Goat & Feta Burgers, Blistered Okra & Shishitos, Miso Chicken Thighs, Italian Herb Beef Roast, Homemade Pesto & Kimchi & More!

Our last What’s Cooking round up was heavy on our pastured pork and this one has none. Funny how that balances out!

There’s lots of summer flavors going on with amazing goat burgers loaded with herbs and feta and topped with purple kraut and pesto (trust), delicious and easy miso chicken thighs, an Italian spiced beef roast, plus basil arugula pesto, Napa stir fry, homemade kimchi and more!

Herby Goat & Feta Burgers with Blistered Okra & Shishitos

I think it’s going to be big goat burger summer for us!

This is one of my favorite ways to eat goat meat — with lots of bright flavors from herbs, whipped feta, pesto, fresh tomatoes and kraut, alongside easy summer veggies, blistered in our pizza oven.

Since the goat herd was rotating through our house field, I even made them and then ate them while I could see the herd out the windows. It might be uncomfortable or weird to some, but after 10 years of raising livestock for meat, I have come to believe that there’s nothing weird about it. And any discomfort should be honored.

As one of my farmer friends reminded me recently, the world would be a different place if we all had to look our food in the eyes on a regular basis!

As for the details of the burgers: our forage-finished goat meat is fairly lean, so without binders used for things like meatballs or meatloaf, it can be a little crumbly. Therefore for these I gave them my meatball treatment with an egg, homemade breadcrumbs, plus goat feta, red onions, oregano, rosemary and thyme and a little fresh made basil and arugula pesto (more on that further down).

While I was making the burgers, Grant blistered first a round of okra, then a round of shishito peppers in our pizza oven! We have done stovetop version of this and transferred to oven or toaster oven in many previous seasons, but we were excited to try them at an even higher heat in the pizza oven. And they came out great! We preheated the cast iron skillet in the pizza oven, tossed the okra and peppers in olive oil and sea salt and then just cooked for a few minutes until blistered.

The meal came together with the goat burgers on Bellegarde brioche slider buns, plus the veggies, some of my homemade almond and cashew sauce I make every week (this time flavored with a little tomato paste and roasted red peppers) and homemade dill pickles. It was incredible and we had enough of everything to cook another batch the next night, too.

Garlic Ginger Miso Chicken Thighs with Rice, Snap Beans, Spicy Mayo & Crispy Seaweed

This was a pretty simple but absolutely delicious meal and I’m ready to make it again! I rarely pull chicken thighs for us since they’re so in demand, but we had a pack of Credo Farms thighs left and more from Pearl River Pastures in backstock, so I allowed ourselves the treat!

The chicken thigh recipe was inspired by It’s A Flavorful Life, but I added garlic to the miso butter mix, too, and seasoned with onion salt for extra allium flavor!

While the chicken marinated briefly and cooked in the toaster oven, I trimmed the ends off a bunch of haricot vert sized purple and yellow snap beans and made some Jasmine rice.

I had some spicy mayo leftover from another recipe, so we drizzled that on the beans, along with some tempura seaweed crisps that I’m obsessed with. There was plenty of extra sauce from the chicken to drizzle over the rice and it was all so tasty together. Like I said, already ready to make this one again!

Herb & Garlic Eye of Round Roast, Roasted Squash, Whipped Feta, Salad & Garlic Bread

Usually I do a simple eye of round roast with a horseradish cream sauce, but with some baguettes to use up and whipped feta in the freezer, I decided to go with an Italian flavor profile to have an excuse to make garlic bread!

For the roast, I smashed Compsotella garlic cloves with fennel seed and fresh basil, oregano rosemary and thyme with a mortar and pestle, then salted the roast and rubbed it with the herb mixture and a little olive oil.

I broiled it at 450 degrees for 15 minutes, then turned the heat down to 300 for another 30 minutes or so, aiming for medium rare, but it actually went a little past that!

I made the garlic bread with truffle mayo and melted butter, plus fresh grated garlic, onion salt and fresh grated parmesan. We also had some roasted zephyr squash and a quick salad with lettuce and creole tomatoes. I dolloped some whipped feta with jalapeño fermented honey on top.

Grant had his as a garlic bread sandwich with squash and tomatoes piled in and that was really good, too!

Beef & Napa Stir Fry with Cashews

I brought home a two pound pack of ground beef with plans to do burgers with half of it and combine with ground goat for gyros with the other half.

But we had two different groups of friends over for homemade pizza on a Friday night and a Saturday lunch, so we didn’t need a big dinner Saturday night after all!

So then Sunday, I just pivoted to a stir fry with tons of veggies to make for good leftovers/meal prep for the week!

It was a clean out the fridge type of deal, starting with oyster, shiitake and shimofuri mushrooms sautéed in a dry cast iron skillet. I’ve learned that this really helps with browning without soaking up a ton of oil (they eventually release their own liquids). So I decided to add some halved and thinly sliced Japanese eggplant to the dry skillet, too, and it worked really well!

In a separate pan, I sautéed onions until soft and starting to brown, then added ginger and garlic and then carrots. I let the carrots start to soften before adding a bunch of Napa cabbage and then the mushroom and eggplant mixture.

Meanwhile I browned the ground beef with ginger and garlic, then added a Korean style sauce from Trader Joe’s (pretty clean ingredients, but ultimately a little too sweet, so I had to balance with extra soy sauce and rice vinegar and spices). I finished it all with a bunch of chives that needed to be used up and we served it with Jasmine rice and cashews.

Basil and Arugula Pesto Pasta with Clams, Sun-Dried Tomatoes & Sweet Corn

I’ve got a cute little garden going in cloth Smart Pots outside my porch in my new house and it’s been so nice coming out first thing in the morning to check on things, water, fertilize, look for pests, etc.

I’ve got lots of oregano, rosemary and thyme, plus bush beans, cherry tomatoes, jalapeño peppers, roselle hibiscus and zinnias and I just pulled a bunch of potatoes and planted amaranth, cantaloupe, more roselle, spaghetti squash and sunflowers.

And basil! I have so much basil that is really taking off, so I pinched a bunch of auxiliary buds to train it to bush out more and keep it in a vegetative state before it tries to start flowering.

So the results of that were a solid basil harvest for pesto! I initially was going to use pistachios for the nuts, but switched to walnuts after taking the photo, whoops!

And then I pulsed some Compostella garlic with the walnuts, then added parmigiano reggiano cheese and then the basil, olive oil and lemon juice. After tasting it, I decided I had my nut-garlic-cheese ratio too high and I had arugula in the fridge that needed to be used up, so I added that, adjusted for lemon juice and salt. It came out lovely!

For lunchtime, I used some garganelli pasta we just received in the mail as a gift, along with canned clams, frozen sweet corn and sun dried tomatoes. It was the perfect easy summer lunch!

Sheet Pan Red Snapper & Seasoned Potatoes with Roasted Red Pepper Almond Cashew Sauce

Per the mere suggestion from the label, I almost always use Anna Marie Seafood’s red snapper taco strips for fish tacos, but this time was more of a quick and dirty get dinner on the table kind situation and we wanted to try our potatoes we just harvested from the garden.

I should have taken photos of the sauce, but I made a fresh batch of Bitchin Sauce. It’s a sauce from an Austin-based company that the Mandeville Whole Foods recently stopped carrying, so I had to make my own!

My amendments to the above linked recipe from the Faux Martha are that I use half cashews and half almonds (and bump up the amounts a bit). For seasonings, I did a really good batch a couple weeks ago with jalapeños, cilantro and chives that gave it a greenish tinge, but this time I went with a few roasted red peppers and tomato paste, along with coriander and chili powder for a slightly sweeter umami profile.

Then we had fresh tomatoes with sea salt and a simple salad with arugula, goat feta and my fermented radishes. The sauce was so good as salad dressing and on the fish and potatoes!

Kimchi with Turmeric, Carrots, Daikon, Watermelon Radishes & Scallions

Always be fermenting! I was entirely out of both cabbage and cucumber kimchi, so I was overdue for another batch.

This time I used green Napa cabbage, purple and red daikon radishes, plus watermelon radishes, carrots, scallions and even fresh turmeric! Why not, right? Fermentation increases the potency and bioavailability of so many antioxidants and fresh turmeric sliced up doesn’t add as much of an earthy taste or gritty texture that some turmeric powder can.

For the kimchi paste/seasonings, I have come to figure out what works for me and how I like to ferment and my tastes, so I’ve stopped worrying about authenticity and perfection.

I used gochujang chili paste, along with gochugaru flakes, garlic fermented honey and fish sauce and a fair amount of paste/brine from my last batch that was still in the fridge to get it going.

I ended up fermenting it for 11 days this time until it was sour and bubbly to my liking. It made a half gallon plus a quart, so I should be stocked up for a few months now!