Curried Zucchini Coins

It's that time of the garden year when bowls of cukes, zukes and tomatoes overtake the kitchen real estate. A really hot and dry July burned out my broccoli and greens, except for a hardy patch of escarole in some semi-shade, but our sun-loving vegetables are really enjoying this warm patch of weather.

I've been keeping up fairly well with the veggie bounty, making batches of pesto, zucchini bread and muffins, sauteed grated zucchini with basil and garlic, zucchini stewed with tomato and garlic, and other summer zuke standards in our repertoire, but then the other day I tried a few different spices with my zukes and husband Dan said that the recipe was a keeper. I tried it out again the next day and have to concur. Maybe you will too.

Curried Zucchini Coins

1 Tbsp. butter
1 Tbsp. olive oil
1 tsp. mild curry powder
1/2 tsp. celery salt
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 small onion, peeled, halved and cut into thin rings (we grew purple onions this year)
6-7 small zucchini (about 1.5 - 2 inch diameter) topped, tailed and cut into thin coins

Melt butter in large skillet. Add olive oil and let it bubble up. Add in curry powder, celery salt, onions and garlic and cook, stirring constantly, for 1-2 minutes. Add in zucchini coins and cook over medium heat, stirring often, for 15 minutes, or until onions are soft and golden and the zucchini is floppy, but still has some bite. You don't want to overcook tender, young zucchini.

Please use small zucchini for this dish, as the bigger, older zucchini that one tends to overlook in the patch under the leaves will be too seedy and watery.

Makes 6-8 servings.

The curry, celery salt and sauteed onions lend such a nice earthy, mellow taste to this dish.

I am sending over a virtual plate of this delicious way to deal with zucchini abundance to Susan the Well-Seasoned Cook, who is hosting Weekend Herb Blogging this week. Weekend Herb Blogging is a long-standing weekly food blog event hosted by Haalo of Cook Almost Anything that celebrates edible plant ingredients.

Foraging a Fungus Among Us Which is Now In my Corpus

And what a delicious fungus it was. I don't normally cook dangerously; but having transplanted a patch of lily-of-the-valley at the base of a grand old sugar maple in my backyard the day before, I came out to inspect my flowers the next morning. Right above them was this beautiful shelf of white mushroom that had definitely not been in residence before.

It was a truly lovely 'shroom.

It was a pearly white with a cascading shape and sweet aroma.

And most importantly, it looked delicious.

Now, I'm no foraging expert. I am more in tune with the idea of foraging than successful in its application. I've failed at harvesting stinging nettles (gathered them too late in their development) and at figuring out fiddlehead ferns (gathered them too early in their development). The potential for disaster with harvesting wild mushrooms always steered me clear but this specimen was so tantalizing.  And my husband Dan was so cute when I pointed out this gorgeous fungus and its potential for our dinner. He exclaimed that he had just fallen in love with me all over again.

Out came my field guides, my mushroom books, my Euell Gibbons library, and research on the Internet. After much study, it appears that I had an Oyster Mushroom, a wild edible delight that blooms on decayed and dying maples during the spring and summer in the Northeast. It has no toxic lookalike mushroom cousins on this continent and so it was with only a small amount of trepidation that I cleaned it up, dipped cut up sections in brown rice flour and then dipped them back in some beaten egg. After a final dredging in some gluten-free bread crumbs, I sauteed them briefly in butter and garnished my 'shrooms with some chopped lemon thyme and parsley.

Heeding well-worn foraging advice of the ages to only sample a small amount of this new wild edible, we adults munched on our CRISPY fried oyster mushrooms with moderation on the first night. They were earthy and delicate and had a nice chewy texture. The next day, having noticed that we were still alive and were suffering no ill effects of my foraging adventure, we heated them up and feasted once more on these delicious wild treats.

I noticed one more shelf of oyster mushroom blooming at the base of my tree and decided to come back a few days later to cook it up, but alas, the passage of just a couple of days had made this mushroom dry up quite a bit and turn brown. There were also lots of insects in residence, so it was not the evanescent thing of beauty that its had been.

I am sending this successful mushrooming adventure post over to Healthy Green Kitchen, who is hosting this week's episode of Weekend Herb Blogging. WHB is the popular food blog event centering on edible plants, herbs, flowers and fruits, and is headquartered at Cook Almost Anything. Healthy Green Kitchen will post a roundup of delicious posts from great cooks from all corners of the globe, so tune in after tomorrow's deadline to see what was cooking.

WHB Hosting and the Gluten Free Food Find of the Week: Poha

When groceries are so inexpensive at the Asian markets in Albany, I feel free to grab packets and bottles and cans of interesting-looking new edibles and fling them in my cart without remorse. We've discovered so many great naturally gluten-free new foods (one must still read labels diligently though) including new varieties of rice, a world of gluten-free noodles from all kinds of culinary traditions, and wildly exotic spices and sauces.

One of my new favorite discoveries is poha (also spelled pohe), a Western Indian comfort food. Poha is a quick cooking product made of pounded or flattened rice that is available in either thick or thin varieties. I bought a package of thick poha for $1.89 at the Indian Bazaar on Central Avenue in Albany that contained 4 cups of poha, enough for two separate dinners for our family of four.

According to my blogger colleague TongueTicklers, poha is one of the first solid foods that children smack their gums upon. She also notes that a dish of poha is a favorite breakfast or snack food and gets packed in many a lunchtime tiffin, whether it is cooked up savory or sweet. Since I have more of a salt tooth, I went savory for my poha test drives.



First I cooked up TongueTicklers' recipe for Kaanda Pohe, which pairs poha with sliced potatoes, which sounds like altogether too much starch, but which blends together beautifully. I added some (well, a lot) curry leaves that I sauteed with the spices and this was an aromatic and belly-filling dinner indeed. You soak your poha in water for a short while and then drain it in a colander. It absorbs the liquid and becomes sort of spongy, rather like a rolled oat, with a delightfully chewy texture.

I also tried poha again a week later without the peanuts, topped with the chopped up last blast of cilantro from the garden. Another winner.



Scheduled next on the Crispy Cook poha experiment trials will be this recipe for Mane Adige's recipe for Gojjavalakki, in which you whir your poha around in the blender or food processor and cook it up with tamarind, rasam powder and other spices. Sounds divine. But gotta trek back down to the Big City to buy more poha!

I am going to include this poha post in this week's edition of Weekend Herb Blogging, which is now in its fifth year, making it one of the Grand Old Dames of food blogging events. Weekend Herb Blogging started over at Kalyn's Kitchen and is now run by Haalo of Cook Almost Anything. The weekly event includes posts about edible plant ingredients, whether they be fruits, vegetables, seeds, grains, legumes, herbs, or flowers. I always find out about new ingredients and new ways to prepare old favorites with this event.


As the guest host of Weekend Herb Blogging #262, I would love to showcase your blog post, which may contain a recipe or information about growing or using a plant ingredient, to include in my recap after this week's deadline of Sunday, December 5, midnight Eastern Standard Time. WHB submissions must include a link back to The Crispy Cook and to Haalo's WHB rules link. WHB submissions must also be specifically written for this blog event and not cross-posted to other blog events.

In your email submission (to oldsaratogabooks AT gmaildot coM) please include the following information:

* Your Name
* Your Blog Name/URL
* Your Post URL
* Your Location
* Attach a photo (please check the details below for specific photo requirements)

Looking forward to seeing what you and other great cooks from around the world will be submitting!

Roasting Up Some Garlic Scapes for WHB #238

I am delighted to announce that The Crispy Cook is once again the guest host of Weekend Herb Blogging (Number 238!), a weekly blog event that celebrates all posts herbaceous, vegelicious and fruitastic. Weekend Herb Blogging was started by Kalyn's Kitchen and has been organized by Cook (Almost) Anything At Least Once for the last year.



From now until Sunday, June 20, 2010 I will be happy to accept recipes featuring plant ingredients (herbs, vegetables, fruits, seeds, stems, flowers, etc.) Entries must be submitted by:

* 5 pm Sunday - New York City Time (EST)
* 3pm Sunday - Utah Time
* 10pm Sunday - London Time
* 11pm Sunday - Rome Time
* 9am Monday - Melbourne (Aus) DS Time.

Your post can be informative, spotlight a particular ingredient and/or include a recipe where your chosen ingredient is one of the primary ingredients in the recipe. WHB posts must be written specifically for this blog event and may not be cross-posted in other events. Your post must include a link to The Crispy Cook and to the WHB rules page.

If you have a great veggie recipe to share this week, please send your posts to oldsaratogabooks AT gmail DOT com with WHB#218 in the subject line and the following details:

Your name Your Blog/URL
Your Post URL
Your Location
Attach a Photo: 250px wide

For my contribution to this week's WHB edition, I turned to what's flying out of the Crispy Garden, and this week it is garlic scapes. Scapes are the flowering stalks that emerge from the garlic plant and are trimmed if the home gardener or farmer wants the garlic plant to save all its plant energy for making a juicy and delicious garlic bulb to be harvested next month. I planted a boat load of garlic last November and have a handsome crop of various varieties of garlic that have been sending up scapes for the past week or so.

We've been using them just like scallions, chopping them into stir-fries and whizzing them up into Herbed Cream Cheese and Creamy Garlic Scape Dressing. They taste like a mild garlic and as you can see below we have a a real abundance of scapes.



I did a little Internet research to see what other ways cooks were using for their scapes and found this blog post gem in which the fanatical scape-lover author and self-described Crazy CSA Lady provides seven fabulous ways to cook with garlic scapes. This is followed by many more tantalizing comments in which other scape nuts mention different ways to use their beloved alliums. One commenter talked about roasting them so that is what I did, tossing them with olive oil, salt and pepper and then roasting them in a 425 degree oven for 30 minutes, stirring twice.



The roasted scapes are nice and crispy at their pointed little ends (though you must be careful not to skewer the inside of your mouth when you fork them in) and have a mild roasted garlic flavor. We ate them over green salads and as a pasta garnish and I still have others to use later on. Perhaps I will chop some up and freeze them to use later. Let me know if you have other fabulous ideas for roasted scapes.

Looking forward to seeing what's cookin' in your kitchen this week. I've already had several cool WHB submissions and can't wait for more to include in the roundup.

A Heads up on Fiddleheads

My foraging for fiddlehead ferns this year was limited to the grocery store. When last I attempted to procure some of these New England springtime delicacies for my cooking pot I didn't realize that the coiled-up new growth of several different varieties of fern can be eaten, but that many varieties are inedible and may in fact be poisonous, so I was a frustrated forager.

This time a survey of my two competing supermarket chains a few weeks ago turned up a small amount of fiddlehead ferns at $4.99 a pound. They had already been wrestled out of their fuzzy jackets and are so beautiful with their architectural lines and cool green color, that I had to buy some to cook up for a lovely supper side dish.

I got a pot of salted boiling water going at full tilt, and then steamed the fiddlehead coils for ten minutes, until they were fork tender. I then served them simply with a pat of butter. They taste a bit like asparagus, but with a more grassy, earthy flavor, redolent of the odors of walking in a cool, mossy forest. My husband and kids were not enamored, however, and commented on their resemblance to a certain variety of garden pest.



No matter. I ate them all up and savored every bite. Fiddleheads are supposed to be very nutritious when cooked (don't eat them raw, as they have certain toxins that need to be boiled off in the cooking water) and they are certainly one of the most beautiful vegetables one can behold on the plate. I am sharing this discovery of a new and gorgeous vegetable with Simona of Briciole, who is this week's host of Weekend Herb Blogging, a blog event that explores cooking with herbs, vegetables, fruits and flowers. Weekend Herb Blogging is now in its fourth year and is headquartered at Cook (Almost) Anything At Least Once.

The Spring Garden Wakes from Its Long Nap. And Hops into my Salad Bowl

What to do when the asparagus starts to wake up in the patch? One only harvests a spear or two at first, and if the gardener doesn't snap them off at a certain height, the plant's energy goes to seed production. And we prefer stems to seeds with our asparagus.

So I usually have a "bouquet" of two or three lovely green spears on my kitchen window sill in early Spring before the asparagus engine really gets going. Sometimes I have the patience to wait a full week to roast or steam them up, but today I was trying to assemble a dinner out of the many leftover edible bits in our fridge and snapped them up to mix with a less-than-fresh head of broccoli that had been hiding out in the vegetable drawer with an equally forgotten half of a red pepper. And I didn't remember buying that red onion, hidden underneath a cabbage. With a knob of hardened mozzarrella (just slice that arid bit off), some leftover fresh (well, less than fresh, but not bad-smelling) mozzarella balls, I was in business.

And so was born,

A Serendipitous Springy Vegetable and Mozzarella Salad




1 head broccoli, cut into florets and stem peeled and diced into 1/2 inch cubes
1 cup mozzarella, cut into cubes (I had some leftover fresh mozzarella balls and a stub end of regular mozzarella)
2 Tbsp. red onion, diced fine
3-4 asparagus spears, cut into 3/4 inch slices (looks nice sliced on the bias)
1/2 red bell pepper, diced
3 Tbsp. olive oil
2 Tbsp. red wine vinegar
Salt and pepper to taste
1 clove garlic, peeled and minced
2 tsp. dried basil (or 1 Tbsp. fresh basil, slivered, or 2 Tbsp. pesto)


Bring a small amount of salted water to a rapid boil in a pot. Add broccoli and cover and cook 3 minutes. Toss in asparagus and steam another 1-2 minutes. Drain vegetables, rinse in cold water and let drain. Pat dry.

Place broccoli, asparagus, mozzarella and red pepper in salad bowl.

Blend together olive oil, vinegar, garlic, basil and salt and pepper. Pour over veggies and mozzarella and toss gently to coat.

Serves 4 as a side salad or 2 as a main course over a bed of salad greens. We enjoyed it served immediately at room temperature, but the leftovers were also great chilled and served the next day.

I thought I would share a serving of this salad with Weekend Herb Blogging, the wonderful weekly showcase of the Edible Vegetable Kingdom, headquartered by Haalo at Cook Almost Anything At Least Once, and hosted this week over at Cafe Lynnylu. Check out Lynnylu's great photography and wonderful recipes; they are a visual treat.

From Wolfberries to Gigantes Beans: Weekend Herb Blogging #218 Roundup

I was delighted to once again be the guest host for Weekend Herb Blogging, a weekly exploration of recipes and informative posts about edible plant ingredients that is hosted by Haalo of Cook (Almost) Anything At Least Once. This week we have a wide-ranging buffet of wonderful recipes from cooks from seven different countries; some showcasing popular fruits and vegetables in new and exciting ways, and some featuring plant ingredients that seem exotic indeed.

Let's start out in Singapore with Cheng Huann of Eat.Read.Live who fills us in on Chinese wolfberries. His recipe calls for rehydrated berries to be sauteed with garlic and nai bai, a variety of baby bok choy.


Remaking a favorite salad, Winnie from the Healthy Green Kitchen in New Paltz, New York pairs blanched broccoli with zinc-rich pumpkin seeds and dried cherries for a zingy new recipe.

Broccoli is also the featured vegetable for Jessica in her Massachusetts-based Fearless Kitchen. She contributes Ginger Lemon Broccoli to our WHB smorgasbord which sounds like a wonderful combination of flavors.


Graziana is harvesting a bounty of beautiful chili peppers in Italy over at the Erbe in Cucina. She used some almost black-colored ripe Pasilla Chiles in her Nachos with Beans and Chili recipe.


Here at The Crispy Cook in upstate New York I tramped out to my snowy kale bed and harvested some leaves for a spicy, hearty batch of Mrs. Lewis' Kale Soup, an heirloom recipe from the Azores.


Marija of the gorgeously photographed Serbian food blog Palachinka serves up a medley of oven-fried root vegetables, including parsley root, potatoes, carrots, beets and celery root.


Susan, The Well-Seasoned Cook of New York City offers us a treasured family recipe for Jewish Apple Cake with wonderful written and photographic accompaniment. Susan also hosts a popular monthly blog event, My Legume Love Affair, which celebrates the variety of legumes, from peas to peanuts, which you may want to explore. I am happy to note that I will be the February 2010 host for MLLA, so I am hoping to learn even more about the oh so tasty Vegetable Kingdom in the coming weeks.

It is late summer in Melbourne, Australia, where Johanna of the Green Gourmet Giraffe has made a pretty batch of Tomato and Peach Relish.


Also in Melbourne, Australia, our awesome WHB Headquarters Hostess Haalo, of Cook (Almost) Anything At Least Once lives up to her blog's title by test driving some gorgeous and huge (check out the photos of variously sized beans on her blog post for comparison) Gigantes Beans.

Saveur blogs over at the Toronto, Canada blog Taste Space and introduces us to Baked Asian Eggplants with Miso, the "yummiest eggplant ever". Bookmarked that post for next summer's eggplant harvest!


The House of Annie recently relocated to Sarawak, Malaysia and bloggers Nathan and Annie have been reporting on all kinds of wonderful recipes using local produce. This week's contribution to WHB is an exploration of colorful bell peppers in the dish Black Bean Chicken and Bell Peppers.

From the shores of Lake Garda, Italy, Cindystar sends us a velvety bowl of Zucchini Cream Soup topped with apples browned in butter. Cindystar's wonderful blog is written in both English and Italian, and her soup sounds even more succulent in its native tongue, "Vellutata di zucchine".


Bri of Briiblog in English, Cindystar's "neighbor" in Lake Garda, tempts us with a vegan recipe for Chocolate and Coconut Muffins. Bri also takes us on a foodie field trip to some ethnic food markets in Trento with some food blogger buddies, so be sure to read her exuberantly written post.


Finally, we have a sampling of Chenna al Timo (Thyme-Flavored Chenna), an Indian cheese dessert that Simona of Briciole prepared for us in her northern California kitchen. Simona's been on a cheesemaking jag of late and this herbal-infused Chenna sounds tempting. Briciole will be hosting next week's edition of Weekend Herb Blogging, so be sure to stop by to see what's cooking and being harvested in everyone's WHB posts.


Thank you again to Haalo for the opportunity to host Weekend Herb Blogging. I have such fun indulging in my passion for cooking, gardening and learning about new edibles and cuisines with this event. I hope you all enjoyed our virtual buffet as much as I did. And now after this fabulous spread, I am off to get into my virtual sweatpants with the forgiving waistline....

A Spicy Kale Soup Recipe from a Centenarian Azorean

A bookseller colleague sent me an heirloom recipe many moons ago when we were chatting about our mutual love of cooking. She has a neighbor, a certain Mrs. Lewis, a native of the Azores, who was 102 years old and still cooking up wonderful things in her kitchen at the time my buddy sent on her recipe for Kale Soup. I like to think Mrs. Lewis is now 103 and still stirring up pots of this wonderful soup, which is a traditional favorite in Portugal and the Azores, an Atlantic chain of islands 900 miles west of Lisbon and a Portuguese Autonomous Region.

My hardy kale plants soldier on in the Crispy garden even under the snow and after enduring several bouts of freezing and thawing along the temperature scale. Kale is a super vegetable in terms of nutrition too. Kale is high in many great vitamins and nutrients, including betacarotene, Vitamins C and K, lutein and calcium, and it makes a hearty soup for these chilly days of deep winter in upstate New York.



I am reproducing this treasure of a recipe below verbatim, (**funny typos and all, you'll see) and will just note that in deference to my Crispy spouse, Dan, who eschews meat, I substituted 1 (12 oz.) package of Melissa's meatless soy chorizo, removed from its inedible casing, for the linguica sausage called for by Mrs. Lewis.



Mrs. Lewis' Kale Soup

4-6 cups water (depends on how many you're severing**)
1/2 cup chopped up onion
1 clove garlic
1 potato small
1/2 cup thin slice linguica
2 cups kale chopped
Salt to taste

Bring water, onion, garlic, salt and linguica to boil. Add greens and potato, cook until tender. Serve with bread. If you don't have linguica you can use salt pork and if you don't have meat use red beans.



This hearty recipe is my contribution to this week's edition of Weekend Herb Blogging. Weekend Herb Blogging is a weekly event that was started by Kalyn's Kitchen and has been organized by Cook (Almost) Anything At Least Once for the last year or so.

I am happy to report that I the host of WHB #218 this week and will be happy to accept recipes featuring plant ingredients (herbs, vegetables, fruits, seeds, stems, flowers, etc.) until Sunday, Jan. 31, 2010. Entries must be submitted by:

* 5 pm Sunday - New York City Time (EST)
* 3pm Sunday - Utah Time
* 10pm Sunday - London Time
* 11pm Sunday - Rome Time
* 9am Monday - Melbourne (Aus) DS Time.

Your post can be informative, spotlight a particular ingredient and/or include a recipe where your chosen ingredient is one of the primary ingredients in the recipe. WHB posts must be written specifically for this blog event and may not be cross-posted in other events.



If you have a great veggie recipe to share this week, please send your posts to oldsaratogabooks AT gmail DOT com with WHB#218 in the subject line and the following details:

Your name Your Blog/URL
Your Post URL
Your Location
Attach a Photo: 250px wide

Looking forward to seeing what's cookin' in your kitchen this week. I've already had several cool WHB submissions and can't wait for more to include in the roundup.

Fennel Two Ways: Fresh and Baked

The best recipes are often the simplest, and cooking with fennel seems to bear this out. The sweetness and delicate anise flavor of fresh fennel is a welcome note in our summer salads. We also enjoy simple salads of thinly sliced fennel dressed with a squeeze of lemon, a splash of olive oil and some salt and pepper (and don't forget to decorate with some snipped fennel fronds!)


I had great luck with my fennel crop this summer after hiding them from ravaging bunnies and voles amidst some spiky pumpkin vines and we enjoyed many delicious fennel salads. After perusing my winter seed catalogs and looking longingly at the fennel page, I recently splurged on some supermarket fennel and tried baking them, similarly dressed, in the oven. They were fantastic! Baked fennel is a meltingly luscious side dish. The anise flavor mellows and a richer roasted taste comes forth when the fennel is cooked, and it makes a wonderful accompaniment to grilled fish.

Fennel Going in the Oven


Simple but Sensational Baked Fennel

2 large bulbs of fennel
3 Tbsp. olive oil
Salt
Pepper
1 fat clove garlic, peeled and minced
1/4 cup grated Parmesan

Trim fronds and pithy stalks from fennel. Trim off bottom end. Chop into quarters. Toss with olive oil to coat. Add garlic and toss again to coat. Season with salt and pepper and sprinkle with Parmesan.

Place in casserole dish and cover with foil.

Bake at 375 degrees F for 20 minutes. Remove foil and bake another 10 minutes to let edges get CRISPY and browned.

Serves 4.


Fennel Coming Out of the Oven

I am sharing this recipe with Maninas: Food Matters, who is this week's host for Weekend Herb Blogging. Now in its 216th week (impressive!)this foodie blogging event started by Kalyn's Kitchen and now headquartered by Haalo at Cook (Almost) Anything At Least Once celebrates the fruits, herbs and vegetables that grace good cooks' tables all over the world.

Baked Stuffed Busillus Frying Peppers

What a weird gardening year. After an inordinately slow start with our cooler and rainier than normal Spring and Summer, the Fall garden season has been balmy and today, October 7th, we have yet to have a killing frost. The always fertile zucchini plants keep pumping out produce, though the vines are somewhat withered, and my bell and frying pepper plants just keep fruiting away. The trees are just shy of the peak of autumn color, but we still have summer veggies. Just plain weird.

Faced with this autumnal abundance, we have been eating a lot of peppers and eggs, peppered tomato sauce, raw pepper strips, and packing egg and tuna salad into small hollowed-out peppers for breadless lunches. Not to mention those countless numbers of diced peppers cryogenically preserved in my chest freezer and which fly out to bonk us in the head every time we open the overhead freezer compartment in our refrigerator.



To keep up with this pepper bonanza, I decided to make some stuffed peppers. I have a gorgeous bunch of Busillus pepper plants which are still blossoming away. They are very faintly hot when cooked and they make my hands tingle slightly after I handle them, so people with sensitive skin should probably wear gloves. And try not to rub their eyes right afterward either.

Some of the Busillus Peppers are turning a glorious red, but most stay dark and glossy green. Despite their unfortunate name (doesn't Busillus sound like a pathogen?), they are a new favorite in our garden. They are incredibly productive and taste wonderful fried up with onions and garlic as the basis for other dishes, but I wanted to feature them (and use a good number of them up) in a casserole for supper, so I came up with this version of the classic rice-stuffed peppers.



It was a satisfying supper and was even better heated up as leftovers for successive lunches. The queso fresco cheese gets soft, but doesn't melt as much as other cheeses, so if you want a gooier stuffed pepper, you could substitute Monterey Jack. The herb patch is still green, so I harvested some fresh cilantro, plucked some homegrown garlic from the garden shed and got creative in the kitchen.



Baked Stuffed Frying Peppers

1-1/2 cups enchilada sauce, divided (check ingredients to make sure wheat is not added as a thickener)

12 oz. queso fresco

2 Tbsp. olive oil
1 onion, chopped
3 fat cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
2-3 extra frying peppers, seeded and chopped

12 large frying peppers, tops cut off, seeds and ribs removed, and slit up one side

1 bunch fresh cilantro, finely chopped (about 1/2 cup)
Salt and Pepper to taste
2 cups cooked rice (make up a bigger pot of rice to serve peppers over later, mmmmm)

Line a 9x13 inch baking pan with 1/2 cup enchilada sauce.

Bring a pot of salted water to a boil. Working in batches, blanch prepared peppers 4-5 minutes, or until skins are easily pierced with a fork. Drain and cool. Repeat with remaining peppers.

Cut queso fresco into wedges as below.



Heat oil in frying pan. Add garlic and cook, stirring, one minute. Add onion and chopped peppers and cook until softened, stirring occasionally, 7-8 minutes.

Add cooked vegetables to mixing bowl. Add rice, cilantro, and salt and pepper to taste. Mix in about 1/2 cup enchilada sauce to moisten. Stuff about 2 Tbsp. rice mixture into each blanched pepper. Place a wedge of cheese in the center and place in prepared baking dish. Drizzle peppers with remaining enchilada sauce. Cover baking dish with foil and bake in preheated 350 degree F oven for 45 minutes.

Serves 6 pepper lovers. Delicious over more plain cooked rice.



This seemed like the kind of recipe that would be enjoyed over at Weekend Herb Blogging, a weekly blog event run by Haalo of Cook (Almost) Anything At Least Once, where the focus is on the Vegetable Kingdom. This week WHB is being hosted by Susan the Well-Seasoned Cook, whose blog has lots of gorgeous photography and is the headquarters of My Legume Love Affair. Susan will have a roundup of all the Weekend Herb Blogging entries after Sunday's deadline, so be sure to swing by and see what everyone's playing around with in kitchens from around the world.

Playing Around with Curry Leaves

The curry leaf is a new favored ingredient in the Crispy Kitchen. I recently discovered the pleasures of the India Bazaar in Albany, NY, (1321 Central Avenue) where they stock a diverting selection of dried beans, spices, barfi (brightly colored "chickpea fudge"),Indian groceries, sacks of heavenly-scented basmati rice, and fresh produce. Bags of fresh curry leaves are something that I picked up on my last several visits, and upon the advice of the grocer, have stuck them in my pots of steamed rice for a wonderful scent and flavor.

Curry leaves look similar to bay leaves (my husband says they look like they fell off a house plant) being glossy green ovals with pointed tips. They come from a small shrub, Murraya koenigii, which is grown throughout India and South Asia. The leaves do get softened during cooking, so I leave them in my dishes, but you can remove them like a bay leaf from finished dishes and their pungent flavor and scent will remain. You can find out more about cooking with and the botanical and medicinal properties of curry leaves and other plants at this informative website.



One can freeze curry leaves, but like cilantro, their flavor is much reduced, so it is best to use them fresh. I recently tried out this recipe for Parsi Potatoes with Egg and it was lovely, sort of like an exotically-spiced Potato Frittata. The recipe was a bit time-consuming, but the flavors were spectacular.

I thought I would send this post about curry leaves over to Weekend Herb Blogging, the weekly blog event that celebrates the Vegetable Kingdom. WHB is headquartered by Haalo at Cook (Almost) Anything At Least Once and is being hosted this week by Serbian food blogger Palachinka. Head on over to see what other interesting leaves, herbs, fruit and other plant ingredients are being featured by great cooks from around the world at the WHB roundup after October 5th.

Putting A Monster in a Jar: Pickled Cauliflower

During this overly damp and cooler than normal growing season in upstate New York, we've had mixed success with our garden veggies. The zucchinis, beans, greens and cucumbers grew with tropical vigor, but other vegetables, like the tomato crop, suffered from the various viruses and pests that love wetter conditions.

We had a six-pack of cauliflower transplants in our garden and only two came to a head. But head they did. They were cauliflower whoppers and grew to be 14 inches in diameter. I used one earlier this summer over the course of a week, snagging florets for raw snacking, stir-frying others, and baking the rest with some grated knobs of cheese.

Then I was faced with another gargantuan cauli-monster and I thought of Dog Hill Kitchen's Gingered Sweet Pickled Cauliflower recipe. I've never canned with cauliflower, so I was eager to try out this recipe, which Dog Hill Mistress Maggie says is similar tasting to those jars of mixed vegetable pickles you sometimes see in the pickle aisle.



My monster cauliflower was thus preserved for winter months when our garden consists of a frozen, rabbit-gnawed couple of Brussels Sprouts stumps, topped with snow. I used a couple of Bucillus frying peppers from our garden instead of the prettier red chile pepper called for in Maggie's recipe, but otherwise, I was faithful in following this great (and long-bookmarked) recipe. Thank you Maggie!

I am submitting this pickled cauliflower post to Weekend Herb Blogging #199 which is being hosted by Mele Cotte. Weekend Herb Blogging is a weekly blog event that puts the spotlight on those members of the Vegetable Kingdom that sustain us, and is headquartered at Cook (Almost) Anything At Least Once.

Weekend Herb Blogging #198 Roundup

Welcome to the roundup of blog posts and recipes that showcase the bounty of the Vegetable Kingdom in Weekend Herb Blogging #198. I was honored to once again host this popular and mouthwatering event. Bloggers from various corners of the world submitted entries using plant ingredients from Malaysia, Italy, Canada, Scotland, the United States, and Australia.

From Italy, we got an entry from Graziele of the very informative herb blog Erbe in Cucina. She grew some shiny red Shishito peppers, which she used in a stir-fry with shrimp, peas, sprouts and rice. Her post has information about growing these mild chili peppers and suggests several other ways of cooking them while they are green as well.


Muneeba (and her handsome cat Ozzy) blogs from Connecticut, USA, at her lovely blog, An Edible Symphony and prepared a fresh Zucchini, Tomato and Herb Tart to share with us. Her recipe calls for layers of sliced vegetables over a puff pastry crust, topped with an egg and cream mixture that gets baked until golden brown. A perfect seasonal recipe for us in the Northern Hemisphere.


Nate and Annie just recently moved The House of Annie from San Jose, CA to Malaysia and I certainly got a geography lesson researching the various locales in their blog post. Their blog post describes a lovely home-cooked meal they were treated to when they flew with their many suitcases from Kuala Lumpur to Kuching, the capital city of the Malaysian state of Sarawak, on the northern coast of Borneo. Their WHB entry describes a local fiddlehead fern variety, Paku, which was stir-fried with shallots, garlic, and belacan (shrimp paste).


Kalyn, from Kalyn's Kitchen, the founder of Weekend Herb Blogging, shares a colorful Bulgur Salad with Tomatoes, Cucumbers, Parsley, Mint and Lemon. Bulgur is an easy grain to cook with, as it just needs to steep in boiling water to soften. For a gluten-free alternative to bulgur (bulgur is a form of cracked wheat), try quinoa, which is becoming more easily available in supermarkets and natural foods markets.


If you haven't yet had a chance to visit Brii's Blog in English, you are in for a treat. Brii is an herbalist who week after week prepares intriguing conserves, pickles, liqueurs and other wonders in the kitchen using a variety of garden grown plants. This week Brii shows us all how to make Aromatic Salt from a variety of herbs which she advises to "give away generously". Be sure to see her gorgeous blog with all of its photos from her many Italian Alpine treks.


Mint is the star ingredient in a Thai-inspired Spicy Chicken and Mint Salad made by Pam of Sidewalk Shoes. Pam is a Tennessee teacher by day and passionate home cook by night. My Crispy Cook heart was also warmed by her love of reading and the great book reviews she sprinkles throughout the recipes and cat photos on her blog.


Up north in Ontario, Canada, Jerry of Jerry's Thoughts, Musings, and Rants made an intriguing Peach, Prosciutto and Goat Cheese Pizza. This sounds like a great combination of flavors and the added smokiness from grilling the pizza outside sounds even more heavenly.


Healthy and delicious recipes abound on Joanne's Eats Well With Others blog and this week the sidewalk fruit vendors in New York City tempted her with their blueberries. Joanne sends us all a slice of Blueberry Muffin Cake to make use of these seasonal berries.

Hailing from Sydney, Australia, our wonderful Weekend Herb Blogging Head Master, Haalo, of Cook (Almost) Anything At Least Once, introduces us to the Lebanese Cucumber. She cured some baby Qukes in lemon sea salt, caster sugar, lemon juice and herbs and they look mighty tasty. As Haalo notes, they make "a refreshing snack for the warmest of days."


Katie in Michigan made use of an overflowing box of veggies from her share in a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm to make a spectacular looking Stuffed Pattypan Squash. Her blog Eat This, has lots of other fantastic gluten-free recipes using whole grains, with an emphasis on fresh produce, natural ingredients and sugar alternatives.


After submitting a lesson to WHB last week on how to can tomato sauce, Cinzia provides followup instruction for canning whole tomatoes with basil, or Pomodori Pelati. Her bilingual food blog, Cindystar, showcases many other glorious recipes and many great photos of life on shores of Lake Garda.

From her garden plot in Scotland, Mangocheeks offered up a delicious round of pakoras made with golden beetroot and coriander. Her blog, Allotment 2 Kitchen, has many other recipes featuring her homegrown produce and tasty bits about Scottish cooking.


Finally, from upstate New York, your host, The Crispy Cook, blogged about my daughter's heartache at a recent soccer game and how she requested a most humble dish for dinner, Comfort Corn. Not my fanciest dish, but one which offered up a little solace on a plate.


Another interesting round of Weekend Herb Blogging and one which introduced me to a few new blogs, recipes and unusual plant ingredients. I now pass the torch on to Mele Cotte, who will be hosting Weekend Herb Blogging #199 from August 31st through September 6th. Thank you to everyone who contributed these great recipes. I have already bookmarked several to make soon. See you at Mele Cotte next week...