Today's show is a celebration of my favorite season-- the spring.

Announcer: "Julie Taboulie's Lebanese Kitchen" is made possible by... Man: ♪ Do your thing ♪ ♪ Do your thing, do your thing ♪ ♪ Syracuse, do your thing ♪ ♪ Do your thing, do your thing ♪ ♪ Syracuse, do your thing ♪ [Middle Eastern music playing] Spring is my favorite season, by leaps and bounds.

It's a full-of-life moment, and I just feel so fresh and inspired by my surroundings.

It also brings me straight back to my childhood days, when my mother would make special springtime dishes to celebrate the season.

And what better way to celebrate the spring season than by preparing and sharing a special celebratory meal.

Today, we are making a crown roasted leg of lamb that is marinated in garlic, olive oil, and a bouquet of fresh herbs that will wake you right up to the springtime, along with some of my sensational side dishes that I am perfectly pairing just for you.

First up is my freekeh pilaf, a fire-roasted baby wheat that is wholesome and healthy, along with my steamed spring vegetables, tossed in a creamy garlic butter sauce that is simply delicious to delight in for the spring season.

My springtime sensations are sure to be special for your family and friends this season.

It's a sensational spring celebration today, and what better way to celebrate the spring season, which is my favorite season, than with a celebratory meal.

And today we're making one that is very dear and near to my heart.

It's a meal that my mother would make often for us as I was growing up as a kid, and it all starts with a beautiful leg of lamb that I have right before me.

We're gonna roast the lamb meat, and it's gonna just be so delicious, and then we have some sensational side dishes that I'm gonna be pairing this roasted crown leg of lamb with as well.

So the first thing that we're gonna get started on is our lamb meat that I have right before me, and before we sort of get to the marinade that we're gonna do for the lamb, we are going to prepare our roasting pan.

Whenever I'm roasting any sort of meat, whether it be lamb or my Cornish hens that I know that you guys all love as well, um, or turkey, really anything, I always like to do a nice sort of aromatic bed of onions and shallots and herbs.

It really kind of makes all the difference, I feel, when you are roasting all your meat.

It adds a really nice flavor that sort of seeps into the meat as you're slowly roasting it.

So this meal really signifies the springtime to me, and the end of Lent and the celebration of Easter.

Uh, I remember my mom and my Uncle Dominic, ah, at Eastertime always having a leg of lamb, and them sort of, you know, kind of carving it up and preparing it for us, and it was just such a special, ah, meal.

We knew it was a special meal when we saw the leg of lamb, and it was a special time of year to celebrate with everybody.

And we are also going to lay some fresh herbs, and I just love the springtime.

I cannot wait when I see in Mama's gardens and grounds all of our spring herbs just popping up.

I literally just run out the door, and I start picking all of the fresh herbs, and I just start making all sorts of different dishes with them.

And also why I'm doing this is because we're gonna be creating a sort of au jus, a natural sort of pan stock that we're gonna achieve when we start to roast our lamb.

So you can use that, and that's what we're gonna do.

We're gonna use the natural pan juices for an au jus, or you can also turn them into a gravy if you like, too.

OK, so now I have some hot water right over here.

We're just going to pour some hot water right over the onions and herbs.

It's about, I would say, 3 cups.

Just want to make sure to submerge them a little bit.

And then throughout the roasting, if you need to add a little bit more hot water, then you can do that, too, as you baste the lamb.

You want to make sure that you keep enough liquid in there so that it doesn't get dried out.

And then just some sea salt and some fresh ground pepper, too.

Beautiful.

OK.

So now we're gonna get our rack back on.

Can see how beautiful this looks, and it's ready to go.

OK, so now we're gonna get to our leg of lamb meat that I have here.

Can see how beautiful it is.

And we're gonna start by actually making our marinade first, so we're gonna grab some fresh flat-leaf parsley and also some mint.

All of the same herbs that we used in the roasting rack.

And also some chives.

I'm gonna chop these up first and get them in our bowl.

And now we're going to season this with some sea salt and some black pepper.

I'm doing about one tablespoon because we have, ah, this nice, big leg of lamb meat and this is our marinade, so we want to make sure to really season it well.

And also a tablespoon of freshly ground black pepper.

And now for some olive oil.

That looks good.

It's about a half a cup.

Beautiful.

Coming along lovely for us now.

OK, so now we're just gonna set this aside momentarily.

We're going to bring our lamb meat front and center, just where it belongs.

Ha ha!

I have some garlic cloves, ah, that I peeled and they are looking lovely right there for us, so now we're gonna take a sharp, small paring knife, and what we're gonna do is we're gonna make slits about one inch deep into the lamb meat.

Just like so.

Gonna make the slits going throughout the entire top surface and along some of the sides, too.

Just sort of a Taboulie tip and trick with infusing lots of flavor into the lamb.

OK, so now we're gonna just take our garlic cloves.

If some of them are bigger, you can just sort of slice them up in half so that they can fit in your slits.

And now it's time for our marinade.

We're just gonna pour this all over our lamb.

Just like that.

Look how beautiful that looks.

OK, so now we're simply going to use our clean hands that we have and rub the fresh herbs and the oil all into our beautiful leg of lamb that we have.

And I have it on the bone, but you can also get it boneless, too.

OK, so now I'm going to marinate this overnight in the refrigerator.

If you're not able to marinate it overnight, then marinate it for at least 6 hours.

Spring is my favorite season by leaps and bounds.

It's when everything comes alive again and everything's just so fresh and new and really inspiring all around me, and it also makes me think of my childhood days, when my mother and family would prepare this beautiful roasted leg of lamb for Easter, and I've sort of put a twist on the traditional recipe that she would prepare by adding lots of fresh garlic and my fresh herb marinade and all of my spring-inspired side dishes, too, and I'm so happy that I can share them with all of you.

So I have our leg of lamb that I marinated overnight.

Gonna let you guys look at this.

I covered it with plastic wrap, too, which is always a good idea.

Look how beautiful that looks.

It's gonna be just delicious for our celebratory spring meal today.

So now I'm just gonna lift it up and we are going to place it right sort of on an angle, because it's pretty big, so I want it to be able to fit right into our rack there.

And we are going to get it in our oven.

I have it preheated at 450 degrees.

It's gonna roast for the first 30 minutes at 450 degrees, and then after 30 minutes, we're gonna turn our heat to 350 degrees, and it's gonna roast for another two to 2 1/2 hours, and we are going to be basting it with all of those delicious pan juices periodically.

We are starting on our first side dish of the day to go with our celebratory spring meal, or anytime meal, for that matter, because it is so sensational, and it is our freekeh, and it's our fire-roasted baby wheat, and you can see how beautiful, the light-brown color that the baby wheat has, and it's gonna make for a delicious side dish, especially with our lamb.

So what you want to do first, we're gonna rinse it under cold water.

Just want to make sure to rinse it really well and then any small skins that rise to the surface you can discard.

I'm just transferring it into my other clean glass bowl that I have here.

OK, and now we're gonna get started on making our freekeh side dish.

So now that our freekeh is nice and rinsed, we're gonna start with our onion.

I have a Vidalia onion and I have a shallot, and we're gonna finely mince these up, and we are going to basically infuse our fire-roasted baby wheat, our freekeh.

It's f-r-e-e-k-e-h. Ha ha ha!

And it's a Middle Eastern grain, it's an ancient grain, actually, and it's sort of become a supergrain nowadays along with so many other grains that really stem from the Middle East and Lebanon.

But now it's time to make our freekeh side dish.

I'm gonna start with about 1/3 of a cup of olive oil in our stock pot, just like that, and we are going to add in our shallots and our onions as well.

Just like this.

OK, so I have our heat on high.

I'm just gonna sort of coat them in the oil.

And we're also gonna season with some sea salt.

About one teaspoon.

Just like that, and we're just gonna let these kind of turn translucent a little bit.

We're not really gonna caramelize them.

Just sort of a little light in color.

OK, so our onions are nice and translucent, and I'm gonna get our freekeh, our fire-roasted baby wheat, right in there.

OK, so now we are just going to toss the freekeh with the onions and shallots in that oil as well.

We want to make sure to evenly coat them.

Beautiful.

OK.

So now we're gonna add our stock to this.

I'm gonna add 3 cups of water that I have measured out already just like that.

And I have this nice lamb stock, it's a nice savory stock that I prepared earlier, and I'm going to ladle some of the stock right in.

We're gonna do about 3 cups of our lamb stock as well.

OK, so we're just going to place our lid on our pot, we're gonna turn our heat to high, and we're gonna bring our freekeh to a boil, and then once it starts to boil, we're gonna turn our heat to low and we're gonna let it slowly simmer for about 45 minutes to an hour because it takes a little bit longer to cook with this grain, but it's perfect for our lamb because it's roasting away, and it's been roasting for about 30 minutes, so right now I'm going to turn our heat from 450 to 350 and we're gonna let it slowly roast for another two hours.

So I'm just checking on our freekeh, and it's doing really well.

It's cooking beautifully, as you can see, and we have enough of our liquid with our lamb stock and also our water, so we are good to go.

I'm just gonna pop the lid back on and we are gonna get making our other spectacular spring side dish of the day to go with our celebratory meal, which is our roasted leg of lamb, in honor of the spring season.

OK, so I have our beautiful sugar snap peas right here.

I also have some thin, small green beans as well, and I also have some gorgeous asparagus spears and some baby carrots, as you guys can see.

I want to bring up my boiler onions first.

Let me just slide these over here for just a second.

And I have some beautiful, uh, golden yellow, red, and white.

And what we want to do, with a small onion like this, they have really thin skin, so it's really easy if you just sort of make, uh, an "X" mark, right like that, and what we're gonna do is we're gonna get them into the bottom pot of our boiling water.

OK, so now we're gonna get to our baby carrots.

Back to baby carrots.

So I'm just gonna simply chop off the stems that we have.

And now we're just going to peel them.

OK, beautiful.

So before we get these steaming, we're gonna get our onions out.

We're gonna get them into our cold ice water so that way we can stop the cooking process.

OK. We're gonna place our carrots in the steamer.

OK, so now we're gonna start on our asparagus spears because we want to get those involved with our baby carrots because they're gonna take the longest to cook.

And now we're gonna get our sugar snap peas, too.

One of my favorite peas.

I love the little sweetness that they have and the crunch, especially, too.

Just layer those right on top.

And last but not least is our small, thin green beans, and those are going on top because they're nice and thin and tender.

They're gonna take the least amount of time to cook.

Just like that.

Beautiful.

OK.

So we're just gonna pop our lid on and we have a sort of steady simmer going, and we're just gonna let them steam until the carrots and the asparagus are cooked through, and also the sugar snap peas and the green beans, but we still want them to have a nice crunch and sort of bite to them and maintain their beautiful, vibrant green color and orange color and texture.

OK, so now we just need to remove the skins from our onions, and then we're gonna get to making our garlic and herb and butter pan sauce.

Lamb meat is really significant in Lebanese and Middle Eastern cultures.

It's definitely the preferred and I would say the top pick meat of choice that our culture cooks with, and it's definitely the number-one type of meat that I grew up also eating as a kid, and I feel that our culture really has some delicious preparations for lamb meat, and the roasted leg of lamb meat on the bone is definitely the sort of crown royal, I feel, of lamb meat recipes that we have.

So now I am chopping up our herbs for our garlic and butter and herb sauce that's gonna coat our beautiful vegetables and our onions that we have just sort of waiting in the wings, and I ready-minced our garlic.

I had 6 cloves of garlic.

And now I'm mincing up our chives.

Sticking with our fresh herb, spring herb theme, all of the sort of same flavors that are in our roasted lamb.

And now I have some fresh flat-leaf parsley.

Feel like these are like my usual suspects--ha ha ha!-- when it comes to cooking with herbs.

I'm always using fresh flat-leaf parsley and fresh spearmint.

And speaking of my spearmint, just gonna grab those right off the stem.

Just want to get the leaves.

Beautiful.

All right.

So, the first thing that we're gonna do, I have some clarified butter.

You can also just use unsalted butter.

And we're gonna turn our heat onto medium, and then I'm gonna add in our garlic and all of our fresh herbs.

And now we are going to salt it with some sea salt, just about a half a teaspoon, and I'm gonna reveal our--whoo!

Ha ha!

Our steamed vegetables, too.

They look beautiful, so I'm gonna turn off our heat immediately and just kind of shake our pan a little bit here.

OK, so now our garlic butter and herb sauce is sizzling away, so we're gonna get our onions in first.

Beautiful!

I love composing this dish.

Just sort of toss them right in that beautiful garlic and herb and butter sauce.

And now we are going to take out our green beans and our carrots.

Can see that beautiful, vibrant color.

We're just gonna get them right in right away.

I'm just gonna coat all of those vegetables.

So that looks lovely.

I'm actually just gonna turn our heat off now and we're gonna check on our freekeh.

It's calling my name.

Ha ha ha!

All right.

Ooh!

It looks beautiful as well.

Everything is coming together so lovely for our celebratory meal today.

So I'm just gonna take a fork.

Mm.

It's delicious.

It's cooked perfectly and I love the flavor of that sort of fire-roasted baby wheat with the onions and aromatics that we have in there.

So I'm just gonna turn this off.

I'm gonna put our lid back on.

Just gonna sort of let it rest for a little bit before we fluff it up with our fork.

And speaking of things being ready, I know that our lamb is just about ready, too, so we are going to take it from the oven and we are going to temperature-test it and get our celebratory meal plated up.

I really love entertaining and preparing special meals for holidays and kind of getting the whole family together and around the table and in the kitchen.

I just love when everybody's around, and I especially love preparing this meal for Eastertime, but you can certainly prepare it for Christmas or New Year's or any sort of special occasion that you want to sort of show your love to your family and friends.

Look at this stunner.

It's our star of our celebratory meal today.

It's our roasted leg of lamb meat on the bone.

So the first thing that we're gonna do, we're gonna take the temperature of our roasted leg of lamb.

We're gonna insert the thermometer in one of the thickest portions of the lamb.

Get it right in there and away from the bone.

OK, so perfect.

We're around 160, and you could bring it to about 170 if you like, too, but I am happy with this temperature, so I'm going to take out my thermometer and we are going to simply cover it with a sheet of foil that I have right over here.

We're just gonna let it rest a little bit.

And now, while our lamb meat is resting, I'm going to get our platter for it and sort of dress it up a little bit for our star of our celebratory spring meal.

Beautiful!

My family is just gonna love this meal today.

And I know so are you, so I hope that you make this for your family, too.

OK, so without further ado, we are going to make myself a plate.

I got to give it a taste before I share it, right?

Ha ha ha!

OK, so we're gonna take some of my freekeh, which is our fire-roasted baby wheat, and we're also gonna take some of my beautiful spring vegetables.

I love it!

OK, so now I'm just gonna grab my carving knife and my carving fork here.

I like the edges.

Look how beautiful that is.

It's cooked perfectly.

A nice medium temperature.

See that, we have this beautiful outer crust.

It's nice and most in the center.

I'm just gonna take this piece.

Place it right on top just like so.

Nice to sort of carve it thin.

That way it tastes more luscious, I think.

Ha ha ha!

Luscious lamb.

Ha ha.

All right, beautiful.

OK!

Without further ado, let's give this a taste.

Gonna get some of our freekeh, our baby--fire-roasted baby wheat with the lamb.

Mm.

It melts in your mouth.

It is absolutely amazing.

The garlic and all of the fresh herbs, that marinade that we put on our roasted leg of lamb, really comes through, and it makes it so flavorful.

I'm so happy that I could share my spring celebration, celebratory meal with all of you today, and I wish for you to make and share and celebrate this meal with your family, too.

So until we cook again, I wish you and yours to always takloull bil' hanna-- eat in happiness and sending smiles.

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To order a copy, call 1-800-PLAY-PBS or order online at shoppbs.org.

Join Julie Taboulie for fresh and flavorful Lebanese foods for your family and friends at JulieTaboulie.com.

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Visit JulieTaboulie.com today.

Announcer: "Julie Taboulie's Lebanese Kitchen" is made possible by... Man: ♪ Do your thing ♪ ♪ Do your thing, do your thing ♪ ♪ Syracuse, do your thing ♪ ♪ Do your thing, do your thing ♪ ♪ Syracuse, do your thing ♪ [Middle Eastern music playing]