Fire Roasted Red Peppers

Roasted red peppers are another handy preparation to have around. We harvested these from the bucket garden and Mommasan had the great idea of roasting them, so on the grill they went. We hadn't done this before, so we have some wisdom to pass on. Cutting in half and coring was the only prep work we did. Getting the roasting part right is the tricky part. You want the peppers to lay as flat as possible with the skin side toward the heating surface. You can do these under your oven's broiler as well. The trick is getting every part of the skin blistered. If it isn't blistered everywhere then it will be tough to get all the skin off. The skin comes off very easily if it is blistered properly. If you are having a tough time getting the skins off put'em back on the grill. We had more than we could immediately use so I canned the remainder into half-pint jars for later.

TTFN

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Mild Green Chile Sauce

The pepper plants are still cranking. As a matter of fact, there are probably enough peppers ready to pick for another batch by now. Green chile sauce comes in handy for all sorts of things, so a few jars will definitely get used over the next 8 months or so. I never made this before, so I got on the internet and read how others do it and this is what I came up with:

Mild Green Chile Sauce

25 Jalepeno peppers

10 green Cowhorn peppers

15 green Cayenne peppers

10 Hungarian Wax peppers

13 dried chinese hot peppers, divided

10 cloves garlic

2 tbsp salt

1 tsp black pepper

1 large red tomato

2 small red bell peppers

1 yellow bell pepper

1 tbsp olive oil

4 c distilled vinegar

De-stem all the peppers. Also de-seed the bell peppers. Process all ingredients except olive oil, vinegar and 8 dried chinese peppers in a food processor. Heat oil in a 4 quart or larger pot and add processed ingredients and vinegar. Bring to a boil and then lower heat and simmer for several hours. I started with about 6 pints of material and ended up with  4 pints. I added 2 dried chinese hot peppers to each pint and canned the result according to the Ball Blue book.

This recipe was driven by the produce gathered from my bucket garden. Any mixture of ingredients similar to this will result in a similar product. Use what you have. The resulting product was fairly mild, so I added 2 dried chinese hot peppers to each pint before canning, to add a little heat. Enjoy! :-)

TTFN

B

Mel's Famous Brisket Tacos

My buddy Mel invited me over for dinner not too long ago and made his brisket tacos. He has been talking about these tacos for weeks and now that I have had them, I can see why. These things rock! If you like TexMex, then you will love these.

Taco Filling

5 lb brisket

1 c taco seasoning

2 jalapeno, sliced

1 tbsp black pepper

1 tsp salt

1 tsp red pepper flake

1 12oz can diced tomatoes (with green peppers and onions)

24 oz water

(3) ONLY (3) Drops of Da’Bomb Hot Sauce (1.5 Million Scoville)

1 can french fried onions

Sear the brisket. Mix taco seasoning, jalapeno, pepper, salt, pepper flakes, tomatoes, hot sauce and water in the base of a pressure cooker. Bring to a boil and remove from heat. Add brisket to pressure cooker. Cook the brisket in the pressure cooker for 45 minutes according to your cookers intructions.

When the brisket is done, remove it from the pot and shred the meat. Add the meat back into the pot and mix everything up well. Serve the filling in a soft tortilla with your favorite Chipotle BBQ sauce and French Fried Onions. Refried beans and Spanish Rice make great sides. For quick Spanish Rice, Mels adds a jar of salsa to almost ready minute rice and then covers it back up to finish the cooking process.

These were done very well and if I hadn't seen him make everything I may have thought he bought the food prepared from a good TexMex restaurant and pawned it off as his own.

TTFN

BTR

Chinese 5 Color Pepper Plant

  A good friend of mine got me this Chinese 5 Color Hot Pepper plant. These are very beautiful ornamental hot pepper plants. The fruit is edible and comes in green, purple, yellow, orange and red. It appears the peppers change color as they mature. I am told the little peppers pack quite punch too. I am going to see if I can save some seeds for next year. What an awesome gift. :-)

TTFN

BTR

Refrigerator Pickled Hot Peppers

This started out as more of an experiment than anything because of the shear number of hot peppers my plants are producing. I was afraid they would go to waste if I didn't find something to do with them. I like pickled hot pepper rings, so I thought I would try to make my own. Note: This process is not suitable for storing the jars outside of a refrigerator.

Refrigerator Pickled Hot Peppers

2 medium cucumbers sliced lengthwise and halved to fit in the jars

5 pints mixed hot peppers

8 c distilled vinegar

8 c water

1 c pickling salt

16 whole cloves garlic peeled

8 tsp whole peppercorns

8 tsp dried onion

4 tsp dried dill

8 pint canning jars with lids

ice

The trick to crunchy pickles is an ice bath before jarring. The cucumbers were cut into spears and sized to fit in the pint jars. The peppers were cut into rings where appropriate and long skinny peppers were cut to fit in the pint jars longwise. We used Cowhorn, Jalepeno, Cayenne and Hungarian Wax peppers. Once the peppers and cucumbers were cut and sized, they all went in to a pot slightly bigger than the volume of the vegetables and were covered with ice. Add enough water so that icy water covers all the vegetables. Leave in the ice bath for 2 hours. Add more ice if needed.

All jars and lids should be cleaned and sanitized. Boiling water can be used to sanitize. At about the 1.5 hour mark line the jars up and in each one add 2 cloves garlic, 1 tsp peppercorns, 1 tsp dried onion and 1/2 tsp dried dill. Combine the vinegar, water and pickling salt in a sauce pot and bring it to a boil. Drain ice and water off the peppers and cucumbers and begin to pack them into the jars leaving 3/4 of an inch space at the top. Put a wide mouthed canning funnel in the first jar and ladel enough of the boiling brine into the jar to cover the vegetables but leaving 1/2 inch of space at the top. Immediatly put a lid on the jar. Follow this process for each jar. After a few hours of cooling, the lids should all have 'popped' in. Check each one to make sure they have formed a vacuum seal. After about 8 hours they should be cool enough to store in your refrigerator.

I was very pleasantly surprised by the flavor and crunchy texture of the pickled goodies. I only waited 2 days before sampling the first jar and I thought they were pretty good. I will be trying this technique on some other vegetables as well. If I had it to do over I would use bigger jars because the pint jars were a little too fiddly trying to pack enough stuff in to each one. From the information available on the internet it looks like these sealed jars should keep in the refrigerator for 6 months.

TTFN

B

Ratatouille with Quinoa

  Around our home anything that remotely resembles the recipe below is called Ratatouille. Maybe we're wrong, but one thing is for sure, if any combination of eggplant, peppers, tomatoes, yellow squash and zucchini is available, we cook it and call it the R-word. I'll list the ingredients for this version, but it isn't likely this exact recipe will be repeated here again. We even cook it different depending on the time of the year. In the summer we tend to use the stove top more and try to get it cooked relatively fast to avoid heating the kitchen up, but in the fall we make it in the oven and roast everything. As many ingredients as possible were used from the bucket garden.

Ratatouille with Quinoa

1 small Lavender eggplant cubed

2 small to medium zucchini cubed

3 small yellow squash cubed

3/4 medium white onion chopped

1 yellow bell pepper chopped (light green really ...)

4 plum tomatoes chopped (seeds removed)

1 14 oz can diced tomatoes

1/2 c canned mushrooms

2 cloves garlic (pressed)

1 1/2 c celery chopped (leaves and all)

6 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

1 bunch parsley chopped (reserve small amount for garnish)

1 small bunch oregano chopped

1 small bunch basil chopped

4 c cooked quinoa

grated mozzarella cheese

salt

pepper

  In a large skillet heat olive oil over medium heat. Add onions and garlic. Stir until soft and the aromatics are released. Add celery eggplant, and yellow squash. Lightly salt to help the vegetables to weep. Saute for 5 minutes. Add zucchini peppers and tomatoes. Once again, lightly salt. Saute for 5 minutes. Add additional salt and pepper to taste. Add parsley, oregano, basil and mushrooms. Stir well and simmer for 30 minutes. Stir occasionally. Serves 4. Plate over quinoa. Melt cheese on top. We use the microwave. Garnish with chopped parsley. Enjoy!

TTFN

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