Quick-Fried Beef Tips (Puntas de Filete a la Mexicana)

It's been a while since I've posted. Apparently, the billable hours, the infant/toddler, the travel, etc. don't all work that well with both cooking and blogging. Guess which one fell by the wayside.

I recently told a friend that I was more than six months behind on the blog. The good news is that that is not quite true: I cooked this dish on August 16, which is slightly less than six months ago... Here it is. The best part is that this is the first dish cooked in our real house. It has been very nice to get back to our kitchen and cook using a reliable stove.

On to the mise (in two parts, this time):

The recipe calls for three medium-large tomatoes, or one and one-half pounds. My tomatoes were medium, not medium-large, it seems. The rest of the mise is some beautiful meat (I love ribeye) and some beef broth:

First, I put the tomatoes in a pan for roasting. I didn't bother using foil because it was a nonstick pan:

Bit of a mistake:

Now I use foil in a cast iron pan. Anyway, after the tomatoes were peeled, they looked great:

I chopped the ribeye into cubes and browned them until they were medium-rare:

I next added the onions to the (still tomato-ed) pan and browned them:

Next, I added the garlic, then the chiles, tomatoes, herbs, and bay leaves:

I simmered, added the broth, and, after roughly ten minutes, I added the browned meat and its juices:

I heated the meat through and removed the bay leaves:

Steamy... I plated it with some warmed-up tortillas:

It was very good, although I must admit I can't remember the specifics about six months later. I guess I'll have to try it again!

Sources:
With no Central Market, we're Whole Foods people now (most of the time)
Bay leaves from Balducci's
Herbes de Provence (very Mexican) from Penzey's

Buttered Crepes with Caramel and Pecans (Crepas con Cajeta)

Cajeta has entered my life as a result of this project, and that is a very, very good thing. I used to think that boiling a can of condensed milk was all I needed to make a nice dulce de leche. I have changed my mind -- cajeta is vastly superior (with all due respect to April Bloomfield, who apparently has access to better "tins" of condensed milk than I do). I, frankly, am not the world's biggest fan of goat cheese, but I love the same goat-y notes in my caramel, and how. Anyway, we now keep some cajeta on hand almost all of the time, and I was looking forward to making this. I admit I would generally much rather have a glass of Port for my dessert than a crepe, and I had never made crepes before, but this was an amazing dessert. In fact, I could have a glass of Port along with it; or maybe a glass of Sauternes. Here's the mise:

Clockwise from the top left: 2/3 cup of flour, 1/2 inch cinnamon stick, 3 cloves, 1 cup of milk (cow, not goat), some melted butter, 2 eggs, sugar, and salt. By the way, there is so much great sugar out there now other than the pedestrian granulated kind -- even from the big producers who have famous signs in various harbors -- that I don't know why people even used to eat boring old sugar.

Enough with the food rant. First, I made the batter for the crepes. Let me just say that, for those who may have been underwhelmed with crepes in the past, cinnamon/clove crepes are really good. I smashed up the cinnamon and cloves in a mortar and pestle and added all of the ingredients except the butter to the blender jar:

I pureed it, added the butter, and let the crepe batter rest for 2 hours. Meanwhile, I started on the topping. The mise for that was pecans, cajeta, and butter.

The first step is to toast the pecans. What's toast without butter? Well, I'm neither Ina Garten nor Alexandra Guarnaschelli, so this is a rare sight in my home:

I must admit, I seriously considered converting this recipe into Homer's Space-Age Out-of-This-World Moon Waffles, but I was resolute.

Still resolute, although I now was considering the Good Morning Burger.

Ahh, finally the pecans are toasted in the brown(ing) butter, which results in this deliciosity:

Not that I ate all of the butter; I carefully removed the nuts, leaving much of the brown butter behind:

Okay, okay, you may see the butter reappear later. Anyway, I got out our crepe pan (why do we have one of those when I have never made crepes before?) and brushed it lightly with oil:

I proceeded to make the crepes:

Once all of the crepes were made, I spooned a tablespoon of cajeta on the crepes:

I folded them in half, brushed with some of the nutty butter (not Nutter Butter), and folded in half again. Those who followed the tortilla recipe closely will note that, with these two folds, I ended up with crepes that were one-quarter circles, not one-sixth circles. I brushed them with more butter and set them in a casserole dish:

This wasn't really a decadent dessert yet, with just a few tablespoons of cajeta, a stick of butter, and crepes. More was necessary, so I took the rest of the cajeta and warmed it in a saucepan:

Meanwhile, I heated the crepes in the oven for 10 minutes:

To plate, I added the heated cajeta to a few crepes and drizzled the pecans on top, thusly. Now that's decadent:

Overall, this was very good. It is incredibly rich, but there are enough flavors that it still works. I wouldn't necessarily eat it every day, but it was quite nice. Definitely worth the effort; the only problem is that it uses up an entire recipe of cajeta. Well, that just means it's time to buy another carton of goat milk and get going...

Sources:
Eggs and butter from Central Market

Crisp-Fried Tortilla Chips (Tostaditas)

This is a nice, supposedly simple, "dish" I made to eat with the guacamole and the salsas I have been making. Tortilla chips are, in fact, simple, but the problem is that it is impossible to dry anything in Houston during the 10-month summers. I figured I could just slice up some tortillas, wait an hour or so, and fry them up. Not in Houston. After several hours of "drying," there was no apparent change in the tortillas. I could have tried to dry them in the oven, but did I mention that it was during the ten-month summer in Houston? Anyway, we ended up not having time, and I just left them in a bag to dry for several days. That seemed to work, eventually.

Anyway, here's the mise:

Not much to it. I sliced the tortillas into sixths to make chips:

Then I set them out in a single layer to dry (or so I thought):

I covered them with a towel so they would not curl up, but not even the magical wicking powers of cotton could help:

Finally, after quite a long time, I figured they were sufficiently dry and leathery:

With the chips finally ready, I prepared the oil for frying. At the time, I did not have a candy/frying thermometer, so I had to improvise:

I heated the oil to 380° and fried the chips. This was actually my last batch, so I had already taken the thermometer out:

I set them out on some paper towels and a paper bag to dry and sprinkled them with salt:

Overall, they were very good, but it's not something I thought was worth the several-day commitment for drying. Good tortilla chips are easy to find, and I doubt I'll make them again unless I have some stale tortillas lying around and no ideas for how to use them, even though I'm sure they would be easier to dry now that we are back in DC. Anyway, here's a plating shot with some of the guacamole and bonus product placement for my favorite beer, which I miss:

Sources:
Tortillas from El Tiempo Market

Quick-Cooked Tomatillo-Chile Sauce (Salsa Verde)

I've already made red salsa, so it's time to make green salsa. (This is the base for the poblano-based taco truck salsa I have been trying to match.) It's quite similar to the red salsa, not surprisingly, but it uses tomatillos instead of tomatoes, and it includes cilantro. Because I wasn't planning to make anything like huevos rancheros, I made half of the full 3-cup version in the cookbook. Here's the mise:

First, I boiled the tomatillos in salted water until they were tender. It usually takes about 12 minutes:

I added the tomatillos and the remaining ingredients -- onion, cilantro, garlic, and serrano (which I stemmed, but did not seed or devein -- spicy) to the blender and pureed it. It was mostly smooth, but it retained some small chunks for texture:

Then I heated some lard in a sauce pan. When the pan was hot enough to make a drop of the salsa sizzle, I added the whole blender jar:

I cooked the salsa, stirring constantly, for about five minutes, until it was much thicker and a little bit darker:

I then added a cup of chicken broth and returned the pot to a boil:

Once the salsa was boiling, I reduced the heat and simmered the salsa for about ten minutes:

This salsa is an excellent base, and, like the red salsa, it has totally ruined jarred salsa for me (which is not necessarily a bad thing). I like to experiment with it; adding a poblano (which I stem, seed, and devein) in addition to or instead of the serrano. We usually keep a jar of either this (or a variation of this) or red salsa (or both) around for our salsa needs, and it is very nice.

Sources:
Pretty much everything came from Whole Foods

Sparkling Limeade (Limonada)

Realizing that where there is lime zest, there is lime juice, I decided to make limonada at the same time as the lime zest cooler. Basically, the mise is the same limes from the last post. I simply juiced them after I zested them:


In the end, the limes yielded about a cup of lime juice. I added about a half cup of sugar and a quart of sparkling water, which resulted in this:

Well, it wasn't really that blurry in person, unless you spiked it with something. Simple and delicious, and much more to my taste (tart) than the lime-zest cooler (sweet). It lacked the interesting depth of flavor from the zest in the lime-zest cooler, though. Perhaps some combination of the two would be ideal...

Sources:
Limes from Whole Foods
Sparkling water from Whole Foods

Lime-Zest Cooler (Agua Preparada de Limon Rallado)

I bought a bunch of limes to make some drinks to go along with the guacamole from the last post. First up was the more difficult of the two, but it is also the one I prefer. It is very easy, and it has a nice depth of flavor that is hard to find elsewhere, I think. First, the mise:


Pretty simple. There's also sugar and water, but you know what those look like (and the sugar is added to taste). First, I zested all of the limes:


Then I added the zest to a quart of water (using some of the water to rinse out the bowl to make sure I got all of the zest):


I let the zest steep for an hour, until it looked pretty much like an inanimate carbon rod:


Well, it at least looked like radioactive waste... I poured the water through a fine-mesh strainer and pressed the zest to get as much lime-y (as opposed to limey) goodness (and radioactivity) as I could:


Next, I added about 3/4 cup of sugar (a bit less works, too, as I have subsequently proven) -- and that's it. Just add ice and enjoy:

Overall, this is very good, despite the fact that it would raise eyebrows at DHS if you were to take it to a public forum. Be careful with the sugar, and it is a nice, refreshing drink, even if it lacks the tang of a good limonada (as you will see). I think it would work well in a margarita with some additional lime juice (as the book suggests).

Sources:
Limes from Whole Foods