Salsa Borracha (Drunken Salsa)

This one is a little unusual. When I first saw Marcela Valladolid cooking it on her show "Mexican Made Easy", I thought she may have been drunken herself. I had never heard of making a salsa with dried chiles, orange juice, and tequila, but it looked like a pretty good topping for meats and tacos.

Start by removing the stem and seeds from 8 ancho chiles. These chiles are dried from the poblano chile. They are a deep red color and are sweet with tastes of raisin and plum.


Put the chiles on to a dry frying pan over medium heat for a minute per side until they are slightly toasted. Tear them apart and put into a blender.

Add to the blender, a cup of orange juice, 1/2 cup of a good anejo tequila, a minced garlic clove, and 1/4 cup of olive oil. Puree until well blended and add back into frying pan over medium heat for about 5 minutes, until thickened.


Puree until well blended and add back into frying pan.

Cook over medium heat for about 5 minutes, until thickened.


Now for the fun part. I created a little dry part of the pan to pour the tequila into a pool.

Then I set the tequila on fire and let it slowly burn out.

Finally, blend it all together and season with salt and pepper.


Let it cool down, then transfer to a serving bowl. Top with crumbled anejo cheese. While the alcohol is cooked off, you will soon be singing and dancing once you make this one.

Bagna Caôda

Bagna Caôda is a classic Italian dish native to the Piemonte area. The name arises from the interaction between land and sea, with the anchovies and olive oil brought overland by Liguarian traders combining delightfully with the garlic grown in Piemonte. It is the symbol of joyful conviviality around which friends gather.

My grandmother's cousin had talked about making Bagna Caôda for years and years. I had heard stories of my long past grandparents entertaining loads of people on a long table at their home in Castroville. There, wine was flowing and fondue pots were used to keep a garlic and anchovy mixture hot for dipping bread and unusual vegetables into. Finally, the night had come for her to share this family recipe.

It all starts by peeling and thinly slicing a staggering 6 or 7 heads of garlic. Not cloves of garlic, but heads of garlic.


In a 2-quart sauce pan, pour a light olive oil over the garlic until it reaches an inch over the top.
Cook over low to medium heat until just bubbling. Stir periodically to keep from sticking to the bottom.


After 20 minutes, the garlic will begin to soften.



After 40 minutes, the garlic turns a to a shade of brown and becomes very tender.

Add 2 cans of anchovies with its oil and mix.


After another 20 minutes, the anchovies and garlic will be disintegrating. Add 1/2 cube of butter and 1/2 cup of white wine. Continue on heat until butter is melted.


At this point, keep it on a very low heat to remain warm.

The vegetables can be any that are in season. Traditionally, with my family, the key vegetable is Cardone. It is pronounced Car-dough-nay and is a cousin to the artichoke. No wonder it was so important of an ingredient with my grandfather being an artichoke farmer. The Cardone is grown for its edible stalks, much like celery.


Once the Cardone is the desired size, the plant is wrapped up and burried for a few weeks until the stalks become white in color removing much of the bitterness. Maybe because of this preparation, we were able to eat it raw, unlike all the other places I have looked saying it needs to be cooked. Ours was placed in a paper bag for a few weeks. It was a milder than I had expected with a slight taste of artichoke.


Other vegetables that we tried were cabbage, anise, carrots, celery, sweet bell peppers, radishes, cauliflower, and broccolini. Of course there were many loafs of fresh french bread to dip as well.

It was an amazing meal that I will remember, and taste, for a long time.

Chiles en Nogada

It has been a long time since my last post, but I have found a new show that has inspired me to try some new dishes and crank out some new posts. The Food Network show is called "Mexican Made Easy", but I find the title to be a little misleading. The host, Marcela Valladolid, breezes through multiple dishes in 30 minutes, while it could take me a couple of hours to finish one of them even after procuring the ingredients.

Today's dish is Chiles en Nogada, Stuffed Poblano Chiles in Creamy Walnut Sauce. The name comes from the Spanish word for the walnut tree, nogal. This famous dish is said to have been developed by the residents of Puebla to honor General Don Augustín de Iturbide at a celebratory banquet held in August 1821, after the signing of the Treaty of Córdoba. All of the dishes served at the banquet featured the colors of the Mexican flag (green chiles, white sauce, and red pomegranate seeds). Still a popular dish, chiles en nogada is often served in August when walnuts and pomegranates come into season.

The first part of this dish is the picadillo, a mixture usually containing chopped or ground meat, aromatics, fruits, and spices.


Cook a diced onion and a few teaspoons of vegetable oil over medium-high heat until translucent. Add a couple cloves of minced garlic and cook for a minute longer, until fragrant. Add a pound of ground pork, a pound of ground sirloin, a bay leaf, and a cinnamon stick and cook over medium heat until meat is cooked through, about 7 minutes.

Chop 1/2 cup of dried apples, 1/2 cup of dried apricots, and 3/4 cup of dried pineapple. Combine dried fruit with meat and remove from heat. Mix in a teaspoon of ground cinnamon along with salt and pepper to taste. Remove the cinnamon stick and bay leaf and set aside.

For the walnut sauce, you are going to need to peel 4 cups of walnuts. This sounds a little intimidating, but really isn't that bad. In a cup of boiling water, add the walnuts and cook for 1 minute, then drain into a colander. After they have cooled, the walnut skins will mostly fall off. A paring knife can be used to remove the stubborn skins. Peeling the walnuts will make a smoother, whiter sauce. Unpeeled walnuts can be used, but the texture will be grainier and slightly bitter.

Combine the walnuts, 2 1/2 cups of Mexican crema, and 4 ounces of goat cheese in a blender and blend until smooth and silky. Sauce should coat the back of a spoon. Add a few more walnuts or crema to adjust thickness. Season with salt.

Next, char 10 poblano chiles on a gas stove top. Keep rotating until the entire chile is thoroughly blackened. I actually needed to get a little bit more of a char on mine to cook the flesh a little more. It was a sufficient amount to easily remove the blackened skin, but I thought that the meat was a little too crunchy.

Immediately after pulling from the stove top, put the chile into a plastic bag for 15 minutes allowing it to sweat a little loosening the skin. At this point, use a paper towel to pull the skin right off.

Cut a slit into each chile lengthwise and carefully cut out the seeds and veins. Leave the chile stem intact.

Spoon as much filling into each of the chiles as you can.

Finally, top the exposed filling with a couple of tablespoons of the walnut sauce. Top with some pomegranate seeds to resemble the colors of the Mexican flag.

Breakfast Burritos and New Bike Gear

The block that I live on was having a bunch of garage sales a couple of weekends ago, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to make some breakfast burritos for the visiting crowds. It was also a chance to try out the new side containers that my father in law put together to mount on the bike frame.

First I had to gather and prepare the ingredients.

• 12" flour tortillas from the Mexican market
• cooked a few pounds of chorizo seco (dried)
• peeled, diced, and boiled a couple pounds of potatoes
• 1 lb. of mixed of shredded jack and cheddar cheese to melt on the tortillas
• 2 dozen eggs
• diced jalapenos

The side car containers now had to be filled. The great part about this devise is that the individual containers come out for easy cleaning, and you can put ice in the bottom to keep the container contents cold. You can also put a Sterno candle underneath the container with some water inside of it to create a hot water bath to keep the container contents hot.

It was about 8:30 in the morning and I was ready to ride down the street and open up shop.


I had never cooked eggs on the hot 'arriba' part of the comal, but if I laid them down gently, they mostly stayed together without sliding off.

After the eggs were cooked, I mixed in the chorizo and egg that have been kept warm on the outer ring of the comal. Jalapenos occasionally went in here.

I scraped the completed filling to a free spot on the side of the comal so that I could use the center part to heat the tortilla and melt cheese on top of. The finished result turned out pretty good. Next time I would try to get more moisture in the filling. Maybe a chipotle sauce mixed in.

Squash Blossom Quesadilla

Went on my first trip at the farmers market last weekend of the year. My problem at these events is that I keep buying more ripe fruit and vegetables than I can possibly eat before they start going bad. This year was going to be different.

While wandering through the produce, I saw something that I hadn't seen in years, zucchini blossoms. I remembered how delicious these were when I was a kid and my grandmother used to fry them up. I had to take a second look.


Now I was recalling my Oaxaca trip, enjoying a quesadilla filled with Oaxacan cheese and squash blossoms. It was one of the most wonderful things I had ever eaten. The whole thing was made in front of you on a wood burning comal. The cheese was like strands of thread with a milky texture while the blossoms were recently picked. They were spread on top of a freshly made masa tortilla until the cheese melted out of the sides.

The quality of Oaxacan cheese here isn't nearly as good as that in Oaxaca, here it is a drier, matted string cheese that doesn't melt as easily. However, the flowers were beautiful and I decided to give the squash blossom quesadilla a try.


This is a pretty easy thing to make once you acquire the flowers. I went with a flour tortilla and placed it on a dry iron comal. After a few seconds, I did my best of shredding Oaxacan cheese and putting on top of one half of the tortilla. Next, I tore up some of the flowers and put on top of the cheese.


Once the tortilla started to brown and the cheese started to melt, I folded in half and let the whole thing melt together.


It wasn't nearly as good as the one I got in Oaxaca, but it turned out pretty tasty. I will be looking for squash blossoms again at the farmers market.

Bike Cart Jamaican Barbecue

Back from Jamaica, I had to take a shot at recreating the jerk chicken and serving up some fish that I had grown accustomed to eating on the island. The perfect opportunity for firing up the barbecue on the bike cart.

First a little more fabrication was due. While on vacation, the butcher block that I custom ordered had arrived. It is an awesome cut of maple end grain, 2 inches thick and sized to fit into the leftover space next to the cooking area. My father in law planted four studs into the wood and drilled corresponding holes into the aluminum frame. It fit perfectly and is removable for cleaning. We also put some hooks on the frame for holding utensils.


Picked up some beautiful halibut at Costco trip and thawed out some banana leaves in the freezer from the tamale expedition. Seasoned with a little dill and lemon, this cooked along side of some foil wrapped corn. A pretty simple dish, but it sure turned out great.

Now that the barbecue had been initiated, it was time for something a little more complicated, slow roasting a whole chicken prepared with jerk marinade. I am so glad that I had researched the Outdoor Chef City Grill 420 ahead of time. It really lives up to its reputation and high reviews. I was amazed how I was able to control the temperature within about five degrees for long periods of time.

This chicken cooked for an hour over 275 degree heat. It really was falling off the bone. The marinated was infused in the juicy meat and the jerk sauce was spicy, sweet, and wonderful.

Jamaican Jerk Chicken

Alright mon, thought that I would try something a little different. Maybe a little Jerk Chicken! What better place to learn than Mantego Bay, Jamaica. My wife and I were here for a little R&R when we saw 'The Art of Making Jerk' cooking class in the hotel activity brochure. After giving the jerk a try for lunch, this turned into a must do for the vacation.

The Jerk Centre is located just 25 feet off of the Jamaican shoreline at the beautiful Ritz-Carlton Hotel.

Jerk shacks thrive on the sides of the road in Jamaica as a local fast-food industry. The term jerk is said to come from the word charqui, a Spanish term for jerked or dried meat. It eventually became jerky in English. Another origin is linked to the jerking or poking of the meat with a sharp object, producing holes which were then filled with a spice mixture. Jerk was an ingenious way to preserve meat out in the wilderness.

Jerk seasoning has two key ingredients: scotch bonnet pepper and allspice berry.

The scotch bonnet pepper is a variety of the habanero and got its name for its shape resembling a Scotch tam or hat. The colors range from green to yellow to red. The chiles not only add a spicy flavor, but also preserve foods when refrigeration was not easy to come by. You can substitute jalapenos, but it is worth the effort to hunt down the real thing. Reduce the heat by removing the seeds and veins from the pepper.

The allspice berry is a popular spice in Jamaica. This is not the same as the ground combination spice powder often used in pumpkin pies, but is the berry of the evergreen pimento tree which is native to the West Indies and South America. The dark brown, dried berries have an aroma similar to the combination of cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves.

Other spices and herbs may include thyme, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, garlic, and scallion (depending on the cook).

Our instructor, Keisha, was going to show us how to combine these ingredients into the jerk.

In Jamaica, there are 2 types of jerk marinades, wet and dry. The dry rub is used when you are in a hurry and need to make a quick dinner. We focused on the wet rub that is more flavorful, infusing the meat all the way to the bone. It can be used on chicken, pork, seafood, or tofu.

Jerk Marinade (Wet)

• 1/4 cup allspice berries
• 10 scotch bonnets, stems and seeds removed
• 1/2 cup scallions, chopped
• 1/2 cup onion, chopped
• 4 garlic cloves, chopped
• 4 bay leaves, crushed
• 1/3 cup ginger, peeled and chopped
• 1/3 cup fresh thyme
• salt to taste
• 1 tablespoon ground black pepper
• 3/4 cup vegetable oil
• 1/2 cup soy sauce

Blend all of the ingredients thoroughly.

After the marinade was made, I had the honor of marinating the meat. We used a whole chicken with the back removed. A cup of the marinade was rubbed thoroughly into the meat. I also was instructed to gently separate the pocket of skin along each breast and to rub the marinade into the space.

Chicken or pork should be marinated between 1 and 2 days for the flavors to work themselves all the way to the bone. Seafood can be marinated right before cooking.

Jerked items are traditionally cooked slowly over pimento wood. I think that in the absence of a pimento wood fire, the key to authenticity is a slow, smokey fire. Keisha also mentioned that barbecue or baking the meat also comes out pretty good, no problem mon.

The final step to the jerk is to make the jerk sauce. This sauce not only goes perfectly with the jerk meat, but the spicy, sweet sauce works great on just about anything.

Mild Jerk Sauce

• 2 cups Jerk Marinade (Wet)
• 1/4 cup Leam Perry Sauce
• 4 ounce Tabasco Sauce
• 3 cups pineapple juice
• 1 cup Ketchup
  
• 3 cups sweet chili sauce
• 1 cup soy sauce
• 1/2 cup honey
• 10 scotch bonnets (whole with stems on)
  

Blend all the ingredients thoroughly. This stuff keeps for a couple of weeks on the counter or indefinitely in the refrigerator. To spice it up, put in 15 scotch bonnets and 8 ounces of Tabasco sauce. Your lips are going to be hot!

This chicken was amazing and the sauce was phenomenal. Looking forward to trying this at home.