sizzling) Are you looking for a summer dessert that's unfussy, forgiving, and that you literally can haul to anywhere?

(laughs) "Haul to anywhere."

I'm gonna remove this chicken carcass.

(clucking) I know I didn't.

I was, like, trying to get to Heather as quick as I could.

(film crew laughing) Struggle!

Okay.

(pan clatters) Here in the South, we don't just celebrate cobbler... We don't just make it, we celebrate it.

(laughs) Perfect, so peachy.

Okay, hold on.

You jinxed us.

(laughs) (Trace sighs) (Trace and film crew laughing)