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.

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

13 recipes down, 142 to go

Last night we had menu 35 (a complete menu, served all at once, we even had leftover flan too!): VBRED1 Seared Zucchini with Roasted Tomato, Chipotle and Chorizo and MD29 Chile-Glazed Country Ribs. My organization skills are improving. The sauce (EF6 Essential Quick-Cooked Tomato-Chipotle Sauce) for the zucchini was the extra from last week’s tortilla casserole and I did the marinade a day in advance so it really came together very quickly.
The zucchini dish was nothing more than a matter of chopping some zucchini, slicing onion and cooking it all up with the sauce and some chorizo in a skillet. Very quick and easy! Let’s talk for a second about Mexican zucchini, though. I had already bought what seemed to be 4 medium zucchini at my local farmers’ market when I noticed some Mexican zucchini at La Casa del Pueblo. The Mexican ones were much smaller (and a lighter green color). I used the ones I had already bought but only needed two of them and that still seemed like a little more than what would coat the bottom of my skillet in a single layer. It turned out fine, though. The sauce, as it was in the tortilla casserole, was quite spicy and thus so were the veggies. There was also an extra little kick from the chorizo.

As an option, suggested by Rick, we used the finished dish as a taco filling and had it as an appetizer for our ribs. Jack ate some, although his was intermixed with plain zucchini and Scarlett ate only plain zucchini with an extra helping of queso fresco. This was really good and would also make a fine meal in and of itself, spicy and yet fresh tasting.
The ribs were a big hit for the whole family. I would definitely make these again. Actually, I would make this menu for company because the last-minute work is pretty minimal. John and I ate the ribs with full glaze, which was really only mildly spicy (with guajillo and ancho peppers forming the base), and had a pleasant but subtle sweetness from the honey. There was also just a note of tang from the cider vinegar. The kids ate them too but we had to wipe off the sauce for them.

Tonight I’m meeting a friend for sushi which will provide me with a nice break from cooking. I’ll be back at it this weekend with a yet to be determined menu. It’ll depend on the availability of things like squash blossoms, squab (pigeon anyone?), and huitlacoche (more on that later).

10 recipes down, 145 to go

Yesterday I made MD11 Guajillo-Sauced Shrimp with Quick-Fried Cactus which involved first making EF12 Essential Simmered Guajillo Sauce. I also made a pilgrimage to Pilsen, the Mexican neighborhood in Chicago and did some shopping at la Casa del Pueblo and El Popocatepetl. I’ll talk about this trip tomorrow and focus on the meal for now.
Essential Simmered Guajillo Sauce involved stemming and seeding the dried guajillos before toasting and rehydrating them. Rick mentions that removing the veins will result in a less spicy sauce. I did that (thinking the sauce might therefore be more kid-friendly). The peppers are then puréed with roasted garlic, some herbs and chicken broth. This is then seared on the stove-top and finally more broth is added and it then simmers for about 45 minutes.
The result was a sauce that was not spicy at all and very subtle in flavor, which is a nice way of saying it was kind of bland. I also noticed the feel of the small pieces of pepper in my mouth and wondered if a blender might work better for puréeing than my Cuisinart. I was starting to have my doubts about this recipe.
Next, I tackled the nopales or cactus paddles. This was the first time I’ve ever cooked with cactus. Ok, they really are prickly!! I’m pretty conscientious and was carefully following Rick’s instructions to trim the edges and then slice or scrape off the spiny nodes. The problem was that the prickles that I had trimmed would then cling back to the nopale when I set it back down on my cutting board to cut the nodes off on the other side. Then I would pick it up and get a prickle in my hand. Ouch! Luckily this only happened two or three times. Once they were de-noded, I chopped them in pieces. While chopping I noticed a viscous liquid emanating from the cactus (more on that later).
John peeled and de-veined the shrimp (yay John!!) and the dish was ready to come together. The cactus was stir-fried with some thin guajillo strips and lime juice. Then the shrimp were cooked in the skillet. Finally, you add the guajillo sauce and a puréed roasted tomato and cook for a couple of minutes. Then it all gets mixed together.
It’s supposed to be served just as is, but Rick says that as a variation you can use it as a taco filling. Since I had just been to the tortillaria, we made tacos. We also served it with potatoes, also per Rick’s recommendation.

Overall this dish was really good. The addition of the tomato to the chile sauce really livened it up for me. It was still subtle though, allowing the flavors of shrimp and cactus to come through. John loved the cactus and said that this was his favorite dish so far. I was a little bothered by the slimy (or as Rick says, “mucilagenous”) texture of the cactus. I guess it’s a similar texture to okra for those of you who’ve had that. I then looked up some of the other cactus recipes that are in the book and in most cases Rick calls for roasting which apparently eliminates this texture as all the liquid evaporates. We’ll see.
I’ll tell you about my trip to Pilsen tomorrow and this week I’m scheduled to make VBRED1 Seared Zucchini with Roasted Tomato, Chipotle and Chorizo, MD29 Chile-Glazed Country Ribs and D1 Modern Mexican Chocolate Flan with Kahlúa (I can’t really believe I’ve held out so long before making a dessert).

update:  Jack tried the shrimp with cactus and said it was good.  Well, actually he said the shrimp and the sauce were good.  When I asked him if he liked the cactus, he said: “I don’t know”.  So I asked him if he would eat the cactus again and he said yes.