Giardiniera

Garden in a jar. A light and delicious appetizer salad is as picturesque as it is piquant.

For a cocktail party fundraiser in New York last weekend, I was planning to take a large antipasto platter centered on ravioletti (mini raviolis) with sundried tomatoes, tiny balls of mozzarella, and salami, and needed a vegetable counterpoint. While I was fishing the ravioletti from the bottom of the freezer at our posh local Italian deli, I spied giant jars of giardiniera, pickled peppers and mushrooms on top of the freezer cases. Aha. That would be it. 

Giardiniera is a combination of lightly pickled vegetables, usually containing cauliflower, peppers, celery and carrots, and spiked with mustard seeds and hot pepper. It goes together in a snap, cures within a day and keeps for weeks in the fridge. I couldn’t find my notes from the last time I made it but I recalled that the recipe came from Gourmet magazine, and luckily Deb at the Smitten Kitchen blog reproduced a similar recipe, which I used as my guide. Like Deb, I omitted the olives. I was considering omitting the jarred pepperoncini, but added them at the end since their hotness re-balanced the sweetness of the pickling liquid.  My organic veggies were from our CSA and very fresh, so my cooking time was considerably less than the original recipe. Pay attention at the stove!

Giardiniera adapted from Smitten Kitchen and Gourmet

Pickling liquid (see below)

1 large head cauliflower (at least 2 lbs before trimming, about 2 after)

4 medium carrots

4 stalks celery

1 red bell pepper

1 yellow bell pepper

About 8 oz jarred pepperoncini (3/4 of a 12 oz jar, selecting the smallest ones)

Pickling liquid:

2½ c white vinegar

3 c water

¾ c white sugar

5 tbsp Kosher or other coarse salt

1 tsp yellow mustard seeds

½ tsp red pepper flakes (or crushed whole red peppers)

Clean a large (2 quart) jar.

Make and cool the pickling liquid. Bring the ingredients to a boil over medium heat, stirring to dissolve the sugar and salt. Set aside to cool for about 30 minutes.

Prepare the fresh vegetables. Cut the cauliflower into florets of about ¾-1 inch,  saving the large stems and core for another use. Peel the carrots and slice on the diagonal into ½-inch pieces. Trim the celery, pulling off any long strings and slice it on the diagonal to a similar size as the carrots. Remove the stems, seeds and ribs and cut the peppers into 1-inch squares.

Cook the vegetables. Bring a large pot of water (not salted) to a boil. Place a bowl of ice water in the sink.  Cook each vegetable separately until it is crisp tender (err on the side of crisp). Cauliflower and carrots take 3-4 minutes, celery and peppers about 2 minutes. Remove the vegetables quickly to a colander and dunk it in ice water for a few seconds to stop the cooking. Drain well and spread the vegetables on towels to remove as much water as possible.

Assemble the giardiniera. When the vegetables are dry and thoroughly cool, place them in layers in a large (2 quart) jar, adding in the pepperoncini as you go.  Pour the cooled pickling liquid over the vegetables to cover. Cap the jar and refrigerate.  The pickled vegetables will be ready in 24 hours and will keep for a week or two in the refrigerator.

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Roasted Tomato and Red Pepper Soup

Quintessentially seasonal.  Tomatoes and red peppers — roasted and slowly cooked into soup – against a backdrop of falling leaves and crisp fall air. I made this as a soup base, thinking that I would freeze it for the winter. It’s versatile since you can add a little rice or mini raviolis, a few herbs or smoky paprika, maybe some chopped vegetables, some cream to make a bisque and so on. But it was so delicious and we were so hungry that it barely lasted an hour. Next week, the soup base.

I can tomatoes – in some form or another from August through October, a batch a weekend to keep pace with our CSA. Every horizontal surface within a stone’s throw of my miniscule kitchen has a tomato on it, ripening. It’s actually kind of comical. However, it’s clear when I start to roast them that I’ve just about had it with canning many kinds of tomato sauce, whole tomatoes, tomato ketchup and chutney and jam and salsa and soup base.

For the soup, I roasted field tomatoes cut side up in the oven at 400 degrees until they started to concentrate their juices and sear the bottom. Meanwhile, I roasted a large red pepper skewered on a carving fork over the gas flame of the stove until black, tossed it in a paper bag to cool and removed the blackened skin with a towel. (Do not rinse with water or you’ll lose the valuable oils and the flavor.) The tomatoes and peppers, chopped up, were simmered with onions, garlic and homemade chicken stock or vegetable broth, and then pureed with an immersion blender. 

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Braised Pork and Peppers on Collard Noodles

Ever get tired of pasta? We are. And besides, wheat doesn’t agree with some of us and pasta from other grains just doesn’t cut it. I had made a quick braise of pork loin (a method that also works with chicken) and was trying to figure out an accompaniment other than pasta. Grains didn’t seem right. I needed a wide noodle. And they were: great flat leaves of collards, all the ready for slicing into broad bands. Shallow-boiled in salted water until “al dente,” they were the perfect substitute for pasta, and more nutritious too.

This meat braise is a great dish that comes together in under half an hour and is sophisticated enough for a dinner party. I use a small pork loin, not the huge ones that are already packaged, though those would work as well. Or use boneless chicken breast or thighs. Sprinkle the meat with salt and paprika, brown it lightly on all sides, splash on white wine and chicken stock (or add a teaspoon or two of white wine vinegar to chicken stock), pile on sliced peppers and onions, cover and cook slowly for 20 minutes. Add a little sour cream. Sprinkle with herbs. That’s it.

Braised Pork Loin with Peppers and Onions

½-¾ lb pork loin (or boneless chicken)

Paprika and salt

Vegetable oil

1 medium onion, sliced vertically in thin moon-shaped pieces

1 orange or yellow bell pepper, sliced thin

Optional: thinly sliced poblano pepper

1 clove garlic, sliced

¼ c white wine

½ c chicken stock

2 tbsp sour cream

Parsley

Sprinkle the pork loin with paprika and salt. Heat vegetable oil in a medium skillet that will hold the pork loin in one piece (or halve the meat). Brown the meat on all sides over medium high heat. Add white wine and let it reduce. Turn down the heat, add the stock and pile the onions, peppers and garlic on top of the meat. Cover the pan and let the mix simmer for 15-20 minutes, or until the meat is cooked through. Remove the meat and vegetables to a platter. Reduce the liquid in the pan by a little and add sour cream. Pour over the meat and vegetables and garnish with parsley. (For a nice presentation, slice the meat into thin rounds on the diagonal and arrange on the platter.)

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Corn and Roasted Green Chili Risotto

‘Tis the season of corn and chilis. Nearing the end of their harvest cycle, great stands of corn stalks are drying and rustling in the wind, yielding long plump ears for supper. After we’ve had a summer full of corn on the cob, we’re slicing off the kernels, simmering the cobs for stock, and adding them to soups, stews, corn bread, and now risotto.

Meanwhile, green chili peppers are populating their bushes in droves — long anaheims, shiny dark green poblanos, jalapenos, serranos, bird chilis and varieties I’ve never heard of in amazing shapes and colors. Our CSA plants hundreds of feet of peppers as a pick-your-own crop and this has been an especially successful season.  We’ve been harvesting 20-30 peppers a week for about a month and there are many little ones growing, a testament to constant picking that stimulates the plant to produce more fruit.

 I roasted the largest anaheims (in the same family as the famous hatch chili from New Mexico), a few poblanos and others that are relatively large on our outdoor grill until browned. The skins slip right off. The milder ones were eaten with a little salt and fresh cheese. The stronger ones were set aside in the refrigerator to add to various dishes or frozen in heavy plastic bags in quantities that are logical to add to individual dishes. Since thin-skinned chili peppers can be frozen raw, I halved and de-seeded some to be preserved this way. They get mushy but I use them in cooked food so no matter. (If you’re freezing bell peppers, blanch them first.) Yet others, the ones whose color is breaking, are left on a rack to turn red and dry out, so that they can be bagged whole or crushed. My pepper supply will last a year. Looking forward to local huevos rancheros in January. 

So for a satisfying supper on the first day of fall, I decided to make risotto, using stock made with corncobs. I added roasted corn kernels and green chilis, and spiked the dish with lime juice and zest, and sprinkling of cilantro.  Served with tomatoes sprinkled with a crumbly cheese, this was a perfect celebration of seasonality.  (I cooked the corn in the oven, allowing half to brown and adding the other half partway through just to cook them lightly.)

Corn and Roasted Green Chili Risotto

2 ears of corn

3-4 c vegetable or light chicken stock

1-2 anaheim peppers

Olive oil

Salt

1 small onion, finely chopped

Butter (or olive oil)

¾ c Arborio rice

1 lime

Cilantro leaves

Cut the corn kernels into a bowl (they spatter less if you cut the cobs in half crosswise and slice one half at a time), reserving the cobs.

Place the cobs in a saucepan with the broth or stock and simmer for 15-20 minutes. Remove and discard the cobs. Keep the liquid warm.

Heat the oven to 425 degrees. Place half the corn kernels and the whole peppers on baking sheet and with a little olive oil and salt. Roast for around 7-10 minutes, turning the peppers and stirring the corn part way through. Add the reserved corn kernels and cook for 3-5 minutes until cooked but not brown. Remove the corn to a bowl to cool. Place the peppers in a bag to steam, and remove the skin and seeds. Chop and add to the corn.

To make the risotto, lightly sauté the onion in a little butter until soft. Add the rice and stir to coat the grains. Start adding the stock, about ¼ cup at a time, regulating the heat to keep the liquid at a simmer. Keep stirring and adding additional ¼ cup of stock. The entire risotto should take about 20 minutes to cook.

Add the reserved corn and peppers, the lime juice and half the zest and cilantro.

Garnish with the remaining lime zest and cilantro.

Serves 3 as a main dish, 4 as a side dish.

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Moroccan Feast: Baked Fish with Chermoula, Peppers and Potatoes

Chermoula is the magic sauce of Morocco. With its combination of herbs and spices, it offers robust flavor and an alluring complexity to dishes featuring chicken or fish or, on the vegetable side, potatoes, peppers and eggplants. Like Indian mint-cilantro chutney, Italian basil pesto and gremolata, and Argentine chimichurri, among numerous international examples, it’s a mash-up of herbs and other ingredients.

The chermoula that I made for this feast uses only cilantro, but I’ve made it with a combination of cilantro and parsley. It also contains smoked paprika, cayenne pepper, toasted cumin seed, garlic, and ginger, all ground to a paste and thinned with lemon juice, champagne vinegar and olive oil.  A jar of this will keep for a long time in the refrigerator but it’s so good that it’s typically used up quickly.

The other significant ingredient in Moroccan food is preserved lemon, which is made by marinating lemon quarters in salt and lemon juice for a couple of weeks. Drat, I recently discarded what was left of my last batch and hadn’t started a new one. However, I remembered that Mark Bittman of the New York Times had devised a quick pickle that could substitute, so I tried it, with great success. He combined diced lemon peel and flesh with salt and sugar and let them marinate for several hours. The result wasn’t as pungent as the real thing, but the crunchy lemon peel added the same twang.

As for the meal, I’ve wanted to make this since March when I read Gail Monaghan’s Wall Street Journal column during a business trip. While the Wall Street Journal is not normally considered a bastion of culinary advice, Monaghan is a good cook and a good writer and her column is consistently informative. She recounts many visits to Morocco, and in the highlights of one, a baked fish made by her host’s splendid cook. 

It’s a bit of a project, but not complicated or difficult. It took me a half hour in the morning and a little over an hour in the evening, including baking time.  In the morning (or the day before), make the chermoula and slather it all over the fish, letting the fish marinate for at least 4 hours or overnight. (Note that if you marinate the fish for more than four hours, you should pull it out of the refrigerator an hour before cooking to bring it close to room temperature.)  Also, make the lemon pickle if you don’t have preserved lemons on hand.

A few weeks ago, I made a homey potato dish layered with zucchini and peppers and remarked that I sometimes bake fish on top. This dish uses a similar method, but rather than cook everything together, sliced potatoes are baked in 450 degrees until crisp before the rest of the ingredients are added. Topped with the fish and then sautéed peppers, onions and garlic seasoned with preserved lemons, salted capers and olives, the dish is baked until the fish is cooked. 

I had a whole sea bass weighing 1½ pounds, but you could use a much larger fish if you’re feeding a crowd. You could also use fish steaks or filets.  In my case, I gauged the pan and the amount of potatoes on the dimensions of the fish, so this made a lot more vegetables than necessary. No worry since the leftovers are delicious. They make a satisfying meal crisped in a pan and topped with a poached egg and a drizzle of chermoula. 

In fact, this could easily be a vegetarian dish if you leave out the fish. Ha.

Baked Fish with Chermoula, Peppers and Potatoes adapted from Gail Monaghan, WSJ

1 fish (1-2 lb whole gutted and cleaned sea bass, branzino, red snapper, or steaks or filets of the same)

1/2 c chermoula (see below)

1½ – 2 lb potatoes, peeled and sliced 3/8 inch thick (Yukon gold and/or white)

1 medium-large sweet onion, halved vertically and sliced into ¼-inch half-moons

1 green pepper, cored and sliced into ¼ inch strips

1 red or orange pepper, cored and sliced into ¼ inch strips

6 tbsp olive oil, divided

2 small dried hot red peppers or 1 tsp red pepper flakes

6-8 ripe plum tomatoes or 1½ c canned whole tomatoes, chopped, juice drained

½ c pitted green olives, cut in 2-3 pieces

¼ c salted capers, rinsed

1 preserved lemon, chopped or 3 tbsp quick lemon pickle (see below)

Cilantro leaves

At least four hours (up to a day) before you want to serve the dish, place the fish in a glass pan large enough to hold it in one layer. Coat the fish thoroughly with chermoula, including the inside if using a whole fish. Cover and refrigerate, turning it once during the marinating process. Remove the fish from the refrigerator and let it return to room temperature, about an hour before you’re going to prepare it if it has been marinating for longer than four hours.

Heat the oven to 450 degrees. Toss the sliced potatoes in 3 tbsp of the olive oil and place them in a heavy roasting pan large enough to hold the fish in one layer. (I used an enameled cast iron roasting pan.)  Cook the potatoes, turning once, until crisp and lightly browned, about 25 minutes.

Meanwhile, in a large sauté pan, heat the remaining 3 tbsp of olive oil and add the onions and fresh peppers. Saute over medium-high heat to wilt them, about 10 minutes. Add the hot peppers and tomatoes and cook them until soft and well combined with the onion-pepper mixture. Add the olives, capers, and preserved lemon or lemon pickle, stirring and cooking for about 2-3 minutes. Remove from the heat.

Place the fish, with the chermoula that clings to it, on top of the crisped tomatoes. Top with the pepper-onion-tomato mixture and pour on any chermoula remaining in the marinating pan.

Bake until the fish is tender, about 25 minutes for a 1½-2 lb fish, and longer for a larger fish. Let the dish cool for 10 minutes or so before serving. It is best served warm rather than hot.

Disassemble the dish, and relayer it onto a serving platter, sprinkling the top with fresh cilantro. If serving a whole fish that has not been boned, slice it carefully along the spine, head to tail to release the filet on one side of the fish. The backbone should be taken out in one piece, but if stubborn, turn the fish over and over and slit the other side of the bone.

Serves 4.

Chermoula adapted from Gail Monaghan, WSJ

This makes chermoula that has the consistency of salad dressing. If you want it to be more paste-like, omit the water.

2 c packed cilantro leaves, rinsed and dried if sandy

5 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped

1 ¼-inc piece fresh ginger, peeled and coarsely chopped

2 tbsp smoked paprika

1 tbsp sweet paprika

½ – ¾ tsp cayenne pepper

2 tbsp whole cumin seed, dry toasted in a pan over low heat and cooled

1/3 c white wine or Champagne vinegar

1/3 c fresh lemon juice

1/3 c olive oil

1/3 c water

Salt to taste

Process all ingredients except the salt in a food processor until smooth. Adjust for salt. Makes about 1½ c. This can be stored in the refrigerator for several weeks.

Quick Lemon Pickle, adapted from Mark Bittman, NYT

1 organic lemon, preferably unwaxed

1 tbsp sugar

1 tsp salt

If the lemon is waxed, plunge it into boiling water for 20 seconds. Remove and scrub the skin to diminish the wax. Make sure it’s thoroughly dry before proceeding. Chop the lemon, peel and flesh, into 3/8 – ½-inch pieces and combine with the sugar and salt. Let sit at room temperature to cure for 3-4 hours before using. It improves as it sits and is even better the next day.

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Summer Vegetable Ricotta Custard

There’s nothing like a versatile base that simplifies meal preparation at any time of year. In the winter, we tend to favor vegetable frittatas, open-faced Italian omelets that contain any number of cooked vegetables. But in the heat of the summer, a mixture of eggs, milk and ricotta cheese makes a light base that envelopes the vegetables and forms a light custard. The custard can be flavored with spices such as saffron or nutmeg, or with herbs such as basil, parsley or cilantro You could also add grated cheese, or even a little precooked rice, but that makes the final dish heavier and more suitable for fall.

 I made this custard twice this month: the first time with roasted eggplant, red pepper and basil the second with corn, red and orange peppers and cilantro. I have previously used eggplant, tomatoes and mushrooms, as well as yellow summer squash and wax beans. As is, this makes a simple summer supper served with fresh tomatoes or a watermelon and tomato salad with feta cheese and basil. Simple, satisfying, summer.

 Summer Vegetable Ricotta Custard

About 2 cups of roasted or otherwise cooked vegetables (e.g., a combination of eggplant and red peppers, or corn and peppers, or summer squash and beans, or tomatoes and mushrooms, or any of them alone)

2 eggs

½ c milk (low-fat is fine)

½ c ricotta cheese (low-fat is fine)

Seasonings (e.g., 1 tbsp chopped basil or parsley, ¼ tsp grated nutmeg, ¼ tsp saffron dissolved in 1 tbsp hot water)

1 tsp salt or to taste

Heat the oven to 350 degrees.

Butter a 1-quart baking dish. Layer the vegetables in the dish.

Lightly beat the eggs and add the milk, ricotta cheese, stirring to combine well, Add seasonings and salt. Pour over the vegetables.

Bake until set, about 30 minutes. Let cool for about 10 minutes before serving

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Waste Not Want Not: Baked Peppers with Tuna and Rice

During seasonal transitions like early spring, I find myself cooking warm comfort food and dreaming about summer food.  There’s a great Italian rice salad that I sometimes make for a summer picnic, laced with tuna that’s been poached in oil (or good quality canned tuna in olive oil). It’s loaded with crunchy celery, abundant finely chopped parsley and fruity olive oil, and make piquant by the addition of capers and sometimes, tiny pieces of anchovy. 

Meanwhile, back here in springtime, I’ve had a hankering for stuffed peppers. I often rescue some good ones from the markdown bin at our local organic produce store. Many people don’t like stuffed peppers – or green peppers at all. Too grassy. Personally, I find them a great convenience as a vehicle for all kinds of mixtures, and a great way to use up stray ingredients or stretch the ones you have on hand. What brought this combination of peppers, tuna and rice to mind was a craving for a certain Italian antipasto of roasted green peppers and anchovies. There was something about the memory of those salty tidbits that made me think that a tuna-rice combination would make a good filling for the peppers.

So where’s the waste-not-want-not lesson? I had made a delicious tuna confit that we’ve been gradually eating for a while now; it involved slowly cooking locally sourced tuna in olive oil and storing it in a jar in the refrigerator. Now that the tuna is gone, except for bits and pieces, I had a jarful of delicious, fishy and fruity olive oil. I didn’t want to throw it out, but what could I use it for? I decided it was the answer to the dryness sometimes experienced with that Italian summer rice salad. I was right. It imparted both moisture and a terrific depth of flavor.

I combined tuna (a combination of my homemade confit and some from a can), chopped green and yellow bell pepper, finely chopped parsley, a little onion, some leftover rice and the olive oil. After taste testing, I added a heaping tablespoon of capers and freshly ground black pepper. Stuffed into peppers that had been halved, seeded, plunged in boiling water for 5 minutes, drained and cooled, the tuna-rice mixture was sprinkled with feta cheese, and the stuffed peppers were baked for 25 minutes.  They were even better eaten cold the next day.

Tuna and Rice Stuffed Peppers

3 green peppers

1½ c cooked white rice

1 small onion, diced

½ green pepper, diced

½ yellow pepper, diced

Approximately 3 tbsp olive oil (new or leftover from tuna confit)

½-¾ c tuna confit (or 1-2 cans good quality tuna in oil)

1 tbsp capers

Optional: 1 tbsp minced anchovies

¼ c parsley

Freshly ground black pepper

Optional: feta cheese

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Lightly oil a baking dish large enough to hold 6 pepper halves.

Wash the peppers and slice them vertically through the stem. Remove the seeds and membrane. When the water boils, plunge the peppers into the water and cook for 4-5 minutes, or until the peppers are slightly tender but still crisp. Remove the peppers to a colander to cool. place them in the baking dish, cut side up.

If you don’t have pre-cooked rice, cook about 3/4 cup of rice in boiling water turned to low as soon as the rice is added, covered, about 15 minutes. Set aside to cool slightly and add some olive oil to it while cooling.

Saute the diced onion and peppers in a small amount of olive oil until tender but still slightly crisp. Combine with the rice. Add tuna, capers, anchovies if using, parsley and freshly ground pepper. Add additional olive oil to bind the ingredients.

Spoon the rice and tuna mixture into the prepared pepper shells in the baking dish. Sprinkle with feta cheese if using and bake uncovered for 25-30 minutes.

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Braised Pork Loin with Sweet Peppers

I am a lousy meat cook. First of all, I’m not much of a meat-eater so it’s hard to get enthusiastic about the topic. Second, I think that Americans have been eating too much meat for generations. My preference is to use meat as a condiment and its stock as a base, stretching good quality ingredients while maintaining nutrition and flavor. No surprise then that most of my successful meat dishes are slow-cooked. That said, however, I have discovered a few quick ways of cooking meat, in this case pork (or alternatively, chicken).  This particular dish is simple but (potentially) elegant, quick (under 30 minutes) and nearly foolproof (if you don’t overcook it). It uses pork loin, not the least expensive cut by any means, but I feed four amply with ¾ pound, which amounts to under $5.00 for the meat at full price. Not bad for elegant.

The more costly ingredients are the organic bell peppers, that is, if you pay full price. Our local all-organic produce market places slightly marred peppers in the markdown bin, so at 69 cents per pound, they can be a (relative) bargain. When I get a haul of great peppers, this is one of the dishes I like to make.

The pork is sprinkled with paprika and slightly seared to seal in the juices. In goes a little white wine to deglaze the pan and then a little chicken stock. Sliced peppers and onions and a little thyme (fresh or dried) are mounded on top and allowed to simmer, covered, for about 20 minutes until the vegetables are crisp tender and the pork cooked through but slightly pink. The pork is removed to a warm platter to rest while a little sour cream or yogurt is added to the vegetables and cooked for a couple of minutes into a beautiful sauce. That’s it. Simplicity.  You can serve this on noodles or potatoes. I don’t know where I got the idea for this dish since I’ve been making it for so long, but I suspect it was from Pierre Franey’s New York Times series on quick meals.

Braised Pork Loin with Sweet Peppers

1 pork loin, ¾-1¼ lb

Sweet paprika

Salt

Vegetable oil

¼ c white wine

½ c chicken stock

1 medium onion, sliced vertically into crescent shapes

1 clove garlic, slivered

½ red pepper, slivered

½ yellow pepper, slivered

½ green pepper, slivered

½ tsp dried thyme or several sprigs of fresh thyme

2 tbsp sour cream or whole milk yogurt

Dry the pork loin. Cut it in half if necessary to fit the pan. Coat it with sweet paprika and a sprinkling of salt. Saute it slowly in vegetable oil to sear all sides. Add the white wine to deglaze the pan, and then the chicken stock. Pile the vegetables and thyme on top, bring the liquid to a simmer, cover the pan, and cook over low heat for about 20 minutes, or until the vegetables are crisp-tender and the meat is cooked but still slightly pink (it will continue to cook after being removed from the pan). Remove the pork to a plate and keep warm. Bring the liquid to a near boil, and add in the sour cream. (You can warm the sour cream with a little liquid before adding it to the pan to avoid curdling; this is more important when using yogurt than with sour cream.) Carve the pork into thin slices and top with the vegetables and cooking liquid. Spoon over noodles or potatoes. Serves 4.

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Pepper and Beef Goulash

Peppers peppers peppers. The combination of so many varieties of peppers with a fall cold snap makes us long for the comfort food, even though we’re still harvesting corn and tomatoes. Stews are the epitome of comfort food in our house, whether vegetarian or containing meat, poultry or fish. Having gone to school in Vienna, I have wonderful memories of eastern European cooking, the prevalence of paprika, the spark of vinegar, the addition of certain seeds like caraway. This is my own version of goulash, probably not authentic, but featuring the fresh peppers and tomatoes of late fall and wonderful beef from local organically raised grass-fed cattle. 

This is a pretty standard stew, but I have a few tricks. Paprika, with natural oils, tends to make the stew rich. I lighten it up, not with salt, which would be a normal first reaction, but with a tiny bit of cider vinegar. I also add caraway seeds, but only as a garnish since cooking them creates a bitter taste. Finally, after all of those peppers have cooked down into an unctuous sauce, I sprinkle the stew with lightly sautéed fresh peppers, providing a crunchy counterpoint. This stew tastes better the second day and freezes well.

Pepper and Beef Goulash

I lb well-marbled beef stew meat in 1-inch (or smaller) pieces

Vegetable oil

1 medium onion, cut in half horizontally and slivered vertically

1 red bell pepper, core removed, cut in half horizontally and slivered vertically

1 green bell pepper, core removed, cut in half horizontally and slivered vertically

1 tbsp sweet Hungarian paprika

Pinch of hot Hungarian paprika

8 fresh plum tomatoes, diced (or used canned)

Salt

1-2 tsp cider vinegar

½ tsp caraway seeds

½ red pepper, diced and sautéed

Optional: sour cream

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees. Trim and dry the beef, cutting it into the desired size. Brown the beef in medium hot oil and remove it to a heavy pot (I use a Le Creuset covered cast iron pot.)

Add more oil to the sauté pan if necessary and add the onions and peppers. Cook relatively slowly until wilted.  Add paprika and salt, cooking over low heat to combine well. Add tomatoes and cook to break them down slightly. Transfer the pepper-tomato mixture to the pot containing the beef, stir to combine, cover and place in the oven. After 30 minutes, check to see if the stew is bubbling and if so, turn the heat down to 250 degrees and cook for another hour.

Let the stew cool, refrigerate it and remove any excess grease from the top before heating to serve.

Taste the reheated stew and adjust the seasonings, adding a little vinegar before adding salt, if salt is needed at all. Sprinkle with caraway seeds and sautéed fresh peppers.

Serve on top of noodles.

Makes 4-6 servings depending on your habits and appetite.

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Sautéed Corn with Pepper and Tomato

What? Still serving fresh corn on the cob in New Jersey in October? You bet. No killer frost yet. Our local farm stand has a crop of corn in peak condition and another waiting, though we don’t have high hopes for the last one because the nights are getting too cold for the corn to ripen. This corn sauté, similar to a Louisiana “maquechoix” served for Thanksgiving, usually finds its way onto our table late in the summer or early fall when the corn becomes ripe and dense. The farmers who run our local corn stand plant successive crops so we rarely get any corn that’s over-ripe. So if you have access to fresh corn at any time of year, this recipe’s a winner. It was inspired by Bert Greene, whose Greene on Greens cookbook is an oldie but goodie. This year, the corn sauté was a convenient way of dispensing with the last of the cherry tomatoes, stray bits of peppers and basil, but not the corn, which continues to grow. At least for now. We’re so lucky.

Sautéed Corn with Vegetables

4 ears of corn

1 slice of extra-thick bacon

4 scallions, reserving the greens (or ½ of a small onion plus chives)

1 small red bell pepper, diced

2 plum tomatoes, seeded and chopped, or a handful of cherry tomatoes, halved

½ tsp fresh thyme

1 tsp fresh basil

2 tbsp heavy cream

Salt and pepper to taste

Scallion tops or fresh chives

Fresh basil if available

Cut the kernels from the corn. Cut most of them close to the core and a few halfway, scraping into a bowl he remaining corn flesh and juice with the back of a knife.

Cook the bacon slowly in a large pan until crisp. Remove the bacon to drain.

Add the scallions or onion and the red pepper pieces to the bacon fat and cook slowly until tender. Add the tomatoes and herbs and cook until well combined, 5 minutes or so. Add the corn and cream and cook for another 5 minutes or until the corn is tender. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Sprinkle with scallion tops or chives and tiny basil leaves.

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