Showing posts with label sweet peppers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sweet peppers. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 4, 2024

September 5, 2024 - This Week's Box Contents Featuring Sweet Peppers

 


What's In The Box

Italian Garlic: Garlic and Tomatoes are a classic pairing. Check out this week’s recipe inspiration for links to a few recipes pairing these two well-suited ingredients!

Red & Yellow Onions: Yes, red, and yellow onions may be used interchangeably, but they do each have their moments where they shine. Red onions are an excellent choice to include in fresh tomato & cucumber salads during the late summer season. Yellow onions are a great selection if you are creating the flavor base for sauteed vegetables or soup.

Green and/or Italian Zucchini: We will continue harvesting zucchini as long as the plants are producing and as long as the first frost holds off! But the reality is that this crop will be coming to an end in the near future. Now is the time to make your favorite zucchini recipes before the season ends!

Orange or Red Italian Frying Peppers: These long, slender, brightly colored peppers are one of our favorite sweet pepper selections because they are not just sweet, they also have great flavor! Enjoy them raw, roasted, sautéed or grilled.

Orange Ukraine or Red Bell Peppers: Orange Ukraine peppers resemble a bell pepper except they have a pointy bottom instead of a blocky bottom. Their color is actually red orange, and they have a thicker wall, similar to bell peppers. We have been saving our own seed for the Ukraine pepper for many years and this variety is not available anywhere else!

Variety of Large Tomatoes: As always, remember to take your tomatoes out of the paper bag we have packed them in as soon as you get home. Place the tomatoes on a plate or clean towel and allow them to ripen at room temperature. If you notice any spots starting to form, it’s time to prioritize using that one. If you catch it early you can cut out the affected area and use the remainder of the tomato. Do not store tomatoes in the refrigerator unless you have cut into them. Longer storage in refrigeration will diminish their flavor.

Silver or Green Slicer Cucumbers OR Orange Carrots (not pictured): Our cucumber production is starting to decline, so this week's boxes will receive either cucumbers or orange carrots.

Sweet Corn: We are harvesting our final planting of sweet corn, and it is possible this may be our final delivery. There is a chance we may be able to pick a smaller quantity next week, but no guarantees! This week’s variety is characterized by large cobs. Cut the kernels of corn off the cob and use as you wish. Reserve the cobs and add them to soups, stews, broth, and/or stock and extract their corn flavor!

Red Seedless Watermelon: Store your watermelon in the refrigerator and eat within a few days. The varieties we grow are seedless, however you may see some immature seeds called “pips.” To get 100% use out of your watermelon, pickle the rind, or add it to a stir-fry!

Sugar Cube Melons or Variety of Miscellaneous Melons: Most boxes will contain a small, personal-sized cantaloupe called Sugar Cube. It’s round with a netted rind and the flesh is orange, sweet and fragrant. We are also picking smaller quantities of a variety of other melons including a canary melon with bright orange skin and a new variety of honeydew melon that has netted skin and a yellowish-green hue on the rind.

Sauté Mix or Baby Arugula: Your box this week will contain either Saute Mix or Baby Arugula. Our first crop of baby greens was ready before the baby lettuces, so we mixed them together with some spicy arugula to create a flavorful sauté mix. The greens in this mix are tender enough to eat as a salad, or you can lightly cook them.

Purple or Yellow Cauliflower or Broccoli Romanesco: Our fall brassicas are coming in a bit ahead of schedule, but we’ll take them as they are a great accompaniment to our late season vegetables! Cauliflower and Romanesco may be used interchangeably. All three of this week’s selections are tasty and beautiful when roasted, especially alongside roasted sweet peppers, garlic, and red onions!


Vegetable Feature: Sweet Peppers

Green Bell Peppers
We grow a variety of sweet peppers to send your way throughout mid to late summer.  Peppers do not tolerate frost, so we hope to either be done picking peppers by the first frost or we cover the plants with row covers to protect them from the cold.  Depending upon when we see the first frost, we can sometimes continue picking peppers for a few weeks after the first cold spell!  

We start out our delivery season with Green Bell Peppers. While it is common to eat green peppers, you’ll find the flavor of a green pepper is more mild without a lot of sweetness.  This is because green peppers are immature.  All colored peppers start out as a green pepper.  As the fruit ripens on the plant, it makes a transition from green to its fully ripe color.  As this change occurs, natural sugars develop in the fruit making it not only sweet but also flavorful.  

Red Italian Frying Peppers
While we used to focus more on growing Red Bell Peppers, we found that we actually prefer Italian Frying Peppers.  Italian Frying Peppers are a sweet pepper that turn either red or orange in color.  They have a more elongated, slender shape that is pointy on the end and they  may be eaten raw or cooked.  

We also grow a unique variety that we call Ukraine Peppers.  Ukraine peppers are a sweet pepper that resemble a small bell pepper.  When fully ripe they are orange-red in color and have a blocky top that tapers to a point at the bottom of the pepper.  They are similar to a bell pepper, but with a pointy end and more orange-red flesh.

Orange Ukraine Peppers
Lastly, we grow Mini Sweet Peppers! As the name states, mini sweets are a small sweet pepper.  They are one of the sweetest, most flavorful peppers you’ll likely ever taste.  When ripe they turn red, yellow, or orange, depending on the plant. We actually save our own seed, which is a labor of love given there are only a few seeds per pepper!  However, it's worth our time because our strain has exceptional flavor and is acclimated to our growing region.

Preparation & Usage: Peppers are versatile in use. They can be eaten raw or cooked and pair well in dishes with other summer vegetables such as potatoes, zucchini, tomatoes and eggplant. Peppers mark the transition from late summer into early fall, and as such can dance on the line between summer and fall which means they also pair well with sweet potatoes, fall greens, and winter squash to name just a few. Peppers are often roasted to not only develop their natural sweetness, but to also give them a smoky flavor. You can roast any kind of pepper, but generally those with a thicker wall will yield better results.

Mini Sweet Peppers in the Wash Tank
Peppers are one of my favorite vegetables to preserve and use throughout the winter.  They can be frozen raw or roasted, either whole or cut down into smaller pieces, strips or diced.  When you want to use them, just pull them out of the freezer and use them as a pizza topping, put them on sandwiches, or add to soups, stews, sauces, etc.  You can also preserve peppers by dehydrating them.  For most peppers, you’ll want to cut them into strips or smaller pieces so they dehydrate faster.  Peppers with a thinner wall are best for dehydrating.

Please note, while many recipes call for “Red Bell Peppers,” any sweet pepper will generally do fine as a substitute.  You’ll need to use your best judgement as to how many of whatever sweet pepper you are using is equal to one bell pepper.  Typically I substitute two Italian frying peppers for one red bell pepper.

Storage Tips: Store peppers in a paper bag and avoid extra moisture that can cause spoiling. Keep peppers in a warmer part of our refrigerator or at room temperature.

Health & Nutrition: As a pepper ripens, the nutrient content changes as the color does.  Colored peppers can contain as much as 60% greater levels of antioxidants and other nutrients, including Vitamins C, A, E, K, B6 and folate, than the non-ripe green peppers.


Summer Panzanella (Italian Bread & Tomato Salad)

The addition of sweet peppers to this traditional Italian tomato & bread salad adds another layer of flavor and color to this tasty, rustic late summer salad. Use any sweet pepper along with your favorite fresh tomatoes!

Yield:  4-6 servings as a main dish

6 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
8 ounces stale bread, torn into bite-sized pieces
½ tsp salt
2 Tbsp red wine vinegar
1 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 tsp Dijon mustard
1 Tbsp finely minced garlic
2 to 3 cups chopped sweet peppers and/or cucumbers
3 to 4 medium tomatoes, cut into wedges or bite sized chunks
Baby greens, for serving
¼ cup fresh basil leaves, torn or cut into ribbons
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
  1. Heat 2 Tbsp of the olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the bread and stir often. When the bread is crisp, 4 to 6 minutes, remove from heat.
  2. Meanwhile, make the vinaigrette. Combine the salt, vinegars, mustard and garlic in a large bowl.  Let sit for 5 minutes, then whisk in the remaining ¼ cup olive oil. Add the bread, vegetables, and tomatoes, gently folding them into the dressing.
  3. Spread the greens on a serving plate. Pour the contents of the vegetable bowl over the greens. Top with basil and freshly ground black pepper.  Serve immediately.
Recipe sourced from Alana Chernila’s book, The Homemade Kitchen.
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Wednesday, August 30, 2023

August 31, 2023 - This Week's Box Contents Featuring Sweet Peppers

 


Cooking With This Week's Box

Basque Piperade
Photo from www.culinaryambition.com
Red and Yellow Onions:  

Musik Garlic:  

Green and/or Italian Zucchini:  

Silver Slicer or Green Slicer Cucumbers:  
Chocolate Oatmeal Zucchini Cookies
Photo from www.crazyforcrust.com
Creamy Cucumber Dill Salad 

Sweet Corn:  

Sweet Peppers:  
Corn & Pepper Pudding (See Below)
Greek Salad (See Below)

Jalapeño Peppers:  

Variety Bag of Tomatoes:  
Jalapeño Popper Bagels
Photo from www.delish.com
10-Minute Fresh Tomato Salsa 

Melons:  

Red Seedless Watermelon:  

Orange Carrots:  

Lacinato Kale:  

I say this every month, but how in the world has another month passed us by!?!  We are just a few weeks away from harvesting winter squash and this week the harvest crews have been bringing in bins of potatoes, carrots, beets, and rutabagas! Late August and early September is a bountiful time of the year as summer and fall collide, and this is the time of the year when sweet peppers are at their peak. Now that we’re seeing some gorgeous colors in the pepper field, it’s time to talk about what to do with sweet peppers.  Trust me, there will be more coming over the next few weeks! This week I chose two featured recipes, one raw and one cooked. With our fresh sweet corn, I thought this recipe for Corn & Pepper Pudding (See Below) was seasonally appropriate. I also like Alice Water’s very simple, but very tasty Greek Salad (See Below) which brings together fresh tomatoes, red onions, and sweet peppers in a refreshing salad. This recipe calls for fresh oregano, but you could also use fresh zaatar from your herb garden in this salad!
5-Ingredient Roasted Red Pepper & Tomato Soup
Photo from www.vanillaandbean.com

Another great dish to make around this time of year is Basque Piperade, a vegetable stew of sorts that originates from the Basque region near France and Spain.  The main ingredients are onions, peppers, and tomatoes. It’s commonly served as an accompaniment to eggs, grilled fish or chicken, or used as a pasta sauce.  Peppers and tomatoes are a natural pairing in this recipe, as well as others such as this 5-Ingredient Roasted Red Pepper & Tomato Soup.  

It's a big melon week!  If you want to try something a little different with your melons this week, aside from just cutting them up and eating them, check out this Chili Lime Melon Salad or Chili Lime Watermelon, which also has fresh cotija cheese on it.  I also found this interesting recipe for Sicilian Watermelon Pudding. I’ve never had anything like this, but I would try anything with Sicilian origins as the Sicilians really know how to enjoy life and food!

I’m going to keep this week’s commentary brief as the harvest crew is going to be bringing in a load of carrots any moment now!  But before I close out, a little glimpse into next week. I’m hoping we’ll have enough poblano peppers ready next week for boxes, along with more tomatillos!  Mini sweet peppers will be coming soon, along with orange Italian frying peppers. Before long we’ll also have jicama and lemongrass!  Have a great week and I’ll see you in September! 

—Chef Andrea 

Vegetable Feature: Sweet Peppers

by Andrea Yoder

Mini Sweet Peppers
before they are ripe
As we continue our progression through the seasons, we are approaching another transition point. Within the season of “Summer,” I feel like there are sub-seasons. Zucchini and cucumbers mark the beginning of summer. Tomatoes take center stage in mid-summer, and peppers close it out. For me, the peak of the pepper season is one of the markers that late summer is upon us and will very soon be colliding with fall. Because of their place in the season, they pair well with all of the summer vegetables we still have available, such as tomatoes and eggplant.  They also play nicely with fall cauliflower, winter squash, sweet potatoes, potatoes and fall greens such as Broccoli Raab and kale. This week we’re focusing on sweet peppers, of which we grow several different types.  Of note, all peppers start out as green peppers when they are immature. While we eat green peppers, peppers are actually fully ripe and at their peak of sweetness and flavor if we let them turn color to be fully red, yellow or orange.  Most people are familiar with the standard bell pepper, which holds an important place in our pepper lineup as an early season green pepper.  Once we start seeing some color in the field as peppers ripen, we move on to more interesting varieties such as Italian Frying Peppers. Italian frying peppers are long, slender peppers that, despite their name, may be eaten either raw or cooked. We have both red and orange varieties, and both have good pepper flavor and sweetness, which we prefer to a red bell pepper.

Fully ripe Mini Sweet Peppers
We also grow mini sweet peppers which are our all-time favorite sweet variety. While there are many snack peppers available in the marketplace today, we believe our peppers are more flavorful than commercial seed varieties. We’ve been saving our own seed for 15-20 years and our variety is not just carefully selected, but also well adapted to our area.  While sweet peppers are delicious eaten raw, they may also be sautéed and roasted. You can roast peppers whole, over an open flame such as on a grill or just on your stovetop if you have gas burners. Otherwise, peppers may be roasted under a broiler in the oven. When roasting peppers, blacken nearly the entire exterior of the pepper.  Once blackened, put them in a bowl and cover them so they steam for about 10 minutes. Remove the cover and once they are cool enough to handle you can peel away the black skin.  Once you have roasted the pepper, it’s ready to use however you’d like.  Slices of roasted red pepper are a nice addition to sandwiches, grain, or lentil salads, or use them to build an antipasto platter. You can also use roasted sweet peppers to make a delicious cream sauce, dressing or soup.

Italian Frying Peppers
While pepper season usually lasts several weeks, peppers are one of the easiest vegetables to preserve and it’s worth putting some away to use throughout the winter.  I use them quite often in winter stir-fries, as a pizza topping, added to soups and stews, and scrambled eggs, etc. Even if I am limited on time, I know I can always successfully freeze peppers as they do not need to be cooked before freezing. At a minimum, freezing peppers requires the time it takes to wash the pepper and put it in a bag. If I have a little extra time, and to save some freezer space, I’ll actually remove the stem and seeds and cut them into smaller pieces.  Really, it’s that simple and you’ll really appreciate having them in the dead of winter!

Peppers are high in vitamins A & C as well as a whole host of other phytonutrients, so munching on a sweet pepper also has nutritive benefits. As far as storage goes, peppers are best held at a warmer temperature of 45-60 degrees. We recognize very few homes have this perfect storage environment, so we recommend you do your best. Personally, I choose to store them at room temperature. If you choose to put them in the refrigerator, I’d encourage you to use them within a few days as they can get cold injury with prolonged time at cold temperatures.  Sometimes my peppers start to dehydrate and get soft and wrinkly. This does not mean the pepper is bad, it may have just lost some moisture. If this happens to you, don’t throw it out, rather use it in a cooked preparation such as soup or if you want to use it raw, do so to make a pepper puree or pepper sauce. 

Corn and Pepper Pudding

Yield:  4 servings

3 eggs
2 cups fresh or frozen corn kernels
2 Tbsp minced onion
½ cup chopped sweet red pepper
5 Tbsp all-purpose flour
Salt and cayenne pepper, to taste
4 Tbsp unsalted butter, melted
1 cup half-and-half
  1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter a 1 ½ quart souffle dish or casserole.
  2. In a large bowl, beat the eggs until light and frothy. Stir in the corn, onions, and bell peppers.
  3. In a small bowl, stir together the flour, a large pinch of cayenne pepper and a pinch of salt. Add to the corn mixture, stirring to blend. Stir in the butter and half-and-half and mix well. Pour into the prepared dish and place the dish in a baking pan that is larger than the dish containing the pudding. Pour hot water into the baking pan to reach about one-fourth of the way up the sides of the dish.
  4. Carefully transfer the baking dish to the oven. Bake the pudding until the top is golden and a knife inserted in the center comes out clean, about 40 minutes. Let rest for 5 minutes before serving.
Recipe borrowed from Williams-Sonoma Cooking at Home, by Chuck Williams.

Greek Salad

Yield:  4 servings

2 small, ripe tomatoes
1 medium cucumber
½ small red onion
1 small to medium sweet pepper
¼ cup black olives
4 ounces feta cheese
2 tsp red wine vinegar
1 tsp lemon juice (optional)
2 tsp fresh oregano or zaatar, chopped or torn 
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
6 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
  1. First prepare the vegetables and combine together in a medium mixing or serving bowl.  Prepare the tomatoes by removing the core at the stem end and cutting them into wedges or bite-sized pieces.  Cut the cucumbers in have lengthwise and remove the seed cavity. Cut into thick, bite-sized slices. Peel and thinly slice the red onion. Remove the stem and seeds from the pepper and slice thinly. Once all the vegetables are in the bowl, season lightly with salt and toss to combine. 
  2. Prepare the vinaigrette. In a small bowl, combine red wine vinegar and lemon juice along with a pinch of salt and black pepper. Drizzle in the olive oil while whisking to combine. Stir in the fresh herbs. 
  3. Add half to ¾ of the vinaigrette to the bowl of vegetables and gently toss to combine.  Taste and add more salt, black pepper and/or vinaigrette as needed. Allow the salad to sit for a few minutes to let the flavors blend together. Just before serving. Gently toss the salad again and garnish with the feta cheese and olives.
Recipe adapted from Alice Waters’ book, The Art of Simple Food.
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Wednesday, September 7, 2022

September 8, 2022 - This Week's Box Contents Featuring Sweet Peppers

 

Cooking With This Week's Box

Red and/or Orange Italian Frying Peppers:  

Yellow Onions:  

Photo from crunchycreamysweet.com
Orange Carrots:  

Red Prairie Potatoes:  

Variety Bag of Tomatoes:  

Sweet Corn:  

Red Seedless Watermelon:  

White, Purple or Yellow Cauliflower or Broccoli Romanesco or Broccoli:  

Jalapeño Pepper:  

Porcelain Garlic:  

Green Top Red Beets:  

Rainbow Chard or Broccoli Raab:  

Hello! 

This week we have a burst of color in the box with sweet peppers! Peppers are one of my favorite crops and the ways you can incorporate them into meals and recipes are endless. This week’s featured recipe is very simple, but make sure you use good ingredients as this is the factor that makes this recipe shine.  This recipe for Penne Pasta with Roasted Peppers and Almonds is very quick. While you boil the water and cook the pasta you can roast the peppers. Serve it on its own as a simple, light pasta dish or serve it alongside grilled beef, fish, or chicken. I also included links to two of my favorite sweet pepper recipes from the past, Sweet Pepper and Cheddar Clafoutis and Creamy Roasted Sweet Pepper Dressing.  This dip is nice to have on hand. I use it to dip vegetables in, such as carrot sticks, but I also use it as a sauce on a variety of things including sandwiches and wraps.

I included several recipe collections for you this week to expand the possibilities. If you’re looking for ways to use the pile of tomatoes this week, check out 17 Ways To Build a Better Tomato Sandwich.  If you receive broccoli raab and do not know what to do with it, check out 14 Broccoli Raab Recipes We’re Not Bitter About.  And lastly, we don’t want those beet greens to go to waste, so check out this recipe entitled,  15 Ways to Eat Beet Greens (And Why You Should).

I also pulled up a few French classic recipes. Check out this Basque Piperade (Spicy Tomato-Pepper Sauce) or Pommes Boulangére (French Layered Potato and Onion Bake). While the names sound much more flashy in French, they are really quite simple preparations.

We have just a few more weeks of summer remaining! Keep your fingers crossed that we may continue to pick tomatoes for a few weeks, and I’m looking forward to just a little more sweet corn before the season is over.  Pretty soon we’ll be harvesting leeks to go along with the celeriac, and we’ll be sending more cabbage.  Of course, it’s almost time to start eating winter squash and just a few more weeks until we dig sweet potatoes!  

Have a great week and enjoy all your delicious late summer creations!

-Chef Andrea 

Vegetable Feature: Sweet Peppers

by Andrea Yoder

Mini Sweet Peppers
As we continue our progression through the seasons, we are approaching another transition point. Within the season of “Summer,” I feel like there are sub seasons. Zucchini and cucumbers mark the beginning of summer. Tomatoes take center stage in mid-summer, and peppers close it out. For me, the peak of the pepper season is one of the markers that late summer is upon us and will very soon be colliding with fall. Peppers are one of my favorite vegetables to grow and eat and they so gracefully represent this unique point in our growing season. They pair well with all of the summer vegetables we still have available, such as tomatoes and eggplant.  They also pair nicely with fall cauliflower, winter squash, sweet potatoes, potatoes and fall greens such as broccoli raab. 

Ukraine Peppers
This week we’re focusing on sweet peppers, of which we grow several different types.  Before I go on, I want to mention that all peppers start out as green peppers when they are immature. While we eat green peppers, peppers are actually fully ripe and at their peak of sweetness and flavor if we let them turn color to be fully red, yellow or orange.  Most people are familiar with the standard bell pepper, which holds an important place in our pepper lineup as an early season green pepper.  Once we start seeing some color in the field as peppers ripen, we move on to more interesting varieties such as Italian frying peppers. Italian frying peppers are long, slender peppers that, despite their name, may be eaten either raw or cooked. We have both red and orange varieties, and both have pretty good pepper flavor and sweetness.  One of our other unique sweet pepper varieties is the Ukraine pepper.  This is a pepper for which we have saved our own seed for several decades. It’s actually not available commercially and we got the seed from someone who brought it from Ukraine.  We like this pepper because it’s a heavy producer, often with as many as twelve peppers per plant. This pepper resembles a bell pepper, but they are smaller and have a pointy bottom instead of a blocky bottom. They also ripen to more of an orange red color instead of bright red. They have a thick wall which makes them a good candidate for roasting.  They’re also a good pepper to use for stuffed peppers.

We also grow mini sweet peppers which are our all-time favorite sweet variety. While there are many snack peppers available in the marketplace today, we believe our peppers are more flavorful than commercial seed varieties. We’ve been saving our own seed for well over 15 years and our variety is not just carefully selected, but also well adapted to our area.  

Orange Italian Frying Peppers
While sweet peppers are delicious eaten raw, they may also be sautéed and roasted. You can roast peppers, whole, over an open flame such as on a grill or just on your stovetop if you have gas burners. Otherwise, peppers may be roasted under a broiler in the oven. When roasting peppers, you want to blacken nearly the entire exterior of the pepper.  Once blackened, put them in a bowl and cover them so they steam for about 10 minutes. Remove the cover and once they are cool enough to handle you can peel away the black skin.  Once you have roasted the pepper, it’s ready to use however you’d like.  Slices of roasted red pepper are a nice addition to sandwiches, grain, or lentil salads, or use them to build an antipasto platter. You can also use roasted sweet peppers to make a delicious cream sauce, dressing or soup.

While pepper season usually lasts several weeks, peppers are one of the easiest vegetables to preserve and it's worth putting some away to use throughout the winter. I use them quite often in winter stir-fries, as a pizza topping, added to soups and stews, and scrambled eggs, etc. Even if I am limited on time, I know I can always successfully freeze peppers as they do not need to be cooked before freezing. At a minimum, freezing peppers requires the time it takes to wash the pepper and put it in a bag. If I have a little extra time, and to save some freezer space, I’ll actually remove the stem and seeds and cut them into smaller pieces.  Really, it’s that simple and you’ll really appreciate having them in the dead of winter!

Peppers are high in vitamins A & C as well as a whole host of other phytonutrients, so munching on a sweet pepper also has nutritive benefits. As far as storage goes, peppers are best held at a warmer temperature of 45-60 degrees. We recognize very few homes have this perfect storage environment, so we recommend you do your best. Personally, I choose to store them at room temperature. If you choose to put them in the refrigerator, I’d encourage you to use them within a few days as they can get cold injury with prolonged time at cold temperatures.  Sometimes my peppers start to dehydrate and get soft and wrinkly. This does not mean the pepper is bad, it may have just lost some moisture. If this happens to you, don’t throw it out, rather use it in a cooked preparation such as soup or if you want to use it raw, do so to make a pepper puree or pepper sauce. 

Penne Pasta with Roasted Red Peppers and Almonds

Yield:  4 servings

¾ pound penne pasta 
4 colored sweet peppers, halved and seeded*
¾ cup pitted kalamata olives
½ cup coarsely chopped roasted almonds
¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 Tbsp fresh thyme leaves
Salt and black pepper, to taste 

  1. Cook the pasta according to the package directions. Reserve ½ cup of the cooking water; drain the pasta and return it to the pot.
  2. Meanwhile, heat broiler. Place the peppers, skin-side up, on a baking sheet and broil until blackened, 8-10 minutes. When the peppers are cool enough to handle, scrape away the blackened skins with a knife and discard.  Cut the flesh into 1-inch pieces.
  3. Add the peppers, olives, almonds, olive oil, thyme, 2 Tbsp of the reserved cooking water, ½ tsp salt and ¼ tsp black pepper to the pasta and toss to combine. Add more cooking water if the pasta seems dry and adjust the seasoning to your liking. Serve while warm.

*Note:  If you have a gas stove, you can leave the peppers whole and char them directly over a high flame, turning them frequently with tongs until they are blackened. 

Recipe borrowed from Real Simple:  Easy, Delicious Home Cooking.
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Wednesday, September 9, 2020

September 10, 2020 - This Week's Box Contents, Featuring Sweet Peppers


Cooking With This Week's Box








Red Seedless Watermelon AND/OR Melon: Watermelon Margarita






Red Pepper, Tomato and Lentil Salad
Seasonal eating means waves of vegetables coming at you in the peak of their season and this week we’re riding a pepper wave with a focus on the sweet side of this crop!  There are so many different things you can do with sweet peppers, which makes it very hard to choose just one or two recipes to feature!  This week I settled on Melissa Clark’s Sweet Pepper and Cheddar Clafoutis (see below) recipe from her cookbook, Dinner in French: My Recipes by Way of France.  Clafoutis is traditionally a dessert made with sweet cherries, but Melissa turns the concept into a savory main dish and it’s excellent!  Clafoutis is kind of like a rich, French frittata.  It is essentially a baked custard made with eggs, milk and crème fraiche.  If you have access to crème fraiche, I encourage you to use it.  If not, you can substitute sour cream.  This dish works as a main dish for breakfast, lunch, dinner or brunch and leftovers reheat well.  Before I move off of the topic of sweet peppers, I want to call your attention to a few recipe favorites from our archives including this Red Pepper, Tomato and Lentil Salad we featured last year and Creamy Roasted Sweet Pepper Dressing featured back in 2014.  This dressing is versatile, but this week I want to use it as a dip to eat with carrot sticks or drizzled over slices of fresh tomatoes!

Grilled Corn & Poblano Tacos
photo from loveandlemons.com
We’re not done talking peppers, but lets switch gears and talk about the hot peppers in this week’s box!  This is the perfect week to make Creamy Chicken & Greens with Roasted Poblano Peppers since we have both chard and poblano peppers.  You could also make these Grilled Corn & Poblano Tacos, garnished with fresh tomatoes and cilantro.  While I was poking around at loveandlemons.com, I found a few other interesting recipes that are appropriate for this week’s box contents.  I want to try this Roasted Beets & Chickpeas with Jalapeno Yogurt using this week’s beets.  This is a vegetarian main dish salad with spicy chickpeas and roasted beets drizzled with a sweet and spicy garlic, lime and jalapeno yogurt sauce.  And the last recipe suggestion from this site is a Watermelon Margarita that also makes use of some jalapeno for a spicy kick to this cocktail!

Before tomatoes are finished, we need to get our fill of fresh tomato salsa and you can eat it on more than just tacos and with tortilla chips!  Consider making this Pan Grilled Salmon with Tomato Salsa for dinner and serve it with Corn, Roasted Red Pepper and Cilantro Salad.

Roasted Tomatillo Chicken Enchilada Pie
photo from littlespicejar.com
Remember back to the end of July when we had just started picking tomatillos and featured them in the newsletter?  You might want to revisit that Tomatillo Feature Article which included a list of twelve different recipes featuring tomatillos.  Now that the temperatures are cooling off, I think it’s time to make this Spicy Chili Verde with White Beans.  This recipe calls for jalapenos and canned green chilis.  You could use a mix of jalapeno and poblano peppers.  I think I’m going to go for this Roasted Tomatillo Chicken Enchilada Pie which calls for poblano peppers as well as the tomatillos.  This recipe calls for spinach, but since we don’t have that this week I’ll substitute rainbow chard.  Round out this dish with onions, garlic and cilantro, also in this week’s box!

This week’s beets and carrots are like nature’s candy and they’re excellent candidates for these Maple Roasted Beets and Carrots, a delicious side dish for any simple dinner of roast chicken or grilled steak.  Of course you could also use both of these roots raw to make this simple Shredded Beet & Carrot Salad.

This brings us to the bottom of another bountiful box of produce!  Lets cross our fingers that we’ll get a few more weeks of warm weather to continue ripening and harvesting tomatoes and peppers.  Before you know it, we’ll be harvesting leeks and will be packing winter squash in your box!  Have a great week!---Chef Andrea  

Vegetable Feature: Sweet Peppers

By Chef Andrea

Orange Italian Frying Peppers
Late August and early September marks the peak of pepper season.  This is the time of year when the field changes from a sea of green to a colorful array of orange, red and yellow.  Several weeks ago we featured poblano peppers and we’ve been including a jalapeno in your boxes since mid-summer.  We still have one more tasty hot pepper to share with you, but that selection will need to remain a mystery as it’s not quite ready.  So this week we’ll turn our attention to the sweet side of our pepper crop.

It’s a shame that the family of sweet peppers are so poorly represented in many traditional grocery store produce departments.  While red and yellow bell peppers are lovely, there are so many other varieties of sweet peppers and many of them have better flavor!  Over the years we’ve grown to appreciate other varieties such as Italian frying peppers which are delicious eaten both raw and cooked.  Richard has also developed our own seed stock for orange Ukraine peppers which are not available commercially.  They are similar to a bell pepper, but have a pointy tip and a thick flesh.  They are an excellent pepper for roasting or stuffing.  And then there are the sweet Mini Sweet peppers.  Long before this became a mainstream pepper selection a CSA member encouraged us to try growing these snack peppers.  Seed wasn’t commercially available so we had to start by buying a pack of peppers from the store, picking all the seeds out of them and starting down the long road of producing our own seed.  Many years have passed and we continue to produce our own seed for this crop despite the fact that seed is now commercially available for snack peppers.  We continue to trial these varieties, but we continue to favor our own seed line as the peppers simply taste better!

Orange Ukraine Peppers
One of the reasons I like to eat and cook with peppers is because they are so versatile in the ways they may be used, but they also pair well with a wide variety of vegetables and ingredients.  They pair well with summer vegetables in dishes such as ratatouille, but they also pair well with root crops, winter squash and sweet potatoes.  You can use sweet peppers in salads, salsa, soups, curry dishes, stews, on pizza, in quesadillas and so much more!  They are also super easy to preserve, which is why I always make sure I have enough in the freezer to last me until the next crop comes in.  Freezing is the easiest way to preserve peppers.  All you have to do is wash them, remove the stem and the seeds and pop them in a freezer bag.  To conserve freezer space, you might want to dice, slice or chop them into smaller pieces. In the case of mini sweet peppers, however, I just freeze those whole.  Pull them out in the winter and add them to egg dishes, soups, stir-fry, casseroles, chili and so much more!

Roasting Red Peppers over a gas burner
The other thing I want to mention about sweet peppers is how they are transformed when roasted.  The natural sugars in the peppers are developed in the roasting process and the texture becomes silky.  If you’ve never roasted peppers, it’s quite easy.  It’s best done over an open flame such as a grill or a gas burner.  If you don’t have either of those, you can also roast them under the broiler in the oven.  I typically roast them whole, but you could cut them in half and remove the stem and seeds before roasting.  You want the skin side to be in direct contact with the flame or heat source so you can roast them until the skin is blackened and blistering.  Remove them from the heat, put them in a bowl and cover them so they steam as they cool.  Once cool enough to handle, use the back of a knife to scrape the skin off the pepper.  Once roasted, you can use the peppers in vegetable, grain, bean or pasta salads.  You can use them to make a creamy roasted red pepper sauce to serve with pasta or chicken.  You can add them to sandwiches or quesadillas.

It’s best to store fresh peppers at room temperature, although you can store them for several days in the refrigerator.  If they start to get a little soft or wrinkly, they are just starting to dehydrate a little bit but are still very usable.  If you do have more peppers than you can use this week, take a few extra minutes to pop them into the freezer.  You’ll be glad you have them this winter!

Sweet Pepper and Cheddar Clafoutis

Note:  Clafoutis is a custardy, baked dessert originating in France.  It is traditionally filled with sweet cherries.  This is Melissa Clark’s savory spinoff on this French dish and it’s delicious served as a main dish for breakfast, lunch or dinner!  If you don’t speak French, you can also refer to these as really good “cheesy eggs” as Farmer Richard refers to them.

Yield:  4 to 6 servings

¾ cup whole milk
½ cup crème fraiche (may substitute sour cream)
4 large eggs
2 ½ Tbsp all-purpose flour
¼ cup chopped fresh basil leaves
¾ tsp fine sea salt, divided, plus more as needed
½ tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 cup (4 oz) coarsely grated sharp white cheddar, cheese, divided
2 ounces sliced ham, chopped (optional)
2 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
3 sweet peppers, (red bell, orange or red Italian frying peppers or orange Ukraine peppers) OR ½ pound mini sweet peppers
2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
¼ cup (1 oz) grated Parmesan cheese
Fresh lemon juice, for serving
Crushed red pepper flakes, for serving

1. Heat the oven to 375°F.  

2. In a large bowl, whisk together the milk, crème fraiche, eggs, flour, basil, ½ tsp of the salt, and pepper.  Stir in ¾ cup of the cheddar and the ham (if using).

3. Prepare the peppers by removing the stem and seeds and slicing into ¼-inch slices.


4. In a 9-inch ovenproof skillet, heat the oil over medium heat.  Stir in the peppers and cook until they are softened and golden at the edges, 10 to 15 minutes.  Stir in the garlic and remaining ¼ tsp salt and cook until fragrant, about 2 minutes.

5. Scrape the egg mixture into the skillet, and top it with the remaining ¼ cup cheddar and the Parmesan.  (Or for a more elegant presentation, scrape the vegetables into a gratin or casserole dish and add the egg mixture and cheese to that.) 

6. Bake until the eggs are set, 35 to 40 minutes.  Cool slightly, then top with lemon juice and red pepper flakes.

Thinking Ahead:  
You can cook the peppers and garlic up to 3 days in advance.  Store the mixture, covered, in the refrigerator.  Gently rewarm it in an ovenproof skillet before adding the egg mixture and baking.
Recipe borrowed (with minor adaptations) from Melissa Clark’s book, “Dinner in French:  My Recipes by Way of France”

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