Why I Love Whole Foods

I know, people joke about this place and call it "whole paycheck" yada yada yada. But sometimes it's worth a little extra for the great shopping experience. For example, on a recent Sunday morning, shopping for a big cookout, I picked up a sixpack of non-alcoholic beer. (I know i know, what's the point?) I knew there might be a problem because the computer system doesn't differentiate between NA and regular beer, and this was before noon, when it is illegal to buy alcohol on Sundays in Texas.

Sure enough, the computer didn't allow the cashier to ring up my beer. I rolled my eyes waiting for the usual, "I'm sorry, but the computer says..." while I know that I could go buy 10 bottles of 11% alcohol cooking wine and the computer wouldn't bark. But the cashier conferred with a collegue, then a manager, and they ran back and got the price for me. "Just ring it up as cheese," said the manager. Now that's using your head and serving the customer. Hell, they may have broken a law or two, but they did right by me. Now if they'd just do something about the $12.99 flank steaks.

Thanks, Whole Foods!

Dover Sole with Ancho Chile Cream Sauce

Dover Sole is about my favorite fish.  When fresh (or even freshly frozen), it is the sweetest tasting non-fishy fish in the world.  Or at least in my little section of it.  So if you read this recipe and think the sauce sounds too complicated, don't make the sauce.  I normally bread and fry dover sole in a little olive oil and butter and serve with no sauce.  It is that good.

But I did a variant yesterday, and made a creamy ancho chile sauce with serrano peppers and mushrooms.  The sauce ended up tasting kind of like a Pontchartrain sauce - kind of a spicy cajun deal, and it was yummy. I could just see making this with some lump crabmeat or crawfish tails.  The red serrano peppers from my garden really helped with the visual appeal, in addition to jazzing up the spice content.

Fish fixins:

• 2 eggs
• 1 lb Dover sold (fresh - or frozen fresh)
• 1 tablespoon ancho chile paste (see this blog 28 Mar 09 for recipe)  
• plain breadcrumbs
  
• 1 tablespoon cumin
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 1/2 stick butter

Heat olive oil and butter on medium heat.  It needs to be hot enough to where a drop of water flicked in there from your finger sizzles nicely. Beat eggs in a bowl, and add cumin and chile paste, and mix it all up nicely. Pour a bunch of bread crumbs onto a plate.  Dip the fish into the egg mixture, then dredge it through the bread crumbs. Place into the hot oil.  The level of oil and butter should be high enough to where the fish is almost submerged.  You'll need to be careful handling the fish in the fryer because it will break up on you. You cannot just flip it with tongs, or you'll end up with a mess on your hands. After 2-3 minutes (assuming there's a lot of sizzling and bubbling going on), flip the fish.  I prefer to use a long spatula to minimize chances of breakage. The fish should be browned nicely. If you cook it on too low a heat, it can be a little soggy and greasy.

I can fit about a half a pound of filets in my iron skillet, so what I do to keep everything warm while i finish the job and make the sauce is put a cooling rack on a cookie sheet into a 200 degree oven and keep the fish warm there. I use the cooling rack to allow any excess oil to drain.

Run the fish through the oil until you're finished - you should be able to do a pound in two batches. While the fish are frying, slice up mushrooms and serrano pepper, if you're making the sauce.

Drain all but a tablespoon and a half of the oil.  

The sauce

• 1 tablespoon flour
  
• 1 cup sliced mushrooms (optional)
  
• 1 serrano pepper (red, if available) - or a red or yellow habanero
  
• 1 cup chicken broth
  
• 1 cup whipping cream or 1/2 cup Mexican sour cream
  
• 1 tablespoon ancho chile paste  
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon cumin
• fresh ground black pepper

Saute the mushrooms in the oil for two or three minutes, until they look like you'd want to eat them. Add the serranos and give a stir. After about a minute, sprinkle flour into the mixture, stirring everything nicely so that it's not too much of a paste, but the oil is about all soaked up. This will be anywhere from 1 to 2 tablespoons of flour, depending on how you eyeballed the remaining oil/butter mixture. Once you have a nice smooth liquidy paste, pour in the chicken broth and raise heat to high.  Stir in ancho chile paste and shake salt and cumin into the mixture.  Bring to a boil, then reduce heat.  Let it simmer for a couple of minutes until it starts to reduce, then add crema Mexicana or whipping cream.   Give the pepper a few turns.  Taste the sauce - if it's not hot enough (it depends if your ancho chile paste is pure ancho or if it's the chipotle ancho blend i like to make), you can sprinkle some cayenne pepper into the mixture. Cook on medium-low heat until the sauce reaches your desired consistency. If too thin, just cook longer, too thick, add a little more broth.  

I serve this with rice, as pictured, with roasted zucchini (to be blogged later). This will feed two hungry folks or three salad-eaters.

Chicken Fajitas - in India

I was on a business trip to India for the month of May, and stayed at a hotel with a kitchen. That gave me the opportunity to cook dinner in my room in between late night conference calls back to the US when I didn’t have time to go to the restaurant.And how many times can you have the paneer butter masala with garlic naan, anyway?  (this place had a good one). Actually, I can answer that question. Three times.

On the weekend, I was determined to make some Tex-Mex for my colleague and me, just to get a break from the standard fare of curries and kebabs. So I ventured out and found a grocery store full of imported goods.  Things like Maxwell House coffee (oh my!), De Cecco pasta, and other good western foods. No tortillas though (and frankly, I won’t even buy tortillas in New York or Arkansas, let alone India).  So I had to find some ingredients for my own fajita fest.  I bought flour, olive oil, salt, cumin (fortunately, I knew the Hindi word for that - jeera), and red pepper.  I had to search for a rolling pin, as my kitchen was not outfitted with one.  Later, I went to the local supermarket (basically, a little one room store, smaller than Imelda Marcos’ shoe closet) and asked, “Aap ke pas rolling pin hai?” (do you have a rolling pin?) while making the universal rolling pin motion.  “Chapati karna ke liye”  (to make chapatis, an indian flatbread).  Ahh, their eyes would light up and they’d be on the floor digging around behind toys, kitchen goods, you name it in search of that elusive rolling pin.  In two places, they came up with the base - something that looked like a tambourine - it seems making a chapati requires a rolling pin and a counterpart underneath.  “Uper, uper” I’d say, again making that rolling motion.  After a couple of stores, I walked back to my hotel, the proud owner of a proper Indian chapati rolling pin.   I was able to find baking powder at the first place I went.  It had a nice layer of dust on top of the lid, so I imagine this was aged baking powder, but why be picky?  I went to the local subzi walla (vegetable vendor) and picked up some of the wonderful red onions they have in Maharashtra along with some chili peppers, limes, and garlic.  These red onions are so sweet, they are served in many restaurants as side dishes - peeled and whole, smaller than a golf ball, you just pick them up and eat them like fruit.  Man, those are good.  And the limes you get in India are smaller even than the Key limes we buy in the US, with very thin skin.  You have to only slice them in half to provide a perfect fit between the thumb and index finger and complement any spicy kebob. 

But I digress.

To make the tortillas, I found a recipe on You Tube.  I don’t remember the specifics - many recipes call for shortening or lard, but I went with olive oil for health reasons (and that’s what i had).  Tortillas call for only flour, salt, water, baking powder, and oil (or shortening).  The key is to use warm water - it makes the dough more pliable.  The recipe I found had me making the dough, letting it rest for 5 minutes, then rolling golf sized balls, and let them rest for some time before rolling out the tortillas and frying them in a skillet.  They turned out pretty good, although I think you need higher heat than what I had and cook them very quickly (grrr - trying to cook on an unfamiliar electric range is no fun).  If you cook too long on lower heat, they’ll be a bit stiff.

To make chicken fajitas, marinade chicken breasts in olive oil, chopped garlic, cumin, red pepper, and lime juice for at least an hour.  Back home, I’d use cilantro too, which they have in India - I just couldn’t find any on this particular day.  These are best when grilled, but you work with what you have.  I sauteed some onions and peppers in olive oil after sauteeing the chicken, chopped it up and rolled it into my freshly made tortillas.  One thing I didn’t find was cheddar or jack cheese.  Even though I used most of the ingredients I use back home, these had a distinctly Indian flavor to them.  I don’t know if it was the flour, the red pepper, cumin, or onions, but it just wasn’t the same as the Tex-Mex I know.  Regardless, it was a nice variant on a long trip.  Of course, my colleague and I found a baseball game to watch while we ate, so we felt like we were back in Houston, having a little cookout.