padrón pepper jelly

I recently harvested about forty padrón peppers and an additional 20 jalapeños from what had been a particularly fruitful fall garden. Particularly prolific were volunteer cherry tomatoes, which popped up out of the ground all over my front yard and yielded two or three pints a week, depending on how constantly I went to picking. It's all gone now, sadly. We had a recent polar blast that forced me to harvest what I could in preparation for a week of perpetual freezes--hence the bounty of hot peppers. This was sad because my romaine seeds took forever to germinate and only started spouting in early November. If the frost had held out, I might have harvested about twelve heads of the stuff. The arugula was also ready for a second sprouting before the freeze, but the rocket had already provided us with a month and a half of weekly salads.

padrón me, jalapeño

But I digress.

It was time for two batches of hot pepper jelly. I followed my old formula of circa 20 peppers (majority padrón) for each batch. I chopped them coarsely, dropped them in the blender along with enough seeds to be mildly terrifying, added one cup of cider vinegar (white vinegar in the second batch), and processed.

I dropped that mess into a pot, added another cup of cider vinegar (again, white vinegar in the second batch), 6 tbsps of dry pectin, and brought to a rolling boil. Then I added 5 cups of sugar, boiled for one minute, and removed from heat.

Each batch filled six 8 oz. canning jars. I cleaned and sterilized the jars ahead of time, and then let them sit in hot (very hot) water while I cooked the peppers. Then I brought out six jars (for each batch, added the jelly, tightened down the lids, and returned the jars to the hot water. The water was too hot to touch comfortably, and I did not allow the water to touch the actual lid--that is, the water came up to the mouth of the jar. I let each batch sit for about ten minutes, then pulled them out and dried them off. As the jelly cooled, it sucked down the lids of each of the jars.

So there it is. My recipe diverges from the standard ones in that it uses about a cup less sugar. Granted, the pectin I used advertised that you need "no sugar" or "less sugar" than normal.

The fingers, they burn...

Autumn is and will always be my favorite season. The weather turns cold. Jackets and sweaters make their way from the closet to the dresser. The heavy duvet comes out, and sleep is suddenly more inviting. And the harvests! A season of peppers. The last of the tomatoes. Crisp lettuce.

There is also the smell and the sound of Autumn. It is football on in the background. Chicken bones and onions in water reducing on the stove. Leaves turn in the crisp air, and crunch underfoot on evening walks. And it all came out in fine form this past Sunday. Chicken stock with a heavy clove and pepper spice reduced on the stovetop while we made up pumpkin muffins and jalapeno jelly. A nice end to fall!

Jalapeno recipe is as follows:

about 20 jalapenos. chopped then blended, with 1 cup cider vinegar. Turned mixture into pot with 1 more cup cider vinegar, then added 4-5 cups sugar (recipe called for six). Boiled for ten minutes, stirring constantly. Added 3 oz. liquid pectin, stirred for one more minute. Ladled into ball jars and let them self-seal.

In a second batch, I mixed red jalapenos and orange banana peppers and used dry pectin, although I forget how many tablespoons.

My fingers burned for two days straight. Mean peppers this year.

Peppers are in, ribs are smoked

So, yesterday I did a little yard work. After mulching the entire back, planting a few happy looking flowers in the herb garden and pruning the weeping bush and the Japanese Maple, I went ahead and planted a row of peppers in the front. I went with 2 yellow bells, 2 red bells, 1 banana (hot) and 1 mammoth jalapeno.

Hickory all Dickory Day

The peppers are in the tomato row of last year. The soil was sandy and black. I amended it with about three inches of homemade compost, but otherwise did not fertilize, or even lay down blood meal. Given that I've never had success with peppers, I have nothing to lose from this little experiment.

I also smoked some ribs for the occasion. I took a pair of baby backs, used the Four Seasonings blend to create a meat paste on them, and then smoked them at 220 for three hours over chunks of hickory. They came out black with a bark. I wrapped them and sweated them in the cooler for an hour. Then I put them on the grill and basted them (southern baste) for about fifteen minutes, medium heat (300 degrees).

NEXT TIME, will try foil wrapping them after 1 hour to keep the meat even more moist. I felt like the ribs were a little dry, although good. Grilling them afterwards will crust them enough, so no need to smoke em dead after one hour.

Jalapeño jelly

Why not try it myself? Almost every recipe had the same proportions, so here's what I ended up with:

16 green jalapeños. Fairly small to medium size, some with striations. I seeded the jalapeños but left some in the mixture.

Chop jalapeños and throw in a blender. Add
1 cup cider vinegar. Blend thoroughly. Add to big saucepan (my 3 quart cup was barely enough). Add:
1 cup cider vinegar
5 cups sugar (recipe called for 6 cups, I made it 5).

The result was extremely sweet. Quite green. Next time, try blending in all the seeds (Just stem them and throw them in).

Salsa Fresca

Adapted from Rick Bayless's Authentic Mexican:

2 ripe heirloom tomatoes, cored, seeds removed, and diced
1 medium onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, diced
4 jalapenos, seeded and diced
20 sprigs cilantro, chopped

Mix all these ingredients. Then add:

1 tablespoon of lime juice
salt
1 tablespoon of water

Let stew for half an hour. Enjoy some with chips. Then let refrigerate overnight.

Simple Stuffed Jalepeno

The basic trick to stuffing jalapeños is to make the stuffing balance. Everything else is a cakewalk. Here was a recipe that really worked, and was pretty to boot.

For the stuffing:

cream cheese
creamy goat cheese
yellow onion, minced
parsley, finely chopped

The proportions were eyeballed, and it is usually best to start with the onion. Six jalapeños took about a quarter onion.

I cut the stems off the jalapeños, halved them and seeded them. I pulled out the membrane, but these peppers were mild enough that I didn't need to do so. I should try better to gauge heat before I do that in the future.

Then I spooned the mixture into the jalapeños halves, and loaded them onto a foil covered baking tray.

Baked at 350 for 16 minutes, broiled for 4 minutes to brown.

They could have been cooked less. These jalapeños are small, from the garden. They came out soft, and a few of them blew apart. Next time try either no broiling, or broiling for only 2 minutes.

baking and stuffing jalepenos

A good way to use some of the jalapeños would be to stuff and bake them. I found some good ideas on the Simply Recipes blog. Basically, the question is how to make cream cheese (or any other cheese) interesting. Some mix of herbs, onions, and/or sausage and bacon seems pretty standard.

Garden Update

Everything in the front is growing beautifully. The jalapenos are coming along, and the anaheims I believe are pretty much ready to go. I have made gifts of them, but have yet to figure out exactly what to do with them. Salsa recipes are definitely in my future. We have already eaten one flavorburst pepper, and the red peppers have already turned green to yellow. Fairly soon we will have a good harvest of peppers.

The cucumbers are off the chain, literally. They come out one and a half inches thick and eight inches long. Bursting with water. Perfectly fresh. They store well, and make nice gifts.

The tomatoes are just coming in. Around July 4, I noticed them beginning to flower more prolifically, and to hint at a change in color. We left for Canada on July 7. When I returned on July 11, they had grown by inches, and in the front planter had begun to fall over. I immediately tied them up with some twine, and eventually dropped two cages in the planter to help hold up the new branches. In the mound (taxi, amish paste, golden nugget?), tomatoes were beginning to turn. The amish paste had produced several tomatoes that were changing from yellow to red, and the taxis are yellow. I picked an amish paste and made a cucumber and tomato sandwich. Highly tasty. I expect the real harvest to begin in a couple of weeks, and hopefully we will see production (like last year) into September.