Ted Allen’s “Pretentious Foodie Bullshit Meal”
This. Is. Awesome.
Stuffed Red Peppers
Ever wonder why red peppers cost $5 and green peppers $1? Start growing your own and you’ll quickly find out. I actually didn’t realize this but red peppers are just really ripe green peppers. They’re not two different plants. And growing them for the first time this year I discovered just how long it takes a green pepper to ripen into a red pepper. Months.
So, back to that $4 price swing between green and red peppers. The answer is—patience.
And the payoff is taste. Red peppers are far sweeter, and therefore versatile than green ones. The shot above is from the first red pepper I picked this year, Sept. 27, after planting the damn things back in July. The photo doesn’t do it justice, but the thing was friggin’ huge. Like almost the size of my daughter’s head huge.
So the only logical way to take advantage was stuffed bell peppers. No original recipe here. Instead I’ll refer you to this one from Epicurious. (Sorry, no shot of the finished dish). Most stuffed peppers recipes include ground beef, but I was trying to do this as a side dish for fish, so wanted a more vegetarian version. Big mistake because while it tasted awesome, the fish was totally lost. Easily could have been a main dish at these portions.
Got me thinking about other ways to stuff peppers… with couscous, or with chopped dried apricots, etc. Sky’s the limit and I’ll definitely be experimenting with it again soon.
Foraging for Chanterelles in Sweden
My family and I recently spent a week in Sweden visiting my relatives on my mom’s side in an areas of the country called Varmland. The family home is in a small village called Glava, which is just on the edge of a beautiful nature preserve/national forest called Glaskogen.
The absolute highlight of the trip for me, other than getting to see Aly meet her great-grandmother and namesake, was a very unexpected opportunity to go foraging for chanterelle mushrooms. I say unexpected because I had thought the culinary highlight of the trip would be the moose meat meal that I only get on my few-and-far-between visits to Sweden. (Separate post on that to follow later).
It all began one evening when we took a hike with my aunt Yvonne and her husband Lars for a lakeside picnic dinner. Not steps away from our parked car, barely three feet into the trail I came inches away from stomping through a massive cluster of chanterelle mushrooms before Lars warned me off.
Gumbo… America’s Dish
As July 4th hit at the end of a long weekend, the urge to grill can be understandable. After all, that’s what Americans do on long weekends right? We grill burgers, corn, hot dogs, ribs and so on. If there’s any a holiday made for grilling, it’s Independence Day.
So what better time to make gumbo? In my opinion, there is no more dish more American than gumbo. It’s the ultimate melting pot of ingredients, technique and flavor that reflects the diverse makeup of this country. Far more so than burgers or apple pie (neither of which are uniquely American either, but that’s another story.)
Penne w/ Shrimp and Freshly Shelled Peas
Finally got around to harvesting the peas this weekend. Might have waited about a week too long, but they still turned out crunchy and sweet.
I actually bought shelling pea seeds by mistake. I had wanted regular snap peas, or peas you cook and eat while still in the pod. Shelling peas need to be, well, shelled because the pod casing is tougher. Shelling peas have something called “vellum” which is a paper-like lining inside the pod that causes it to be stringy. Snap peas, English peas and others don’t have the gene that produces vellum, so they’re more edible. They’re also a shitload easier to harvest because you just need to pick and use. Shelling peas, again, require shelling, which can be a major pain in the ass.
But, what I found, was that the extra work is worth it. Shelling peas have a wonderfully sweet flavor, bright color, and crunch that you just can’t get from frozen peas, which can easily get mushy, grey, and tasteless.
