With summer comes all the dishes you like best when you use your own garden produce. A few of these dishes I only eat with specific fruits or vegetables I grow. Either because I use an ingredient I grow but cannot buy, or fresh just tastes better.
Caprese Salad. It’s our family tradition, since having my own garden, for the first large tomato to be used in a caprese salad. Fresh basil from my garden, the first large tomato, some olive oil and fresh mozzarella are the only four ingredients needed for this salad. I enjoy making a pretty layers with slices, but this can be cut into chunks to create a traditional bowl salad.
Habanada Pepper Dipping Sauce. I *adore* this sauce. Off season, I will use regular red pepper sauce to dip my eggrolls in. But it’s not even close to being as good as when I use habanada peppers. Habanada peppers have an extraordinary unique flavor, a sweetness I cannot even describe. The sauce it makes is genuinely exceptional. It’s the typical eggroll dipping sauce ingredients of salt, garlic, vinegar, water and sugar, with your preferred pepper added.
Sloppy Joe. With my peppers and tomato! Peppers I like a mild heat and sweet in my sloppy joe, so I’ll grab a sweet pepper from my garden, any color. Then add a poblano pepper, which is delicious and has that deep green. Tomatoes, I’ll harvest any traditional red tomato. I make my own tomato sauce, so I’ll use that for the base and add more chunks of fresh tomato and a mince clove of garlic. Add cooked ground beef, my favorite herbs from the garden, salt n pepper, a shallot, a touch of brown sugar, oatmeal and a splash of vinegar for bite. A pinch of my secret ingredient and we are done. Too easy and all the veggies included are fresh from my garden.
Hot n Sticky Garlic Noodles. Because of the fresh Thai peppers. One local store used to carry the Thai peppers but stopped two years ago. The Asian market in town gets them kinda fresh once a week, but they sell out fast and the market is across town. Late summer arrives, and so do the Thai birds eye peppers in my garden. And then we have these noodles once every week or so, because they are that good.
Crispy Eggrolls. To go with my habanada dipping sauce, of course. I make Asian inspired crispy eggrolls on occasion. Per the prep, the roll and the fry, it’s a production. Hence, this a dish I make in the summer when I have my favorite eggroll veggie available, long beans (or noodle beans). I harvest this bean when it is about 10 inches long, about a day before it grows to be a foot long and at it’s typical harvest length and thickness (thin pencil). So a day early. I chop the beans into 2″ pieces, sauté and add to the other fresh veggies that go into the eggroll. Broccoli stalks, cilantro stems, minced poblano pepper and cabbage. I love when most of the eggroll filling bowl is filled with garden goodies I just harvested.
Did this help you plan your next menu? If so, keep checking back as I post more recipes and menu plans. Thank you!
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