Last month’s recipes were very baingan/eggplant heavy, with three out of four centered on various eggplant varieties I grew in my community garden plot this year (though not quite as heavy as September 2021 when all the recipes were eggplant-focused). The first killing frost hit us earlier this week. I did cover my eggplant and hot pepper plants and so they’ll be featured in my cooking in October as well. But you will have some deliverance from it on the blog: there’s only eggplant recipe on this month’s poll and it was the fifth place finisher in last month’s poll. Also on the poll are the other three recipes that didn’t make the cut in September and four new ones. You can vote for up to four of the eight that you’re most interested in and the four highest vote getters will be posted here every Thursday. The poll will be open through Monday.

Many of these recipes were also ways of using up my vegetable garden bounty, especially tomatoes, which are featured heavily in most of the curries. Garden peppers also find their way in here and there. There are sweet green peppers in the kofta/meatball curry; and lethal Trinidad Scorpions in a tomato chutney that I am calling The Red Death.

• Chicken Curry with Fennel: I improvised this recipe for one of my readers whose family has dietary issues with alliums and it came out rather well.
• Hot and Sour Baingan Masala: This is closer to being a curry and I swear it’s different from the eggplant recipes I posted in September.
• Kofta Curry: Beef meatballs in a slightly sour tomato-heavy curry with sweet green peppers.
• Lamb Shank Curry with Potato and Tomato: This delicious lamb shank curry also features tomato. Don’t have lamb shanks? Use any red meat with bones.
• The Red Death: As I do every year with excess garden tomatoes, I made a large batch of oven-roasted tomatoes. Our usual use for these is in sandwiches with mozzarella and basil and in pasta sauces. But as I stared at a jar it occurred to me they would also make a great chutney. And since I have more ripe Trinidad Scorpion peppers from my plants than is safe to have in one house, I used those. It’s rather good (and rather hot—but you can use a milder pepper like habanero).
• Red Pork with Wine and Spices: A holdover from the last two polls, this involves white wine, spices, tomatoes and coconut milk.
• Shrimp Curry with Tomatoes: Big tomato action in this delicious shrimp curry as well.
• Zucchini Chenchki with Shrimp: Yet another recipe improvized to use up excess summer produce, this time zucchini, not from my garden but from our CSA. The shrimp is entirely optional and without it the dish becomes vegan.

Here is the visual inducement (the poll is below):

Again, you can vote for up to four recipes.