Spicy Pork with Peach Sauce and Braised Cabbage

The farm has been quite generous with peaches over the last few weeks, with recent shares containing 8 peaches every time. This has presented a bit of a challenge in that the peaches are not yet ripe when I get them, and inevitably they will all ripen at the same time resulting in a bit of a scramble for us to get them all used before they start going bad. Not that I'm really complaining about having to eat lots of nice ripe peaches, but it got me thinking that it would be good to have a few ways to use unripe peaches as well.

Since the unripe peach are quite firm, they don't fall apart as easily during cooking and I wanted to take full advantage of this by using them in two of the three components in this dish. The main protein, pork is often paired with fruit, apples probably being the most common. I've never tried pork with peach, but there are plenty of pork/peach recipes on the web, so it appears I've been missing out.

After sifting through a few recipes, I decided to go for a sweet/spicy combination by using a spicy rub on the pork and then serving it with a sweet peach sauce. Since the unripe peaches are rather tart, I'll add some sugar to the sauce to give it a bit of sweetness, but not too much. The second way I used the peaches was to combine them with red cabbage (left from a couple shares ago) and onion and then braise the whole lot with vinegar until it reaches its happy place. Pork, peach sauce, braised cabbage...this is going to be good!

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.

Share Contents Used
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. 

Simple Coleslaw

There is the promise of coleslaw, crunchy and creamy, and then there is the all to common reality of limp, soggy cabbage in a watery dressing. What is it about this simple recipe that can go so wrong? In a word; water. Cabbage is full of water and the dressing will slowly draw that moisture out of the shredded leaves until your slaw is more of a cabbage soup. Yuck! The best way to deal with this is to remove the excess water from the cabbage before dressing it by salting the shredded leaves and allowing time for the salt to draw out the water.  Its a little extra work, but you will be rewarded with a much more appealing result and the leftovers (if any...yeah its that good) will keep much longer as well.

Share Contents Used
Cabbage

Ingredients
6 cups shredded green cabbage
2 tbs grated onion
1 small carrot, peeled and shredded
1 tsp salt
2 tbs sour cream
1/4 cup mayonnaise
1.5 tsp white vinegar
1 tsp sugar
1/8 tsp pepper

Preparation
Place the shredded cabbage, onion and carrot in a colander and sprinkle with the salt.  Mix a few times to distribute the salt evenly and then set the colander over a bowl and let sit for 1 hour.  The salt will draw excess water out of the vegetables.  When the hour is up, discard the water and then rinse the salt off of the shredded veggies with fresh water.  Allow to drain thoroughly and then dry by spreading the shredded vegetables on one or two tea towels, then roll the towels up and squeeze to wring out as much moisture as you can.  In a small bowl, mix the sour cream, mayo, vinegar, sugar and pepper. Return the vegetables to a clean bowl and then toss with the mayo mixture. If the slaw seems too dry (which can happen depending on how aggressively you wrung out the tea towel) add a bit of fresh water back in and mix. Or, if you have some handy, try using pickle juice. I used juice from some sweet bread and butter chips for this batch and it added a great level of flavor. Just go slow with the additions and taste often lest your slaw ends up tasting more like relish.