Salsa Verde

I had promised myself that I'd try to do something interesting with the tomatillos, but after another busy week that included a three day business trip to Minnesota, I needed to get these used before they went bad, so I phoned it in with possibly the most common tomatillo recipe out there; salsa verde.

Salsa verde is made using a different technique than other salsas. Instead of dicing up the vegetables and mixing them together raw, all the ingredients are boiled together and then blended to make what is basically a chunky sauce. One of the reasons why its done this way is that tomatillos have a lot of pectin in them which is released by the boiling. Then when the mixture cools the pectin acts as a thickener, giving you salsa instead of tomatillo soup.

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.

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. 

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.

Vegetable Stuffed Zucchini

Prior to being overrun with various summer squashes from my CSA, I had thought of stuffed squash as a winter dish when the acorn, butternut and other winter varieties are plentiful and your choice of fresh local produce is severely limited. Its not just the squash, but the fillings as well with combinations of breads, sausage, dried fruit and other hearty flavors that one associates with cooler weather. However, with 2 pounds of week 11 zucchini still in the fridge when another 3 pounds of yellow squashes arrived with week 12, I was going to have to get past my seasonal preconceptions. 

Since I'm using a summer squash, it only makes sense to fill it with other summer ingredients, and the recipe I found not only accomplishes that, it does it with several other items I have from recent shares! The combination of sweet corn with spicy jalapeno is fantastic and black beans add a slightly meaty texture that really ties everything together. All the colors in this dish really shout summer as well, the bright greens, red and yellow along with a earthy brown from the beans truly make this dish as pleasing to the eye as to the taste buds!

Stuffed Zucchini, adapted from Spark Recipes

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Zucchini

Jalapeno pepper

Onion

Corn

Ingredients
2 medium sized zucchini
1 tsp olive oil
1 fresh jalapeno pepper, seeded and finely chopped
1/4 cup chopped onion
2 cloves garlic minced
1/2 cup corn (cut off the cob of a fresh ear)

1/3 cup chopped tomato
1/3 cup canned black beans, rinsed and drained

Salt and pepper
2 tbs grated parmesean cheese
2 tbs chopped fresh parsley

Preparation
Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Wash and dry the zucchini and then cut in half lengthwise. Using a  spoon, scoop out and discard the seeds and surrounding pulp. Place the prepared zucchini shells, cut sides up, in a shallow baking pan. If they are not sitting flat, you can use a vegetable peeler to take a strip of two off the uncut side to create a flat surface.

In a large skillet heat oil over medium heat then add the jalapeno and onion and cook until tender, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic, corn, tomato and black beans and continue to cook for 3-5 minutes until everything is heated through. Season to taste with salt and pepper to taste then remove from the heat and stir in the parsley. Spoon the bean mixture evenly among the four zucchini halves then sprinkle with the cheese. Bake, uncovered, about 20 minutes or until zucchini is cooked through and the cheese has started to brown. Serve immediately.

Cauliflower Jalapeno "Rice"

It’s hard for me to imagine how people came up with new recipe ideas before the internet. I suppose it was a combination of word of mouth and flipping through cookbooks, and while those methods certainly are still useful today, I for one would have a much less varied repertoire if not for Google. The best is when I have an ingredient that needs to be used; the cauliflower from week 10 in this case, but no idea what I want to do with it. In this case I added one item from week 11 to see what came up. Cauliflower + jalapeno then scroll through the results until something catches my eye, and catch it this one did! Let me tell you, after one bite of this cauliflower rice it immediately became my (and my wife's) favorite way of cooking cauliflower. The texture of the final dish is surprisingly similar to actual rice, but with added flavor of the cauliflower, which really reacts well to letting it brown and crisp up a bit on the bottom of the pan. Combine that with the added nutrients that cauliflower has (compared to pretty much nothing for white rice) and welcome to the regular rotation! The next step will be getting our daughter to eat it, which will be much easier if I make a batch isn't full of jalapeno...

Adapted from The Roasted Root.

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Cauliflower

Jalapeno

Ingredients
1 head cauliflower, grated
1/4 cup minced shallot

1 jalapeno, seeded and finely chopped
1 tbs fresh ginger, grated

1 tsp olive oil
3/4 cup canned coconut milk
1/2 tsp ground cumin
Salt and pepper

Preparation

Remove any leaves from the cauliflower then chop it into quarters. Using a box grater or the shredding disk on your food processor, grate all of the cauliflower. In a large skillet, heat the oil over medium heat and then add the shallot and jalapeno. Saute for 3-4 minutes until the shallot is starting to brown. Add coconut milk, ginger and cumin and stir until the mixture comes to a boil. Add the cauliflower and mix to combine. Turn the heat up to medium high and cook, stirring occasionally until the cauliflower starts to brown in spots. Don't be afraid to let a little crust form, you'll be rewarded with great flavor! Season to taste with salt and pepper then serve immediately as a side to any dish you would normally use rice with, you will be surprised how similar it is in texture and flavor.