Paper Chef #9

It’s time for another Paper Chef, hosted by Tomatilla. I’ve only taken part in one other one but with swim team season finally over (for a few weeks at least), I decided to join in this time.

The required ingredients were peaches, dried, chiles, edible flowers, and “something local.” My first thought was a salsa but I wasn’t sure about the edible flowers. I saw a neat-sounding recipe for pork chops rubbed with lavender, rosemary, and thyme and thought I could rightly combine an herb rub with the peach salsa I’ve made before, substituting some diced dried chipotle peppers for the jalapeno. I normally either skip the jalapenos in a salsa or walk softly, given that I’m cooking for children. I decided to do the same thing with the peppers I found at the grocery store. In this case, I used a combination of Abe Lincoln tomatoes, red cherry tomatoes, yellow pear cherry tomatoes, ginger, chipotle peppes, lime juice, and… I sprinkled some of the herb rub mixture in for good measure. In the local category, the peaches came from our local farmer’s market, from Hollister I believe. My own Indian Blood Peaches aren’t ready for another month or so or I could have been a lot more local!

I rubbed the pork chops with a mixture of herbs, mostly from my own garden, so about as local as you could get: rosemary, oregano (with flowers!), basil, thyme, and sage, as well as some salt, garlic powder, and pepper. I let the meat sit with the dry rub on it for an hour or so and then barbecued the chops. Mmmmm! I topped them with the peach salsa, which also included tomatoes from my own garden–so another local bonus point.

As we were wandering the farmer’s market this morning choosing peaches, my youngest spied some English peas and asked for them. It’s really hard to say no to a request for locally grown fresh vegetables so we bought a bag. They were decidedly not a cheap dish, but they were delicious. She wanted to help with dinner so I showed her a couple of recipes for freshly shelled peas and she chose one. She and the neighbor child sat outside shelling peas, deciding they wanted to “play pioneers” later. as they’d read about shelling peas before. She diced up a few green onions and some mint. I put a pat of butter in the pan and she added the onions and stirred them. After a few minutes, we added the peas, some water, some lemon juice, some sugar, and the mint. We brought them to a simmer, covered them, and cooked till barely done. She loved them!

So we ended up with:

Barbecued pork chops with fresh herb rub
Peach-tomato salsa with chipotle peppers
Minted peas