Each week I put together a collection of recipe ideas for what’s arrived in our beautiful Riverview boxes, but you know, sometimes you just don’t have the time or inclination to follow a recipe. Or maybe you’re in a situation where you don’t have the equipment or ingredients to do anything relatively elaborate. This weekend Read More…
Use any combination of peppers you like.
This recipe would work with arugula and mustard greens. They’re tender enough that everything could be cooked quickly. I can’t remember the recipe’s original source.
This comes from “ Sunday Roasts: A Year’s Worth of Mouthwatering Roasts, from Old-Fashioned Pot Roasts to Glorious Turkeys and Legs of Lamb by Betty Rosbottom (Chronicle Books, 2011).
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.”
A note about popcorn, assuming you still have one or more cobs left over from last week. Suzanne Welander had some advice: “I spend some time and ‘roll’ kernels off of the popcorn cob and cook them in my cast iron skillet just like “regular” popcorn. You can cook it on the cob in a Read More…
And I’ve been waiting to try this recipe that appeared in early August in the New York Times. So glad to see green beans in our box today.
Yes, you can lightly steam your green beans, but sometimes what you really want is a dish of beans that’s been slowly braised with wonderful aromatic companions. I grew up with a dish like this, served over rice pilaf. My mom added cubes of browned beef, but otherwise, this is pretty much her recipe.
I’m excited to see the return of radishes. It gives me the chance to provide another pickling recipe for those of you into that sort of thing. This is from Roy Eyester at Rosebud. Cut the recipe in half for a small bunch of radishes.
On my mind right now are oysters – having just come home from one coast and headed to another in about a week. September brings the months with “r” back, so it’s time to be thinking oysters again. I think this is adapted from a recipe that actually came from Better Homes and Gardens magazine.
And how great is it to see that butternut squash in our box today? It may be the first of many to come, but what a blessing – a vegetable you can sock away in the pantry and pull out come January when we’re missing the delivery of fresh fruits and vegetables every week.
First of all, I hear there’s great consternation and confusion about how to handle those beautiful ears of popcorn in your box. We got popcorn last year, and I gave it all to Marcia Killingsworth – your faithful photographer – because she loves popcorn so much. Come to discover today that she tried to take the kernels off the cob before popping them and gave it up as an impossible job. I’m guessing last year’s popcorn went to feed the squirrels in her neighborhood.
The good news is that I’m keeping all the popcorn in this box for me. Now I get to experiment with it. Everything I’ve read says cook it in your microwave – on the cob – in a bag. Same idea as microwave popcorn, but just on the cob and without the icky stuff I imagine impregnates those microwave popcorn bags. I remember hearing from some CSA members last year that popping the corn in a paper bag worked just fine.
I know there are some folks who have concerns over what’s in our paper bags these days – especially those made of recycled content. Bits of metal? Tiny pieces of plastic?
It’s actually my intention to try the popcorn in my Whirley Pop popcorn popper – the lightweight metal pan with a lid that folds back and a crank to turn a small metal arm that keeps the popcorn from hanging out too long on the bottom of the pan. I’ll probably have to break the cobs in half, but that seems easy enough to do.
Let us know how your popcorn turns out.
I’m so glad to see the popcorn because I’ve been saving this recipe just for its appearance. The aforementioned Ms. Killingsworth is a true fan of bacon. She might be willing to pop a little Riverview popcorn to make this recipe.
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This recipe comes from Denver restaurant Colt & Gray. Who can resist salty-sweet caramel corn studded with cashews and bits of bacon? The method of popping corn here would work fine with the whole cobs. Oolong is a lovely chef-y addition to the recipe, adding its bit of smoky flavor to the mix. Bacon and Cashew Caramel Corn balls for Halloween anyone?
Makes about 15 cups