Cheap, Fast, and Tasty!

Winners have been drawn!

noreply@blogger.com (Genie) — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 07:48:00 +0000

None of my Blogger peeps won, sadly. But congrats to the winners all the same. Can't wait for them to get their free Country Bob's All Purpose Sauce and try it out. It was a LOT of fun doing this giveaway and I hope to get more opportunities in the future to do more.

I know I haven't posted many recipes lately, but I haven't stopped cooking. I've just been too dang hot (summer heat in Texas is exhausting) and tired to photograph and journal what I've been cooking. However, I've got two recipes to blog about soon--the photos have already been taken. One is Nigella Lawson's chocolate Guinness cake. Oh my gosh, y'all, that stuff is GOOOOOOD. The other is Bayoudog Kingfish. I don't like fish much (unless it's sashimi) and I have never acquired a taste for curry so this recipe blew my mind as it's cooked fish in a very light and extremely easy to make curry sauce. It's plate licking good. We make it alot now--had to find SOMETHING to do with all the Kingfish hubby came home with a few months ago after his trip to the coast. So far, this is the only recipe I've liked the Kingfish in. And we've yet to get tired of it.

So, see you soon!

Country Bob's All Purpose Sauce Giveaway

noreply@blogger.com (Genie) — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 18:34:00 +0000

Officially ending entries into the Country Bob's give-away. Drawing to be done tonight!

Free Giveaway of Country Bob's All Purpose Sauce!

noreply@blogger.com (Genie) — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 15:45:00 +0000

I'll be doing a random drawing for two winners at the end of this week. To get your name in the pot, just leave a comment here or email me. This drawing is for people living in the U.S. only, please. Each winner will receive two bottles of Country Bob's All Purpose Sauce directly from the company.

To read more about the product, check out Their Website.

It's some tasty stuff, I promise! Big thanks to Al at Country Bob's for sending me two bottles of the sauce and letting me offer a this give-away. How fun to be able to do this!

Free stuff from Country Bob's! Bless them.

noreply@blogger.com (Genie) — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 02:59:00 +0000

In July Al Malekovic from Country Bob's sent me an email asking if I'd review their Country Bob's All Purpose Sauce. I was delighted at the opportunity and accepted. Within a few days I received two free bottles of this sweet and tangy sauce.

I have to apologize to Al for taking so long to do this review. Sorry Al! But thanks so much for sending me the sauce! And for your patience.

I tried one of the recipes from the site, a lasagna like dish calling for Country Bob's sauce instead of an Italian tomato sauce.

I can't say I particularly liked the dish. Not with this sauce in it. That was hardly the sauce's fault. Truth be told, however, that I ate enough of it to give myself a belly ache. A barbecue/steak sauce in an Italian dish doesn't really work for me. We didn't hate it and, in fact, hubby ended up eating all of the leftovers.

But I definitely won't use it in an Italian type casserole again. The sauce wasn't bad, I just didn't feel it belonged with mozzarella, cottage cheese, and Parmesan. It sure was pretty though, and very very rich.

I still had one bottle left and knew exactly what I wanted to make with it. Sloppy Joe's! I felt it would be perfect for that.

Before making this, however, I did use a bit of the sauce from the second bottle on some of our Pinto Farm pasture raised grass fed beef. I never use steak sauce. I don't care for it. But I have to say that I really had to use a lot of restraint not to use the rest of the sauce on more steaks over the next two months. It was really good. Sweet, tangy, mildly spicy. It made a to-die-for steak sauce and I was dismayed that our grass fed beef could be improved by anything besides a little salt, pepper, and my propane grill. Our beef is really flavorful.

I generally avoid sauces with sugar in them because I have hypoglycemia and once I have a little something sweet, I want a LOT of something sweet and Country Bob's sauce does have corn syrup as well as sugar and molasses in it. Not high fructose corn syrup, just so you know. This was probably the one thing that kept me from using it all up on our rib eyes and sirloins. Honestly, it was GOOD. Hubby loved it too, we both licked the remaining sauce off our plates the night we taste tested it on our steaks. Well, I used my finger. Hubby is a little less shy about getting all the good stuff off his plate.

But, tonight, I FINALLY got around to making the Sloppy Joe's. I never actually make Sloppy Joe's because I've never particularly liked them. I had a feeling this sauce would make a difference for me and I was right.

The Recipe:
1 bell pepper, diced
1 small onion, diced
1 (or more, if you like) serrano pepper, diced
2 lbs. of your preferred ground meat, I used ground venison.
3 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 medium tomato, diced
1 bottle of Country Bob's All Purpose sauce (minus the ounce or two we'd used on our steaks one night)
1 tsp. chili powder
salt and pepper to taste

Saute the onions, bell pepper, and serrano until soft, add meat and garlic and cook until the meat has browned. Drain off any excess fat/liquid. Add the diced tomato and cook for three or four minutes to allow the tomato to soften. Add remaining ingredients, combine well, and allow it to simmer for 10 or 15 minutes without a lid, stirring occasionally.

Serve on hamburger buns or hoagie bread, your choice. I served it up on hamburger buns. The sweetness of the sauce was unusual to me as, again, I generally avoid sweetened sauces. But this really did make for some great Sloppy Joe's and this is definitely how'd I'd like to make them in the future. I like Sloppy Joe's now!

Country Bob's sauce would be good on any grilled meat. I can't wait to try it on some of hubby's wild hog sometime. Country Bob's sweet barbecue sauce on pork slow cooked over a mesquite fire, yum! But I want to get some of the spicy version Country Bob's All Purpose sauce first. I like my spice!

Thanks again to Al at Country Bob's, I really did like this sauce and can see a lot of possibilities for it. Sloppy Joe's today, wild hog tomorrow! And to those who insist on adulterating our grass fed beef steaks with sauce, well, if it's Country Bob's I won't pout too much. Should be awfully good on the ribs though... mmmmm.

Cortido Taste Test

noreply@blogger.com (Genie) — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 21:16:00 +0000

In my Last Entry I'd just made a huge batch of cortido (Mexican style fermented cabbage). I taste tested on Saturday and was very pleased with the results, although it was still quite mild after only three or four days fermenting. Today, for lunch, I made myself some naked fried tilapia (seasoned, no breading, fried in oil) and served myself some cortido on the side. The fish and the cortido go very well together. Got the idea from reading up on how the French serve sauerkraut (they call it choucroute). In France choucroute is frequently serve alongside fish. Not that that's the only way the serve it, of course.

After a few more days of "aging" on the countertop it got spicier and spicier. Delicious! It is crisp, refreshing, and flavorful. Plain sauerkraut tastes decidedly different from the cortido. I can't explain this very well except to say that plain sauerkraut is yet more cool and definitely more sour. The cortido, to me, tasted lighter, a bit more mild, and more flavorful.

I won't eat canned sauerkraut. The texture is very unappealing to me which is why I always thought that I didn't like sauerkraut. This, however, is so fresh and crisp, it's entirely different than the canned stuff. I am getting quite used to fresh fermented cabbage.

I haven't seen a single speck of mold or anything else suspicious looking on my fermented cabbage. I only blogged about the cortido, but a week before making it I also had a batch of kimchee style cabbage fermenting on the counter (which I have since finished off) as well as some plain sauerkraut in the making. Those two batches spent nearly two weeks on the counter before going into the refrigerator. No sign of spoilage, no mold. After leaving them alone for the first three days I tasted them daily until they seemed about right and have put them in the fridge to keep them that way.

Cortido a.k.a. Mexican Saurkraut. Right here in Brackettville!

noreply@blogger.com (Genie) — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 05:42:00 +0000

I adapted this recipe, making very very few changes, from AskShelley.com.

There's nary a place in the world where people don't ferment cabbage in one way or another. In Germany, fermented cabbage is called saurkraut. In Korea, it's called kimchi. In Mexico, cortido.

Cortido

1 large cabbage, cored and shredded (you can use red, green, or both).
1 cup carrots, grated
2 medium onions, quartered lengthwise and very finely sliced (red, white, or yellow)
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes (I used a teaspoon and a half)
2 tablespoon sea-salt

Mix up all the ingredients in a large bowl. Then pound with a wooden pounder for about 10 minutes to release juices or you can use your hands and just squeeze and squeeze and squeeze until the juices are released and the cabbage starts looking a bit limp.

Place mixture in a container (a crock, glass jars, or some other nonreactive container--I used the crock out of my crock pot) and mash vegetables down tightly. There will be a fair amount of liquid floating on top. You may need to add a little more water (purified or spring--no chlorinated water) to insure that the veggies are completely covered with water. Weigh the vegetables down with a plate if one fits in your container. If you don't have something to weigh it down with, you may just have to keep checking over the next few days to make sure there is water over the vegetables, adding it as needed. If using the a plate, weigh the plate down with rocks (clean rocks, wash them well), a bag of water, or jar of water to keep it from floating. I didn't have a plate that would fit in my crock but I found a large, round, plastic lid that fit into it, although it's a bit too small. I put water in a Ziplock bag and set it on the plastic lid, then covered it all with the crock pot lid.

There are many ways of protecting the vegetables from the air, and the above is the one I have settled on for this batch. But any variation will do - as long as it excludes air. You can even seal it in an airtight container but be warned, this stuff expands! My first batch was leaking right out of the tightly sealed Mason jar I put it in--I hadn't given it enough room to expand in the jar.

Opinions vary on whether or not it should be sealed air tight. You'll just have to experiment to figure out what you prefer. Neither of them seem to be worse or better than the other. Seems to me, however, that the better it's sealed the less mold might grow on top, but that's just a theory. Germans prefer the plate or weight method and covering it with a cheesecloth to keep the bugs out. Koreans seal their kimchi well and bury it underground (where it's cool).

Leave your cortido at room temperature for 3-5 days then taste test. Does it taste good to you? Think it needs to sit a while longer? Then let it. If you like the way it tastes as it is, then transfer it to a container that seals well and put it in the fridge to halt fermentation. It will keep for quite a long time.

Like sauerkraut, cortido improves with age, but can be eaten after the initial ferment.

Don't fret if scum or mold forms on the top of your cortido. Just scrape it off. The fermentation process kills off harmful bacteria. It's only the portion that the air reaches that will form mold. This is why I, personally, prefer an air tight seal.

Thin sliced onions wait in the bowl for the rest of the ingredients.

Carrots added.

Quartered and cored cabbage being sliced thin.

Spices have been added and the mixture has been tossed well to disperse the salt and flavors.

Preparing the vegetables woke up my tennis elbow, hubby stepped in to do the pounding for me. Don't fret if you don't have a pounder, just use your hands and SQUEEZE! The point is to break down the vegetables enough to release their juices. Otherwise the mixture takes up more space in your jar and takes longer to ferment. And you have to add a bunch of water instead of letting the vegetable ferment in their own natural juices. The bacteria that lets cabbage become saurkraut, kimchee, or cortido is in and on the cabbage itself. Pounding it or squeezing it releases that wonderful stuff so that the process can begin.

The cabbage, after a thorough pounding, has now been added to the crock. There is a LOT of liquid here that you can't see. When I mash the vegetables into the crock there's about an inch and a half of juices on top. Alas, veggies want to float. Hence the need for a weight to keep it down in the liquid.

I've never made cortido before, but I can hardly wait to try it. I'll let you know the taste test results in 72 hours!

If you just want to make plain old sauerkraut, you can follow all of these same steps but leave out the pepper, oregano, garlic, and onions. Or, you can use onions, cabbage, and apples, or just cabbage and apples or just cabbage and onions. Just play with it. You'll find what you like.

Cabbage is CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP, if you like saurkraut there's no reason not to make it yourself. It takes about 30 to 45 minutes to put this stuff together, preparation is so very simple. And, in three days, you'll have a very healthy side dish full of beneficial probiotics (seen any Activia commercials lately?). Homemade saurkraut, kimchee, and cortido all contain Lactobacilli plantarum. L. planatarum--an extremely beneficial bacteria. It aides digestion and helps keep you regular. Canned saurkraut is pasteurized and all that healthy Lactobacilli plantarum. L. planatarum is destroyed in the process.

If you make it and hate it, you'll be out less than $5 and you'll have wasted less than an hour of your time. If you make it and love it, you'll be doing your body a great favor.

If you're wondering, no, you cannot omit the salt. It's a major component of the fermentation process.

New Years Dinner

noreply@blogger.com (Genie) — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 11:19:00 +0000

Nope, not gonna tell you how to fry a turkey. I've never done it myself and so I am hardly qualified to offer the best tips and techniques on the actual frying--but I have a lot of opinions on the preparation since that's always my job when we fry a turkey.

I didn't take a good photo of it tonight, obviously. Hubby and his nephew were doing the cooking and had only taken it out of the oil for a bit to check the bird with a meat thermometer when I shot this photo. By the time it was done and I could have taken a nice photo of it, I was too hungry to care.

Some opinions on preparing to fry a turkey from a fried turkey fan.

#1. Frying makes a store bought turkey edible. I detest store bought turkey. The breast meat is bland, tasteless, and usually has terrible texture. I won't eat the average grocery store turkey unless it's been fried. Frying makes the bird moist and delectable on the inside and crispity crunchity on the outside. Fried turkey is NOT GREASY. The oil drains off the bird like water off a duck's back. There's no breading to hold the oil in or on it. This is not greasy, oily meat.

#2. To prepare the bird (the men cook it, we girls prepare it) I use a defrosted turkey that hasn't been injected or brined or adulterated in any other way that I can help. I put on plastic gloves and rub it down with oil so that when I add the seasoning it sticks. The gloves save me a lot of messiness, yes, but mostly I wear them so I don't burn my skin with the seasoning. I use sea salt and cayenne pepper--LOTS of cayenne pepper--inside and out. The heat from the cayenne burns off but leaves nice color and flavor. You don't have to be afraid of the cayenne when you eating fried turkey.

#3. Fry two birds. Why not? You've bought the oil, gone to the trouble of setting up the fryer, and by the time you've fried the first you've figured out what not to do and so the second will be easier to fry. Besides, cooked turkey freezes GREAT! Freezing it in small packages to use in casseroles, omelets, soups, or salads will save you a lot of cooking time later on and why shouldn't we get to enjoy turkey in April instead of November?

#4. Hubby and his nephew prefer to inject their turkey with various injectable marinades. I don't care for this. For one, if the bird isn't allowed to rest long enough after injection you end up with too much marinade in one bite and none at all in the next. For another, I don't want to eat honey-garlic flavored turkey, I want to eat turkey flavored turkey. Wes is kind to me in that he always fries two turkeys. One sans injection for me and one that's adulterated for everyone else. Inevitably, however, my turkey is usually the one that gets cooked first and that means it's usually the one that everybody eats for the main meal. The second, injected, turkey ends up getting split into Ziplock bags for people to take home after the family dinner. So far no one has ever complained about lack of flavor in the first turkey and, in fact, the first turkey is always demolished.

#5. The oil is expensive (we used four gallons of cottonseed oil to fry our two turkeys tonight--about $30 worth) but you can cut down on the amount of oil you use by frying smaller turkeys. The bigger the bird, the more oil you will need. Use peanut or cottonseed oil. You can reuse this oil if you are willing to filter it, which I am.

#6. If you are going to fry a turkey, be extra careful. Follow every precaution, read all the instructions, and don't underestimate how dangerous it can be. Be careful where you set your fryer. We made the mistake of frying a turkey on someone's back porch a few years ago and they were very upset by the splattered grease on their concrete slab. I could care less about splatters of grease on my concrete porch--but not everyone is so laid back. Making this stuff is messy. It's going to splatter. Clean up is going to be a pain. But it's so worth it.

Media Crema, Broccoli Soup, and I Shoulda Blogged 'Em Rellenos

noreply@blogger.com (Genie) — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 00:29:00 +0000

I didn't know anyone canned cream! I assume it's half and half based on the name. I asked Nestle if it was half and half and had a few other questions but their response was very cookie-cutter and didn't address my specific concerns. That's okay. My main question was whether or not I could cook with it. They didn't answer that directly but did include several recipes that included baking and simmering with Media Crema.

It's got less than one carb per tablespoon, not bad. I don't buy cream because it's too pricey here and if I buy it out of town where it's cheaper, it frequently goes bad before I can use it. I never know when I'm going to need it so having it canned in the pantry is great!

Shake can well before use! It doesn't say so on the can but I learned that it was necessary.

Eight Minute Broccoli Soup
If you read my blog, then you may be experiencing déjà vu. Yes, this is pretty much the same recipe as the formerly published Eight Minute Tomato Soup. I made this broccoli soup for my dinner tonight and it was easy enough to take a few pix as I went along.

I should add that this was going to be Eight Minute Cauliflower Soup until I realized I only had frozen broccoli in the freezer.

3 TBS butter
1/2 a medium to small onion, chopped
1/2 a small bell pepper, chopped
14 to 24 ounces fresh or frozen broccoli (the more broccoli the thicker the soup)
3 to 4 cloves of garlic, chopped
4 cups chicken, turkey, or vegetable stock
1/4 cup of white wine (optional)
1 cup whipping cream, or half & half, or 1 can of Media Crema
Salt and pepper to taste
Sour cream or a few teaspoons of heavy cream to garnish (optional)

Saute onions and bell pepper the butter until soft. Add chopped garlic and saute a minute or two more.

Add four cups of your Preferred Stock or use canned broth instead. If using white wine, add it now. Add your fresh or frozen broccoli and bring soup to a boil and then simmer for seven or eight minutes or until broccoli is soft.

This is one of the very rare times that I tolerate overcooked broccoli but, since you will be pureeing it, crisp broccoli is not ideal.

Using a kitchen wand, puree soup to your desired consistency. Some people like a few more chunks, others like it much smoother. If you don't have a kitchen wand just puree the soup in a blender in small batches and return to pot.

Add the cream, salt, and pepper, return it to a boil, then lower heat and simmer for eight minutes.

I know, crappy photos. The light in my kitchen is awful. And I was shooting after dark.

The broccoli soup was for me, but hubby thinks I'm punishing him if I try to give him something like this for dinner. For him, I had planned chiles rellenos. I've never made them before and didn't know how they were going to come out so I didn't plan on blogging the recipe and didn't take photos of the process.

I don't personally like chiles rellenos, but people around here get positively ecstatic at the very thought of them. I made these using Monterrey jack cheese and ground venison. I won't blog the recipe right now but if you really want to know, then buy a 27 ounce can of Ortega whole green chiles because I used them and the recipe on the back of the can to make these. Except for the addition of meat, I changed nothing. Wes loved them! He happily ate several with our homemade habanero salsa. Considering I've never made them before, I thought they came out really pretty. Okay, the photo is lousy but they really were pretty, I swear. The next batch should be much improved.

Nachos, Cincos, Pericos, Chalupas, and Spaghetti -- Some tips and tricks

noreply@blogger.com (Genie) — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 04:46:00 +0000

Spaghetti Sauce

Tip #1: Golden Onions. Not to be confused with caramelized onions.

Inevitably, because I don't have the patience to stand over my onions for half an hour or more, my "golden onions" end up a lot more caramelized than I'd prefer. But that's okay. Most of them come out golden.

Here's how you get golden onions. Chop white onions up and saute them in olive oil over medium heat FOREVER (30 minutes at least, less than an hour for sure) and somewhere near the end of eternity they will turn golden. Rarely have I gotten them quite as golden as I'd like because I just get tired of messing with them. Regardless, the more golden, the better. 1/2 to 1 whole onion, diced and cooked until golden, will make the most humble spaghetti sauce outstanding. It's totally worth the time. I should add that I could probably get them golden a lot faster by cooking them on medium high if I was willing to stand there and stir them the entire time. I just don't have the patience for constant stirring.

Tip #2: Minced Mushrooms. A lot of them.

When mushrooms go on sale we have spaghetti. Sometimes I make the sauce from scratch (well, if you can call using canned maters and canned tomato sauce starting from scratch), starting the entire process with the onions and mushrooms. Other times I just use the golden onions and mushrooms to improve on canned sauce.

In a large batch of spaghetti sauce I will happily use up to 30 ounces of fresh mushrooms that have been minced in the food processor and then sauteed in olive oil. Generally I add the minced mushrooms (and fresh garlic if I'm using it) to the golden onions (after they are golden, not before) and continue sauteing them until the mushrooms are cooked and a lot of the liquid from them has cooked off--this doesn't take long.

My husband and I are of two minds on my spaghetti sauce. You see, I love mushrooms and would happily forgo meat in my sauce. He likes mushrooms okay, but not the way I do. He would much prefer I "beefed" the sauce up with, well, beef (okay, usually venison).

For hubby, 10 ounces of fresh mushrooms is more than enough for a batch of sauce. For me, 20 to 30 ounces is much better.

White mushrooms have a lighter flavor than baby bellas and when I use white mushrooms he enjoys the sauce just fine. When I use bellas, he remarks that the sauce is good, but that the mushroom flavor is too strong. To me, that's kind of like saying there's too much chocolate in the dessert, but whatever.

If you use 20 to 30 ounces of mushrooms, it's going to change the color of your sauce. You can turn your sauce brown if you use enough baby bellas.

Mushrooms really do beef up spaghetti sauce and I personally think it's a great way to stretch your meat sauce or to use in place of meat altogether.

Lentils are also good in spaghetti sauce in place of meat. Yummy!

Chalupas, Nachos, Cincos, Pericos, and Chips

Tip #1: Why triangles for our cincos or whole fried tortillas for our chalupas?

Triangles don't fit in our mouths and practically demand double-dipping (of which I am frequently guilty) and a chalupa built on an entire fried corn tortilla usually falls apart if you are trying to hold it like a slice of pizza and eat it. Disintegrates is a better way of describing what happens. Eating a chalupa with a fork is pretty much impossible unless the tortilla has been sitting on the plate long enough to get mushy. Nope, there's a better way.

Think strips!

For chalupas, we cut our tortillas into thirds before we fry them. This makes eating them SO much easier. Once you've done this, there's not much difference between a chalupa and a perico, really.

Above: fried tortilla strips with seasoned refried bean and venison mixture--the base for our chalupas.

Above: cheese has been melted on them.

Above: We've topped our chalupas with onions, lettuce, tomatoes, and habanero salsa.

Tip #2: Chip Strips. For chips, we cut the tortillas into fourths in one direction and then cut the two middle strips in half so they aren't too long. This way, all the chips are strips, they fit in your mouth, and they are perfect for dipping.

What's the difference between Nachos, Cincos, and Pericos? Read on. "Beans" from here on out means "refried beans."

Nachos: Fried tortilla chips with melted cheese and jalapenos (optional on these and all of the following). A cook and restaurant owner in Piedras Negras, Mexico, about an hour from here, claims he invented nachos. But the owner of Ma Crosby's in Ciudad Acuña, Mexico about 35 minutes from here, also claims to have invented them. On Ma Crosby's menu there is a story that Ma Crosby herself was already closing up shop when a group of hungry American turistas entered her establishment. With nothing available but leftover chips and the cheese in her cooler, the nacho is said to have been born.
Cincos: Fried tortilla chips with beans and melted cheese. Think triangular bean and cheese chalupas. Chalupa, by the way, means "boat." I have no idea why cincos are called cincos as they don't have five ingredients. I think a waitress at Johnny's Steak House in Acuña told me once but I can't remember what she said. I vaguely remember that it had nothing to do with "five."
Super Cincos: Fried tortilla chips with beans, melted cheese, and meat.
Pericos: Think colorful, like a tropical bird. Perico means parakeet. Depending on what restaurant you are in this might simply mean Cincos with lettuce, onions, and tomatoes. It might instead mean Cincos with guacamole. Or it could mean Cincos with guacamole, lettuce, onions, and tomatoes. But every restaurant differs on this.
Super Pericos: Same as above, with meat.

Fortunately, to clear up the confusion, a lot of restaurants are switching to calling all of the above nachos and putting them on the menu like this:

Nachos
Nachos with fried beans
Nachos with fried beans and chicken
Nachos with fried beans and beef
Supreme nachos (with fried beans and guacamole)
Nachos Grande (with fried beans, your choice of beef or chicken, and guacamole)
Nachos Deluxe (with fried beans, your choice of beef or chicken, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, and guacamole)

There is no standard, unfortunately, but you get the idea.

None of the above is really Mexican food, by the way. It was all invented to please American taste buds and, in Mexico, is only on the menus of restaurants that cater to non-Mexican tourists.

But what's a tostada? Experience has taught me that tostada usually, but not always, means beans or beans and meat on a crispy round tortilla covered with shredded lettuce, tomatoes, onions and topped with cheese. How's that different from a chalupa? On a chalupa, the cheese is usually melted on the beans/meat mixture before the veggies are added.

Ah, fat, our misunderstood friend.

noreply@blogger.com (Genie) — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 18:01:00 +0000

At left: Chef, Food Stylist, Fat lover, and author Jennifer McLagen.

I'm a big fan of food combining, low carb eating, and plenty of fat! As far as I'm concerned, meat IS whole food. It's all that junk we pile next to our meat and veggies that's the problem. You know, like those potato pancakes I made last week! Deadly stuff. If we all ate nothing but fruits, vegetables, meat, cheese, and eggs we'd all be some extremely healthy people.

I don't usually publish anything here that doesn't include a recipe but I was delighted by an interview between AndrewZimmern.com and Jennifer McLagen (unknown to me but catching my attention with her love of fat).

The interview is brief but interesting, and it's mostly about something near and dear (and probably on and in thanks to all the not-so-whole foods I consume) my heart, fat. Her book is Fat, An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, with Recipes.

No, the title isn't genius, but she is first and foremost a chef, after all.

Here's an excerpt:

AZ.com: Fat has earned a bad reputation in the United States. What initially started our fat-phobia?

JM: Fat’s fall from grace can be traced to two things; a 1950s theory that suggested increased consumption of animal fat raised our cholesterol levels and resulted in heart disease. This link between cholesterol, saturated fat, and heart disease was only associative, not causal, and excluded populations that eat diets high in animal fats (such as the French and the Inuit eating their traditional diet). Science has continually failed to prove conclusively that there is any direct connection between eating saturated fats and developing heart disease.

The second event was in the 1970’s animal fat was declared “the greasy killer” by the US government and we were told to reduce our consumption. Thousands of years of human history showing the importance of animal fat in our diet were totally ignored.

AZ.com: Why should we aim to add fat back into our diets?

JM: Fat is very important for our health, every cell in our body needs fat. Our brain and hormones rely on fat to function, and fat supports our immune system and protects our liver. Fat promotes good skin and healthy hair, and it regulates our digestive system and leaves us feeling sated. Fat is the body’s preferred fuel, providing us with more than twice the amount of energy as the same quantity of carbohydrates and protein. It helps the body to absorb nutrients, calcium, and the fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K. Fat and protein are found together in nature for a reason, it’s the fat that helps us digest the protein, so it makes good sense to eat a well-marbled steak, or a roast chicken with crispy skin.

Read the full article HERE.

Leftover Mashed Potato Pancakes

noreply@blogger.com (Genie) — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 17:50:00 +0000

Just for you, Diane, I know you were sick of looking at pickled garlic every time you checked my blog!

I swore I wasn't going to eat anymore wheat for a long while after the Thanksgiving holiday (I don't get along with grains) but I made chicken fried venison, gravy, and mashed potatoes (with cream cheese) for Wesley's birthday dinner last night and with all those leftover taters calling to us this morning, well, I couldn't resist. But no more after this morning! I hope. Maybe. We'll see.

I have wanted to make these since visiting a friend's mother up north several years ago. It was the morning after Christmas and my friend's daughter (a military trained electrical engineer pregnant with her first child) came out of her room demanding that her grandmother make her potato pancakes with the leftover mashed potatoes from the day before. I'd never heard of such a thing--but then I don't get out much. I don't remember tasting them (I think I was successfully abstaining from wheat back then) but I remember that they were gorgeous.

My first attempt was good, tasty, but a bit too thick and a slightly bland for my taste. The ingredients here are how I'll make them next time so they'll be a bit thinner and tastier than the pancakes shown in these photos.

Approximately 4 cups leftover mashed taters
3 green onions, minced (or shallots or onion or leeks)
1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon caraway seeds (optional, gives them a nice gourmet taste though--caraway seeds aren't for everyone but I liked what they did for these pancakes)
1 or 2 cloves of minced garlic or 1/4 to a 1/2 tsp. garlic powder
1 tsp. salt (less if your taters are pretty salty to start with)
1/2 tsp. black pepper
handful of cheddar cheese (optional, use as much or as little as you like)
3/4's to 1 cup of flour (depending on how thick you want your pancakes--I'd go with 1 cup your first time out)
3 to 4 eggs (the more eggs and flour you use, the thicker the pancakes--mine held together really well with four eggs)

Thin with water if needed, but don't let the mixture get too thin. You shouldn't be able to pour it quite as easily as pancake batter but you can make them a lot thinner than these for "maximum crunchiness" as my friend Darbee says when talking about how her mother makes them.

Mix all ingredients with a mixer and your batter is ready. Now you'll need a little Crisco for frying them up--I tried doing them with Pam and they just didn't get crispity crunchity on the outside--so I did another batch with Crisco and YUM! You don't need a lot, just a few tablespoons in the pan or on the griddle. I tried butter as well but it burned before the pancakes were ready. Yup, it's gotta be Crisco or oil.

I served it up with the leftover gravy from the day before (made with stock, nom nom) and I was in heaven.

Preserving Garlic in Soy Sauce

noreply@blogger.com (Genie) — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 02:26:00 +0000

This recipe isn't difficult, but it takes a lot of time. First the garlic has to pickle in vinegar (our homemade white wine vinegar in this case) and then it is allowed to pickle in a mixture of soy sauce and sugar.

I tried the garlic pickles tonight (their pickling time was finally up) and was amazed at how crisp the garlic cloves are especially considering how much the soy sauce seemed to be fermenting in the jar. Yup, they were crisp and fresh tasting!

They taste exactly like you'd expect, like soy flavored garlic with a hint of sweetness. I just didn't expect them to be so crisp.

I don't like these nearly as much as the Honey Garlic Pickles and I probably won't make them again. But having a bit of garlic flavored soy sauce might be kind of fun while it lasts. The pickles will certainly get used in as many Asian dishes that I can think to put them in. And it's definitely an interesting way to preserve garlic.

Ninniku Shoyu-Zuke
Garlic in Soy Sauce
from Tsukemono: Japanese Pickling Recipes by Ikuko Hisamatsu

10 whole garlic bulbs
2 cups rice vinegar (we didn't have any so used our homemade White Wine Vinegar)
1 1/4 cups soy sauce
2 TBS sugar

"Quite a few people dislike the strong smell of garlic. I learned this recipe in Korea and now it's everyone's favorite since the vinegar-pickling process reduces the characteristic odor."

The recipe reduces the odor of the garlic considerably as claimed by the book, but this is replaced by the unmistakable smell and taste of soy sauce.

Choose round bulbs so they will form pretty plum blossoms when cut horizontally in half.

Peel the outer skin with your hands leaving only one layer of skin. (Okay, this part was a pain.)

Trim away the stems for tight packing.

Sterilize a small pickling jar in boiling water. Pack it with garlic bulbs.

Pour rice vinegar to cover. Let stand in a dark place for two weeks.

Remove 2/3 amount of vinegar. Save this vinegar for salad dressings as it will have a nice garlic flavor to it now.

Mix soy sauce and sugar until the sugar dissolves.

Pour over the garlic and cover with the lid. Let this jar sit in a dark place for a minimum of two months (not the refrigerator).

Just before serving cut horizontally in half.

I can't imagine serving garlic like this. I don't know how garlic is served in Japan, I can't imagine just eating it straight. Chopped up in something, certainly, but to serve it like the above photo? Really? This is a traditional recipe by a Japanese, um, pickler, so I can only imagine that some Koreans (where the author got the recipe) as well as Japanese must sometimes eat garlic straight along with a meal.

Not me! I'll be using it in stir-fry, fried rice, Asian style soups, and who knows what else. But not straight.

Tasty Updates

noreply@blogger.com (Genie) — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 01:58:00 +0000

I updated my Street Tacos recipe tonight. If you were thinking about making them, you might want to check it out. This recipe is much improved!

You know how happy my Solar Cooker makes me, right?

noreply@blogger.com (Genie) — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 18:41:00 +0000

I've talked about how excited I am about solar cookers and the way they're changing lives. This video makes me even happier. It makes my heart swell and my throat tighten.

I swiped it from Realizing Ordinary's blog. Tending a garden is so very much a way to nurture yourself, inside and out. It's no wonder that a program that involves the homeless in fresh, organic gardening is changing lives.

Check out these links:

Growing Home stabilizes and sustains children and their families when they are experiencing or at-risk of homelessness.

Working for justice in the system, opportunity in our cities, and peace on our streets.

Craving Street Tacos?

noreply@blogger.com (Genie) — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 20:24:00 +0000

I love getting beef tacos from vendors on street corners in Acuña, Mexico. I can't precisely reproduce their tender and succulent beef or their soft, warm, delicious corn tortillas, but here's my version anyway. We like these tacos just fine, we gobble them right up, and they're certainly cheap, fast, and tasty!

You will need some tenderized beef, about 0.5 lbs to feed yourself or about 1.5 lbs. to feed the fam,

and

1 batch of Pico de Gallo
garlic powder
salt
oregano
one lime
corn tortillas
half an onion--thinly sliced (less, obviously, if you're just making a couple of tacos for yourself)
a microwaveable tortilla warmer (they start out at .99 cents in many stores) or enough oil to fry tortillas into crispy taco shells.
A grill, a wok, or a large iron skillet.

These tacos are so fast and easy that it's totally worth it to whip them up for just yourself.

For this particular mess of tacos, I used chuck-style boneless beef ribs. I bought it because the price was right but I discovered that it was so easy to remove the excess fat and gristle and cut the meat to exactly the right size with this cut of meat.

Tenderize the meat a bit, not too much--you aren't making chicken fried steak. Then slice it very thin in bite size pieces. Remember to cut the meat against the grain so it will be more tender, not hard to do with this cut of beef.

Sprinkle meat with salt, garlic powder, oregano (rub it in your hands so it's more powder than leaves before putting it on the meat), and a few squeezes of lime juice. Don't add too much lime juice or your meat will simmer in the pan instead of stir-frying in the pan later. Add the thin sliced onions and mix well then allow it to marinate for a few hours if possible.

Pico de Gallo is a key ingredient to my "street tacos" but some minced cilantro and minced onions offered on the side as a condiment will also work. Remember that Pico de Gallo is best when it's had at least 30 minutes to a few hours to 'homogenize.' You can, of course, use whatever taco toppings make you happy.

If cooking the meat inside, take the battery out of you smoke detector for the preparation of this meal. Don't forget to put it back in later. Open some windows or set your a/c on fan to keep the air moving.

Set a large iron skillet over high heat and allow it to heat for at least seven minutes. It will smoke and this is good. Get a large square of foil ready to receive your meat after it is ready. Once at least 7 minutes have passed, toss in your marinated meat and stir-fry it until done. Don't overcook it. When it's ready, put it in the foil and wrap it up. The steam created inside this foil pocket does nice things to the meat.

You can fry your tortillas up for crunchy tacos, or dip them in hot oil for soft tacos OR, for soft tacos without the fat, place a paper towel in your tortilla warmer and however many tortillas you will need. Cover and microwave for one minute. The hot steam inside the tortilla warmer makes the tortillas pliable enough for tacos--if they aren't warmed up right, they will tear and you'll have a huge taco mess on your plate.

As soon as your taco shells are ready then it's time to put together some tasty tacos. I like them fresh and simple but you can use whatever taco toppings you like.

In Mexico, these tacos are handed to you with just the meat inside the tortillas (always homemade and to die for). Some vendors cook the meat with onions, others don't. Condiments are few but fresh and delicious--the choices are minced cilantro, minced onions, minced serrano peppers, and lime quarters. I have never seen Pico de Gallo offered by these vendors but the Pico is very good on them and I always find myself wishing the vendors offered it.

Extra Tips:

Beef milanesa is a good cut of meat to make these tacos with, just cut across the grain into strips. Tacos are always a good way to stretch a pound of meat.

You can fry flour tortillas into extremely tasty taco shells if you prefer them to corn. If you are using store-bought taco shells, well, shame on you. Yuck!

You don't have to cook the meat in an iron skillet. You can use your grill, in which case you should probably slice the meat after you've cooked it instead of before. You could also use your electric grill (George Foreman anyone?) or you could let your wok get smoking hot and use that instead.

We make these tacos with chicken frequently. I find that boneless, skinless thighs are the tastiest bit to use but use whatever part of the chicken that makes you happy.

Cilantro Lime Chicken Fried Rice

noreply@blogger.com (Genie) — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 23:52:00 +0000

Fried Rice is easier than stir-fry, y'all. And it's so tasty. The only exotic thing in this recipe is ginger--and if you read my blog then you know I've told you at least three times now to buy a hand of ginger and keep it in your freezer so you can grate it as you need it.

If you don't read my blog, then know that I live in a rural Texas town where I can't buy fresh ginger or leeks, or anything more exotic than a red onion. This blog is about tasty cooking with simple ingredients that are available just about anywhere.

Fried Rice is best made with leftover rice but who usually has six cups of leftover rice in the fridge? If I can, I just make the rice a day ahead or early the day of.

Cilantro Lime Chicken Fried Rice
This is not something you want to eat if you're going to be kissing anybody.
Ingredients:

2 large boneless, skinless chicken breasts cut up pretty much how you please. Strips or cubes is fine.

6 garlic cloves, peeled

2-3 serrano peppers with the stems removed

2 bunches of green onions, cleaned and cut into thirds and then julienned. You can substitute one red bell pepper, also julienned, in place of one bunch of the green onions if you like bell pepper. Leeks go well in this recipe and are more mild than the green onions, a very nice substitution if you can get them and definitely my preference.

1 cup of coarsely chopped cilantro, loosely packed (use up to 1.5 cups if you like, it won't hurt a thing). If you have fresh basil, you can use it instead of the cilantro if you like. Use the basil leaves whole. Do garnish the dish with cilantro, though, it adds excellent flavor.

3 TBS grated ginger

1 TBS honey or a teaspoon of white sugar

1 lime, juiced

1/8 cup soy sauce

Six cups of cooked rice (preferably Jasmine but whatever)

1/4 cup peanut or vegetable oil

Using a mortar and pestle mash peppers and garlic cloves until pulverized. If you don't have a mortar and pestle, dice the garlic and peppers and mash them with the flat of a large blade by laying the blade flat on the garlic and peppers and pressing hard with your hand repeatedly. Mashing them brings out their oils and flavors better. But, if you prefer, you could also use a Cuisinart or an electric coffee grinder.

In a wok or dutch oven heat oil over medium heat, not too hot, and saute garlic and peppers for thirty seconds to a minute.

Add the chicken and turn the heat up to high. Stir constantly until chicken is about halfway cooked, then add all of the rice and combine well. If rice starts to stick to the pan too much (and it will very likely stick, don't let that bother you a bit, just don't let it burn) you can turn the heat back down to medium.

Add soy sauce, ginger, lime juice, and honey, combine well. It takes a while to combine six cups of cooked rice, all that chicken, and all these seasonings. Don't fret, your chicken will have plenty of time to finish cooking while you are busy getting it all combined.

Add green onions and cilantro and combine well, allowing it to cook for a minute or two until the green onions start to go limp. Do not overcook.

Serve and enjoy as an entree or as a side dish.

You can substitute fish sauce and/or oyster sauce for the soy sauce. It will add a great depth of flavor as well as adding all the saltiness the dish will need.

Got me a Hot Pot!

noreply@blogger.com (Genie) — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 18:13:00 +0000

Our nephew David and his wife Lana gifted me with a Hot Pot for my birthday! Thank you David and Lana!

A Hot Pot is a relatively recent innovation in Solar Cooking. I've blogged about Solar Cooking HERE. In brief: Solar Cooking is changing lives in places where fuel is scarce and where water isn't safe to drink without pasteurization.

My new Hot Pot came from Gaiam. From the website: Sales of the Hot Pot help subsidize the distribution of this device in developing countries to reduce deforestation and respiratory disease caused by traditional cooking methods. USA and Mexico.

I'm trying to stick to low carb since the holiday weekend and so decided to make myself a little low-carb meatloaf (using the last of our ground Axis) in my new Hot Pot this morning. It came out perfectly! Perfect for a low-carb meatloaf at any rate, you can't put crackers or breadcrumbs or anything like that in a low-carb meatloaf.

The little red things you see are chopped up roasted red peppers.

The meatloaf was probably done in just under two hours (it certainly appeared to be done) but I was doing other things and so didn't check to see for sure if it was done until after three hours. And when I did go check it, taking the meat thermometer with me, I didn't need the thermometer because the juices from the meatloaf were bubbling merrily all around the edges of the pot. It was done, no doubt.

What's amazing to me is that it cooked the meatloaf so hot and so fast (for a solar cooker) with the morning light AND it wasn't full-on sun, there was a very thin layer of clouds low in the eastern sky cutting the light just a bit.

This is Texas and it's freaking hot here, if I can avoid turning on the oven you can bet I will. I love having the Hot Pot. It's like cooking with a solar powered slow cooker. I'm eager to try my enchiladas in it! Or a lasagna! Or a small brisket! Heck the top of this meatloaf even browned!

X-Posted at Photographer In Training.

Thank You Bo Yin!

noreply@blogger.com (Genie) — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 15:23:00 +0000

I have the most delightful, precious friend in Taiwan named Bo Yin. We met online over a year ago, I think, and have been email pals ever since. She's a college student, an artist, a seamstress, and she has bunnies for pets (they're so cute!). She made me some blog awards for my birthday! One for this blog and one for my Photographer In Training blog. I love them. Thank you Bo Yin!

I have no idea how to create gifs, but Bo Yin had this to say about her creations: An amazing thing is I drew them merely using Microsoft Word and Window’s Painter (not Adobe Painter). I didn’t know Word can be so powerful in drawing before. I drew your camera by Word which was too amazing for me............ how’s your birthday cake?

Well, Bo Yin, my birthday cake came out as good as can be expected from a girl who, even though she worked in a bakery for a year, never learned to decorate cakes with any skill at all.

It's just a Duncan Hines cake mix with some coffee extract added. It's frosted with a grocery store brand of icing (I recently discovered that HEB's Hill Country Fare chocolate icing is REALLY good!) but I turned it into a tort by cutting each of the two layers in half to make a four layer cake (best done if the cake layers are first frozen or, at least, partially frozen) and putting icing and ground walnuts in between each layer. I wish I'd had some gold sprinkles to add to the ground walnuts I scattered on the cake, I think gold sprinkles would have been really pretty. Nigella Lawson combines ground nuts and gold sprinkles and the effect is really beautiful. I used almost three cans of icing!

Pico de Gallo

noreply@blogger.com (Genie) — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 00:14:00 +0000

Feel free to coarsely chop all ingredients and throw it in the food processor. Just don't over process. Mincing or pureeing Pico ruins it.

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups diced onion (red, white, or yellow)
1 1/2 cups diced tomato
1 to 5 serrano or jalapeno peppers (depending on taste) finely diced or thinly sliced--remove the seeds if you want to decrease the heat a bit
Minced cilantro to taste
Juice from 1 lime

Stir ingredients together until well mixed and allow it to rest for at least 30 minutes, if possible, before serving. Stir well before serving, the minced peppers like to sink down to the bottom of the bowl. Speaking of which, you can always slice them thin across the width of the pepper instead of mincing them to make pretty little pepper circles in your Pico.

You can mix this recipe up however you like: increase the tomatoes to make it more colorful and less biting from the onion; use lemon instead of lime; use any kind of pepper you like; just have fun with it.

Serve on tacos, burgers, beans, burritos, grilled chicken breast, anything you like! Use it in place of jarred salsa for a fresher, crisper taste.

My girlfriend Sue gave me a Mezzaluna and concave cutting board set for my birthday, woot! Now I can mince the heck out of cilantro! Yes, I could use my little Cuisinart but it's not nearly as fun as the mezzaluna. It's also hard to get all of the fresh, minced herb out of the Cuisinart, much easier to scrape it off a cutting board. The mezzaluna is also easier to clean--it has fewer parts.

Below you can see the double-bladed mezzaluna that Sue gave me and my little lemon/lime juicer, I love that thing.

Eight Minute Tomato Soup

noreply@blogger.com (Genie) — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 11:15:00 +0000

Think what you like about Suzanne Somers and her diet books, the woman has some excellent gourmet recipes! Her eight minute tomato soup recipe is especially tasty and very simple. This recipe comes from her Fast & Easy book, although I have altered it a tiny bit.

I have insomnia something fierce. I woke up at 3:00 a.m. and soup just sounded so good and soothing. I pulled 3 packages of frozen chicken stock out of the freezer and got to work.

Ingredients:

4 cups Chicken or Turkey Stock
1/4 to 1/2 an onion (depending on how heavily seasoned your stock already is with onion), diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp. basil
Sea Salt to taste
Crushed red pepper to taste
fresh ground black or white pepper to taste
One 28 ounce can crushed tomatoes
1 cup of heavy whipping cream or half and half
2 TBS butter

In a pot, saute diced onion in butter until soft then add garlic and saute for a minute longer. Add stock and tomatoes and puree with hand wand or puree in blender then pour back into soup pot. Add all remaining ingredients except the cream and bring soup to a boil then lower heat and simmer for eight minutes. When eight minutes is up, add cream and heat through and then your soup is done!

Using canned stewed tomatoes or canned tomato sauce is just fine--it will just change the texture. The change in taste will be minimal.

How much you puree your soup is up to you, some people want it chunkier and some want it smoother.

Top with a little sour cream if you like and serve.

Click here to go to the more printer friendly version of Eight Minute Tomato Soup.

Variation on this soup:
Instead of adding canned tomatoes use cooked broccoli, cooked cauliflower, or a combination of the two and puree well. It makes for a thicker version of this soup and it's absolutely delicious.

Making Fire Oil

noreply@blogger.com (Genie) — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 14:35:00 +0000

While it's not fast, it's extremely tasty and doing all this work in one afternoon will provide you months of cheap, fast, and tasty goodness. It's also a great way to utilize an abundance of peppers.

I learned to make fire oil last year when my husband and his mother grew so many peppers that I was ready to rip my own eyes out. They were so proud of their peppers. And my mother in law, although we were growing our own, kept "gifting" us with bag after bag of peppers. They were growing Kung Pao, Jalapeño, Caribbean Red, and Scotch Bonnets. Pickled jalapeño peppers are CHEAP and so I had no interest in pickling my own. I dried a lot of these peppers and use them when I make beans or stir fry--but I wanted another way to preserve them. Hubby reminded me of the hot oil served in Asian restaurants and I began Googling this. After much research, this is how I make fire oil. You can do this with any type of peppers and you can use dried or fresh peppers when making it.

Instructions:

1. Rinse peppers to be used in your fire oil and dry them completely before proceeding.

2. Remove stems from peppers. Put peppers and a teaspoon of salt in blender (don't fill blender more than 3/4's full of peppers), and add peanut oil until peppers are covered. Puree on high until you have created what looks like a pepper smoothie. You can use a lighter, but high quality, oil if you prefer but I use the peanut oil to ensure I don't burn the mixture and so that if I'm cooking with the oil later on, I don't have to worry about burning it. Peanut oil has a high smoke point.

3. Pour mixture into a pot that has a properly fitting lid (a pot with a glass lid that you can see through would be ideal). Place lid on pot and turn heat on high. Then don't move or go anywhere until you can either hear the mixture boiling or until the lid starts to dance a bit from the boiling mixture. Lower heat to allow mixture to simmer and set timer for seven minutes. It's important that you are very careful boiling fire oil as you do NOT want this very dangerous mixture splattering on your skin. Yes, I have a photo here of the mixture boiling--I took my safety in my hands to do this. I don't recommend you try it.

4. When timer has gone off set pot aside and forget about it until it has cooled enough to work with.

5. It's time to strain your fire oil. Last year I used a chinois (metal, cone-shaped strainer) and while it was nice, it didn't filter out enough of the pulp and all my fire oil bottles ended up with pulp at the bottom. This pulp does no harm, but when you gift someone with fire oil they tend to be dubious when they see that stuff floating on the bottom of the bottle. This year I decided to filter the fire oil the way my Mom taught me to filter peanut oil (since you can re-use peanut oil several times before it's bad).

With this method, you use one to two layers of paper towel (depending on the quality of the paper towel--never super cheap paper towel, please) which you clip to the top of a pot with clothes pins. The paper towel should not be pinned in such a way that the paper towel looks like a drum head on top of your pot. It should be concave in shape--clipped well but in such a way that when you pour your oil in, there is room for it to sit as it drains. Only pour as much oil in at a time as the paper towel can hold. Give it plenty of time to drain before adding more oil. Depending on how much pulp you have and how good your paper towel is, you may or may not have to refresh the paper towel you are using. You'll have to judge this yourself. If you have made a lot of fire oil, why not go ahead and set up several pots with paper towel so you can strain it all at once? It will mean more washing, but hey, at least you won't have to baby the one strainer for endless hours. I liked this straining method very much except that the pulp holds on to SO MUCH OIL and I have yet to figure out how to keep from wasting that--perhaps loading it into some linen cloth and squeezing it out? I am open to suggestions.

Or maybe I simply need to rethink the process of making fire oil--it may be that my best bet is to dehydrate all the peppers and add them to the oil then let it sit and infuse the oil with flavor. I may try that next year and see how the flavor compares.

6. Once the oil has drained you can pour it into a jar or bottle and it's ready to use. There is no need to refrigerate.

Link to a more printer-friendl y version of this recipe.

How to use fire oil: Drizzle on any dish that you want to "heat up." Drizzle on pizza before you bake it to add delicious flavor or add it to hot pizza. Splash on your tacos, eggs, beans, or any food at all that you like. You can saute in fire oil but if you do, make sure you have good ventilation. Cooking in fire oil creates some spicy fumes!

Jalapeño fire oil will fade--the color will go from a vibrant, neon green to a kind of murky green, to an almost clear (but not attractive) green. This is normal and does not mean it has gone bad. So far, our Scotch Bonnet and Carribbean Red fire oils have not changed color very much. The Scotch Bonnet has stayed a gorgeous pineapple yellow color, the Caribbean Red went from a rich, thick red to a slightly clearer red, but it's still pretty. Our Kung Pao oil turned a bit murky, but it started out that way. It was never a pretty oil but it's our favorite fire oil for stir-fry and other Asian/Asian-style cooking. If hubby had had the patience to let the Kung Pao peppers turn red before harvesting them, I think they'd have made a really pretty oil.

Something New

noreply@blogger.com (Genie) — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 01:02:00 +0000

I wanted to add "printer friendly versions" of all my recipes and it's doable, but it's a pain. Instead, all my entries will soon have links to cleaned up versions of my recipes that are without photos or my endless blabber. Check it out:

Mom's Enchilada Casserole

Ohm Rice

Ain't it kewl?

Ohm Rice

noreply@blogger.com (Genie) — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 01:43:00 +0000

I wanted something simple and different to do with ground Axis and rice tonight. I was Googling for ground beef and rice recipes when I found Ohm Rice at Recipezaar.com. I changed it up to suit our love for peppers and spices! The recipe in the link is a bit bland as is, but I gave it a five star rating. It's just so good and so simple. And easily changed to suit your own tastes. I now have this wonderfully simple Korean recipe to add to my repertoire. I'll be cooking this a lot--especially for guests as it's so inexpensive and different! The leftovers are obviously going to heat up extremely well, I can't wait to heat some up in the morning and fry an egg to put on it. Mmmm.

This recipe is so cheap, fast, and tasty I can't even begin to express my complete joy in finding it! In fact, I'm so eager to blog it that my freshly prepared bowl of Ohm Rice is sitting on the counter with only three bites eaten out of it. Hubby ate one of those bites and gave it two thumbs up before he dashed off to the studio. Although he had several bites before the egg was added--he was helping me season it. By the way, Ohm Rice does not taste like your average ground beef recipe! It's so good you'd think it couldn't possibly have something so mundane as ground meat in it. I actually detest cooked carrots but don't even notice them in this dish.

It's a good dish for chopsticks, which is how we eat all our Asian dishes. The fork you see in the images way below was used only for taste testing and to cut the egg open for the camera--fat lot of good it did me visually. The ingredients seem (mostly) so American that I nearly forgot it was an Asian dish and grabbed the chopsticks only at the very end.

No, runny egg yolk is not gross. It's bursting with delicious texture, and flavor and enhances a dish like this amazingly well. Think of thick, yellow, warm egg yolk as a rich and exotic sauce.

I do wish I'd had green onions instead of plain onions for this dish, I think it would have been tasty and more attractive. I'd have kept the chopped green tops separate and added them toward the end so they would have retained their color and crunch. Heck, even just having a few chopped green onion tops to add at the end of this exact recipe would have been fine.

Ingredients:

1 lb ground beef, pork, turkey, or venison. I used ground Axis
1 large potato, grated
2 large carrots, grated
1/2 a large onion, chopped
3 Kung Pao peppers, chopped (if available) -- if not, substitute 1 tsp. crushed red pepper or more to taste
1 tsp. honey
2 minced garlic cloves or 1/2 tsp. garlic powder
Instead of the above two ingredients, I used about 1/4 tsp. of My Beloved Garlic Honey and minced one of the Garlic Honey Pickles in addition to a few unmeasured dashes of garlic powder. The recipe really did need just a touch of sweetness and a little garlic!
4 TBS soy sauce (more if needed for taste and for liquid)
2 TBS Olive oil or fire oil because it will be threatening to stick to your pan if you don't add oil.
salt
1 cup uncooked Jasmine rice if you have it, if not, just use your favorite rice.
1 egg per serving

Directions:
Cook rice according to package directions or in your rice cooker--when done set aside until ready to use.

Cook ground meat until just over halfway done, drain off excess fat and liquid, then add grated vegetables, garlic, honey, peppers, soy sauce, the oil, and 1/2 tsp. salt. Cook this mixture until onions are soft and potatoes seem done. The vegetables should not be mush. Please don't overcook!

Mix rice in to dish and stir well. Taste and see if you need a bit more salt and/or soy sauce.

Put mixture into as many bowls or onto as many plates as people you will be serving and fry eggs in butter for each individual serving, putting a fried egg on top of each serving. I prefer mine rather runny but others may not. Another option is to make individual, one-egg omelets for each serving. The omelets should be flat, open, and unstuffed with anything. Garnishing with a bit of chopped green onion would be very attractive. Once served, the eater would chop their egg up a bit and stir it into the dish to eat. I've also seen this dish (online) served wrapped inside an omelet and covered in ketchup. All I can say about that is, ew! But to each her own, yo.

This dish reminds me a lot of really good fried rice, although the potato adds a new and filling dimension!

Below is the photo journal of this dish. I was too hungry to cook another egg and try to make it prettier for the photos. It was plenty tasty all the same! And this isn't the pretties dish anyway, but it's definitely homecooking, Korean style. At the very bottom is a little tutorial on how to chop an onion for those of you who don't watch the Food Network.

Images will enlarge when clicked.

How To Chop An Onion:

The trick to chopping an onion is to cut it in half lengthwise and leave the big, gnarly end intact on each half, cutting off the smoother ends only if needed and peeling the onion. Long slices aimed more or less towards the core of the onion, going from tip to tip of your onion half (without cutting into the gnarly end), are the next step. Then slice across your longitudinal cuts, thinner for more finely chopped onions and wider for more coarsely chopped. This is as simple and fast as it gets without a fancy onion chopper. Leaving the big, ugly end in place holds everything together while you chop and allows you to waste none of your onion. By the way, I chop, slice, and dice as much as possible on heavy-duty paper plates. It's probably not very "green" but I don't have the energy for endlessly washing cutting boards. I also don't have enough cutting boards! I figure I am saving water by using paper plates so maybe it all works out in the end.

If it matters, we very rarely eat on paper plates. I like a real plate when I chow down!

Click here for the slightly easier to print version of Ohm Rice.

Mom's Enchilada Casserole

noreply@blogger.com (Genie) — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 00:56:00 +0000

No, this recipe does NOT require that you make your own corn tortillas.

I am not adept (yet) at corn tortillas so in the interest of honing that skill, I made my second batch ever of corn tortillas today with the intent of using them in Mom's Enchilada Casserole (see recipe below). My tortillas aren't yet good enough to simply fill with delicious taco ingredients and enjoy fresh or to smear with butter while still warm. But for enchiladas they're more than serviceable. I think my tortilla press doesn't quite squish the masa flat enough. Or, perhaps, I just need to practice a lot more.

Normally, I would just use store bought corn tortillas for enchilada casserole--but, like I said, I needed the practice. And since I'm no Tortilla Wizard, I won't drag you through the written instructions on how I make them until I get it perfect. Following are just some photos of the process--there are a multitude of recipes and suggestions online.

I have learned a few things about making tortillas--they need to be kneaded for at least three minutes. I keep intending to knead them for five minutes but my arm wears out.

If I don't knead them for a few minutes, they simply don't cook up as well.

Another trick I've learned is that tortillas are not done until they've sat and steamed for at least a couple of minutes. A tortilla warmer is a must. It can turn the stiffest tort cooked by the most ignorant tortilla cooking noob into a soft, pliable, useful food item. Putting warm tortillas in a tortilla warmer with some paper towel on the bottom to absorb excess moisture and closing the lid allows the cooked tortillas to steam perfectly.

Now, if you are going to make the following recipe, I suggest you use store bought corn tortillas and either warm them up wrapped in paper towel in a tortilla warmer (make sure yours is microwaveable) for one minute or warm them in very hot oil. Personally, I don't find that dunking them in hot oil improves the flavor at all. Steaming them in the warmer makes them pliable enough for rolling, and dipping them in the warm or hot enchilada sauce improves that even more.

This recipe assumes that you are using a 9x13 baking dish. It's the closest approximation I can get to the way my Mom made enchiladas. These are my all time, favorite enchiladas. We used ground Axis meat instead of hamburger for this recipe, not that we can taste the difference.

Ingredients:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees
1 to 1.5 lbs. lean ground beef, turkey, pork, or venison
Half a large onion, chopped--reserve enough chopped onion to sprinkle on top of casserole
2 jalapenos for spicy enchiladas or 1 for mild. Cut off stem and chop, do not remove seeds.
Approximately 12 oz. grated cheddar
15 to18 corn tortillas depending on size
1 batch of Killer Enchilada Sauce
Enough sliced black olives to sprinkle on top of casserole

Cook ground meat until it is about half done or so--but not completely done, then drain off excess fat and liquid. Add almost all of the chopped onions, except for what you've reserved to sprinkle on top, and all of the chopped peppers. Sprinkle in a bit of salt if you like. Saute until meat is completely done and onions are tender. The fat melts off ground meat well before it's done and you won't find that anymore needs to be drained off after the vegetables are cooked.

Doing it this way allows my onions and peppers to cook with the meat without my having to pour off half their flavor when I drain the fat from the meat. It probably doesn't REALLY matter if you saute your onions and peppers separately and add them to the meat after it's done or if you add them to the meat after it's cooked and drained and then saute the whole mess until the veggies are done. But something inside me says the veggies and the meat need to cook together so that's what I do.

Once cooked, set meat aside. Your enchilada sauce should at least be warm, if not hot. So warm it if necessary. You will use all but about 2/3's cup of the sauce. Take that out now, if you like, so you don't forget.

Warm tortillas as suggested above the ingredients list and set aside in tortilla warmer to keep them warm, moist, and pliable.

Get ready to get dirty, this is a messy process.

One at a time, dip a tortilla in the sauce to coat the entire tortilla. In the image below I only dipped most of it, but I was trying to keep from getting too dirty while I took photos of this process. After tortilla is dipped, lay it in your baking pan and put a bit of the meat mixture and a little bit of cheese in the tortilla and roll it up. Don't be tempted to over-stuff tortillas, you need to be able to roll them. Also, you don't want to run out of meat. Roll tortilla and start with the next and keep going until you have a pan full of meat and cheese stuffed tortilla rolls.

As you can see below I started rolling them in the pan one way and then realized I needed to lay them out in the pan differently. Oh well. In addition to that boo boo, I was desperately hoping that 16 tortillas would be enough but it wasn't and at the last minute I had to whip up two more. The maseca bag actually has a recipe for just four tortillas, so I didn't have to do any math in my head. The extras took almost no time at all to make--probably since everything was still sitting out!

My homemade tortillas are a bit smaller than store bought tortillas so you may find that 15 store bought tortillas are enough. You'll just have to figure that one out on your own!

Once your pan is full, don't fret if you have leftover meat, just sprinkle it over the rolled enchiladas. Then pour the enchilada sauce (all but that 2/3's of a cup) over the enchiladas and spread it evenly over the top of the casserole with a spatula or your hand. If you think it needs more, add the rest, but mushy enchiladas are not pretty on a plate so don't use too much. Besides, the extra sauce can probably be used for a little snack the next day!

Now sprinkle enchiladas with remaining cheese, adding more if you wish. Sprinkle remaining onions over the top of the cheese and then sprinkle with sliced olives.

Bake uncovered in a 350 degree oven for 30 minutes or until cheese is melted and sauce is beginning to bubble.

Serve and enjoy!

Mmm mmm good!

Click here to see a version of JUST THE RECIPE, you'll find it much easier to print than the above mess!

Delightful Surprise!

noreply@blogger.com (Genie) — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 22:05:00 +0000

I just updated the blog entry about taste-testing the Ninniku Hachimitsu-zuke. You'll have to Click This Linky to read the update--it's the final paragraph.

You see, today I tasted the garlic from the jar, straight, all by itself and I got quite a delightful shock! And now I'm inspired to make two more batches of it. Yes, ol' Ikuko Hisamatsu is right. These pickles are good stuff. And I never want to be without garlic honey.

By the way, the Killer Enchilada Sauce recipe got some images added to it today since I had to make the sauce and an enchilada casserole today. I'll blog the enchilada casserole very soon.