2020 Produce CSA Week 24

Contents of this week’s box:  Apples, sweet & mild peppers, butternut squash, garnet red sweet potatoes, purple top turnips, butter lettuce, carrots, eggplant, hot peppers.

Conne’s vacation continues this week. Here’s my take on this week’s box. What a great mix!

Peppers confession: I have struggled with the peppers in years past, resorting to dicing & freezing them for use in grits casserole and on pizzas. This year, I’ve turned a corner and can’t seem to get enough of them, or the eggplants either. It’s one of the things I love about the CSA. If they weren’t landing in my kitchen in the CSA box, I wouldn’t be buying them and my culinary lens would narrow to a pinhole of my own making over the years..

Conne has contributed quite a few recipes featuring jalapenos. See them at this link: https://grassfedcow.com/ingredient/jalapenos/  I’m particularly interested in the Honey Jalapeno Chicken Tenders. The Hot Pepper Apple Pie sounds like fun. You’ll need a pepper jelly recipe for the apple pie.  Try this one:  https://grassfedcow.com/recipes/pepper-jelly/.

Last crazy pepper idea, this one for the campfire. Try wrapping a brie wheel slathered with jelly in aluminum foil and heat in your campfire coals. Add apples, or use apple slices to dip? Consider it an experiment, potentially a gooey one.

Love the apples. Last week, we tried the Apple Upside Down Cake, which disappeared in a few days. Terrific. This weekend, we’re trying Apple Pecan Blondies. And throwing a couple of apples wrapped in foil into that campfire, for kicks.

Needing eggplant inspiration from the beatnik 70’s? Try this moussaka recipe from my mother’s ex-boyfriend Paul. The resulting casserole might be short on authenticity, but is long on yum.

Eggplant Moussaka
1-2 large eggplants cut in 1/2 in slices
Oil
1/2 cup butter
1 medium onion, chopped
1 lbs ground beef
1 cups tomato sauce
1/4 teasp ground cloves
4 tbsp flour
2 cups milk
salt & pepper
nutmeg

Soak eggplant slices in heavily salted water for 2 hours, rinse, pat dry and saute in high-temp oil until tender and light golden brown. Drain in colander. Brown onion in 1/2 cup butter. Add meat to brown. Stir in tomato sauce, ground cloves, salt and pepper to taste. Cook down until most of the liquid is absorbed. Make a thin white sauce from flour, 1/2 cup butter, milk and nutmeg. Layer eggplant and meat sauce in casserole dish, cover with white sauce and bake at 400 degrees until golden brown, about 20 minutes.

The recipe tolerates a lot of improvisation. Chopped peppers sound like a nice addition, as do chopped garlic cloves. I do tend to go heavier on the spices.
Serves 8
SW