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?

Month 6

What can I tell you about Month 6 of Susie’s MK Project?  That I started very strongly and then petered out, ending up with the completion of 9 new recipes.  What else?  Sadly, that this becomes the month where I officially fell a little behind the pace I need to complete the project within a year (I’m 4 recipes behind).  That said, though my output flagged towards the end of the month, our dinner at Frontera and discussing my project with Rick were certainly highlights and have left me anxious to continue.  What delectable morsels from the month would make a fabulous meal for those who like it hot?

• Chorizo-Stuffed Ancho Chiles with Sweet-Sour Escabeche (SOS15)
• Broiled Chipotle Chicken with Creamy Spinach (MD3)
• Topolo Margaritas (WAM2)

Month 7 is already underway; I’ve completed 3 recipes to be detailed soon.  I didn’t make it to Pilsen in Month 6 so I promise that it will happen in Month 7.  One more fantastic bit of news: I’ve been given the go-ahead to procure the Vitamix blender that I left our wine dinner coveting!  You can be sure that a mole will be soon to follow.  À bientôt!

Frontera Wine Dinner

Among the things I learned at last Wednesday night’s wine dinner at Frontera Grill were that I need a new blender, I need a new blade for my Cuisinart, that there is no way of predicting the spiciness of fresh peppers, and that I still love Rick Bayless and Mexican cooking.

Let’s go through these one by one.  In the cooking demonstration before the meal, Rick made a Carne Apache appetizer (this is essentially ceviche made with beef and was fabulous).  The accompanying sauce was made with dried guajillo peppers that had been fried in oil.  These were puréed with lime juice in Rick’s completely amazing Vitamix Blender.  This is obviously the blender that I’m meant to have at some point although disappointingly I’m sure the $400-$500 price tag will keep me from having it for some time.  This blender made such a smooth purée of the peppers and lime juice that there was almost nothing left behind after the sauce was passed through the strainer!  You could most certainly tell the difference in how smooth the sauce was.  I will probably never get a sauce as smooth with my current equipment.

That leads into the next point about the Cuisinart blade.  Right after Rick demonstrated how fabulous his blender was at puréeing the mixture someone asked about using a Cuisinart for the task.  Rick said that you would never get as smooth of a purée because of the direction that the blades rotate and because they rotate much more slowly that those of a blender.  To stick the knife in a little further he added that a Cuisinart blade was only good for about 2-3 years of use.  So I guess my 14 year old blade needs replacing.

Then in the question and answer time I asked about how to tell the spice level of fresh peppers and the answer was that there is no way to tell.  That was reassuring in the sense that I haven’t been missing anything but also tells me that I need to be flexible in my expectations when using fresh peppers.

Finally, let me just say how incredibly fantastic an experience it was to do this dinner.  Rick’s demonstration was great and he’s really quite funny.  We were among the first to arrive and so there was some time just waiting (while enjoying Topolo Margaritas) for the demo to begin.  I took that time to introduce myself to Rick and to tell him about my project.  He seemed impressed, especially with the book I chose, which he described as his “master class” of Mexican cooking.  He told me how he is a big user of Twitter and that I should send him the link that way.  I’m not yet in the Twitterverse but will probably join next week and follow through with getting him my info.

After the demo the group was seated for a wonderful dinner at which we met some interesting people (much like our experience last year).  I gave out the link for my sight to a few of my fellow diners so if you’re out there feel free to post a comment!  One note I’ll make about the dinner was that it opened with a “Pickled” ancho chile relleno filled with homemade chorizo sausage and smoked potatoes.  Manchamanteles and pineapple.  In case that doesn’t ring a bell for you it was incredibly similar to the appetizer I made and ended up not serving at our Superbowl party.  Rick’s was great (better than mine) although really not too different.  And his was just as spicy.  I can’t tell you how cool it is to go to his restaurants and find things that I know I either have made or can make myself.  It’s moments like that that really validate my efforts in this project.

73 recipes down, 82 to go

It’s taken me a little while to write this entry on the food made for our Superbowl Party last Sunday, maybe because my Colts lost.  I can’t really feel bad for the Saints and I was in the decided minority rooting for the Colts.  About the only other person I could recruit to my side was my 3 year old daughter Scarlett.  But even she insisted on using the golden cups and plates at the party so her allegiance was half-hearted at best.  Jack, who rooted for the Colts in the playoffs, decided that it was okay to cheer for the Saints because he had already rooted for the Colts.

Anyway, on to the food.  First, the Chorizo-Stuffed Ancho Chiles with Sweet-Sour Escabeche (SOS15).  Let me just say right now that I feel like I’ve made all of the easier starters (which really consist only of the guacamoles) in the book and so against perhaps better judgement I decided to add this to our party menu.  The recipe states that the escabeche and filling can be made ahead so I did this on Saturday.  The escabeche is made by frying diced carrots in olive oil and then adding garlic, allspice, bay leaves, vinegar, water and piloncillo and cooking until the piloncillo dissolves.  Finally you add thinly sliced red onion.  This becomes both the marinating liquid for the dried anchos and the topping for the stuffed chiles.

The stuffing consists of chorizo and potatoes.  The chorizo is cooked in a skillet and then the already boiled potatoes are fried in some of the chorizo oil and then combined with the cooked chorizo.

The issue with this appetizer is that for one, de-seeding the marinated chiles is messy and difficult.  Imagine picking each and every of at least dozens of seeds per chile out of something that is coated with an oily mixture.  Then, contrary to Rick’s suggestion that this is a perfect party dish, I quickly realized that the oily chiles would be difficult to eat unless seated with a knife and fork, and thus not the perfect party dish.  I agree more with Rick’s assessment of the dish as being “stunning as a first course or light main dish” (108).  So at the last minute I decided that I would not serve them at the party.

John and I did, however, have them, and they were amazing!!  Both the chorizo-potato filling and the anchos themselves were good and spicy.  But the spice was balanced with the sweet and tangy flavor of the escabeche.  Also the crisp texture of the carrot and onion complemented the creaminess of the potato filling.  All in all I would make this again for a sit down first course.  One last note is that we had extra filling and it makes a wonder taco filling, especially with eggs for breakfast tacos!

What did get served as one of the main dishes at the party was Chicken Breasts in Nutty Queretaro Green Mole (CFF4).  This dish is probably the one that we had made most often pre-project, so I was very familiar with making it.  Of the moles in the book, it is one of the easier ones, and also relatively mild, making it a good choice for a crowd with perhaps variable spice tolerance.  However, as I’ve come to learn, poblanos (the base pepper of this mole) are themselves variable in their spice level and so we’ve had this mole be more or less spicy.  In this particular case, it ended up being less spicy.

Making up the complex flavor of this nutty green sauce is poblanos, tomatillos, plantain, romaine, golden raisins, almonds, sesame seeds, peanuts, corn tortilla, cinnamon, pepper, aniseed, cloves, parsley, garlic and chicken broth.  More or less, this all gets ground up, strained and simmered.  I did it myself in an afternoon a few days before the party.  In the book version, boneless, skinless chicken breasts are baked in the sauce in the oven.  That worked well and produced nice juicy meat.  I’ve also in the past baked the meat separately, shredded it, and let people determine how much of the sauce they wanted.  I served this with tortillas and Classic White Rice.  I got nothing but complements about the sauce which as usual, was nutty, fruity, mildly spicy, in a word, good!  I will note that I actually grinded whole aniseed this time (I usually use it already ground) and I noticed the anise flavor as being more pronounced than usual.  Maybe I should try freshly grinding cinnamon next time.  I know I will make this again (although probably not as often as I now have so many other good options to try again after the project is over)!

Finally, we made a double batch of the Topolo Margaritas (WAM2).  It’s hard to believe that we waited so long to try another of the three margarita recipes but I guess that a Superbowl party was a good excuse to buy a new bottle of tequila.  This recipe calls for Sauza Conmemorativo tequila.  We actually made a batch on Friday night prior to the Superbowl and found that they were less strong tasting than the Frontera’s Gold Margarita with more lime flavor.  We had no trouble polishing off 4 servings among the two of us.  For the party we made a double batch it was quickly gone!

And now, after such a good start to Month 6, John has informed me that he needs a week off of Mexican cooking.  So I may not make anything this weekend (we’ll see) and next Wednesday night we have our wine dinner at Frontera.  Ideally, I’d like to make it to the half-way point before the end of Month 6.  For that I need to make 5 more recipes.

64 recipes down, 91 to go

On Monday evening, although still not feeling well from a cold, I made a Mexican meal of Chile-Glazed Sweet Potatoes with Cinnamon and Orange (VBRED5) and Red Chile Rice (VBRED16).  I made these two together partly because either dish by itself would not make a meal, but mainly because they used the same base of Essential Sweet and Spicy Ancho Seasoning Paste (EF10) and I could kill two recipes with one flavor prep.

This is now the fourth time making this seasoning paste and it’s pretty easy: roast garlic and dried chiles, soak chiles, process garlic and chiles with spices and some broth in Cuisinart, pass mixture through a strainer, and voilà.

For the Sweet Potatoes, the paste gets mixed with orange zest, orange juice, and honey.  This is slathered onto slices of sweet potato and baked.  For the rice, the paste gets mixed in with the broth in which the rice (and onions, of course) are cooked.

All in all this was fairly easy to put together and made a good meal.  The paste gave both dishes a decent level of spice.  I’m not one for adding sweet to my sweet potatoes (I like them mainly roasted with salt and olive oil); I would never serve sweet potatoes with marshmallows.  I mean they are called sweet potatoes for a reason, there’s no need to make them sweeter.  That said, the addition of the honey and orange flavors to the sweet potatoes were nice.  The sweet was certainly adequately balanced by the spice in the seasoning paste.  The rice, as always, had a nice texture and the the seasoning paste gave it a definite kick.  I served this with tortillas and used a little sour cream for garnish.  We had it leftover with a little cooked chicken, and that was good too.  If I hadn’t been doing the project, I probably would have done this with Classic White Rice.  But the double dose of ancho seasoning paste wasn’t a bad thing in the end.

If you’re keeping track you’ll know that today is the final day of Month 5.  I’m hoping to fit in one Spicy Plantain Pie to put me into double digits, thus rounding off the month nicely.  Stay tuned.

60 recipes down, 95 to go

What better way to ring in the New Year than with a choice selection from the Classic Fiesta Food chapter!  Rick says that he looks forward to the recipes in this chapter more than any other ones in the book (275).  We chose to make Braised Turkey in Teloloapan Red Mole (CFF1).  Here is an excerpt from Rick’s description of the recipe: “This is cooking for people who love to cook and who love to share their creations with enthusiastic eaters.  It’s cooking that takes up the greater part of a day (or parts of several days) — definitely special-occasion fare” (277).  I heartily concur with Rick’s assessment.  We had almost all of that.  We love to cook and share our creations.  On this particular day we had last minute visitors to our table: John’s parents.  While they are enthusiastic eaters, my sense is that the result was a little spicy for their taste.  They were however fans of the Classic White Rice that was served as an accompaniment so they were happy with mainly turkey and rice with just a small amount of mole.  And, the recipe really did take the greater part of the day to prepare.

I guess it goes without saying that any recipe with 28 ingredients is going to take some effort to put together.  And even by the standards of some of the other mole recipes (that I’ve made pre-project), this one is complex.  This was not, however, the first time that I’d made this recipe, just the first time for the project.  There are some ingredients that make you wonder what they’re doing in the recipe (grated avocado pit comes to mind).  There was also a lot of frying of ingredients in lard: dried chiles, nuts, raisins, bread, etc.  Two separate purées were made, a chile purée and a seed purée.

chile purée

seed purée

These are ultimately cooked and combined along with broth and Mexican chocolate to make the mole.  Then the turkey breast (which has previously been browned) is braised in the mole.

This recipe is far too detailed to go over each step (this is a blog, not a book).  That said, I will make one aside to talk about the frying of the dried chiles (ancho and guajillo) in the lard.  As I said, I’ve made this before and I remember the chiles frying too quickly and getting a bitter smell to them and thus to the soaking liquid as well.  I remembered  from making the Plantain Turnovers that the oil should not be as hot as you might think, so I erred on the side of keeping the oil cooler so as not to overcook the chiles.  This seemed to work as my soaking liquid was not bitter at all and was able to be used in the chile purée.

Now for the results.  The mole was everything that Mexican food should be: sweet, spicy, complex, fantastic!  Also, the turkey breast was cooked to perfection.  This is one of those sauces that you taste and first you sense the sweetness of the sugar and the chocolate.  Then, a couple of seconds later the spice coats your mouth.  It really was quite spicy but you could adjust the ratio of sauce to turkey and rice to find a good balance for any palate.  We had made this mole before and I’m sure we’ll make it again.  One more great thing about this recipe is that it really makes more sauce than you need and so there was plenty not only for all of the leftover turkey but also a sizable amount to freeze.  And what’s so great about freezing the sauce is that you can then in the future whip up a fantastic meal with little effort.  This really was the perfect way to ring in 2010 and I look forward to a lot more Mexican cooking in the months ahead

59 recipes down, 96 to go

I wasn’t going to let being at my mom’s for Christmas stop me from making progress on my project so I used our trip to CT as an opportunity to do some of the seafood selections from the book. It was also a second chance for me to cook something for my mom that she would like (she hadn’t really been wild about the Chicken with Pueblan Green Pumpkin Seed Sauce) and a first opportunity for me to cook for my brother and sister-in-law.
So here was the menu: Tomatillo-Greeen Guacamole (SOS2), Spicy Chile-Baked Oysters (SOS7), Tangy Tomatillo-Sauced Fish Enchiladas (TEOCE14), and Frontera Grill’s Chocolate Pecan Pie (D8). I had already made the Guacamole but my sister-in-law is a big avocado fan and it used the same base as the fish dish (or so I thought, more on that later) so I figured it was worth repeating.
The first order of business was to go grocery shopping. The only really Mexican ingredients that I needed were tomatillos, serranos and dried anchos. I didn’t think that it would be a problem. Well, let’s just say that I’m glad that I’m not doing this project in CT. Apparently serrano peppers are a summer only item. I went both to the large Stop and Shop (the one actually in Hartford) and to Whole Foods. I was shocked to not only not find serranos, but to not find dried anchos either! I was sure to tell the staff at the West Hartford Whole Foods that those items were always available in the Chicago area Whole Foods. Not that they probably cared. So I decided to substitute a combination of poblanos and jalapeños. Then I went to Penzey’s for the dried anchos. Last I went to a local fish market (Tinker’s) for the oysters and the fish (sea bass) for the enchiladas. I paid an extra 25 cents per oyster to have them shucked for me. I’m sure it was money well spent as I have a very vivid and not positive memory of trying to shuck clams one year while on vacation in Rhode Island so I was happy to not have to tackle that.
Then it was home to make the pie crust and the sauce for the enchiladas. The pie crust, much like the one I made for Creamy Lime Pie (although this time I didn’t have lard), did not roll out and had to be pieced together in the pie dish. I did this first as it needed to be chilled, rolled out, chilled, and baked all before the filling. Not hard, just a little time consuming.
Now when I first read the recipes for the guacamole and the enchiladas I thought they called for the same base. It wasn’t until I was mid-way through making it that I realized that the base for the enchiladas, Essential Simmered Tomatillo-Serrano Sauce (EF7) was actually not the same as the base for the guacamole, Essential Roasted Tomatillo-Serrano Salsa (EF8). Oops! So I ended up improvising. For the Sauce the puréed roasted tomatillos are then cooked with onions and garlic. For the salsa the roasted garlic gets puréed with the tomatillos. So the long and the short of it is that my salsa for the guacamole lacked roasted garlic. I wish I could say that it didn’t suffer, but honestly, it did. Also, the poblano-jalapeño mixture had a subtle spice but most in our group would have preferred the guacamole to be a little more zesty. We ended up adding some cayenne which helped. It was still really good; just not as good as the first time I had made it (properly).
Now here’s where things got a little bit interesting. Around 4:30 as I was ready to bake the pie and get the oysters going Scarlett became sick with a rather unpleasant stomach bug. I won’t go into unneeded detail, but between the cleaning, laundry and bathing that became necessary, and someone sitting with her at all times with a bowl, our schedule got a little bit off. It was decided that we would have the guacamole, oysters and pie that evening and we would save the enchiladas for the following day for lunch. We also ended up with a pizza from Harry’s (our favorite in West Hartford).
So on to the oysters. The sauce for these was Essential Sweet-and-Spicy Ancho Seasoning Paste (EF10). This along with onions and 2 canned chipotle chiles en adobo (which provided a considerable amount of kick), were fried and then made into a sauce with broth and lime juice. This sauce was then combined with the juices from the oysters and drizzled over the oysters in their open shells and baked. They were served with lime wedges. All agreed that these were fantastic! Poor John had to eat his by himself at Scarlett’s bedside. The sauce was very spicy but went well with the oysters which themselves were quite good. And I was glad that I didn’t have to try to find fresh oysters in Chicago. That all said, this is probably not something I would make again. I’m a believer that some foods are just better left to restaurants and oysters are one of those for me. It was a lot of work for just a small appetizer.

Next was the pie. Unfortunately the amount of filling was a little bit too much for the pie pan. I could very easily have rectified this problem by just not using all of it. But no, for some reason, I felt the need to put as much filling as possible in the pie dish. This led to a couple of problems. One, it overflowed in the oven creating a not insignificant amount of smoke whenever the oven door was opened. Then the upper outside of the pie got a little too done. What can I say? I just hated to waste what I guessed would be yummy pie goodness but I ended up lessening the quality of the whole dish. The pie, however, was good. It was very rich making me realize all the more that a little less filling would have been just fine. It was served with whipped cream spiked with kahlúa. And this provided what was surely the funniest moment of the day. So my mom had a bottle of kahlúa and I didn’t bother to look at it until it was time to use it. The price tag was from the liquor store 21st Amendment, an Indianapolis chain. My mom hasn’t lived in Indianapolis since 1996 and this bottle was almost assuredly considerably older than that. So this revelation led us to question whether or not the kahlúa was good or not. I will only say that we did use it and that the information provided at the following link: http://www.drunkbastard.net/wetbar.htm had us all in hysterics.

The next day I made the enchiladas, which were easy to put together since the sauce was already made. To make the filling for the enchiladas you poach the fish in salted water and once it’s done you cook diced potatoes in the poaching liquid. The fish and potatoes are combined with a little bit of the sauce. This is the filling for the tortillas and then more sauce is spooned on top. These were a big hit. Everyone loved them, including my mom! I stand by my statement that the tomatillo-serrano (or even my improvisational tomatillo-poblano-jalapeño) combination is a winner. It went really well with the fish and potatoes. This was a nice, light, healthy entrée and a wonderful ending to a visit with family.