This week, I stumbled upon a great recipe for kohlrabi salad on the “Feasting at Home” blog. I mentioned that I enjoy kohlrabi in the Week 3 post, and, although I’ve made tasty dishes with it in the past, I thought this salad was outstanding and a great accompaniment to grilled pork with homemade bourbon barbecue sauce.
This week’s share contained another round of pickling cucumbers, eggplant, Yukon Gold potatoes, assorted sweet bell peppers, mixed varieties of tomatoes, green beans, green onions, summer squash, and corn.
Sweet peppers and onions always make me think of grilled sausages and White Sox and Bears games. I love to sit in the bleachers at U.S. Cellular Field and cheer for the Sox while munching on a Polish sausage with grilled onions. And, if you’re marathon training during the fall, coming back from a 20-mile run to the smell of brats grilling at pre-Bears-game tailgates is pure torture (although it makes you pick up your tired feet and hurry home to eat something). I haven’t been to as many games as I’d like this year, so I indulged at home with turkey brats and grilled sweet peppers and onions.
As much as I like to eat fries with my encased meats, I opted for something a little healthier—grilled eggplant topped with tomatoes, basil, and feta. I made the salad twice because the tomatoes were so delicious. And, both times I ate quite a bit of it during preparation.
Grilled eggplant with a fresh tomato salad
Grilled salmon with a ginger vinaigrette, a side of grilled peaches and onions, and green onion sour cream mashed potatoes also were on the menu this week. I love grilled fruit, both in sweet and savory dishes, and peaches and onions together are a surprising, yet perfect match.
It’s the time of year for piles of zucchini. When I get overwhelmed by the amount of summer produce, I try to remember that I’m going to crave these in-season beauties in January.
I thought was going to have to bake with this week's zucchini, but the July/August issue of Cuisine at Home had some great suggestions for using up a plethora of summer squash. I debated whether I should try the zucchini enchiladas, which used hollowed-out zucchini in place of tortillas, or the zucchini involtini with pancetta bread crumbs. I went with the involtini. They were really tasty, and I’ll be saving the enchilada recipe for another batch of squash.
Finally, this is the best recipe for creamed corn. The creamy yellow kernels are topped with a delicious sweet and savory garam masala butter. Thinking outside the box with spices can result in a new favorite recipe. One of my go-to cookie recipes is a garam masala oatmeal cookie, and before I tried them, I never would have thought to add garam masala to cookie dough.
Do you have any favorite recipes that use spices in an out-of-the-box way?
I've got these little guys on tap for next week. They're orange Turkish eggplant.