Movin' on Up

I'm a movin' on up
To the east side
To a deluxe apartment in the sky
Movin' on up
To the east side
I finally got a piece of the pie....

Yes, folks, I'm moving to the high rent district. I went out and plunked a couple of bucks on my very own dudecancook.com domain name. This here blog is now that there blog over on my new website. I promise I won't leave y'all behind and I'll always keep it real with my homies. It will be just like old times (sniff). Please start following me on the new site! Or better yet, sign up for my tweets: dudecancook@twitter.com.

dave

New World Veggie Saute with Crispy Tortilla Strips

This is a variant of a very simple dish I found in Rick Bayless' Mexican Kitchen, and it also reminds me of India, where in public places vendors cook fresh corn on a hot plate with charcoal and serve it in little cups with a spoon to passers by. Use the following ratios, each ear of corn makes enough for two-three people as a good sized side dish.

• 1 ear corn
• 1/4 cup diced onion
• 1/2 to 1 serrano pepper diced
• (optional) 1/2 cup diced chayote or zucchini
• 2 corn tortillas, cut into 1/4 inch strips and fried
• a bit of olive oil

I made this with zucchini because i have a surplus of that lying around, but I think chayote would be perfect for this dish. After chopping the vegetables and frying the tortilla strips, this takes about five minutes. For guidance on frying tortilla strips, refer to my tortilla soup recipe here.

Saute vegetables in olive oil until the corn turns a deep yellow and before the squash gets too soggy. Top with crispy tortilla strips after plating. That's it, hombres.

Tangy Roasted or Grilled Zucchini

This is a really simple dish. My favorite way to cook zucchini is to saute with chopped garlic in a little olive oil, and stop cooking while it's still bright green and firm. But I've been cooking zucchini two or three times a week lately, as my garden has produced an abundance of eggplant-sized zucchinis.

• Juice from two limes
• 1 tablespoon Ancho chile paste (optional)
• Freshly ground black pepper

The chile paste really is optional. I just my ancho chile paste like that guy in My Big Fat Greek Wedding uses Windex. It pretty much solves every culinary problem facing me.

Put the chile paste into the lime juice and stir. Slice zucchini on the diagonal - almost length-wise to maximize the size of the slices. Bathe in the lime juice and sprinkle with a couple turns of fresh ground black pepper. This is really good cooked over an open flame on the grill, or you can roast them at 400 for about 20 minutes. When roasting, I use a steam pan to get these guys cooked through.

Dover Sole Marsala

I know I just wrote about Dover sole, but my wife liked it so much Saturday that she ordered it again Monday. So I made it the way I most commonly do - with a balsamic/marsala sauce.

Follow the fish recipe as discussed on 28 June, but use Italian bread crumbs for the fish, and no other seasonings.

Marsala Sauce

• 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
• 3/4 cup Marsala
• 1 cup chicken or vegetable broth
• 1-2 tablespoons flour
• 1 cup mushrooms, sliced
• 2 cloves garlic - chopped finely
• salt and black pepper to taste

Drain all but 3 tablespoons oil and keep on medium low heat. Add chopped garlic and saute until translucent. Add mushrooms and continue to saute. Once the mushrooms are looking good, sprinkle flour into the mix and stir with a fork until all of the oil is sopped up, and you have a thin paste going on. Add balsamic and marsala. Increase heat and bring liquid to a boil. Reduce to medium high and simmer until liquid reduces by 25% or so. Add broth and heat on medium, letting it bubble a bit until it thickens appropriately. This should not be as heavy as a cream gravy, but have some texture to it. Add about 1/2 teaspoon of salt and a few turns of freshly ground black pepper and serve.

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.

Recipe: Back to Basics - Macaroni and Cheese

Quick show of hands - who grew up on Kraft Macaroni and Cheese?  Who still feeds that to your kids?  OK, that's everybody. Now who has ever made macaroni and cheese without opening the "cheese packet"?  I thought so.

I had a wild hare last week and bought some elbow macaroni. I've had a hankering for some mac n cheese lately, but just couldn't bring myself to buying a box o' product. I'm also trying this Barilla pasta product - it tastes a lot better than whole wheat pasta and is better for you. It's made from a variety of whole grains and legumes and has protein and omega-3s so it's all good.  So why not add a whole bunch of dairy fat to make it even better? Beats me.

You'll find that this may take about 5 minutes of work instead of 30 seconds like the Kraft stuff, but what were you going to do with that extra 4 minutes and 30 seconds, anyway? Elapsed time, this will take you 45 minutes, but that's no big deal. You pop it in the oven and then you have 30 minutes to make the rest of your dinner while this bad boy heats up.

• 8 oz elbow macaroni
• 1 3/4 cup milk
• 1/4 cup flour
• salt and pepper
• 1/4 cup chopped onion
• 8 oz grated cheese
• 3 tablespoons butter
• 1/2 to 1 serrano pepper (or 1/4 jalapeno or red pepper flakes)

The Betty Crocker recipe calls for American cheese or Velveeta, but I stay away from that stuff. But you do want at least one decent melting cheese like a mozzarella or quesadilla. I used a blend of jack, white cheddar, swiss,) and mozzarella. I topped it with parmesan.

Cook macaroni and set aside. While that's going, go ahead and preheat your oven to 375. Warm the butter and saute onions until they're translucent. Add flour slowly and stir with the butter until you have a paste - you may not need all the flour. Add milk and bring to a boil - then remove from heat. 

Put the macaroni an an uncovered baking dish, and toss with grated cheese. Pour in the milk mixture, add the peppers, about a teaspoon of salt, and a few turns of freshly grated black pepper. Stir the mixture to distribute contents evenly and bake uncovered at 375 for about 30 minutes. 

Damn. That's some good stuff. I don't think I'll go back to the "side dish in a box" after this.

Recipe: Ancho Chile Paste

Forwarning - this isn't a meal unto itself, so don't make a batch of this and call out, "honey, dinner's ready!" You'll be facing a big letdown. Note: this recipe calls for a food processor.

• 6-8 dried ancho chiles 
• 6-8 cloves of garlic - roasted
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• up to 1/4 cup vegetable or chicken broth
• 1 tablespoon comino (optional)

This is a variant of the recipe found in Rick Bayless's Mexican Kitchen cookbook.

Ancho chiles are very mild and pungent, and when soaked, smell more like raisins than hot peppers you may be accustomed to. I add this paste to just about anything southwestern that I'm making, whether it's a fajita marinade or a mess of beans. I've even attempted to make a pasta sauce with this a few times, but I have to say that one is still in the developmental stages. If you do use this in a recipe where you want a spice kick, you'll need to get the spice kick elsewhere, as the paste is more for enriching your dish with an earthy complex flavor that you won't find by just chopping up some jalapenos.

Cut open and deseed the chiles, and open them up enough so that they can be pressed flat. The last time I bought anchos, I saw some chipotle chiles at the same store, so I added some of these to the mix - they really livened up matters from a spice perspective. Briefly broil or sear the chiles. If you broil them, make sure you do not over cook, as they will burn quickly and not taste so good. I prefer to sear them in an iron skillet - just get the skillet good and hot, and press the chile down briefly on each side for less than a minute until you hear a crackle and see a wisp of smoke (or is it the other way around?).  Once the chiles have been properly singed, soak them in water for about 30 minutes. While this is going on, roast the garlic. You can bake on 350 for about 25 minutes, or broil (but ten cuidado! you don't want to burn it).  Squeeze the roasted garlic from its peel and gather the soggy anchos and place in a food processor. Add the olive oil and a little broth and process. You may not need much of the vegetable/chicken broth - it's just there to keep the chiles honest and smoothen the paste as it spins around in the food processor. 

This will make about a cup and a half. I store it in the refrigerator in a jar, and it keeps for some time. I can't say how long, as I usually consume it within a month or two.

BTW - I don't think I've ever listed comino as optional in a recipe before, but i typically don't add it to my chile paste, as any recipe that calls for the paste calls for the comino, anyway, so why worry about it here? The same goes for other spices - if you wanted this to stand alone, you'd want some salt, freshly ground black pepper, etc. But here, we're just making a paste to add into whatever recipe calls for it and worry about the complementary ingredients at that time.

Recipe: Tequila Lime Salmon with Pico de Gallo

I love how a good fresh salsa of any sort complements the flavor of smoked or grilled salmon. I had grilled salmon with a tomatillo salsa in a restaurant last week, and thought, "I can do that!" I did something a bit different, but it was good! (as my Italian friend says, gnam gnam!)

• 4 salmon filets (about 2 lbs / up to 1 kg)
• 1/2 cup (any grade) + one shot (good) tequila
• two beers
• 1/3 cup ancho chile paste - or 1 tablespoon chili powder or both
• 1 tablespoon comino
• 1 lime wedge plus juice from 1 lime
• pico de gallo
• 2 avocados
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
• 1 tablespoon sea salt (optional)

This recipe will take at least two hours counting marinade time, so you need to get started quickly. One hour in the marinade is sufficient, but I prefer two or three hours if you have the time. I listed the salt as optional, as some folks are watching their blood pressure.  Salt adds a bit of flavor, but I don't find it necessary. And it doesn't matter how much salt I cook with, my wife will salt the crap out of whatever I serve her, anyway. I will have another blog entry on the ancho chili paste - this is a staple in my house, and I always have some in the fridge, so I use it with just about any southwestern-style recipe.

Drink the shot of tequila, then squeeze the lime wedge into your mouth. Now you're ready to get started.

For the marinade, combine the rest of the tequila, juice from the lime, comino, cilantro, salt, and chili paste / powder in a shallow dish. Place the filets in here, skin side up. Make sure the liquid is at least half-way up the sides of the fish, so you get a good soaking going on. I'll usually  just add a little tequila to get the marinade to the optimal level. You could also have another tequila shot at this time, depending on the effect you're looking for.

Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 1 to 3 hours.

To cook the fish, I prefer smoking. I wax eloquently about the benefits of smoking fish in my blog entry from December 2007. Smoke these filets about 45 minutes to an hour based on how hot your smoker gets. Or if you're not that ambitious, you can grill, bake, or broil these bad boys.  For broiling, see my sea bass recipe from last month (the sear, flip, and broil method), or just bake on 400 for about 25 minutes.  

While the fish is smoking, drink the two beers, and make the pico de gallo and prep the avocado. If you're not from Texas, pico de gallo is just a nice fresh topping made with tomatoes, onion, cilantro, and serrano or jalapeno peppers and a squeeze of lime juice. Google it if you can't figure it out from that. Some folks like to mix it up with a little mango or grapefruit, which I've done once or twice, myself. I'll partake of that mixture in a restaurant, but at home I tend to stick to tradition and leave the fusion to the fusionistas in the restaurant trade.

One last thing - I love to drizzle a really high grade olive oil over sliced avocado and add a few twists of fresh ground pepper. I've also got pictured a slice of my rustic sourdough rye - I can't have a meal without bread or rice or pasta of some sort. Bread in this case is perfect for mopping up any garlic, salmon bits and pico de gallo, so you can just put the plate right back in the cupboard without washing.

Y'all enjoy now, you hear?

Recipe: Seared Sea Bass Steaks with Lemon Butter Sauce

Sea bass is so good that all you really have to do is make sure it's heated all the way through and then get out of the way and eat it. You could probably just toss a couple of sea bass steaks in the microwave and they would be delicious.

Now, I wouldn't try that, myself, but I'm just trying to make a point here. With some foods, it's not the cook, it's the ingredients.

This dish can be whipped up in about 10 minutes + whatever time it takes to make your side dishes. I conveniently had a nice couscous salad with feta, olives, and tomatoes in the fridge, so I didn't have to do much else here.

Preparation: pull that sea bass out of the fridge and let it warm up to room temperature prior to cooking - 30 minutes should do the trick. I like to start up the lemon butter in advance, so I'm not distracted from the delicate art of cooking the fish. The thing about fish is you just don't want to overcook it. One or two minutes can mean the difference between creating a moist juicy meal that you would recall for the next week with loving affection versus ending up with a heated old tennis shoe with a distinct fishy taste.

Note: this dish calls for 1 iron skillet.

Lemon butter can be done in a variety of ways. Sometimes you put the butter in first and sometimes the lemon. I'll use about a 1 stick of butter to 1 lemon ratio, and whisk in about a tablespoon of flour per stick. Sometimes, I'll thin this out with white wine if I want a more delicate sauce - about 1/2 cup per stick of butter. If you're going to add wine, double the flour ratio and whisk that into the butter prior to adding the wine, to avoid lumps. In general, I like to start with the amount of butter I'm planning to use (maybe a quarter stick per person), then add the lemon to taste. If you start with too much lemon, you'll end up adding more and more butter to get the taste right resulting in far more sauce than you need, and this goes a long way. You need only a tablespoon of sauce drizzled over the fish to give it just that little je ne sais quoi. You can let the sauce mellow in a small saucepan at warm temperature while you get the fish going.

Get that iron skillet of yours smoking hot on the stovetop - about a medium high setting. Oil it very lightly with olive oil, as too much oil will cause a lot of spitting and spattering at a later stage of the recipe. Ideally, the skillet is large enough to accommodate all of your steaks without crowding.

Prepare the steaks by grinding black pepper over both sides. (remember - they should be at room temperature by now - we are going to be cooking these at high heat but briefly, so we want to make sure they're cooked all the way through)

Prepare a measuring cup with 1/2 cup water and 1/2 cup of any type of cooking wine. Warm this in the microwave - you don't need to bring it to a boil - you just don't want it to be ice cold, either. Turn your oven broiler on high, and position a rack in the top half of the oven that will fit your skillet.

Sear the steaks in the skillet for 1-2 minutes and flip. Last night, I seared them for 1 minute per side, and I felt like they could have gone a bit longer - I really enjoy the crispy texture of the seared edges and I think another 30 seconds per side would have been ideal.

After 1-2 minutes on the other side, remove from heat, and pour the wine/water mixture slowly into the skillet (not directly on top of the fish) until there is enough to cover the bottom of the pan. You don't need to use the full cup of liquid. Be careful, as this can spit and spatter as the liquid comes to a boil.

Park that skillet in the oven with the broiler on high. Broil for five minutes, remove from heat, and serve. As pictured, I served with sliced avocado and a drizzling of lemon butter wine sauce.

Bon appétit!

Smoked Red Pepper and Tomato Cream Soup

1. 
   
   
   
   
   This recipe is great - my buddy Mike sent it to me, and I finally concocted it this afternoon. I halved this recipe and it was plenty of soup for four people.
   

• 8 large red bell peppers cut in half and seeded
• 2 lbs tomatoes, cored
• 1large onion quartered
• 3 cloves garlic, peeled
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter or olive oil
• 1/4 cup tomato paste
• 6 cups chicken or vegetable stock
• 5 sundried tomatoes, soaked in hot water for 30 minutes & halved
• 2 cups heavy cream
• 1 ancho chile pepper, soaked in hot water for 30 minutes & chopped
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro leaves
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1 to 2 tablespoons cornstarch mixed with enough water to make a paste
• 1 cup corn kernels, lightly roasted
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 1/2 to 1 tsp cayenne or your favorite spice

Smoke peppers, tomatoes, corn, onion and garlic for 30 minutes. If you don't have a smoker you can put the peppers and tomatoes under the broiler & char the skin. Then put in ice water for a few minutes and remove charred skin then chop.

If you have the smoker, make sure you peel the tomatoes and peppers before chopping.

Chop onions and garlic and saute for a few minutes in a large soup pot. Stir in red peppers, tomatoes, tomato paste, sundried tomatoes, ancho pepper and chicken/vegetable stock. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes. While this is going on, slice corn kernels from the cob (one cob makes about 1/2 cup of corn).

Add heavy cream, cilantro salt and pepper, and cornstarch (or flour) and simmer for 5 minutes. Let cool for 5 minutes and run through blender in small batches to puree (don't fill blender more than halfway; use a towel over blender; hot soup!) I'm serious about covering the blender - I didn't use a towel on the first batch and it spewed all over the wall!

Serve with with bit of sour cream and some chopped cilantro and corn on top. I like Mexican cornbread with this dish (or with any tortilla soup or pinto beans recipe). I think a nice ripe avocado would also go nicely with this (that was my intention today, but I forgot).

This makes 4 quarts.

One note about the ancho chiles - I find rehydrating ancho chiles a drag sometimes and they are so good, so what I do is make a big batch of ancho chile paste and keep it. I get about 8 ancho chiles, and char them briefly in an iron skillet before soaking. I roast 6 cloves of garlic, add some cumin and maybe 1/4 cup of chicken or vegetable broth to this in a mixer to make a nice smooth paste. The ancho chiles are not hot - they smell and taste more like raisins than chipotle japapenos, but they add a nice flavor to any mexican dish. I store a jar of this in the refrigerator so I can grab a couple of tablespoons on demand.

Hurricane Cooking

I live in Houston, and for those who pay attention to the news may have noticed that a big ol' hurricane rolled through here Friday night. I was watching Prison Break on my DVR and missed the end of the episode when the lights went out. Bummer.

One gift Ike gave my family was a power outage. We were still out Sunday night. Fortunately, I've got a propane grill and a smoker, and for hurricane prep, I bought a big bag of charcoal. I happened to have a freezer full of meat, so I got to smoking. I smoked chicken Saturday, chicken and pork roast Sunday. Now, I think it's too late to smoke anything else, as the food's going to start spoiling.

I went to check on my Dad Sunday morning, and he had his two Coleman camp stoves out on the patio, and had just finished a breakfast of scrambled eggs with peppers, mushrooms, and onions, and a pot of coffee. So I didn't feel too bad for him. We're all weathering this ok.

Now it's going to get boring - rice and beans and pasta is what I've got in the pantry. I try to remember to keep pretty well stocked on dried goods during the hurricane season, so I'm not one of those desparate people running to the store at the last minute. I went Monday night, just in case, and just bought a bag of charcoal and a couple of bottles of pasta sauce. Thursday afternoon, I dropped by the liquor store, and the place was packed! Everybody was buying beer by the case, two liter bottles of vodka, you name it. Hey, if you're gonna ride the storm out, you may as well have something to do!

Recipe: A Celebration of Circles (pasta, sausage, and zucchini)

I love this recipe - it has fantastic visual appeal, and it is very easy. This came out of the Williams-Sonoma Pasta cookbook.

• four links fresh hot Italian sausage
• two zucchinis
• four cloves garlic, crushed then chopped
• 1 cup dry white wine (red's OK, too, but white will not turn the zucchini purple)
• 1/2 cup water
• parmesan cheese
• salt and pepper
• red pepper flakes
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 tablespoon unsalted butter (although I guess salted is OK - we're adding salt to this dish, so why should it matter?)
• 12 oz. rotini (the wagon wheel type)

In a heavy saucepan, heat about a teaspoon of olive oil and saute the garlic until it's translucent - do not brown. It's better to undercook the garlic at this stage than to overcook, as there's plenty more cooking that this stuff will be involved in. Add the sausage, wat

er, and wine. Bring to a boil, then simmer for 15 minutes. If the sausage is not covered by the liquid, turn them over half way through. Remove the sausage and set aside, and let the liquid continue to simmer until it's reduced to about a tablespoon or two. In the meanwhile, get get a large pot of salted water boiling for the pasta, and slice the zucchini into nice little circles about 1/8 to 1/4 inch thick. Slice the sausage the same way. Once the wine has been reduced, add the zucchini, sausage, butter, and a tablespoon of olive oil and stir it all up. Add about a half teaspoon of salt, a few turns of freshly grated black pepper, and a pinch (or more) of red pepper flakes. Stir well, and heat on low while you attend to the pasta. Just make sure the sausage has cooked through.

When your pasta is finished (al dente, mind you!), drain, add the remaining olive oil (about 2 teaspoons), and toss. Serve in a large warmed bowl - just mix all of the ingredients together, and top with freshly grated parmesan. With dishes like this, I eyeball the pasta to make sure my proportions are right - I frequently make too much, so put about half the pasta in the bowl, add the sausage / zucchini mix, stir, and then add pasta until it meets your satisfaction from a visual perspective. Serves four.

Yummy!

Recipe: Butter Chicken (Murg Makhani)

With all of the globalization of the economy going on, I spend quite a bit of time in India - about two to three months per year. I've never been a big fan of Indian cuisine, although I've developed a taste over the past couple of years. I still don't know what the hell anything is when I eat in the cafeteria at work - it's a bunch of chafing dished filled with veg curries. I've found that yellow and orange are usually pretty good. If it's in the dish after the rice, put it on your rice. Grab some chapati. Life is simple.

Anyway, I thought I'd try my hand at making some of my own Indian food at home this week. I broke what I usually consider a cardinal rule - don't try more than one new recipe for any single meal. I wrote that rule when I had a dinner party and we ambitiously tried three or four new recipes including dessert. There were tamales, some kind of ancho-chile peppered and honeyed yams, and cream of jalapeno soup. Needless to say, our guests had to help us finish all of the cooking, and we served dinner about two hours later than planned.

However, I'm on vacation, so I threw caution to the wind, and made daal, butter chicken, and naan for dinner last night. The daal was OK, but nothing like what I've experienced in India - I prefer the moong daal (the yellow daal) and didn't see it at my local grocery store. I will find some and do this again. The naan turned out very tasty - the recipe I used had some flour, water, yeast, yoghurt, and some of my sourdough starter. You need only about two hours of leavening time, and cook on a stone in a 550 degree oven. I made it a bit too thick, and it had a nice pocket like pita bread, and it was a bit stiffer than the good soft naan I've had in restaurants in India. Nonetheless, I enjoyed it, and will make this again.

Now to the butter chicken. If you haven't had butter chicken, it's much like chicken tikka masala, although generally, it's not made as spicy. It has a creamy tomato gravy.

I found this nice recipe online - I substituted walnut oil for canola oil (I prefer olive oil or walnut oil to the other popular frying oils).  I found that I hadn't added enough cayenne, as I would have enjoyed more kick. However, you can spice to the needs of your palate. Also, if you have fresh peppers around, I think those should be added at the stage where you're sauteing the onion and do this instead of the cayenne. I think a habanero pepper would go great with this dish.

Here's a link to the recipe.  Note:  this will take about an hour.

Recipe from Sapna Magazine

BTW - I found something funny on wikipedia - I was looking up chicken tikka masala and found this hindi translation:
Hindi: चिकन टिक्का मसाला

The first word (चिकन ) is just a direct transliteration of the English word "chicken" rather than the Hindi word for chicken, "murg." Maybe that ties to the fact that the article says this dish was actually invented in the UK, so there is no such thing as murg tikka masala. Hell, I don't know.

dave

Polenta?

I'm a southern boy, so I really like corn grits. (as if there's any other kind of grits - but I'm just throwing a bone to my culturally disadvantaged readers here)

I still remember the day when I went to some fancy Italian restaurant and discovered that they had grits with class. Only they called it "polenta." That was a revelation to me. For the first time, I saw the possibility of ordering a $15 entree with grits (i mean, polenta) that didn't include bacon, eggs, or milk gravy.

When I make grits at home (it's been awhile, I admit it), I use the real grits - I'm not a big fan of the instant stuff. That's probably why I don't do it all the time, as it makes a big mess of your saucepan. Regardless, it's just the right thing to do. 

The funny thing is, the last time I had grits, I was in India. Don't even ask me how that worked out - it's a long story. Let's just say it was Monday morning at 5AM and I was watching the Superbowl, eating grits and bacon. with a colleague, while trying to explain the game of football to our Nepalese cook. 

Back to the topic here - I bought a tube of readymade polenta the other day. I wanted to try out an Italian recipe with the stuff at home, and if it worked out, then I figured I'd move it into the rotation using the actual home made stuff. It worked out.

• 1 pound polenta
• pasta sauce
• olive oil and butter

I just heated up about 1/4 cup of olive oil and about 1/4 stick of butter and fried the polenta pieces sliced about 1/4" thick.  They came in a tube, so it was basically a cylinder of about 2" diameter. Saute the polenta for about 5 minutes. If they're not covered by oil, you'll need to flip them. Serve with pasta sauce (arrabiata, puttanesca, or marinara) and top with parmesan. This is a nice side to any Italian meat dish.

Recipe: Tortilla Soup

This is one of my all time favorites, and there are a number of ways to make this, so it's hard to go wrong.  You can make it very light, to serve as a "cup o' soup" appetizer, or fill it up with chicken and/or veggies to make a meal out of it. This can be a veg or non-veg dish - just substitute vegetable broth for chicken broth, and that's it.

Start with six cups of chicken broth.  First choice - homemade broth from a roasted chicken. Second choice, fresh broth from the store.  Third choice, canned broth (in those cardboard boxes) on the grocer's shelf. Last choice - chicken boullion cubes. When I cook chicken or turkey, I like to take the carcass and make a nice broth. Just bring it all to a boil, and then let it simmer for a couple of hours. I was reading a cooking book about making consomme, and for that, they were simmering very clean bones for something like 8 hours to make a very clear broth. That's not what we're doing here - I'll throw in the skin and everything. After cooking, strain it well and use immediately or refrigerate.

If you refrigerate the broth after making it, the fat will solidify on the top, and you can easily spoon it off before using it for a recipe. If you intend to use it immediately, you'll have to separate the fat with one of those broth cups with the spout that pours the broth from the bottom of the cup.  I've also found that if I put a freshly made broth in the refrigerator rather than the freezer, I'll be more likely to use it in the next week. I still have three tubs of turkey broth in the freezer from Thanksgiving 2005.   

The other feature of tortilla soup is, well, the tortillas. Corn tortillas are required for this - and they don't have to be too fresh, as you're going to fry them up. If you're making an appetizer, use one tortilla per person, and for a meal, use two. This is a bit more than you'll put into the soup, but people tend to snack on these things. I like to cut the tortillas into 1/4" wide strips, then fry them in batches - you don't want to put so many in there that they stick together. Get your oil good and hot so that one drop of water dribbled in the pan makes a mighty commotion (about 7 on my electric range). If the oil is too hot, the tortillas will brown immediately. If not hot enough, they will be greasy and soggy. Your job is to find the middle ground. If you find the middle ground, the tortilla strips should become nice and crispy within around one minute, and still retain their yellow color.

The recipe

• 6 cups chicken or vegetable broth
• fried tortilla strips
• two medium sized tomatoes
• 1/2 large white onion
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 habanero or jalapeno pepper (watch out if you're a softie!)
• 1 tbsp cumin
• 1 tsp salt
• a few turns of fresh grated black pepper
• 1 cup grated cheddar or jack cheese
• 2 ripe avocados
• (optional) a handful of cooked chicken pieces (i use leftovers from a roast and make this the next day)
• (optional) fresh carrots / chayote squash

After washing (I assume you're clean - I'm talking about the vegetables here), put all of the vegetables into an oven proof dish and broil on low for a few minutes - maybe just two or three.  You will probably have to remove the peppers before completing this exercise, as the recipe does not call for "the charred remains of one habanero pepper."  The goal is to get the tomatoes nice and falling apart, and the onion sweetly smoking.  I prefer to use a smoked onion for this - cut in half and put in the smoker, but I'm not always smoking. The garlic should be a nice paste at this point.

Bring the chicken broth to a boil, slice and dice all of your vegetables (including the optional ones) and toss them in. Add the spices, stir, and bring to a nice simmer. If you're using additional vegetables such as carrots or squash, you want to let this simmar for at least 15 minutes to get those flavors to blend. Otherwise, 10 minutes is OK. If you're adding chicken to the soup, add it about two to three minutes before serving. Chicken boiled to pieces for a long time loses its flavor, and since you already have a nice chicken broth, all you need from these pieces of chicken is substance (and you need it to warm up, eh?). I trust that you've already completed making the tortilla chips by now, or you will have to just put this pot on a back burner and let it go a bit longer.

Grate the cheese and slice up the avocados. You can allow your guests to make their own bowls with an assembly line of chips, cheese, soup, then avocado, or you can serve it yourself. Put the chips on the bottom, then a pinch of cheese, pour in the soup, and garnish with avocado.

This will easily make four big bowls or six to eight cups o' soup.

Recipe: Dave's Marinara

I have to admit it - I love pasta.  Real pasta made from durham wheat semolina. I try that whole wheat pasta every now and again, but it just doesn't taste good.  I'm sorry, guys, but I'm about taste.  Brown rice tastes good.  Whole wheat bread tastes good. Whole wheat pasta? Fuggeddaboutit.

This recipe will go with your favorite meat / seafood accompaniment. Ordinarily, I'll use Italian sausage, but on occasion, will substitute shrimp or some other ocean critter. Last night, said critter was mollusks.

My preferred way to make a marinara is to use fresh Roma tomatoes. Sure, you can use a 28 oz can of stewed Italian tomatoes, but if you have time, the real deal is the best.

About the wine - I usually use wine from the bottle that I'll be serving with dinner.  If you're not cracking a bottle on this occasion, a cooking wine is fine. I prefer Marsala for cooking, it has a very nice flavor. If you do the Marsala thing - go buy a bottle at your local discount liquor store, rather than spending $5 on 1/4 of a bottle of  cooking wine at the grocery store. In the liquor store, it will be over near the sherries and ports, and you can buy the cheapest bottle for $6 or $7.

• 2 pounds ripe Roma tomatoes (about 12 medium sized)
• 6 medium to large cloves garlic
• 1 tbsp oregano (or some fresh stuff if you can find it)
• 4 sprigs fresh basil (at least 20 leaves) or  2 tbsp dried (yuck)
• 1 bay leaf
• 1/4 cup red wine
• olive oil
• (optional) mushrooms
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp red pepper flakes
• 6 oz. can of tomato paste
• meat or seafood of choice

Get a big saucepan of water boiling - this can be the same one you'll cook the pasta in.  Once the water is at a full boil, add the tomatoes. Let the water return to a boil, and then let those tomatoes roll around for a good five minutes or so. You should see a few of them splitting before you remove them from the heat.  

Drain these bad boys in a colander, and cover with ice.  The ice causes the skins to split on all of these, and it lowers the temperature enough to where you can handle the tomatoes with your bare hands.  Once the tomatoes have cooled enough, peel off the skins, and move them to the cutting board.  If required, cut out the stem area of the tomato with a paring knife.  

(We're multitasking now)  While all of this is going on, get some olive oil going for sauteing the garlic.  If you're going to use mushrooms, you'll need at least two tbsp olive oil.  If not, 1 is about right. Hell, I don't know, I just pour that stuff in the pan until it looks right.

Anyway, in a medium skillet, heat up olive oil to medium-low.  I prefer to crush unpeeled garlic cloves with the flat blade of a large knife.  This makes it easy to remove the skin, and releases a lot of oil.  I mash it enough to break it into a few pieces, and then I chop.  I used to mince garlic in a garlic press, but if you mash it enough prior to chopping, the effect is about the same, and it's one less tool to put in the dishwasher.  Add the garlic to the heated olive oil, and saute until translucent.  If you're doing mushrooms, add them within a minute or two of the garlic (prior to achieving translucence) and get the whole batch going together at the same time.

Once the garlic is translucent or the 'shrooms are done, add the wine.  let that bubble and reduce to about 50%.  Note - if you're doing Italian sausage, you'll need to have this cooked by now.  One method is to bake for 30 minutes on 400 (poke with fork prior), or just strip off the skin and brown like ground beef.

While all of this is going on, chop the aforementioned tomatoes and dump into a medium saucepan.  Purists may want to remove the seeds at this point,  but that's kind of a pain in the ass.  Add the bay leaf, red pepper flakes (to taste), salt, oregano, and tomato paste.  Combine with the sauteed garlic, and bring to a nice simmer.  If you have fresh basil, chop that up and add it now.  

In the meantime (you have to stay on your toes), you should have the water for the pasta boiling.  A good linguini takes about 7-8 minutes to boil, so add the linguini to the water once you have the sauce on a low simmer.  If you're doing mussels, add them directly to the sauce now.  Let the sauce simmer until the pasta is done; the mussels should have opened up by now. Serve with parmesan (fresh grated Reggiano is the best, but I guess some Kraft out of the can is ok - it beats sawdust, at least).

Garlic bread and a salad will fill out this meal.  When I'm baking, I use ciabatta for garlic bread - it's the best.   When I was a kid I was always confused why my folks bought French bread to make garlic bread for an Italian meal.  I don't know - it was just some cognitive dissonance that I had to get over.

Sour Dill Pickles

This recipe takes only 2-3 months.  

First, go to the nursery, and buy four to six cucumber plants.  Plant, nurture, and wait until you have cucumbers.

In all seriousness, I like to grow cucumbers every spring and make my own pickles.  I can occasionally find kirby cucumbers in the grocery store (and it's even harder to find the right plants - you need the smaller cucumbers for pickling).  It's a two day recipe, though, so be prepared.

Once you have cucumbers and ingredients in hand, this is a pretty quick recipe other than the wait time in between steps.  Sometimes, it's harder for me to find the fresh dill than to actually do the recipe.  I've done this once with dried dill weed, and it just wasn't the same.

I have to attribute Jim Fobel for this recipe - his cookbook is called Jim Fobel's Big Flavors.   I've found that this makes very crunchy crispy sour dills.  Many pickle recipes have you cooking and doing the traditional canning process, but I think that gives you the softer pickles that I don't like as much.  Be cautioned, however, that these must be refrigerated immediately and last just six months to a year.  I seem to have a problem where they last only a few weeks, as they get eaten pretty quickly.

Ingredients

• 2 pounds kirby cucumbers (8 to 12)
• 1/2 cup pickling salt / kosher salt - basically any salt without iodine added
• 2 bay leaves
• 2 tsp coriander seeds
• 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
• 1 cup cider vinegar
• 3 large garlic cloves
• 1/2 cup fresh dill or 1 tbsp dried dill weed
• 1 tsp dill seeds

First you want to brine the pickles - make sure they've been well rinsed - add the salt to five cups of tap water and stir to dissolve the salt.  You need to find a bowl where the pickles can be submerged completely in this mixture.  I use a couple of big souflee dishes and put a plate on top to keep the cucumbers down.

Brine for two days.

Once this exercise is complete, heat up some of the ingredients in a sauce pan - 1 cup water, 1 tablespoon salt, the bay leaves, coriander, and pepper flakes.  Bring to a boil, and then let it cool to room temperature.   This may be an hour or two later, so wait until you're ready to complete the recipe to remove the cucumbers from the brine and rinse them well.

Slice the garlic, and set aside with the fresh dill.  Mix all of the remaining ingredients in a bowl with 2 cups cold water.   I use 1 quart mason jars, and I pack the soon-to-be pickles, garlic, and dill weed in the jars, then pour the liquid into them to fill them up.   This recipe will make about two jars - I frequently halve it and make one jar at a time, based on my cucumber yield. Refrigerate.

Lastly, if you grow your own, what you can do with the last two or three cucumbers to come off the vine is to brine them for two days, and then just rinse and drop into one of your jars from which you've already consumed a pickle or two.

Three Quiches

Mexican Quiche

I'll start with my variation on the theme. I learned to make quiche from a college roommate many moons ago. I've since morphed the classic quiche Lorraine recipe into my own adaptation, using the flavors of the southwest that I like so much.

The crust. If you want a quick quiche, and you're not experienced at making pies, then just go buy a pie crust. However, I think a special touch for the Mexican quiche is to make a masa harina crust. Masa harina (a corn flour used to make tortillas, tamales, etc.) isn't as workable as white flour, so you would need to either use more shortening than normal, or just deal with it falling apart on you. I prefer the latter, as I try to minimize the trans fats you get from Crisco. For regular quiches, I prefer homemade pie crusts anyway. They're just better, and in my book, worth the work.

Ingredients

• pie crust
  
• 1 cup shredded cheddar / monterrey jack cheese (I use about half and half)
  
• 4 eggs
  
• 2 cups whipping cream
  
• 1/3 cup chopped onion
  
• 1/2 cup chopped tomatillos (about 4 or 5? I always buy too many)
  
• (optional) 1/4 cup chopped chayote
  
• (not optional) 1 tablespoon comino
  
• 1 tsp chili powder
  
• 1/2 to 1 chopped jalapeno, habanero, or the like to the level of spiciness you can handle
  
• 1/2 tsp salt
  
• a few turns of freshly grated black pepper
  

If you're not familiar with chayote, that's a really cool Mexican squash. I first had that a couple of years ago when I added it to a Mexican style cornbread dressing for Christmas dinner. It's nothing like any other squash I've ever had. It's green and firm, and sweeter than zucchini. When you chop it up, it's as slimy as okra, but the slime comes out while chopping - not cooking, so you don't end up with the mucous factor you get when cooking okra. For the record, I don't like okra. So check it out if you can. I can find it just about everywhere in Houston.

The tomatillos are the key ingredient to this dish - I don't know how common they are in other parts of the country, but again, I can always find those in my neighborhood grocery store in Houston. Tomatillos add a lot of sweetness, but they also add a lot of liquid. I've found that if I don't really push the baking time to maximum browning on the top, it's a bit too wet.

So, let's get started. Heat the oven to 425, put all of the ingredients other than the eggs / cream in the quiche pan. I beat up the eggs and add the whole cream in big 1 quart measuring cup, so it's consistent. They key is you may not use all of this mixture, so you want to get the ratio right. The proper ratio is supposed to be 4 eggs to 2 cups cream, but I typically use about 3/4 of that (1.5 cups cream) due to my use of additional ingredients. Due to the additional liqui the tomatillos, I cut back the cream a bit. Also, a lot of folks say, "holy moly, whole cream?" Yes, I've done half and half - or used some cream and some lowfat milk. Again, the more liquid you go, the more you need to fill in the gaps with cheese, veggies, or eggs.

Pour the egg/cream mixture into the quiche pan until it's brimming at the top and commence baking. A dust of some of the chili powder on the top gives it a nice look.

Bake uncovered for 15 minutes, then lower the heat to 300. Bake 30 to 40 minutes until you can insert a knife in the middle and it comes out clean.

Quiche Lorraine

This is the original. Use the above ingredients, except substitute swiss cheese for jack/cheddar, drop the tomatillo, chayote, jalapenos, and comino. Use a sprinkle of red pepper flakes instead. Add 8-12 slices of cooked crispy bacon.

Quiche Florentine

Like Lorraine, but drop the bacon and add fresh spinach. I still remember the time I made this when I was a young single guy living in Arkansas. I made a batch of quiche in the little foil pans you get when you buy frozen chicken pot pies, so I could take them to work for lunch. One of my co-workers was asking me what was in there while we were eating in the lunch room, and when I got to the spinach, she said in the best Arkansas accent, "you just ruraned (ruined) it." I don't think I've made it since.

Quiche [insert your idea here]

I think you get the picture - this is a versatile dish - like an omelette - add your favorites, and stick to the cream/egg/cheese ratios, and you'll have yourself a new creation you can call your own.