Daikon and Shrimp Soup

This soup recipe comes from Florence Fabricant and will use up quite a bit of radish. Serve it hot, or chill it and serve it cold.
In place of the green chili it calls for, you can also a Scotch bonnet pepper, but DON’T CUT IT UP. Just simmer the whole pepper in the soup when you add the shrimp, and then remove it before serving. You just want a bit of the heat, not the whole scorching thing.

Potato and Chorizo Tacos

Chances are you also have a favorite taco recipes – but do you ever think about using potatoes? This recipes is from “Tacos, Tortillas and Tamales” by Roberto Santibanez. Mexican chorizo is the fresh variety, not the smoked and cured kind of chorizo. You could substitute it though, just maybe adding a little oil if necessary so the onions, etc. don’t stick to the skillet when you’re sautéing.

Mark Bittman’s Spicy No-Mayo Coleslaw

Are you a fan of Mark Bittman? Here’s a recipe from How to Cook Everything (Completely Revised 10th Anniversary Edition) with a few variations.

Bittman says: If you want restaurant-style coleslaw, you take shredded cabbage and combine it with mayo and maybe a little lemon juice. This version is far more flavorful with far less fat. I like cabbage salad (which is what coleslaw amounts to) on the spicy side, so I use plenty of Dijon, along with a little garlic and chile (you could substitute cayenne for the chile or just omit it if you prefer), and scallions.

Pepper Jelly

Those gorgeous peppers make me think it’s time to make pepper jelly. If you think you won’t use it, see the next recipe for a yummy vinaigrette. If you don’t have enough peppers in this week’s box, maybe you still have a few from last week? Or save this week’s and cross your fingers we’ll have some in next week’s box.

This is a recipe from Linton Hopkins of Restaurant Eugene.

Hot Pepper Sauce

I had a conversation with Jennifer Halicki about what to do with those cute little jalapenos. My suggestion was to do a very simple pickle, just putting the jalapenos in a jar (with or without stems) and cover them with vinegar. Leave them for a week or forever, they’ll keep indefinitely as long as you keep topping up the vinegar. This was the old Southern standby for making hot pepper vinegar to season fall and winter greens like turnips, collards and mustard. And it works fine with jalapenos.

Then just the other day I opened an email from Import Food, a company on the west coast that imports primarily food from Thailand. They offered a little more complex version of this peppered vinegar idea. They were recommending the Thai chiles they sell, but it would be just as delicious with your jalapenos or leftover cayenne peppers.

In their words: “Spice up your food with this simple, homemade heat. The combination of sour vinegar with hot Thai chiles is a common condiment in Thailand (called “nam som”), but this goes along great with American food too–especially southern favorites like collard greens, fried chicken, green tomatoes, etc.”