This idea for stuffing peppers would work well with delicata squash, larger eggplants or even your acorn squash. The filling incorporates a lot of ingredients from current boxes and past. Substitute with what you have on hand. And the filling also makes a tasty side dish all by itself. The recipe suggests cooking this on the grill but you can bake it in a 350 degree oven just as well.
This recipe is adapted from one I found in Fine Cooking magazine. The original called for poblano peppers, but it works just as well with our beautiful bell peppers.
Roasting peppers is easy, but it does require a flame. Or I guess you could do this under a broiler, but I’ve never tried. I do this on my stove, placing the peppers directly on the gas burners. I use as many burners as it takes to do as many peppers as I have. You…
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Cook squash, [See “notes about spaghetti squash for instructions on steaming, roasting, and microwaving.] Heat oil in a medium skillet and cook peppers, garlic and cayenne just until slightly softened. Add vinegar and set aside. When squash is cooked, comb out strands into a serving bowl. Add peppers, walnuts and herb. Season to taste and…
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Here’s a recipe I found for harissa. If you still have your cayennes from several weeks ago, you might give this a try. It’s generally made from dried peppers (true confession: I have dried cayenne peppers in my refrigerator from LAST YEAR!!!) but I’m going to mix dried peppers with fresh peppers from this week’s box and see how it turns out.
For our next pepper trick …. stuffed peppers. But not your grandmother’s stuffed peppers. I cannot remember where this came from – but I love the tuna filling. This is a great way to cook tuna even if you’re not going to use it to stuff peppers. Any leftover stuffing would make a fabulous tuna salad sandwich.
Pepper recipes one and two come from Linton Hopkins of Restaurant Eugene and a demo he did last summer at the Peachtree Road Farmers Market. The two colors of cheddar make for a pretty spread, but of course you can just use one kind of cheese if that’s what you have on hand. Hopkins opts for homemade mayonnaise in this recipe, but he says it’s ok for you to use store-bought, as long as the brand you buy contains no sugar. He roasts his pepper for the pimento cheese which adds a wonderful smoky quality.
Interestingly, when he makes his pepper jelly he cooks the peppers and then strains off the juice for the jelly. I’ve always made my pepper jelly by just cooking the chunks until very very tender. Love this idea even though it’s a bit more work. You could try the pepper jelly in some cornmeal pepper jelly cookies we featured last December. Search our archives for that, and for pepper roasting directions.
Lots of ideas here for hearty fall and winter food. First – we’ve got two recipe suggestions from members this week. Very exciting!
Joy Carter sent us a recipe for Pasta with Roasted Red Pepper Sauce. She doesn’t remember the website she found this on, although it might have been Pioneer Woman. Joy said she’s had lots of peppers in her garden this year so she’s been seeking new ways to use them. Our green peppers that came in today’s box will ultimately turn red, if you don’t already have roasted red peppers stashed away in your freezer.
This first recipe is an adaptation of one from Ian Winslade, formerly of many Atlanta restaurants including Bluepointe, Shout and Spice market. He just opened Buckhead Bottle Bar in June and he demonstrated this pepper salad at the Morningside Farmers Market last week.
Winslade suggests using different colored peppers, but the salad will, of course, be just as delicious with the exclusively red peppers that were in my box today. I haven’t cut into them yet, so I don’t know if they’re all sweet peppers, or if some hot ones are lurking in the bunch. Be sure to taste your peppers as you’re using them in any recipe to be sure the final result is what you expect!
Oh – and a note. There was some conversation several weeks ago about sherry vinegar. Almost every chef I’m working with these days is using it, and I was reminded that I bought mine at the DeKalb Farmers Market – I think it’s less than $2 for the bottle.
This week I discovered that a work colleague is a subscriber at one of Riverview’s other CSA pick-up locations. We chatted about the cayenne peppers in last week’s box, and agreed we’d like to have something to do with them beyond chopping them up and storing in the freezer for when you need a tablespoon or two of hot chiles for a recipe.
He and I talked about experimenting with Tabasco-type sauces. I found a great website, www.mexican-barbecue-recipes.com/tabasco-hot-sauce-recipes.html, with a bunch of ideas, and I liked this particular one, maybe because I’ve been working on a story that features recipes from the 1920s and 1940s.
Depending on how many peppers were in your box (that you haven’t already used), you may have to scale things up or down. I guess you could use any kind of vinegar you like, but white vinegar is probably what is meant here. I’ll be working on my sauce this weekend. Let us know if you decide to experiment, too.
