CSA week 14 - Camarones verdes

I found this recipe on the New York Times website with lots of basil with a bit of mint and tarragon substituted in to try to simulate the flavor of hoja santa. Well, no need for that for us lucky few. I traced it back to what looks like the original, from whence I got the Spanish name. It was buried on the third page of a Google search that ought to have popped it right up; Weird. Anyway, that page says it was published in the Dallas Morning News in 1998 as a preview of Diana Kennedy's cookbook: My Mexico. The NYT version only credits Martha Schulman, the author of the piece, but she did make some changes. For one, she broils the tomatillos rather than simmering them which seems an improvement to me. My version will mostly follow the NYT procedure with the big change of swapping out half the shrimp for potatoes, partially because the dish could use both a higher veg to meat ratio and partially because that's what I've got.

Ingredients:
1/2 pound tomatillos
3-4 hoja santa leaves
2 smallish hot chilies, de-stemmed but not de-seeded
1 pinch anise seeds [substituting for maybe-poisonous avocado leaves]
1/4 cup water
5 large garlic cloves, crushed
1 large pinch salt
2 Tablespoons olive oil
1/2 pound medium shrimp, peeled and de-veined
1/2 pound something else like potatoes or zucchini or more shrimp

1. Broil the tomatillos on a baking pan for 3-5 minutes on one side until charred [they'll start popping audibly at this point which is helpful], flip them over and broil 3-5 minutes more until that side is charred too. Remove to a blender or food processor making sure to keep the released juices.

2. Tear hoja santa, leaving the bigger veins behind [pretty easy actually]. Chop the chilies. Add both, the anise seeds and water, to the tomatillos. [Note from after the fact: also add one canned or dried-and-reconstituted chipotle pepper] Blend until smooth. Taste and season conservatively. Set aside.

3. Cook your something else until almost done [unless it's more shrimp].

4. Put garlic and salt in a mortar. Crush. Add olive oil and crush some more until you form a paste.

5. Add some more olive oil to a large pan and heat over medium-high heat. Add your something else if you want to get a bit of color on it. Season the shrimp then add it to the pan and cook about 2 minutes until not quite done. Remove both to a bowl.

6. Add garlic mixture to the pan and cook 30 seconds until aromatic. Add tomatillo mixture, bring to a boil, turn heat down to medium low, and cook around 5 minutes until the 1/4 cup of water has boiled out and the sauce has thickened slightly. Return the other ingredients and cook a few minutes more until everything is cooked through and the sauce coats the chunky bits.

Serve with tortillas if your something else wasn't starchy.



The sauce has the same tart, oddly herbal/medicinal flavor that I had a hard time describing the last time I made something using the combination. I doesn't pair particularly well with either the shrimp or the potatoes, but it doesn't actively clash either. You taste it, then you taste the shrimp but there's kind of a disconnect between.

Last year, I suggested adding some chipotle so I'm going to try that now to see if that helps matters... Yeah, it helps a whole lot. It lays a foundation for the tartness of the tomatillo and rounds out the hoja santa. It even makes the flavors blend with the shrimp. I can now honestly recommend making this dish if you add a chipotle or maybe some pimenton back in step two.

CSA week 19 - Baked fish in hoja santa tomatillo sauce

This is a recipe from Victoria Challancin, the owner of the Flavors of the Sun International Cooking School. It's pretty simple and I made it even simpler because, after making the sauce, I didn't have leaves left to wrap the fish too. Also, I didn't have enough fish so I used some shrimp.

Ingredients:
1 share hoja santa leaves, I didn't count. Six? Around that.
6 ounces tomatillos, husked, cleaned and quartered
1 clove garlic, peeled
1 hot chile, seeded or not to your taste I used a seeded jalapeño.
1/6 cup water
salt to taste

0. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

1. Boil a pot of water. Blanch the hoja santa leaves for 30 seconds. Cool immediately to stop the cooking. Strip out the tough stems and roughly chop.

2. Add everything to a food processor and process until fairly smooth. I found I got little chunks floating in a watery sauce so you might want to keep on blending for a while longer.

3. Place seafood in a baking dish. This makes enough sauce for a couple fillets. Cover with sauce. I didn't, but you might want to cover the dish with foil to try to keep the fish moist. Bake until fish is cooked through, 10-15 minutes.

Serve with tortillas or possibly rice. I made tacos because why not?




Hmm...The sauce is slightly spicy, brightly acid from the not-quite-ripe tomatillos (a squeeze of lime takes the unpleasant edge off the tartness), aromatically herbal, rooty and slightly chemical--unmistakably hoja santa. Nothing transformative here, but the hoja santa flavor, a bit much on its own, works better as a balanced element of the gestalt of the sauce. It goes pretty well with the fish, less well with the shrimp (which were kind of funky today. Maybe from overcooking; maybe I just got a bad batch?) and really well with the tortillas. I'm going to try using hoja santa in a corn salad next time I get some or maybe in tamales...Hold on a second, I just added some chipotle to the sauce and the smokiness is great base for the hoja santa's flavors. That's definitely the way I'm going next time around. Just add a little to this sauce and you'll be happy, I'm promise.

CSA week 18 - Zucchini caldo de camaron seco

This is a bit of an improvisation. I was shopping for a Javanese dried shrimp and zucchini dish and not finding the Mexican dried shrimp where it was supposed to be at Whole Foods when I started wondering just what Mexican dried shrimp were used for.

If you trust Google, they're used for caldo de camaron seco--dried shrimp broth--mostly. Well, if zucchini works with dried shrimp and coconut milk, it might work with dried shrimp and chilies too. [I gave in and took the trip to Lucky Asian Mart I was hoping to avoid to get the ingredients.] Seemed worth a try anyway. I didn't follow any of the caldo de camaron seco recipes exactly even before adding the zucchini and I didn't really measure anything either; here's an approximation of what I came up with.

Ingredients:
1/2 pound dried hominy
1 medium tomato and 1 handful grape tomatoes
2 cloves garlic
2 not too hot dried peppers
1 chipotle pepper
1 Tablespoon olive oil
1 small onion, diced
1 carrot, diced
2 ounces by weight dried shrimp
4 cups water
1/2 large zucchini, diced

0. Soak the hominy 8 hours or overnight. Or quick soak it by boiling it for 5 minutes and then soaking for 3-4 hours.

1. Soak the peppers for 10 minutes to slightly soften. Remove stems and seeds. Cut or tear into small pieces.

2. Process the shrimp into a fine powder.

3.Blend the tomato and garlic. Add peppers and blend until very smooth. Press through a strainer to make sure. Add a little salt and taste. Add chili powder and/or hot sauce if the flavor isn't quite to your liking.

4. In a large saucepan or dutch oven, heat olive oil over medium high heat. When shimmery add the onion and carrot. Cook until the onion becomes translucent, then add the chili tomato mixture. Turn heat down to medium low and fry 10 minutes, scraping up the sauce if it sticks. [This is a typical Mexican technique. Interesting, no? Aren't Thai curry pastes treated similarly?]

5. Add the dried shrimp, hominy and water. Bring to a boil, turn heat to low and simmer for 50 minutes. Add zucchini and cook for 10 minutes more.

Top with diced white onion, a squeeze of lime and a drizzle of olive oil.


The ground shrimp has hydrated a bit and now has a meaty chew to it but in grainy sludgy form. It reminds of something, but I can't quite pin it down. Maybe somewhere between ground meat in chili and strands of overpicked crab in chowder. It's about as enticing as that sounds, but its not bad once you get used to it.

The broth itself is an earthy blend of the the fruitiness of the chilies and tomato and the salty minerally tang of the shrimp. That's pretty tasty. Kind of weird, but tasty.

The hominy could be softer; I should have cooked it a bit longer. And the zucchini could be firmer; I should have cooked it a bit less. [I adjusted the cooking time for the zucchini in the recipe above, but I'm not sure how to deal with the hominy. Follow the instructions on the package if you've got a package with instructions, I guess.] Still, their flavors come through nicely and do work well with the flavor of the broth.

Like the soup from a couple days ago, I think this one is going to work better tomorrow after the flavors have blended. I'll bet the textures will have improved too. ...

OK, it's tomorrow. The hominy and zucchini haven't changed so no improvement in the texture, but the flavors have melded nicely. Still, it's missing something and I'm pretty sure that something is pork. The flavor would fit in really nicely and the broth is so much like chili that I'm missing chunks of meat. I've got some pork in the freezer; maybe I'll give it a shot. I'll report in later...

Now it's the day after tomorrow. I've added some ground pork and, as long as I was at it, more zucchini and some red bell pepper. Now it tastes like a strangely shrimp-tinged chili. It was a much more interestingly distinctive dish before. Ah well; win some, lose some.

Albondigas

Sometimes when I come across an interesting recipe I decide I want to make that dish, research a bunch of variations and then come up with my own version. But sometimes I'll notice that I've got everything I need for the recipe in the house and skip all that and just make it.

I found a link to this recipe on TheKitchn.com, but it was a link to a link to a reposting of a recipe from a cookbook so all the context and explanation was missing. That should have been a warning sign, but I guess I wasn't in a mindset to be warned. I didn't look at variations and didn't even look at the context. I just thought: "I didn't know albóndigas had oatmeal in them." and went ahead with it. As you may know, they don't. This recipe is from Almost Meatless, a cookbook by Joy Manning and Tara Mataraza Desmond, where they switched out bread crumbs and reduced the amount of meat. The oats add bulk and absorb flavors. If they had left it at that then I may well have tried the recipe even if I had done my due diligence; it's a clever idea. But they made a bunch of other changes that I don't get. I'll explain later, but first the recipe.

Albóndigas
- serves 4 to 6 -
from Almost Meatless by Joy Manning and Tara Mataraza Desmond

Ingredients:
1/2 cup steel-cut oatmeal
1/2 cup loosely packed fresh cilantro leaves, chopped plus more for garnish
4 cloves garlic, minced (about 2 tablespoons), divided
1 chipotle in adobo sauce, seeded and chopped into a paste
4 teaspoons ground cumin, divided
2 teaspoons ground coriander, divided
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
1/2 pound ground lamb
2 teaspoons olive oil
1 small onion, cut into 1/4-inch dice (about 1 cup)
1 (28-ounce) can crushed tomatoes
1 cup water
Juice of 1 lime

Procedure:
1. Mix together the oatmeal, cilantro, half the garlic, the chipotle, 2 teaspoons of the cumin, 1 teaspoon of the coriander, 1 teaspoon salt, and 1/4 teaspoon pepper in a bowl. Gently work the lamb into the mixture, distributing it evenly. Form balls out of tablespoon-size scoops of the mixture and set aside.

2. Heat the oil in a Dutch oven or a large pot over medium-high heat. Add the onion and saute for 5 minutes. Stir in the remaining garlic, cumin, and coriander, cooking for an additional 30 seconds. Add the tomatoes and water and stir to combine.

3. Bring the sauce to a simmer and add the meatballs. Simmer partially covered for 45 minutes.

4. Season the sauce with salt and pepper to taste, squeeze the lime juice over top, and serve with extra chopped cilantro.






From all the oats floating around the bowl, it appears I've suffered critical meatball failure during simmering. The meatballs that remain are crumbly which isn't too surprising considering the chunky bits they're made of and the lack of binder. Most every other albóndiga recipe has an egg in there. I think maybe the recipe was expecting little broken bits of oats instead of the big chunks in the McCann's brand oatmeal I used. I probably should have chopped my cilantro finer; that can't have helped. I suppose I could break up the rest and call this chili.

I'm a bit disappointed that I'm not getting more lamb flavor here. There's a bit of anonymous meatiness in there, but mainly it's all tomato, cumin, cilantro and less chipotle than you'd expect, but I did use a small one. Frying the meatball before simmering, which most Spanish albóndigas recipes do, would have helped. So would using more strongly flavored beef or pork which are far more common.

I wonder; what with the chipotle, cilantro and lime; if this is a take on a Mexican meatball. The cumin, coriander and lamb are typical of the Moorish origins of the tapas version (each of those isn't unheard of in Mexican cooking, but they're a very Mediterranean combination). Even if all the spices were Mexican, the tomato sauce is very much a Spanish element. It all just seems incoherent and, for me, it doesn't really work.

Incoherence aside, it's not actively unpleasant to eat. Not high praise, but that's all this dish is going to get.

CSA week 13 - Cold beef, avocado and chipotle salad

This is a variation on a Rick Bayless recipe. I've been watching his Mexico: One Plate at a Time show recently so when I had a pile of Mexican ingredients and no particular plans I checked out his website. A lot of interesting recipes there and, an aspect I liked a lot, lots of variations on them too. The nice thing about variations is, for beginners it gives a range of recipes to follow and for the more experienced cook it reveals what's central to the dish, what's ancillary and how the pieces fit together. Here's the recipe cut and pasted from his site with a few notes and pics added.

Cold Chicken and Avocado with Chipotle Chile

Pollo, Aguacate y Chile Chipotle en Frio

Yield: about 3 1/2 cups, enough for 12 tacos, serving 4 as a light main course [This is the only place he mentions tacos. You'd think "spoon into tortillas" would be part of the serving instructions, but I think guests are supposed to do that themselves at the table after the actual serving and there's a basic assumption of "what else would you do with it?" so the instruction got left out.]

The chicken for this salad can be prepared 1 or 2 days in advance and then mixed with the dressing just before serving. Great for a summer picnic.

Ingredients

1 chicken leg-and-thigh quarter or 1 large breast half

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 small (about 6 ounces total) boiling potatoes like the red-skinned ones, halved

2 medium (about 6 ounces total) carrots, peeled and cut into 1 1/2-inch lengths

1/4 cup cider vinegar

1 teaspoon dried oregano

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 to 4 canned chiles chipotles, seeded and thinly sliced

1/4 small onion, finely diced

4 large romaine lettuce leaves, sliced in 3/8-inch strips, plus several whole leaves for garnish

1 ripe avocado, peeled, pitted and diced

1/4 cup vegetable oil

1 slice of onion, broken into rings, for garnish

Directions

1. The chicken mixture. Bring 2 cups water to a boil in a medium-size saucepan, add the chicken and salt, skim off the foam that rises as the water returns to a boil, partially cover and simmer over medium heat—23 minutes for the dark meat, 13 minutes for the breast. If there is time, cool the chicken in the broth. Boil the potatoes and carrots in salted water to cover until they are just tender, 12 to 15 minutes. Rinse for a moment under cold water, strip off the potato skins, if you wish, then cut the potatoes and carrots into 3/8-inch dice. Place in a large mixing bowl. Skin and bone the chicken, then tear the meat into large shreds and add to the potatoes. Skim off all the fat on top of the broth, then measure 3 tablespoons of broth into a small bowl. Stir in the vinegar, oregano and salt. Pour the dressing over the chicken mixture and add the sliced chiles chipotles and chopped onion. Stir, cover and let stand for 45 minutes, refrigerated or at room temperature.
2. Finishing the dish. Shortly before serving, mix the sliced lettuce and diced avocado into the chicken mixture. Drizzle with oil and toss lightly. Taste for salt. Line a serving platter with the remaining romaine leaves and pile on the chicken mixture. Decorate with the onion rings and serve.

COOK’S NOTES

Ingredients

Chiles Chipotles: In Mexico City, dishes like this often utilize pickled (not adobo-packed) chipotles. Without any chipotles at all, this dish loses many of its special qualities, though a nice salad can be made using pickled jalapeños and chopped fresh coriander (cilantro), if desired.

Timing and Advance Preparation
The active preparation time is less than 45 minutes, though you’ll need to start a couple of hours before serving. The chicken mixture can marinate overnight, covered and refrigerated; complete the final dressing within 15 minutes of serving. [I didn't find I needed much more than an hour prep time total. I think he's giving really long cooling times.]

TRADITIONAL VARIATIONS
Variations on the Salpicón Theme: The proportions and selection of the main ingredients should be kept loose. Meats such as ham and leftover pork or beef roast can easily be substituted for the cooked chicken.
[I had beef but it wasn't leftover. I didn't think it would respond well to boiling like chicken would so I braised it instead. I'd rather have given it a longer time but I was hungry. I kept it to twenty minutes cooking and then physically tenderized it during shredding by removing excess connective tissue.]

CONTEMPORARY IDEAS
Smoked Chicken Salad with Avocado and Chipotle: Replace the cooked chicken with 4 or 5 ounces (about 2/3 cup) diced smoked chicken. Serve on plates lined with lightly dressed curly lettuce leaves.

It turned out pretty good. The chewiness of the beef and, to a lesser extent, the tortilla contrasts with the soft cooked vegetables, crisp raw vegetables and creamy avocado to give a lot of textural interest. There's a nice combination of flavors here with subtle heat and tartness against the savory beef, smoky chipotles and the bright freshness of the vegetables. The tortilla both holds the salad together physically and tempers the sharpness of the dressing to keep everything in balance. I considered making the pickled jalapeño variation, but I'm glad I didn't. The vinegar would have been overwhelming; the chipotles give this dish a lot of character.

CSA week 11 - garlicky shrimp and greens tacos

Just a quick post here since this is a close variation of the steak and greens tacos I made back in week seven. The only changes were that I used the swiss chard and radish tops for the greens (and saved the chard stems for later), added a jalapeño and a dash of red pepper flakes in with the onion, put in four chopped extra-large shrimp with the garlic for the last two minutes of cooking, added a little water with the greens to deglaze the pan and replaced the queso fresco with slices of avocado and breakfast radish.

Normally, I'd save this for the weekly wrap up, but it turned out so well and it's such a quick and easy weekday dish I wanted to suggest it before you used your swiss chard for something else. The flavors of the browned onions, garlic, greens and shrimp blend beautifully. The textural contrasts of the creamy avocado and crisp radishes add an elevating aspect that was lacking in the steak and greens version. And I think just adding the step of deglazing the pan added a lot since the greens hold on to pan sauce so you get a nice burst of flavor with each bite. It makes things a little drippy but well worth it.

CSA week nine - Taquitos with guacamole

The guidebooks will tell you: if you go to any taquerilla in San Diego (other than Rubio's Fish Tacos where you want to order the specialty), the thing to get is "three rolled with guac". That is: three rolled tacos--chicken or beef--topped with cheese and guacamole. Today, I made chicken.

Really, this stemmed from having a ripe avocado and tomato, some leftover cilantro and no clever ideas defaulting me down to guacamole. But if I'm going to make guac I may as well put it to good use.

I searched around and found a good-looking recipe here. Now that I've poked through his site a bit, I see he's got a lot of authentic but doable Mexican recipes. I'm going to have to try out some more of those.

I cut the recipe down to a third to use the two chicken thighs I had in the freezer, but otherwise I followed it straight:

"Ingredients: Shredded Chicken

1 1/2 lbs. boneless, skinless chicken breast
2 teas. seasoned salt [I used adobo con sazon which is probably what he meant)
1 teas. pepper
3/4 teas. garlic powder
2 teas. onion powder
2 teas. chili powder
3/4 teas. cumin powder
1/2 teas. oregano
2 dry bay leaves
enough water to cover chicken ( about 2-3 cups )

Ingredients: Taquitos

shredded chicken
15 to 20 6in. corn tortillas
toothpicks
3 to 4 cups vegetable or canola oil for frying

Method: Shredded Chicken Taquitos

Wash chicken thoroughly and place in a medium sized skillet and add just enough water to cover the chicken. Add all ingredients and bring to a boil. Boil for 10 minutes then reduce heat and simmer, covered, for 30 to 40 minutes or until the chicken can be shredded using a wood spatula. If there is any liquid left simply turn up the heat and allow the liquid to evaporate. Let the shredded chicken cool enough to work with.

While the chicken is cooking, add the oil to another medium sized skillet. Only use enough oil to go half way up the side of the pan so when you start frying the oil won’t spill over. Heat oil to 350 degrees and lightly fry the tortillas, on both sides, using a pair of tongs, for about 5 to 10 seconds total. All you are doing here is making them pliable enough to roll, you don’t want them crispy yet, that will come later. Stack the cooked tortillas on a plate and when all of the tortillas are done, flip the whole stack over. this will allow the oil on the tortillas to drip evenly over all of them. Turn off the heat on the oil while you are rolling the taquitos. [I wasn't sure how many tortillas I would need so I prepared eight. I only used five so the rest I chopped into sixths, fried until crisp, sprinkled with salt and lime as they drained and stored in a paper bag for later.

Take about 2 spoonfuls ( about 2 ounces ) [I found a little less than one ounce filled a tortilla to my liking. Skimpy fillings is the San Diego style.] of the chicken and place it in a line across the center of a tortilla and roll it up. Use a toothpick to keep it closed by inserting it at the edge of the tortilla and running it through the center. Continue this process until all of the chicken has been used, you should get somewhere between 15 and 20 taquitos. I like to place them on a piece of foil after rolling them because I don’t have to wash it later but a plate will work fine.

After they are all rolled up you can start to fry them in the 350 degree oil ( turn the heat back on when there are only a few taquitos left to roll ). Fry a few at a time on both sides until golden brown, they will take about 2 minutes a side. Remove to a plate and remove the toothpick. Top with guacamole, shredded lettuce, shredded cheese and tomatoes and a little bit of hot sauce. Toppings are always optional, you can really put anything on them you want, this is just what I put on them." [Cheese usually goes over the guac, but I like mine under so it melts a little. I used half cheddar and half queso fresco. Over the guac I added a little onion, a little tomato and some hot sauce. The guac was a pretty standard recipe; I won't bore you with it.]
---
Back at the originating site there's an attached recipe for Mexican rice, but I wasn't feeling up to it. Instead I just put the rice in the rice cooker with the water I simmered the chicken in and some tomato and onion. Not at all bad, really.

I thought it turned out really well. The chicken was a little on the dry side--maybe I should have packed it in more tightly so it would keep out the oil and steam instead of deep fry--but still nicely spiced. All the flavors were there just as they're supposed to be. It's not quite the same as the authentic San Diego rolled tacos; they're not cheap and trashy, it's not 3 a.m. and I'm not drunk so no Ratatouille dolly-zoom flashbacks but still, pretty darn good.

CSA week seven - Garlicky steak and greens tacos

This is my modified version of a Rick Bayless recipe for a taco he had at a market stall in Toluca, Mexico. It's pretty simple even after I added the steak so I think it's mainly meant as a vehicle for Bayless' rather more complicated roasted tomatillo chipotle salsa. It looks really good, but even if I could get all of the specific peppers he calls for I'm in no mood to deal with all that soaking and toasting and roasting and scraping and all so salsa from a bottle it is. I'm sure it does the recipe some harm, but there are good bottled salsas out there, right?

Ingredients

Makes 8 to 10 soft tacos.

• 8 to 10 corn tortillas (plus a few extra, in case some break)
• 1/2 teaspoon coarse salt, plus more for blanching
• 6 cups loosely packed sliced green or red chard leaves (one 12-ounce bunch) [I used the Asian braising greens minus the stems on the purple flowery stuff. I think that was more like 4 cups all told]
  
• 1 tablespoon olive or vegetable oil
• 1 medium white onion, sliced 1/4 inch thick
• 1/4 pound quick-fry suitable steak. [I used thin sliced top round]
  
• 4 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped
• 1/4 cup finely crumbled Mexican queso fresco; queso anejo; dry feta; pressed, salted farmer's cheese; or Parmesan cheese
• 3/4 cup Rick's Essential Roasted Tomatillo Chipotle Salsa
• Cilantro sprigs, for garnish

Directions

1. Warm the tortillas: Place a vegetable steamer in a large saucepan filled with 1/2 inch of water. Bring to a boil. Wrap tortillas in a heavy kitchen towel, lay them in the steamer, and cover with a tight lid. Boil 1 minute, turn off the heat, and let stand without opening for about 15 minutes.
2. Prepare the filling: While tortillas are steaming, bring 3 quarts salted water to a boil in a large pot. Add greens, and cook until barely tender, 1 to 2 minutes. Drain in a colander, and spread out on a large plate or baking sheet to cool. When cool enough to handle, roughly chop.
3. In a large skillet, heat oil over medium-high heat. Add onion, and cook, stirring frequently, until golden brown, about 5 minutes. Add steak, cook for 5 minutes more. Add garlic, stir for 1 minute, then add greens, and stir for about 1 minute, just long enough to heat them through. Season with salt.
4. Prepare the tacos: Scoop the filling into a deep, warm serving dish, and sprinkle with cheese. Serve with the warm tortillas, salsa, and cilantro sprigs.

When I lived in Queens, New York, there was a Mexico City-style taqueria a few blocks away. I'm not going to say that this recipe turns out something I might have bought there, but the flavors definitely took me back. The properly steamed corn tortilla did half the work there, but the rest was in the right neighborhood, too.

I didn't expect the greens to wilt away quite so much. I wanted the filling to be mostly greens with a bit of beef but they're more equal partners which gave unfortunate prominence to the fact that the beef wasn't cooked in a big bubbling vat of meat juices the way real taquerias do it.

The greens, on the other hand, I think were cooked nicely: just a little al dente so they've still got some character both in texture and flavor. It would have been easy for the salsa to walk all over the other flavors, which were rather more subtle than you'd expect with all that garlic, but the lightly cooked greens helped the filling hold its own against it. Unfortunately, while I could find a quality tomatillo salsa, that left out the chipotles whose smokiness wouldn't have been a bad addition. Maybe I'll add some in with the onions if I make this again.

I'm thinking about variations and tweaks but I find I don't want to over-complicate it with a bunch of extra flavors. Simple is best for tacos. I do think I'd like to take out the steak and add shrimp for a baja-style greens taco. I think I'd want a red salsa with that, but no need to change the seasonings otherwise : shrimp, garlic and olive oil is a classic no matter the cuisine.

CSA - Mexican pizza

I'm in a rare pizza mood today, but I've never tried any of the local take-out places and I don't feel like taking the gamble. I haven't got the makings of a proper Italian pie in the house, but I think I can pull off Mexican pizza. I have a residual fondness for such things, as most people do I suppose, from some truly awful pies I had at the local pizza parlor that had the best selection of video games. A dumb reason to pick a restaurant I'll admit. These days they'd have to have a good selection of pinball to get me in the door.


So to start off I have to make some dough. I used to do this fairly frequently, but any recipes I've kept are lost in the pile. Instead I'll use a recipe from another blog that I've been reading for a bit, A Good Appetite. The recipe's for a garlic bread that's actually more like a skimpy calzone so I left out the garlic and parsley filling and added some chili powder and Mexican oregano to the mix to make it suitably Mexican.

As is typical of my baking experiences, following the recipe left me with a unworkably wet sticky dough that inexplicably swallowed up at least another half cup of flour while barely changing in texture. Eventually it got close to the proper texture and I figured it got kneaded enough while I was folding in all that the flour. All that extra flour gave me rather more dough than I wanted, so I put half in the freezer and set the other aside to rise for an hour and a half.

An hour in, I started the oven preheating to 450 degrees. I keep a pizza stone in my oven all the time to act as a heat capacitor to smooth out any unevenness in my oven's heating cycle. For actually cooking pizza I took it off the bottom rack and moved it up one space.

When the dough had risen to around double its volume I dumped it out onto a silpat and spread it outwards with my fingertips. It's a bit too soft to properly work and it's a little underkneaded, but that means it won't spring back so it doesn't need a ten minute rest after deflation. Also, it sticks to the silpat which keeps it spread out into a good pizza shape.

I prefer a thickness that isn't quite that paper thin thin crust you can get. That's lucky for me because the under-kneading means the dough won't stretch out properly to get that. If you like it that way look up "windowing" to get the details. It will make more sense with the sort of pictures I don't have. When I got it to the right thickness I took a sideless cookie sheet I use for a peel, dusted it with corn meal and then held the silpat upside down over it so the crust could peel itself off and drop down. That wouldn't work with properly prepared pizza dough, but then with proper pizza dough it wouldn't be necessary.

I gave the crust a drizzle of olive oil and then spread a layer of herbs and spices--cilantro, chili powder, cumin, cayenne, oregano. A layer of shredded jalapeno cheddar on top of that and then slices of tomato and avocado along with chopped pickled peppers and crumbled fried up Mexican chorizo.




Into the oven for 10 minutes and I got this:


I've got to say I'm surprised but the crust is actually really good: crisp on the bottom and chewy on top. My camera's not great at close ups but you can sort of see the two layers in the cross-section. The toppings worked well, but to really get the right effect I should have used enchilada sauce under the cheese. The flavors are the standard Mexican set so you know they work well together. I did go a bit overboard with the peppers, though. Texturally, the cheese has melted into the crust to make the chewy layer, the avocado adds creaminess and the tomato melts during each bite with a little burst of flavor. The chorizo in particular has a lot more character than the traditional ground beef, both with its crispy texture and its rougher flavor. The big minus though is that the pizza's a bit dry. I tried adding some green salsa after the fact, but it overwhelmed the over flavors. Well, lesson learned; keep some enchilada sauce around just in case.

Beefsteak fajitas with fresh tomato salsa

I mentioned a little while back that I had picked up some skirt steak for the first time. It has a reputation as nature's Steak-Um--flavorful, quick to cook, flat--but it was an impulse buy and I didn't have any particular recipes in mind. A bit of later research turned up that this is the traditional cut for fajitas and since I've got a fajita recipe I like (from Jim Fobel's book Big Flavors) easy enough for a summer kitchen that sounded like a plan.

What I particularly like about Fobel's recipe is how he marinates the meat. On the bottom of a flat container lay out thin slices of tomato, onion, jalapeno and garlic and some chopped cilantro. (Leave in the stems; cilantro and parsley stems are just as flavorful as the leaves. In fact you can use all stems here and save the leaves for other applications.) Down goes the meat and then another layer of vegetables on top. For the second layer I used my pickled jalapenos and added a little salt to release juices. Seal it up and refrigerate overnight. It infuses the beef with some nice flavors and tenderizes it a bit. I've also done this with chicken breasts pounded flat which works well, too.

The salsa is just:
1 large juice tomato, 1/2-inch dice
1/8 cup chopped cilantro
1 whole scallion, minced
1/2 jalapeno, fresh or pickled, minced
1 Tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper

Mix and let sit on the counter for an hour for the flavors to meld.

Fobel actually serves this as whole steaks dressed with the salsa but I always slice it up for fajitas. If you're going to do it as beefsteak ranchero, Fobel suggests matching it with corn tortillas, pinto beans, corn-on-the-cob and grilled scallions. If you're going with fajitas, you'll need flour tortillas and grilled onions and peppers.

Since I don't have a grill, I toss the onions and peppers in a high-smoke-point oil and a bit of salt and then throw them into a piping hot cast-iron skillet. Let them sit long enough to start to scorch, stir them up and let them sit again. Maybe a third time, maybe not, depending on if they've gotten tender yet.

But before you do that, take the beef out of the marinade, pick off all the bits of cilantro and onion that stuck on and pat it dry. Cut it up into bite-sized pieces (on your special beef cutting board of course). Thin slices against the grain is best but I went with a chunkier option. That was a mistake as the results were a little chewy. Sprinkle on a little salt as there wasn't any in the marinade and you're ready to add them to the cast iron pan when the vegetables are done. Less than a minute per side should do the trick but the exact timing depends on how thick your pieces are.

Serve in flour tortillas with the onions and peppers and a spoonful of salsa. A dollop of guacamole's not a bad idea either if you've got some handy. And that's a pretty tasty fajita right there. The best bit is how the juices from the beef and the liquid from the salsa mix into a flavorful sauce that coats each bite and leaks out of the bottom of the tortilla over your hand. That second part's not so good, but the first part makes up for it.

One issue I do have with this recipe is the waste of all those vegetables in the marinade. They're a little mushy from the night in the refrigerator but there ought to be some use for them. I decided to run them through the blender and then boiled the mix on the stove-top for a couple minutes as there is some raw beef bits still in there. The result isn't the most pleasant color but it's got lovely flavors of onion, pepper and cilantro in a tomato base. It could live to marinate another day or it could work as a dip for chips. It's a nice contrast with the more tomato-forward flavor of the fresh salsa. I'll have to see how it tastes after it's been chilled before I figure out what I want to do with it.

Turns out when it's cold it loses all its zip. So, along with the leftover fajita bits and some pickled carrots, both roughly chopped, some white beans that have been sitting in the fridge, pepper jack cheese and rest of the (no-longer so) fresh salsa, it's topping some nachos. Not bad, but Garden of Eatin' organic corn chips sure go soggy quick. I should have trusted to the agrobusiness complex to engineer a better chip. If there's anything they know, it's designing corn products.