When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
Skin on, bone in, chicken thighs (the better half started the asian-inspired marinade while I was at the office)
Brown rice
Broccoli, onions, garlic sauteed in a pan with some olive oil and topped with toasted sesame oil
Took the leftovers today, stir fried everything together and dropped a couple of eggs and two HEAPING tablespoons of sambal.
This is Spanish soul-food. Everyone's abuela has a slightly different recipe, all are good. Common throughout the Caribbean, it never quite made it into mainstream Mexican cuisine, which I suspect is why it is relatively unknown in the US.
Prep: 1 green bell pepper, 5 cloves garlic, 1 medium yellow onion, 1/2 jar pimento-stuffed olives (about 4 oz):
The spice blend is 1 tbs cumin, 1/2 tbs cinnamon, 2 packets Sazón Goya, 1/2 tbs sugar.
Saute the onion and bell pepper with olive oil over medium heat in a large saute pan until softened. Add the garlic, and about a minute more. Set aside into a large saucepot.
Put 1.5 lbs ground beef in the same pan, with some water. Work into small pieces, and cook until browned.
Drain, and transfer to the saucepot
Add one small can tomato paste, one can diced tomatoes (half-drained), the spice mix, 1/4 cup raisins, 1/4 cup cider vinegar, 1/2 cup golden cooking wine (Edmundo Vino Seco Para Cocinar, Vino Dorado ), and 2-3 oz capers, drained. Add a little water if needed, to achieve a consistency similar to extremely thick chili. Simmer, covered, for about 45 minutes. (Uncover if you find that it's too runny.)
Plate over rice.
EDIT: Needed a bit more kick. I used Tabasco the first time, but it wasn't quite a good fit. Sprinkled liberally with cayenne pepper the second time, and that was a perfect fit.
Excellent and super tasty sauce - salty, full of flavor. Great on grilled meat - just elevates it so much. Hard to find in stores, rare in restaurants.
Excellent and super tasty sauce - salty, full of flavor. Great on grilled meat - just elevates it so much. Hard to find in stores, rare in restaurants.
Indeed. It's a very unusual hot sauce, not even hot in sense of traditional hot sauce so much as... complex.
The family down in Florida discovered it at a restaurant, but couldn't figure out where to buy it. At the time, I was in San Jose, so I drove out to Gilroy and bought a case of it for them.
This is one of those dishes where everyone's abuela has a different recipe. I've done it many times, always strictly following the recipe which was written on a sheet of paper by my mother in 1971, as she learned it from her soon-to-be mother in law. Yes, Ursula actually required that my mother travel to Hato Rey and learn to cook from her before she would bless the marriage. It must have been quite a scene. In her younger years (which is to say, her mid 60s), Ursula was very much a Julia Child sort of personality. Only in Spanish.
I've been reading up on the dish lately, exploring other people's abuela's recipes, and decided to try adopting a few variations. The first is that we're going to pork it up. The second is that I'm going to use dried beans. Ursula always used canned beans, but with dried beans we get to infuse them with any flavor combination we want while they are soaking up the juice at the beginning. This recipe turned out to be a whole lot more labor-intensive, which makes me wonder if Ursula might have been dumbing-down the recipe somewhat when she passed it on to my mother. Unless I can get tia Sonia to confess (at 102, she's the last living member of their generation), I may never know. And it's quite possible that she might not even know, as she didn't leave Cuba until the Mariel boatlift in 1980, so there were 24 years of isolation during which the recipe might have evolved independently on the two islands.The third is that we're going to go off the rails and embrace my redneck side, with some heat & sweet. (Traditional Cuban cuisine is rich and savory, but not spicy. Enter the jalapeno.)
The day before, thoroughly rinse and clean one 16 oz bag of dried black beans (Goya, La Preferida, etc.) as the dried ones sometimes have dirt / twigs / etc in the bag. Toss 'em in the pot, cover with water to about 1" above the bean-line and add:
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp black pepper
1 tsp oregeno
1 tbs olive oil
3 bay leaves (remember to singe them on the stove first)
Mix well. Then, halve four garlic cloves, one red bell pepper, one large yellow onion, and one scallion. Chop one half of the onion into quarters. Slice one scallion-half into halves again. Add the garlic, one pepper-half, the quartered-half of the onion, and the halved-half of the scallion. Put the other half of the onion, scallion, and pepper into the refrigerator, we will use them tomorrow.
That's it for tonight. Put some good music on, have a drink, do whatever you normally do on a Friday night. The beans are gonna soak this **** up.
Day 2: 9:05am.
The next morning, add more water to get it back to 1" above the bean-line, and then toss a ham hock into the pot. At this point, here's what we should be looking at:
I will note here that while I started this in a slow-cooker pot, I later decided to transfer it to a conventional soup pot, as the slow-cooker wasn't able to get the mix to a roiling simmer with the lid off. This is important, as we will be reducing the mixture as a final step. In the future, I will use the regular stovetop soup pot for the whole process, and reduce the first-stage cook to 2-3 hours.)
Now turn the slow-cooker on high, and let it do its thing for about 4 hours. Note that from this point forward, any time we add water (as the beans are still soaking it up), the water will be raised to a boil in a pan before being added to the pot.
1:30pm
After a brief respite, use tongs to remove the garlic, onion, scallion, and bell pepper, and set into a bowl. Remove and discard the bay leaves. Into the garlic / onion / scallion / pepper bowl, put two big scoops of bean and water. Place this bowl into the refrigerator to chill down to room temp.
While that's chilling, we're going to make the usual sofrito. Dice the remaining halves of the onion, scallion and bell pepper from yesterday. Mince another 3 cloves garlic, and 2 jalapeno peppers.
At this point, I'm going to pause and reflect upon garlic. In the past, I have extolled the virtues of pre-minced garlic. This was, I will admit, due in part to my own laziness and not owning a good-quality garlic press. I recently purchased this:
It cost $13 from Amazon, and does a really great job. Unlike any garlic press I have used before, the crush-plate has little fingers on it which align with the holes in the opposite end, and actually does a really good job of making use of all of the garlic, rather than half of it winding up as a pressed-yet-unminced mush in the receiver. Link:
Put 'em all in a skillet with some olive oil on low, and cook for about 15 minutes, stirring constantly. We're not going for a char here, and we don't want the garlic to brown. We just want it all to soften and intermingle.
This is the target:
While that's going on, cook 1/2 lb bacon (the very thick sort that you get from the butcher's counter) in the oven on a rack, for 15-20 min at 400°. We want it just shy of crisp.
Assuming you did it right, the bacon is done at the same time as the veg. Slice the bacon very thinly, and toss everything into the pot. (The bacon, and the onion / scallion / pepper from the above step.)
(Bacon. So much bacon.)
4:00pm
Retrieve the bowl from the refrigerator. Toss it into the food processor, and chop into a paste.
Add, along with 3 more bay leaves, singed. Here's where we're at now:
(As mentioned previously, we are now in a soup pot on the stove, with the flame set to a low simmer.)
(And, yes, I removed the ham hock during stirrings, to make the photo prettier.)
Add 1/4 cup cider vinegar, and 3/4 cup golden cooking wine (Edmundo Vino Seco here.)
From this point forward, we just need to let this glorious concoction simmer for another few hours on low heat (just barely bubbling.) This is the point where we'll actually start tasting it, and adding spices as necessary. I tossed in a pinch of cayenne pepper and about 1/4 cup brown sugar. I have added no salt at all, as the ham and bacon are both pretty heavily salted.
Stir occasionally.
7:000pm
Plate atop rice.
That's it. Done.
This experiment was a success. Can't think of anything I'd change.
Well done gents. I've been slacking, and the better half let me off the hook yesterday when I was planning something that would rival what you guys are doing.
(It was her B-Day and she told me she wanted to go get some mexican instead of me spending a few hours in the kitchen cooking. And I will never turn down tamales.)
12 ounces fresh or frozen blueberries (about 1 1/2 cups)
1/4 cup demerara or sanding sugar
Instructions
Heat the oven and prepare a muffin pan. Arrange a rack in the middle of the oven and heat to 350°F. Coat the wells of a 12-well muffin pan with cooking spray or line with paper liners.
Whisk the wet ingredients together. Place the butter or oil and sugar in a large bowl and whisk until well combined. Add the eggs, vanilla, and lemon zest and whisk vigorously until the mixture is lightened in color, about 3 minutes.
Add the dry ingredients, alternating with the milk. Add the baking powder, salt, and 1/2 of the flour. Stir gently with the whisk until just combined -- some dry spots are okay. Add 1/2 of the milk and whisk gently to combine. Add the remaining flour and whisk to combine. Add the remaining milk and whisk until the batter is mostly smooth.
Fold in the blueberries. If you'd like to top the muffins with blueberries, set aside 1/4 cup. Add the remaining blueberries and fold to combine, don’t worry too much if any berries burst.
Divide the batter and top. Divide the batter among the muffin wells (about 1/2 cup each). If topping with blueberries, divide them among the muffins. Sprinkle each muffin with 1 teaspoon demerara or sanding sugar.
Bake for 28 to 30 minutes. Bake until the muffins are domed, lightly golden-brown, and the center muffins bounce back when pressed, 28 to 30 minutes.
Cool the muffins in the pan for 10 minutes. Cool the muffins in the pan for 10 minutes. Run a thin knife around the edge of each muffin to remove it from the pan (even if you used liners you will want to do this). Cool on a wire rack for 10 more minutes before serving, or cool completely before storing.
When i prep the apples, I toss them in white/brown/ sugar and cinnamon mix, let them sit for 30 min, which releases quite a bit of liquid, then I take the liquid , boil it, add 1/4 heavy cream and reduce until it thickens. That's it - the whole pie takes 10 min to prep and 40 min to bake.
I keep going back to chuck in my chili because it's so damn perfect in that liquidy braise scenario. connective tissue breaks down well and has super beefy flavor.
Salmon with dill crème, and quinoa / asparagus / parsley salad:
The cast of characters:
Start the music. Audioslave / Nirvavna / Soundgarden / Alice in Chains / Oasis. That's the proper vibe for this dish. Mix a Godfather (1 part Disaronno, 4 parts bourbon, on the rocks.)
Dill is one of my favorite herbs, and I prefer fresh. It's a pain to deal with. I use the small paring knife to separate it, and then mince the hell out of it with a chef's knife. Fresh parsley is also slightly annoying, but you can just pluck it by hand into the food processor (it's ok if some stems get in) and chop to a medium-fine texture.
Slice 1 large bunch of thin asparagus into ~ 1.5 inch sections.
Prepare 1/2 cup quinoa, per package directions. Basically just add 1 cup water, bring to a boil, and then reduce to simmer for 15 minutes, covered. Add 1/4 tsp ground dried rosemary (the mortar & pestle are invaluable here), 1/4 tsp thyme, 1/2 tsp oregano, and a little black pepper at the beginning.
Pan cook the asparagus. I used a little olive oil, and about 5 minutes on medium-high, tossing occasionally.
Prepare the crème. It's just Greek yogurt (you can sub sour cream), lemon juice, and dill. Mix to taste. I'd estimate this batch at about 2oz yogurt, 1 tbs lemon juice, and quite a lot of dill. This amount will probably last 4-5 platings of the dish.
Put a piece of salmon into a preheated oven, skin side down. 425° for about 12 minutes. The toaster oven is great for this. As is Reynold's non-stick aluminum foil. No pan, just put the fish on the foil and stick it in. No seasoning, other than a pinch of salt if that's your thing.
As the quinoa approaches completion, uncover and turn the heat up a tad. Add the asparagus, the chopped parsley, 2 tbs lemon juice, and a handful of toasted pine nuts, and mix well. Give it another few minutes, stirring often until fairly dry.
The secret to perfectly toasted pine nuts, BTW, is that there is no secret. During the mise en place stage, you just put 'em in a dry skillet on medium and toss until nicely browned.
(If you have guessed that I literally never wash this pan, you are correct. A good quality non-stick finish on a heavy pan is an amazing thing. This one is from Calphalon, one of the very few expensive kitchen tools I own. Just wipe it with a dry paper towel every now and then. I'll note that I never prepare sauces in this pan. I have a separate sauté pan for that. It's actually a cheap-as-hell, thin, aluminum pan which came in a set of four which I purchased from K-Mart while in college, about 23 years ago. It's beat to hell, but perfectly adequate for messier, liquid-heavy tasks which will invariably require washing afterward.)
We do Calphalon where I work. We charge them a lot for our process, and in turn they are expensive pans.
You do good work. This is honestly the best pan I have ever used. It was not cheap, but worth every penny.
I'm being totally serious here. I take an odd sense of pride in making good food with the absolute cheapest of tools. I really hem and haw over the decision to purchase an "expensive" kitchen tool, partly because I'm a cheapskate, and partly because I feel like I have an image to protect. But this pan is a seriously high-quality bit of hardware which I very much respect.
Originally Posted by Erat
I can't cook, i just take cool **** i have growing in my garden, get hammered and put it in a pan with some type of protein.
01-25-2019, 05:13 PM
0
