Pickled Vegetable Slaw

Fall weather is descending fast around here marking the start of my favorite part of the year. This stretch from mid-September through to the end of the year brings so much of what I love about food and cooking. The big holiday feasts are always the main events of the season, but there are so many smaller events and activities before those that keep me plenty busy. Today’s activity comes from the desire to hold onto the bright, beautiful flavors of summer before they disappear until next year. Already, my freezer is stocked with blanched vegetables (beans, corn, etc.) that take well to freezing, but for those that are best when raw it’s time to break out the pickling jars again.

I read about this technique of pickling mixed vegetable slaw a few months back on Smitten Kitchen, and it jumped to the front of my mind when I did a clean out of the fridge to find a big bell pepper, a lone carrot and a whole bunch of radishes from past CSA shares that have been languishing. To that I added a couple small bell peppers that my backyard plants managed to produce despite looking pretty worn out, as well as a red onion to complete the medley of vegetables for this slaw.

Rice and Squid Stuffed Peppers

If you are into food blogs, I imagine that you have at some point spent time on Smitten Kitchen. It's one of more well known out there, and a recent post there for rice stuffed tomatoes caught my attention. However, with an abundance of bell peppers coming in over the last few weeks, as well as the pepper plants in my garden starting to produce (yes, despite the fact that I'm getting a half-bushel of vegetables every week from the farm that I can barely keep up with, it seemed like a good idea to ALSO plant a vegetable garden) I realized I needed to get working on this pepper backlog and now was the perfect time to go for a meal of stuffed peppers. 

I still wanted to use a tomato/rice mixture based on the Smitten Kitchen recipe as the stuffing, but since the plan was to have this as a stand alone meal, I was worried that it would not be filling enough as is. Adding some seafood to the rice seemed like a good answer and I picked squid because it pairs so well with tomato, and anyway, seafood risottos are a favorite at my house.

Given a choice I would have picked a sweeter (red, orange) bell pepper for this dish, but green was what I had to work with. In the end though, the slightly bitter taste of the green bell pepper paired pretty well with the sweetness from the tomato used to cook the rice and if I make this again in the future, I may purposely seek out green peppers. Its always fun when the necessity of using an ingredient on hand results in a something tasty that you never would have discovered otherwise!

Eggplant Caponata

What a day today! We've had veggies from the CSA slowly building up over the last couple weeks and I decided to put some serious effort to use them up before more comes in this week. First, the remaining cucumbers went into another batch of bread and butter pickles (the first batch of which turned out fantastically by the way). My next target was 3 pounds of yellow squash that I used to make a triple batch of fritters. I used the same recipe as before, but this time mixed in chopped Swiss chard that I sauteed with a clove of garlic and the last of the hot peppers. By tripling the recipe, I ended up with 12 big fritters, most of those will be frozen for a future meal. After all that work, there was still eggplant and several bell peppers left to use, and from that I decided to make caponata.

Caponata is a Sicilian dish centered around eggplant that is cooked until very soft with a variety of other vegetables in a sweet, vinegary sauce. In addition to the eggplant, a traditional caponata should have celery and capers in the mix, but after that there are many other things you could add depending on your taste. Bell pepper was already in for me, and to that I added onion, tomato, garlic and olives. This is a fairly simple dish to make and it gets better with age, which is good because the eggplant I had was rather large, and when all was complete I had close to 2 quarts of caponata. We typically eat this as a snack on chips or slices of baguette, though it can be used as a side dish and will go quite well with seafood.

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Eggplant
Bell Pepper

Ingredients
6 cups eggplant, cubed
1 tbs kosher salt
Olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
1 bell pepper, chopped
1/2 cup celery, chopped
1/2 cup green olives, chopped
1-1/2 cups canned crushed tomato
3 tbs capers, rinsed
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
2 tbs sugar
Salt and pepper
1/4 cup fresh basil, finely chopped.

Preparation

Toss the cubed eggplant with 1 tbs salt and then place in a colander over a bowl and let sit for 15 minutes so the salt can draw some of the water out of the eggplant. When the time is up, give the eggplant a quick rinse with fresh water and allow to drain completely. Spread the eggplant on a sheet pan and season with pepper and drizzle with olive oil, toss to coat then roast in a 400 degree oven for 20 minutes. Remove and set aside.

Meanwhile, heat one tablespoon of oil over medium heat in a large nonstick skillet, then add the onion, bell pepper and celery and cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the garlic, season with salt and pepper and cook for another minute. Add the eggplant to the pan and cook, stirring for another 5 minutes, until the vegetables are tender and the eggplant starts to fall apart.

Add the crushed tomatoes to the pan along with the capers, olives, sugar and vinegar. Bring to a simmer then turn the heat to low and cook, stirring often, for 20 to 30 minutes, until the vegetables are very tender and the mixture is quite thick and fragrant. Stir in the basil and season to taste with salt and pepper. Allow to cool to room temperature before serving.

Sausage with Peppers and Onions in Marsala Sauce

Bell peppers from the CSA seem to have joined the squash in an attempt to overtake my refrigerator these past few weeks, and I don't know about you, but tossing a few slices on my salads is definitely not keeping them in check. To make some headway, I'm enlisting the classic combination of sausage with peppers and onions. Most of my experience with this meal has been at street fairs and the like, usually served out of the side of a truck or trailer that has been brightly painted with the colors of the Italian flag, and 9 times out of 10 the sandwich they sell you is pretty terrible. Overcooked, fatty sausage in a tasteless white bread bun with unseasoned, limp, greasy peppers and onions on top. To add insult to injury, the darn thing costs you eight bucks! 

My version of this dish is a far cry from carnival food. I like to use Italian turkey sausage because it is generally less greasy, though this recipe works just as well with regular pork sausages if that is your preference. To give the whole thing more flavor, the peppers and onions are cooked in a Marsala wine sauce along with tomatoes, garlic and a bunch of fresh herbs. I also throw in a jalapeno pepper to give a little heat (crushed red pepper works as well) and then let the whole thing simmer away with the sausages until it reaches its happy place. To serve this, you can go for the classic and put it on a roll (note that you can choose to leave the sausages whole to make portioning easier here) or for a less messy option, you can do what we did and serve on a plate with the bread on the side. This is also really good over rice or even pasta.

This recipe is loosely based on the one here from the Food Network.

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Bell Peppers

Hot pepper

Ingredients
2 tbs olive oil
1 pound sweet Italian turkey sausage
3 bell peppers, sliced
1 yellow onion, sliced

Salt and Pepper
1 tsp chopped fresh oregano
1/3 cup chopped fresh basil leaves
3 garlic cloves, minced

1 jalapeno pepper, minced (remove the seeds if you don't want too much heat)
2 tbs tomato paste
1 cup dry Marsala wine
1 (15-ounce) can diced tomatoes (or use an equivalent amount of fresh chopped tomato if you have them)

Preparation

Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat then add the sausages and cook until nicely browned, it is not necessary to cook them all the way through. Remove the sausages from the pan and drain off any remaining oil, leaving just a thin coating. Add the peppers and onions, season with salt and pepper and cook until they have started to brown. Add the oregano, basil, jalapeno and garlic and cook another minute or two. Next, add the tomato paste, Marsala wine and tomatoes then stir to combine. 

Bring the pan to a simmer over low heat. Cut the sausages into bite sized pieces and add back to the pan, stirring to incorporate. Cook uncovered over low heat until the sauce has thickened, around 10 minutes. Season to taste before serving. 

Cabbage and Cucumber Salad with Sesame Dressing

To be honest, I'm not really sure if this should be called a salad or a slaw. The cabbage and carrots are shredded like in a slaw, but the cucumber and bell peppers are chopped like in a salad. Maybe a slawlad?

Well, whatever you want to call this, it was very good and making the sesame dressing from scratch really made the difference. A much more pure sesame flavor than what you get with the bottled dressings. We ate this as a side to some miso glazed scallops, but I could see it being used to accompany just about anything, all you need to do is change up the dressing to fit the other flavors on the plate. One tip to keep the leftovers fresh longer is to only dress what you will eat. Storing the remaining salad undressed will prevent the dressing from making it soggy and will also give you that option of trying other dressing with other meals.

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Cabbage
Carrot
Cucumber
Bell Pepper

Ingredients
1/4 of a cabbage, cored and shredded (about 4 cups)
1 cup shredded carrot
1 large cucumber, peeled and chopped
1 bell pepper, thick julienne
2 tbs unseasoned rice vinegar
1 tbs soy sauce
1 tbs sesame oil
1 tbs light brown sugar
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper

1 tsp sesame seeds

Preparation

Combine the cabbage, carrot, bell peppers and cucumber in a large bowl and toss to combine. In a separate bowl, combine the rice vinegar, soy sauce, sesame oil, sugar, salt, pepper and sesame seeds and whisk to combine. Taste for seasoning and adjust as you like. To serve, place a the portion of the salad you will eat in to a clean bowl and toss with dressing to taste. 

Mexican Pork and Purslane

Figuring out how to make use of the purslane was a bit of a challenge because in addition to it being a vegetable I've never used (or seen up until now) it turned out that the cuisines that make the most use of it were not ones that I typically cook. Really, the purslane is now the item from the CSA that did the best at taking me furthest from my usual cooking routine. New vegetable and a cuisine that I rarely work with.

Purslane is a plant commonly found in Mexican cooking, so it made sense to focus on that cuisine for a recipe. After a bit of research, I learned that its often paired with pork in a stew or soup preparation. The recipe here is based on a few different ideas that I found and the result is somewhat in between and soup and a stew with the pureed vegetables adding body and a nice depth of flavor to the broth. Cooking the purslane this way makes it quite soft and will dull its flavors, so if you want to experience the full flavor of this vegetable, then I suggest a raw preparation. Here's a link to one that looked pretty good to me.

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Purslane
Bell pepper
White onion (last one remaining from week 11)
Jalapeno pepper (also last one from week 11)

Ingredients
1.5 lb pork spare ribs
1 lb tomatillo, husked and quartered
1 large fresh jalapeño chile, seeded
2 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced
1/2 white onion, chopped
1 lb. purslane leaves, washed and coarsely chopped
1 bell pepper, 1/2 inch dice
Salt and pepper to taste

Preparation
Place the pork, 1 clove of garlic, half of the chopped onion, and 5 cups water into a pot and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to a simmer, cover and cook until the pork is tender, about 1.5 hours. Strain the broth, reserving the pork and 4 cups of broth. Discard the garlic and onions. Separately, bring a pot of salted water to a boil then add the jalapeno and tomatillos and cook until soft, about 10 minutes. Transfer tomatillos and jalapenos to a blender with the remaining onions and garlic and a 1⁄4 cup of the cooking water. Purée until smooth and set aside. In a wide bottomed pot, heat a bit of oil over medium high heat and brown the pork on all sides. Reduce the heat to medium, add the tomatillo purée and cook until thickened slightly, about 8 minutes. Add the reserved 4 cups of broth, purslane, salt and pepper to taste. Bring back to a boil and reduce to low and simmer until the pork is falling off the bone, 20-30 minutes longer. With 5 minutes left, add the bell pepper. Taste again for seasoning then serve with rice.

Mango Salsa

Because everybody likes to say salsa! More importantly, everyone likes to EAT salsa, everyone I know at any rate.  Personally, my favorite salsas have a sweet element to them and when shopping for a jar I tend to look for a mango or pineapple variety. Since I was looking for a way to use the fresh onion in my last share and mangoes are plentiful at the store lately, it seemed that the time was right to come up with my own recipe for mango salsa. The ingredients here are all pretty standard for salsa.  The red and yellow bell pepper I had on hand, but you can use any color, though I suggest that no more than half the pepper be green. I used a Serrano chili as I am a bit of a wimp with spicy salsa, but if you prefer more spice go for jalapeno or habanero if you dare!

Those of you who have ever tried to peed and chop a mango know how slippery they can be. A trick I've learned to help hang on is to stick a corn holder into one end of the mango.  That way you always have a easy to hold handle that will make peeling and cutting the flesh off the pit much easier. And as a bonus, you can hold it like a popsicle and eat any remaining fruit right off the pit!

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White onion
Tomato

Ingredients
1 ripe mango, peeled and diced
1 cup Diced bell pepper
1/2 cup Minced white onion
1 small Serrano or jalapeño pepper, minced
3/4 cup fresh tomato, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
Fresh lime or lemon juice to taste

Preparation

Combine everything in a bowl and allow it to sit for at least 30 minutes for the flavors to meld.