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Saturday, September 26, 2015

Garden Goulash #vegan #oifree #GlutenFree #Kosher

Fall is officially here. That garden you've been tending all summer is ready for one final harvest. My friend Melanie gave me a bag of veggies from her garden and my wife's friend Cindy heard that I love hot peppers. She sent me a whole box of asorted insanely hot,  fresh and dried peppers from her own garden, bagged and neatly labeled. Thanks again to both of you!
Here's a picture of what I used:
Garden Veggies
Which magically turned into dinner:
Garden Goulash
That little red pepper of Cindy's was labeled simply "Butch".  That doesn't sound very threatening so I washed it and tasted a tiny bit...

Note to self:
Before tasting a strange little pepper, look it up! 
SURPRISE!!!

It turns out "Butch" is a BUTCH SCORPION PEPPER; the hottest hot pepper ever grown next to the Carolina Reaper. It's about 1,460,000 Scoville Units (SU). That's 200,000 SU hotter than the Ghost Chili .  For reference a Jalapeno pepper is about 5000 SU.  My lips swelled up, I started coughing and the roof of my mouth fell off. Smooth move.
Twenty minutes later when that fun passed, I cleaned out the seeds and threw it in a blender with my tomatoes, green pepper, garlic, onion, salt and other seasonings. It was still too hot. I dialed it down a bit by adding 3 chopped dates. The natural sugar in the dates neutralizes some of the heat in the pepper.  Perfect! 
I put the mix into a pot, added 1/2 cup water, brought it to a boil, turned down the heat and simmered it for 20 minutes stirring occasionally. 
I added 4 cups of  dry vegan penne noodles and simmered it for 15 more minutes allowing the liquid to disappear. Salt to taste and enjoy! 

Ingredients:
4 Garden tomatoes
2 cups cherry tomatoes
1 green pepper
3 cloves garlic
2 small onions
3 dates
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup mixed basil, oregano and parsley
1/2 TBS cumin
1 hot pepper (optional)
4 cups dry penne noodles (gluten free optional)

Serves 4







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