Grilled Korean-seasoned Chicken, Eggplant, and Pepper Rice Bowls

A summer dish made on the grill--Korean spiced chicken thighs grilled with farm share eggplant and peppers, topped with a fried egg and served in a rice bowl.

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I love an easy supper that can be--mostly--pulled off the grill and onto a bowl of rice. There's something very satisfying about eating from a bowl, and in the summer when it's hot it's rather nice to simply fire up the grill [and the rice cooker] and enjoy a complete meal.

When I came up with the idea for these bowls I already had chicken marinating in the fridge for my Korean-seasoned Grilled Chicken Thighs. I'd doubled the amount of chicken (on sale + on clearance) and skipped the marinated bag of veggies. But I had plenty of eggplant and bell peppers from the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share, so I wanted to use them in a way the family would enjoy.


I was thinking of Bi Bim Bap, the Korean dish cooked/served in hot stoneware bowls with seasoned meats and veggies and an egg to finish. I decided to make do with what we had, and to make it on the grill. I opened against digging out the stoneware bowl I'd gotten for my spouse. Someday I'll  do him up a proper dish worthy of the bowl. I also opted against picking up some kimchi or making some Spicy Asian-inspired Pickled Kohlrabi because . . . summer heat sapped my oomph.

Peach Salsa with Golden Plums and Roasted Hatch Chiles (Canning recipe)

This thick blush-colored salsa is sweetly fruity from the peaches and plums, with a nice level of heat from the roasted chiles. It clings to the chip so you get all of the flavor while dipping.

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Most Saturdays in summer, I walk a dog or three down to the farmer's market to by fresh produce. Like a Summer Tomato Sandwich, fresh ripe peaches in summer are one of those tastes you just need to enjoy while you can because you cannot replicate the flavor with out of season produce other times of the year. So we gorge ourselves with fresh fruit, and I keep buying more because I know I've got to get it while the getting is good.


Last summer my friend Jen posted a photo of her canning efforts on FB, saying that her son polished off an entire jar of peach salsa in one sitting. Intrigued, I asked her for the recipe. She told me it's straight outta Food In Jars (Amazon affiliate link), Marisa McClellan's eponymous (ooh!) first book from her terrific blog.

I knew from the start that I was going to change up the recipe because I've become smitten with the flavor of roasted Hatch chiles. Each August my local grocery store fires up a chile roaster in the parking lot (a round cage like contraption with a flame shooting into it) and I can walk a dog (or three) down to pick up a quart of freshly roasted chiles. [Like my local farmer's market, the grocery store provides water for dogs.] These roasted chiles freeze well, and I buy several quarts for a year's worth of roasted chile needs. If you don't have a local source of roasted Hatch chiles, roast the hot peppers you've got, or pick up a can of roasted green chiles at the grocery store in the Hispanic foods aisle.

I was thinking about the color of the finished jars when I chose the orange-purple peppers at my Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share pick up. The final piece for this recipe came when my favorite fruit vendor had yellow plums at the farmer's market. The plums were so ripe they weren't exactly the best looking fruit, and we had a conversation about how good looking produce has no correlation with good tasting produce. With the combination of ripe local peaches, plums, and orange-purple peppers, as well as roasted Hatch chiles, I was set to get my salsa on.

Heirloom Tomato and Mascarpone Pizza

This grilled pizza is a gourmet version of the cheese and tomato classic.  Flavorful heirloom tomatoes on a mascarpone-spread crust topped with feta, fontina, and mozzarella cheeses. Simple is good when you start with fresh, amazing, local flavor.

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Sometimes it's good to keep things simple on a pizza. Just some cheese and tomatoes.  You could order in a plain cheese pizza or you could make it yourself, a variety of ways. You could pick up a box on the shelf of the grocery store, grab a fork, and have a simple cheese and tomato sauce pizza.
You could pick up a bag of dough, a jar of sauce, and a wedge of cheese and get busy. Or you could get an heirloom tomato in the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share and decide to go gourmet, like I did.


One of the reasons I like to eat locally grown produce is because it tastes better than something trucked in from off. That flavor discrepancy is never more pronounced than in a tomato. There's something about a fresh tomato, picked at the height of it's ripeness, that cannot be matched by anything trucked into a grocery store.

When tomato season starts, I make it a point to enjoy a fresh tomato sandwich every week. That sounds easy, now, in the beginning of the season. Let me tell you--it can be a drag come September. But I do it anyway--changing it up with bacon, avocado, whatever looks good that day to me.



I also like to put fresh tomatoes on pizza. The trick to keep your pizza from getting soggy is to slice your tomatoes a good 30 minutes to an hour before you put them on a pizza, like I share in my Tomato Basil Pizza recipe. If I'm using my oven, I'll have my pizza dough sitting on the counter for a couple of hours before I plan to bake, just to get up to room temperature so I can work with it. I'll slice my tomatoes and leave them on a cutting board to drain, then turn on the oven to preheat my pizza stone for an hour. By the time the dough has relaxed and the stone has warmed up, the tomatoes have given up a fair amount of juice. I can tip that off the cutting board and I am good to go.