End of the month round-up
I’ll admit it, I’m happy to see this month recede. Don’t get me wrong, I usually adore October, brisk chilly mornings, sun drenched indian summer afternoons, leaves turning brilliant reds, blues, and oranges, and good food to eat. But my cooking hasn’t been that interesting and there was this, which seems to be lingering to some extent. Also my appetite betrayed me. For the longest time all I wanted to eat were delicious falafel, crispy brown and tucked into a warm pita lined with tomatoes, chopped parsley, and yogurt sauce seasoned with garlic, salt, and lemon juice. Actually, I just had one for dinner tonight and I don’t see this obsession of mine waning at all. You’ll notice there are no pictures of falafels, too busy eating. But we have enjoyed eating these lovely pears from our CSA fruit share.
This club sandwich brought me right back to a road trip vacation with my parents and my brother. I must have been 9 or so and we drove west. Whenever we’d stop and eat in a restaurant I’d order a club sandwich. I thought it was so cool. Also I had a pair of cowboy boots that I wore all the time, a bad perm, an overbite, and cat woman glasses as thick as a coke bottle. Yes indeed folks, I was quite a beauty. But this sandwich is the real thing, beautiful, totally local and tastee.
This herb encrusted Icelandic lamb with purple potatoes, both from Jordandal Farm, were lip smacking good with great lamby flavor, and so much fun to eat. Those potatoes are another one of my obsessions this month. The first time I bought the potatoes I only got a few because our CSA keeps us well stocked in taters. But these were not typical spuds…on no my friends, these were potatoes of the gods. When I went back 2 weeks later Eric didn’t have anymore with him. I explained how much I loved these potatoes and what fine and awesome taters they were, and poor Eric took pity on me and said he’d see what he could do. Sure enough he wrangled me a good sized bag of them and now it’s all I want to eat. I cut them into a 1/2″ dice, steam them, and then toss them with shallot butter, coarse kosher salt, and some coarse pepper…ummm, I’m in heaven. They’re perfect warmed up in the microwave with leftover whatever on top. Again no photos, too busy eating.
Beef, eggplant, and mushroom stir fry is one of my favorite combos. I sauce it with some soy, siriracha, and a dash of rice vinegar. I always use dried shitakes for this because they have such a bold flavor and a great texture.
This was a huge pot of soup featuring diced french fingerling potatoes, squash, chard, onions, and carrots. Totally local too.
Another sandwich…this is made on a ciabatta and filled with Brunkow’s pepper-jack cheese, Jordandal’s beef summer sausage, olives, and those beautiful sweet and spicy red peppers from Whole Foods’ olive bar…I have no idea what they’re called but I love, love, love them on everything. I made this into a panini using my new electric griddle and and a cast iron skillet as a weight.
Another easy-peasy obsession of mine…stir-fried rice noodles with egg, sriracha, and topped with ribbons of fresh basil. I know it’s ridiculous, but I like it.
I can already hear the humming of the interweb as it gears up for the gluttonous holiday season. I’ll get there…after a few more falafels.
Chicken enchiladas
Sometime I crave simple casserole-type food. Macaroni and cheese, broccoli, rice, and cheese casserole, chicken enchiladas. Notice that these dishes all have a common component of cheese…melted, gooey, belly-warming cheese. Usually when I crave food like this it’s an indication that I’m stressed and I need to be comforted in every way possible. Yes I know, when you’re stressed you shouldn’t turn to food, or at least that’s what we’re told that by Oprah. But honestly, why wouldn’t you turn to food…it’s an elemental component of comfort and security…that and my favorite pillow, blanket, and hugs from my men can get me through any amount of chaos.
Thus on Friday I knew it was chicken enchiladas that would wipe the memory of the horrid week from our collective minds. In the past, when I made this I would turn to a can of enchilada sauce…but it always had a tinny, metallic flavor, and since I had some time I thought I should make my own.
Pay attention now…this is where I finally get kicked in the ass for not following the recipe…my chronic love of substituting. The sauce recipe I pulled off the interwebs called for 5 dried pasilla chiles, seeded and stemmed. But I didn’t have pasilla chilies, I had cascabel chilies, 7 of them with a scoville rating of 11,000. Without even considering what the scoville rating was on pasilla, I proceeded to make the sauce…I even threw in a couple of chipolte for fun. I should have been intelligent enough to notice that when I pushed the seeds and stems into the garbage disposal they triggered an asthma attack…but no, I just ignored it. Turns out the cascabel is 10x more pungent…so is the chipolte…in other words my sauce could be used to strip paint but not to make enchiladas.
At this point my hands felt like I’d soaked them overnight in tiger balm…but I kind of like that feeling. I pureed the sauce in the blender and put it back in the skillet to reduce. Finally I tasted it and instantly knew how badly I’d screwed up. How to fix this mistake…hmmm…I’d been hording red bell peppers and Hungarian peppers so I seeded and stemmed them, and tossed them in the chicken stock I’d poached the chicken in. I simmered them for about 10 minutes and then pureed them in the blender with a cup of the stock. Next I added the paint-stripper sauce and blended the two together…tasted it, and it was good…actually so good I wanted to eat it with a spoon…good thing too, because now I have two quarts of enchilada sauce.
The lesson here is to either follow the damn instructions or at least do the research. In the end I probably would have made the sauce in a similar fashion with similar technique and components…but I wouldn’t have used 9 chilis…maybe just 2 or 3.
My chicken filling is delicious…it’s shredded, poached chicken breast, plain yogurt, pepper-jack cheese, green onions, and cilantro. Tossed together and seasoned with salt and pepper it is a tasty, mellow filling.
Traditional enchilada recipes call for the corn tortillas to be dipped in hot oil or lard but I’ve always dipped the tortillas in the heated enchilada sauce. Then I fill them, roll them up, pile them in a well oiled pan, spoon more sauce over the top, and cover with more pepper-jack cheese.
No recipe for this one folks…just follow someone else’s lead for the sauce and use my filling. I’ve got enough sauce, now in my freezer, for three more batches.
Smokey corn and cabbage salad
Often when I cook I start out with a vague idea of where I want the meal to end up…no not in my belly silly…I mean how it will taste and what it will look like. On Monday I cooked six ears of corn knowing that we wouldn’t eat them all but that I could use them in a salad on Tuesday night. So I actually started thinking about Tuesday night’s dinner while I was making Monday’s dinner.
On Tuesday I planned to fritter away the whole day learning some new applications on my adorable new laptop. Isn’t it cute…I’ve covered it with my moo picture stickers…oh such a delight! It’s powered by Linux…specfically the Ubuntu, Feisty Fawn distribution. I’m now a huge fan of Linux and the whole learning curve has been painless thanks to the sweet, sweet GH. Open source rules!!!
Back to the food…I managed to tear myself away from Lappy (yes I named my laptop) long enough to get some pork chops out of the freezer to defrost. Later, I dug through the freezer again and found a jar labeled “spicy marinade” and felt resonably confident that it would go well with pork…doesn’t everything. While I pulled a double espresso I defrosted the marinade in the microwave and plunked the chops into it for a soak.
At six I headed into the kitchen and began putting dinner together. In the refrigerator was a red bell pepper, cabbage, a purple onion, the corn plus there were three tomatoes on the counter. I roasted the bell pepper over the flame on my cooktop as I chopped the cabbage, sliced the corn off the cob, and diced the onion and tomatoes. This all got thrown into a large bowl. Once the pepper was roasted I removed the loose charred skin and seeds, diced it, and added it to the bowl. In a mixing cup I combined 2 minced cloves of garlic, 1/3 cup lime juice, and 1/3 cup olive. I always keep bottles of Santa Cruz lime and lemon juice in the refrigerator…they work so well in marinades and dressings. I stirred that up well and added a teaspoon of Spanish smoked paprika and a 1/4 teaspoon of chilpotle. Once that was well combined I tossed the salad. The pork chops were on and off the grill in no time at all and dinner was served.
The salad worked so well with the pork chops. The smoky spicy flavors of the paprika and chipotle played accented the sweetness of the roasted pepper and corn. The cabbage might seem like an odd addition but it really was pleasant. The acidity of the lime juice boosted the flavors. My favorite was a small bite of pork with some salad on the fork too. Perfect easy summer dinner.
For those of you that like a recipe click for the printer-friendly version.
Finally, a brief aside about this blog. Over the summer I’ve been tweaking the design and layout. I upgraded WP and my theme to the most current releases. I’ve got my fabulous, colorful banner and I’ve resigned myself to tolerating the small photo size (I’m at 461px on the width and I lust after 580px). I removed all ads because, well really…they’re never going to actually pay enough to balance out their inherent ugliness. I’ve cleaned up the sidebar and added a few flickr mosiacs…hopefully they don’t slow the loading speed down too much. Today I added a new “related posts” feature at the bottom of each post. I hope it behaves and serves us well but if not I’ll bring it in line or kick it out. If you have any comments or suggestions please let me know. Thanks for reading!
