Eggplant, Garlic and Hot Peppers...OH MY!!

Week 8 is bringing in some new produce items we are very excited about - in particular eggplant, garlic and hot peppers. I'm a fan of Baba Ghanoush, Hummus and fresh pita so this time of year really allows the home foodie to get creative with these types of treats. Stoneybrook has a really simple recipe for the Baba Ghanoush featuring the eggplant and garlic. I'm taking on the hot peppers this week!!

Since we are looking at tapas style dining featuring cool treats, here are a couple of salsa recipes I hope you find as delicious as we do. In addition we've added a fabulous Martini recipe we make that is sweet with a nice kick of heat thrown in!!

Cranberry Salsa

1 12 oz bag of fresh cranberries
½ cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup lime juice
2 garlic cloves minced
½ cup fresh cilantro leaves, minced
1 jalapeno pepper finely chopped
3 scallions, finely chopped

Use food processor to chop up cranberries. Add all ingredients together and refrigerate for a couple hours, or overnight. Put in bowl and serve with tortilla chips.

Mango Salsa

2 ripe Mangos, diced
1 small red onion diced
2 limes, juiced
2 Tablespoons fresh chopped Cilantro
Salt, to taste

Once you've prepped the mango, onion, Cilantro and lime juice – combine together then add salt to suit your taste. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour prior to serving.
Serve with your favorite tortilla chips.


A great option is to substitute Pineapple for the Mango!!


FOR ADULTS ONLY:
Hot Blueberry Martini

Get a bottle of vodka and add frozen blueberries (for 1/5 probably 1/3 of the bag will do) – let sit for a couple days – it WILL turn blue.

In a saucepan add 2 cups sugar with 2 cups water, 2 jalapenos or 2 habaneros (depending on what you like better) seeds removed and cut in quarters, and one lime rind. Simmer this mixture for about 10 min – you are looking for the liquid to thicken up a bit and all the sugar to dissolve. Remove the lime rind and hot peppers then strain the liquid through a tightly woven strainer to make sure you get all seeds. Cool. Put in a sealed container and keep in the fridge.

Rim mix – take 1 rind of a lime chopped and ¼ cup sugar and grind together in a coffee mill till fluffy.

Juice a lime and put in a salad plate (or bowl as long as your martini glass can fit in it to get the rim wet)

Rim your glasses with juice then sugar/lime mix

Take a martini shaker and add ice cubes, 3 shots of vodka and 1 ½ shots of hot pepper simple syrup. Shake like mad :-) Pour into your glass and enjoy!


Cheers,
Cheryl