Stuffed Lipstick Peppers

These stuffed peppers are our next entry in the cabbage-disguised-as-Mexican-food sweepstakes (see cabbage enchiladas, previously).

Enterprise Farm sent us a dozen "lipstick peppers" (amazing small sweet red peppers) in last week's box. These ones are stuffed with a mixture of rice, refried beans, leftover tomatillo salsa, cheese, and sauteed onions and, yup, cabbage.

Cabbage Enchiladas with Tomatillo Salsa

A major feature of life around here recently has been brainstorming ways to eat cabbage.

Inspired by some delicious (non-cabbage) enchiladas we'd had in New York, we had the idea of cabbage enchiladas. (Jack plumped for cabbage hard tacos, but was voted down.)

Strangely, we were not the first people to think of this. The key question about cabbage enchiladas turns out to be whether you put the cabbage on the inside or the outside. (Yes, I did briefly consider "both." That's how much cabbage we have.)

The recipe we went with was this one for Mexican Cabbage Rolls, substituting rice and beans for the ground beef to make them vegetarian. They were tasty (if a bit hard to cut), and if you got home late, you didn't get any. (No leftovers counts as a big win when we're cooking with cabbage.)

Serendipitously, Picadilly Farm sent us tomatillos today, along with a simple green salsa recipe, which made a tasty enchilada topping. Their recipe called for serrano or jalapeno peppers, but we used some roasted green chiles our friends Nathaniel and Ariel imported from New Mexico and left at potluck last week.

Simple Tomatillo Salsa

Husk and wash your tomatillos, and cut them into halves or quarters. Throw into the food processor with a garlic clove, a big handful of cilantro, and chiles to taste. Process until smoothish, and add salt and maybe lime juice to taste.

Wednesday Veggietrivia

Not too much cooking in our kitchen this last week ... but lots of stuff happening in the food world.

• Jack made the tomatillos into salsa verde. (We've done this before.) The lazy way is to combine everything raw, but since we had time to mess around, we roasted the tomatillos, onion, and chile first.
  
  
• I'm pretty excited about watching these "8 Must-See TED Talks About Sustainable Food" (via @eartheats). I'd seen the Mark Bittman one already, but none of the rest.
  
  
• Massachusetts Farmers Market week is August 22 through 28, and there will be a "Loving Local" blogathon to celebrate. I'm planning to participate; fellow food bloggers, you should too!
  
  
• If, for some reason, you read this blog, but you're not a member of the Enterprise Farm CSA, now's your chance to try it: the farm is offering a twelve-week fall share starting August 31.
  

Making Salsa and Not Canning Tomatoes

Probably just like everyone else, we used the tomatillos to make salsa verde this week. (What else do people make with tomatillos?)

The recipe world seems to be a bit divided about whether you boil the tomatillos, roast them, or use them uncooked. I chose this recipe because it had a roasting option (we broil pretty much everything around here) and because it matched the ingredients already in the house.

(Recipes also seem to differ quite a bit in whether you need to add water. This recipe has no additional water, while the recipe in the Enterprise newsletter called for adding 2 cups. Ours was fine without when I made it, but it's solidified a bit over a couple days in the fridge.)



Making salsa got us started thinking about canning. It seems like I've been reading about the resurgence of home canning everywhere recently, often tied to the idea that it's a money-saving thing to do in tough
economic times.

We use a lot of canned tomatoes in our house, for pasta sauces and soups and pizza, so the idea of jarring a bunch of the beautiful heirloom tomatoes we've been seeing at the farmer's market to draw on through the winter was pretty appealing.

The USDA has very comprehensive canning resources available online. My enthusiasm for the project was damped a bit by all the OMG YOU WILL DIE OF BOTULISM (though this is not really a concern if you can follow a recipe -- always a question for me -- and stick to high-acid foods, like tomatoes, if you don't have a pressure canner).

But it was really the mathematics of the thing that put the kibosh on canning for us. The USDA told me that for crushed tomatoes, no liquid added, I would need about 2 3/4 pounds of tomatoes per quart. I didn't make it to the Davis Square farmer's market on Wednesday, but at Copley heirloom tomatoes were $3 or $4 per pound. So about $8 to $11 worth of tomatoes in each quart. Jars and lids looked like they'd run about another $1 per jar.

So figuring a cost of about $10 per quart, canning 12 quarts of tomatoes would have been an upfront investment of $120. (By comparison, we buy fancy canned Muir Glen organic tomatoes for $2.69 for 28 ounces, or about $3 per quart.)

Are people really saving money canning? (I think it's a bit of a cheat to say that the produce is free if you grow it yourself -- at least on the scale that I grow tomatoes, they're about the farthest thing there is from free.)