A Plethora of Peppers

I’ve been harvesting and storing a wide variety of peppers from my garden for a few weeks.  I’ve been eating them, sure, but didn’t realize how many I had accumulated until this morning.  And, for some reason, I bought even more at Springdale Farm yesterday.  So, today, I got busy, making the most of my harvest and those from the farm.  First up, I put quite a few in the freezer.

Next, I prepared a double batch of brine, 2 cups vinegar, 2 cups apple cider vinegar, 4 cups water, and 4 teas. salt.  I stuck that on the stove, started steralizing lots of jars, and chopping carrots, onions, peppers, and peeling garlic.  Using Claudia Alarcon’s recipe, Mima’s Escabeche, I sauteed the vegetables in olive oil, stuffed my jars, filled with brine, garlic and a bay leaf, then processed for 10 minutes in a water bath.

While those were processing, I started slicing jalapenos, and peeling more garlic and stuffing jars.  Once the escabeche came out, in went the jalapenos.  I also pickled some other varieties from my garden, banana peppers, serranos and some peppers I don’t even know the name of.  The result was an attractive variety of shelf stable peppers.

Pickled Pepper Security

I hadn’t made a dent in the peppers yet, so I chopped the stems off of quite a few jalapenos and serranos, peeled a couple garlic cloves and put them on the stove to boil in water.  I boiled for about half an hour, until they were very soft and mushy, then drained them and stuck them in the Vitamix with about 2 Tbls. of Vegetable Oil.

Boiled until super soft

Emulsified green sauce

I blended it then added about 2 more Tbls of oil in slowly, and kept blending, leaving it fairly thick.  I salted to taste and put in jars in the fridge for later.  This is not a shelf stable recipe.  MMM, so good.

MMM, green sauce

Next, I decided to fire roast some chiles, to stuff for later.  I have a gas stove, it roasting is pretty easy.  Just lay the peppers over the flame.

Roasting over fire

Once the skins were fairly blackened, I stuck them in a baggy to steam the skins loose.  Then I just peeled the skins off while rinsing under the faucet.  Once done, I cut a slit in the peppers, and set them aside.

Roasted and Peeled

I had some Richardson Farms Beef, Bacon Burger thawed, so I browned that in a skillet.  Once it was done, I let it cool a bit, then mixed it with some of the few remaining cherry tomatoes from my garden, and some Wateroak Feta cheese.  I stuffed the peppers as well as I could then stuck them in the oven on 375 for about 15 minutes, until the cheese was melted.

Lunch today, (and more days this week) was a stuffed pepper, with a couple slices of avocado, and a dollop of my green sauce.  Not bad at all.

Stuffed pepper, with avocado and green sauce

It feels awesome to get those peppers put up and used up.  And, my crisper drawers are mostly cleaned out again.