Stuffed Peppers
It's the garden that keeps on giving - and it really hasn't even started, yet!
While I was busy making desserts and looking at apartments in Barcelona, Victor was in the kitchen making magic with fresh peppers and tomatoes from the garden! It's a wonderful life we lead!
He started with a basic sauce of fresh tomatoes - whooshed in the blender and then cooked with smashed anchovies, garlic, a bit of tomato paste fried with the anchovies and garlic, red wine, salt, pepper, crushed red pepper, and a handful of pecorino.
The stuffing was ligurian sausage, onion, yellow zucchini, onion, whole grain bread for croutons, garlic, a splash of the tomato sauce, and more pecorino.
Covered, and then into a 375ºF oven for 40 minutes.
Nonna all but licked her plate clean. Mine was so clean from sopping up every morsel with bread that we could have almost put the plate back in the cupboard.
It was molto favoloso!
Dessert to follow.....
Crespelle and Tomatoes
Tonight's dinner is brought to you by a recipe I saw in Fine Cooking Magazine. I didn't make the recipe, but that's beside the point.
Fine Cooking and Cooking Light are my two food magazine subscriptions. They both have some good ideas and are easy to switch up as my mood - or pantry - decrees. I've been looking at a crêpe recipe for a few weeks, now, and decided today was the day to do it - it just looked fun.
The recipe was for Shrimp Purses - a shrimp filling wrapped in a crêpe and tied with a chive. They looked pretty no-brainer. I even have chives growing in the garden.
I got to work and started making crespelle because I decided I was going to do a sausage and pepper and cheese filling - make them with an Italian flair. I've been making Lidia's Crespelle recipe for a long time - it is no-brainer easy. Their recipe is for an hors d'oeuvre and I wanted to make it a bit heartier for dinner.
Alas... the crespelle is heavier than a light French Crêpe... they didn't want to neatly gather into little pouches.
So I stuffed them and rolled them like a canneloni. I mean... what the heck... I was making them Italian, anyway. May as well just go for it.
I topped them off with the quick tomato pan sauce I was going to use as the base for my purses. Sauce on top, sauce on bottom. As long as there's sauce, it doesn't matter where it goes.
The tomato sauce was simply fresh tomatoes chopped up and tossed into a skillet with some olive oil, basil, and salt & pepper. As basic as basic can be.
The end result was it didn't really matter what shape they were - they were really good. Even Nonna cleaned her plate - she's always the wild card when we do something different. She may not have been as receptive to little purses on her plate although she usually is a good sport about at least trying things.
The filling was some fresh sausage cooked with onions, garlic, and peppers from the yard - along with a bit of fresh mozzarella.
And the crespelle...
Crespelle
- 4 large eggs
- 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 to 1 1/4 cup water
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
Place the flour in a large mixing bowl. Crack the eggs over the flour and whisk them in. Add salt and whisk in water until smooth.
Heat your pan until hot and brush with melted butter. Pour 1/4 cup batter into the pan and swirl to completely coat. Cook until pale golden and crespelle is dry on top. Place on plate and continue until all the batter has been used.
Fill with your favorite sweet or savory filling.
I do think that I still want to make the little purses at some point, so stay tuned.
Tomorrow I'm turning the kitchen over to Victor - he's going to stuff some of our garden peppers!
Film at 11.
More from the Garden
We're finally starting to see some ripe tomatoes - and the green beans are going crazy! We have two blue lake beans and two purple bush beans out there. The purple ones are easy to pick - they're purple. The blue lakes blend in with the stems and leaves making them more difficult to see. They're delicious - but a pain in the ass.
Let's face it - Farmer in the Dell, I'm not. Our little plot needs a lot of work - I can't even imagine twice as much, let alone an actual farm. Once, maybe 30 or 35 years ago, I worked all day with my sister, Arlene, picking honeydew melons in Marysville. I was reasonably young and in reasonably good shape. It almost killed me. I couldn't fathom doing it day-in and day-out for the pittance migrant workers get paid.
I read today that more Mexicans are returning to Mexico than are coming north to work the fields. Some California farmers are paying a lot more for workers - who typically work 50-60 hours a week. Others are letting crops rot for lack of skilled labor to pick. The realities of using minorities as scapegoats.
In the fields picking, sorting... I did it one day. One. No, thank you.
I'll bemoan our little plot and then remember what it was like that one day years ago. Suddenly, it's not so bad!
Today while I was working, Victor made a great green bean and tomato salad with cherry tomatoes from the plant that just decided to grow. It also had thinly sliced red onion, hard-cooked eggs, and freshly-shredded cheese. He made a vinaigrette of olive oil, sherry vinegar, anchovies, garlic, and S&P.
Totally awesome.
It was served with a lightly-floured whitefish, fried in butter and olive oil and a sauce made of white wine, capers, parsley, lemon juice and lemon zest.
Totally awesome, part deux.
It's great being married to a man who loves to cook.
And farm.
Tomatoes, Figs, and Sausage
I had a bit of an unexpected day off from work, today - I had to get nasty cancerous things cut off my delicate skin - so... into the kitchen to properly heal!
It only makes sense, right?!? I mean... food is medicine, food is healing. Throw in some butter and a bit of alcohol and it's downright holistic!
Tonight's helping of healing holistic happiness comes to us because fresh figs have hit the east coast! I just love me some figs and with a really short season back here, I have to get them when I can.
But before I could start making a mess in the kitchen, Victor was making the first tomato salad with tomatoes from the garden.
Red, ripe, juicy tomatoes with Sicilian Olive Oil, basil from the garden, a bit of fresh garlic, and a sprinkling of salt and pepper. Pure flavors and pure simplicity. If the garden gods cooperate, this will be a regular dinner feature.
And on to dinner...
My first thoughts when approaching fresh fruits is almost always dessert. Let's face it - if I had my way dessert would be renamed breakfast and treated as such. But, every now and again I have to think outside the sugar bag and come up with something savory.
Tonight is a great example...
I did a sausage and grapes a while back so the concept wasn't unfamiliar... I just needed some inspiration.
Chef Google came to the rescue.
I found a recipe on a site called Idiot's Kitchen that sounded promising... Figs, marsala, mushrooms - all things already in the house. Since I'm infirm, I didn't want to have to go to the store.
While Idiot's Kitchen used a pork tenderloin, I used apple sausage from Martin's Meats at Reading Terminal Market. I have a planned trek back down there towards the end of the month for more goodies, so I have to use up the stuff in the freezer! Apple sausage... fresh figs... sounds like a marriage made in gastronomic heaven.
Figs and Sausage
adapted from Idiot's Kitchen
- fresh sausage
- 4 oz pancetta, large dice
- 1 med onion, chopped
- 8 mixed mushrooms, sliced
- 1 lb fresh figs
- 6 oz Dry Marsala (sweet will work if that's what you have)
- 1/3 cup chicken broth
- S&P, to taste
In a large skillet, brown sausages in a bit of olive oil. They don't need to be cooked through - they'll be going back to finish in the sauce.
Remove the sausages and add the pancetta. Preferably, you will have a couple of thick cuts of pancetta that you can cut into 1/2" cubes. If all you can get is the pre-diced 1/4" package, just be really careful not to overcook it. Lightly saute the pancetta, rendering the fat but not crisping it.
Add the onions and cook for a minute or two and then add the mushrooms. Cook until the onions are cooked through and the mushrooms have given up much of their moisture.
Add the marsala and bring to a boil. Add the figs and reduce the heat to medium and simmer until sauce is reduced by half. Add the sausages back in and add 1/3 cup chicken broth.
Simmer until sausages are cooked through.
Check for seasoning and add salt and pepper, as desired.
We ate this up with slices of crusty bread - perfect for dunking in the tomato juice and the fig juice. It made a lot - way more than the three of us could eat - so Victor has lunch leftovers while I'm at work.
Yes... I have to head back to work tomorrow. I took off Saturday for my niece's graduation party.
I'm thinkin' that if there are more figs to be had on Sunday, I might make a fig jam... Figs, marsala, and pistachios might go well together...
Hmmmmm.....