I found a great way to use the serrano peppers from my garden

 I like to garden. For me, it's quite satisfying to walk into my backyard and pick something ripe and fresh to eat. 

The trouble is, my yard is not very conducive to growing a prolific garden. My yard is blessed with an abundance of tall, leafy trees. But they cast so much shade that it stunts most garden plants that I'm trying to grow.

Example: tomatoes. I can't resist trying to grow tomatoes. But because of the shade, the plants put all their energy into trying to grow tall, and I end up harvesting just a couple of handfuls of small tomatoes. If they didn't taste so good, I'd quit trying. 

The other problem is wild animals. We have deer, raccoons, squirrels, and rabbits galore. They like to feast on my vegetables as much as I do. 

So each summer, I plant a few tomatoes and other items and just hope to be able to harvest enough to make it worthwhile. 

First batch of ripe serranoes

There are a few things, however, that usually thrive in my yard. Herbs, for example. I have perennial chives and garlic chives, mint, and oregano that come back every year with abundance. I also usually have good luck with basil, parsley, rosemary, and sage. (This year, my sage plants withered, and my rosemary just didn't do very well. On the other hand, I harvested a nice amount of tarragon. So that was nice.)

The other thing that usually does well in my yard is peppers. I grow them in pots and have them placed where they can get some good, direct sunlight. The plants usually grow tall, like the tomatoes. But I usually get a good harvest of peppers. This year, I planted serranoes, and I was pleased with my harvest. 

I posted a photo on Facebook with the plant before I harvested them. I got a nice reply from a friend in California who suggested that I use the serranoes to make zhug. Zhug, it turns out, is a Yemenite pepper sauce made with lots of herbs and garlic. I decided to give it a try.

My friend's suggestion didn't include a recipe. So I went online in search of a recipe. I came across a blog called Chili Pepper Madness. Not only did that blogger have a recipe for zhug, he has a very cool web site with lots of fun info about peppers and, of course, recipes. 

Personally, I like hot peppers and spicy food. My wife does not. But with zhug, I can make a dinner entrée mild to suit her taste and then add the zhug to spice it up. I add it to pizza and soup and pasta. I also put it on a grilled hamburger and used it to spice up a homemade black bean patty. (Here's the recipe for the black bean patty that I got from the New York Times Cooking page.)

These ingredients + olive oil = zhug

Here's the link to the zhug recipe on the Chili Pepper Madness blog. I followed the recipe pretty closely and only made a couple of changes. The blog post describing zhug states that cilantro is an optional addition, but the recipe as posted calls for a cup of cilantro. I don't particularly like cilantro, so I didn't use it. Instead, I substituted several of the fresh herbs that do well in my yard. The original recipe calls for 'chiles de arbol.' I didn't have any, and I could have used dried pepper flakes. But I didn't; I just left that ingredient out. Finally, the original recipe calls for 4 garlic cloves. I only used two. 

I've included the recipe at the end of this post with my modifications, but I encourage you to look at the zhug recipe on the Chili Pepper Madness site as well. The original version turned out very bright green. Mine did not (see photo below) I think because I used ripe, red serranoes rather than green ones. 

Zhug Yemenite Hot Sauce

Ingredients

• 1 teaspoon black peppercorns
• ½ teaspoon cumin seeds
• ½ teaspoon coriander seeds
• ½ teaspoon cardamom seeds
• Salt to taste I use about a teaspoon
• 1 cup loosely packed fresh herbs (such as oregano, mint, cilantro)
• 1 cup loosely packed parsley
• 5-6 serrano peppers chopped
• 2 cloves garlic crushed
• Juice from 1 lemon about 2-3 tablespoons
• ½ cup extra virgin olive oil

Instructions

Grind the peppercorns, cumin seeds, coriander seeds and cardamom seeds in a mortar and pestal into a coarse powder. Alternatively, you can start with powdered versions of these ingredients. Add them to a food processor along with the salt.

Add the remaining ingredients except for the olive oil to the food processor and pulse until the ingredients are chunky but combined. Do not overprocess or you’ll lose the desireable texture.

Drizzle in the olive oil and pulse/process until the oil is emulsified and the remaining sauce is thick and chunky.

Adjust for salt and use as needed.

Notes:

Makes about 1.5 cups. 

Heat Level: Medium-Hot, because of the use of serrano peppers. You can easily dial back the heat by using milder peppers.

Store your zhug in an airtight container in the refrigerator. 

End of the Minnesota growing season

I just spent a couple of hours in the kitchen chopping basil to bag and freeze. Actually, it was lemon basil. I harvested the last of my sweet basil over the weekend. You see, the weather forecast is for our first killing frost, either tonight or tomorrow. Some of the heartier herbs will survive. In fact, I’ll be using fresh sage until it’s covered by snow. But the delicate stuff, like basil, definitely is a goner. (No irony intended – preserving basil by chopping and freezing it before a frost kills it.)

Same for tomatoes. My yard does not accommodate tomatoes well anyway. I always plant a few just to make a valiant effort. But my yard is too shaded for the plants to thrive. This year, with the heat in July, we actually harvested several handfuls of grape tomatoes and a few cherry tomatoes. But when the weather cooled off, they stopped ripening.

So my lament for the end of garden fresh tomatoes is mostly theoretical, but it’s no less heartfelt.

A friend of mine at work, a new reader of my blog, commented that she liked the postings about tomatoes. She said she has a favorite tomato recipe. She got it from Mary Hunt’s syndicated column called ‘Everyday Cheapskate.’

I told her that I would post it on the blog, so here it is. (Thanks, Jill.) The original recipe calls for shortening in the pie crust, but I’m giving you the option of using butter instead.

Savory Cheese, Tomato & Onion Pie

Pastry shells:

3 c. flour
3 tbsp. sugar
1 tsp. salt
1½ c. shortening or butter
1 egg
2 tbsp. white vinegar
4 tbsp. cold water

Blend together flour, sugar, salt, and shortening (or butter if you choose to substitute) until mixture looks like coarse meal. In a small bowl, mix together egg, vinegar, and water until well mixed. Add to flour mixture and stir until it just sticks together. Form into two balls, wrap in plastic wrap and chill for at least 15 minutes. When dough is chilled, roll out one ball and place in 9-inch pie pan. (You may freeze the other ball for a later use.)

Filling:

4 tbsp. butter
2 large onions, sliced
2 large, firm tomatoes
1 tbsp. chopped fresh basil
5 oz. Swiss cheese, grated
5 oz. Monterey Jack cheese, grated
2 tbsp. flour
2 large eggs
¾ c. cream or half-and-half
Dash nutmeg

Preheat oven to 350. Caramelize onions by melting butter in a large skillet and sauté onions for 30 minutes or until soft and brown. (Be careful not to burn.) Remove onions and set aside.

Slice tomatoes ¼ inch thick. Place tomatoes and basil in same skillet used to caramelize onions. Cook over medium heat for 3 minutes until heated through and tomatoes have absorbed any butter remaining in the skillet.

Grate cheeses into a bowl. Mix in flour. Spread 1/3 of cheese mixture over bottom of pastry dough in pie pan. Top with onions. Spread tomatoes over onions. Cover with remaining cheese. Whisk together eggs and cream until just blended. Carefully pour over cheese; sprinkle with nutmeg. Bake for 35-40 minutes until eggs are set and top is golden brown.

Chive flowers

In May, I was in Washington, DC, on business and I stopped in to Equinox for lunch. I like that restaurant. I’ve eaten there a couple of times for dinner, but this was my first time there for lunch. Instead of an entrée, I ordered a salad and a first course.

The salad was the mozzarella and baby spinach salad. The first course was the orecchiette with artichoke hearts. Both were delicious. I highly recommend either one.

The salad had these cute little white flowers sprinkled over. I was intrigued, especially because the menu description didn’t mention them. After I had paid, and as I was leaving, I stopped to chat with the maitre d’. My server walked by, and I just asked her about the flowers. She said she thought they were chive flowers, but she’d send the chef out to tell me.

In just a minute, the chef came out of the kitchen. He confirmed that they were, indeed, chive flowers. He said he had snipped them off of the chive plants at his home that morning. He hold me all you do is pick the flower bud and then snip off the base of the bud. Then he just sprinkled all of the little stamens and flowers over the salad.

I’ve had edible flowers before, but I’ve never thought about actually using them in anything that I cook. But I have chives in my garden – it would be such an easy thing to add the chive flowers to salads or pasta in my own kitchen!

Unfortunately, my chives had already finished blooming for the spring. I was able to clip a few final blooms, but didn’t really get much chance to try it.

Fortunately, even in Minnesota, our season is long enough so that chives bloom twice. And mine have just started to bloom again! Tonight for dinner, I clipped a bud and sprinkled chive blossoms over my risotto (made with roasted eggplant, tomatoes, and smoked cheddar cheese). It was so much fun!

By the way, the plants that are currently blooming are garlic chives. My dad gave us the plant several years ago. The chives have a delicate garlic flavor and are a great substitution to any recipe that calls for chives.