Good Real Food

I discovered a way to get D to eat green peppers…stuff them with yummy things and bake until sweet. We have had a recent onslaught of green peppers from our CSA and from our garden along with yellow, red, and orange ones of all varieties. I made up this recipe using what I had on hand and it was one to put in the “that’s a keeper” book. Pilaf is a very old way of cooking rice used by many cultures. I like the wikipedia entry on the subject.

What you need for my dish:

• one cup brown rice
• 1 red onion, diced
• 2 tbsp sunflower oil
• 2 cloves garlic, put through a garlic press
• two sweet peppers (red, yellow, orange), diced
• 1/2 cup nuts (I used pine nuts and pecans)
• 2 cups stock (I used chicken)
• two green peppers

What to do:

1. Dry roast the rice in a frying pan over low heat for 10 minutes, stirring so as not to burn. 2. Heat the oil in another pan and saute the onions, peppers and garlic. 3. Add the stock to the rice along with the cooked peppers, onions and garlic. Let simmer until the liquid evaporates. 4. In the mean time, slice two green peppers in half, keeping the stems, and remove the pith and seeds. Brush them with oil. 5. When the rice is done, fill the green peppers with the pilaf, place in a shallow baking dish, and cook for about 15 minutes at 350.

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So, wow, I sure do have a lot of corn and cucumbers on my hands with the recent CSA boxes. After some searching I found this great recipe for a cold summer soup in  Sheila Lukins’ All Around The World Cookbook. 

P.S. After weeks of heat and no rain, it is raining nonstop today and our house is dark. I had to take the photo above perched in a window so as to shed some decent light on the soup.

What you need:

• 4 cups chicken broth
• 2 ears corn, kernels removed, cobs reserved and halved crosswise
• 4 fresh dill sprigs with stems
• 4 new red potatoes, scrubbed and cut into 1/4-inch dice (about 2 cups)
• 3 medium cucumbers
• 2 cups plain yogurt
• 1 small red bell pepper, stemmed, seeded, and cut into 1/4-inch dice
• coursely ground pepper to taste
• 2 tbsp. fresh dill

1. Place the chicken broth, corn cobs, and dill sprigs in a medium-size heavy pot. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat, and simmer uncovered for 10 minutes. Remove and discard the cobs and dill springs.
2. Add the potatoes to the broth and cook until tender, about 8 minutes. Add the corn kernels and cook for 1 minute longer. Remove from the heat and pour the soup through a strainer, reserving the vegetables and broth separately.
3. Peel, halve, and seed the cucumbers. Coursely chop 2 of the cucumbers and cut the last cucumber into 1/4-inch dice.
4. Place the yogurt and coursely chopped cucumbers in a food processor and pulse on and off to combine but not puree. Pour in 1 cup of the reserved chicken broth and pulse to combine. Remove the mixture to a bowl.
5. Stir in the reserved potatoes and corn, and the diced cucumber, red pepper, and chopped dill. Season with pepper. Refrigerate for up to 4 hours. Serve chilled. Makes six one cup servings.

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I’ll refrain from posting the recipe or pictures on this one, since the recent movie by the same name has everyone making ratatouille (which is a wonderful thing).

Still, after making a huge batch of the eggplant, zucchini. and tomato concoction over the weekend, and facing a night that I didn’t really want to cook too much, poaching some eggs and setting them on top of a mound of ratatouille with a slice of toast worked nicely.

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Polenta is a wonderfull base for many vegetable and meat sauces with an Italian bent. I like to use it when I get a little tired of pasta. The grainy yellow flour is a type of cornmeal made from ground maize, which is cooked into a kind of porridge with a wide variety of uses. You can make your own polenta, or you can buy it ready made at the store.

For this easy week-night dish, I used the store baught polenta, which comes in a tubular plastic casing, and sliced and fried the rounds in oil in a frying pan. (Do this as you are making the sauce so that the rounds are nice and hot and crispy just as the sauce is ready to eat.)

To make the sauce:

Saute red onion and garlic in olive oil until translucent. In the meantime, heat up some water on the stove and pour a cup of the hot water over a 1/2 cup of dried wild mushrooms to reconstitute them. Let these sit for about ten minutes, then drain them, reserve the mushroom stock for another night, and slice up the wild mushrooms along with two cups of sliced domestic mushrooms.

Add one chopped red pepper and the mushrooms to the pan.

Add a splash of red wine.

Let this simmer for about 5 minutes.

Add the sliced smoked lamb sausage and simmer for another five minutes.

Add salt and pepper to taste.

Serve the sauce over the hot polenta slices and garnish with fresh cherry tomatos and basil.

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Reading last weeks New York Times Magazine on this rainy Saturday afternoon, I came accross this recipe for summer pasta which uses the same ingredients in the salad I made yesterday and is a new twist in pasta salad.

• 5 cloves garlic finely chopped
• 1/2 to 3/4 cup of your favorite olive oil
• 12 basil leaves
• 7 large ripe tomatoes
• salt
• 1 pound dried rigatoni
• 1 pound fresh, lightly salted mozzarella
• country bread

1. Take out your largest bowl. Add the garlic. Pour in 1/2 cup olive oil. With scissors, snip the basil leaves into shreds over the garlic mixture. Let sit all day.
2. About two hours before serving, chop the tomatoes and add them to the bowl.
3. When you are ready to eat, bring a large pot of generously salted water to a boil. Add the pasta and cook until al dente. Meanwhile, cut the mozzarella into small cubes.
4. Drain the pasta and pour on top of the tomato mixture. Do not stir. Spread the mozzarella on top of the pasta and toss only the pasta and cheese; the cheese will soften slightly, and the pasta will get coated with fat. Then stir up from the bottom, incorporating the tomato mixture. Season with salt and add the remaining olive oil, if desired. Serve with bread. Serves 6.

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Want to savor the last month of summer? How about a Caprici salad in a to-go box?

Slice up a cucumber and two tomatoes from the garden, CSA, or local farmers market. Add some fresh basil, cubed mozzarella, a dash of salt and pepper and a splash of olive oil and balsamic vinigar. Toat it with you to work. Take a BREAK over your lunch hour to walk to your favorite park. Sit under a tree in the shade and eat the perfect summer meal as it was meant to be eaten. Take your time. Let the ants crawl over your bare feet. Believe me, you will be a breath of fresh air as you walk back into the office or wherever you need to return to on this mid-week afternoon. Remeber how much you will miss this come february in Minnesota!

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It is only a small step from sourdough, yogurt and other hummy earthy concoctions to a carboy  full of Chardonnay bubbling in the basement.  While it’s best when taken through the process in all its steps, but, failing grapes from the vines the next best thing is a “wine kit” which produces up to 26 bottles of the home made stuff … . . amazingly good.

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