Peppers

Pepper plenty

| Green Card Gardener

It is as if the peppers are trying to make up for the poor zucchini and cucumber harvest this year. As always, I start cutting off all bell pepper blossoms in early August so the plants put their energy into the peppers that are already there, and I don’t end up with oodles of tiny green peppers at the onset of frost in October.

A bumper crop of bell peppers is not a problem – I freeze them and use them all winter long for various dishes and my Red Pepper Spread. But what to do with all those jalapeños from one single plant? After I used them for salsa, and froze and dried some (they are not turning red as expected), I was running out of ideas, especially since my husband does not like hot foods. Then I found a fabulous recipe for Bread and Butter Jalapeños. After I tried the first bite I instantly regretted that I had only made half the recipe. They were gone in a few days. I even ate some straight out of the jar, something I usually never do. Now I am collecting all the jalapeños for canning a large batch.

Yesterday I felt a slight disappointment rising when there was only a handful of jalapeños, and was reassured seeing plenty of more growing. Interesting how one great recipe can make you change your perspective.

Green legacy

| Green Card Gardener

Pepper spreadMy father-in-law, who passed away this month, used to tell me about his beginnings in gardening: two tomato plants and a cucumber in a Victory Garden at the end of World War I. Children, especially those of struggling immigrants, did surely not receive any pocket money in those days, so the dime he received as a prize for the tomatoes must have been quite special for a nine-year-old.

He also told me that two of the most difficult things he had to do in his life was closing his medical practice upon retiring, and taking down his garden when he was no longer able to physically do the work.

I never saw my father-in-law’s garden, as it had disappeared years before I first met him.  I only saw photos of it, yet I could tell that the area that is now just lawn must have once delivered a cornucopia of fruits and vegetables.

We talked gardening often, he sitting at his usual place at the end of the long kitchen table with a view of the back yard where his garden used to be. I remember him laughing out loud and shaking his head over and over again when I told him I had planted almost two dozens of tomato plants. “What the heck will you do with so many tomatoes?” he asked. My answer, “Soup, sauce, freeze them whole so I don’t have to ever buy canned tomatoes,” did not quite seem to convince him. However, after we brought along a few bags of homemade frozen cream of tomato soup in the midst of winter, he did not question the number of my tomato plants again.

These past few weeks have not been easy, and I have even wondered whether I would have the oomph to plant a garden this year. But then I remembered how my father-in-law told me that he always had some sort of a garden and was growing something, no matter where he lived, and no matter what difficult times he was going through. When we buried him, we buried his rusty shovel with him. Thinking about this, I feel that I simply must plant a garden this year to continue in his spirit.

After several bags of frozen bell peppers and jalapeños have reproachfully looked at me every time I opened the freezer, I finally made a batch of red pepper spread today. I never bother to remove the skins, those are all healthy fibers. After cooking the peppers slowly in the oven and pureeing them, the spread is so smooth it is almost impossible to tell the peppers have not been skinned. The spread tastes a bit like Harissa but it is much milder. For a hotter version, just add more jalapeños. Starting with two pounds of seeded peppers sounds like a lot but they shrink considerably.

Pepper spread before pureeingRed Pepper Spread

6 to 7 large red bell peppers, seeded (about 2 pounds)

2 jalapeños

1/3 cup olive oil

6 small garlic cloves (3-4 fat ones)

Salt

Extra-virgin olive oil

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

2. Coarsely chop the peppers. Seed the jalapeños and chop finely. Chop the garlic.

3. Mix all ingredients except for the salt and put in in a large ovenproof dish with a lid, ideally a cast-iron casserole or Dutch oven.

4. Cover and cook for 1 hour, then remove the lid and continue cooking until the peppers are very soft and look almost melted. Stir and scrape down the sides once in a while with a rubber spatula.

5. Remove from the oven and cool. Puree very finely and salt to taste.

6. Fill the spread in a glass jar and pour a little bit of extra-virgin olive oil on top to prevent the spread from drying out. Refrigerate and use within a month.

Makes 1 jar

Breaking the rules for paella

| Green Card Gardener

For kids, three months of summer vacation can be quite boring if you live in an isolated location in the country and cannot just walk down the street to hang out with friends. To keep our son busy (and preserve our sanity), a few summers ago my husband commissioned him to do a few short videos. One of the videos he made was about high-fructose corn syrup. Our son discovered that we are an almost HFCS-free household. When he searched our pantry and fridge for props, the only product containing HFCS he found was a bottle of mustard.

MSG is another blacklisted ingredient. It is not difficult to avoid HFCS and MSG when you cook mainly with fresh or frozen ingredients and make as much as possible from scratch. Yet I must admit that I deviate from my own rules once in a while for convenience or taste, or both.

For paella, for example, I use yellow rice mix, aka Spanish rice, which sometimes contains MSG. When I cannot find brands that are MSG-free, I remove about half of the heavy seasoning from the uncooked mix by placing it in a colander and shaking it a few times over the sink. The remaining amount of MSG is minimal. MSG usually gives me terrible migraines but I have never felt a thing after eating this paella.

This recipe is adapted from Paella, Fast and Easy in Mark Bittman’s The Minimalist Cooks at Home. I doubt whether Mr. Bittman would agree with my using yellow rice mix from the package but since I adhere to most of what he advocates so passionately, I hope he would let this one slip.Most of the vegetables for the paella – peas, greens beans, and bell peppers – come from my garden, fresh during season, frozen in the winter. When I made the paella yesterday I did not have peas, as the supply of peas from the garden is already gone. We were also out of carrots; unaware of my dinner plans, my husband fed the last carrot to our dog, whose favorite treat is carrots.

To make up for the missing peas and carrots, I doubled the amount of bell peppers and green beans. And, instead of chicken broth, which I normally use for liquid, I used homemade turkey broth from our Thanksgiving turkey, also coming from the depth of our freezer. This recipe offers lots of flexibility in terms of ingredients.

One little trick: my son does not like peppers so I omit them in half of the paella and place a piece of triple-folded aluminum foil across the pan. After the paella is cooked, that barrier can be removed very easily.

Paella

4 cups chicken broth

1 cup fresh or frozen green beans

1 red bell pepper

1 carrot

1 onion

1 swordfish steak (about 6 ounces)

3 tablespoons olive oil

2 cups yellow rice mix (Spanish rice), some of the seasoning removed as described above

1 cup fresh or frozen peas

½ pound uncooked shelled and deveined medium-size shrimp (41-50 count)

1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F.

2. Heat the chicken broth in a saucepan.

3. Cut or break the green beans into bite-size pieces. Cut the pepper in half, remove the seeds, and cut into ½-inch pieces. Peel the carrot and cut into ¼-inch cubes. Halve the onion and slice very thinly. Cut the swordfish into ½-inch cubes.

4. Heat the oil in a large cast-iron skillet. Add the onion and cook for 5 minutes over medium heat until translucent, stirring often.

5. Add the rice mix and stir to coat. Cook for 2 minutes until it turns glossy. Add the hot broth and stir (stand back, it will steam when you add the broth).

6. Add the shrimp, fish, and vegetables, distributing them somewhat evenly. Bring to the boil, then carefully transfer the pan to the preheated oven. Cook for 25 to 30 minutes, until the rice is cooked through and the broth is absorbed. If during the cooking some of the vegetables start to poke out, gently push them back into the liquid so they won’t dry out. Do not stir.

7. Remove the paella from the oven and let stand for 5 minutes before serving.

Makes 6 to 8 servings