It’s pepper season, and Spadea is on the farm

Harvest time in New Jersey!

It's here and Jodi and I spent a great afternoon at our friends John and Tracey, who own a beautiful farm in Hunterdon County. First step was to head out to the garden where the rows of plants offered up two bushels of hot peppers.

The process takes time, but is relatively simple. We brought the four full baskets into the kitchen and then handwashed each pepper, then each pepper was dried carefully.

Next station, cut 'em up!

This was led by John's brother Pete and his wife Annie. They've been doing it for the better part of nearly five decades as a married couple!

I know, some of you may be concerned about me and the knives, given Jodi's ban on my using the mandolin at the house.

Fair point.

That said, as I mentioned to Eric Scott on the morning show, part of my downtime between the election and my return to the air was a lot of cooking and sharpening my knife skills, pun intended.

How to prepare the fresh hot peppers

Each pepper is sliced into small rings and the stem is discarded. Then as the bowl of peppers fills, each layer is salted with coarse sea salt.

After about an hour, there was a ton of water coming out of the peppers from the salt and settling at the bottom of the bowl.

We put the peppers in a colander and drained the excess water. Next step was to stuff the peppers in three jars, large for longer storage, medium for us and small 'giveaways' for our friends.

It's a great time of year and we'll look forward to adding these delicious peppers, which will last for years in a cool storage place, on everything from steak to pasta to pizza to omelets!

The post above reflects the thoughts and observations of New Jersey 101.5 talk show host Bill Spadea. Any opinions expressed are Bill's own.

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