This week, in my ingredient challenge game, we’re doing things with peppers and chilis and I remembered that I had a whole lot of Thai Bird Chilis dried from last summer, so I decided to make some chili oil. It’s pretty hot, so definitely designed as a finishing oil. It’s got a bit of sesame seeds and sesame oil in it as well. Spicy, but not blow your head off spicy!
As y’all know, every year for Thanksgiving, I make a variation on cranberry sauce, and this year is no different. This year’s variation is a Cranberry Blackberry Portwine (with a touch of nutmeg) Sauce and it is absolutely delicious. Would go super well with the usual poultry (also duck!) but also with a steak/beef. Very warm and enticing.
About ten days ago or so, I baked these Low-Knead Cast-Iron Crisp-Top Dinner Rolls. They were absolutely fantastic, but I was curious to see if a whole wheat or seeded (or both) variety would work as well and turns out, it did. I made them in the same cast iron braiser that I made the others, and the tops came up nice and crispy, the flavor is also great. Overall, definitely a repeatable recipe, though in all honestly, I did like the White Flour ones better. These are a recipe to add to the rotation for sure!
I have an urban garden on my porch and always manage to get an amazing array of tomatoes (so far this year, 840) and Chili Peppers (over 300 shishitos and another 5-ish kilos of other chilis — I planted a dozen varieties: Redskin Sweet, Caribbean Red Habanero, Carolina Reaper, Red Cayenne, Shishito-Takara, Cubanelle, Jalepeno, Scotch Bonnett, Mad Hatter, Candy Cane, Texas Habanero and Bhut jolokia (ghost peppers). What happens when everything becomes ripe at the same time — well, you have to do something with the produce, so I ended up making Chili Oil and Hot Sauce. I don’t actually know how “hot” either of these are — they are spicy to me, but I usually have a fairly mild tolerance for hot things, so if you are a hot sauce aficionado, these cold be fairly mild. If you are going to make either of these yourself, mix your chilis according to your own taste.
How to up your Corn on the Cob game? Instead of plain ole butter, how about using compound butters? Here are three great options: Chili Lime Butter, Garlic Herb Butter and Parmesean Ranch. All taste fantastic on corn, but definitely not limited to that. Keep some in the fridge and use them all summer.