Chef Ali's Roasted Peppers with Pomegranate Molasses & Walnuts

Roasted Peppers with Pomegranate Molasses & Walnuts

This dish takes its flavor from a Middle Eastern Dip Muhuhmarra… and it is so versatile. The peppers make a terrific addition to a Meze plate, along side  hummus, olives, and toasted pita or try them on top of a flatbread with warm goat cheese, served them aside grilled lamb or fish  or bake chicken thighs with and serve with cous cous. They are lovely with roasted delicate squash and some tahini and one of my favorite ways  is to mix them in a bowl of warm farro and top with an olive oil fried egg, a dollop of yoghurt and a handful of fresh herbs.

[Ailish's note: We have roasted peppers for sale at the Crystal Spring Farmers' Market in Brunswick from late summer to fall. If you miss the freshly roasted ones at market, we also have hot and sweet frozen roasted peppers available in our freezer at all of our markets.]

• 1 pound mixed roasted peppers ( ILOVE a mix of hot & sweet in the recipe), seeded, de-stemmed, and cut into strips
• 2 tbs Olive oil
• 1 or 2  large cloves fresh garlic, chopped
• 2 tbs red wine vinegar
• 1 tbs Pomegranate Molasses
• ½ cup Toasted walnuts
• 1 cup torn Fresh Mint, Parsley and/ or Cilantro.

1. Whisk together garlic, olive oil, pomegranate molasses.
2. Pour over peppers and let marinate up to 4 days.
3. Mix in walnuts and herbs just before serving. Tastes best at room temperature.

How to make scrumptious roasted peppers if you don't have a fancy roaster:

There are more aggressive ways of roasting peppers, I like this way, it requires less diligence and results in a tender sweetness, even with the hot peppers.

1. Heat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit,
2. Place the pepper on a sheet pan and position them in the middle of the oven, 
3. Bake for an hour, checking every 15 minutes of so and rolling them over so a different side touches the pan.
4. Roast them until they looked wilted, soft, collapsed with the skin pulling away from the flesh, they don’t have to be blacked or even browned.
5. Place the peppers in a large bowl and cover it tightly with plastic wrap for about 15 minutes, if plastic wrap alludes you, you can put them in a paper or plastic bag—just make sure it closes tightly. We want steam to build up and get under the skin so it’s easy to peel off.
6. Unwrap the bowl, place the peppers on a cutting board and slice them on one side. Open the peppers to pull the stems off or cut them away, remove all the seeds and ribs and cut them in to strips.

Chef Ali's Peanut Noodles with Asian Slaw

Chinese Cabbage

Long, pale and frilly Chinese cabbage is mainstay throughout Asia. Left raw it adds crunch to a salad or slaw, sautéed it adds texture to a stir fry and slowly braised it soaks up flavors becoming a beautiful vehicle for flavor. Here are 3 recipes one for each incarnation.

Peanut Noodles with Asian Slaw

I LOVE this dish for a potluck it can be served warm, room temperature or cold straight from the fridge (actually it’s a fabulous thing to find in your fridge when rummaging through looking for a midnight snack). If you have a peanut sensitivity substitute tahini for the peanut butter, and toasted sesame seeds for the peanuts. This works well with many types of pasta from soba noodles to rice noodles to angel hair, it is especially fantastic with fresh Chinese egg noodles if you can find them.

Asian Slaw

This slaw can hold its own as side dish with sticky ribs, teriyaki salmon or shrimp, on top of any sort of fish especially tuna or pan fried haddock. It makes a terrific addition to sandwiches and a fun refresher with sriracha spiced chicken wings. It works well with anything spicy, sticky or fatty.

Ingredients

• 3 cups Chinese Cabbage, sliced into thin ribbons (julienne)
• cup red bell or horn pepper, sliced into thin ribbons, ribs and seeds removed
• 2 scallions sliced thinly
• ½ cup grated carrot
• 1 whole Asian pear cut into matchsticks (sub apple or jicama if there is no Asian pear available)
• 1 tsp grated fresh ginger
• 1 tbsp. sugar
• 1 tsp kosher salt
• ¼ cup rice wine vinegar
• 1 tbsp. neutral oil (vegetable, canola or grapeseed or peanut)
• 1 tsp sesame oil
• Juice & zest from 1 lime
• 1 cup cilantro leaves

Recipe:

1. Place the cabbage in a large bowl
2. ix together salt, ginger and sugar
3. Rub the salt/sugar mixture into the cabbage and let sit about 10 minutes
4. Add remaining vegetables
5. Whisk together the oils, lime juice & vinegar
6. Let sit at least 15 more minutes or overnight
7. Toss cilantro leaves in right before serving

Other things you can add: Slivers of ripe mango, slivered of under-ripe mango or papaya, julienned daikon radish, julienned jicama, julienned broccoli stems, Thai basil leaves, fresh mint leaves, bean sprouts, pea shoots or slivered snow peas (raw or blanched)

Peanut Sauce

• 1 small clove garlic, chopped
• 1 tbsp. minced or grated fresh ginger
• 1 tbsp. dark soy or tamari
• ½ cup peanut butter
• 1 tsp sesame oil
• ¼ cup orange juice
• 1 tbsp. rice wine vinegar
• 1 pinch red pepper flakes

1. Put everything in a blender or food processor and blend until creamy
2. aste and adjust seasoning to your liking, you may like it saltier or sweeter or find you like more acid or spice

Putting the dish together

• 1 pound noodles of choice
• ½ cup chopped salted roasted peanuts or toasted sesame seeds

1. Boil the noodles in salted water according to package instructions
2. Before draining the noodles set aside ½ cup of the pasta water
3. Drain noodles and set aside in large bowl
4. Whisk reserved hot noodle water in to the peanut sauce
5. Add sauce to noodles and using tongs gently turn the noodles in the sauce about 20 times until all the noodles are covered in sauce
6. op with slaw and peanut right before serving.

You can make this a more substantial meal by adding cooked shredded chicken or some bits of firm tofu or cooked shrimp, pork or beef.

Ham Steaks and Gravy in the Crockpot

Fresh Ham Steaks and Gravy in the crock pot

Perfect for the crock pot or other slow cooker.

Ingredients

• 1 Whatley Farm organic fresh Ham Steak, cut into 2 pieces. Our ham steaks are large and equal 2 store-­bought steaks
• 1⁄4 cup butter
• 6 Tbsp flour (or equivalent gluten-free thickener - see this article in Bon Appetit for suggestions)
• 2 cups chicken or turkey stock – preferably homemade
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp pepper
• 1/2 tsp celery seed
• 1 Tbsp "Rosemary's Italian Blend" from Gryffon Ridge Spice Merchants 
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped
• 2 cups mushrooms, roughly chopped – or use dried mushrooms and rehydrate

Recipe

1. If you are using dried mushrooms, rehydrate in enough warm water to cover, until tender.
2. Warm the chicken stock.
3. In a large saute pan, melt the butter. Add flour and stir together. Cook on low, stirring constantly, until slightly golden. Slowly pour in the warmed stock, whisking to smooth out the lumps, until mixture is nice and thick. 
4. Add remaining ingredients – salt, pepper, chives, parsley, garlic, mushrooms. Stir sauce until well mixed. Adjust seasoning to taste.
5. Pour a little sauce into crock pot, place one piece of ham steak in crock pot, pour half of sauce over it, place second piece of steak in, pour remaining sauce.
6. Cook for at least 4 hours on high. It is done when the meat is tender and falls apart in large chunks. If you double this recipe you will need to increase the cooking time, as the bulk in the crock pot will slow down the cooking a bit.

Garlic Scape Pesto

Garlic scapes are one of the best heralds of summer. Up here in Maine, we plant garlic cloves in the fall, letting them grow some roots before the winter freeze. Then we weed and and feed them painstakingly in the spring. Garlic, like many other alliums, is day-length sensitive. It will only put on vegetative growth until the summer solstice. Then, it will start to form a bulb and mature. We try to get as much vegetative growth as we can, because a bigger plant essentially means bigger garlic!

Garlic scapes are the flower stalk of the garlic plant. Hardneck garlic varieties produce scapes, whereas softneck varieties have been bred to produce as few scapes as possible so the plant sends all its energy to the bulb. We grow mostly hardneck varieties (Phillips, German Extra Hardy, Georgian Fire, a strain of Music from NY and a strain of Music improved on in Bowdoinham) and one softneck (Inchelium Red). 

When we pick garlic scapes, we not only get a delicious vegetable, we also cause the garlic plant to send its energy back into bulb forming. So by growing lots of hardnecks, we don't get as great a percentage of energy going to the bulb as with soft necks, but we'll take the garlic scapes instead. So will you, too, if you try this pesto!

Ingredients: 
2 cups garlic scapes (about 20 scapes, and no need to be super exact)
1 cup olive oil
1 tsp salt

Chop the garlic scapes into pieces about an inch or smaller. You can see from the picture above that I am not very scientific about it. Put a quarter of the scapes, the salt, and a big splash of the olive into a food processor and blend until it starts to smooth out. Add the rest of the scapes and olive in batches until the whole thing is as smooth as you want it. 

Note: At this stage, you can also add nuts (2 tablespoons of pine nuts, sunflower seeds, or chopped walnuts), cheese (2 tablespoons of parmesan), lemon juice (2 tablespoons), or anything else you fancy in your pesto (a 50-50 garlic scape/basil blend is very nice).

Serve on toast, pasta, grilled veggies, you name it! Alternatively, you can freeze it in any freezer container and get it out in the depths of winter when you need to remember summer.

Enjoy!

Russian Carrot Salad

This is a favorite of ours. Carrot salads are usually sweet; this one is sweet and pungent and delicious. It is also a great fresh salad from winter storage vegetables.

Russian Carrot Salad

• 4 medium-large carrots
• 2-4 cloves garlic AND your favorite mayonnaise OR garlic aioli (recipe below)
• Salt and pepper to taste

Grate the carrots using a medium-large grate. Mince the garlic. Mix the carrots and garlic with enough mayonnaise to lightly coat the vegetables (or depending on your preference for mayonnaise). If you are making the aioli, mix the carrots with one recipe of aioli.

Aioli (from Alice Waters' The Art of Simple Food)

2-3 garlic cloves, peeled
Salt, a pinch or to taste
1 egg yolk, separated into a mixing bowl
1/2 teaspoon water
1 cup olive oil

Pound the garlic in a mortar and pestle with the salt. If you don't mind larger chunks of garlic you can just mince it. Add half the garlic and the water to the egg yolk. Now comes the fun part:

Mix well with a whisk OR an electric mixer. Start to dribble the olive oil into the egg yolk mixture, whisking or mixing constantly. Keep dribbling, a little at a time, until the mixture thickens, gets lighter in color, and becomes opaque. Then you can add the oil faster, still whisking or mixing until you have added all the oil. You can add more salt, garlic, lemon juice or vinegar to taste.

Note: if you use extra virgin olive oil, the mixing process releases some of the bitter compounds in EVOO, so if you don't want that flavor, use other oils (like safflower oil) in combination or as a replacement.

Note 2: if you use duck eggs, which have larger yolks, you may need to add a little more oil to reach the desired consistency.