Tomatillo salsa can be made with raw tomatillos, cooked ones and canned. Last week, Part 1 offered a raw salsa from Rick Bayless. Today, in Part 2, there is a cooked tomatillo salsa again from Rick Bayless. This is the perfect opportunity to contrast two recipes: same author, nearly the same ingredients, and just one shift in the preparation technique. The modest differences in ingredients are the addition of a small amount of onion, increased garlic and decreased cilantro.

The real shift, of course, is that in this recipe the tomatillos and garlic are pan roasted before being added to the blender with the chiles and cilantro. The onion below is not blended but added only after the salsa has been created.

How about the results? What do you get for roasting the tomatillos? There are important differences in the two salsas. This cooked version has a darker color, is more viscous, and offers you a more complex flavor. I personally like the raw tomatillo salsa for its simple tangy flavor which is the perfect match for chips and margaritas. The cooked salsa has multiple flavor levels that, like a complex wine, reveal themselves over time. This cooked salsa is the one for your main courses: chicken, beef, and shrimp.

Like the raw version, this cooked salsa can be refrigerated and enjoyed for several days.

Roasted Tomatillo Salsa

Yield: 1 ½ cups

Ingredients:

4 medium tomatillos, husked, rinsed and halved
2 large garlic cloves
⅓ cup cilantro, loosely packed, roughly chopped
½ small white onion, finely chopped
salt
water

Preparation:

Set a large (10-inch) nonstick skillet over medium-high heat (if you don’t have a nonstick skillet, lay in a piece of foil). Lay in the garlic and tomatillos, cut side down. When the tomatillos are well browned, 3 or 4 minutes, turn everything over and brown the other side. The tomatillos should be completely soft. [Brian note: using tongs you will know immediately when the raw, hard tomatillos have truly softened.]

Scrape the tomatillos and garlic into a blender or food processor and let cool to room temperature, about 3 minutes. Add the chiles, cilantro and ¼ cup of water.  Blend to a coarse puree. Pour into a salsa dish and thin with a little additional water if necessary to give the salsa an easily spoonable consistency.

Scoop the chopped onion into a strainer and rinse under cold water. Stir into the salsa. Taste and season with salt, usual about ½ teaspoon.

Source: Mexican Everyday by Rick Bayless

Miller’s recipes are spicy, authentic, and appealing from the first glance. In his new book, Tacos, Miller offers many recipes you’ll enjoy, but this one is Suzen’s favorite. The word charro refers to the original New World cowboys. These Mexican and Spanish men needed serious food at the end of their day, and they had one pot to make it in.

This dish will remind you of chili, but it’s something different. The spicy aromas will fill your kitchen. As you peer into the pot, the combination of beans and spices will form a broth quite unlike what you’ve seen before: rich, thick, dark red, and obviously potent.

You can serve this with tortillas as Miller suggests, put it in bowls and garnish with sour cream, or do what Suzen and I did: heap it into a large baked potato and savor the combination of mellow potato and outrageously spiced beans.

Charro Beans with Blacked Tomatoes

Yield: 8 tacos worth

Preparation Time: 2 ½ hours

Ingredients:

1 cup dried pinto beans, rinsed 3 times and picked over for rocks
3 cloves garlic
1 small white onion, halved
6 ½ cups water
2 tablespoons olive oil (preferably Spanish)
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 jalapeno chiles, dry-roasted
1 pound tomatoes, blackened and cut into ¼—inch dice [directions below]
1 teaspoon tomato paste
¼ teaspoon chipotle puree
½ teaspoon smoked salt
¼ teaspoon dried Mexican oregano, toasted and ground
1 tablespoon chopped fresh cilantro leaves
8 (5 ½-inch) soft yellow corn tortillas, for service

Garnish: strips of soft beef or game jerky

Preparation:

To cook the beans, in a large pot, simmer the beans, garlic, ½ onion, and the 6 ½ cups of water over medium=low hat, partially covered, until the beans are almost falling apart, 2 to 4 hours. Add water as necessary during cooking so the mixture does not dry out. After the beans are cooked, drain the bean liquid into a saucepan and return the beans to the large pot. Over medium heat, reduce the liquid until it is thickened (not too much liquid will be left), about 10 minutes; reserve.

Meanwhile, cut the remaining ½ onion into ¼-inch dice. Ina skillet, heat the oil over medium-high heat and sauté the diced onion until it begins to caramelize, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and sauté for 30n seconds (don’t let the garlic burn); set aside.

Into the ;pot of cooked beans, stir in the sautéed onion and garlic, chiles, tomatoes, tomato paste, chipotle puree, smoked salt, oregano, cilantro, and the thickened bean juice, and cook over medium heat for 20 minutes. Remove from the heat and serve immediately, or keep warm in the pan until ready to serve.

To serve, the tortillas side by side, open face and overlapping on a platter. Divide the filling equally between the tortillas and top with salsa and jerky strips. Grab, fold, and eat right away. Or build your own taco: lay a tortilla, open face, in one hand Spoon on some filling, top with salsa and jerky strips, and eat right away.

To blacken the tomatoes, preheat a heavy skilled, cat-iron preferably, over high heat. Add the whole tomatoes and cook, turning occasionally until the tomato skins split and are blackened, about 5 minutes. Remove and let cool.  Peel the tomatoes, discard the stem ends and coarsely chop the tomatoes.

Source: Tacos by Mark Miller

There, I wrote it. What did you first think? Awful stuff? Too sweet? Red neck food? Manufactured junk? Or did you think where is my spoon?

Crème or cream or fluff is not highly respected. It’s considered a manufactured food, something that does not have the up-from-the-grass-roots mythology of fudge or brownies or chocolate chip cookies. Actually, it does have an up-from-the-bootstraps background. According to Wikipedia, Archibald Query starring selling his version door-to-door in the early 20^th century. By 1917, the recipe had been sold to Massachusetts candy makers, for the great sum of $500. By 1940, the familiar glass jar was there for us to forever try to scoop the stuff out.

I always have a jar, or two, on hand. And, I regularly, religiously test the quality by taking a spoonful. Somehow Suzen always seems to notice. I get a sharp glance and a sharper comment along the lines of “Had your blood sugar tested lately?” I’m not allowed to kiss her until I have washed my face.

Yes, it is sticky. Getting it out of the jar is a task, and you always leave a good third in that jar. But, if heated, it’s much more manageable. If seriously heated, you can even spread it. And that is the secret of this great cookie.

This recipe, from Cookie Time by Marilyn Miller Wasbotten in 1992, is wonderfully old-fashioned. A secret of this cookie is to melt the butter, then stir it into an egg rich batter.

I have promised to blog my favorite cookie from Cookie Time but I made a mistake. I began to go through Cookie Time from the front. The recipes are arranged alphabetically in Cookie Time and this one is called Aunt Sally’s Mississippi Mud. We’ll be tasting the B’s next week.

Oh, I should mention that there is cookbook called The Marshmallow Fluff Cookbook. I would not describe it as terribly sophisticated but it is delicously sweet.

Aunt Sally’s Mississippi Mud

Yield: 18 large squares

Cookie Ingredients:

1 ½ cups flour
2 cups sugar
Pinch of salt
4 eggs
1 cup butter [margarine in the original recipe]
⅓ cup cocoa
1 ½ cups pecans, coarsely chopped
1 7-ounce jar marshmallow crème for fluff

Cookie Preparation:

Sift together the flour, sugar, and salt. Add the eggs one at a time. Mix well. Melt the butter, and stir in the cocoa. Pour this cocoa mixture over the four and egg mixture. Mix well.  Add the pecans. Pour into a 9X11X2” pan.

Bake at 325 degrees for 25 to 35 minutes. Turn off the oven. Spread a layer of marshmallow crème over the maxed cookies. Return the oven for 3 minutes to soften the fluff. Remove from the oven and spread the crème evenly with an offset spatula.

Frosting Ingredients:

¼ up butter, softened

⅓ cup cocoa
1 box confectioners’ sugar
⅓ cup milk

Frosting Preparation:

Melt the butter and stir in the cocoa. Add the confectioners’ sugar and milk.  Stir until runny. Pour over the smoothed fluff. Cut into square and remove from pan.

Source: Cookie Time by Marilyn Miller Wasbotten

This drink is about as easy a mixture as you can imagine. It ranks very high on the flavor-to-effort scale.

Brian’s Frozen Mango Margarita

Yield: 2 large cocktails

Ingredients:

4 ounces white tequila
2 ounces orange liquor [Mandarin Napoleon suggested]
Juice of 2 limes
1 cup of diced fresh mango
1 ounce of simple syrup
12 ice cubes

Preparation:

Place all ingredients in a blender and blend away until smooth.  Pour into glasses rimmed with salt or sugar.

Source: Brian O’Rourke

After a bible, what is there left to do? Rose must have a religious thread somewhere because she has just written Rose’s Heavenly Cakes. This hefty work is just as impressive as the Cake Bible and just as important. This is one of those if-I-were-headed-to-a-desert-island-what-would-I-take books.

What makes this book so special? First, it’s a Rose book. So it comes with very precise lists of ingredients and instructions. Typical of Rose’s books, those ingredients are presented to you by volume, by weight in ounces, and weight in grams. And when Rose says exactly 5.6 ounces, she means it.  You see, the second thing special about a Rose book is a guarantee of success. Follow her recipe to the letter and you really will be in cake heaven.

Lastly, the third special feature of Heavenly Cakes is the variety of sensational ideas here. Americans love cake, but we don’t bake them very often. Our flavor spectrum trends to the basic: vanilla and chocolate and yellow for the cake, vanilla and chocolate and perhaps lemon for the frosting. With cake decoration shows now the rage on television, there seems to be an overwhelming emphasis on how a cake looks. So, how often are you personally going to build a cake duplicating Notre Dame Cathedral?

In Heavenly Cakes, Rose gives you a bevy of brilliant cake ideas — ones you can truly do yourself. In turning the pages, I was struck by the recipe below, Spice Cake with Peanut Buttercream. Spice cake is one of those neglected flavors, lost in the maze of vanilla and chocolate. And Peanut Buttercream? How could you not be intrigued by that? Then to combine the two — just what would that combination taste like?

It tastes like heaven. It’s a superior cake, distinct in flavor, and thoroughly satisfying.

Give this recipe a try. Following Rose’s detail, I’ve listed the ingredients both by volume and where appropriate by weight in ounces. Take a look at Heavenly Cakes, browse the recipes and you’ll probably succumb to bringing it home.

Oh, I do have one confession. I am a vanilla-and-chocolate addict. So I also made Rose’s White Velvet Cake with Milk Chocolate Ganache. It’s a serious reason to have this book open in your kitchen. Or to take with you to that desert island.

Spice Cake with Peanut Buttercream

Yield: one 9” round layer

Ingredients for the Cake:

2 large eggs at room temperature [3.5 ounces]
⅔ cup buttermilk [5.3 fluid ounces]
1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups cake flour [7 ounces]
1 cup superfine sugar [7 ounces]
1 ½ teaspoons unsweetened (alkalized) cocoa powder
3 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoon cloves
8 tablespoons butter

Cake Preparation:

Special Equipment. Encircle one 9 by 2-inch round cake pan with a strip of parchment paper. Coat the bottom with shortening and top with parchment. Coat the parchment with baking spray and then flour.

Prepare the Oven. Twenty minutes or more before baking, preheat the oven to 350° F.

Mix the Liquid Ingredients. In a medium bowl, whisk the eggs, 3 tablespoons of the buttermilk, and the vanilla just until lightly combined.

Make the Batter. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the flat beater, mix the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and cloves on low speed for 30 seconds.  Add the butter and the remaining buttermilk. Mix on low speed until the dry ingredients are moistened. Raise the speed to medium and beat for 1 ½ minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl.

Starting on medium-low speed, gradually add the egg mixture in two parts, beating on medium speed for 30 seconds after each addition to incorporate the ingredients and strengthen the structure. Using a silicone spatula, scrape the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the surface evenly with a small offset spatula.

Bake the Cake. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes, or until a wire cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean and the cake springs back when pressed lightly in the center. The cake should start to shrink from the sides of the pan only after removal from oven.

Cool and Unmold the Cake. Let the cake cook in the pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes. Run a small metal spatula between the sides of the pan and the cake, pressing firmly against the pan, and invert the cake onto a wire rack that has been coated lightly with nonstick cooking spray. To prevent splitting, reinvert the cake so that the top side is up. Cool completely.

Ingredients for the Peanut Buttercream

½ cup Peanut butter, preferably Jif, at room temperature [4.7 ounces]
½ cup minus 1 tablespoon cream cheese (65-70°) [4 ounces]
4 tablespoons unsalted butter (65-70°) [2 ounces]
2 teaspoons sour cream
¼ cup powdered sugar, lightly spooned into the cup and leveled off, plus 3 more tablespoons
1 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

Buttercream Preparation:

Make the Peanut Buttercream. In a food processor, combine the peanut butter, cream cheese, butter, sour cream, powdered sugar, and vanilla and process, scraping down the sides of the bowl as necessary, until the butter cream is smooth and uniform in color.

Compose the Cake. When the cake is completely cool, spread a little buttercream on a 9-inch cardboard round or serving plate and set the cake on top. If using the plate, slide a few wide strips of wax paper or parchment under the cake to keep the rim of the plate clean. Frost the top and sides with swirls of silky buttercream. If using the paper strips, slowly slide them out from under the cake.

Source: Rose’s Heavenly Cakes by Rose Levy Beranbaum