Red Beans, Almost the Classic Way (FM)

• 1 1/2 cup dried kidney, pinto, or other red beans, rinsed, picked over, and soaked if you like
• 1 meaty smoked ham hock or ham  bone or 4-ounce chunk of bacon or pancetta
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 andouille or hot Italian sausage in casings [andouille]
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 1 green and 1 red bell pepper, chopped [I think my green bell pepper was too far gone to make it in this recipe so I skipped it.]
• 1 tablespoon minced garlic
• 2 or 3 sprigs fresh thyme, or 1 teaspoon dried
• 2 bay leaves
• 1/4 teaspoon allspice
• Pinch of cayenne
• 1 1/2 cups chopped tomatoes (canned are fine; include their juice)
• 2 large sweet potatoes, cubed
•  Salt and black pepper
• Chopped fresh parsley, for garnish [nope]
• Hot sauce, optional

Ah, one my last uses of my home-cured, home-smoked almost bacon.  I'm humble enough to admit my failures.

I threw the bacon and beans before I completed any of the other prep.  Since I guess these beans cooked super quickly (I also wasn't around to pull it off the boil immediately), they were overdone at the end.  Oh well.

 

Mise en place at this stage.  I figured I'd have time enough to prep the sweet potatoes during the next few steps.

Browning the sausage.

Cook onions, bell pepper and garlic until the peppers have softened.

Slice sausage and add back in to pot along with everything but the sweet potatoes.  Cook until beans begin to get tender.

That or until I realize they're totally blown out by the time the sweet potato cooks through.


The dish was fine but had a lot of pitfalls similar to many of my experiences with Food Matters.  I mean I'm not always disappointed by the overly healthful recipes, but sometimes it's pretty hard for me to eat too much of them.  I did wind up throwing a bit of this out.

Mixed Grill with Chimichurri (FM)

• 1 or 2 eggplants, cut into thick slices
• 2 cups fresh parsley (mostly leave, but thin stems are okay)
• Salt and black pepper
• 3 garlic cloves
• 1/2 cup olive oil, plus more for grilling
• 2 tablespoons sherry vinegar or lemon juice [Again, I'm using sherry vinegar. I have it on hand.  Why not?]
• 1 teaspoon red chile flakes
• 2 portobellol mushrooms
• 2 summer squash, cut lengthwise into thick slices
• 4 ripe tomatoes, cored but left whole
• 12 ounces boneless, skinless chicken breast or pork tenderloin, cut in half crosswise and pounded to 1/2 inch thick [latter]
• 1 bunch scallions [nope]

Yeah, I tried to make chimichurri sauce in my low-end blender.  It didn't work.

Chimichurri is made from finely chopped parsley (an alternative version uses coriander), minced garlic, olive oil, oregano, and white or red wine vinegar. Additional flavorings such as coriander, paprika, cumin, thyme, lemon, and bay leaf may be included. In its red version, tomato and red bell pepper may also be added. It can also be used as a marinade for grilled meat. Chimichurri is available bottled or dehydrated for preparation by mixing with oil and water. Somewhat similar sauces are pistou and pesto.

Salt, pepper, oil, garlic, and a crazy amount of parsley.  Drizzle in more oil as the machine is running as well as sherry vinegar.

When it comes to grilling the actual food, it's pretty basically.  Olive, salt, and pepper.

Tenderloin and tomato.

Running up and down the stairs like mad while "hosting" a cookout party in my back yard was pretty exhausting, but I ate bits and pieces when I got the chance and was frankly well on my way to being full once all the cooking was done.
There's a splash of the romesco sauce as well.  My friends thoroughly enjoyed both sauces.  Chimichurri sauce is also a big winner though twice as much a headache because it has twice as much picked parsley in it.

Roast Potatoes and Chicken with Romesco (FM)

• 6 tablespoons olive oil, or more as needed
• 1 1/2 lbs new potatoes or small potatoes, halved
• Salt and black pepper
• 2 sprigs fresh rosemary
• 4 bone-in chicken thighs
• 1/2 cup almonds
• 1 large red bell pepper, roughly chopped
• 1 large or medium ripe tomatoes, cored and roughly chopped
• 1 garlic clove, or to taste
• 1 packed cup fresh parsley
• 2 tablespoons sherry or white wine vinegar [I used sherry vinegar]

Toss potatoes with 2 tablespoons olive oil, salt and pepper.  Roast for 10 minutes in single layer.

Top potatoes with rosemary sprigs, then chicken and salt and pepper.  Drizzle with another 2 tablespoons olive oil.

Roast for 25 to 30 minutes.

 

Throw ingredients for romesco into blender.

Romesco (Catalan pronunciation: [ruˈmɛsku]) is a nut and red pepper-based sauce from Tarragona, Catalonia, Spain. It is typically made from any mixture of roasted or raw almonds, pine nuts, and/or hazelnuts, roasted garlic, olive or sunflower oil, bitxo peppers (similar to New Mexico chiles) and/or nyora peppers (a small, round, variety of red bell pepper). Flour or ground stale bread may be used as a thickener or to provide texture. Other common ingredients include roasted tomatoes, red wine vinegar and onions. Leaves of fennel or mint may be added, particularly if served with fish or escargot. It is very often served with seafood, but can also be served with a wide variety of other foods, including poultry and some red meats like lamb and vegetables. During the springtime, salsa romesco is served as an accompanying dip for calçots, a spring onion typical to Catalonia, during traditional springtime calçot barbecues called "calçotades". During calçotades, calçots are roasted over an open fire until their outer layer is charred. The charred layer is then removed and the tender part of the onion may be dipped into the romesco.

Deliciousness in wait.

 

OMG, I found a new favorite sauce.  Romescu is beautiful, rich, tangy, nutty, flavorful...  Awesome on the roast chicken and potatoes.

Plenty of leftover sauce for my forthcoming Mixed Grill entry.

Ma-Ma's Pasta "Milanese" (FM)

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1 green bell pepper, chopped
• 2 celery stalks, chopped
• Salt and black pepper
• 2 tablespoons minced garlic
• Two 3.75-ounce cans sardines, preferably packed in olive oil
• 1/4 cup tomato paste
• 1 cup red wine or water, or more as needed [What did I use?  Oh yeah, oxidized Malbec that I opened at least a week and a half before for the escabeche.]
• One 28- or 35-ounce can chopped or whole tomatoes; include their juice
• 1 small cauliflower, cored and roughly chopped [I preferred to cut them into florets.]
• 1/2 cup raisins or currants [The currants I had for this blog's very first entry over a year ago had expired.  Raisins are a food-stuff that should be ubiquitous I guess in a kitchen but still somehow lack, like ketchup.  In any case, I wound up using blueberries.  Yes, they are a dried berry; nope, they don't really serve the right function.]
• 1/2 cup chopped pecans or walnuts
• 8 ounces any pasta, preferably whole wheat [Hahaha.  I rarely cook recipes involving pasta.  I'm not going to waste my time with edible cardboard.]

Mise en place.

Cook onion, bell pepper, and celery until everything is soft and the onion becomes translucent.

Stir in garlic, sardines with their ooil, and tomato paste until mixture is fragrant and starts to stick to the bottom.

Stir in wine and scrape up bits from bottom of pan.  Add tomatoes and cauliflower and cook until cauliflower is extremely tender.

Stir in fruit and nuts.

The dish was pretty awesome.  I might do it again since it was quite good, but who knows.
I apologize for the fact that I can't be any more detailed about my reaction to the dish since I'm pretty slow at blogging now, but I totally dug the combination of garlic, sardines, tomatoes, and celery.  Maybe I'll even have the proper dried fruit for next time.

I should cook more pasta dishes.

Grilled Escabeche (BRW)

• 1/2 cup red wine or other vinegar
• 1 cup red wine
• 2 bay leaves
• 5 fresh thyme springs or 1 teaspoon dried
• 5 fresh marjoram or oregano sprigs or 1 teaspoon dried marjoram or 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1 small dried or fresh chile, optional
• 1 large onion, white or red, cut in half and sliced into half-moons
• 3 garlic cloves, peeled and lightly crushed
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• Salt and black pepper to taste
• 1 1/2-2 pounds boneless skinless chicken thighs [The original recipe called for two pork tenderloins but suggested that any cut of chicken could be used]

After running out of I think an edition of the JP Gazette to light my chimney starter, I think I tried three different types of paper that I could find in the basement or backyard to start it.  Including manga and, out of desperation, wet newsprint.  Frustrated, I ran back up into the house thinking I might actually need to run out to Washington St somewhere and grab a free paper before remembering I had art-quality newsprint in my room.

It's hard to see, but by the time I ran downstairs, I noticed that the chimney had actually started despite my assumed failures.  It was pretty weak so I crumpled a piece of dry newsprint and shoved it in underneath.

If you hadn't figured out by now, newsprint is the most effective kind of paper to light a chimney starter with.  Don't even dare suggest that I should use lighter fluid, folks.  Though I guess manga paper may be bad for cooking too.

Bring nearly all the ingredients to a boil and simmer for 5 minutes.  Excluding the protein obviously.

Chicken liberally seasoned with salt and pepper.

Unlike ATK, I don't think Mark Bittman's recipes actually specify what kind of "fire" to build with the coals.  I just poured them out in one layer.

Grilling the thighs until I think they were cooked through.  They were so thin that it didn't make sense to gauge them with an instant-read thermometer.

If you got to eat right away, let the proteins marinate in the liquid for at least fifteen minutes though overnight would be best.  Escabeche is yet another method of cooking that people dreamed up in order to prolong spoiling.  As with my previous entry on menudo, I googled this dish as well.  All other references besides BRW described the meat being poached or fried, not grilled.

I figured I needed a side and made Grilled Eggpant out of CI's 2010 Summer Grilling issue.  One of the major problems with cooking eggplant is dealing with its moisture.

On the grill, all of it just gets vaporized.  The result was just sublime though even a short stay in the fridge kind of ruined this.  Seriously though, grilled eggplant is totally worth it.

 Escabeche is yet another thing I've heard parlayed about a lot and I had finally gotten around to putting it together and eating it for the first time.  Quite largely, I probably cooked this recipe since it seems relatively hard to find a recipe that I can actually execute on my baby Weber kettle grill.  It was certainly interesting and worthwhile.  Unlike the menudo, I didn't wind up tossing the lot of it in the trash.
It seems like escabeche more typically refers to fried fish treated in the same manner.  Maybe someday...

Menudo Rojo [Red-chile Tripe Soup with Fresh Garnishes] (AM)

• 2 pounds beef tripe
• About 1 tablespoon salt
• 1 large lime, juiced
• 1 small cow's or medium pig's foot, split lengthwise
• 1 pound marrow bones, cut in 1-inch cross sections
• 6 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
• 1/2 medium onion, chopped
• 2 teaspoons dried oregano
• 4 medium (about 1 1/3 ounces total) dried chiles cascabeles nortenos or California/New Mexico chiles, stemmed, seeded and deveined [Couldn't find those special peppers.  Used New Mexico chiles instead.]
• a general 1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds, ground
• Salt, about 1 teaspoon

Wash tripe in multiple changes of warm water.  Sprinkle over with salt and lime juice and scrub the tripe vigorously against itself.  Let sit for 30 minutes.

By this time, the tripe is actually starting to smell a bit funky, but you're going to have to do the multiple changes of warm water stuff all over again anyway.

Cut tripe into pieces about 2 inches long and 1/2 inch wide.  Bring to a boil and simmer for 10 minutes, then drain.

I suspect there are quite a lot of ways to clean tripe.

Add more water, the marrow bones, and the pig's foot.  Bring to a boil, reduce heat to medium-low and skim off the foam for a few minutes.

Add half of the garlic along with the onion and oregano.  Partially cover and simmer until tripe is tender, 2-3 hours.  I used Mexican oregano since after all this is a Mexican dish.  I might have blanked on getting the oregano in the pot, but it was disappointing to pick out all these still unsoftened herbs out of the dish when I ate it.

Toasting the chiles.  I may have over toasted some of them.

Soak toasted chiles in boiling water for 30 minutes.  I think the overtoasted ones resisted complete softening.

Blend chiles, 1/3 cup menudo broth, remaining garlic, and cumin.

Strain through a sieve into the stockpot.

I knew I was taking a risk by making a dish that is far from being a "whole" meal, but I've been curious about this dish for a while and honestly where am I going to be able to order this?

The dish is often eaten for breakfast and is considered a hangover cure by some.  I did feel as if the dish felt pretty restorative, but since it didn't seem to make sense as something that I would bring to work and eat on its own for lunch, I wound up throwing a lot out.  By the fifth day, the texture of the tripe had softened so much that it was simply disagreeable to me.  After a lifetime of eating dim sum tripe, I think this cut of an animal should spring back in your mouth at least a little.

All in all, it wasn't a total failure, but it definitely wasn't a dish that falls under my usual criterion for actually wanting to execute something with the good faith that I might eat most of it.  Amusingly enough, for 10 seconds I tried to listen to Menudo while preparing menudo.  This did not work.

Oh and I guess I'm thankful that unlike some traditional recipes I had heard of while googling this dish, Rick Bayless's recipe does not take 7 hours to make.

Mediterranean Braised Green Beans (CI)

• 5 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 onion, chopped fine
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• Pinch cayenne pepper
• 1 1/2 cups water
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 1/2 pounds green beans, trimmed and cut into 2- to 3- inch lengths
• 1 tablespoon tomato paste
• 1 (14.5-ounce) can diced tomatoes, drained with juice reserved, chopped coarse
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon pepper
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
• Red wine vinegar

Mise en place.

Cook onion until softened.

Add garlic and cayenne and cook until fragrant.

Add water, green beans, and baking soda and simmer for ten minutes.

Stir in tomato paste, tomatoes and their juice, salt, and pepper and pop into a 275 degree oven until you can cut one of these suckers with your life.

I associate braised tomato-ey green bean dishes more with the Middle East than Mediterranean flavors so I tried to daub on a bunch of dried out harissa I had in the fridge.  Overall I thought this was a reasonably good dish, but eating all that baking soda made me feel a little funny.