107 recipes down, 48 to go, aka I’m back!!

I am officially one of those moms with a latte in hand experiencing quiet but thoroughly ardent joy at the first week of school.  Ahhh . . . I am now back in complete control of at least three hours of my day and so my project may resume.  Don’t get me wrong, I have been cooking, just at a really slow pace compared to during the school year.  Apparently the summer is just not a good time to do these things.  Between travel and swim lessons, and just having the kids around all the time, I found it much more difficult to plan, shop for and cook new recipes.  Speaking of travel, it is almost over.  I’m heading to Indy this weekend for my 20 year high school reunion (scary, huh?) and then John and I are taking a long getaway weekend sans enfants over Labor Day to Park City, UT.

In the meantime, I will give you a brief overview of what I have accomplished over the last month and a half.  On July 10th, I made:

Tomato-Braised Grouper with Achiote and Roasted Peppers (MD18)

Seared Corn with Green Chile and Mexican Herbs (VBRED8)

and Mango-Lime Ice (D2)

This was an excellent summer meal, especially the corn.  I can still remember the tangy lime flavor mixed with the spice of the chile and the sweetness of the corn.

Then on the 24th we made Tangy Yucatecan Grilled Pork with Roasted Onions and Fresh Garnishes (MD31).  The citrusy Yucatecan flavors in this dish made for another perfect summer meal.  This was made with boneless pork steaks that were marinated in lime juice and then grilled.  It was served as a taco filling with grilled onions, a cilantro-lime juice cabbage slaw, sliced tomato and avocado.

On August 1st, I made a one of the moles that I had never tried before: Oaxacan Green Mole with Pork, White Beans and Mexican Vegetables (CFF5).  And in case you’re wondering, in this recipe, Mexican vegetables are chayote and green beans.  This was also excellent and a little less complicated than some of the other moles in the book as it used fresh, rather than dried, chiles.  It also provided some lovely leftovers for my good friend Melissa and her family when they came for a visit.

My brother and sister-in-law came for a visit in mid-August and that provided the perfect occasion for Lamb Barbacoa from the Backyard Grill (MD27).  I’m really starting to like the indirect grilling of a larger piece of meat, in this case a 3-pound lamb shoulder roast, especially for company.  It was tender and flavorful and made for  a most excellent taco filling.

Finally, on Monday we made Yucatecan Grilled Fish Tacos (TEOCE4).  This was an easy and thoroughly tasty weeknight meal as I already had Achiote Paste made and I used purchased salsa.

Expect to hear of some more Mexican cooking after Labor Day.  Until then, enjoy your own end-of-summers!

p.s. pics to follow when I find the battery charger.

100 recipes down, 55 to go

I’ll start with my feelings of guilt over the status of my project, so if you’ve become weary of reading about that (trust me, I understand, I, too, am weary), please feel free to skip down to the next paragraph.  First of all let me say that I am still loving the project, the food is amazing and I’m trying things that I would never have made otherwise, so, in really all the ways that count, the project is already a success.  However, I’ve got to face facts.  It has become clear to me that I will be unable to finish all 155 recipes before August 22nd.  So, while I’m not abandoning the  project, I fully intend to complete all of the recipes, I am, however, not going to be holding myself to the year deadline.  As for my delays in posting what I’ve already cooked, I can offer no other excuse than my own laziness.  That, and I have been out of town for a lovely week in CT with the kids visiting my mom.  I can say again that I will try to do better.

So on to the food.  I still have three delectable dishes that remain to be described.  Back on June 12th (wow, has it really been that long ago), I made Crusty Griddle-Baked Quesadillas (TEOCE23).  Earlier in the week I had made a double batch of Essential Roasted Poblano Rajas which serves as the base for this recipe and the next one.  There are still quite a few recipes left that call for fresh masa and I’ve come to the realization that I won’t be able to go to Pilsen for each of them, so I broke out the Maseca for these quesadillas.  You use the Maseca with water to form balls of dough that get flattened in the tortilla press.  The flat circles are cooked on a hot griddle and topped with rajas and shredded Chihuahua cheese and finally folded over.  They are served with salsa.  I used store-bought Frontera Tomatillo-Serrano Salsa.  These were pretty good, but I’m sure that they would have been better with fresh masa.  And having made the rajas ahead of time, they were really pretty easy to put together.  It made a perfect weeknight meal.

With the remaining rajas, I made one of the few remaining soups, Roasted Poblano Crema with Mexican Greens (LHS9).  This soup also calls for diced ham and we had just had a ham for Jack’s 6th Birthday party and had enough leftover for the soup.  With all these ingredients already in place this would be a snap, right?  Well, the annoyingly difficult aspect of this recipe’s preparation was my inability to get either chard or spinach (not the pre-washed, bagged, baby variety, but real regular spinach) at my local grocery store (Jewel).  It was the only ingredient that I didn’t have on hand for the soup and I thought I could avoid a trip to Whole Foods and just get it on my way home from picking up Jack from his all-day camp at the Morton Arboretum.  Well, apparently there is no demand for these things in my area.  Seriously, it wasn’t that they were out of them, they do not carry either of these ingredients!  I guess it’s no wonder that there’s an obesity crisis.  If you can’t go to your local store and get the ingredients you need to make a healthy meal, I don’t see things getting any better.  So I had to postpone making my soup by a day (the kids were in no shape to go on a multiple grocery store excursion, and frankly, neither was I) and I think we ended up with carry-out sushi that night instead.   The next day I went to Whole Foods where it may not be cheap, but at least I know I can buy chard.

As for the soup, you simmer the rajas, chard and some chicken broth, purée the mixture in a blender, add more broth and some cream.  Then you whisk in a masa/broth mixture which thickens the soup nicely as well as adding a nice addition to the flavor of the soup.  Diced ham and diced boiled potatoes are placed in the soup bowls and topped with the soup.  This was great — nice poblano flavor and what a great use for leftover ham!  I will make this soup again.

Finally, on June 19th we had some friends over for dinner and made Achiote-Grilled Turkey Breast with Tomato, Chile and Mint (MD7) with a side of the already chronicled Black Bean Rice.  You rub a turkey breast with achiote seasoning paste and grill it.  After the coals are hot, you push them to the sides of the grill, put in a drip pan in the middle.  This way, the heat that cooks the turkey is indirect.  The sauce is made with dried chiles japoneses.  They are rehydrated and puréed with some additional achiote paste and some broth.  This is added to cooked onion, skinned and seeded diced tomatoes, mint and broth.  The sauce is simmered and then thickened with a masa-broth mixture (total coincidence that I picked two recipes with this method in a row).  This, too, was really good!  The sauce had a definite kick to it but was really nicely flavored.  My only complaint was that I think that our turkey ended up being just slightly too done.  It wasn’t overly dry, just a little dry.   Though, really it was nothing that the sauce didn’t mask nicely.  And the Black Bean Rice was (as suggested by Rick) a nice complement to the dish.  And although it should go without saying, I will add how nice it was to share our cooking with friends

Check back in for a Month 10 recap sometime this week and then I have to get back to cooking!

97 recipes down, 58 to go aka Susie’s MK Project travels to Texas!

This was one of my most favorite project experiences!!  John and I used to live in Austin when I was in graduate school (French Linguistics) and neither of us had been back since I defended my dissertation seven years ago.  It was in Texas that I first learned to like spice, being exposed to both great Tex-Mex food and also authentic Mexican food.  It was after enjoying the great food at Fonda San Miguel (if in Austin, I highly recommend their Sunday brunch) that I decided to purchase Mexican Kitchen for John for his birthday back in 1997.  One of the other great things about living in Austin for us was a group of wonderful friends (who were also all really good cooks) with whom we had formed a supper club.  There were four couples and we would meet once a month and each contribute a dish for a themed menu.  We did all sorts of things: French, Italian, Scandinavian, Mexican, Alsatian, Indian to name a few.

So for a great variety of reasons I was really looking forward to our vacation in Texas, but at the top of the list was cooking a Rick Bayless meal with my supper club friends (minus Linda and Noel who, sadly for us, couldn’t make it in from the Netherlands).

For the menu we decided on a casual Mexican brunch which would include two kinds of seviche and huevos Motuleños.  We were staying at the house of our friends, Stephanie and Greg, and together with John and myself, we did the bulk of the Mexican cooking.  Our friends Melissa and Joe came with beans for the huevos as well a fabulous (though not Mexican) dessert of mango fool with blackberries.

First up was Classic Seviche Tostadas (SOS4).  Now seviche is something that I’ve never made at home but I can assure you that I will be making it in the future.  The classic rendition was so easy and so very tasty!  It calls for very fresh fish (in our case tuna) to be diced and marinated in fresh-squeezed lime juice.  This is then drained and mixed with Essential Chopped Tomato-Serrano Salsa as well as a little olive oil, salt and sugar, and of course, a diced avocado, and served atop tortilla chips.  All agreed that it was fabulous!   Like many Bayless dishes it was light and fresh tasting with nice spice and texture.

Melissa about to enjoy her Classic Seviche Tostadas!

We also made Shrimp Seviche with Roasted Cactus (SOS6).  This recipe would mark my second experience with nopales or cactus paddles.  First, let me say, we were in Texas, so my friends, who did the shopping in advance of our arrival didn’t have to worry about whether or not their grocery store carried nopales, they simply snipped some off of a cactus plant in their neighbors back yard!  Secondly, if you will recall, when I used nopales the last time, in Guajillo-Sauced Shrimp with Quick-Fried Cactus, back in August (wow, has it really been that long ago!), I was turned off by the slimy consistency.  But Rick promised that if roasted, the excess ooze would cook off, and true to his word, it did.  What was left was a very pleasant tangy flavor, without the slime.  They were combined with shrimp, poached in water and lime juice, and then diced.  Also in the mix was diced fresh serrano, tomato, avocado, and cilantro.  This was all soaked in a dressing of lime juice, cider vinegar, thyme and oregano.  Again, this version of seviche was a big hit that everyone liked.  When pressed to choose, the majority gave a slight edge to the classic variety, but the margin was slim.

Greg, after enjoying his Seviche

Finally, we made Huevos Motuleños or Motul-Style Eggs with Roasted Tomato, Black Beans and Plantains (VBRED24).  I’ll borrow Rick’s description because it succinctly describes a somewhat complex dish: “They’re made from crispy tostadas topped with black beans and eggs sunny-side up, doused with robust roasted tomato sauce flamed with habanero chiles, then strewn with ham, peas, crumbled fresh cheese and slices of sweet fried plantain” (270).  For this recipe I give full credit to Greg for making a delicious iteration of Essential Simmered Tomato-Habanero Sauce, and also for frying the eggs!  Once all the ingredients were combined, the flavors and textures really did work wonderfully together making this a great dish.  I will say that to whip this up from scratch on a Sunday morning (as Rick suggests he enjoys doing) is no small task.  If I wanted to impress with a great brunch for guests, I would be sure to make the sauce, the beans, and the plantains ahead.  But it really was very good and I would like to make it again some day.

Table full of Huevos Motuleños

Stephanie enjoying her eggs!

Me enjoying my eggs!

So to wrap up, I have to send out a huge thank you to Stephanie, Greg, Melissa and Joe for helping me with my project and for making it so much fun!  Plus, vacation in this case, didn’t grind my project to a halt.  More of Month 10 to come soon.

94 recipes down, 61 to go

Back on May 23rd, we had my sister and brother-in-law and their family over for dinner and the menu was, what else, Mexican!  I decided on two different kinds of taco, or really one taco recipe and one veggie dish that served as a delicious taco filling.

First was Spicy Yucatecan Beef “Salad” Tacos TEOCE2.  As a bonus, this recipe called for a previously unmade Essential Flavor: Essential Chopped Tomato-Habanero Salsa EF4.  So, for one of the last times in the project I was able to cook two recipes and have it count as three!  The beef in these tacos was beef brisket that was browned and then steamed, and finally shredded.  The beef was stirred into the salsa which consisted of red onion, chopped tomatoes, diced radish, cilantro, minced habanero (we followed the recipe and used half of one habanero), and lime and orange juice (standing in for the unavailable sour orange juice).  This was a very fresh tasting salsa and definitely makes Rick’s title of the dish as “salad” tacos an apt one.  The habanero in this case was not really very spicy.  Overall, I liked these, but they weren’t great, especially in comparison with the next dish.

Next I made Roasted Mexican Vegetables in Green Sesame Pipián VBRED3.  Having just made, and loved, the Green Pipián for the salmon dish, we were anxious to have it again.  Plus, I always like a good vegetarian taco.  As a reminder, the Pipián is Essential Tomatillo-Serrano sauce with the addition of toasted sesame seeds, cilantro, ground aniseed (last time I used fennel fronds; both are substitutions for the elusive hoja santa), and chicken broth.  This all gets simmered together and then is puréed. This time the Pipián was the coating for roasted vegetables: potatoes, chayote, zucchini and chard.  There was supposed to be cactus too, but my Whole Foods (which usually does carry it) was out of them and I didn’t want to scrap the whole recipe.  Honestly, though the recipe was absolutely fantastic and you would never suspect that there was anything missing from the dish.  The vegetables has good roasted flavor, and the chayote retained some of its crispness lending a nice contrast of textures as well.  And as before, the Pipián  was creamy, spicy, nutty, tart, and if that doesn’t sound appetizing, trust me, it is!  It was amazing and will become something that we make again and again in our house (post-project, of course)!

Finally, just a couple of project notes.  I’ve been slacking in the posting department but I have still been cooking.  We were in TX for a week and my next post will include the details of a fabulous Mexican Brunch that some of my good friends and I made while there.  I also made some quesadillas this past weekend and have something in mind for this week.  I swear that you will know all about all of it by the end of the week.  I mean it!

Month 9 aka 91 recipes down, 64 to go

Month 9 clearly marks a low point for Susie’s MK Project.  I have been lazy about updating and clearly, lazy too about cooking.  I could give all the usual excuses about how busy I’ve been (I really have been busy!), but this refrain is getting a bit tired, isn’t it?  So I’m just going to recap the 3 lonely recipes that I made this month and try to move on as best I can for Month 10.

Back on May 4th I made Crusty Lentil Cakes with Garlic and Herbs VBRED7.  These were cooked lentils mixed with sautéed onion, roasted garlic, parmesan cheese (my local market doesn’t carry queso añejo), and cilantro.  This mixture is formed into cakes which are dipped in egg and breadcrumbs and then fried in oil and served with a roasted tomato-jalepeño salsa (I used Rick’s store-bought variety).  This was a good meal but lentils aren’t my favorite and the multi-step prep will probably keep me from making this again.  If you like lentils, I would definitely recommend it.

The next day was Cinco de Mayo and so I couldn’t not cook Mexican then!  So I made Seared Skirt Steak with Chipotle and Garlic MD23.  This is seared skirt steak with a roasted tomatillo-chipotle salsa with a healthy dose of garlic added in.  I remember this being good but honestly, the details are a little fuzzy for me.  I guess that’s what I get for waiting so long to write about it.

Finally, my mom was in town for a visit and I decided to try Pan-Roasted Salmon in Aromatic Green Pipián MD17 for her.  It was a huge success and the highlight of the month!  The star of this dish was the Pipián which is Essential Tomatillo-Serrano sauce with the addition of toasted sesame seeds, cilantro, fennel fronds (I remain unable to find hoja santa), and chicken broth.  This all gets simmered together and then is puréed.  A piece of roasted salmon is served atop the sauce.  All agreed that this was fantastic (creamy, tangy, spicy, wonderful) and I will certainly be making this again.

So the winner of Month 9 is clearly Pan-Roasted Salmon in Aromatic Green Pipián MD17.

Month 8

I’m not really sure why I didn’t just write this as an addendum to the last post, but my dedication to the project has been a little lacking in recent weeks and I was probably just a little depressed at how pathetic Month 8 actually was.  Yes, I was on vacation in the middle of Month 8.  Yes, I was sick upon return.  You are, perhaps, tiring of my seemingly endless stream of excuses as to why I haven’t done this, that, or the other.  The numbers don’t lie; I cooked only 4 recipes in Month 8, all of which are detailed in the previous post.  I did not make it to Pilsen.  I didn’t toast or re-hydrate a single chile.  However, I did make a fabulous Smoky Shredded Chicken and Potatoes with Roasted Tomatoes (MD5) which was the highlight of the month.  Things can only look up from here, right?

88 recipes down, 67 to go

I really have made an effort since getting back from Florida to do some Mexican cooking.  I’ve just been slow to post.  So here it is. (Kind of a pathetic intro, I know, I just have this laryngitis turned into sinus cold that I can’t seem to shake.  It’s leaking into my writing).

On the Friday after returning from Florida (the 9th), I made Tomatillo-Braised Pork Country Ribs with Mexican Greens (MD30).  This had one of my favorite sauce bases: Essential Simmered Tomatillo-Serrano Sauce.  It was also a good one-pot meal with the meat, starch and veggies all together.  This iteration of the sauce was spicy, but good.  I also liked both the potatoes and the chard and overall I liked the dish too.  My only complaint was about the pork country ribs.  I just found them to be a little too fatty for my taste.  This is the same feeling that comes to me whenever I have short ribs.  The sauce is always good but the meat has too much fat.

I got right back to cooking on Sunday (the 11th), making both Grilled Steak with Spicy Guajillo Sauce (MD22) and Sonoran Fried Beans with Chorizo and Cheese (VBRED12).  I had some leftover Essential Simmered Guajillo Sauce in the freezer that I decided to use now that it was finally nice enough out to fire up the grill.  Because I already had the sauce, this recipe was very easy.  Just marinate the steaks with some of the sauce and some vinegar, grill and serve with some grilled red onion slices and additional sauce.

The steaks were good, although really not spicy.  My sauce had been in the freezer for awhile and so I’m sure that some of the flavor had been lost.  It was also interesting to see some visible pieces of chile in the sauce.  I immediately thought how much better it would be if I had redone it with my new blender.  The grilled onions were a really nice addition to the steaks and their sweetness really complemented the chile sauce.

Because the steaks were so easy, I figured I could knock out the final bean dish in the book.  These require a lot of unattended cooking so are easy if you’re going to be home.  After simmering the beans for a couple of hours, you fry up some chorizo, add that to the beans and then in the chorizo drippings, you fry some dried, ground chile (I used Penzey’s ancho).  The beans and chorizo are then added back to this and shredded Chihuahua cheese is added.  John really liked the beans; I thought they were ok.  The texture was good and I liked the cheese, but for me, I didn’t like the addition of the dried, ground ancho, which I thought had a slightly bitter taste.  Now that I’ve made all of the bean dishes, my favorite is still Classic Mexican Fried Beans.

Finally, last Friday (the 16th) I made Smoky Shredded Chicken and Potatoes with Roasted Tomatoes (MD5).  This was the best dish of the bunch!  It called for Essential Quick-Cooked Tomato-Chipotle Sauce which I decided to make with canned chipotle chiles en adobo.  This eliminates the frying and re-hydrating of the dried chipotles.  Plus, I still have a few frozen roasted tomatoes so the sauce was easy to put together.  Skinned chicken thighs are cooked in the sauce, removed and meat torn from the bones.  In another skillet grated potato and sliced onion are cooked in oil.  Then everything is combined: the chicken, sauce, potatoes and onion.  To serve the mixture is topped with queso fresco and avocado and served with tortillas.

I loved this dish!  The combination of flavors and textures was perfect.  You know when you make something and it’s so good that you look forward to lunch the next day when you can have the leftovers?  That’s how I felt about this dish.

Ok, you can now consider yourselves updated and I can stop feeling guilty about not posting.  I’ll soon move on to some guilt over not doing more cooking   See you at the Month 8 update.

Month 7

What can I tell you about Month 7 of Susie’s Mexican Kitchen Project?  I got off to a good start but have failed to make up any of my recipe deficit and am even further behind as a result.  The final tally for the month was 10 new recipes completed.  Still not too shabby, but I’ll have to pick up the pace if I don’t want this to turn into a 13 month project.  What else can I say?  I have a fantastic new Vitamix blender that definitely kicks the butt of any blender I’ve ever had before!  And I probably never would have gotten the blender if not for the project.  Not only do I now have velvety smooth chile purées, but I’ve also been savoring some delicious smoothies (my favorite so far is an Almond-Banana Smoothie recipe that I got on Epicurious.com).  How about the highlights of the month?  Both Campeche Baked Fish Fillets with Tomato, Habanero and Citrus (MD16) and Seared Lamb in Swarthy Pasilla-Honey Sauce (MD25) were outstanding and will be made again in my kitchen.  Plus, for a simple, healthy meal, I will also make Tacos of Creamy Braised Chard, Potatoes and Poblanos (TEOCE8) again.  One to skip?  Spicy Pasilla-Mushroom Tacos (TEOCE5).

84 recipes down, 71 to go, plus, where I’ve been

So the first part of this post should have been written a couple of weeks ago.  What can I say?  Spring Break trip prep took precedence over blog writing (and Mexican cooking for that matter).  Now that I’ve returned from 10 days in sunny Florida and have restored at least some semblance of order to the household (there is food in the fridge, including ingredients for Tomatillo-Braised Pork Country Ribs), I can finally sit down to update the status of my project.

Shortly after procuring the Vitamix, I used it to make Essential Bold Pasilla Seasoning Paste (EF11) which would provide the base for both Seared Lamb in Swarthy Pasilla-Honey Sauce (MD25) and Spicy Pasilla-Mushroom Tacos (TEOCE5).  This blender is truly an amazing machine.  I used it to purée the re-hydrated Pasilla chiles, roasted garlic, herbs, and a little of the soaking liquid from the chiles.  It made a much smoother purée than I ever got from my Cuisinart and, like I observed in Rick’s test kitchen, after passing the purée through the strainer, there was very little left behind.

In the Seared Lamb in Swarthy Pasilla-Honey Sauce the Seasoning Paste is added to cubed and browned lamb meat along with some broth to simmer.  Then sweet potatoes are added while the meat continues to cook.  At the end, honey is added.  I served the dish with rice and tortillas.  It was amazing!!!  The pasilla paste was very spicy but the honey and the sweet potatoes really provided the perfect balance to the spice.  You actually tasted the sweetness first and then the spice would hit you.  I would make this again.

A few days later I used the remaining pasilla paste to make Spicy Pasilla-Mushroom Tacos.  These, on the other hand, had nothing in them (really just the mushrooms) to balance the spiciness of the pasillas and were too spicy for my taste.  I would not make these again.  One more note, according to Rick this recipe made enough filling for 12 tacos; I think we got maybe 6.  So, if you do plan to make these either double it or plan for fewer servings.

These recipes marked the end of Month 7, so look soon (maybe tomorrow) for a monthly recap and then I be playing catch up in Month 8 since we’ve been on break and I didn’t do any Mexican cooking while in Florida.

81 recipes down, 74 to go

The last week or so has seen me do a bit of Mexican cooking and I do have something on the agenda for tonight, but I’ve also been busy filling in at the kids’ preschool because the Director is out on a family emergency.  I still don’t know how Julie Powell mananged to keep her blog so well while working full time!

Anyway, last week I made “Drunken” Pintos with Cilantro and Bacon (VBRED11) and Chile-Seasoned Pot-Roasted Pork (MD28).

The beans are essentially pinto beans simmered with some pork shoulder until they are tender.  They become drunken with the addition of a small amount of tequila before serving.  I thought the tequila accentuated the sweetness of the beans.  They were also served topped with bacon pieces and really, what is not improved with a little bacon?

As for the pork, it marks my last chile purée made in the Cuisinart.  That’s right, I now have in my kitchen a brand new Vitamix 5200 blender!  So far I have only warmed it up with a couple of smoothies, but tonight it will sample its first chile purée.  Last week’s pork, however, was slowly roasted in the oven in a purée of ancho and guajillo chiles, vinegar, onion, garlic, herbs and spices.  It came out nice and tender and made a good taco filling.

One more random note, I keep meaning to look up and see if there is some white onion issue out there.  Neither grocery store that I shop at have had any for the last two weeks.  Anyone know what’s going on?