Fire Roasted Marinated Peppers

I love fire roasted red peppers. When peppers are in season, I love roasting them myself. It's one of the reasons I love having a gas stove. And I absolutely adore pickled green peppers.

I decided to combine the two. First, fire roasting. Then a little dance with vinegar and salt. And finally, a swim in oil. I considered adding some herbs - oregano, maybe. Or thyme. But I decided to leave the herbs out to make the peppers more versatile.

The result? These have a little tang from the vinegar, but they're not as pickled as my usual pickled peppers, but they have a bit more sharpness than a typical roasted pepper.

What would I use these for? For salads (and the oil for a vinaigrette) or for an antipasto, or for a garnish on deviled eggs or an accent on cheese and crackers. They could be chopped for use in a pimento cheese spread or added to a sandwich. Or you could cook with them.

Or, if you're me, you'd eat them straight from the jar when no one's looking

Fire-Roasted Marinated Peppers

5 bell peppers I used (2 red, 2 yellow, and 1 purple*)
2 tablespoons white vinegar
1/2 teaspoon salt
Olive oil (or other oil of you choice) as needed

Roast the peppers over an open flame, turning as needed to char the skin on all sides. Or, you can char them under the broiler. You don't need to get every bit of the skin blackened, but you don't want huge swaths of uncharred skin. don't forget the top and bottom of the pepper.

When the peppers are well-charred, put them in a plastic bag or in a covered bowl. This will help the peppers steam which will make the peppers easy to peel. Them them cool until they're easy to handle, then peel the skins and remove the stem, seeds, core, and ribs. It's fine if a few bits of skin remain, but get as much off as you can.

Slice the peppers into strips, and pack them into a pint jar or similar-sized storage container. Add the salt and vinegar, cover the jar, and shake to combine. Let it rest at least 30 minutes, shaking now and then so that all the peppers get their time in the vinegar. You can let them sit longer and they'll absorb even more vinegar flavor - your choice.

Drain the liquid from the jar and add oil, to cover the peppers. Run a skewer or thin knife down the sides of the jar to get all the air bubbles out. Refrigerate until needed.

Depending on what sort of oil you use, it might solidify at refrigerator temperature. This isn't a problem (except for emergency snacking). Just bring the jar out of the refrigerator to come to room temperature and the oil will melt again.

*The purple pepper had green flesh, so it looks green in the jar.

Crock Pot BBQ Pork Sandwich

This is fantastically easy, and it feeds a crowd. Sure, the bottled sauce is a cheat, but if you usually make your own sauce, use that instead. The water is just to thin the sauce enough so it doesn't burn or scorch while the pork cooks.

The amount of pork isn't critical. Another half-pound or pound more or less isn't really a big deal - if the bigger packages are a better deal, go for it. You could easily make 5 pounds of pork, as long as it fits in your slow cooker.

This is a two-day recipe, but there's not much work involved. You could cook the pork the first time overnight, refrigerate it in the morning, and finish for dinner.

You could also opt to cook this in a Dutch oven on the stove top or in the oven - whatever works for you. The one key here is knowing your equipment. The slow cooker I used for this holds the moisture in really well, so I didn't have to worry about the liquid evaporating out. With different equipment, you might need to add more water during cooking.

Slow Cooker Barbecue Pork Sandwiches

3 pound boneless pork shoulder or country-style ribs or boneless country-style ribs
1 bottle barbecue sauce (about 15 ounces, plus more as needed)
1 cup water

If your slow cooker has a browning setting, brown the pork on all sides. If your slow cooker doesn't have a browning setting, you can do the browning is a separate pan, Or, just cook without the browning. You'll get enough flavor from the sauce, so you might not notice the difference.

Add the barbecue sauce (use your favorite) to the pork in the slow cooker. Cover and cook on low until the pork is fork-tender, about 8 hours.

Put the pork and all the liquid into a storage container and refrigerate until well-chilled. It's true that braised meats are better the next day, and it's not about time - it's about chilling the meat.

The other advantage to the chilling is that the fat rises to the top of the liquid so you can scrape it off and get rid of it.

Pull the meat out and shred it or slice it (your choice). Put it in a pot or saute pan, add all the liquid, and cook until the liquid is mostly evaporated and you have the meat swimming in a thick sauce. Taste for seasoning, and if you want more barbecue sauce flavor, just add additional sauce and let it simmer down some more.

Serve on buns. Pass more sauce at the table, if desired.

Saturday Snackies

Once again, we're diving into some interesting snacks ... and stuff.

Beanzzzz

First up is roasted chickpea snacks from The Good Bean. A while back I tried their no-nut bars, and said that the chickpeas tasted a lot like nuts. This was my chance to sample the chickpeas on their own.

Solo, they tasted a little less like nuts, but they were still very snacky-good. Crisp, crunchy, munchy. The Cracked Pepper flavor was very aggressively black peppery. Really good, if you like pepper. It was a little bit much on its own for me, but in a bowl of mixed snacks that pepper added a great accent. I'm thinking it would also make a great "crouton" on top of a salad.

On the other side of the flavor range was Sweet Cinnamon. This was sweet, but not crazily so, and had a burst of cinnamon flavor. For some reason, it reminded me of apple pie. As usual, while I was eating them I was thinking of cooking applications. They'd be pretty good crushed and sprinkled on vanilla ice cream that's on top of pie. Or crumbled on top of grilled fruit.

The other flavors are Smoky Chili & Lime and Sea Salt. I've stashed those for some cooking experiments. We'll see how that goes.

The bare ... chips

The next snack was Cinnamon Apple Chips from a company called Bare Fruit. They make six different dried fruit products including apples, mangoes, pears, and cherries.

I ripped the bag open as soon as it arrived and we started apple-munching immediately. These apples are completely dried so they're crispy chips rather than leathery or prune-textured fruits. First, we at them as snacks, then as chips along with some pulled pork sandwiches.

Next up, I'm thinking of adding them to baked goods. Or added to a peanut brittle. Or ... oh! How about in a stuffing?

I haven't tried it yet, but I'm thinking that besides being a munchy snack food, these would be handy to have on hand when I want apple flavor in a dish and I don't happen to have any fresh apples hanging around. So many ideas, not enough time.

As far as snacking, the thing about dried fruits like this is that the apple flavor is very concentrated. Very apple-y. So you're less likely to over-indulge as you might with a more styrofoam-like snack. Or at least that's how it works for me.

I'm really curious about the cherries. I might have to seek those out and see if they're completely dry like the apples. If so, it could be really interesting.

The mystery box

Have you jumped on the mystery box bandwagon yet? There are a whole bunch of companies who sell boxes of unknown items to subscribers.

Petit Amuse is a company that is doing something similar, but instead of sending you random products, these boxes are all food products.

It's kind of hard to review a mystery box because what I got is probably not what you'll get. But here's what was in my box: a single serving bag of Oogies' popcorn, a granola bar from a company called Garuka Bars, and two different cookies from a company called Lark Fine Foods.

The last item, and one that I thought was most interesting, was a jar of ice wine jelly. Ice wine is a sweet dessert wine that's made from grapes that have been left on the vine long after the normal harvest, until they are frozen. The flavor and sugar content are both very concentrated. I became acquainted with German ice wines (eiswein) quite some time ago. It's expensive. And did I mention that it's sweet?

I had some doubt that the jelly would really taste like ice wine - but oh boy, when I opened that jar it had that distinctive ice wine scent. And it tasted like ice wine as well. Pretty impressive. Small jar. Use wisely. I'm thinking it would be a lovely accent for cheese. Or other small bites. Definitely not for your peanut butter sandwich.

The idea behind Petit Amuse is that they send you these sample boxes with the hope that you'll come back to their site and stock up on the items you really love. And of course you can buy anything on the site, even if it wasn't in your sample box.

That's their idea - but is it a good value? A box costs $10, which includes shipping.

It's hard to figure the value of two cookies that are usually sold in a larger quantity, so we'll set that aside for a moment. The Garuka bars sell for $3 each. A single serving of popcorn or chips is what? Maybe a dollar? Two for the gourmet stuff? Let's say $1.50. The jar of ice wine jelly was 2 ounces. The site sells a 4-ounce jar for $6.99, so half of that is $3.50. And seriously, the smaller the jar, the higher the price. It probably sells for closer to $4. So that's (mumble mumble 3+1.5+4 mumble) ... $8.50ish plus two cookies plus shipping. Hmmm ...

So, if you like samples of fancy food stuff, it's a reasonable deal. A much better deal than some I've seen, that's for sure. I can't guarantee that all the boxes will add up like that, but the site owner said they're trying to make the sample boxes worthwhile to folks so they'll find items they love and come back to buy them.

So there we go. My tummy's full.

Ah, but here's a little preview. 

I'm working my way through Italian Volcano products. No, not lava rock. These are Italian juices, and I'm almost mad that I tried the limeade because it's so freaking good and now the bottle is empty. It's just sweet enough, but mostly tart and very fresh-lime flavored with hints of the zest flavor. This is the limeade of my dreams, I tell ya. Not that super-sugary candy flavored goop.

I'll be back at you with at least one recipe featuring one of the juices. The blood orange juice is an amazing color, and I'm waffling between making something sweet or something savory. Eventually I'll probably make both. Keep your eye out for it.