We Are Never Full » chile

Mariah Carey Makes Me Want to Eat Ecuadorian Ceviche!

Amy — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 01:25:48 +0000

Since parenthood came into my life, so has weight gain. It hasn’t been all that bad but I think I weigh a bit more now than I did in the days after I pushed that child out. Why? Because the gym is now a long-distant memory. Since we clearly like to eat, the gym was once my very good friend four or five times a week pre-child. Now, I’m lucky to even get a long walk to the park. If I still have energy after a day of chasing after a 1 year old, I’ll may pop in a yoga DVD, but I now realize that “5 Minute ABS” only works when you are doing more than just “5 Minute Abs”. I refuse to stop eating or drinking wine but I miss those carefree days of hitting the gym whenever I wanted to sweat off my stress and weekend steak and potatoes.

So how does Mariah Carey fit into this post? Well, recently, Mariah debuted her “post baby body” – a phrase I’m kinda getting sick of seeing on magazine covers. Yeah, yeah, she did it through diet and exercise and did gain like a million pounds while on bedrest with her twins but she has a FLAT STOMACH AGAIN! How about this chick - she did a Vickis Secret bra and panties modeling shoot a few weeks after giving birth. I was still wearing my “belly band” at that point.

But, it’s never too late to try and lose a bit of that baby weight, huh? This ceviche is the perfect way to attempt to do so without getting depressed that all you are eating is salad and brown rice. This ceviche is a bit different than the ones you may have had in the past. Normally, ceviche’s fish/shellfish is “cooked” by lime or lemon juice acid that it marinates in. This particular ceviche requires one to actually cook the seafood first. It is inspired by street food we had in Brooklyn several years ago. We have remembered it all this time – it was the type of NYC street food that is very hard to find these days (one that is probably illegal and delicious). With street food becoming a weird trendy thing, possibly because of the invention of the Vendy Awards and the infiltration of slick food trucks, it is sometimes hard to find street food that isn’t overdone or trying too hard. This particular hot summer day, we discovered a woman on her stoop with a little table containing a large, plastic vat, a tupperware filled with avocados and two bottles of hot sauce. For $2.50 we received half a perfectly ripe avocado filled with shrimp ceviche in a spicy tomato sauce. It was served on a white napkin with a plastic fork. The avocado skin served as it bowl. We happily sat on the neighbors stoop inhaling this amazing snack.

Five years later, we finally got around to trying our hand at the ceviche. After a bit of research, we discovered that this ceviche is closer to an Ecuadorian ceviche which is different from the Peruvian type most are accustomed to. The main difference between the two is 1) a tomato-based marinade with a “soup like” consistency 2) most often made using shrimp that is cooked/boiled first and 3) served with popcorn and fried plantains. We played around a bit with our recipe, adding some things that are probably not traditional. For instance, the tomato base of the Ecuadorian ceviche “sauce” is often made with ketchup and doesn’t have olives. We used some Goya tomato sauce and added olives for briny-ness. We also had some baby octopus that needed eating up, so we threw that in there too.

A few weeks of this as a weeknight meal and I may not have a stomach like Mariah or legs like that Victoria’s Secret model but who cares. It’s the trying that counts, right?

Ecuodorian-Style Ceviche in Avocado (serves 4)

Ingredients:

1 lb. shrimp with shell on (about 15 to 20)
1/2 lb baby octopus (optional)
1 8oz. can of Goya tomato sauce
juice of 3 to 4 limes
1/4 cup of orange juice
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 red onion, thinly sliced and then chopped into small pieces
1 cayenne pepper, very thinly sliced (optional)
big handful of cilantro, chopped
1 cup of alcaparrado (or just some pitted spanish green olives) + a bit of the olive brine
2 perfectly ripe avocados (or 1/2 avocado per serving)

Recipe:

Boil your shrimp with the shells on – about two to three minutes. Remove from water and allow to cool. The take the shells off the shrimp. Keep whole or cut down the middle.
Meanwhile, add the octopus to the boiling water if using and boil for two to three minutes. Remove and allow to cool.
In a separate bowl, add the tomato sauce, pepper, onion, cilantro, alcaparrado or olives, lime and orange juice along with the sugar. Stir and taste. Add a bit of the olive juice for a hint of saltiness. Taste for seasoning. Add more lime juice if you want or even a pinch of garlic powder if you feel it needs that kick. This sauce is to be to your liking so play around with the ratios till it tastes like you want it!
Add the deshelled shrimp and octopus to the tomato sauce. Stir.
Cut ripe avocados in half and remove the pit. Scoop a small bit out from the center of the avocado to allow a bit more room for the ceviche to lay in. You can top the ceviche with that extra avocado if you like. Poor the ceviche on top of an avocado half. Top with a bit more of the cilantro. Serve with rice to make it a bit more of a meal. Enjoy!

Cheese & Pea Curry: Why Paneer-ances Don’t Matar…

Jonny & Amy — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 21:12:35 +0000

If the immense diversity of this city reveals itself in the faces of its people, and if, in turn, those faces can be said to reflect the myriad flavors of this world, then how should one interpret the wearing of “beats by dr dre” headphones by anyone north of 25 years old? With this eternal question in mind, I urge you to consider another conundrum for the ages, which may still puzzle some Hindu theologians: how to take enticing food photography of Indian food with its range of brownish-hued sauces? As we know only too well, appearances are crucial in the food world.

Since the majority of Hindus swear off most meats, dairy and legumes (pulses) are essential proteins for the citizens of the sub-continent, and paneer, a firm, fresh cheese, is an important component of that diet. Paneer – which comes in a variety of styles in India, from super firm to an almost goat-cheese consistency, but is mostly limited to the former in our hemisphere – is something of a strange beast in that it neither melts nor competes for flavor with even the mildest of curries. Also, due to being typically coagulated with lemon juice or vinegar rather than rennet, it somehow manages to be wholly acceptable to vegetarians too.

A perennial, and, likely fruitless, desire to be good food bloggers but also possess the waistlines of triathletes, lately convinced us to expand our palates beyond our customary choices – lamb rogan josh and chicken bhuna – and include a vegetarian option and recipe on these here interwebs. Hardly groundbreaking, we know, but every day is a journey through the world, as described in a previous post, and another recent stop was Patel Brother’s grocery store at the far end of Brooklyn’s Sunset Park neighborhood.

Picking up fresh curry leaves, house-ground spices and a fat block of paneer at Patel’s, we ransacked the springtime growth of our tiny garden for English peas and threw together a matar (pea) aloo (potato) paneer curry with some cumin-seed scented basmati rice and some of the best heat ‘em up at home naan bread we’ve had.

Satisfyingly protein-packed and redolent of sub-continental flavors with the curry leaves and toasted spices, it came together in no-time flat. If you have access to good Indian supplies, this can quite easily become part of your weeknight repertoire and, even if you don’t, non-melting mild cheeses (like halloumi) are readily available and good peas are only a freezer section away.

Of course, Dr Dre headphones are almost certainly perfect for listening to all kinds of music, including hip-hop, but when sported by middle-aged business men one can’t help but assume they were borrowed from teenage offspring (who would surely pour merciless scorn on them for it), as which person of that demographic, in our image-conscious world, would risk public approbation and actually buy them? Taking a similar risk with crumby photos of this yellowish-brown dish we humbly request that you overlook appearances and trust us enough to try it.

Aloo Matar Paneer (Potato, Pea and Cheese Curry) (serves 4)
Adapted from Rick Stein Coast to Coast

Ingredients:

12oz paneer, cut into inch cubes
2 medium starchy potatoes, cut into 1 inch cubes
2 tablespoons neutral tasting oil – sunflower, safflower, canola, etc.
4 cloves garlic, crushed and chopped
1/2 large white onion, diced
1 inch piece ginger, chopped finely
2 birds’-eye, or other hot green pepper like serrano, chiles, finely chopped
1 teaspoon each of ground cumin and ground coriander
1/2 teaspoon each of ground turmeric and ground cayenne pepper
1/3 of a 12oz can whole tomatoes, roughly chopped or pulled apart
1/2lb fresh (or frozen) shelled peas
4 tablespoons julienned cilantro (coriander)
6 fresh (10 dried) curry leaves

Recipe:

Heat oil to medium high in a large pan or wok
Lightly fry paneer until golden on all sides, about five minutes. Remove from pan and reserve.
Add onions and cook until translucent. Add ginger, garlic and chopped chiles.
When aromatic, add dry spices and stir well to coat everything in the pan.
Fry gently for about three minutes.
Add potato, tomato, curry leaves and peas (if fresh) with 2-3 tablespoons of water.
Stir well and simmer gently for five minutes before adding paneer.
Simmer gently for another 5 minutes.
Season with salt and black pepper and sprinkle in chopped cilantro.
Serve with naan and pilau rice seasoned with cumin or caraway seeds

Lomo Saltado: Delicious, Eaten Drunk or Sober

Jonny — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 03:33:20 +0000

During his show on Panama, Anthony Bourdain observed that Chinese food somehow gets shinier the further west one goes. He might also have mentioned that it changes in other ways throughout the western hemisphere too, on the whole, becoming less and less Chinese-like. In a similar way to Panama, to which Chinese laborers flocked to help build the eponymous canal, Peru experienced large-scale immigration of Cantonese mine workers during the latter half of the 19th century too, and still has the largest Asian population of any nation in South America. Largely isolated from its home country for the intervening century and a half, the Peruvian Chinese community, like many New World immigrant groups, developed its own distinct peculiarities.

Regular readers of this blog will know of our penchant for the immigrant groups of the Americas, where they came from, how and why they arrived, and how they went about creating their new and entirely unique cultures on foreign soils, often in the teeth of vicious discrimination from those who had arrived earlier. So it was for the Chinese in Peru. Principally from the Chinese province of Guangdong, these immigrants were not just coming for a short time to work, earn a living, and then return home. In a way that is almost unimaginable for us today, given the global mobility many of us have, those who journeyed to South America to work in its silver, copper and silicate mines had to virtually abandon any thought of ever seeing their homes again. It must have been all the harder without any of the comforts of home either – as traditional Cantonese ingredients were (mostly) unavailable in 19th-century Peru.

Culinarily, this isolation and a lack of familiar foodstuffs led to the development of an entirely Peruvian-Chinese phenomenon known as Chifa. Derived from a local corruption of the Mandarin “chi fan” or “eat rice”, chifa cuisine is characterized by somewhat curious ingredient pairings. In the most popular chifa dish, lomo saltado – a beef stir-fry, this manifests itself in the carbohydrate combo of rice and french fries, and the flavoring mix of soy sauce, red wine and spicy Peruvian yellow aji peppers. Purists may quibble that chifa is less fusion cuisine and more mish-mash food given the apparent clumsy pairing of local meat and potatoes with Cantonese stir-fry, but I, for one, find that lomo saltado actually offers the same salty, spicy, sour and sweet tastes typical of Chinese cooking, just with different ingredients.

Understandably popular among hard-working Cantonese miners, chifa cuisine was also a surprise hit among the higher echelons of Peruvian society, and though initially limited to Lima’s Barrios Altos, chifa restaurants soon began to spring up outside of Chinese neighborhoods too, eventually expanding across the capital (where there are now more than 6,000 chifa restaurants) to most parts of the country. Indeed, so popular has it become that today one can find Chifas, as they’re known, throughout the rest of South America. From Argentina and Chile all the way north to Venezuela, chifa cuisine is almost as well known as Peru’s other great gastronomic export, ceviche. Evidently, this trend is growing among the Yanquis too: Chef Jose Garces of Iron Chef America fame, opened a chifa-style eatery in Philadelphia recently, naming it, rather unimaginatively, Chifa.

On a visit to Argentina, Anthony Bourdain commented that the common Porteno carb combo of pizza and chickpea faina must have been invented by drunk people, and rice with fries would seem to fall into the same category. Sure, double starch is weird, but that doesn’t mean to say it’s not good, drunk or sober.

Lomo Saltado (serves 2)

Ingredients:

2 floury potatoes, sliced into 1cm (1/2 inch batons)
1/2 cup white rice
1/2 cup red wine
2-3 tablespoons soy sauce
1 red bell pepper, sliced into 1cm (1/2 inch sticks)
6 cloves garlic, crushed
1lb shell, skirt or sirloin steak, cut into 1inch pieces
4-6 Peruvian aji peppers, sliced finely
2 tablespoons tomato puree or strained tomatoes
1 tablespoon white vinegar
1 teaspoon white pepper
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon onion powder (optional)
oil for frying

Recipe:

Marinade steak in red wine, white pepper, cumin and onion powder for up to 1 hour
Boil rice until cooked, drain and allow to steam.
Fry potato batons in oil until crispy and golden brown. Drain and keep warm in oven.
Drain steak but reserve marinade.
Heat wok or frying pan to high, add 1 tablespoon oil.
Add red peppers and cook for two minutes. Add steak.
Cook for two more minutes before adding garlic.
Cook, stirring frequently, for another minute before adding tomato puree.
Stir together well before adding marinade, soy sauce and vinegar.
Cook for another minute, stirring regularly, until sauce has thickened and reduced slightly.
Stir in aji peppers. Taste and correct seasoning (it shouldn’t need any salt, but you never know.
Plate rice, french fries and beef stir-fry. Garnish with cilantro and, if you’re feeling brave, more aji peppers.

On Parenting and Pumpkins

Jonny — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 14:24:33 +0000

It’s one of the ironies of being a new parent that even though we are spending more time than at any other point in our adult lives at home, we are finding it virtually impossible to do any cooking. Even when we do steal a few moments of quiet to get behind the burners, by the time the food is done, so is the nap our baby was taking. Of course, eating your dinner cold is nothing new to a food blogger – teasing the plating and getting just the right lighting usually takes a while – but at least we used to be able to eat our tepid meat and congealed sauce without the throaty vocal stylings of a five-week-old as an accompaniment.

Another delightful aspect of being a home-bound parent is that, when leaving the house involves assembling ten things, a stroller and an acquiescent child, one is motivated to make use of what is close at hand. In a moment of hunger-inspired desperation this past weekend, we took that maxim to its logical conclusion.

Literally lying beside our front door was a pair of pumpkins we had originally intended to carve for Halloween had our sculptural ambitions not been thwarted by the arrival of said infant. Still edible, they were quickly hacked, seeded and roasted in a hot oven with salt and pepper while the baby slumbered peacefully in his swing. In a “waste not, want not” moment, also into the oven went the pumpkin seeds seasoned with chipotle powder and brown sugar, emerging a scant twenty minutes later, crispy and snack-tastic. The baby, now stirring, its nostrils a-quiver.

From all of this, plus the contents of a still well-stocked spice rack and half a Mexican chorizo I rescued from a sad end in the depths of our refrigerator, came a pimentón-scented pumpkin velouté topped with sweet chipotle pepitas, crumbled chorizo and a sprinkle of black Hawaiian sea salt that I forgot we’d bought, somewhat curiously, in a supermarket in France last Christmas.

Even the abundant use of the stick blender failed to completely rouse our newborn, though, in his now-customary fashion, by the time we were seated at the table, spoons-at-the-ready, our charming little nipper was once again in full voice, sharing his anguish at his meager milk-based diet. Happily, this soup is just as good, if not better, when reheated the next day. A quality we might not have fully appreciated before now.

Pumpkin Velouté with Pimentón and Chipotle (feeds 4-6)

Ingredients

1 large pumpkin, with seeds
1/2 Mexican style chorizo
1/2 cup cream or sour cream
1.5 cups milk
1 cup chicken stock
2 tsp pimenton ahumado (smoked Spanish paprika)
1tsp chipotle powder
2 tsp brown sugar
salt and pepper
2 tbsp cotija cheese, grated
cilantro garnish

Recipe

Preheat oven to 420F/200C
Cut pumpkin into large chunks (leaving skin on), and deseed it. Sprinkle pumpkin with salt and pepper.
Rub pieces lightly with olive oil and roast in the oven for 40 minutes, or until pumpkin starts to color a little
On a separate oven tray, spread seeds and season with salt, pepper and chipotle powder. Place in same oven and roast for 20 minutes or until crispy.
Remove from oven and allow to cool fully before removing skin carefully with a paring knife.
In a blender, food processor or with a stick blender, pulse pumpkin, pimenton, brown sugar.
Spoon in half the sour cream and milk, and re-pulse. Add chicken stock, pulse to combine.
Consistency should be pretty thick. Add remaining milk and sour cream until soup is smooth but not gloopy.
Return to the pot and bring to a simmer. Correct seasoning.
In a saute pan, crumble chorizo and saute until cooked through
Ladle soup into bowls and garnish with chorizo crumbles, pumpkin seeds, cotija cheese and any thing else you think might be good.

The Mexicans Get It Right Every Time! Pollo en Salsa de Cacahuate (Chicken with Peanut Salsa)

Amy — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 16:57:17 +0000

Ever have one of those days where the only thing that gets you through is knowing you are going to have a good meal later on? I have no idea where I read about this dish, but one day, trying to unwind after a long, frustrating and tiring day of putting out the fires that are usually started by teenage drama (I moonlight as a school counselor, in case you forgot), a mental picture of this dish formed in my head and I immediately went to the store to try and make it. This dish is definitely not for the nut-hater. But, maybe it could be? As a girl who used to eat peanut butter on a spoon every day for breakfast (I’ve now matured to peanut butter spread on multigrain toast), this dish made me very, very happy.

It’s not surprising that Pollo en Salsa de Cacahuate is a traditional dish from Puebla, Mexico. Puebla is often thought of as the gastronomic mecca of Central Mexico and happens to be the birthplace of mole, that beautiful, dark, chocolatey sauce made of over thirty ingredients including nuts and seeds, and pipians, another sweet yet savory sauce using ground nuts and seeds. Peanuts have been part of Mexican cooking since long before Spain invaded in the 15th century and are often used as a thickening agent. Poblano cuisine, specifically, is typically made of indigenous and local ingredients and, let me tell you, Pueblo is on my “must go” lists of places to travel to (and eat, eat, eat in).

Traditionally, this dish should be made with dried chiles. We used dried chiles in ours and I really just wanted to kick it up, so I added some chipotles in adobo. For me, it added extra spice and the adobo added more flavor than the dried chiles did. In fact, I think you could leave out the dried chiles if you don’t have any on hand and just add some chipotles in adobo. It’s rare I’ll move away from the traditional but, in this case, flavor-wise I think it would be ok. I also did not make this in a mortar and pestle and, again, although not traditional, a blender worked just fine.

CHICKEN WITH PEANUT SALSA (Pollo en Salsa de Cachuate)
(serves 4)

2 to 3 lbs. of chicken pieces with skin
1 to 1 1/2 cup unsalted raw peanuts, lightly roasted till brown
1 small onion, chopped
2 dried pasilla (or guajillo) chiles, rehydrated and chopped up
3 chipotles in adobo + some of the adobo (if you don’t like it spicy, start with 1 or 2 and decide if you want to add more)
2-4 cloves of garlic (depending on how much you like garlic),whole
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
optional: 1/8 teaspoon ground clove
squeeze of lime
pinch of freshly ground pepper
hot chicken stock
some oil
blender

Season your chicken pieces with salt and pepper and saute in a bit of oil until brown all over. When skin has taken on color and is a bit crispy, remove to a plate.
In a separate dry pan, brown peanuts – this doesn’t take long – about 30 seconds if that. Don’t burn them! Take off heat and keep on the side.
Add a bit more oil if necessary and throw in your garlic, onions and rehydrated pasilla and saute until they take on some color and the onions soften.
In a blender, first add the onion, garlic and pasilla mixture and blend with a bit of warm chicken stock. Try to puree it as best as possible. Add the chipotles along with a tablespoon of adobo and blend. Add the peanuts to the blender along with another bit of chicken stock and puree until smooth. You do not want the texture of the sauce to be like peanut butter, you want it smooth with some liquid in it. Add the cinnamon, clove and some fresh ground pepper. Blend. Taste the sauce for extra seasoning. Does it need more salt or pepper? Do you like it spicier? Add more adobo or whole chipotles if you do. Add a bit more chicken stock so it is not too thick.
When sauce is as you like it, bring it back to the pan you cooked the chicken in and add some along with a bit more chicken stock. With a spoon, pick up all the goodness that collected at the bottom of the pan and stir. Add the chicken to the pan, add a bit more sauce along with a bit more stock and allow chicken to simmer for another fifteen to twenty minutes. Add a squeeze of lime juice to the sauce. Serve with some rice and enjoy.

We’re Back, And Cornier Than Ever. Creamy Corn and Crab Soup with Chorizo, Yucca and Spicy Pepper Oil.

Amy — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 13:56:54 +0000

This was definitely the longest hiatus in We Are Never Full history (bear in mind our history is only a measly 27 months) but, finally, we’re back! (exactly a month to the day since we went away) You may not be as excited as we are to be slowly getting back to normal, but if you visited us right now in our new apartment you’d notice how far from normal our living conditions are.

After almost 3 weeks of eating take-out and restaurant meals, we spent our Labor Day doing hard labor. A day in a North Korean Labor Camp would’ve felt better to my legs and feet than a day trying to set up shop in our new place. Oh, and a tip to anyone moving after accumulating five years of crap (along with a fear of throwing things away), PAY PEOPLE TO PACK FOR YOU or at the least pay people to move everything you own for you. Maybe it was our youth, maybe our naïvete, maybe our pride, but we really thought it was a great idea to pay movers to move only our furniture because we could “get the rest ourselves”. Let’s put it this way, my thighs look like this after walking box after box (after box) up to our new 3rd floor walk-up over the past few weeks. Oh, and did I mention my three-days of shredding a 30-gallon garbage bag full of “I’ll get to shredding it next weekend” bills/credit card statements/etc. Guess what, Amy? 2004 was five years ago – you didn’t shred it “next” weekend.

But, the craziness is almost over now. In a few weeks, we’ll be more settled after we buy a few more pieces of furniture and put those last few clothes away. The kitchen, of course, was the first thing we worked on. Our new kitchen has a bit less cabinet space than our last one and a smaller refrigerator, which isn’t great given the many, many dry goods and countless bottles of condiments we own, but we’ve just about found a home for everything, and we’ll be okay going forward if we make sure to limit our worst excesses at the grocery store.

So,the first meal we made in our new apartment was a simple, seasonal farewell-to-summer cream of corn and crab soup with a chile emulsion using much of what is readily available in our neck of the woods. Corn is coming out of our wazoo and is about 15 cents an ear; the bay at my parents’ shore house is full of crabs; our pepper plants are almost ready to die, but have given us many, many spicy cayennes, cowhorns and red hots. And the yucca, well, it’s not exactly local and may not be as easy to get depending on where you live, but substitute a potato and you’re good to go. Strangely, a soup was actually very satisfying since the weather, coinciding uncannily the start of the school-year, has actually turned kind of cool.

Thanks for sticking with us through our hiatus. We hope you really enjoyed your summer and we can’t wait to start cooking some cool-weather meals for you. Until then, crack open a cold one and enjoy the last few days of summer.

CREAMY SWEET CORN SOUP WITH CRAB, CHORIZO, YUCCA AND CHILE PUREE (serves 4)
Ingredients

1/2lb cooked crab meat (2 dozen blue crabs/10 king crab legs, approx.)
4 cups vegetable stock
4 cups fresh sweet corn, (5-6 small ears), uncooked
1/2 large yellow onion, diced
1/4 cup cream
2 small or 1 large dry chorizo, cut into 1/4inch cubes
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 medium yucca (7-8 inches), peeled and cut into 1/2 rounds
6-8 of your favorite fresh hot red peppers (cayenne, cowhorn, mirasol, fresno, etc.), sliced length-wise in half.
1/2 cup good olive oil
Salt and black pepper
Juice of 1/2 lime

Recipe
For the chile emulsion:

Toast your chiles in a hot dry pan until the air around your stove makes you cough, or the peppers are starting to burn in a couple of places.
Transfer peppers to your blender and set it to liquify.
Add the oil slowly while blender is running, until you’ve got slightly thick sauce.
Again while blender is running, squeeze in lime juice to loosen it slightly.
Season with salt to taste.
Your condiment is ready. Pour into a squeezy bottle for easy serving.

For the soup:

Boil yucca in lots of salted water for about 8 minutes, or until tender but not fluffy
Strip corn off cobs with a knife
Heat large pot to medium, saute chorizo to render its fat. Remove with a slotted spoon to a plate.
Add onions to pot and saute until translucent in delicious orange chorizo fat, about 8 minutes.
Add garlic.
One minute later, add the corn.
Saute the corn for 3-4 minutes before removing 2/3 cup of it to a plate.
After a couple more minutes, add two cups of your stock and cream.
Bring to a boil and simmer for about six minutes, or until corn is softening nicely.
With a slotted spoon, transfer all solid ingredients from pot into your blender or food processor and puree
Adding the liquids from your pot, continue to puree until you achieve a smooth, medium-thick consistency.
Return soup to pot and reheat to a gentle simmer.
Add crab to soup and stir well. Allow to simmer for 1-2 minutes.
Your soup is now ready. Ladle it into bowls and garnish with yucca, chorizo, and reserved corn pieces.
Dress soup to taste with your homemade fiery condiment!

Top Five Condiments: The Winner and A Prize

Jonny & Amy — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 03:21:48 +0000

As last month, we got a fabulous response from you in this month’s top five – your favorite 5 condiments. So fabulous, in fact, that we were completely unable to decide whose selection should win the frankly amazing prize of the fabled West Coast treat Pepper Plant’s Chunky Garlic Hot Pepper Sauce. Fortunately, the very special website that is random.org came to our aid. A simple randomization of your entries later, and (cue drumroll)… the winner is: George @ CulinaryTravels!

Her (George is short for Georgina if you were confused) top five of: Home made mayo mixed with either garlic, lemon or harrisa, Sambal Olek, Chilli jam (home made), Balsamic vinegar, and Extra Virgin Tuscan olive oil, was by some distance randomized to the head of the list in front of such other notable luminaries as Cebca and Lo. Congratulations George! A bottle of said sauce is on its way to you now, which given your obvious proclivities for spicy condiments, we feel confident you’ll enjoy!

And speaking of a taste for capsaicin, it seems George is not alone. The vast majority of you showed your appreciation for all things spicy. From tabasco to Frank’s hot, Encona to Crystal hot, to Cholula, hot sauce was one of the few things almost everyone agreed on. That said, it seems like some of you have rather exotic tastes when it comes to spicy condiments, suggesting some which were new to us: sambal olek (spicy south-east asian condiment), sinamak (chile-infused vinegar), and sriracha (Thai hot sauce), to name a few.

We also learned about what you guys think of as condiments: olive oil, jam, guacamole, vinegar, and butter. None of which we would have thought of, but are, when you really get down to it, in fact condiments.

Above all, we learned that condiments, domestic and humble, common, or exotic, remain wildly popular, in spite of contemporary fears about “industrial foods.” Your favorite condiments, it seems, are here to stay.

Gambas al Ajillo – Famous for all the Right Reasons

Amy — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 13:44:16 +0000

Perhaps the most common, and implicitly, therefore the most popular, tapa in Spain and in Spanish restaurants world-wide, gambas al ajillo, or fried garlic shrimp, is rightfully so admired. The hot tang of garlic and red pepper flake-infused extra virgin olive oil, perfectly coating tender pink shrimp (king prawns for our UK readers), makes for a luscious and satisying dish, especially when there’s plenty of crusty bread to mop up the magnificently flavorful oil.

The other great thing about this dish is that it’s pretty cheap and incredibly simple to make. Accompanied by a green salad and washed down with a chilled glass of fino or amontillado sherry, or perhaps a flute of cava, this is a great tapa/racione or a light lunch, both in late summer and through the fall. Buen provecho!

Ingredients:

1 1/2 lb medium shrimp (about 20 medium-sized shrimp), shells removed
About 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
3/4 head of garlic, each clove finely sliced
1 tsp (or more if you like it hot) red pepper flakes
3 tablespoons white wine

Recipe:

Heat a pan to low-medium and throw in your thinly sliced garlic and red pepper flakes.
Allow the garlic to infuse the oil for about 20-25 minutes by keeping it on low to low-medium heat. You do not want it to sound as though it is cooking the garlic quickly. It should not take on color immediately. This will really flavor your olive oil.
After about 20 minutes, heat another pan up until it is very hot. Throw a few tablespoons of the garlic-infused oil into the hot pan and then throw in your shrimp.
Immediately after, pour in a bit of white wine and allow to cook down about a minute. Continue to toss the shrimp so they begin to cook on both sides.
Add the rest of your garlic oil and cook for another minute or two until shrimp are pink and cooked all the way.
Serve immediately with lots of good bread.

Note: This dish is actually not authentically made, but I’ve played around with this dish a few times and I love the way garlic can really infuse oil – to me it gives a much stronger garlic flavor to the dish – if cooked more slowly. Traditionally, this dish is made in a cazuela (shallow clay ramekin) either on the stovetop or in a crazy hot oven. If you own a cazuela or similar type of vessel, heat it until it’s screaming hot and then toss everything in at once. You’ll probably only need to cook for about a minute (the garlic should be pretty dark and crispy) before it’s ready to serve.

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Morcilla-Stuffed Squid – Bloody Hell!

Jonny — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 14:29:34 +0000

A lot of people love Jamie Oliver for his informal, cheekie-chappie attitude and antics, which they welcome as a nice break from the seemingly unapproachable TV chefs of the past. Personally, I find his mockney styles and instant familiarity grating, and have let this issue influence my opinion of his cooking. However, I’m big enough of a man to concede that, off-screen, he’s almost certainly a guy I would like, that I have great admiration for his efforts at giving low-income, disadvantaged kids opportunities to work in his restaurants, and, more recently, I’ve come to terms with the fact that he’s a pretty good cook too.

From the first, fateful occasion I ate morcilla I was hooked, and since finding a reliable source of it close by us in Brooklyn, I’ve been looking for ways of including it in my cooking. So, giving credit where it’s due, Jamie Oliver’s recipe for squid stuffed with black pudding was just the inspiration I needed. To the naked eye what follows might look like a simple execution of his recipe, but as I say, his recipe was just inspiration. I read the recipe, but did not follow it. I added a degree of chipotle heat to the sauce and switched the white wine for plenty of lemon juice, and to my mind, the addition of some spiciness and acid is what elevates this dish beyond its already delectable level, cutting, as it does, the richness of the blood sausage.

Where this dish would sit in terms of global cuisine, I’m not sure. Its inspiration was British, its sauce Mexican-influenced, and its stuffing almost Spanish in flavor, but the dish really worked well regardless of its provenance. We made it as a tapa, but it would work perfectly as a first course, as a light main course, or even cold as part of a salad, and because the squid look really cool, but are really simple to make, they’d impress the hell out of dinner guests, providing, that is, they were adventurous enough to eat blood sausage.

Morcilla-Stuffed Squid (Calamares Rellenos con Morcilla)

Ingredients (serves 4)

8-10 squid (bodies, not tentacles)

2 small morcilla links, or 6oz of your favorite black pudding/blood sausage, casings removed

1/2 spanish onion, diced finely

2 cloves garlic, crushed & chopped

1tsp sweet paprika/pimenton dulce

1tbsp lemon juice

1tbsp finely chopped flat-leaf (Italian) parsley

1tbsp olive oil

8-10 toothpicks

For the sauce

2 plum tomatoes, diced finely

3 tsp chipotle powder

1/2 clove garlic, finely diced

2 tbsp olive oil

2 tbsp water

1 pinch salt

1 squeeze lemon juice

Recipe

Rinse out your squid with cold water and remove any cartilidge or other crap if you bought them whole.
Add oil to saute pan and, when at medium heat, add onions. Allow to sweat for 3-5 mins until soft.
Break up morcilla/sausage with your fingers and add to pan. Continue to break up with a spoon while it cooks.
When onions and morcilla are well combined, add garlic and paprika/pimenton, and mix well.
Increase heat to medium high and add lemon juice.
When ready, mixture should be well-combined and pretty coherent rather than loose or solid.
Allow to cool enough so you can handle it.
Fire-up your grill/barbecue to medium-high.
Salt interior of squid lightly and stuff with mixture and “sew” top closed with a toothpick.
Do not overfill. Squid shrinks when cooked and too much filling will cause it to leak and make a mess of your grill.
Oil your grill so squid don’t stick and grill them for 2-3 minutes per side or until grill-marks have developed and squid are nice and firm.
Remove from grill and allow to come to room temperature.
Slice and serve with sauce.

The sauce

Heat saute pan to medium. Add half olive oil and garlic.
When garlic is lightly colored, add tomatoes.
Tomatoes should melt into a sauce texture with a little stirring.
Add water, salt, parsley and chipotle powder. Combine well.
Reduce heat. Add lemon juice and remaining olive oil.
Serve over and under the stuffed squid.
Enjoy!

Taco Bell? I Think Not – How Good An Authentic Carne Asada Taco Can Make You Feel

Amy — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 20:29:07 +0000

Normally we wouldn’t post a recipe for something as everyday as a steak taco. Most people know how to make them, right? But how many take the time to cook them really, really well? It actually doesn’t take much longer to make them more authentic. I’m not being a food snob here, I’m just talking from experience. I’ve made my fare share of ground-beef tacos or over-cooked cubes-of-steak tacos. But since we’ve been united with, made out and fallen in love with our seasoned, heavy-duty, cast-iron skillet, we’ll never be the same. We’ve fallen under its spell and will never return to the old way of cooking steak inside the home. Of course, an outside grill is the second best way to cook a steak!

Since we’re always on the search for the traditional and authentic, we really wanted to do the steak taco justice. In Mexico street food is rampant, fresh and delicious. You won’t see Old El Paso pre-made, fried taco shells, pre-packaged “taco seasoning” or over-salted ground beef plopped in the middle of the tortilla. The meat, veggies or fish and toppings are fresh and the food is cheap. Carne asada (grilled steak) is one of the most popular dishes of many parts of Northern Mexico. It’s synonymous with barbecue – the verb, not the noun version as is often used in America to describe the sweet sauce brushed on various bits of meat and poultry. Even more interesting is that “a carne asada” or “una carne asada” in Mexico also refers to the party/social gathering/event surrounding the making of the actual meal. I think that’s pretty kick-ass. I feel like Mexicans always find a good reason to party! They’ve got tequila AND ‘una carne asada’!

You may also be interested to know that tacos have been around for a long time. No, I mean a really long time. Like, longer than a Britney Spears marriage (cheap shot and bad joke, I know). A Spanish soldier named Bernal Diaz del Castillo wrote about the taco in the 1500′s but he’s not the inventor of the delicious, utensil-less, portable meal. Anthropologists discovered evidence that those who lived in the lake region of the Valley of Mexico made tacos filled with fish (hey, they lived by a lake). In other parts of Mexico, tacos were filled with live insects, locusts and/or snails. Fillings were determined by what was local and available, same as many other culture’s meals, except America, of course. Today, this still holds true. Although you may not find many taco stands selling insect or locust tacos, fillings will be different depending on the geographical region you are eating them in.

The first taco recipe found in America comes from a California cookbook published in 1914 called “California-Mexican Spanish Cook Book“. The recipe went as follows:

The tacos are made by putting chopped cooked beef and chili sauce in tortilla made of meal and flour; folded, edges sealed together with egg; fried in deep fat, chile sauce served over it.

Very different from what the Mexicans and Americans look at as tacos today. The above quote seems more like a tortilla empanada or chimichanga? A real, traditional carne asada taco will always be pretty bland and never spicy. The meat, usually finely cut flank or skirt steak, should be seasoned only with some salt because the delicious flavor of the beef is what is to be tasted. No cumin, no chili powder – nothing but salt. The spiciness and other flavor comes from the various toppings you can put on your carne asada. Salsas, chopped white onion and cilantro are just a few traditional toppings. This dish is also traditionally made with corn tortillas, although we (ok, I) forgot to pick some up on my grocery trip and I couldn’t be arsed going back to the store.

For our toppings we decided to make another popular Mexican condiment, rajas. As the great Rick Bayless puts it, rajas is “a true-blooded Mexican classic”. The word rajas is spanish for strips and in Mexico that means strips of chile. In parts of central and northen Mexico poblanos grow everywhere, so rajas will feature the poblano chile. Again, just like with the fillings of tacos being determined by the geographic location, so is the rajas topping. Poblano peppers are dark green in color and don’t have much of a spiciness to them. In parts of California these peppers are called “passillas” and in Mexico, “chile verde”. You may have heard of ancho chiles, well these are poblano’s in their dried form. The rajas are basically made of onion, roasted poblano, some garlic and herbs. Ok, now on to the recipe!

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STEAK TACOS WITH RAJAS AND SALSA VERDE (Tomatillo Salsa) – serves 3-4

Ingredients for Steak

3 pounds steak (preferably skirt or flank
Salt
Corn or flour tortillas (corn preferable)
Optional toppings: avocado slices, lime juice, crema/sour cream, thinly sliced cabbage, diced onion, jalapenos, scallions etc

Ingredients for Rajas:

2 poblano peppers, roasted, skin removed and thinly sliced
Optional and not traditional: yellow or orange pepper, thinly sliced
1 onion, thinly sliced
oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
pinch of oregano ,thyme (optional)
salt

Ingredients for Salsa Verde (Tomatillo Salsa)

3 – 4 tomatillos, husk removed, washed and roasted in oven
1 clove garlic, minced
1 scallion, sliced
Handful of fresh cilantro
Lime juice
Pinch of salt
Optional: Roasted spicy pepper like habenero or Serrano, minced

What to do:

Heat oven to 475. When oven comes up to temperature, add your tomatillos and allow to roast whole for 10-15 minutes until soft and slightly browned.
Salt your steak on both sides. Roast your poblano pepper by placing pepper directly on the open flame of your gas stove turning frequently. You will do this until the skin is blistered and blackened all over the chile. Remove and place a towel over it until it cools.
Remove tomatillos from oven and make salsa verde by placing all the ingredients in a food processor or blender and blend until smooth. Taste for seasoning by adding salt and extra lime juice if necessary.
Now, make the rajas by heating up a skillet till red hot. Add some oil and first saute your onions and yellow pepper (if using). Allow to sauté for 4 to 5 minutes and then add the garlic. Allow to sauté for another minute or two. Finally, add the roasted poblano pepper and sauté for 30 seconds. Remove all to a plate.
In the same skillet, not adding any extra oil, add your steak. This process should be QUICK. We like our steak really pink inside – medium rare. For a thin piece of steak, this will mean cooking each side for about 3 to 4 minutes per side. If worse comes to worse, UNDERCOOK it and then make a little slice in it. You can always cook it a bit more, but never take back the cooking time on an overcooked piece of steak.
Remove steak and allow to rest for 5 minutes. Meanwhile, heat up your tortillas. If using flour, heat in dry skillet for a few moments on each side and wrap in a towel. Or, microwave for 20 seconds wrapped in a towel. If using corn tortillas, you should fry them a bit in some oil in the skillet. You don’t want them crispy, just pliable and cooked.
Cut your steak on the bias against the lines of the steak so you get a clean cut. Assemble your tacos by putting all the various toppings you’d like on each! ENJOY.

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