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Homesick Texan Posole

Friday, February 26th, 2010

Posted by Kristin

posole

I never really thought much about making posole until recently. Shawn told me he hates hominy, but of course prior to this, he had only ever eaten it out of a can. Canned hominy is a much different animal than dried. It has sort of a squeaky texture that hominy prepared from the dry state doesn’t have. I had a feeling that this “squeakiness” had something to do with his aversion to it.

For Christmas this year, I gave my parents a Rancho Gordo care package with a sampling of several kinds of their dried beans. When I placed the order, on a whim, I decided to get a couple of packages of their dried prepared hominy. I thought I would use it to make green posole, but then Homesick Texan posted this recipe so, I had to make it.

It was absolutely perfect—the pork fell apart into shreds and the broth was rich and delicious. Okay, so it was almost perfect—my hominy didn’t actually flower because I didn’t allow enough time for it to cook, so it was a little au dente and the kernels didn’t open up the way they should have. But this actually didn’t bother me a bit. I sort of enjoyed the chewiness of the underdone hominy. Next time I would add the dry, soaked hominy at the beginning with the other ingredients rather than waiting a couple of hours as the recipe suggests.

Oh, and by the way, Shawn ate a healthy serving of posole. He said it was good and the hominy didn’t really bother him. Success!

Posted in budget recipes, main dishes, mexican, pork, soup | No Comments »

The Culinary Adventures of Kelly & Kristin: Part 2

Monday, February 22nd, 2010

Posted by Kelly

Kristin and I share a culinary bond. Our best weekends are ones when we get to cook something exciting and delicious for people we love. As winter slips away from us here in Texas, we felt the need for one last decadent winter dish. (Did I say winter? I meant a couple weeks of cold disguised as winter to give us a break from our shorts and flip flops.) Deep in the shelves of Kristin’s bookcase is Sunday Suppers at Lucques and within those pages lies a gem of a recipe. Braised short ribs with potato purée, swiss chard and horseradish cream would be our Sunday, err Saturday Supper.

This recipe is simple to make, and will make your friends think you slaved all day over a hot stove when, in reality, the stove does all the work.

We began early that afternoon by searing off the ribs to brown perfection.

Brown Food, YUMMY!

Then you add your Mirepoix to the pan to caramelize in the rendered juices.

Carmelize

Then add your ribs back to the pan, add the liquid, put it all in the oven and forget about it for 3 hours.

Finished Product

(Well, in reality you can’t  forget. The smells will fill your home and make you so hungry, you send your husband and Shawn back to the store for snacks, and they will come home with your requests and 10 boxes of Girl Scout cookies. Queso, jalapeno hummus and one too many cookies later, those ribs will be finished!)

Close Up

Braised Short Ribs

Adapted from Sunday Suppers at Lucques: Seasonal Recipes from Market to Table by Suzanne Goin

6 beef short ribs * we used about 12, we were feeding two country boys okay?

1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon thyme leaves, and 4 whole sprigs thyme *we used dried only

1 tablespoon freshly cracked black pepper

3 dozen small pearl onions *if you are not thrilled by the thought of peeling 3 dozen small onions, a bag of frozen will do

1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil

1 cup diced onion

1/3 cup diced carrot

1/3 cup diced celery

2 bay leaves

2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

1 1/2 cups port *

2 1/2 cups hearty red wine *

6 cups beef or veal stock *

4 sprigs flat-leaf parsley

2 bunches Swiss chard, cleaned, center ribs removed

Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

*Ladies and Gentlemen, Kristin and I believe that there is no reason one should waste a whole bottle of wine in this recipe. We used just over a cup of red wine, a little sugar, an extra glug of balsamic vinegar and only about 4 cups of veal broth. Even with 12 ribs we had plenty of cooking liquid to cover our ribs.

Horseradish Cream (recipe follows)

Potato Purée/Mashed Potatoes (recipe follows)

Season the short ribs with 1 tablespoon thyme and the cracked black pepper. use your hands to coat the meat well. Cover, and refrigerate overnight. (Whoops, we bought the meat the day of, and well didn’t read the directions before then either. It was still delicious)

Take the short ribs out of the refrigerator an hour before cooking, to come to room temperature. After 30 minutes, season them generously on all sides with salt.

When you take the ribs out of the refrigerator, preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. (If you cheated and bought frozen already peeled pearl onions like we did, you can skip the 425 and go right to 325 degrees. Hey, if Ina Garten uses them, we will too!)

Toss the pearl onions with 2 tablespoons olive oil, 1 teaspoon thyme, 3/4 teaspoons salt, and a pinch of pepper. Spread them on a baking sheet and roast them about 15 minutes, until tender. When they have cooled, slip off the skins with your fingers and set aside. Turn the oven down to 325 degrees F.

When it’s time to cook the short ribs, heat a large Dutch oven over high heat for 3 minutes. Pour in 3 tablespoons olive oil, and wait a minute or two, until the pan is very hot and almost smoking. Place the short ribs in the pan, and sear until they are nicely browned on all three meaty sides. Depending on the size of your pan, you might have to sear the meat in batches. Do not crowd the meat or get lazy or rushed at this step; it will take at least 15 minutes. When the ribs are nicely browned, transfer them to a plate to rest.

Turn the heat down to medium, and add the onion, carrot, celery, thyme springs, and bay leaves. Stir with a wooden spoon, scraping up all the crusty bits in the pan. Cook 6 to 8 minutes, until the vegetables just begin to caramelize. Add the balsamic vinegar, port, and red wine. Turn the heat up to high, and reduce the liquid by half.

Add the stock and bring to a boil. Arrange ribs in the pot, lying flat, bones standing up, in one layer. Scrape any vegetables that have fallen on the ribs back into the liquid. The stock mixture should almost cover the ribs. Tuck the parsley sprigs in and around the meat. Cover tightly with aluminum foil and a tight-fitting lid if you have one. Braise in the oven for about 3 hours.

To check the meat for doneness, remove the lid and foil, being careful of the escaping steam, and piece a short rib with a paring knife. When the meat is done, it will yield easily to a knife. If it falls off the bone, don’t worry, that is a good thing!

We were so hungry, we skipped the following meat steps, and the dish was still a thing of perfection!

Let the ribs rest 10 minutes in their juices, and then transfer them to a baking sheet.

Turn the oven up to 400 degrees F.

Place the short ribs in the oven for 10 to 15 minutes to brown.

Strain the broth into a saucepan, pressing down on the vegetables with a ladle to extract all the juices. Skim the fat from the sauce (if you made these the day before, you will have already skimmed them) and, if the broth seems thin, reduce it over medium-high heat to thicken slightly. Taste for seasoning.

Heat a large saute pan over high heat for 2 minutes. Tear the Swiss chard into large pieces. Add 3 tablespoons olive oil to the pan, and stir in the cooked pearl onions. Add half the Swiss chard, and cook a minute or two, stirring the greens in the oil to help them wilt. Add a splash of water and the second half of the greens. Season with a heaping 1/4 teaspoon salt and a pinch of ground black pepper. Cook for a few more minutes, stirring frequently, until the greens are tender.

Horseradish Cream

3/4 cup créme fraîche

1 tablespoon prepared horseradish

Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

Combine the créme fraîche and horseradish in a small bowl. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Mashed Potatoes

2 pounds potatoes, scrubbed (We used Yukon Golds)

8 tablespoons unsalted butter (1 stick, 4 ounces), melted  (We used about half that amount)

1 cup half-and-half , warmed (We used mostly 2% milk with a splash of half and half)

1 1/2 teaspoons table salt

Ground black pepper

Chives for garnish (optional)

1. Place potatoes in large saucepan and cover with 1 inch water. Bring to boil over high heat; reduce heat to medium-low and simmer until potatoes are tender (a paring knife can be slipped into and out of center of potatoes with very little resistance), 20 to 30 minutes. Drain.

2. Set food mill or ricer over now empty but still warm saucepan. Spear potato with dinner fork, then peel back skin with paring knife. Repeat with remaining potatoes. Working in batches, cut peeled potatoes into rough chunks and drop into hopper of food mill or ricer. Process or rice potatoes into saucepan.

3. Stir in butter with wooden spoon until incorporated; gently whisk in half-and-half, salt, and pepper to taste. Serve immediately.

Posted in beef dishes, main dishes | 1 Comment »

The Culinary Adventures of Kelly & Kristin: Part 1

Sunday, February 21st, 2010

Posted by Kristin

If you have been reading for a while, you might remember this post about my friend Kelly. Recently, Kelly, Jeff and their dogs Cash and Bella moved back to Austin. When I heard the news I was so excited, imagining all of the things we could cook together.

After a fun day out at Bella Vista Ranch in Wimberley with Jeff and Kelly, sampling wine and olive oil, we started to think about recipes we wanted to try. Just a few days prior, I had a conversation with Shawn that went approximately like this:

Me: If I cooked a cow tongue would you eat it?

Shawn: No.

Me: Why not? It’s just like stewed meat. You wouldn’t even try it?

Shawn: I’m not eating tongue.

Me: Not even in a taco?

Shawn: I detest organ meat.

Me: *sulking silently*

So you can only imagine my excitement when Kelly and Jeff mentioned that they had seen the recipe for Beef Tacos de Lengua on Simply Recipes and wanted to try it.

* Fast forward to Super Bowl weekend. *

Never did I imagine that I would be standing face to … uh … face with an actual cow tongue, about to plunge it into boiling water, so that I could cut it up and serve it to my guests at a Super Bowl party.

Cow tongue

Granted, when you serve tongue at your Super Bowl party, the only people who will actually show up are blood relatives, people who live at your house anyway, and the friends who helped you plan the party (Just kidding y’all. If you’re reading this and you didn’t come, I know your reasons were all valid and I completely understand).

But really, you should have seen the look on this woman’s face when I put this baby in my cart at our friendly neighborhood HEB. When you tell people you are cooking a cow tongue—and they go “eeewwww” and you laugh hysterically at their squeamishness and your ability to gross them out (or maybe that’s just me)—you don’t think about what it will actually be like to cook a cow tongue.

So Kelly and I pressure cooked the tongue following Elise’s instructions, cooking it for 1 hour in the pressure cooker instead of cooking it normally for 3 hours. About 20 minutes into cooking it started to smell pretty amazing.

Cooked tongue

An hour later, Kelly removed the tongue from the pot and I peeled it. Yes, I just said I peeled the tongue. Sounds gross, I know, but trust me, you have to get the little taste bud looking thingies off it. The skin was Buster’s favorite part. As I was dangling a piece in the air he snapped onto one end and we played tug of war for a minute until I realized the ridiculousness of fighting with the dog over tongue skin. Needless to say I let him have it.

After peeling the tongue, I sliced it. And at that point we put everything away until the next day. The final step was to brown the meat in oil, and that needed to be done at the last minute. When we went to clean the pots and pans and dispose of the, uh, tongue juice, the broth from cooking the tongue smelled so rich and delicious, we couldn’t bring ourselves to throw it away. Jeff suggested we make it into pho (Vietnamese noodle soup). So, into the pot went some star anise, cloves, a little cinnamon, a handful of coriander seeds and some charred ginger which simmered away while we had a cocktail … or two …

The next morning I warmed up the broth and added some fish sauce. Then I ladled it over bowls of cooked rice noodles, sliced sirloin, sliced onion, green onion and cilantro. YUM! I never would have guessed that a boneless piece of meat would make such a delicious broth.

Later that evening we got out the lengua and Kelly browned it in some oil so it looked like this:

Finished Lengua

Then, we waited anxiously for the guests to arrive. Bella could hardly contain her excitement.

Bella

Neither could Cash. Because he knows a thing or two about tongues.

Cash tongue

Unfortunately we didn’t get a good shot of the final tacos. We cubed the meat and cooked it with a few cans of Herdez salsa verde. You could use whatever salsa verde you like, or even make your own out of charred onions, garlic, jalapenos and tomatillos. The finished product was served inside of warm corn tortillas with a little chopped onion, cilantro, avocado and sliced radishes.

My mother even ate one, despite my dad trying to gross her out by describing the texture as “boingy.” But she was a really good sport. My mother won’t eat a hot dog, but she ate a tongue taco. And she only did it because her baby made it. Of course, Shawn stuck to his word and didn’t eat any. He smoked a pork shoulder roast instead. It was also delicious.

I don’t know that I would want to make beef tongue very often, but it’s really a very flavorful cut of meat and it’s one that is often overlooked. If you’ve never cooked lengua and you’re not squeamish about the idea of it, I encourage you to try it.

Posted in beef dishes, budget recipes, main dishes, mexican | 6 Comments »

Dad’s Perfect Crab Cakes

Friday, September 18th, 2009

Next to fresh steamed lobster, you would be hard pressed to find a dish I would rather eat than crab cakes. This recipe is based on some instructions that my dad gave me over the phone once when I asked him how he makes his “perfect” crab cakes. You could take this recipe any way you like, but personally I like it just the way it is—with just a few flavors added to enhance, but not overpower the crab meat.

I realize fresh crab meat is expensive, but served with a simple mayonnaise based sauce, a side salad and maybe a few wedge fries, a single crab cake makes a fairly decadent meal for one person. NOTE: There is no substitute for fresh crab meat. I wouldn’t even bother with this if you can only get it canned.

Dad’s Perfect Crab Cakes

1 lb of fresh lump or back fin crab meat, picked free of shells

1 large egg

2 tablespoons mayonnaise

2 teaspoons dijon mustard

1 tablespoon roasted red pepper, minced

A few drops of Worcestershire sauce

3 saltine crackers, crushed

Pinch of cayenne pepper

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground white pepper

Pinch of salt

8 saltine crackers, crushed

vegetable oil for pan frying

lemon wedges for garnish

1. In a medium bowl, combine the egg, mayonnaise, dijon mustard, roasted red peppers, Worcestershire sauce, 3 crushed saltine crackers, cayenne, white pepper and salt. Taste and adjust seasoning if necessary (I realize it has raw egg in it, but I taste it anyway, egg and all).

2. Put the remaining 8 crushed crackers on a large plate. Place a large biscuit ring on top of the crackers and fill it with 1/6 of the crab meat. Press down gently to form the cake. Remove the ring and sprinkle the top of the crab cake with crumbs to coat. Set each crab cake aside until six cakes have been formed and coated with bread crumbs on both sides. Alternately, if you don’t have a biscuit ring, you could form the cakes by hand (make them smaller for appetizer-size portions).

3. Heat some vegetable oil or other neutral oil in a skillet over medium heat. Unless you have a large skillet you will probably need to cook the cakes three at a time. Cook them until the cracker crumbs are golden brown and the cakes are set. You can keep the first three cakes in a warm oven while you’re cooking the second batch.

4. Serve the crab cakes with lemon wedges and your sauce of mayonnaise based sauce.

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Posted in appetizers, main dishes, seafood | 3 Comments »

Keep it Simple Stupid: Tomato Paella

Sunday, July 26th, 2009

I’ve always been one of those people that has trouble keeping things simple. For special occasion meals I tend to go overboard, choosing recipes that have 25 hard-to-find ingredients and take several days to prepare. The dishes almost always come out great, but sometimes they feel contrived and I’m left too pooped to enjoy the fruits of my labor. But occasionally, I will run across a recipe like this Tomato Paella and I am reminded that sometimes the best dishes are the ones that take little time and allow a few good ingredients to shine through.

I’ve had this recipe stored away for months, waiting for the moment that I had a few extra homegrown tomatoes to use up. When that day finally came last week, I pulled it out and realized I didn’t have any saffron. I had been meaning to order some from here, but there was no way my tomatoes would last that long. So I skipped it, subbing some tumeric instead, and I didn’t miss it.

The only other change I made to the recipe was that I cut the rice in half, thinking that two cups of rice would be too much for just the two of us. In retrospect, I could have eaten the entire full recipe by myself, but it would have taken weeks for my waistline to forgive me.

Tomato Paella
Adapted from Mark Bittman. This recipe depends on good quality tomatoes, so use the best-tasting tomatoes you can find. I would not try making it with those pink, mealy off-season atrocities from the grocery store.

1 3/4 cups water

1 1/2 pounds good-tasting tomatoes, cored and sliced into thick wedges

kosher salt

fresh ground pepper

1/8 cup extra virgin olive oil

1/2 of a medium onion, diced

1 large clove of garlic, minced

1 tablespoon tomato paste

1 teaspoon sweet smoked spanish paprika

1/2 teaspoon ground tumeric

1 cup short-grain rice, such as arborio

chopped parsley for garnish

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

2. Toss tomato wedges with a pinch of salt and a generous grinding of pepper. Drizzle with olive oil and set aside.

3. Warm 1/8 cup of olive oil in a medium-sized oven-proof skillet. Add the onion and cook until translucent. Add the garlic, paprika, tumeric and 1 teaspoon of kosher salt and cook two minutes more. Add the tomato paste and cook a minute more.

4. Add the rice to the skillet and cook, stirring until shiny and slightly toasted, a minute or two. Add the water and bring to a simmer as you arrange the tomato slices on top of the rice and drizzle the tomato juices over the pan.

5. Put the skillet into the preheated oven and bake 15 minutes. The tomato skins should be wrinkled and the rice should be browned and crispy around the edges. If you like crispy rice on the bottom, put the skillet over high heat for a few minutes to allow a crust to form. Garnish with the parsley and serve.

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Posted in budget recipes, main dishes, spanish, vegetarian | 1 Comment »

Falafels—Baked, not Fried

Friday, July 3rd, 2009

Falafel is a scary word to the uninitiated. Say it to most people and they will make a face and say, “what is that?” But falafel is delicious. Especially stuffed inside a fresh pita with lots of veggies and tzatziki sauce.

Falafel is made from a mixture of soaked, ground up chickpeas, flour, onion, garlic, seasonings and herbs. While falafel is not an inherently unhealthy food, it can be if made the wrong way. When you buy falafel from a greek restaurant or street vendor, the balls are generally fried, served on white pita, and slathered with tahini sauce and tzatziki.

The first time I made falafel, I fried it. It was great and I was kind of sad that it could only be an occasional treat. Then I read that you could bake it instead of frying and I was intrigued. I decided to try it on the next batch. I found that the difference in flavor was negligible and baking the balls on a cookie sheet was much faster than deep frying them. To further “healthify” the meal, I omitted the tahini sauce, which contains a lot of fat. Instead I used tzatziki made from low fat greek yogurt. I stuffed it all into a white whole wheat pita and filled it with extra tomatoes, lettuce and cucumbers. And the result? It tasted just as good as the first batch and it was easier to boot.

Baked Falafel
This recipe for the falafel balls is adapted from this Epicurious recipe. The only real difference is, the balls are baked and not fried. I also like to double the recipe so I can freeze some for later. Note: You do not cook the chickpeas in this recipe. I know this sounds strange, but just go with it. I promise, it works.

2 cup dried chickpeas

1 large onion, roughly chopped

1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley

1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro

2 teaspoons kosher salt

2 teaspoons crushed red pepper flakes

8 cloves of garlic

2 teaspoon cumin

2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 cup flour

oil, for greasing the pans

For serving:

sliced cucumbers

chopped tomato

lettuce

Tzaziki sauce (recipe below)

1. Place the chickpeas in a large bowl, covered by two inches of water (the bowl will seem much too large, but the chickpeas will expand a lot). Soak the dried chickpeas overnight (at least 18-24 hours) and then drain and rinse them.

2. Preheat the oven to 375 F.

3. Place the chickpeas, onion, parsley, cilantro, salt, red pepper flakes, cumin, garlic, baking powder and flour in a food processor and process until well blended.

4. Grease two large cookie sheets (my falafel stuck a little bit to my cookie sheet, so you may want to use a silicone baking mat if you have it, or I suppose you could line the pan with parchment). Using a small ice cream scoop, scoop the chickpea mixture and place it on the cookie sheet in rows about an inch apart (alternately you could roll the mixture into balls the size of walnuts, but the scoop really speeds up the process—I highly recommend using it).

5. Taste the mixture and adjust for seasonings.

6. Bake the falafel for about 20 minutes, or until they feel dry and firm. If they stick to the pan, allow them to cool some before trying to remove them.

7. Stuff each pita with 3 or four falafel balls, lettuce, tomato, cucumbers and a generous dollop of tzaziki sauce.

Tzaziki Sauce

16 oz low fat or fat free greek yogurt

1/2 of a seedless cucumber, grated

2 cloves of garlic

3 tablespoons fresh herbs of choice (dill, mint, parsley or cilantro)

juice of 1 lemon

Salt and pepper to taste

1. Combine all the ingredients in a small bowl.

2. Taste and adjust seasonings.

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Posted in budget recipes, main dishes, mediterranean | 3 Comments »

A Lucky Accident

Sunday, March 1st, 2009

A few years ago I signed up for The Good Cook Book Club. I had received an advertisement in the mail that said if I signed up I could have 4 books for $1. Chump change! As a self-proclaimed cookbook addict, how could I resist? So I happily picked out my four books and placed my order. And when they finally arrived in the mail I was pretty psyched … that is until I picked up one of the books. It was ‘Mexican Everyday’ by Rick Bayless. No, no! This was all wrong. This is about healthy Mexican food. Ugh! You see in my haste to order, I chose this book thinking it was one of Rick’s other books, ‘Mexico: One Plate at a Time.’ I had borrowed it once from the library and loved it. It never crossed my mind that Rick Bayless had written another book (do you see how young and naive I was?) So I flipped through it, decided it was way too much hassle to send the stupid thing back and I put it on the shelf. Lo and behold, it began to make its way off the shelf and into my kitchen … often. The recipes are not entirely authentic. You will not find any recipe in ‘Mexican Everyday’ that calls for “1 small udder.” And no, I’m not going to tell you where you can find a recipe that calls for “1 small udder” (you sicko). But the recipes are delicious, healthy and simple enough to cook every night of the week.

And so, over time, quite a few of the recipes from Mexican Everyday have made it into my repertoire. The chipotle chicken salad tacos have become a favorite way to use up leftover rotisserie chicken at our house. All of the main course salads are delicious and make really satisfying light dinners. Every mexican cookbook has a recipe for tortilla soup, but the one in this book is different and it’s perfect. I was surprised to see a recipe for a crusty bean, avocado and fresh cheese sandwich (tortas) and for the meatballs flavored with chipotle. They were a refreshing change from the typical mexican entree, and they were both very good.                          

Each time I cook a new recipe from this book I’m in awe of how Rick Bayless is able to combine a few simple ingredients to create something that always seems to be just the thing I am hungry for. The salmon with spinach and creamy roasted peppers was no exception.

     

This dish is basically a piece of grilled salmon sauced with some wilted spinach in a creamy pepper sauce. In keeping with the healthy theme of the book, the sauce has no cream. It’s made with milk and thickened with a little masa harina (a corn flour that is the base for corn tortillas and tamales). Basically what you do is this:      

Roast two poblano peppers. Peel and discard the skins, seed pods and stems and toss the peppers into your food processor. Then slice a few cloves of garlic in half lengthwise and cook them in a few tablespoons of oil until they are browned all over. Remove them from the oil with a slotted spoon and add them to the food processor also. Add a tablespoon or two of masa harina and a cup and a half of milk (I used 1%, but whatever you have will work) and blend the whole thing up until the sauce is smooth.                 

Season four salmon fillets with salt and pepper and sear them in the pan with the leftover oil from cooking the garlic (I like to undercook my salmon just a little). Remove the fillets and keep them warm in the oven. Add 10 ounces of cleaned spinach to the hot skillet and cook until wilted. Set it aside and add the sauce to the pan. Bring it to a simmer so it thickens. If it’s too thick, add more milk. Stir the spinach into the sauce and remove it from the heat. Season to taste with salt and pepper. 
 
Plate the salmon and ladle the sauce over the top. This was great served along side the Pioneer Woman’s crash hot potatoes, but it would be just as good with a salad.

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Posted in main dishes, mexican, seafood, vegetables | 3 Comments »

Freedom Buns

Monday, February 16th, 2009

Of the many things that can ruin a good hamburger, I think that the bun is most often overlooked. Imagine this: you’ve just picked up some beautiful coarse ground beef—or maybe you ground your own. And maybe you’ve also got some really good apple wood smoked bacon. You’ve got nice fresh buttery boston lettuce and maybe a few homegrown tomatoes from the farmer’s market. You’re going to have burgers with all the fixin’s. And you’re thinking that you had better get home so you can start making your burgers, but, oh wait! You forgot the buns. Without much thought, you go to the bread isle and grab whatever is cheap.

STOP! Stop right there! You are one step away from turning a possibly award winning burger into a mediocre one and I just can’t let you do it. Now think of the restaurants where you love to get a burger. How are the buns? They’re probably really good right? They’re probably shiny, golden and toasted with some butter. They’re probably rich with eggs or milk and maybe they’re flecked with sesame seeds. They are anything but bland. Now think about the buns you’ve got in your hand. Why would you put your ingredients that you selected so carefully in between two texture-less, tasteless, chemically-fortified so-called pieces of “bread”? Because it’s easy! Don’t be easy! This may come as a surprise, but you don’t have to use those buns.

Free yourself from the confines of tasteless supermarket buns and try making your own for a change. It’s not that hard, it takes very little active preparation time and the result is well worth it. I recently made some very good buns with this recipe from Annie’s Eats. The process was really simple.

You dissolve some sugar, instant yeast and warm water in the bowl of a stand mixer and then you add milk and oil. You gradually add some flour and knead it to the right consistency. Then you let it rise. You form the risen dough into discs like this:

If you like soft-sided buns (I do) you put them closer together on the pan for the second rise. After the second rise you paint them with an egg wash and sprinkle some poppy seeds or sesame seeds on top if you want. They look something like this:

Then you just pop them into a nice hot oven and when they are done they might look like this:

If they don’t look like this, well, sorry. But try again! And now that you’ve got some nice soft buns, all you have to do is figure out what to put between them (sorry, I couldn’t resist).

Making your own hamburger buns is probably not feasible if you decide you want hamburgers like, right now. I won’t say that I will only use made-from-scratch buns from now on, but I will make them more often when I have the time. And when I have to buy them at the store, I’ll be thinking the whole time about how much better my burger would be with one of these babies.

Budget Recipe Info

You could argue that you won’t save any money by making your own buns at home. You can go to the store and pick up a bag of buns for like 99 cents. If you already have the ingredients on hand it costs very little to make hamburger buns, but it takes time (albeit very little active time). But if your hamburger buns come out really good, you could argue that to buy buns of equal quality you would have to go to a bakery where the buns would be more expensive, or you might have to drive further to get them. So it may or may not save you money, but I do know I have paid $3.99 for some organic hamburger buns before that weren’t even that good. The choice is yours, but I encourage you to try it once.

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Posted in baking, beef dishes, bread, budget recipes, main dishes | No Comments »

Carne Guisada—Homesick Texan Style

Sunday, February 15th, 2009

I love carne guisada, but I almost never order it in a restaurant. Why? Well, for the same reason I don’t go to a restaurant and order beef stew—because it’s simple comfort food and it’s just something people cook at home. Besides that, I have rarely had good carne guisada in a restaurant. It’s often dry or bland or tough. Sometimes it has a thick gravy that you can see through, which is no bueno in my book.

I was super excited when Lisa of Homesick Texan decided to put up her recipe for carne guisada. Even when I think I have a great recipe for something Tex-Mex, it seems as though the Homesick Texan can always inspire me to take it a step further.

Lisa has a couple of rules when it comes to her carne guisada. The first rule is that no potatoes go into the pot. It is my opinion that potatoes ruin carne guisada. This is very serious and if you choose to ignore this rule, well, there is probably no hope for you or your carne guisada so you should just give up right now. The second rule is that sweet bell peppers are for wussies and old ladies (my words, not Lisa’s). I know, I know, I love them too, but no matter how much you may love delicious sweet bell peppers roasted on a sandwich or in your hummus, please keep them far away from your carne guisada pot. Instead choose spicy green chilies like serranos and jalapeños. I took this a step further and added some roasted poblano peppers because, well, I like poblano peppers in my carne guisada and I think they give it extra depth of flavor. The last rule is that the meat should not look like the contents of a can of Prime Cuts in Gravy—it should be cooked until it’s tender enough to string and fall apart. Enough said. I was able to make this happen very quickly on a Friday evening in my pressure cooker. If you have one I recommend using it.

So I followed Lisa’s rules and when I took that first bite of rich, spicy goodness nestled inside of a warm corn tortilla, my eyes got wide. I had found carne guisada perfection and I knew I would never go back to my old ways. I also knew I had to share this with everyone I know. So here it is: my version of the Homesick Texan’s carne guisada.

Carne Guisada

Inspired by this recipe by the Homesick Texan.

Serve with fresh flour or corn tortillas, salsa, pico de gallo and cilantro. Great with mexican rice (check out this stellar recipe) and charro beans on the side. This makes a big old pot of meat so invite your friends. It also makes great leftovers. Scramble some up with an egg the next morning—it makes an awesome breakfast taco.

6 pounds of beef chuck roast, trimmed and cut into 1-inch cubes (you will end up with about 5 lbs)

2 tablespoons neutral oil 

1 medium onion, diced 

2 jalapeño peppers, minced 

2 serrano peppers, minced 

2 poblano peppers, roasted and cleaned of stems, skins and seeds, diced or cut into strips 

6 large cloves of garlic, minced 

1 tablespoon cumin 

1 tablespoon dark chili powder 

1 teaspoon mexican oregano 

2 bay leaves 

2 1/2 cups of water 

1 14-oz can of diced tomatoes with juice 

1 12-oz bottle of beer (Lisa recommends dark mexican beer, but even a nasty Bud Light will impart more flavor than water alone)

1 tablespoon of flour mixed with 1/4 cup of water to make a slurry

1. In a large heavy pot, pressure cooker or dutch oven, heat 2 tablespoons of neutral oil on medium high until it shimmers. Brown the meat in small batches and set aside. NOTE: This is the most important step of the whole recipe. Make sure the pieces are well caramelized. Areas of the pot and meat drippings will become a dark brown color as the meat cooks. Don’t be scared. This will give the gravy its flavor. 

2. Add the onion, jalapenos and serranos to the meat drippings and cook until soft, scraping the browned bits from the pot. Add the garlic and seasonings and cook until fragrant. 

3. Add the meat, poblano peppers, water, tomatoes, beer and slurry. Bring to a simmer. If you are using a pot or dutch oven, simmer covered for about 3 hours or until the meat becomes tender and begins to fall apart. If you are using a pressure cooker, cover and bring to pressure and cook for 45 minutes on high.

Budget Recipe Info

Carne guisada is normally made with beef chuck roast which is a very inexpensive cut of meat. I bought mine at Costco for $3.99/lb, but it sometimes goes on sale for $1.99/lb in our regular grocery store. Served with rice and beans (also inexpensive), carne guisada is a very economical meal.

We fed six guests the night we made this and we still had enough for lunches and breakfasts all week long. I normally tire of leftovers after eating them once or twice, but for some reason I never get tired of tacos. So carne guisada was a great choice for our second week of eating on a budget, and nothing went to waste.

Budget Tip

Buy spices in bulk if possible. Bulk spices are much cheaper than those pre-packaged in little jars (because you’re not paying for the packaging) and grocery stores usually go through them faster so they will be fresher. You can also use them to make your own inexpensive seasoning blends instead of buying the pre-made ones. Often pre-made seasoning blends are mostly salt anyway.

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Posted in beef dishes, budget recipes, main dishes, mexican | 2 Comments »

Beans and greens tacos, with salsa verde and queso fresco

Saturday, January 24th, 2009

I love beans. I love all kinds of beans. And the great thing is, beans are pretty economical food. They’re cheap and filling with all their fiber and protein. Unfortunately I have developed a taste for more than your average 99 cent bag of supermarket pintos (although there will always be a special place in my heart for you little pintos). Once you’ve had heirloom beans, you will never be the same. And I’m actually not even that fond of beans out of a can anymore. Have you tasted the difference between canned garbanzo beans and the ones made from dry beans at home? It’s shocking. That’s why I bought a pressure cooker. I can have beans in like 30 minutes flat, which opens a whole new world of bean possibilities. Like cooking beans for dinner on weeknights!

This week I needed to use up a head of curly kale and I had a recipe on file from Amy Scattergood of the L.A. Times for Christmas lima beans tacos with wilted dandelion greens. Well, I had kale. And frankly, I had a rather traumatic experience with the only bunch of dandelion greens I have ever attempted to cook which I really don’t want to get into right now. So Christmas lima beans and kale tacos it would be. Sounds exciting doesn’t it? I know, it doesn’t, but trust me. These were really good. Shawn ate seven of them.

Now, about the beans: I don’t know exactly why they are called Christmas limas. Maybe it’s their speckled red and white coloring. Or maybe it has something to do with their meaty chestnut flavor. Steve Sando of Rancho Gordo says that if you think you don’t like lima beans, you owe it to yourself to give these a try. Needless to say, you can’t buy these beans just anywhere. You can order them from Rancho Gordo (if you do, be prepared to place an order to try out several varieties of their beans to justify the hefty shipping charge). You may also be able to find them at a well stocked grocery store like Whole Foods or at Central Market if you live here in Texas. I got mine at Central Market for $4.99 for a 12-oz bag. You could also try this application on a different variety of bean. Black beans, pinto beans, or borlotti/cranberry beans would also be good.

To get started, cook your beans. If you are using the Christmas limas, follow along with me. If you are using a different kind of bean and you have a favorite way of cooking them, that’s fine. If you are cooking the Christmas limas, all they really need for flavor is a generous cup of diced onion and a few cloves of garlic. Sweat the aromatics, add the beans and about three cups of water (or enough to cover) and cook 45 minutes or 15 minutes or so in the pressure cooker on the highest setting.

At this point add about a tablespoon and a half of kosher salt to the pot, add more water if needed to keep the beans covered and put the lid back on. There are all sorts of arguments about when to salt the beans. I don’t really think it matters. If you think that is blasphemy, do it your way. Bring the beans back to a simmer (or back up to pressure if you’re using the pressure cooker), put the lid on and cook for 45 minutes to an hour more or another 15 minutes on high in the pressure cooker.

In the meantime, wash your kale really well and wilt it in a pan with some garlic and olive oil. Add a small amount of water and a lid and cook just until the greens are tender. Add salt to taste.

To assemble each taco:
1. Place 2 corn tortillas per taco on a plate (or 1 flour tortilla per taco if you prefer) 
2. Fill each taco with about 1/3 cup of beans and some of the kale
3. Top each one with a little prepared salsa verde (I used Herdez in a small can)
4. Crumble some queso fresco on the top or another cheese of your choice. Goat cheese or feta maybe?
5. Squeeze some lime juice over the whole thing

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Posted in budget recipes, main dishes, mexican, vegetables, vegetarian | 1 Comment »

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