What's Cooking: Sweet Pepper Patty Melts, Pork Burgers and Meatballs, Spare Ribs, Spicy Roll Bowls, First Apple Crisp of the Season!

How many ways are there to use up sweet peppers? I am loving these bullhorn and Lesya peppers from Two Dog Farms, but there are often ones with minor soft spots that we cull from retail sales and this week I was finding out just how many ways there were to use them up besides for fajitas!

I also had some veggies to cook before Hurricane Francine hit in case we lost power at the shop and the farm (luckily it was only for less than 24 hours!) and then once we got past the storm and my parents arrived to help us install flooring in our new house this week, we celebrated with the first apple crisp of the season.

Sweet Pepper Patty Melts

First up for the peppers, these patty melts! I seasoned the beef with a little Worcestershire sauce, dijon mustard, paprika and onion and garlic powders and smashed them in a cast iron pan.

Before that, I caramelized some white onions and then added the bullhorn and Lesya peppers. Topped the burgers with mozzarella cheese and then toasted the Honey Oat slices in the cast iron pan, too. Put it all together with some heirloom tomato slices, truffle mayo, the burgers and the onion and pepper mix. And whole roasted okra on the side. Very tasty!

Meatballs & Fettuccine with Sweet Peppers, Mushrooms & Goat Cheese

My original plan the night I did the patty melts was these meatballs, but we did so much on the farm that Sunday that I ran out of steam for mixing and rolling meatballs.

So instead I did this after we finished final storm prep on Wednesday, with the additional of more peppers and 1.5 lbs of shiitake and oyster mushrooms we cleared out of the shop fridge!

For the meatballs, I did breadcrumbs, two eggs, parmesan, paprika, Smokey Shiitake and Black Garlic seasoning and garlic and onion powders and then cooked in a cast iron skillet in the oven, while I was also cooking the rest of the delicata squash and hakurei turnips we also cleared out of the shop fridge.

For the sauce, I has defrosted some bone broth (it was pork versus beef, but still worked well!). I sautéed the onions, then the peppers and then the mushrooms and added the broth with a little cornstarch slurry to thicken it.

I had 8 ounces of the Il Supremo hand cut fettuccine left from last week, so cooked that and then topped it all with fresh chèvre.

Fennel Pork Burgers with Peppers & Onions

My parents got to the farm last night and I once again had more peppers to use up, plus Bellegarde’s lovely brioche buns in the freezer.

So this time I used some pork sausage to make some patties. This sausage isn’t any of the normal blends we sell from our USDA butcher, it was made by a custom facility when we got some of our breeder boars processed just for our own consumption a few years ago (yes, we still have some and yes, it’s still fine to eat and delicious).

Anyway, it’s a little leaner, a thicker grind and more crumbly than our other bulk sausages, so I decided to add a binder for the patties. I had some egg whites in the fridge (yolks used for a previous recipe), so used that, panko bread crumbs, parmesan cheese and some fennel seed and garlic powder to add to the mild seasonings already in the sausage.

It worked out so much better than trying to make patties out if this sausage in the past! And then of course I did another round of caramelized onions and peppers and we topped with a combination of Swiss and manchego cheeses. My parents brought cherry and slicer tomatoes from their garden, so I made a salad with some cucumbers, the tomatoes, goat feta, black garlic salt, pecan oil, lemon juice and white balsamic vinegar. It was perfect together.

Spare Ribs with Japanese BBQ Sauce

Last weekend before the storm, I also did a round of spare ribs with Japanese BBQ sauce.

We seasoned with salt, pepper, Allspice, coriander, chili lime seasoning, garlic powder and paprika, then seared each piece in a cast iron skillet.

I then drizzled them with a little of the BBQ sauce and cooked it with a bit of water and rice vinegar in the Instant Pot for 25 minutes. I’ve overdone it before where it’s completely falling off the bones and you do want it to at least hold together!

Then to finish, I drizzled with more sauce and broiled in the toaster oven the portions we were eating that night. We ate it with extra toasted (by mistake, but still came out great) Jasmine rice, homemade kimchi and cucumbers with rice vinegar and sesame seeds. Later in the week, we finished them off with fried eggs and leftover turnips and delicata, along with more rice, cucumbers and kimchi.

Tofu & Tuna Spicy Roll Bowls

Still had some rice leftover from the ribs, so made a quick batter for some Fried Lemongrass & Red Chili Tofu. This is one pack, with each fried cube cut into four pieces.

The “batter” was my usual cornstarch and nutritional yeast, plus hoisin sauce, sesame oil and garlic powder, crisped in the oven for 15 to 20 minutes or so.

I also made a tuna salad (with “hidden” sardines to amp up the nutrients) with a little garlic mayo, sesame oil, sriracha and rice vinegar.

For the bowls, it was Jasmine rice, the tofu, the tuna sardine salad, cucumbers, avocado and topped with panko breadcrumbs and Furiyake. I always love this combo and it’s nice leftovers for lunch, too.

First Apple Crisp of the Season

We got some early Gala apples from Mountain View Orchards this year, but apple season has really begun in earnest now that Scott’s Orchard has 4-5 varieties at a time for us.

The crew sent home a bunch of imperfect apples with me and while Grant often consumes several a day and eats through our stash in no time, I was excited to use some of them for the first apple crisp of the season.

I do love to include persimmons in apple crisp because it get so decadently jammy with both fruits, but persimmons aren’t quite in season just yet!

I used a bunch of Golden Delicious and Mutsu apples for this. For the fruit I added brown sugar and maple syrup, vanilla extract, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and a splash of lemon juice and apple cider vinegar. For the topping it was oats, Butler’s Gold flour, pecan meal, sea salt, baking powder and soda plus butter and pecan oil. We loved it and the leftovers for breakfast weren’t bad either!