Along with the Corn and Shishito Salad I posted yesterday, I made burgers for the guys on Labor Day. I used a one-half pound of 80/20 ground beef for each patty. So yeah, they were BIG burgers! If you’d like to make them more manageable, use about a quarter-pound of beef per patty.

But this recipe is really about the great zippy basting sauce that consists of sweet chili sauce and sriracha. The sauce really makes these burgers sing. Added bonus: Half of the sauce gets mixed with mayo … truly addictive stuff!

As I mentioned in THIS POST, I do a lot of the shopping for veggies for the Crudités Harmony Boards at Sprouts. My favorite produce available there is the orange and purple cauliflower.

I had one last crudités and one final fruidités board to make the weekend before I left town. (Fruidités is a word I coined to mean a half crudités and fruit Harmony Board)

I store all the cheese, meat, and fruit for Harmony Boards in my kitchen refrigerator. I store the vegetables in the garage refrigerator. I keep a list in my brain of what vegetables I had on hand, which in hindsight is a mistake.

Anyhow, I went to Sprouts and bought a load of vegetables, including a head of purple cauliflower. Then I came home, pulled out the stock from the garage refrigerator and there was a nearly full head of purple cauliflower. Usually, that would not be of concern, but since I was only 48 hours from hopping on a plane… a problem it was.

In my opinion, there is a nearly perfect way to use up extra vegetables and that is in SOUP! Happily, I also had a few leftover purple potatoes. All these purple vegetables made me excited about purple soup.

Of course, I’ve made cauliflower soup before, but never purple soup. Some of you might be thinking, “What about borscht?” Nope, never made borscht, because I despise beets! Sorry, you’ll have to find a recipe for borscht elsewhere.

Roasted Purple Cauliflower and Purple Potato Soup

I haven’t been cooking much. It’s just too hot! But over the weekend, I put my big-girl pants on, braved the heat and hit the stove. I’ve made this pasta before and added shrimp to it. It is refreshing and tasty both ways.

Of course, dinner was served inside. I can not wait to eat al fresco again. October can not get here soon enough! How are you all coping with the heat? If you have any fun ideas or tips, please leave them in the comments, I really need ’em.

This recipe was supposed to post last week two days after the Peach and Pluot Caprese Salad recipe. I thought I had it correctly scheduled in the queue but turns out I dated it for 2020. Oops!

Oh well, although the peaches from my tree are long gone, at least there are still peaches in the markets. You’ll notice in the photos that I was using very small peaches that were just cut in half and pitted. That is what my tree produced this year. I’ve written the recipe to reflect using regular size peaches and cutting each into 8 wedges.

TIP: You have probably noticed that when you are reading a recipe, it often states to cut an ingredient into 1-inch, 2-inch, or some other size pieces. Maybe you get out a ruler or maybe you just guess. I have another way for you to do it and get the correct size without fishing around for a ruler. I use my finger as a measurement tool. For instance, for this recipe, the onions are cut into 2-inch pieces. I know that the length of my pinky is 2-inches. So I use it as a marker to cut the first piece and then use that piece as a guide to just the rest. Yep, it’s as easy as that.

It was about 15 months ago that I had a new little peach tree planted. No, that is not it in the photo above. That is the peach tree from my last house that got so large and so loaded down with peaches that nearly all the branches broke off. That tree was removed when we remodeled the backyard and a new smaller tree was planted.

It was a dwarf peach and as little as it was, it was mighty. It produced the most lovely perfect peaches.

This is my newest peach tree. I stripped it clean of all the ripe peaches over the weekend.

As you can see, the peaches were very petite for this first harvest.

But there were lots of them! I decided that there was too much skin to flesh ratio to be used in desserts, so I used them in savory dishes instead.

The first dish is a salad. A twist on the classic Caprese. I threw in some apriums, also known as pluots. Apriums and pluots are hybrids of apricots and plums.

A pluot is mostly plum, it looks more like a plum than an apricot. The flesh is soft and grainy, unlike the firm flesh of a plum. The aprium, on the other hand, has skin covered with slight fuzz and tastes like a sweeter apricot with a hint of plum.

Two recipe notes: I used balsamic vinegar for my vinaigrette, but I strongly suggest using white balsamic vinegar instead. The dark dressing made the salad less attractive than it should have been. It tasted great, but the dressing covered up the beautiful colors of the fruit, tomatoes and basil. It did nothing for the mozzarella either. I also had a log of sliced fresh mozzarella on hand, so used it instead of the mozzarella balls listed in the recipe. If you have to go out and buy the cheese, get the cute little rounds.

I believe this is the last of the recipes from Anne’s birthday dinner. Don’t you love dragging out birthdays for a month!?!

The peas I used are the same that I used in this recipe for Easter. I found them in the fresh produce section of Trader Joe’s. Since they are only available for a limited time, I bought a few packages and froze them for the long hot summer.

I made this as the starter for Anne’s birthday dinner early this month. I could honestly eat this for breakfast, lunch or dinner on a daily basis. It’s That Good!

Grilled Asparagus Toast with Poached Eggs

• 4 large slices sourdough bread
• Olive oil
• 24 asparagus spears
• 1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
• 1/2 teaspoon ground Allepo pepper
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 4 large eggs
• Parmesan cheese
• Maldon sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Bring a pan of water to a boil, then reduce water to a simmer. Brush one side of the bread slices with olive oil.

Heat a grill pan over high heat and toast the bread. Move each slice to its own serving plate and drizzle with olive oil.

Snap the woody end off the asparagus, then place it on a plate and coat the spears with olive oil.

Using the same grill pan, grill the asparagus for a few minutes on all sides, sprinkle with the paprika and Allepo pepper, then divide between the pieces of toast.

In 1993, Barbara Pool Fenzl began writing her first cookbook, Southwest The Beautiful Cookbook. It was published in 1994. In the space between, I was her recipe tester. Barb would develop the recipes and then give me a stack of recipes for me to test, make suggestions, corrections, and such.  My family vividly remembers it because the batches of recipes came not as a menu, but in groups of the same type of dishes. So one week I’d be making 6 or 7 salads, the next week it would be 5 or 6 desserts, and so on. Honestly, we loved it.

Barb also gave me the opportunity to develop and contribute a recipe of my own to the cookbook. I decided on Tortilla Soup. The only prerequisite was that the soup should include a sauce Barb had developed for the sauce section of the book.  So this recipe uses Barb’s Red Chili Sauce. If you would rather just buy red chili sauce or red enchilada sauce, please take that shortcut. But by all means, make the soup, it is a family favorite.

The recipe also calls for four cooked chicken breast halves. You can substitute shredded rotisserie chicken if you’d like. Use 5 to 6 cups of shredded rotisserie.

Lastly, there aren’t as many in-process photos as I usually post with a recipe. That is because I made this for my final series at Les Gourmettes Cooking School, so I was only able to take photos of the pre-prep I did at home before loading it all up and taking it to the class.

Tortilla Soup

Soup

• 2 tablespoons corn oil
• 3 corn tortillas, cut into 1-inch pieces
• 1/2 cup finely chopped onion
• 3 garlic cloves, peeled and minced
• 1 jalapeño chili, cored, seeded, and minced
• 2 Anaheim chilies, roasted, peeled, cored, seeded, and finely chopped
• 8 plum tomatoes, seeded and diced *see photo below
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste
• 2 teaspoons ground cumin
• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 5 cups chicken broth
• 1 cup red chili sauce (recipe below) or use store-bought red enchilada sauce
• 2 whole cooked chicken breasts, shredded
• 1 ripe avocado, pitted, peeled, and diced

Garnish

• 4 corn tortillas
• Pam
• Salt and chili powder
• 1/2 cup grated Monterey jack cheese
• 1/3 cup chopped fresh cilantro

Soup: Heat the oil over medium-high heat in a large pot. Add the tortilla pieces, reduce heat and cook until they are golden and brown, and slightly crisp.  Add the onion and cook for 3 minutes, then add the garlic and jalapeño and cook another 2 minutes.

Add the Anaheim, tomatoes, and tomato paste; cook for 10 minutes. Stir in the cumin and cayenne; slowly whisk in the chicken broth and the red chili sauce and simmer the soup for about 20 minutes, or until slightly reduced. Add the shredded chicken and avocado and heat until warmed through.

Garnish: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Stack and cut the tortillas into julienne strips. Spray a baking sheet with Pam, place the tortilla strips on a baking sheet and spray them with more Pam. Cook in preheated oven for 10 to 15 minutes, or until brown and crisp.

Remove from the oven a spray with Pam one last time and then sprinkle generously with salt and chili powder.

To serve, ladle soup into bowls and garnish with the grated cheese, cilantro, and baked tortilla strips.

Serves 6

Halibut Asian Style

• 2 pounds halibut fillets, cut into chunks
• 3 tablespoons sesame seeds
• Olive oil
• Sesame oil
• 3 large garlic cloves, peeled and thinly sliced
• 2-inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled and grated
• 1/4 cup soy sauce
• 1 lemon
• 5 sprigs of fresh coriander, leaves pulled off
• 2 green onions, thinly sliced on the diagonal
• 1 fresh red chile, thinly sliced on the diagonal

Place the sesame seeds onto a flat dish, then add the halibut chunks, turning them over in the seeds to nicely coat.

Heat 1 tablespoon of the olive oil and 1 tablespoon sesame oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add about 3/4 of the sliced garlic to the pan and fry for 1 minute, or until golden and crisp, remove from heat and use a slotted spoon to quickly transfer to a plate, leaving the oil in the skillet.

Return the pan to the heat, then add the sesame-coated halibut to the garlic oil. Sear on one side for 1 to 2 minutes. Using a spatula, turn over and cook on other side for another 2 minutes. Transfer to a plate.

Place the grated ginger in a small bowl with the soy sauce, 1 teaspoon sesame oil and the remaining sliced garlic. Add the zest of the lemon and 2 tablespoons lemon juice, then mix well to combine. Taste and add more lemon juice, if needed.

Thank you for all your input and comments on which of the 8 recipes I put forth you’d like to see first. The requests were all over the board, but the jalapeño jelly had a couple more than the rest. I believe the halibut had the next most, so that recipe will be second and then I’ll go from there until all recipes are posted here for you.

I made this jelly as a take-home gift for the students in my series at Les Gourmettes Cooking School. All of the recipes from this particular class were from Barbara Fenzl’s Southwest The Beautiful Cookbook. This jelly is the perfect homemade gift or hostess gift, especially during the holidays. But I promise you, it’s would be a much-appreciated gift any time of the year.

The recipe below is written just as it is in the book, but here is a tip I’d like to add: When dispersing the jelly between the jars, use a slotted spoon to evenly divide the solids into each jar. If you pour the jelly directly in, the first few jars will end up with all the solids and the last will have none.

Once the solids are distributed, then ladle the hot liquid evenly between the jars. I used 4-ounce jars and ended up with 17. That is a very satisfying amount of gifts for one quick cooking session.