CSA week four - A couple of compicated salads

I don't think it struck me until just now, after the fact, that this week's CSA share (the half-share at least) is better suited to salads than cooking. I thought it was just my slow recovery from various ills that making me not feel like cooking, but with grapefruit, curly parsley, avocado, green pepper and tomato, this is just a raw foods sort of week.

As these are salads, there isn't much to say or illustrate preparation-wise. Chop everything up, mix it together, make the dressing and toss. Not much too it. The aforementioned complication comes from the sheer number of ingredients in each of these dishes. I only made minor tweaks in each so with no further ado, here are the recipes:

Italian Parsley Salad

Adapted from “Roast Chicken and Other Stories” by Simon Hopkinson (Hyperion, 2007)

Ingredients:
1/3 cup soft, fleshy black olives, pitted and coarsely chopped
1 bunch parsley, coarsely chopped
1 large shallot, chopped
1 ounce capers, rinsed of salt or brine
1 large garlic clove, finely chopped
7 large anchovy fillets, chopped

Dressing:
Freshly grated zest of 1 lemon
1/4 cup olive oil
freshly ground black pepper
juice of 1 lemon
salt, to taste [probably not a lot]

thin slivers of Parmesan cheese
crackers or biscuits or toast or bruschetta or suchlike

Mix the salad ingredients. Mix the dressing ingredients. Mix them together. Top with the Parmesan and serve with the crackers.

This has a pleasing combination of flavors that blend together in a pretty classic way and compliment the parsley while still letting it be the center of the salad. Both the texture and the somewhat less strident bitterness of flat-leaf parsley would work better; That's probably why the original recipe called for it. Still, it's still not bad with the curly parsley. The crackers are important in toning down the intensity of flavors, but it's still a bit much to eat on its own. It's better as a side dish to a straightforward piece of roasted meat, I think.



Avocado shrimp Thai salad

This is an unsigned recipe from Recipe4Living which is a community recipe website so there's no way to know where the recipe actually came from. No other versions of it online are immediately obvious so I can't track it down that way. They don't claim association with any old media source of recipes or have any chefs on staff either so far as I can see. I guess it'll have to remain a mystery unless one of their editors notices this post and wants to clear things up in the comments.

Ingredients:
1 hass or lula avocado, peeled, pitted and cubed
1 fluid ounce lime juice
1/2 pound shrimp, peeled and deveined, poached and chopped if they're larger than 'large'
1 large meaty tomato, [whatever sort our CSA tomatoes are is perfect for this sort of thing] coarsely chopped
1 1/2 green onions, sliced lengthwise and separated into four pieces then chopped into 2-inch lengths
1/2 small green bell pepper, diced
1/2 small red bell pepper, diced
1/4 cup bean sprouts [I left these out as the grocery that usually has them didn't this week. They would have been a nice addition even in that small amount.]
1/8 cup mint leaves, coarsely chopped

Dressing:
1/4 cup lime juice [You can get this out of one lime if you rough it up a bit, microwave it for 20 seconds or so and then ream it out with a fork.]
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1/2 cup vegetable oil [That's clearly way too much so I used only 1/3 cup which seemed to emulsify well with the amount of water-based ingredients.]
1/2 Tablespoon sesame oil
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 inch knob ginger, grated
1/2 teaspoon brown sugar
zest from 1/2 lime
1 pinch crushed red pepper flakes
salt to taste

Mix the salad ingredients. Mix the dressing ingredients. Mix them together. Serve.


Now this is pretty darn good. There are so many different flavors and textures going on in here that every forkful is a different combination. Each starts with the bite of the dressing, sesame and lime foremost, blending as the crunch, creaminess or chew of the ingredients releases their individual flavors. The tartness gets to be a bit much after a full serving, though. I think that's because there is way too much dressing here. I think halving the amount would probably balance things a little better.

CSA week two - Chocolate and roasted avocado ice cream

The combination of chocolate and avocado is unusual, but not entirely unheard of. I understand that chocolate-avocado milkshakes are common in Viet Nam and Indonesia. I can see how the creaminess of the avocado could work; as for the flavor, well, I've got a Monroe so it hasn't got much. Using it as is would have been the easy way out, but I decided to try to intensify the flavor and then see what I could do with it.

I chopped up the avocado, sprinkled it with brown sugar for caramelization--I considered adding a bit of butter as I would if I were caramelizing bananas, but it's got plenty of fat of its own--and baked it at 400 degrees for 30 minutes, stirring a couple times. If you compare the before and after pictures, you can see that it's shrunk considerably. The flavor isn't, I think, a lot more intense, but it has transformed. There are a lot of warm, toasty notes now.

Still, the cup of caramelized avocado wasn't really enough to flavor a full batch of ice cream so I looked around for some additions that would pair well without overwhelming it. And also I wanted to use up some scraps left in the refrigerator. Here's what I came up with:

Ingredients:

1 cup caramelized avocado mush
1/4 cup pineapple
1/4 cup coconut milk
1 1/4 cup milk
1 cup cream
3 Tablespoons dutch process cocoa
1/3 cup light brown sugar

I blended all that together and put it in the back of the refrigerator to chill. The texture seems about right at this point so that's good, but I'm still concerned the flavor isn't bold enough to survive freezing. I may add some spices after I taste the fully chilled mixture.
...
Actually, the flavor intensified, but it did turn somewhat bitter. I added another quarter cup of sugar to compensate.

So, to churning. It froze very quickly. Look how it glommed onto the dasher. I've never seen quite the like before and I don't think that bodes well for the texture of the final result. I was hoping the fat in the avocado would help keep things creamy, but I don't see that happening. The fat's not there in the mouthfeel either. It feels like sherbet despite all the cream that went into it. Here's hoping that ripening will help.
...


And here's the final product. The fact that I didn't bother to deal with the freezer burn is probably a biasing factor, but I think despite that, you can see that that it's not terribly attractive. The texture could be creamier--it's definitely more sherbet than ice cream rich--but it melts smooth if you let it warm up out of the freezer for a while before serving. I'm going to blame the roasting here as there are plenty of avocado ice cream recipes that don't appear to turn out like this.

The flavor starts with cocoa, clearly not intense or creamy enough to really feel like chocolate, with a little tropical fruitiness rounding it out and fades into bitter roasted notes not dissimilar to those you get with very dark chocolate. There's definitely a note of avocado there at the end, too, but difficult to identify if you don't know what you're looking for. It might just be an off note if you're expecting straight chocolate (upon which this is definitely no improvement). It just seems like cheap nasty chocolate ice cream. I'm going to take this back home before it ruins my reputation around the office.

Southwestern ham and shrimp potstickers

I can't really explain how this dish came to exist. I started with a recipe for corn and prawn fritters, tweaked it a bit, tweaked it some more and ended up making something else entirely. I haven't really got a recipe; I just threw things together that seemed to make sense.

The potsticker filling has two components: solid bits and a creamy medium for them to float in.

For the solid bits I used finely chopped ham (actually Canadian bacon browned to get the best flavor), scallions, cilantro, hot pepper and corn. About a half cup of each.




For the medium I used half a small Florida avocado, five extra large shrimp, one egg, salt, pepper, chili powder and cumin blended until smooth.


After I mixed them together I got concerned about how the texture would react to heat so I decided I needed to add some cheese as an extra binder. Monterey Jack would have been the proper choice, but havarti was the only melty cheese I had on hand so it sufficed.

Dollops went into potsticker wrappers (store bought even though I could probably make them without much trouble now that I've got a well-functioning pasta machine). Because the texture was a little loose I had trouble using a full Tablespoon as I could with a traditional meat-paste filling. I ended using about half that most of the time and still having trouble keeping it all in.

Practice makes passable, so I managed. They aren't the prettiest potstickers around, but they'll do. And they cooked up fine in the traditional reverse-braise method.



Here's a look inside:

You can see how the filling's solidified nicely. Better than I had hoped. And now to try one...not bad at all. A little eggier in flavor than you'd expect and a bit noodly where the dough's separated from the filling, neither of which are really bad things. Otherwise, the Southwestern flavors come through with the corn and ham up front, some herb and spice, and maybe just a hint of the shrimp. Tasty and not nearly as fusion-cuisine weird as I feared. Could use a dip, though. A fresh tomato salsa or a remoulade would be just the thing. I'll have to remember that for when I cook up the rest.

I just did a little research and found that Southwestern potstickers are not an unheard of bar food, but, from what I can see, they're just tradional meaty potstickers with different spices. My conconction is a different thing entirely. Well, good. Maybe I should give them a different name, though.

Roasted avocados

I know I promised more serious cooking, and I do have a half dozen post-worthy recipes lined up, but I was delayed by having to go into work on a day off and then unexpectedly finding a pork shoulder at Whole Foods. I was tempted to do something new with it, but decided to make rillettes the same as last time as I appreciated the flexibility the minimalist seasoning gave me for altering flavors after the fact.

I got home from work today too late to start the lengthy stew I had planned, but I did have time to try the kitchen science experiment I mentioned last time. I kept things pretty simple. I used one of the Tonnage avocados I got at the CSA yesterday. This cultivar is smaller than your usual Florida avocado, but no improvement in flavor or texture. I cut it in half, removed the pit, placed in cut-side-up in a baking dish, sprinkled with salt and chili powder, spritzed with olive oil and baked at 350 degrees. I checked at 15 minute intervals for changes, ending at 45 minutes. There wasn't much change visually, but there were notable changes in both flavor and texture.



Compared to a control avocado, the flavor has lost the bright high notes and is now warmer and more complex--roastier, I suppose. It's no more intense, but because the meat has softened to a silky panna cotta consistency, it coats the mouth. You get more flavor per bite and rich lingering aftertaste. The traditional accompaniments--the spices, lime juice, cilantro--are all high notes so I found the roasted avocado a much more synergistic pairing. The one webpage I found with information on cooking Florida avocados warned that they might turn bitter, but I didn't experience that at all. Overall, I found it to be a substantial improvement at least for Mexican flavors; I don't think it would work in sushi so well. But maybe it's just me. Someone else ought to try it and see what they think.

OK, a real interesting recipe next time.

Avocado deviled eggs

I just searched on Google and found that I was about the billionth person to come up with this idea, but I swear it just occurred to me on its own. Most of the recipes I found kind of miss the point by just adding the avocado to a standard deviled egg formula when it can easily replace the mayonnaise entirely. Maybe this is the one case where watery Florida avocados are actually superior and Hasses can't sub in so well? It might be interesting to compare and contrast.

I should probably back up here and defend the idea of deviled eggs in general. I've got to admit that I'd be skeptical too if I, at the prompting at a post on TheKitchn and, yes, a desire to try the steamer function on my new rice cooker, had my first homemade deviled egg last week. I was amazed at how different it was from the buffet table atrocities I've encountered before.

The key, I think, is in properly cooking the egg. I used my steamer this time, but I usually coddle them--poaching in the shell, really--by carefully adjusting the temperature so water stays just under a boil. That keeps the whites tender. The second important aspect is pulling the eggs from the heat a few minutes early to get them at the mollet stage with the whites just firm and the yolks moist and maybe a little wet in the center. Eggs done this way are great as is, but work really well in deviled eggs too.

Beyond the properly prepared egg, there's the choice of what to mix into the yolk. There are as many variations here as there are in egg salad recipes. Mostly the same variations, actually, now that I think of it. The basic version is to mix with each yolk: a Tablespoon of mayonnaise, a teaspoon of mustard, a little salt, a little pepper and a touch of something acid. Add a sprinkle of paprika on top to justify calling it deviled. This is obviously rich, but it's also just bursting with flavor if it's well seasoned and not too thinned out with mayo.



As you've probably figured out by now, my questionably innovative innovation here is to leave out the mayo and instead use a Tablespoon of avocado. How well this works depends on the moisture content of your yolks and your avocado so some adjustments may be necessary. Unless it's a particularly old avocado, it probably won't want to completely mix in with the other ingredients, but, for me, the little bits of recalcitrant avocado add some textural interest. But I like my mashed potatoes lumpy, so take that for what it's worth. Beyond that, the texture is indistinguishable from using mayonnaise, just beautifully luscious and creamy. As for the flavor, mild Florida avocado is hard to spot, but I think there's a little something there, and, of course, the greenish tinge is obvious.

I suppose there's a mild health benefit to using, but a Tablespoon of mayonnaise more or less is hardly a big deal. I suppose I'm just enthusiastic about deviled eggs right now and happy to have found another avocado recipe that Florida avocados don't screw up.

Chilled pea and avocado soup with shrimp and corn salad

No great story behind this I'm afraid. Given the giganto avocados we get here in Florida and our CSA's insistence on giving us several at a time, I'm always looking for avocado-centric dishes. I stumbled across a recipe for pea and avocado soup, found a handful more (which means that this is a known recipe. I never thought of putting peas and avocado together, much less in a cold soup, but it must be common somewhere or have gone through a fad of popularity at some point. Have any of you heard of this before?), picked through them for ideas and worked out my own, rather more elaborate, version.

Ingredients:
1/2 cup tiny shrimp or crab meat
1/2 cup sweet corn kernels
1/2 medium tomato, seeded and chopped
an equal amount of roasted red pepper as the tomato, chopped
1 small handful cilantro, stems and leaves separated. Leaves chopped.
1/2 lime, juiced
extra-virgin olive oil
salt
vinegar-based hot sauce

olive oil
1/2 of a medium onion (or a few scallions), chopped
1 jalapeño or other meaty, not too hot, pepper, chopped
2 cloves garlic
the cilantro stems from above
1/2 teaspoon cumin
2 cups chicken stock (homemade is, as always, much preferred)
2 cups small sweet peas
1 large avocado, chopped or just scooped out if it's as old as the ones I've got
1/3 cup sour cream
salt and pepper

1. Mix the shrimp, corn, tomato, red pepper and cilantro leaves in a small bowl. Salt well, dress with copious amounts of lime juice and olive oil and hot sauce to taste. Make it a little hotter than you'd like, actually. Set aside in the refrigerator.

2. Heat a Tablespoon of olive oil in a small pan over medium heat. When it's hot, add the onion, pepper and garlic with a sizable pinch of salt. Cook for four minutes, turning down the heat if they start to brown, add the cilantro stems and cook for one minute more. Take off the heat and stir in the cumin. If your peas need cooking, use a larger pan and add them after the first minute.

3. Scrape pan into a blender, add stock and peas. Blend smooth. Add avocado and sour cream and blend again. Salt and pepper (and cumin) to taste. Also adjust the texture with a bit more stock or avocado if you've got them to hand, water and sour cream if you don't. Some recipes call for straining it, but if it's chunky, blend it some more instead.


Serve soup topped with a sizable spoonful of the salad and a good drizzle of the dressing. Maybe with a chunk of hearty brown bread.



The soup tastes of peas and avocados naturally, sweet and creamy rounded out with touches of savor and spice from the additional ingredients and a slow burn in the background from the pepper. Each component of the salad, which separate out so you get one or two per spoonful, is a bright burst of flavor--salty, acid and spicy on top of its clearly delineated individual character. It's just gorgeous stuff. My expectations were far exceeded, here.

CSA week 14 - Cold avocado, arugula and spring onion soup

I've adapted this from this recipe for cold avocado, spinach and scallion soup, but the only ingredient I didn't change was the lime so I'm comfortable calling this recipe mine.

Ingredients:
1 Monroe avocado (or 2 Hass), roughly chopped
1 lime, juiced
the middle bit of a spring onion (or 4 scallions), sliced
3 ounces (by weight) arugula leaves without a whole lot of stems (or one pack of baby spinach)
2 1/2 cups shrimp stock or broth
4 sea scallops, brined and dried
1 slice bacon, chopped
several grape tomatoes, chopped
a few drops of hot sauce
salt and pepper

1. Fry bacon over medium-low heat until crisp. Remove from pan, turn up heat and sear scallops in the bacon fat. Let both cool.

2. Chill all the ingredients.

3. When everything is good and cold, put avocado, lime juice, spring onion and arugula into food processor, holding a little bit back for garnish if you'd like. Add a little broth and process out the big chunks. Slowly add more broth while processing until the soup is to the texture you'd like. I aimed at smooth and creamy myself, but I could see that you might like it with a little texture or a little thinner. This will take a couple minutes so there's plenty of time to check and adjust seasoning as you go along.

4. Top soup with scallops, bacon, tomatoes and any of the green stuff you saved. Serve with toast spread with cream cheese. Makes two large servings or four soup courses.


Hmm, that's surprisingly good stuff. It's not quite creamy enough that you think there's actual cream in there, but it's impressively close. The avocado is quite mild so the flavor is mostly spring onion and arugula. I was afraid the processing would bring out the bitterness of both, but it's just nicely peppery with a little oniony burn. You could make this with baby spinach and sweet onion, but it wouldn't have any character.

It needs a good bit of salt, pepper and acid to bring the flavors out. It would be easy to overdo it and have the hot sauce and lime be primary flavors, which wouldn't be bad if you wanted to take the recipe in a Southwestern direction I suppose. I'd use chicken broth, leave out the scallops, and add a little cilantro, cumin and top with grated montery jack cheese if I were going to do that.

The tomatoes, bacon and scallops all match well, but the scallops stand out as particularly good. I'll have to remember to pair scallops with arugula in the future.

Overall, pretty nice and really easy, especially since you could prepare everything beforehand and just blend it at the last minute. And you can impress guests since it seems pretty sophisticated if you don't make smiley-faces in the bowls.

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 six - Broiled canistel with avocado mayonaise

If you've been searching for a palatable canistel dish don't get your hopes up too high here as this is more of a science experiment than an actual recipe. If you have been searching you've probably came across the serving suggestion of canistel with salt, pepper, lemon and mayonnaise. I don't know about you, but to me that sounds entirely appalling. And yet I didn't have any better ideas and it's not like it's going to waste a lot of other perfectly good ingredients so I thought I'd see what I could do with it.

Another experimental element today is pictures taken with the proper camera I've finally bought. I rather expect picture quality to get worse for a while until I figure out what I'm doing with the thing.

Let's start with the avocado mayo. There are a fair number of avocado mayonnaise recipes out there but they generally fall into two categories, either glorified avocado purees or standard mayonnaise with some avocado blended in. What I'm doing here instead is using the fat in the avocado to substitute for the vegetable oil in a standard mayonnaise recipe. I don't usually go to science blogs for my recipes, but that's where you'll find this one; it's from a blog called Adventures in Ethics and Science.

I whisked an egg with the juice of one lemon and some Dijon mustard to act as an emulsifier. Then I blended that with half of a Monroe avocado. The result was too thin and tasted mostly of mustard and lemon so I added another quarter avocado and gave it a full minute in the food processor. Now it's got the right creamy texture and is starting to take on that distinctive light tanginess of actual mayonnaise mixed with the avocado flavor. Not bad at all, but I'll have to make some tuna salad to make a really fair judgment. There's still a bit more mustard flavor than I'd like, though, so next time I'll have to use a chemical emulsifier instead.

Step two is the canistel. Beyond soups and pies the only cooking instructions I found for canistel were to "lightly bake". I have no idea what that means. I decided to broil it instead to a) see if it would melt, catch on fire, explode or what and b) see how it tastes with a bit of browning.

I cut my two canistels in half, pried out the seeds, scooped out the seed pods, sprinkled them with a bit of salt and pepper and drizzled with a little olive oil. Since I'm experimenting here I thought I'd try some additional flavors. The canistel soup recipe we got in the newsletter is flavored with Chipotle adobo sauce which I happen to have handy so I spread a little of that on one canistel half; The second I brushed with a jerk marinade; The third with a tamarind chili sauce; and the fourth I left plain as a control.

I neglected to time how long they spent under the broiler. I just waited until they started smelling cooked and the sauces had dried into glazes. They didn't brown as well as I had hoped but the bits that did got crispy and caramelized so they're going closer to the heating element if I do this again.

The broiled casinstel didn't do anything alarming to my disappointment. It firmed up and dried out to a texture somewhere between russet potato, winter squash and Play-Doh. It was better than that makes it sound and it sure beats the gritty pudding texture it has raw. On the other hand, it definitely needed the mayo to moisten. Interestingly, the peel, which you wouldn't want to eat raw, is of a piece with the flesh cooked so there was no point in not eating it whole. The flavor has become milder, losing the sickly sweetness and now isn't too far off from a yam. The avocado mayo is a nice accompaniment. Probably better than real mayo I think.

As for the sauces:
The adobo pairs nicely with the canistel and goes with the avocado mayo too.
The jerk not so much.
The tamarind chili sauce is pretty similar to the adobo and works well with the canistel but clashes a bit with the avocado mayo.
The plain needed something so I added some Pickapeppa sauce. The fruity tanginess marries with the canistel and isn't bad with the mayo, but it feels incomplete. I think it needs meat. But that's usually my reaction to Pickapeppa sauce. I think there's the start of a full dish there that I'll work on if I get more canistel.

So, overall I've had better dinners, but that could have gone a lot worse. If you're at a loss as to what to do with your canistels and/or avocados, it's worth a try.

CSA week six - Cobb salad soup

I may have exaggerated a bit when I called this idea "clever" on Saturday. Really, once you've come up with the basic idea of creating soup versions of famous salads by mixing the dressings into lettuce soup and garnishing with the other salad components different varieties don't require a lot of imagination.

I'm not sure the original idea is all that clever either as a quick search on-line finds a few other people who independently came up with it. Either way, I made cobb salad soup today and here it is.

Traditionally, cobb salad should be made with iceberg lettuce, watercress, chickory and romaine which makes for a fairly bitter mix. I used the lettuce I've got: pei tsai and, um, assorted.

I kept the soup really simple since it would be getting a big flavor boost from the dressing. I just wilted a pound of lettuce in butter and olive oil, added two cups chicken stock and a cup of water and simmered for ten minutes. Once it had cooled I transferred it to my food processor, discovered that the liquid level was too high when it started pouring out over my work-table, transferred it to my blender, cleaned up the mess, and blended it to a not-too-smooth texture.

When I made the caesar salad soup I mixed in the dressing during the blending but the extra time it took to make sure I had everything well incorporated meant I blended the lettuce smoother than I really wanted. This time I mixed the dressing in by hand afterward.

Wikipedia, and some other references I checked agree that the original cobb salad dressing is:
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1/4 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
2 teaspoons salt
3/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
3/4 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1/4 teaspoon dry English mustard
1 small clove garlic, finely minced
1/4 cup full-flavored olive oil
3/4 cup salad oil
plus up to a 1/4 cup water if the dressing seems too oily. I cut the recipe in half and left out the water since it's going into soup. Half was probably a little too much, but not by a lot.

And then there's the other components:
boiled chicken breast (I don't keep chicken breasts around so I steamed a thigh)
diced tomatoes
bits of bacon
diced avocado
chopped hard-cooked eggs (I prefer the slightly softer mollet)
crumbled Roquefort cheese
chopped chives
and some recipes include baby corn but I decided against it.

It's usually presented with each of the components in its own distinct sector of the plate on top of the lettuce. I tried that with the soup but half of them sank.

But, presentation aside, it's pretty darn good. The soup itself is light, fresh and tangy. And every spoonful has a different mixture of the garnishes with a unique combination of textures and flavors. The mildly tart creaminess of the Roquefort matches very well with the soup. I expected the bacon to be another stand-out, but the cool bite of a cube of tomato and the fattiness of the avocado and egg yolk are surprisingly good and overshadowed it.

Overall, a nice little dish but kind of a pain with all of those ingredients to prepare. I'd recommend it to any of you who have a sous chef to help out.

CSA week five - Things not to do with grapefruit

I tried a couple interesting things with the grapefruit this week neither of which I thought were entirely successful, but you may like them better than I did so I thought I'd post them up for comments or at least as a warning.

First up, broiled grapefruit. I had never heard of this before I stumbled across a recipe a few days ago but the same simple recipe shows up for page after page if you Google for it so maybe it's just me. It's simple enough: just pre-slice a grapefruit half, cutting out the pithy bit in the middle and separating the flesh from the rind, top with a bit of butter and a bit of sugar (Brown sugar is popular. I tried vanilla sugar.) and maybe a bit of spice, and broil for five minutes until browned around the edges. Serve optionally topped with sliced fruit or, in one recipe I just found, a chicken liver.

It looks pretty good but I found that the broiling cooked all of the bitterness and most of the sourness out of the fruit and what's left just isn't terribly interesting. Why cook a grapefruit in a way that destroys all its grapefruitiness? If you don't like grapefruit, eat an orange. Have any of you had this and can explain the appeal to me?


And second, scallop and shrimp ceviche with grapefruit and avocado. In contrast with the first preparation, scallop, grapefruit and avocado is a pretty rare combination. I only had half a grapefruit left by now so I marinated the shrimp and scallops in lemon and lime juice before adding finely chopped cilantro, shallot and jalapeño, grated ginger and olive oil for another hour's marination. And then, just before serving, in goes the diced avocado and the grapefruit supremes. I added an ear's worth of CSA corn too which added some nice color. In this case the bitterness of the grapefruit overwhelmed and ruined a perfectly good ceviche. Maybe the author (Tina Jones, it says here) assumed I'd be using one of those new-fangled grapefruit with most of the bitter bred out or at least something less uncompromising than what we got. I'll try it again tomorrow; maybe a night in the refrigerator will mellow it out.

[Added tomorrow: No, it really didn't. I ended up tossing most of it.]

CSA week four - Seared scallops with bacon, tomato, and avocado puree

I should have just wrapped a scallop with bacon, seared it, dropped it on a slice of tomato and topped it with a dollop of mashed avocado. Instead I followed this overcomplicated-to-no-great-advantage recipe from Martha Stewart.

Ingredients

Serves 2 to 4

* 2 teaspoons freshly squeezed lime juice
* 1/2 teaspoon agave nectar or corn syrup (I've been looking for something to do with the bottle of agave nectar I bought on a whim a while ago.)
* 1/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
* Coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper
* 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

* 1 medium Hass avocado, pitted (I used a Monroe)
* 1 teaspoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
* 2 tablespoons olive oil
* 2 tablespoons Brown Butter, cooled

* 2 slices bacon, cut into 1/4-inch-long pieces
* 6 to 8 sea scallops
* 1 tablespoon butter

* Coarse salt and freshly ground pepper
* 1/2 cup red or yellow cherry tomatoes, halved (I chopped up one of the CSA tomatoes instead. Not nearly as nice in either flavor or texture, really.)
* 2 lovage leaves or celery leaves, torn (I used arugula)
* Fleur de sel

Directions

1. In a small bowl, whisk together lime juice, agave nectar, vanilla, and a pinch each of salt and pepper. Slowly drizzle in extra-virgin olive oil, while continuing to whisk, until an emulsion has formed. Set vinaigrette aside.





2. Remove flesh from avocado and place in the jar of a blender along with 1 teaspoon salt, lemon juice, 2 tablespoons water, olive oil, and brown butter; blend until smooth.

3. Place bacon in a medium skillet over medium heat. Cook bacon, turning, until fat has been rendered, 5 to 7 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, remove bacon from skillet; transfer to a paper-towel-lined plate.

4. Pour off bacon fat from skillet and discard. Return skillet to stove and place over high heat. Season scallops with salt and pepper; add to skillet. Sear scallops 1 minute, add butter and turn scallops; sear 1 minute more. Remove pan from heat.

5. Spread a spoonful of avocado puree on each serving plate. Divide scallops evenly between plates; drizzle with vinaigrette. In a medium bowl, add bacon, tomatoes, lovage, and remaining vinaigrette; toss to combine. Divide evenly between plates, season with fleur de sel, and serve immediately.

First published: May 2008

Some presentation, huh?


The seared scallops are good just on their own. No complaints there. Actually, I'm kind of surprised at how well I cooked them considering how little experience I have working with sea scallops.

With bacon: better. But you knew that.

With avocado goop: about the same. It tastes of avocado, brown butter and olive oil and it's OK but it adds a lot of fat the dish doesn't need for an unremarkable result. And there was a whole heck of a lot of it. Maybe a medium Hass avocado is smaller than I thought. I used a bit more than half of a medium Monroe avocado. Even with the waterier Monroe it really didn't want to blend. The blades would clear out a space and whir away under a dome of half-mushed avocado pieces. There was a lot of stopping and starting a stirring and poking before I got something reasonable out of it. It would only be worse with a more solid Hass so I don't how it was supposed to work or how the flavors were supposed to balance out.

With the salad: eh, why not?

With the vinaigrette: blagh. Oh, I just realized I switched the quarter teaspoon for the agave nectar with the half teaspoon for the vanilla. That would explain the bitterness and intense lingering unpleasantness of the vanilla clashing with everything else on the plate. It doesn't help that the new brand of olive oil I tried turned out to be pretty bitter too.

Ah well. Even if I hadn't screwed it up, I can't imagine the world's best vinaigrette elevating this dish into something worth the trouble. Worth a try, though.

CSA - Lemon basil avocado sorbet

After my failure with last week's avocado sherbet I wanted to jump back on the horse, but a) other than the problems with the lavender I was happy with the results in general and I wasn't interested in doing it again immediately and b) I didn't have quite enough avocado left. So instead I decided to add a bit of avocado to lemon sorbet to see what happens. I've never made a citrus sorbet before so that was interesting in itself as well.

My initial research turned up lots of different lemon sorbet recipes on-line which varied surprisingly widely on how much lemon and how much sugar to use. With the variation in lemons' size and flavor and not having tried this before I was at a bit of a loss as to what to do. Lebovitz's Perfect Scoop hasn't let me down yet so that seemed a safe starting point. He was one of the few recipe authors who described the resulting flavor--"tangy"--plus his was the only recipe that specified mixing in the lemon juice at the last minute. I don't know how that would be important, but it shows he's been thinking, anyway.

So I started with 1/2 cup of water, a cup of sugar and the zest from one really big lemon. I heated that up until the sugar was dissolved. Then I poured that into a blender along with about 3/4 cup of avocado and enough more water to bring the volume up to 2 1/2 cups.

After blending, I was a bit surprised to see that the mix wasn't letting go of its air bubbles. That uneven reflection you can see in the picture is from the knobbly bubbly surface of the mix. I had no idea avocado was a foam stabilizer. This was a good sign.

While that was chilling, it was time to get a cup of juice. Or it would be if I hadn't decided that I wanted all the pulp too. Most sorbets get some additional texture from the solid bits of the fruit and I wanted to add that here if I could. So I ended up doing some careful microsurgery to peel a few lemons and either peel away the connective membranes or cut supremes. Once I had a cup I decided not to run it through the blender as I had originally planned. I liked the idea of little packets of pure lemon juice mixed in with the sweetened sorbet around it. So I just mushed up lemon bits to release about half the juice but leave the rest encapsulated. And that got chilled too.

The next day they got mixed and into the churn. This is when I got an inkling that I may have made a mistake. The freezing process, usually so elegant for sorbets, was ugly and clumpy. Who really wants texture in a sorbet anyway? Well, too late to back out now.

To add a bit more interest to the flavor, just before the mix was done churning I added a quarter cup of chopped fresh basil. Visually, the flecks of green are quite nice, but it's more to chew on which, again, might not have been the best idea. But too late now.

After churning, I ripened it in the freezer and here's the results. I still like the look, but, yeah, the texture isn't great. There is nice smooth sorbet, but it's got chunks of frozen lemon, bits of loose pulp and little leaves floating in it. I'm of half a mind to melt it down, run it through the blender and churn it again.
...
Now I'm of a full mind to do it.








So, before:








after:









and afterer:










and even afterer:


The texture is much improved with that perfect creaminess that I'm still amazed that sorbet can achieve. Maybe it's frozen up a little more solidly than your average sorbet. There wasn't any alcohol included so that hurt it but maybe the avocado helped? Further investigation is required.

The basil flavor is now well distributed and maybe there's a hint of avocado there too. You can tell that straight lemon sorbet would be like a piece of hard candy: just citrus and sweet melting on the tongue. The basil makes it significantly more interesting. The flavors aren't blended into anything synergistic--the lemon and basil are clearly distinguishable--but they go well together and take the edge off each other. Italian sweet basil would probably have worked better than the Thai basil I've got. Lemon basil would probably have worked better still. But I've got what I've got and what I've got is certainly plenty nice on a hot Miami day. I may revisit this when the CSA supplies some Italian basil. Maybe I'll use lime instead. ...Argh, I just did a quick Google and found that Jaime Oliver does a basil lime sorbet and Emeril does a basil lemon. OK, I've been saving a perfectly unique ice cream idea and it's going up next in the line-up. Watch this space.