Colorado Bounty - Roasted Vegetable Salsa

Here in Colorado, with the coming of fall, pepper roasters start showing up on roadsides and farmer's markets - and the smell in my kitchen while roasting the peppers was very similar. The smell reminds me of last fall - my first fall back in Colorado. It isn't a smell I remember from my childhood, instead it is a smell I now associate with being at the Farmer's Market and being VERY pregnant. I didn't try any peppers last year due to unfortunate heartburn.

But - this year, I decided to be brave. So I bought a couple poblanos, a handful of bell peppers and a jalapeño. I also picked up tomatoes, onion and corn. I roasting all of the veggies in the salsa - and to do this I put them on a cookie sheet in the oven. It fills the house with the delightful smell of the roadside pepper roasters - enjoy!

Roasted Vegetable Salsa

• 3-4 Bell Peppers (whole - use different colors - I recommend Red, Green and Purple)
• 1-2 Jalapeño (whole)
• 1-2 Poblano (whole)
• 4-6 large Tomatoes (heirlooms are fun, remove the stem)
• 1-2 Corn on the cob (shucked and whole)
• 1 Onion - sliced in large coins (I use a large sweet onion - like Walla Walla or Vidalia)
• Sea Salt
• Pepper
• 1 Lime
• Ground red pepper (to taste for spice)
• Cilantro (optional)

Instructions:

• Turn on the broiler on high and place a rack at the top of the oven. On a dry cookie sheet, place the peppers. Roast the peppers until the skins are black and papery on all sides. Turn the peppers often and remove them individually once roasted. (Note - you want to get the skin nice and black as it will be easier to remove)
• Once peppers are all removed, put the corn, tomatoes and onion onto the cookie sheet. You can dry roast or roast with a little bit of olive oil on the skin of the onion. As it roasts, turn the corn and onions so they can roast evenly. Remove the corn when it has some black - but before it has completely blackened. Remove tomatoes oven when tomatoes are bubbly, the skin has split and it is a little black. Remove onions when they are slightly blackened at the edges.
• Peppers: Once cool, remove the skins, seeds and hull of the peppers (once cool enough to handle). Roughly dice the peppers and save in a large glass bowl
• Tomatoes: Once cool, remove the skins and roughly dice. Add diced tomatoes and juice into glass bowl
• Onions: dice and add to the bowl
• Corn: Slice the kernels off of the cob and add to the glass bowl.
• Once all of the vegetables are chopped and in the bowl, stir and add sea salt and pepper to taste.
• Squeeze 1/2 to 1 lime over salsa. Taste!
• For a saucier salsa - puree half of the salsa and blend back into the bowl.
• Add diced cilantro at the end.
• Let it mellow for at least 15 minutes to allow the flavors to blend
• Salsa lasts for up to 2 weeks

Enjoy!

Pumpkin and mushroom soup

Here in New Zealand, a cold wind has slammed the door shut on the mild false spring of recent weeks. As the storm built up, I made comfort food: my favourite pumpkin soup. This time I used half a grey skinned Crown pumpkin, bought already cut from the greengrocer. I often use butternut or buttercup pumpkins. In NZ the big orange pumpkins that Americans make into jack'o'lanterns are not so common, and I seem to remember them as not being so tasty as our little NZ varieties, but its been a long time since I was over there in pumpkin season!
Don't freak out at the whole head of garlic, once roasted it is mild, sweet and subtle; nothing like the intensity of sauteed garlic. For stock I usually use Rapunzel organic herbal stock cubes. They are delicious and don't have any of that chemical aftertaste of most stock cubes.

I'm pretty sure this is as original as one of my recipes can be. It has evolved over many years in response to my dislike for the taste of pumpkin, but respect for its affordable nutritional value.

Pumpkin and mushroom soup

half a medium size crown pumpkin, or whole butternut or buttercup
whole head of garlic
2 yellow onions, chopped pretty fine
bag of mushrooms, sliced pretty fine
1.5 litres of stock
1 teaspoon ground cumin
(other spices optional: coriander, garam masala, cinnamon or cloves,even some curry powder, can each add something lovely to this soup, )

Scoop out the pumpkin seeds and slice off the pointy end of the head of garlic so the ends of the cloves are exposed. Place pumpkin skin side down, and garlic root side down in a roasting dish and cook in a hot oven until they are soft and fragrant (about 45 minutes). Cool and then peel out of their skins (its so much easier than when they are raw). Puree in a foodprocessor til smooth.
Meanwhile, saute the onions in a soup pot with a little oil until they are soft but not brown. Add the mushrooms and saute until they are limp then add the hot stock and pureed pumpkin/garlic. Simmer until thick and silky.

Good Garlic

In my current research into happiness, I came across a reference to this study which found that adding garlic bread to a family meal decreased the number of negative interactions by 22.7% and increased the number of pleasant interactions by 7.4%. Apparently it's the garlic, not the bread that has the positive effect, and even the smell of cooked garlic is enough to improve family interactions!

When Louise was about 7, we were living on an organic garlic farm in upstate New York. That's where I learned to roast whole bulbs of garlic. We would slice off the stem end, and place the root end down in a generously oiled roasting dish, rubbing oil over the whole bulb. When roasted until soft and beige (not brown and hard), everyone would get their own head of garlic. We would squeeze each clove out of its skin, the flesh as soft as warm butter. This is delicious spread on bread or mixed in with other roast vegetables as a condiment. Roasted garlic is creamy and mild, without any of the sharpness of raw or lightly cooked cloves.


When I don't know what exactly I'm making for dinner, its usually a safe bet to start by sauteing some chopped onion and garlic, then adding whatever I can find in the fridge. Some of my favourite ways to get the aroma and taste of garlic going include:

• Sliced garlic and chunks of zucchini sauteed in butter or olive oil until the garlic and the corners of the zuccini just start to caramalise and turn brown. Sometimes I'll add tomatoes and fresh basil.
  
• Chopped garlic and sliced mushrooms sauteed slowly in butter or olive oil until the mushrooms are very very soft and the garlic has kind of melted into the mushroom juice. This is good with lots of finely chopped parsley and a squeeze of lemon or a dollop of wholegrain mustard.
  
• Chopped garlic and onion sauteed til soft (starting with the onions and adding the garlic towards the end so it doesn't burn and become bitter). Then when the onion/garlic is cooled down I mix in lean minced organic beef, a free range egg, soft bread crumbs and whatever vegetables, herbs and spices I feel like (today it's lots of cumin and and a little cinnamon). I enjoy squooshing the mixture in my hands like playdough, and then shaping into little balls which I bake on a rack in the oven until brown. The cooked meatballs sit in a box in the fridge and get added to spaghetti sauce, cooked vegetables, sandwiches, even salad as I feel like it. When Louise left home and I was only cooking for myself, I stopped cooking very often. This is one of the things I try and make once a week so that I have some proper food to graze on even when I'm not making a whole meal.
  

Jess comes home from work

When we were young children we took it for granted and didn't much notice it. Finally after three years at university, I came home during the summer that I became engaged to read Proust and only then did it strike me how very much in love our parents were. And by then I knew it wasn't the usual way married couples behaved.



One afternoon I was hanging out in the kitchen. Mom had started dinner. I noticed her cheeks were pink, her eyes were sparkling and she had a little smile. She was close to the door when Dad came home from work. He took her in his arms, leaned her backwards, and gave her a long, passionate kiss. Coming out of it, they both were smiling. He took his uniform jacket off, put a large bath towel around his waist and they went into the kitchen togetherto finish dinner in perfect harmony. I realised that was the way he had always come home before we lived in Japan which was a year when everything was different.



Their teamwork was so smooth that there was little room for us. As children we were given tasks like putting the applesauce through the food mill. We set the table and unset it and did the dishes but did little cooking. The cooking they did together was a public demonstration of their love for each other. As well, Dad's need to feed people with delicious food was his most open expression of love for others.



I should now describe the applesauce. Wash unpeeled apples, roughly cut up boil up skin, seeds, cores and all together. Put through a foodmill which lets the applesauce pass through and sieves out the skins, cores, and seeds. Cooked this way the spplesauce is a warm, pinky brown. While it is still warm, flavour the applesauce with sugar, butter,cinnamon, cloves, ginger and nutmeg. Strangely this wasn't dessert. It was put on the table with cottage cheese, pickles and olives, bread and butter as a side dish in an ordinary meal in addition to the main components of meat, a green and a yellow vegetable and a starch. Then there was a dessert: cake or pie or pudding. Remember the punch made with Coolaid and fruitjuice. My favourite was grape Coolaid and pineapple juice. Does anyone still make punch the way we used to? I serve the applesauce for dessert with a lttle cream or ice cream.



Now I will tell you why the Kellerman kids happlily ate their spinach when other kids hated it. They never served canned spinach, only fresh or frozen. Boil a couple of eggs. fry up some diced bacon, briefly cook the spinach, drain the liquid, stir through the crspy bacon and a little of the bacon fat, salt and pepper, slice the eggs and arange on the top of the spinach. Very beautiful and tasty too. Not so often we had creamed spinach and it was just as good.

Now I challenge Edwina to post the browned butter carrots and Judy to post the perfect gravey.

Betty and Jessie, Jeannie and Will what were the everyday foods that you liked best? Do you still make them? Did you teach your children?