Peppers: Stuffed

before

After the first Great Pepper Harvest of 2010 (okay, so what's "great" to some might look sort of flim flamy to others...) one of the things we couldn't wait to eat were warm, sweet and savory stuffed peppers.  Like many things that we make, stuffed peppers never seem to come out the same way twice.  Though they do seem to be a vehicle that stands up to reinterpretation.  This go round we stuffed ours with a mixture of wild rice with sauteed turnip greens and sausage.

Getting Started

I started by selecting the largest of the sweet varieties that we had harvested.  Mainly we had red Russian Healthy peppers, but there were a few Chocolate Beauties, one smallish Violet bell, and a couple very small orangey guys.  After deciding which sides of each pepper would behave the best and not tip over, I cut them in half and removed the seeds.  I cut enough peppers that they pretty well filled up a 9x13 baking dish.

Fill 'er Up

• 1 cup long grain wild rice
• 1 lb. sweet Italian sausage, uncooked  (you could use any sort.  I got an organic chicken variety.)
• 1/2 onion, finely chopped
• 1-2 garlic cloves, finely diced
• 1 1/2 lbs. turnip greens,chopped
• olive oil
• salt and pepper and crushed pepper flakes
• fresh herbs

 Method

• Cook the rice -  either according to package directions on the stove top or in a rice cooker.  I'm all about the rice cooker.  As it is cooking, get the rest of the filling prepped.

• Remove the sausage from its casing,  add a good bit of red pepper flakes, and brown  with a little olive oil in the trusty cast iron skillet.  When it begins to crisp up, remove it to a bowl and set it aside. 

• Using the oil left in the skillet, get the onion and garlic cooking just until they begin to take on some color, about 5 minutes. 

• Add the chopped greens, a couple hefty pinches of salt, black pepper, and whatever assortment of chopped herbs you like - my random assortment from the garden was parsley, oregano, and a little marjoram. 

• When the greens have wilted and begun to turn tender, I took them off the heat, and gently tossed them and the sausage with the cooked rice. 

• Taste for seasoning, add another pinch of salt if needed, and set to stuffing the peppers.

Into the Oven

• After the peppers are stuffed and positioned snugly into the Pyrex cover tightly with foil and bake at 350 for about 40 minutes.  Pull them out, remove the foil and top them with thinly sliced cheese.  We had some with provolone and some with cheddar.  Put back into the oven for another 5 minutes or so until the cheese is oozy and melted.  

They were really delish - sweet peppers, slightly bitter greens, savory, spicy sausage, sharp, tangy cheese - yum!  The recipe is just a loose guideline, really.  Just a jumping off point.  We have made them with seasoned ground tofu meat instead of sausage.  With chard or beet greens or mushrooms or grated zucchini instead of or in addition to anything else.  With brown rice or red rice or lentil/barley/couscous mix.  You go.

after

Winter Garden Update

It has been three months since we got the seeds in the ground for our winter garden.  Things have come along nicely and with fairly minimal input. (Except for a couple minor mishaps involving a certain dog and some of his friends.  Sorry peas!)

   

It always feels like a slow start when you're waiting to eat from the garden, but so far we've been able to sample  some beautiful beets and beet greens, some carrots, turnips, arugula, a bit of chard, and some radishes on hot buttered toast.  But the real bounty is just starting to be unleashed.

I am personally setting my sites on the cauliflower.

Still attempting to get into the habit of having a perpetual garden that is edited and re-seeded on the regular (as opposed to once a season), I spent some time last weekend tidying the vegetable beds.  Among other things, I harvested all of the turnips to make turnip pickles and got a good bit of new seed in the ground.

• In the lower bed
• 1 row heirloom shelling peas  (Renee's Garden)
• 1 row Tonda di Parigi carrots  (Renee's Garden)
• 1 row French Breakfast radishes  (Seed Savers)
• Filled in 1 row of Cosmic Purple carrots  (Renee's Garden)
• 1 row purple top white globe turnips (Seed Savers)
• 1 row Chef's Choice cauliflower  (Renee's Garden)
• 3 Mammoth Red Rock cabbages  (Seed Savers)
• 2 Copenhagen Market cabbages  (Seed Savers)
• 1 row 1/2 Chioggia & 1/2 Burpee's Golden beets (Seed Savers)
• In the upper bed
• 1 row Rouge d'hiver Romaine lettuce  (Renee's Garden)
• Herb Garden
• Dill  (Ferry Morse)

 

Bulbs: Part 1 1/2

The daffodils are beginning to peek through the mulch under the pepper tree.

A small thing, but very exciting.

Peppers: Louisiana Hot Sauce

One thing that I have come to realize over last few seasons is the intimate link between growing and preserving.  With an edible garden, you are constantly trying to figure out new and different ways to utilize what your garden is providing.  Generally you can only keep up with the production to a degree and sometimes you have so much of a particular fruit or vegetable you are left with giving it to friends and neighbors, putting it back into your compost pile or preserving it.  This winter we have had a bumper crop of peppers (both regular and hot versions) and it has forced us to figure out ways to preserve to bounty.

Right around Christmas time, in midst of the holiday crunch, I saw that our pepper plants were overflowing.  We weren't going to be around and I was worried about them going to waste, so I picked the plants clean and  made a quick batch of Louisiana Style vinegar hot sauce.  Similar to Tabasco or Frank's Red Hot  but without the fermenting step, it is really quick and easy to make, ready immediately, improves with age, and has tremendous flavor.

ingredients:

• 1/2 cup peppers (I used Serranos and Rooster Spur)
• 1 3/4 tp salt
• 2/3 C white vinegar
• half a carrot (Rachel suggested we try this out on the second batch)

method:

• Cut the tops of the peppers and seed depending on hotness.  Be careful with the eyes here.  Some people use gloves.

• Toss peppers in a kitchen blender with the carrot, salt and vinegar.  Cover and blend for about 5 minutes until completely smooth.

• Pour into prepared canning jars and seal.  I did not process the filled jars as I put this batch directly in the fridge.  Use immediately or let it ferment in the fridge over time.

Voila!  We now have plenty of hot sauce whenever we need it.  Next time, I would really like to use empty hot sauce bottles, though this might be a problem as the finished product is so good I can't imagine ever buying hot sauce again.

final notes:

The carrot was an idea Rachel had for our recent second batch.  It was a great addition, giving a touch of sweetness, cutting the overt presence of the vinegar and adding some complexity to the flavor.  I can't wait to try pickling jalapenos or trying to replicate one of the Chinese chili oils from 99 Ranch Market that we are so fond of using in our stir fries.

Rancho Rewind: Beet Pizza

One of the things that I'm most looking forward to in the winter garden are all of the beets.  Last year Jeremy and I made beet pizza a couple of times, and flipping through photos, I came across one of our creations that got me excited for this years crop.

We used the regular pizza dough from Trader Joe's for this one.  (We need to start making our own, I know it's easy, but not as easy as buying it from TJs!)  We usually brush a little olive oil onto the sheet pan and then sprinkle that with some yellow corn meal. (Nope, we don't gots a pizza stone.)  After a couple of initial versions, we decided that with a beet pizza we need to pre-bake the crust before adding the toppings (the beets and beet greens have so much moisture that it makes it hard for the crust to crisp up if you don't). So we bake the plain crust for 8 minutes or so, pull it out and dress it up.

Dressing it up:

• sauteed beet greens
• I just chop them up and through them into a hot cast iron pan with a little olive oil, salt and crushed red pepper.  Cook until wilted and just tender.
• roasted beets
• I scrub them, cut the tops off, and put them into a roasting pan or pyrex.
• larger beets I might cut in half, but otherwise I leave them whole.
• sprinkle a couple of teaspoons of water into the pan, cover tight with aluminum foil, and roast at 400 degrees for about 30 minutes, until fork tender.
• let the beets cool, then peel the skins off with your fingers.  (it's a little messy, but the skins come off really easily.)
• cut the cooled beets into thick slices.
• walnuts , rough chopped
  
• goat cheese
• parmesean cheese
• fresh parsley, chopped
  

Spread the goat cheese on the pre-baked crust.  Distribute the greens and the sliced beets over the cheese.  Sprinkle walnuts and parmesean over the top.  Bake for another 8-10 minutes. Sprinkle parsley on the finished pie.

We kept it pretty basic, but you could easily add other flavors that would be great.  Maybe some balsamic vinegar or flavored olive oil or walnut oil drizzled over the top when it comes out of the oven?  Chives, onions or shallots?  Pickled onions or shallots?  Pine nuts?  Blue cheese?  No cheese?  However it is modified, I am looking forward to recreating it with at least a part of the new season's crop.  Hurry up beets!

Winter Vegetable Garden

Three weeks ago now, I got the lower bed seeded with the winter veg.  This is the first season that we haven't planted both beds at the same time; we are officially "experimenting"  - in the effort to learn to stagger our crops, to know more about which perennials we can leave in the ground from season to season, and to figure out just what we can do in the space we have. So the eggplants and peppers stayed put in the upper bed and I planted bits and pieces around them.  The lower bed got the full-on, seed sowing treatment.  Mainly, I used standard row planting - short rows that cut vertically along the long bed.  I did break a little from the seed-packet recommendations though, and set my rows closer together - about 12 inches apart, as opposed to 24 to 32 inches.  I could just be shooting my cabbages in the foot (or is it shooting my cabbages in the head?) trying to squeeze more out of the space.  We'll see.

Here's what I sowed:

• Upper Bed
• 1 row Butter lettuce  (Renee's Garden)
• 1 small patch Common arugula  (Seed Savers)
• Along the length of the lower bed
• 4 Copenhagen Market cabbages  (Seed Savers)
• 4 Mammoth Red Rock cabbages  (Seed Savers)
• 4 Early Snowball cauliflower  (Seed Savers)
• Starting from the north end of the lower bed
• 1 row heirloom shelling peas  (Renee's Garden)
• 1 row Tonda di Parigi carrots  (Renee's Garden) & French Breakfast radishes  (Seed Savers)
• 1 row De Cicco broccoli  (Seed Savers)
• 1 row Cosmic Purple carrots  (Renee's Garden) & Watermelon radishes  (Renee's Garden)
• 1 row Chef's Choice cauliflower, mixed colors  (Renee's Garden)
• 1 row Purplette mini onions  (Huntington)
  
• 1 row Purple Top White Globe turnips  (Seed Savers)
• 1 row Romanesco broccoli  (Seed Savers)
• 1 row Cipollini onions  (Huntington)
• 1 row Cylindria beets & Burpee's Golden beets  (both Seed Savers)
• 1 row Five Color silverbeet  (Seed Savers)
• 1 row Bull's Blood beets & Chioggia beets  (both Seed Savers)
• 1 row Sunshine carrots  (Renee's Garden)
• 1 row Pigeon peas  (from Irma)
• Herb Garden
• Italian Large Leaf Basil  (Armstrong's seedling)
• Coriander  (Armstrong's seedling)
• Curled Chervil  (Armstrong's seedling)
• Italian Parsley  (Armstrong's seedling)
• Florence fennel  (Renee's Garden)
  
• Nasturtium  (Burpee's)
  

Bulbs: Part One

Along with the edibles, it has always been a part of the plan to have a cutting garden at Rancho Garbonzo as well.  Natives they are not, but a vase of dahlias or tulips or peonies on the mantle is hard to beat.  So, last weekend I got started by planting 100 daffodil bulbs on the slope under our pepper tree.  (Daffodils remind me of my Grams.)

The area is really shady, with only a little dappled light here and there throughout the day.  Unlike the rest of our yard, this slope has been covered with a thick layer of mulch for the last few years - partly just leaves and twigs that have fallen from the huge tree above, and partly a deliberately placed load of chipped yard waste that the tree trimmer dropped off a couple of years back. Also unlike the rest of the yard, the soil that I uncovered beneath the mulchy top layer was lovely! Not a clumpy ball of reddish clay in sight! Now is that just the mulch working its magic over time on our crummy soil or was there completely different soil in this section of our yard to begin with?  I think the former makes the most sense.  Three cheers for the mulch!  So, bone meal and bulbs into the ground and fingers crossed; I'm hoping that we'll see some of these babies popping up by the start of Spring.

 

(Unfortunately not my yard, the pics are scanned from the bulb bags.  I bought them at Costco.)