Gringo Kitchen

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

2009-02-08T18:48:00.000-08:00

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)

2008-09-27T23:59:00.000-07:00

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)

2008-09-07T21:24:00.000-07:00

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)

2008-09-01T11:26:00.000-07:00

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)

2008-08-18T18:02:00.001-07:00

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)

2008-08-18T18:01:00.000-07:00

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

Guacamole with Tomatillos (Guacamole de Tomate Verde)

2008-08-18T18:00:00.000-07:00

So, it's been a while since I posted, but I have been dealing with moving back home (you'll see my real kitchen -- it actually has burners that respond when you turn the dial -- in some posts soon), and I've had a busy few months on top of that. Somehow food blogging takes lower priority than my son and my job. Anyway, on to the food. Sorry if there's not much detail, but I actually made this almost four months ago. Anyway, here's the mise:

First, I husked and washed the tomatillos, and then I boiled them for about 10 minutes:

Meanwhile, I diced the onion, cilantro, and serranos (thusly):

I then put everything into the blender:

Next, I "whacked" it, as either Jamie Oliver or John Gotti might say, until the ingredients were a coarse puree. You can't really see how coarse because of the bubbles, but them's the breaks:

Finally, I mashed the avocado in a bowl and added the tomatillo/onion/chile puree:

That's pretty much it. (Sorry about the mess on the side of the bowl.) The guacamole was nice, and (obviously) thinner than guacamole made only from avocados, which I think is often too heavy. The best thing about this guacamole is that the acid in the tomatillo helps prevent browning, which is important when you are taking this to someone's house an hour away (as I was). I also liked the trick to keep the avocado pit in the bowl with the guacamole, which also helps delay (but does not prevent) browning. This was very good, and it will certainly make it into our rotation.

Sources:
I think I actually got the ingredients for this from Whole Foods, not Central Market

Ranch-Style Eggs with Tomato-Chile Sauce: Huevos Rancheros

2008-06-22T13:40:00.000-07:00

I had to do something with all of that salsa. I'm not really a huge fried egg fan, but this looked like a good weekend breakfast. I apologize in advance for the blurry pictures, but there was a lot to do at once with this dish, even though there were not many ingredients. I didn't have a lot of time for photography. Maybe they can go here, along with the nude women and businessmen (whether walking exuberantly or not). Here's the mise:

As I said, pretty simple. Just some eggs, queso fresco, some old corn tortillas, and about a cup and a half of the salsa. First, I warmed the salsa in a saucepan (not even a blurry picture of that, but it looked pretty much like the last picture from the salsa post). Meanwhile, I fried the tortillas - in vegetable oil, not lard, for once - for a few seconds on each side, just to warm them up:

Next, I fried the eggs, two at a time:

I added salt and pepper to the eggs and moved them to a cookie sheet, where I held them in a low oven along with the fried tortillas to keep them warm while I fried the other eggs. For plating, I added a tortilla to the plate, topped it with two of the eggs, and spooned the salsa over the eggs. Then I sprinkled on the queso fresco and some chopped parsley:

This dish was really good. I'm not sure it converted me to fried eggs, but Katy loved it. I think this and the fish baked in cornhusks are her two favorite dishes, even with the mole. She mentions this dish to people a lot, and even people I barely know ask me about it. I call that a success.

Sources:
Queso fresco from La Vaquita
Tortillas from El Tiempo Market
Eggs from Central Market

Quick-Cooked Tomato-Chile Sauce: Salsa Cocida de Jitomate

2008-06-22T08:24:00.000-07:00

One of the best things about this project has been the salsa. We have found some good jarred salsas that we like, but fresh salsa is far better than even our favorites. This is the first salsa I made, and I like how simple the recipes are so I can make all sorts of adaptations. I am still trying to match the salsa verde from the taco truck by our house - I know it has poblanos, so I have been making a bunch of different poblano-based salsas to try out different flavors. It's fun, and they have all been delicious (although sometimes a bit too hot).

Enough about that, on to this salsa, a red salsa. Here is the mise:

It's quite simple: just some canned tomatoes (or fresh tomatoes if you prefer and if they are in season), a few serrano chiles, and chopped onions and garlic. Because I was using diced canned tomatoes, I did not have to chop them up. All I had to do was chop the serranos:

Not much to it. Then I put everything in the blender:

I pureed everything until it was mostly thinned out, but there were still some chunks for texture:

Next, it was time to fry the salsa. I put some lard in our medium skillet, and heated it over medium-high heat:

When it was hot enough to make a drop of the salsa sizzle, I poured the entire carafe into the skillet:

Stirring constantly, I cooked the salsa until it thickened and changed to a more rusty color:

That's it! It was quick and very easy, and it made a ton of salsa (more than two cups) that we used on a bunch of different dishes. It's flavor is so much better than jarred salsa, and it is easy to make variations on the salsa (some of which are in the book) because it is so simple. We rarely eat jarred salsa anymore unless I am lazy, which is very nice.

Sources:
Tomatoes from Muir Glen
Everything else from Central Market

Cold Chicken and Avocado with Chile Chipotle: Pollo, Aguacate y Chile Chipotle en Frío

2008-06-21T09:59:00.000-07:00

So, it’s summer. I made this quite a while ago - I just haven't gotten around to writing this post - but it already felt like summer here when I made this dish. This is a nice cold salad for summer dinner. It will definitely be entering our rotation. Here is the mise:

I had poached some chicken breasts the day before for another dish, and I had these left over. I know, it’s not a whole chicken, but we have to eat the chicken breast from our freezer at some point. The bread is not really an ingredient – we just served it alongside, but I really like my ciabatta, so I put it in the picture. The ramekin has a bit of the poaching liquid used to poach the chicken, so it was like a light chicken broth. The recipe calls for a slice of onion broken into rings for garnish, but I forgot to do that, so I just reserved some of the diced onion. The lettuce is from a friend of my sister-in-law’s mother-in-law (does that make me her fourteenth cousin, once removed?), who grew it in her garden. Thanks! You can see the cook’s glass of wine off to the side – not Gewürztraminer like Bayless suggests, but a decent white nonetheless.

First, I peeled and cut the carrots and halved the potatoes. I then boiled them for about 15 minutes:

I added the poaching liquid, a quarter cup of apple cider vinegar, oregano, salt, and some puree of canned chipotles to a measuring cup to make a dressing:

Then I added the onions (except for those that I had reserved) and took a blurry picture:

Meanwhile, I shredded the poached chicken breasts and put them in a bowl:

I also diced the boiled carrots and potatoes and added them to the bowl, along with the dressing:

I covered the bowl and let it stand for 45 minutes for the flavors to mingle. Just before serving, I sliced the lettuce, diced the avocado, and mixed them in. I added the diced onions I had reserves as a garnish and served it with some of my ciabatta. Bayless calls for French bread, but Italian was all I had around because I haven’t made baguettes in a while.

There it is! The dish is a great summer dish. First of all, it is served cold, which is key. It has a really nice amount of spice from the chipotles, but the vegetables and avocado keep it from being too spicy, which is not what you want on a hot summer day. It’s pretty easy preparation, too, especially if you have the chicken left over. I think it would be great for a picnic lunch or dinner.

Sources:
Ciabatta from The Bread Baker’s Apprentice
Lettuce from a friend’s garden
Everything else from Central Market

Saturday Dinner IV: Mole (Mole Rojo con Pollo)

2008-05-30T08:16:00.001-07:00

I wanted to make something big, new, and exciting for this dinner, so I went to the mole section of the cookbook. This one looked the best to me, and Bayless suggests making a traditional dinner with the three dishes from the last three posts. (Well, he actually suggests making caramel crepes with the cajeta, but I figured I had ignored the guests enough at that point, so we just served the cajeta with ice cream.)

I have been putting off both this and the last post both because I have been very busy and because I have been dreading it a bit. The mole took all day, and I mean all day. Charlie woke us up, we got him ready, and I started cooking. I took a short break for lunch (from El Tiempo Market and St. Arnold) and kept cooking until about 5:00. I took a shower, got ready for dinner, and redid the rice before the guests arrived. The good news is that I made a double batch of mole, so we still have a bunch of mole in our freezer. I was a bit worried that this post would take a really long time, too. We'll see...

On to the mise! Well, in this case, there are several mise pictures because of all of the ingredients. I based the mise on the categories that Bayless has in the ingredient list. First up are the chiles:

I used anchos, pasillas, and guajillos. (The recipe calls for mulatos. I couldn't find anything that went by that name, and I understand that mulatos are similar to anchos and pasillas, which this recipe already has. I wanted to try something different, so I got guajillos, which are, after all, dark skinned (mulatos).)

Next are the nuts, seeds, flavorings, and thickeners:

Clockwise from the upper left is: canned tomatoes, tomatillos, peanuts, raisins, sesame seeds, onions and garlic, stale bread (ciabatta), a stale corn tortilla, and a chopped plaintain. Here's a closer look at the bread, tortilla, and plantain:

And here are the remaining items from this category:

Next up are the herbs and spices:

In the ramekin is chocolate, and a cinnamon stick is in the center of the plate. Clockwise from the top of the plate are torn bay leaves, dried oregano, dried thyme, cloves, and peppercorns. There are a few more ingredients that we'll get to later, in case you didn't think that was enough.

Anyway, on with the prep. First, I ground up the spices using a mortar and pestle and put them in a bowl with the chocolate, tomatoes, tomatillos, oregano, and thyme. I toasted the sesame seeds and added them to the mix. Then I stemmed, seeded, and deveined the chiles and piled them up on the board for frying:

The next step, obviously, was to fry them in a bunch of lard. I put them in individually or in small groups and fried them just for a few seconds on each side, until they browned and the skin blistered:

Here's what they looked like:

Then I reconstituted them in water, like I showed before. The frying was not done yet, though! I also fried everything from the nuts, seeds, flavorings, and thickeners except for the sesame seeds, tomatoes, and tomatillos. Then I mixed everything but the chiles together, and it was ready for the blender:

I blended all of those ingredients together and pressed them through a strainer:

This is the result:

Next, I blended the chiles and ran them through a separate strainer:

That's pretty much it for the mole prep. Next, I turned to the chicken:

Nice looking bird, isn't it? Thanks, Central Market. I must confess, this was the first time I ever butchered a chicken. We don't eat much chicken, and when we do, it is usually chicken paillard or some other recipe that calls for chicken breasts, and boneless chicken breasts at that. I was excited about the opportunity to deal with a whole chicken, and I really liked butchering it. I pulled out my Jacques Pepin's Complete Techniques and went to town. There will be more whole chickens in my future (and, hopefully, some homemade chicken broth). Here's the chicken after I quartered it:

Having taken care of that, I got back to the mole. I fried the chile puree until it darkened and thickened (sorry, no picture -- stirring constantly) and did the same with the remaining puree (ditto). This is what it looked like when the two purees were put together:

Next, I added about five cups of chicken broth and brought the whole thing to a simmer:

When we had finished the soup, I browned the chicken in a pan for about three minutes per side:

Then I added it to the simmering mole. The cookbook says to cook the dark meat for ten minutes, then add the breasts for fourteen minutes more. Perhaps it was the precision of the fourteen minutes, but I actually believed the food would be ready by then. It was not; not even close. It took at least another ten minutes; I think it was twenty. Anyway, it was cooked when we served it, along with the rice:

It was awesome, and totally worth all of the effort. The flavors were so complex, it is really difficult to describe. You can really taste both the ingredients and the effort. Our French friends who travel to Mexico (real Mexico, not the beaches) regularly appeared to like it, and they were very complimentary. All I can say is that I was really happy with it, and I will totally make it again, even though it is a lot of work. I am also really looking forward to getting another chicken and making this dish again with the mole we froze -- the same flavor, but without nearly as much effort! Won't that be nice...

This post, while it did take a long time, was worth it, too. I can almost taste the mole again...

Sources:
Chiles from Don Enrique
Tomatoes from Muir Glen
Chocolate from La Popular
Sesame seeds from Balducci's
Ciabatta from The Bread Baker's Apprentice (made with flour from King Arthur Flour and yeast from Fleischmann's)
Pretty much everything else from Central Market or our pantry

Saturday Dinner III: Mexican Tomato-Colored Rice (With Fresh Vegetables) (Arroz a la Mexicana (con Verduras))

2008-05-29T20:25:00.000-07:00

So, I'm finally back. It's almost enough to make one wonder, Fan (if you exist), why a person with a fairly grueling occupation and an infant child would start a blog. Well, Fan (if you exist), it's really a somewhat Quixotean task, admittedly. Moreover, I haven't had the type of travel that allows me to spend time on the blog lately (not that there has been no travel). Anyway, here's the latest post. For those who have forgotten over the last month, there are four posts about a Saturday dinner I made. We've seen the soup and the dessert (cajeta, for which, if you must know, a second batch is completely gone, and I got to eat some of it!). Now for the main course (well, its side...):

This dish got off to a very bad start. I started it early, thinking it would be nice to finish it and be able to reheat it according to the book's directions while spending time with my guests. Needless to say, it didn't quite work out that way. The first time I made it, the rice was, well, just wrong. I mean, very wrong. It was kind of like risotto on the outside, but completely undercooked on the inside. The more I cooked it, the worse it got. I eventually threw it out and started over. So much for time with the guests...

Anyway, it all starts with some onions and rice. The recipe calls for them to be toasted in oil, but I, of course, toasted them in pork fat. That's the way I roll...

I love the way rice tastes when toasted, and that's what I do now with risotto (which we eat just about weekly) before I cook it. It adds a great dimension to the flavor, and I don't know how I lived without it before, quite frankly. The only problem is the tendency for it to burn before the onions are ready, but I think I have that down now. Or maybe that has something to do with the rock-hard risotto garbage. You be the judge.

Once the rice and onions were lightly browned, I added some minced garlic. Meanwhile, I pureed some canned tomatoes (no, it was not -- and frankly is not -- tomato season yet), heated them up, and added them to the rice and onions. I also heated up some chicken broth in a separate pot. You'll notice that the pot appears to have been used. That's what happens when you have to throw out your first batch and start another one, at least when you're me. You'll also notice that there has been a blue ray of deliciosity in the background of the last two pictures. What delights does the Le Crueset hold? You'll have to wait (ideally, not another month) to find out...

Also part of the mise was some carrots and peas, which I had previously cooked:

Who's up for some pot pie?!? Sorry, but that's what I think when I see this. Not to mention the Swanson TV dinners from my youth. But seriously, these taste good. Pay no attention to the infant behind the curtain (who eats these sorts of things all of the time...)!

Anyway, that's pretty much it for the mise, and the final plating picture will have to wait for the Le Creuset to reveal its delights. For those of you who haven't lost interest in the last month -- I'm talking to you, Fan (if you exist) -- another potentially long wait should be nothing!

Sources:

Pretty much just our pantry, which is almost exclusively from Central Market

Saturday Dinner II: Garbanzo-Vegetable Soup with Smoky Broth and Fresh Avocado (Caldo Tlalpeño)

2008-04-17T18:11:00.000-07:00

For the first course of our Saturday dinner, I made a soup that is nice and light, unlike the main course, as you will see. Well, let's get on with it! Here's the mise:

Yes, it's true, I use store-bought chicken broth. We don't eat much chicken, and, when we do, we usually just eat chicken paillard or something made from boneless chicken breasts. Kind of makes it hard to make chicken broth. We do make our own vegetable broth, but that just wouldn't be the same. Those following along with the cookbook will note that there is no sprig of epazote, only dried epazote, because that's all I've been able to find thus far. I also don't have slices of chipotle because I pureed my canned chipotle when I opened it; I used it instead. I also didn't include the pork fat in the mise, but, don't worry, it's in there. I did not add a chicken breast because we were having it as a light starter (Bayless even suggests omitting the chicken breast when the soup is served with our main course).

Because I was going to make the soup after everyone arrived, I made everything I could first and added all of the ingredients to the broth to simmer, with the idea that I could leave the kitchen. It didn't exactly work out that way because of all of the other things I was busy cooking, but it did free up some time for me. So, I added the onions and carrots to the pork fat to cook:

I cooked them for a while; until the onions were starting to brown, and added the garlic. I cooked it for a bit longer, then added the beans and dried herbs:

When everyone arrived, I heated up the broth, added the onion/carrot/bean/herb mixture to it, and simmered everything for about 30 minutes. When it was ready, I added some diced avocado to the top, and here's the final plating:

Okay, I forgot to take a picture of the finished dish (idiot), but I thought it looked very nice. It certainly did not have any swimming pool floatie noodles in it.... In fact, the soup was excellent, if I do say so myself. It was nice and light, but also full of flavor. As I said earlier, I offered chipotle puree instead of chipotle slices, with a warning because it is very spicy. I thought that a bit of it gave it some interesting depth, but it was easy to take a bit too much and overwhelm the delicate flavors of the soup. One of our friends declared that the soup tasted like spring, and when Katy had a stomach ache a few weeks later, she said that it was all that she wanted to eat (of course, it was gone by then). Not bad reviews, I think.

Sources:

Central Market Organics chicken broth

Goya beans

Everything else from Central Market or our pantry

Saturday Dinner I: Goat-Milk Caramel with Spirits (Cajeta de Leche Envinada)

2008-04-16T16:59:00.000-07:00

This is a fairly simple "dish," but it is delicious. The only problem is that I went out of town right after I made it and Katy ate all of it before I could have more than a couple of tablespoons (out of about a cup and a half of cajeta). We made it for some friends who came over to our house for dinner. This is the first of four posts about that meal.

Anyway, our friends are French, but one of them travels to Mexico regularly, so I was interested in running a good weekend dinner by him. I started cooking the night before, because that's the kind of cool guy I am on Friday night, particularly since the baby was born. Anyway, our friends made crêpes a few weeks later and gave us a couple when we went to the park with them. The cookbook suggests eating the cajeta with crêpes, which we could have done except -- did I mention that Katy ate all of it? In case you're wondering, yes, it was the first time in my life that anyone had stopped a stroller on a jogging path to hand me crêpes -- maybe I just don't get out much. The cajeta would have been really good with the crêpes, but it was also really good as a topping for ice cream, which is how we used it.

On to the cooking! Here's the mise:

It was much easier than I had feared to find goat milk, and goat milk made all of the difference in the flavor (not surprisingly). We don't keep grain alcohol around the house (at least for long...), so I used some Black Seal rum instead. I know, Bermuda is not exactly Mexico, but I'm not the first person to cook with it, at least.

I put everything but the baking soda and rum into our Le Creuset pot:

I brought the pot to a simmer and added the baking soda (I was careful about stirring the mixture to keep it from foaming up, but it wasn't really a problem). I kept simmering, stirring it every once in a while:

How did I manage to take a picture from the right side while stirring the pot with my right hand? I have three arms. Also, no, my Rice ring does not have that much schmutz in it, and we don't actually employ the steamer in this dish; we just made some food for Charlie at the same time. Whew.

Anyway, this is what the pot looked like after a while (I don't know, something like half an hour; I didn't really pay attention):

Mmm...caramel. (And yes, the camera is still misrepresenting the amount of schmutz in my ring.) It reminds me of my friends who were married in the Caramel Valley, which I understand is next to the Land of Chocolate, although, sadly, I never got to see it while we were out there... (Yes, Jon, I'm still beating that joke to death, as is my wont.)

Once the caramel was ready (a bit thinner than corn syrup when hot, and making fairly hard droplets when they are cooled to room temperature), I strained the caramel into a jar, careful to leave certain undesirable things like the cinnamon stick behind:

I added the rum and put the jar into an ice bath to cool:

Could the ice bath have been deeper? Probably, if I had used a more appropriate bowl, but, you know, it was late. We ultimately served it on vanilla ice cream (homemade, of course) at the end of a long meal and a long day in the kitchen, so we were a bit lazy with the prezo (all together now, "like with the ice bath?"):

Later, we found that putting the cajeta under the ice cream looked much better and less drizzly. Overall, the cajeta was great, and it was really easy. Not that I really did so often before, I don't think I'll ever again be able to eat jarred caramel on ice cream. The goat milk flavor (for those who have not partaken, it tastes like goat cheese, duh!) is really interesting and makes it virtually impossible for the caramel to be cloying, which it can sometimes be. And a bit of 140-proof rummy goodness certainly doesn't hurt the overall flavor... I will definitely make this again, but I'll wait until I'm not about to travel for a while so (maybe) I can eat some of it.

Sources:
Goat milk from Meyenberg
Karo corn syrup
Gosling's Black Seal Rum

Tacos with Potatoes and Mexican Sausage (Tacos con Papas y Chorizo)

2008-03-31T19:12:00.000-07:00

This is a simple dish that I have made before, but I really like it. It's a great meal to make during the week because it's so easy, as long as I remember to take the chorizo out of the freezer, and it tastes great (plus, the picture of it in the cookbook makes me want to cook it again every time I see it). There are only four ingredients. To be fair, one of them is the chorizo, which is quite an undertaking if you don't choose the "store-bought" option he offers -- but why would I do that? Maybe because I did so for the corn tortillas? Shut up.

I already made and froze chorizo based on his recipe, although not identical to it (I didn't have all of the chiles he calls for, so I used my chili powder, which I make based on Alton Brown's recipe). The chorizo's really good, and I'll have to make it again for the blog.

Anyway, here's the mise:

That's the chorizo on the plate. When I made it, I only had the meat grinder attachment for my KitchenAid, so I made balls of the sausage and wrapped it in plastic wrap for freezing. Now that I have the sausage stuffer attachment, I'll have to make proper links next time. Anyway, the first thing I did was halve the potatoes and parboil them for about 15 minutes:

The next order of business was to warm up the tortillas. The cookbook has a great method for warming corn tortillas by wrapping them in a towel and steaming them for 15 or 20 minutes. I complied:

Yes, I actually put the steamer over a pot of boiling water. Sheesh. Next, I cooked the chorizo:

Meanwhile, I diced the potatoes. When the chorizo was ready, I took it out of the pan, leaving as much of the chorizo-y fat behind as I could. I added the potatoes and onions to the pan:

I cooked them for about 15 minutes and added the chorizo back to the pan to bring it all together.

Pretty easy, huh? Sure, it is! That doesn't mean it doesn't taste good, though. It does! Here's the final plating before we inhaled it:

I really should have wiped up those specks around the plate, but I didn't. A bit of cilantro on top of the dish wouldn't have killed anyone, either. So I'm not exactly Joël Robuchon, but he doesn't have either the billable requirement (sorry, it's an "aspirational goal") that I have or a six-month old. I figure I've made it past the laziness threshold for the day. Overall, I think it's a really good, simple dish. What more do you need than some potatoes and something from the magical animal? Plus, the chorizo brings so much subtle flavor to the party that it seems like a shame to dump a bunch of ingredients on top of it to mask it. Yes, this clearly deserves a spot on our weekday rotation.

Sources:
Our refrigerator and freezer (hey, it's a weekday, and the potatoes and onions lost the chips I implanted in them so I could remember where I bought them)

Three of Three: White-Rice Pilaf with Corn, Roasted Chiles, and Fresh Cheese (Arroz a la Poblana)

2008-03-26T20:11:00.000-07:00

Now we get down to the nitty-gritty. The final preparation in this dish is really just a side of Pueblan rice, but it is very good Pueblan rice. The first step in preparation for the rice is to roast three poblano chiles, which I did over a burner on our stove:

After they are sufficiently roasted, you can just leave them in a bag to steam and pull the skins off. I, however, did a bit of a Shary Bobbins-esque half-assed job (it's the American way) when roasting the chiles, so a lot of the skin stayed on. (Mom, it's okay to put that word on the Internet because it's pronounced haahhf-aahhsed in a British accent, and nothing said in a British accent can be wrong, just like how no one who speaks German could be an evil man.... While I'm talking about Cape Feare, I have been sitting in meetings all week while people talked about how Kroll is going to do all of this work for us, and every time it came up, all I could hear in my head was "All hail Krull and his glorious new regime! Sincerely, Little Girl." My colleagues didn't seem impressed when I informed them of this fact, for some reason. Oh, well.) Anyway, I stemmed, seeded, and deveined the chiles and sliced them into short, thin strips. Here they are, along with the rest of the mise:

We have started to cook all of our rice along with onions in a bit of pork fat before adding the broth, even for risotto, so I love how the recipes in the cookbook call for that. I highly recommend it. That's what I did first:

I kept it going until the onion was translucent, but not browned. Meanwhile, I brought the broth and a bit of salt to a simmer, added it to the rice and onions along with the chiles and corn, and cooked for about 15 minutes. I took it off of the heat and let it sit for a few minutes before adding the queso fresco. Because it was late and I was lazy, I put it into bowls and turned it out onto the plate, rather than doing something fancier (plus, I'm still not sure about using what I bought to pass as ring molds).

Finally, here's a plating picture:

Mmm... it was very good. The fish was cooked perfectly, and it stayed nice and moist in the adobo. The adobo was excellent, with a nice depth of roasted flavors, but not overly spicy. Despite the lackluster roasting on my part, the poblanos were also more flavor than spice, but their spice did add a nice dimension to the rice and played well with the queso fresco. Overall, a great dish -- we had it two nights in a row (we made four) and it was just as good the second night when we ate it in tacos. I think it's a definite make-again dish.

Sources:
Veggies from Central Market
Jasmine rice from our pantry and who knows where before that?

Two of Three: Chile-Bathed Fish Grilled in Cornhusks (Pescado Adobado en Hojas de Maiz)

2008-03-24T19:47:00.001-07:00

What do you do when you have adobo just lying around the house? Well, one excellent thing to make is pescado adobado, or fish with adobo sauce. The recipe calls for relatively inexpensive fish like cod or catfish, but the fishmonger recommended halibut because the halibut season had just started. I love halibut, if only because it reminds me of Alaska, particularly Seward and Homer. I like the flavor, too, and if my version of this dish was a bit decadent, well, so what? Let's get started. There isn't much mise for this -- it's pretty much just fish and adobo -- but let's have a look at the pretty fish:

Yes, I may have caressed it once or twice before slicing it into strips and covering it with adobo to marinate. Bayless calls them "sticks," but that makes me think of this:

Not this:

Which, by the way, makes me think of this:

Not this:

INGREDIENT(S): HALIBUT.

Anyway, while the fish was marinating, I soaked some corn husks in boiling water to soften them so they could be wrapped around the fish. After a couple of hours, everything was ready to go. First, I added some adobo to the husk:

Then, I added some fish, another layer of adobo, a bit of salt, some more fish, and more adobo:

Finally, I wrapped up all of the husks into bundles to go under the broiler:

After broiling them on both sides, they looked like this (I had to open one to make sure it was done):

That's not much of a final plating, but you'll just have to wait for the next installment...Tune in next time.

Sources:
Central Market for just about everything

One of Three: Adobo

2008-03-20T18:25:00.000-07:00

Sunday was a big day; perhaps a bit too big because we didn't actually sit down to eat until about 9:45. That's what happens when you go out for lunch, then go shopping for ingredients, then come home and start cooking in the late afternoon (and a certain infant won't let your sous chef help out in the kitchen). Anyway, we finally had our meal, and it was fantastic. The meal included three recipes from the cookbook: adobo (a red-chile marinade), which was used in the chile-bathed fish grilled (broiled, actually) in cornhusks (pescado adobado en hojas de maiz), and a side of white-rice pilaf with corn, roasted chiles, and fresh cheese (arroz a la poblana). This post is the adobo, and two more posts will follow.

So, on with it! This has quite a mise:

Is that too much for you? Well, then, here are the chiles (guajillos on the left and anchos on the right) and garlic:

And here are the herbs and spices (and salt, which is really neither):

There was also vinegar. While I'm totally down with my apple cider vinegar, do you really need a picture? What kind of a crazy person would include a picture of a cup of vinegar? Someone who thought a picture of brine was a good idea? Oh.

Anyway, this recipe called for ten peppercorns. That's fine -- I can count, but I certainly was reminded of this hilarious post from FLAH. At least ten sounds like a reasonable number, unlike twelve (Why not thirteen? Do you hate bakers?). Anyway, the first order of business was to toast the garlic and roast the chiles. I seeded and deveined the chiles, tore them into strips, and toasted them until they blistered:

While I skinned the garlic, I poured some boiling water over the chiles to soak for a while to rehydrate them:

I smashed up the herbs and spices using a mortar and pestle, and I added everything to the blender and went to town:

Once everything was pureed (for the most part), I pushed the adobo through a strainer:

That led to a nice, smooth sauce, which I put in a jar to be used shortly...

Although it's just a sauce, I had to try it, albeit with a bit of trepidation because of all of the chiles. However, it was not overwhelmingly hot. Instead, it had a nice, smooth flavor -- with great depth -- but without the tongue-blistering effect. It really validated for me the importance of toasting the dried chiles -- you get amazing flavor without overwhelming heat. Not that I'm afraid of heat -- I still love the chipotle salsa, which isn't lacking in heat -- but I also love the flavor of chiles with a bit more subtlety, particularly when it is going to be paired with something more delicate like fish (you'll see...). Very nice.

Sources:
Don Enrique chiles
Garlic from Central Market
Our spice rack for just about everything else

Wheat-Flour Tortillas (Tortillas de Harina)

2008-03-15T20:35:00.000-07:00

For my first official recipe, I thought I'd start off with something fairly easy. We were also low on flour tortillas for the normal Saturday lunch I make: burritos made with whatever we have in the refrigerator. We had leftover rice and chicken fajita meat from dinner Friday night, and I planned to roll it up and reheat it in tortillas, but I needed tortillas to do that.

Here's the mise:

Those of you who have the cookbook will note that the recipe calls for lard or shortening (shiver), and there is nothing that looks like either of those in the picture. Whenever we can, we use pork fat that is left over after we make pulled pork instead of butter or lard -- it's like lard, but it has additional spices and pork-y goodness in it. (A friend of ours once asked us, "You mean on toast? That sounds awesome!" Not yet, but he may well be right...) So, you might notice some weird flecks in some of the pictures -- that's just extra flavor, not a dirty kitchen.

Anyway, I added the pork fat to the flour and worked them together by hand. Bayless says to make sure the fat is "completely incorporated." That posed a bit of a problem for me, because can I ever get the fat "completely" incorporated? And what about those italics? Do they raise the bar, and, if so, how much? I decided that I had done enough there were no more clumps. You'll have to wait and see if it worked out. Here's what it looked like:

Next, I added the salt to the water, and guess what that looked like:

Pretty amazing, huh? I made a well in the flour/fat mixture and brought the dough together:

I kneaded the dough for a while. Bayless calls for kneading until the dough is "smooth." My dough never really got smooth, but I was worried about developing too much gluten, so I stopped when it looked like this:

Next, the recipe calls for making 12 balls of dough (for 12 tortillas). I read in another recipe that you can just keep dividing it in two until you get 12 balls, but I had a sneaking suspicion that wouldn't work, perhaps because I can multiply by two... Instead, I divided my ball into three sections:

And then I rolled those sections into balls, which I cut in half and then in half again. So that's how we get to 12! I covered the balls in plastic to rest at room temperature for 30 minutes:

The timing worked out well, because Charlie woke up hungry about that time. We have just introduced him to avocados, after rice cereal, apples, and sweet potatoes. It's not from Authentic Mexican, but, who really needs a recipe for mashed avocado? Here's his mise:

Pretty simple, huh? This is the final dish. I think it looks good!

What did he think? Well, let's just say he liked it much better than his first taste of apples:

Those were Fuji, and we found he is much happier with Red Delicious. Anyway, with baby back to happy mode, I could get back to the tortillas. I rolled them out into rounds (roughly 7"), and cooked them on a cast-iron griddle:

As you can see, some got a bit burned, but others looked really good:

Here's the stack:

We ate two of them immediately with some avocado and a touch of salsa (a modified version of the Bayless chipotle chile sauce), and I made burritos with a couple more. Overall, we thought they were very good, and much better than store-bought.

I can see Bayless's point that the tortillas made with only lard are a bit on the heavy side, but I don't believe in vegetable shortening. I may try these again with a bit of canola oil mixed into the pork fat to lighten it up a bit. We'll see how that works.

Sources:
All-purpose flour from King Arthur Flour
Avocado from El Tiempo Market

Welcome to the Gringo Kitchen!

2008-03-15T19:36:00.000-07:00

Thanks for stopping by. Inspired by -- well, actually, copying from -- one of my favorite blogs, French Laundry at Home, I decided to launch a similar project: cooking every recipe in a single cookbook. While FLAH is geared, I think, to gaining an appreciation for striving to be a perfectionist, as Thomas Keller puts it, my focus is different. I want to learn a new style of cooking and gain an appreciation for something that I have glimpsed, but rarely experienced fully: true Mexican cooking. And, with a new baby around, I don't really have the time or the flexibility to focus on something so audacious. (That and Chef Armstrong from my favorite restaurant hasn't written a cookbook yet.) I'm not a big fan of Tex-Mex food and other Americanized versions of Mexican food, but I am a fan of more authentic styles of Mexican cooking, which ultimately led me to Rick and Deann Groen Bayless's Authentic Mexican cookbook. I have prepared a few of the recipes in the cookbook, but I thought that jumping in with both feet might be the way to go. I hope I enjoy it, and I hope you do, too.