chewla Food Journal

Ohmygoodnesstheholidayscanbefrightful...but they can also be so inspiring! Check. It. Out.

You see, I've been cooking, but not writing about it because the results have been just short of disastrous (more on that later). I feel that this most recent addition to my kithchen collection is going to turn everything around. Red is lucky. I think.

So...on to my less than amazing attempts at cooking lately (including chocolate that at one point looked disturbingly like blood sausage). I might as well be honest about it. Pre-red cooking apparatus, I attempted fresh tortilla chips with salsa verde and guacamole. The guacamole was an afterthought--AFTER completely ruining my first enormous batch of salsa verde. I had created a huge batch of beautiful salsa verde (for the potluck at work), but it was a bit watery, so I decided to boil out a little liquid. I sat down with some CSI...and was awakened an hour and a half later by my sweetie, unable to sleep because of the awful smell of something turning to ash. I got up so confused that when I looked in the pot (previously 6 inches deep in salsa), I thought someone had moved my creation to another container.

In reality, my salsa had boiled down to a half inch layer of ash. So...it was curtains for the salsa. I whipped up the guac as a replacement (a satisfying one, at that--and more familiar to most people). The chips--as usual--were a fabulous success. They impress EVERYONE, but when people get all excited about them, I feel silly because they're so simple. I keep saying that I'm going to make my own tortillas one of these days. (I really will!) And when I do--well, that's when I'll brag about the chips.

A day later, I duplicated the salsa and it was really great--a little bite to it. I decided to make the chips fresh at a family holiday party, but they were eaten as they came out of the oil--so alas, I got no pictures of the finished thing.

However, I posted a few images over at Flickr, including a particularly embarrassing pic of Chula. She may never forgive me.

Recipes:

Salsa Verde
1 lb tomatillos, husks removed
½ cup chopped onion
2 serrano chiles, chopped
1 ½ tsp salt
1 clove garlic, minced
1 T fresh cilantro, chopped
½ tsp ground cumin
2 cups water

Combine all the ingredients in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Turn the heat down and simmer for 15 minutes. Blend the mixture in a food processor and refrigerate or serve immediately.

Guacamole
3 avocados, pits removed
2 or 3 key limes, juiced
1 tsp salt
½ cup diced onion
1 tomato, diced
1 or 2 garlic cloves, minced
Pinch of cayenne pepper

Combine the avocados, lime juice, and salt in a bowl. Mash them together and then add the remaining ingredients and mix well. Refrigerate.

Fresh Tortilla Chips
1 bag of fresh (soft) corn tortillas (about 100 tortillas)
(I buy “Pepinos” brand near the butter at Wal-Mart.)
Lots of canola oil
Salt

Fold the fresh tortillas in half and in half again to break them into quarters. Heat the oil (about 2-3 inches deep) in a saucepan or use a deep fryer if you are lucky enough to own one. Drop the tortilla pieces into the hot oil and try to spread them out a bit. Fry until they begin to turn a little darker color. You may want to turn them over in the oil to fry evenly. When they turn color, remove them to a paper towel and salt them immediately. Try a chip to see if it is too soft or too dark and adjust as you drop in the next batch of tortilla pieces.

Give it a shot--but set an alarm before you take a seat...holiday fatigue might just be inescapable.

(I promise more food to come--all thanks to red potware. Oh la la...)

Yesterday, my old boss emailed (and called!) asking if I wanted my old job back. I used to live and work in the Rio Grande Valley--where “cold” is the 50s, and “hot” is 110. His call made me think back to the tiny pink house I rented for $325 a month there, 10 minutes from Mexico, 45 minutes from the Gulf. I thought of the better pay, the better vacations, the better benefits, the amazing culture and life-changing food…

…and I declined.

But I only declined because I’ve moved up North to be with my family. Retreating after only four months seemed silly, so I said “no” with a heavy heart and told him to call me in June.

Until then, I’ll try to enjoy the REAL cold of the Midwest and I’ll try to revive the ghost of the Texas-Mexico border through food. My boyfriend is a native of that area and I realize more and more what a sacrifice he has made moving to this strange, cold place for me. So I try to keep the food familiar.

Tonight: fideo con carne (pasta with meat). A short preface: I didn’t take even the slightest interest in cooking until about a two years ago when I discovered the joy of Mexican…or should I say Tex-Mex food. And the following recipe doesn’t fit well into either of those categories; it’s simply one Mexican family’s tradition.

Eli (my boyfriend) tells me his mom made this dish all the time when he was a kid. It’s not difficult and it’s not particularly nutritious, but it tastes good and it reminds both of us of “home.”

It changes every time we cook it, but the basic ingredients are:

Approx. ½ lb stew meat, cut into bite-sized pieces
7 oz of fideo or angel hair pasta
1 cube of chicken bullion (or a can of chicken broth)
Approx. 14 oz tomato sauce
Coriander
Salt
Pepper
Olive oil
Water
Fresh (read: soft) corn tortillas
Limes (any kind, but I prefer key limes)

I can’t really include measurements because I never measure the ingredients. The recipe varies every time I make it and I kind of like that. One time it’s tomato sauce, another it’s tomato paste. Sometimes it’s Italian flavored sauce; sometimes I cook the meat with random spices; sometimes I crush up angel hair pasta instead of fideo. It all depends upon what’s readily available in my pantry.

To start, I coat the bottom of a frying pan with olive oil and heat it. I add the bite-sized pieces of stew meat to this (once, it ended up being pork--a complete accident and it was still good). Sprinkle the meat with salt, pepper, and coriander--“comino”). This takes a few minutes, so go ahead and answer emails and watch a few minutes of TV before starting the noodles.

For the noodles, coat the bottom of a second frying pan with olive oil. Add the fideo and heat the pan over a low flame. This is where you have to be pretty attentive; turn the noodles frequently or they will burn quickly. Just toast them to the point where they are turning a golden brown. Then, add the browned meat to the browned fideo (juices and oil and all).

To this, add the tomato sauce/paste, the chicken bullion, and water all the way to the top of the pan. Turn the heat to medium and let it simmer with all the ingredients. You may want to add some more coriander, salt, and pepper to suit your tastes. Stir this simmering mixture every now and again to make sure the fideo isn’t sticking to the bottom of the pan. Add water as necessary. Keep cooking it until the noodles are nice and soft and the water has boiled out a bit so that you are left with something that is neither spaghetti nor soup--it’s somewhere in between.

Now it’s time to break out those delicious soft corn tortillas. (Here in Illinois, I can find them refrigerated at the Wal-Mart for a few bucks per 100 tortillas.) Toast them over an open gas flame if at all possible because the burnt parts are the best. Keep the tortillas warm in your handy-dandy “tortillador“ (this could be a fantastical name I made up…I‘m really not sure anymore--but it sounds a bit like “matador,” which makes me smile). And if you don’t already own a tortilla warmer, you are really missing out. (They’ll keep ANYTHING warm for a good while.)

Cut a few key limes in half and have some napkins ready; this meal can get a little messy if you do it right.

Serve yourself a generous helping of the noodle-meat mix, squeeze lime juice over it, and scoop up a bite using a toasty tortilla. Or--if you insist--eat it with a fork, like any old pasta dish.

This time, I took pictures as I cooked and I posted them on Flickr.