Cooking With This Week's Box:
Potatoes: Sheet Pan Roasted Chicken with Potatoes &
Sweet Peppers (See below)
Sweet Yellow Onions: Caramelized Poblano Chile & Onion Dip
Orange Italian Frying & Red Bell Peppers: Spaghetti Squash & Leek Skillet Gratin; Veggie Pizza; Edamame & Veggie Rice Bowl
Broccoli: Veggie Pizza
Mini-Sweet Peppers: Veggie Pizza; Sheet Pan Roasted Chicken with Potatoes & Sweet Peppers (See below); Edamame & Veggie Rice Bowl
Here we are in mid-September and while the trees are still
mostly green, you can see they’ll be transitioning to their fall colors
soon. Yesterday we finished winter
squash harvest and our greenhouse is filled with bins of colorful squash! We hope you’ll consider joining us for our
Fall Harvest Party coming up on September 23.
Come and see the farm and enjoy delicious food, great conversation with
other CSA members and tour the fields!
Lets kick off this week’s cooking extravaganza with a focus on this week’s featured vegetable, the beautiful mini-sweet peppers. These little gems are delicious just on their own, but they are also really great when roasted. This week I suggest using most of your mini-sweet peppers to make Sheet Pan Roasted Chicken with Potatoes & Sweet Peppers (See below). This is a simple recipe featuring herb-roasted potatoes, mini-sweet peppers and sweet onions, but very tasty and filling.
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| Spaghetti Squash & Leek Skillet Gratin |
While the tomatoes in this week’s box aren’t technically
green tomatoes, most of them were a bit on the under-ripe side when they were
picked. We know tomato season won’t last
forever, so I’m going to pull the trigger on making our annual dinner of Fried Green Tomatoes. This recipe also includes a simple sauce to
serve alongside.
When I was a kid, one of the church ladies’ go-to recipes
for snacks at church events was a cold Veggie Pizza. This is a great way to incorporate a lot of
vegetables into one preparation. This
could serve as a light dinner or lunch, but might also be a good thing to send
in school lunches for the kids or just have it in the refrigerator for an
after-school snack. The recipe calls for
using canned crescent rolls for the crust.
You could also use puff pastry as the base or make your own crust. You can top this with any fresh vegetable you
like, but I’d suggest using carrots, broccoli, cauliflower and sweet peppers
from this week’s box. You could also use
edamame for a pop of green color.
 |
| Caramelized Poblano Chile & Onion Dip |
We’re nearing the end of edamame for the season. I’ve enjoyed having these sweet, tender beans
over the past few weeks. If you’re looking for a simple vegetable snack for the
kids, this is a good one. Otherwise,
this week I’m going to follow this simple suggestion for Edamame & Veggie Rice Bowl. You could eat this warm or at room
temperature. Basically you pile brown
rice in a bowl and top it off with roasted vegetables (such as carrots,
broccoli, sweet peppers or grape tomatoes).
Serve it with chunks of avocado and dress it with a citrus lime
vinaigrette. This is a nice light,
nourishing alternative to some of the more rich dishes I’ve recommended
throughout the week.
Here’s another suggestion for something a bit on the light
side. If you get the red cabbage in your
box this week, pair it with carrots to make this Thai Sesame, Red Cabbage & Carrot Salad. It’s a basic salad consisting of cabbage,
carrots, fresh herbs and a light vinaigrette.
You could turn this into a meal by adding some shredded chicken or
salmon.
Lastly, if you didn’t have a chance to try the Korean
Peppers last week, I’d encourage you to do so this week. We’ve sent them as a choice item, so pick up
a small handful and use them to make the HVF Korean Chile-Garlic Sauce or Salt-Cured Chiles we featured on the blog last week. You can also read more about this chile and
how to use it in the same blog post.
Alright friends, we’ve cooked our way to the bottom of yet another CSA box. I haven’t cooked any of our Kabocha squash yet, but I am thinking they’ll likely land in next week’s boxes, so start transitioning your thoughts to more fall cooking. Have a great week!—Chef Andrea
Featured Vegetable: Mini-Sweet Peppers
These sweet little gems have become something many of our
members look forward to every year, and what’s not to like about them! They are cute, colorful, sweet and easy to
eat. They travel well, require very
little if any preparation, store well on the countertop during the season and
are easy to preserve. They are delicious
raw, roasted, sautéed and are excellent for dipping or stuffing. If I had to choose just one pepper to grow,
this would be the chosen one.
For those of you who have been members with our farm for
several years, you likely remember the story about how this vegetable came to
be part of our repertoire. It’s a
relatively new addition to our crop plan and we’re grateful to one of our
longtime CSA members who introduced us to them.
Upon his suggestion, Richard picked up a pack of these peppers at the
co-op and saved the seeds from them.
Please note, each pepper only has a few seeds inside, so the amount of
seed we had to start with was pretty slim.
He planted out the seeds that year, selected more peppers to
save seeds from and thus began the process of developing our own line of
seed. At the time he first saw these
peppers, they were not very wide-spread in the stores as they are now and seed
was not commercially available in this country.
Times have changed and mini-sweet peppers, or snacking peppers as they
are also called, are much more mainstream.
Seed is now commercially available in this country. Several years ago we purchased some seed to
try. We grew it side by side with the
seed we had saved and when we looked at the plants in the field, they were
pretty similar. We almost had ourselves
convinced that we should just purchase seed and stop spending time
painstakingly picking 4-5 seeds out of peppers at the end of every summer so we
have seed for the next year. But then we
tasted them. One bite of the purchased
variety stopped us in our tracks. It was
an acceptable sweet pepper, but it did not have the level of sweetness or the
depth of flavor we experienced with the variety we’ve been developing. Deal breaker.
We haven’t purchased seed since then and will continue to refine the
seed we save every year as it seems to be doing pretty well in our growing
environment.
So what do you do with this little pepper? Well the easiest thing to do is to just eat
it as a snack. I usually don’t even cut
them or trim away the top. I just use
the stem as a handle and eat around the seeds.
One of Richard’s favorite ways to eat this pepper is stuffed with cream
cheese or other soft cheese. You can eat
peppers stuffed in this way raw or pop them under the broiler for a bit to warm
them up. This pepper is also great
roasted, such as in this week’s recipe.
Lastly, you can use this pepper as you would any other sweet pepper.
I mentioned above that it can also be preserved. This is actually one of the easiest things to
put away for winter. All you have to do
is wash them, let them air dry a bit and then put them in a freezer bag and
freeze. That’s it. When you’re ready to use them, take out the
portion you need and leave it on the counter at room temperature for just a few
minutes so it softens enough for you to cut them. I use these throughout the winter as a
topping on pizza, added to soups and stews, or chopped and added to rice and
pasta dishes.
We hope you enjoy this sweet little gem as much as we do!
Sheet Pan Roasted Chicken with Potatoes & Mini-Sweet Peppers
Yield 4-5 servings
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| (Pre-cooked) |
4 cups diced potatoes (about 1 ½ pounds)
2 cups mini-sweet peppers, stem removed & quartered
(about ½ pound)
1 medium sweet onion, diced
1 tsp dried thyme
1 tsp dried parsley
½ tsp dried rosemary
½ tsp fennel seeds
1 tsp salt, divided
Freshly ground black pepper, as needed
3 Tbsp sunflower or vegetable oil, divided
6 pieces chicken thighs, legs, wings or a combination,
skin-on
- Preheat the oven to 375°F. Combine potatoes, mini-sweet peppers, and onions in a medium mixing bowl. Add dried herbs, freshly ground black pepper and about ½ tsp salt. Drizzle with 2 Tbsp oil. Toss the vegetables to thoroughly mix the vegetables with the herbs and coat everything with oil. Spread the vegetables evenly on a sheet pan and set aside.
- Put the pieces of chicken in the same bowl you mixed the vegetables in. Drizzle with 1 Tbsp oil and sprinkle with about ½ tsp salt as well as freshly ground pepper. Mix well with your hands and make sure all sides of the chicken are thoroughly coated with oil and seasonings.
- Put the pieces of chicken on top of the vegetables, skin side up.
- Put the chicken and vegetables in the oven and roast for 30 minutes. If necessary stir the vegetables a bit so they brown more evenly. Return to the oven for an additional 10 minutes or until the vegetables are golden brown and tender and the chicken is golden, crispy and cooked through.
- Remove from the oven and serve hot.
By Chef Andrea, Harmony Valley Farm
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