It’s hot and I don’t want to heat up the house, cooking something on the stove. Time to make some gazpacho!
Lazy Heirloom Tomato Gazpacho with
Cucumber and Red Bell Pepper Garnish
Category Archives: Spanish
Pimientos de Padron: How to Escape the Heat
A Bag of Happy Quail Farms’ Pimientos de Padron Peppers
These little peppers may look sweet, but eat the wrong one, and you might be grasping for a glass of beer or a chunk of bread, your mouth on fire. Allegedly, one in ten of these peppers a tongue-scorcher. Chez Pim calls eating a mess of Pimientos de Padron “Culinary Russian Roulette”.
I’ve had these before, and my taste memory of them didn’t include searing pain and vigorous fanning of air onto my extended tongue. Of course, I only had a couple of them at the time. So when I read on Foodista and on We Heart Food that Pimientos de Padron were on sale again, I knew I had to get some. I convinced Annie to go to the Palo Alto Farmer’s Market and pick some up
Happy Quail Farms Pimientos de Padron Peppers on Sale
Continue reading Pimientos de Padron: How to Escape the Heat
Roasted Tomato, Onion and Pepper Gazpacho
Tomato season is rolling around, and soon we’ll be inundated with a bounty of tomatoes from our garden.
Part of last year’s bounty:
I’ve documented quite a few recipes for utilizing the tomato harvest. One of my favorite tomato recipes has got to be gazpacho. Gazpacho is the perfect dinner for a warm summer evening. Now I’ve found a way to boost the cancer-fighting power of this cold tomato soup, without a lot of extra work.
Paella
Yonks and yonks ago, back when we were just dating, I cooked a paella dish for Annie. I don’t remember what went in it but it probably had chicken, Portuguese sausage, and jasmine rice (at the time, I didn’t know about arborio). It was successful, and the rest is history.
We hadn’t made it since but an opportunity arose when Fosco issued a “smackdown challenge” over on the alt.binaries.food newsgroup. Annie rose to the challenge and, basing her recipe off of one found on the America’s Test Kitchen website, produced this masterpiece.
Here are the steps:
1. Marinate prawns and chicken thighs in olive oil and garlic
2. Cut red bell pepper into strips and cook; remove from pan
3. Brown chicken pieces; remove from pan. Brown chorizo; remove from pan
4. Cook chopped onion until soft, then toss in chopped garlic. Stir in 1 can diced tomatoes until thickened.
5. Stir in arborio rice until coated. Add chicken broth, wine, saffron, bay leaf, and salt. Return chicken and chorizo, bring got boil then cover and place in oven until rice absorbs water.
6. Add prawns, mussels, bell peppers, and peas and return to oven until the mussels have opened.
Aloha, Nate