Thai Basil Chicken (Kai Kraphao)

This dish is the main reason we grow Thai basil in our herb garden. We’ve grown many kinds of basil over the years and seem to have settled into a routine of Genovese, Lemon (Sweet Dani or similar), and Thai (Sweet Thai or Queen of Siam) basil because they cover the spectrum of our uses. The Sweet Thai variety we grew this year produces plants with purple stems and gorgeous purple flowers. Like most basils, the flowers are also edible and add a punch of anise flavor to Asian dishes. Our basils will last a few more weeks, then it will be time for the final harvest of the season and a marathon session making pesto (basic and sun-dried) and basil ice cubes. Read more

The Daring Cooks Make Vegan Dosas

For the Daring Cooks September challenge, we made vegan dosas adapted from the reFresh cookbook by Ruth Tal. Fresh is a popular chain of vegetarian/vegan restaurants in Toronto, Canada with three published cookbooks teaching how to cook Fresh food at home. Our host Debyi of Healthy Vegan Kitchen chose this fun challenge for us, and I for one am grateful because this is the first time I’ve ever made Indian food and witnessed our two older boys actually eat it. Builder Guy (6) has recently developed a taste for spicy foods—good thing because we like our spices—and Top Gun (5) is finally coming around and trying new things. Monkey Boy is still a picky three-year-old, but he did eat one of the plain dosas. We thought the dosas were delicious and would eat that coconut curry sauce on just about anything. Read more

Weekend Gardening: Peppers

Peppers, both hot and sweet, are a favorite for our summer garden and indoors in the winter, and this year we are growing more types than we ever have before, though we’ve had trouble with production. The cold wet spring that carried through into early June affected some of our plants, and some of the bells haven’t even flowered yet. Though we don’t have peppers yet on all the plants, we do at least have flowers on most of them now, a huge relief as we were worried we might end up with nothing this year.

Here’s what we are growing this year.

Hot Peppers

Anaheim

Big Chile hybrid (Mild like an Anaheim, grows 8 to 10 inches long. Matures red.)

Chocolate Habanero (Same size as a regular habanero.)

Hot Paper Lantern (Habanero type with smaller elongated pods. Matures red.) Read more

Jalapeno Cheddar Cornbread

Cornbread is a staple of Southern cooking, and it made regular appearances at our family table when I was growing up. I don’t remember my mother ever diverting from her standard cornbread recipe; it was always the same warm, comforting bread we enjoyed with beans and other foods.

Last week I planned to make a pot of spiced up beans using the ham bone from a recent Sunday dinner, and I wanted a spicy cornbread to go along with the beans. I used equal amounts of flour and cornmeal, but instead of buttermilk for the liquid I used plain yogurt, which gave a wonderful taste and texture. We only used one jalapeño this time, but I think we would use another next time for a little more kick.

I wish I could say that the jalapeños came from our garden, but we’ve run out of the stash we grew last year, though the scallions came from the pot I started in September and still have going in the kitchen. I just snip off the green part and leave the white in the ground, and they keep growing back. We’re planting scallions in our raised beds this year, so hope to have plenty of them.

This is my contribution to Grow Your Own, a blogging event that celebrates the dishes we create from foods we’ve grown, raised, foraged, or hunted ourselves. I am hosting this round, so please send your post to me at andreasrecipesgyo AT gmail DOT com by March 30. If you are new to the event, you can read more about the rules for participating at the Grow Your Own page. Read more

Jalapeno Jelly

The jalapeño plant is holding its own in a jungle of grape tomatoes, bell peppers, and tomatillos. Even caged, the plants around it spread so much they lay over it, and most of the time I have to go under the deck to reach the spicy little gems. The plant is about three feet tall and has been a prolific producer. Every time I glance at it, I see more little peppers sprouting or flowers in bloom, and we’ve had them overflowing in the kitchen. At first we tried to encourage more production, but now we think we have enough jalapeños to last us until next summer, so we’ve left the remaining peppers on the plant to encourage them to turn red, which is the first step in making chipotles. We looked into making our own chipotles, but once we learned the process takes several days of smoking and tending, we decided to continue buying them and freeze the rest of the jalapeño harvest. Supposedly there are short cuts, such as using a dehydrator prior to smoking, so we might give that a go if we get enough red peppers before the first frost.

Jalapeños, like any other chile pepper, has a range of heat based on the Scovill scale, and supposedly you can roughly determine the amount of heat the pepper has based on its appearance, though this method is very imprecise. Green jalapeños have less heat than red, and peppers with scars have more heat. The more scars, the higher the Scovill Heat Units (SHU).

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Roasted Tomatillo Jalapeno Salsa with Avocado

Creamy with a kick is what comes to mind when I dip tortillas or lavash into this salsa.

The September Daring Bakers challenge required the members to make both lavash and a dip or other condiment to serve with it, and considering our abundance of tomatillos and jalapeños coupled with my utter devotion to avocados, the choice was an easy one. I wanted to make it a little spicier than the previous version to help balance the rich creaminess of the avocado, so we roasted four of our homegrown jalapeños with the intent that we could use them all if necessary, but three seemed to be just right.

It comes together pretty quickly, and I had a batch ready in time for appetizers on a week night. Michael enjoyed it so much he had it for breakfast the next morning, spread all over an omelet and topped with mixed cheeses.

This recipe makes about four cups of salsa.

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