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Labor Day Foodie: Marconi Bruschetta and Smoked Cayenne Chicken

September 7, 2009 by arfoodie

Labor Day is a busy foodie day! There are so many classic labor day dishes that it’s hard for foodies to pick which to cook!

At noon, I attended the Slow Foods USA Time for Lunch rally in Argenta. This event, one of hundreds held across the country, was to raise awareness about “slow food” (put simply, the opposite of “fast food”) and to support measures to bring fresh, local foods into school lunchrooms nationwide. It was a potluck, and folks were encouraged to bring dishes highlighting our local bounty of said slow foods.

Later this week I’ll post my photos and videos from this event, as I played the intrepid reporter. But for now, I’ll just show you what I made:

My Marconi Bruschetta

Marconi Bruschetta

  • 1 honey-molasses wheat baguette
  • 4 T. olive oil, divided
  • 3/4 c. shredded raw milk cheddar cheese (white, yellow or mix)
  • 3 large roasted marconi peppers (may use red bells), roughly chopped
  • 10 large kalamata olives, roughly chopped
  • 1 garlic clove, finely minced
  • 3-5 fresh basil leaves, chopped, or 1/2 tsp. dried basil
  • 1 T. balsamic vinegar
  • Pinch kosher salt
  • 1/4 tsp. freshly ground black pepper

Slice the baguette into thin rounds with a serrated knife, about 1/4″ thick. Brush with 3 T. olive oil and place on baking stone (preferred) or baking sheet at 400 degrees for 10 – 15 minutes, or until just crisp on tops and browning on edges.

Remove from heat and sprinkle cheese on each round. Return to oven for one minute or until cheese is just melted. Mix final 1 T. olive oil with remaining ingredients and season to taste. (I used much less salt than normal because of the briny olives.) Spoon a small amount of topping onto each round and serve immediately.

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I know, I’ve only been doing this blog for a little while, and I’ve already got bruschetta twice. But this bread was so perfect for making little toasty rounds, it had to be done!

After the potluck, I quickly ran to the next event, a cookout with friends at their house. I wanted to take some chicken breasts to this event to put on their huge, competition-BBQ style smoker. But I also wanted them to be full of flavor and character. So, last night, I put this recipe together using the smoked peppers I wrote about earlier:

Smoked Cayenne Chicken

  • 3-4 large boneless, skinless chicken breasts
  • 1/4 c. olive oil
  • 1 hickory smoked cayenne pepper
  • 1 garlic clove
  • 1 T. kosher salt
  • 1/2 tsp. freshly ground black pepper

Place olive oil in a zip-top plastic bag or glass container, and use scissors to snip the pepper into very small pieces into the oil. (To reduce the heat level, you may shake seeds out of the opened pepper and/or use less than a whole pepper.) Leave the pepper to reconstitute in the oil for at least five minutes.

Put garlic through a garlic press and add to oil. Add remaining ingredients to the oil besides the chicken and shake or stir to mix. Add the chicken and, if using a bag, reseal while removing as much air as possible. Move chicken within bag or dish so that the mixture is evenly distributed, then place in refrigerator overnight.

Cook on grill for 10-15 minutes per side, or until internal temperature reads 180 degrees with a meat thermometer.

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The chicken, I must say, was INCREDIBLE! It was juicy and flavorful with just a little smoky, spicy kick. Kudos to our buddy T. for cooking the chicken for me on his smoker grill. Would that make it Double-Smoked Cayenne Chicken?

Tonight, after eating so much all day, I just wanted a light, easy dinner. I mixed some leftover marconi topping with some leftover plain pasta, adding a dash more salt, pepper, basil and balsamic vinegar. I diced a half-piece of the smoked cayenne chicken that was left and mixed it in, and I had (actually, finished while writing this) a yummy, light meal.

More to come, Fancy Pantsers. Leave me a comment and let me know what you made for Labor Day!

Filed Under: Appetizer, Main Course Tagged With: bruschetta, cayenne, chicken, chicken breast, labor day, marconi, peppers, recipes, smoked

Today’s Market / Morgan’s Ratatouille

September 5, 2009 by arfoodie

I went to the Farmers’ Market this morning and loaded up for the week…I am really enjoying not buying my produce (at least, for the most part) at the grocery. It feels good to know I am supporting Arkansas farmers, and that my family is eating well.

Today, I bought a huge bag of goodies that I’ll have to figure out how to use. One trick of market shopping is not knowing exactly what you’ll find. Maybe as this blog grows, we can learn how to plan meals and cook for a week based on what is available. I bought yellow squash, zucchini, fresh blackeye peas, pepper sauce, roasted Marconi peppers, sun-dried tomatoes, the weirdest yellow-green sweet bell peppers, ground buffalo, a honey-molasses wheat baguette, and more cheese.

Guess I need to visit Recipe Puppy and see what ideas come up. Generally, if I can find the basic idea of a recipe, I can take it from there and make it my own with what is available. I’ll let you know what we make!

The finished productMeanwhile, I’ve been promising a little blurb on Morgan’s Ratatouille. If you’ve never seen the Disney movie, Ratatouille, I can highly recommend it. It’s not the same vibe of movie as other Pixar films, but if you are a foodie, you’ll love it. It’s all about the creation of something great and new from the ingredients you find, whether that be culinary or from life in general.

In the movie, the final dish prepared is an amazing dish of ratatouille, a traditional French tomato-base stew with squash, zucchini, peppers and eggplant. Honestly, in the stew’s original form, I’m not crazy about it. But in the movie’s culinary consultant was the illustrious Thomas Keller of The French Laundry, and his version (technically called Confit Byaldi) was quite different. Instead of chopping all the ingredients into a stew, he spoons a bell pepper and tomato sauce into a flat dish and layers the veggies, cut into thin rounds, on the top. Cover and bake.

But, as most French recipes go, this recipe (although simple for a French cook) is a little bit much for even the Fancy Pants home cook. About a year ago, after a bit of searching, I found this simplified version here on Smitten Kitchen. This is what Morgan and I have made twice now, the second time with wonderful veggies from the farmers’ market.

My only variation from this recipe is that I use my homemade marinara sauce rather than just tomato pureé.

Photos from the first round, made last September:

Our first Ratatouille, before baking

Our first Ratatouille, before baking

The finished, baked product

The finished, baked product

This time, we made it a bit bigger (because it was so yummy) and added the last of the fairy tale eggplants. We had left eggplant out of the first because we really don’t care for it, but the small ones are not so bitter.

Veggies on the sauce

Veggies on the sauce

The final, baked product!

The final, baked product before plating

In the large photo above, you can see the final product. Next time I will take Keller’s advice and cook down all the extra liquid before plating. My sauce looks watery, but it sure was good!

Recipes coming from market foodies besides myself soon, as well as more profiles.

Filed Under: Main Course, Resources Tagged With: eggplants, fairy tale eggplants, farmers market, peppers, produce, ratatouille, squash, Thomas Keller, zucchini

At the Market — Peppers from Sparkling River Farm

August 30, 2009 by arfoodie

Hubby and I have decided to develop a new fragrance. I’m sure it will quickly outsell Chanel No. 5, Cool Water and all those other silly scents combined.

It’s this….

Smoked Peppers

I think I’ll just hang it on a string around my neck. It’s that good.

Zi6_0877Meet Fred Gray of Sparkling River Farm in Mt. Olive. He and his wife Toni are certified chileheads (OK, the business card says “Pepper Rancher”) who supply Argenta Certified Arkansas Farmers’ Market attendees, as well as other markets around the state and in Memphis, with some of the best pepper products around.

Saturday, we found the pair with a wonderful array of fresh peppers, from sweet to hot. But the products that will keep me coming back were the ones they created from these peppers.

Market attendees could buy fresh roasted peppers in bags, roasted on-site in a tumbling basket contraption right there by the tent. If you’ve ever purchased roasted peppers in a jar, or even (like me) gone through the trouble of roasting your own on the gas stovetop, you should give these super-fresh babies a try.

There were sauces (do you realize how few people actually MAKE good pepper sauce themselves?!?) and other goodies, but I have to come back to the smoked peppers. Oh, the smell is drawing me back…

Toni told me about Fred spending the day out in the farm’s smokehouse, and coming back inside steeped in the incredible aroma of peppers and hickory. And yes, she said it still smelled good to her, too, although they both said the smell disappears after being in it a while.

Of the two varieties available at the tent on Saturday, the first is a sweet variety made of Marconi peppers, which can be used, according to their website:
Whole pod (reconstituted) in soups, meat sauces, casseroles, pasta dishes; ground pod in above plus rubs, wet rubs, chile pastes, marinades and in ground pepper dispenser on table top. Also called vegan-jerkey!

The second variety, which we took home and decided to carry around with us like sachets of smoky goodness, was the Cayenne pepper. Their website recommends using this pepper:
Whole pod (reconstituted) in soups, meat sauces, casseroles, pasta dishes; Infused oils and vinegars; ground pod (dry) in above plus rubs, wet rubs, Chile pastes, moles, marinades, Bar-B-Q sauces and in ground pepper dispenser on table top.

Um, yes. All of it. Today, please.

So far, I have snipped a tiny bit and infused it into a cream sauce I made for the handmade Chipotle pasta purchased from Argenta Market (I’ll get to them another post!). Tomorrow, I’ll go old school/new school on a crock pot of beans with bacon and one of these bad boys. And cornbread. Nom.

Meanwhile, as it gets used up, I’ll continue to just open the bag every hour or so and take a deep sniff. You think I’m kidding.

Over the next few days, I’ll introduce you to more of the vendors at the Argenta Certified Arkansas Farmers’ Market. One of the purposes of this blog, I think, will be to encourage you to step out and try a few new things, especially in the area of whole foods or slow foods. Fewer boxed things. More things that were recently growing, and growing locally.

I’m certainly not completely there myself yet (I recommended shortening in a previous recipe, for goodness’ sakes), but I’m getting there. Come with me, it’s yummy!

Coming soon: Incredible local pickles, cheese, bread and more. And monthly farm-fresh goodie baskets you can pre-order. We’ll eventually get back to Morgan’s Ratatouille.

Filed Under: Resources Tagged With: cayenne, local, marconi, peppers, roasted, smoked, sparkling river farm

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