Upside-Down Pear

I have long had a fondness for the small dishes of many cuisines. I cut my teeth — almost literally –on the American bar & grill appetizers, which to this day I enjoy as meals on their own. Show me a tapas restaurant and I’m there, with bells on. And then there are mezethes, more commonly known in the US by the name of the singular, meze. Just out of college, already a fan of the “meze platter” or “mezza platter” from various Greek and Middle Eastern restaurants around me, I found a few brands of jarred mezethes — “eggplant dip”, “roasted red pepper meze”, “grilled vegetable appetizer”, and so on.

Desperate to use up the bounty of my garden and farm box, I turned to mezethes (or their close relations). A friend had recently made Ina Garten’s Roasted Eggplant Spread, and I had fond memories of roasted red pepper meze, so I decided that’s what I’d make (only I didn’t have red peppers. A small detail). It’s hard to roast in the summertime when you have no air conditioning, but this morning was cool and I was working from home, so could make this in-between projects.

I gathered up all the peppers I had — many! of several varieties, ranging from hot to sweet — and roasted them in a 450F oven for about 20 minutes, turning them after 10 minutes. I put the veggies for the Garten recipe into the oven at that 10 minute mark, then turned it down to 400 for another 20 minutes after the peppers came out.

Meanwhile, I cooked chopped fresh tomatoes and diced onions on the stove until the tomatoes broke down, then added minced garlic. This would be the base of the pepper meze.

When the peppers came out, I set three aside for the Garten recipe — it calls for two red bell peppers, and red bells are pretty large. I figured three of my peppers would be about right; I used one small bell pepper and two of a slightly spicy mystery variety (similar to Hungarian Wax peppers) that came out of my garden.

The rest I peeled, seeded, and chopped. I added them to the pan with the meze base, spooned in a little canned crushed tomato for extra tomato goodness, splashed in maybe a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar, and shoved it all over a low burner for about half an hour.

I then peeled, seeded, and chopped the peppers for the Garten recipe and put them, the roasted eggplant, and some more canned crushed tomatoes (I don’t keep tomato paste around) into my food processor.

Roasted Pepper Meze

• mixed hot & sweet peppers, about 2lbs
• 2-3 medium/large tomatoes (flavorful meaty tomatoes preferred!)
• 1/2 large white onion
• 4 cloves garlic
• extra-virgin olive oil
• a few big spoons of canned crushed tomatoes (or else maybe a small spoon of tomato paste, or some spaghetti sauce if that’s what you have around, but not ketchup because that would taste funny)
• balsamic vinegar
• salt (I use kosher salt) and pepper

Wash peppers and roast, whole, in 450F oven for 20 minutes, turning once. (Peppers should be browned or blackened on the outside.)

While the peppers are roasting, chop tomatoes and squeeze out the gooey bits. Put them in a hot pan with a few tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil and some kosher salt. Chop the onions and add them to the pan, as well. Let cook over low heat until the tomatoes are soft and have broken down a bit (like they are trying to be sauce). Mince the garlic and toss it in the pan at this stage, and turn off the heat.

By now the peppers should be out of the oven. Let them cool down until you can easily handle them. Peel them & remove the seeds (you should be able to just pull off the skins and rip open the pepper and slide the seeds out. Very messy and a bit slimy, but easy). Chop them up and toss them into the pan, along with the canned crushed tomatoes and a splash of balsamic vinegar.

Cook over low heat for about 30 minutes. Taste & adjust salt & pepper until it’s how you like it!

Serve on toast, crackers, pita, eggs….

We ate both of these with toast and pieces of cheese for dinner. They’re like concentrated late summer, hot and smoky-sweet.

I was looking around through my draft posts, the ones that I never published here, and found this:

Recently, I made a delicious dinner: bay scallops in red pepper butter, cooked in ramekins and served up with dry-seared asparagus. I had half of the recipe left over: 4 ramekins full of scallops and shallots, butter and hot pepper and bread crumbs.

In my fridge, I had fresh egg lasagne noodles, twice as wide as the dried versions.

I carefully picked out the large chunks of butter, leaving behind the peppers and shallots, and wrapped the leftovers gently in cooked noodles (2 ramekins to a noodle), topped it all with vodka sauce, and slid it into the oven for about 10 minutes.

The leftovers, thus transformed, passed through delicious into sublime: melting on the tongue, the shallots tender, the scallops sweet and delicate against the noodle in a way they had not been standing alone.

Dry-seared asparagus, almost impossible to improve on, again provided the accompaniment. What better?

I had another experience like this just this past week. We’d grilled a white-wine-and-herb marinated half-chicken, and had the tender, smoky leftovers in the fridge, along with leftover grilled cherry tomatoes (three varieties - grape tomatoes from our farm box, and Red Currants and Yellow Pears from our garden). We shredded the chicken from the bone, and reheated it and the tomatoes in our trusty microwave. On the stove, I made penne and heated cream with some salt and pepper.

When the penne was ready, I drained it and put it back in the pot, tossed in the chicken, tomatoes, and cream, and stirred it all about before plating it and topping with some freshly grated Parm. Marvelous! (And enough left over for two lunches, making three meals out of that half-chicken.)

Tonight is rugby practice, and I’m already tired; I didn’t sleep well and today I had too much to think about. All I want to do is stay home and cook things I found in my farm share box.

I’ve got fresh sweet corn, beets, a melon, the first of the winter squashes, a lot of tomatoes. Yesterday, I took the potatoes and dill from last week’s box and made a warm potato salad:

Warm Potato Salad
Boil up some new potatoes. Let them cool slightly, and cube them.

Add diced red onion, chopped fresh dill, and a crumbled strip of crisp bacon. Add some sour cream, some mayo, and some dijon mustard, mix it up, and taste it. Add some salt, some black pepper, and some cayenne pepper to taste.

Eat warm (or cold!)

Right now, I’m making an autumnal dish out of the squash — it’s in the oven, cubed and mixed with butter, maple syrup, raisins, and dried cranberries. I am not much for sweets but this is one of my all-time favorite dishes. I want to roast some of my beets and perhaps pickle the rest; I want to eat up all six ears of my sweet corn RIGHT NOW. Instead, I will tell you what I did with last week’s sweet corn: I grilled it up, ate some right off, and turned the rest into roasted corn salsa.

Roasted Corn Salsa
Scrape the kernels from two leftover ears of grilled or roasted corn. Dice 1/2 a large red onion and 1 or 2 medium tomatoes, discarding the runny bits of the tomatoes. In a bowl with plenty of room for mixing, combine the veggies with the juice of 1 lime and a little olive oil. Taste, and add to taste: salt, black pepper, cilantro leaves (dried or fresh), and cayenne. Let meld at least 1 day in the fridge before eating.