Roasted Red Pepper Sauce

Insomnia, old friend of mine, has been plaguing me all week.  A few moments ago, I was laying flat on my back in bed, eyes wide in the dark, watching the clock roll over to yet another minute where my brain just wouldn’t turn off.  Then it dawned on me.  I have to remember to put up that post about the Roasted Red Pepper Sauce since everyone’s enjoying the eggplant meatballs so much, and they’re even better with the sauce!  So, insomniac that I am, I figured the best course of action was to endure the jarring sensation of turning the lights back on and get this recipe to you pronto instead of wiling away one sleepless minute/hour at a time in bed. 

Making your own roasted peppers is a breeze and so much tastier than the stuff you get in a jar at the store.  And once you’ve gotten the knack of making your own roasted peppers, it’s even easier to whip them into a sauce that’ll make plain ol’ tomato sauce seem boring and so-last-season!  It’s fantastic over the eggplant meatballs, but I could certainly see this smoky yet brightly flavored sauce doing miracles for run-of-the-mill fish, chicken, beef or vegetable entrees. 

While peppers are in season, you might as well just go ahead and roast a batch every weekend and keep them in the fridge with a little oil to pull out to make this sauce in a jiff as you need it (or to make this spread for your sandwiches).  Or if you’d rather, make the sauce on the weekend too, and it’ll keep a few days so you can use it on weeknights or in quick lunches. 

For the Four Eyes

No matter how much I enjoy them, I always feel a little strange about eating dandelion greens.  It’s also strange to think about somebody purposely growing dandelions, don’t you think?  But the truth is, they’re mighty tasty, in that slightly bitter way. 

The farm is growing dandelions for the first time this year, and the large bunch I brought home with me landed on the counter next to the mesh bag of baby red potatoes I’d just picked up at the store.  Fate would have these two ingredients married together over the course of the next hour into a hearty warm salad, one of those concoctions where I raided the fridge and threw in whatever seemed viable, including the rest of the chicory from last week.

It Begins

It’s so wonderful to have an abundance of fresh delicious produce again.  Just seems like a few weeks ago that we locavores were subsisting on potatoes and the last dredges of canned goods.  The sight of plump ruby red strawberries at the Headhouse Market nearly made me weak in the knees.  Nothing, and I mean nothing, compares in sensual eating to the first bite of a juicy, ripe, just-picked strawberry.  At least that’s the way I feel about it. 

Helping out at the Weavers Way Farm table at the Headhouse Market was like going home.  I’d missed it more than I even knew: the energy generated by shoppers and farmers all focused on freshly harvested food.  Of course, it didn’t hurt that I could load up on all sorts of glorious greens and some asparagus. 

I picked up a few more bunches of the edible chrysanthemum to try mixed in with the other salad greens I procured.  I thought the zing and tenderness of the chrysanthemum might contrast nicely with the edgier endive and smooth butter lettuce.  And, of course, my dear old friend kohlrabi got tossed in the shopping sack.  I actually had a great time “pushing” the kohlrabi at the farm’s table.  So many people hadn’t ever seen it before, asking questions about how to use it.  If you hadn’t guessed, I love answering question about how to prepare unusual fresh vegetables. 

Rolling With It

I’m learning a very valuable life lesson these days.  Change, for the better or for the worse, is strangely easier to deal with in larger quantities. I’ve already mentioned the big change I made recently in careers. If I’d had my druthers, that change would have been more than enough for me for a year or so.  But following close behind it, much to my initial dread, was another big change.  D and I bought a house and moved into it this past weekend.  So now, in about a month’s time, both my job and my home are completely different. 

Moving to the new house was looming in my head for the past month.  Don’t get me wrong, I helped pick it out so I was happy with the new house.  I just didn’t want to leave the old one, what with the four years of junk stored up in the basement and the kitchen I’d come to love so much.  I don’t think I posted many pictures on here of my old kitchen, but it was adorably retro with red walls and a decidedly Asian flair that I had carefully cultivated.  I’d moved in there while I was still single so everything was arranged just the way I liked it.  The one downside though was its size: 8 feet by 10 feet.  Ouch.  When we picked out the new house, the kitchen was top priority for me. 

Green Goodness

Sometimes it’s the little things that tickle a person.  Things that make the corners of your mouth turn up just a notch and put a gleam in your eyes.  That’s what happened when Farmer Dave asked me to play around with a new crop on Weavers Way Farm.  I was tickled because it was, whether he realized it to be or not, a little pat on the back that said “Hey, you’re pretty much an expert at figuring out how to use farm produce so naturally I’d ask you to create a recipe for me.”  

This mystery ingredient, however, was completely new to me too.  Edible Chrysanthemum is known by many names (Garland Chrysanthemum, Crown Daisy, Shingiku, Choy Suy Green, Tong Ho, Ssukgat, etc.) around the world and is used mostly in Asian dishes, from what I could gather.  It is different from the ornamental mums you put out in your flower beds or deck containers each fall.  Its leaves do look similar though.  Farmer Dave was asking me to play around with the stuff since he didn’t know what to tell customers at market who asked how to use it.  Well, those customers weren’t the only ones without a clue.