the Friday Feeding; VOL. 42

What…perfect…weather. It has made Canterbury the quintessential summer destination. And we live here; how lucky are we.  

We had a conversation over the sales counter with Charlie a few weeks back—he and Erica were planning a getaway—but couldn’t quite decide where.  They couldn’t find anything as nice as here.  We all agreed we would pay good money to vacation r i g h t here.

You may have noticed I took a week off from writing last week because we have had our own vacation guests;  my sister Niña and Nick, so we took some time off.

We pretty much ate our way through the visit, cooking at home and sampling from the store’s cooking.

New fun at the store…

Our organic garden is really producing right now and it’s bounty is making its way into some of the salads and kabobs…a new Street Corn* salad featuring Glines corn and our roasted peppers. We roasted and stuffed peppers for one of our meals this week and I thought you might enjoy knowing how to do it yourself.

Roasted Stuffed Poblano Peppers

Prepare the peppers.

1. Roast 4 poblano peppers then steam off their peels.  METHOD:  place on a vegetable steamer over a gas flame or under a broiler in the oven, char all sides of the peppers until they are blackened.  Immediately place inside of a covered bowl or in a paper bag and let “steam” for 10 minutes after which time the peels will pull right off. I run them under cold water and let the peels rinse off.
2. Slice open the peppers on one side and remove the seeds. NOTE: you are seeing red peppers here because we let our poblanos redden on the bush. They are sweeter this way but greens one work just great too.

Make the filling.

1. In 2 T clarified butter [called ghee; butter with the fats removed] plus 2 T olive oil, saute on low heat one red bell pepper diced and half of an onion diced.  After 10 minutes add 1/3 cup raw sunflower seeds and cook stirring for another 5 minutes until the seeds just start to brown.
2. Add to pan: 1 cup raw quinoa, 2 cups vegetable broth.  Bring to a boil then reduce heat to low, cover pan and simmer for about 20 minutes until the quinoa is tender.
3. Toss into cooled simmered mixture: 1/2 cup drained canned cannellini beans and 1/2 cup coarsely grated parmesano reggiano cheese.

Assemble.

1. Fill the peppers with the pilaf mixture and place them cut side down in a baking pan that has been oiled with a little olive oil.
2. Cover the peppers with cashew gravy.  To make: Soak 3/4 cup of raw cashews in 2 cups of water for 30 minutes.  Meanwhile sauté 2 finely chopped shallots in 2T olive oil.  Add 2T nutritional yeast.  Add this mixture and the cashews with water into a food processor or VitaminMix or use an emersion blender to purée until smooth.
3. Add some herbed sauce to the center of the peppers.  To make: In a sauce pan, heat up 1 tsp of olive oil and turn off heat.  Add 1T dried/crushed tarragon leaves plus 1/4 tsp cinnamon and let them “marry” into the warm oil by sitting for a few minutes.  (NOTE: to release the volatile flavor oils in herbs, they must be heated in oil)  To this add one 8oz can of tomato sauce and heat through; add salt and pepper to taste.
4. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes or until heated through and slightly browned on top.

*Street Corn is a Mexican fast-food called Elote that is sold in street stalls or carts. Corn cobs are skewered then grilled until slightly charred then spread with a creamy garlicy lime sauce, sprinkled with chili powder then rolled in traditional Cojita cheese. Our salad contains all these flavors plus a few more to make our own tasty version to eat with a fork!

DON”T FORGET: Farmers Market pizza 4pm – 6:30pm each Wednesday where Dave is doing pizza live made to order. We suggest calling ahead to reserve a pizza…we have had a line and could not take any further orders past 6:00. We have plenty of room for the 4:00 to 5:00 time range. Fresh squeezed lemonade too!

Get ready for our next art show. Its only a week long so don’t miss the fun! And click here to see all the other shows coming for the rest of the year!

Have a great week,

Jane and Dave