Superfast Elote Asado... with a Caveat

The polenta was almost finished when I remembered I had a couple ears of corn languishing in the fridge. It's not like me to neglect sweet corn, but we went out of town for a wedding and sometimes these things happen.  I thought a little roasted corn flavor might be nice in that polenta, but there just wasn't enough time to make elote asado before everything else was ready for dinner, so I gave it the chile pepper treatment and held with tongs over the open flame of my stove burner.  The kernels spit as they charred, making these wacky little bursts of sparks [It's not as scary as that may sound.]  As soon and they were spotty all over,  I transferred them to a cutting board, gave them a minute to cool while I checked the polenta, then cut the kernels from cob and stirred everything together.  The texture of the kernels was a little chewier -- it's definitely not a replacement for stand-alone elote asado* -- but it had the desired flavor and made the polenta dish taste like super gooey, whole-kernel cornbread.  It was good.

 

I topped it with fried eggs and scattered raw yellow tomatoes and roasted wax beans around the plate. It was supposed to be a textural and tonal dish, harkening back to the early days with JG when I'd regularly make an all-yellow meal of blue box macaroni and cheese, fish sticks, and canned corn [I've come a long way, baby]. Aesthetically it wasn't much prettier than that meal from the old days... I could have scattered some bright green cilantro over the whole thing and it would have been lovely, but I didn't garnish back them and I was overly committed to the theme.  At any rate, it tasted great with a few splashes of [tonally acceptable] Cholula hot sauce and was a _bit_ healthier than my yellow dinner of yore... and at ~15 minutes of total cooking time, the new, whole grain/fresh produce version might have even been faster.

*that's the caveat

Simple Polenta [Grits]

Polenta has a bad reputation as a very fussy starch, but it may help your confidence to think of it as "corn grits" -- a simple, salt-of-the-earth sort of dish.  The name polenta is derived from pulmentum, the Latin word for "porridge."  In practice, the big difference between "polenta" and "grits" is that the former is traditionally adulterated with cheese and butter [and sometimes milk] while the latter makes use of bacon fat [and cheese on occasion, but those are usually called "cheese grits"].  Despite these conventions, a plain mixture of cornmeal, water, and salt can rightfully go by either name.

Polenta making is often seen as hot and tedious, requiring a long simmer with constant stirring to prevent the dreaded clumps... but this, my friends, is completely unnecessary.   Clump-free polenta can be made in your microwave in 10 minutes or less with a minimum of stirring!
[I sound like an infomercial, but wait! There's more!]

Actually, there's not.  You can certainly get fancy with your polenta, but its glory lies in its simplicity -- you don't have to do much at all.... and that makes it a regular guest at my weeknight dinner table.

Recipe: Microwave Polenta [Grits]

Steel-Cut Oatmeal, a Whole-Grain Breakfast Favorite

The weather's turning crisp up here in Yankee Land.  Right now the days are sunny and warm, but the pumpkins and winter squash are appearing in the farmers' markets and the floor feels chilly against my
bare feet in the morning.  Hence, it's time to resurrect the oatmeal breakfast.

I was never a fan of oatmeal as a kid unless it was rolled oats in cookies (surprise).  My mom never made it for breakfast, but for some reason we had packages of the instant, stir-in-hot-water stuff in the pantry that I tried a couple of times and found the texture extremely offputting.  Somewhere in my quest for tasty whole grains I discovered steel-cut oats and the difference is stark.  Steel-cut oats have a nice toothy bite, nutty flavor, and tons of soluble fiber that sticks to your ribs on brisk bike ride to work.  They do, however, take a bit longer to cook (~25 minutes) and I have two appliance-base ways around that:

1) Throw it in a rice cooker when I first get out of bed and go on about my morning business until it's ready.
2) Put it in a slow cooker with a "keep-warm" function the night before and it's ready when I am.  Mini crockpots are perfect for this, but I just use my giant Cuisinart and nuke the leftovers on subsequent days.

With both appliances, use 1/4 cup steel cut oats, 1 cup water, and a pinch of salt for each serving. There will be a gooey layer on top and maybe some crusty bits on the bottom by the time it's finished.
Just stir it to combine before serving.

My favorite oatmeal: raisins, pecans (sometimes toasted), maple syrup, and a splash of half & half.

Oops!... plus Chorizo and Egg Tacos

If any of you stopped by the end of last week/ beginning of this week, I was playing around with moving the site to its own domain and inadvertently lost it for a little while... Let's just pretend I handled it really well and didn't freak out at all, okay?
[I know almost nothing about web design but I feel like I should be able to figure out the basics... which hasn't worked so far.]

Let's focus on the positive.  Here's a little demo of the chorizo cubes in action:

The frozen [raw] cube in the pan over low heat

Break it apart as it cooks

Increase the heat to medium-high and pour in the egg

Swirl it around a bit

Dump it in a bowl

Serve on warm tortillas with optional garnishes

[I leave 'em plain for breakfast and jazz 'em up with avocado and pickled jalapeños for dinner.]

Lean Mexican-Style Chorizo

The first time I cooked Mexican chorizo at home, I was horrified. I opened up the casing, the contents glugged into the hot pan and started bubbling away, and I thought -- since it was sausage and sausage is generally a fattier food -- that it was at least 30% oil or some weird fat that rendered instantaneously. All of the chorizo and egg tacos I'd consumed in my past suddenly seemed... unseemly.

I now know that Mexican chorizo has a substantial amount of vinegar in it, which both flavors it and acts as a bacteria-killing preservative. Unlike Spanish chorizo, which is smoke-cured and sold at room temperature for slicing and serving as-is; Mexican chorizo is sold uncooked, refrigerated, and must be pan-fried into little crumbles before joining a given dish. Any place you might add bacon, you can add chorizo -- eggs, cooked greens, soups, salads, beans, etc. -- and because it's so heavily seasoned with garlic and onion and chiles and vinegar, you can even substitute a lean meat combination without diminishing its fantastic flavor.

Here JG pan-fried it with left-over rice and stirred in an egg at the end for chorizo-fried rice. It was tasty.

Recipe: Lean Mexican-Style Chorizo

Red Lentils & Yogurt

I'm trying to make more Indian/South Asian food because up here in Yankee Land it's a lot easier to find the ingredients cheaply than it is for my Mexican staples. There are three Indian and Pakistani grocery stores within a three-block radius of mi casa and I've found them to be the best-priced purveyors of bulk spices around town, so I decided that this week I was switching from beans and rice to their South-Asian split-lentil counterpart: dals.

[Side note: I've heard that people in the food scene here don't consider Mexican cuisine to be a viable food trend, which hurt my heart a little... and gave me a serious jonesing for some homemade corn tortillas... and made me think they need to visit Berlin for a little enlightenment.]

On this particular night worknight, I wasn't up for any real effort [like blooming whole spices in oil], so I decided to try a super simple [Americanized?] version of a red lentil recipe I'd printed from the New York Times. I didn't have any sweet potatoes, so I just skipped them and added a whole 15oz can of diced tomatoes (with juice) instead. The ginger in my vegetable bin was, ahem, fuzzy so I doubled the dried ginger. I didn't have a Thai chili so I used a serrano, half-seeded. I actually had a fresh coconut, but didn't feel like splitting it and I also had a jar of dried, unsweetened coconut chips in the pantry [gotta love a well-stocked pantry], and I'd somehow used all my fresh cilantro, so I put a big dollop of unsweetened, fat-free yogurt on top.

Verdict? Tasty, perfectly acceptable alternative to beans, and clearly adaptable to my whims. I served it over brown rice for dinner and ate it swirled with yogurt [2:1] for lunch the next day.*

I do have one Indian cookbook, and though it is the source of my favorite recipe for mattar paneer [spicy peas w/ fresh cheese], I don't really love it for some reason and rarely reference it. If you've got recommendation for a book or blog on the subject, let me know in the comments.

*... actually it was breakfast, but it was great, and it would have been great for lunch, too.

Huevos Motuleños for Breakfast or Dinner

JG and I eat a lot of beans and rice, and I often make extra rice to have on hand for leftovers-fried-rice. [We strongly believe that everything is better with fried egg.] This week, however, we somehow ended up with too many beans. I thought to myself, as I always do when putting away leftovers, "How would that taste with a fried egg on top?" And I realized that, of course, it would taste excellent because it would be huevos motuleños, or "eggs like the guys in Motul, (Yucatan) make 'em." And that's what we had for dinner the next night.

Cans of beans, jars of [homemade] salsa, and packages of corn tortillas are staples in my house. They're also cheap enough to buy that I'm going to suggest you go out and get them if you don't already have them and make huevos motuleños this weekend. They're a tasty midweek dinner and they're a killer weekend breakfast.


Recipe: Huevos Motuleños

Whole-Grain Chocolate Almond Biscotti

I realize I have a biscotti problem -- obsession, really -- but once I gave up coffee I haven't been able to commit to a single flavor. The latest batch were from Joy of Baking, and I followed it pretty closely [except for substituting 1 cup white whole wheat and 3/4 cup oat for the called-for A.P. flour] but I had a little timer problem:

I didn't realize it until I was sitting at the computer and a toasty smell wafted toward me. I looked at the clock, then ran to the kitchen, half-expecting to find biscotti charcoal. They were deeply brown around the edges but just shy of burned, which actually gave them an amazing roasted marshmallow-esque flavor. I'm making a note to add another 15 minutes to the second bake on this recipe. [I think it was actually closer to 20 but they were just a shade away from the trash can, so it's best to undershoot and monitor, know what I mean?]

Whole Grain Bagels

It was just a little chilly in the apartment the other night, so after dinner I decided it was time to turn on the oven.... for bagels.

I've never made them before. Peter Reinhart has a recipe floating around foodblogs that I'm sure is fantastic, but it's a multi-day process and I wanted something to bake posthaste... I found a home-style recipe that used a one-hour rise and decided if that could still produce an identifiable bagel, I could tweak it for whole grains and flavor.They're excellent. They came out of the oven much softer than a standard bagel, and the one I cut while it was still warm gave off a lot of steam and was still so moist inside I wondered if my slap-dash recipe was off, or if you're just supposed to wait until they cool [and finish cooking from the inside] before you cut them.
The next morning, sliced and toasted, I experienced bagel nirvana. The outside was perfectly crisp, the toasted cut side nice and crunchy, and the interior was so soft. I'm not going to say they're authentic, but they were pretty darn tasty... and who wants to boil and bake before breakfast? I think I'll keep my nighttime recipe and enjoy my ready-to-go bagels the morning after.

Recipe: Whole Grain Bagels
These take about 2 hours start to finish, mostly hands-off. I used 1/2 sourdough starter for extra flavor but the rise came from the instant yeast... you can approximate the flavor by adding a tablespoon of Marmite [or Vegemite] or replacing the water with a lager beer like Budwiser, Narragansett [for the Yanks], or Lone Star [for the Texans].

For the bagels:
1/2 cup rye flour
1 1/2 -2 cups white whole wheat flour, more as needed
2 Tbs oil
1 Tbs sorghum [or barley malt, or molasses]
3/4 cup warm water or lager [~110F]
1 Tbs + 2tsp instant yeast
1 1/2 tsp salt

For the boiling water:
2 Tbs baking soda
1 Tbs sorghum [or selected substitution]
2 tsp salt

For baking glaze:
1 egg white
1 Tbs water
optional black sesame, white sesame, poppy, caraway, or celery seeds; onion or pepper flakes; garlic or kosher salt; or any combination thereof

Combine all bagel ingredients except salt in the bowl of a standing mixer. Stir by hand ~1 minue until all flour is hydrated. Cover with plastic wrap and let rest for 17 minutes for gluten formation.

Add salt, attach dough hook, and mix on medium low (#4) for 7 minutes. After 5 minutes, check the dough and if it doesn't pull away from the sides, add additional flour, 2 Tbs at a time, until it does. The dough will be tacky, but it shouldn't be sticky [or: it'll be clingy, but it should stick to itself more than you... is that better?].

Coat a bowl with non-stick spray. Transfer dough to bowl, spray top lightly, and cover tightly with plastic wrap. Let rise in a warm place until doubled ~1 hour.

Turn on your oven to 500F. Punch dough down [I love punching dough] and scrape onto a lightly floured surface. Divide into 8 equal pieces (~3 oz each), and roll into balls. Poke an index finger through the middle of each ball, wiggle it until you can get your other index finger in from the other side, and tumble your fingers one over the other to stretch the hole evenly* to a 2" diameter [the ones pictured were a bit bigger]. Cover with a light towel or plastic wrap and let rest 20 minutes.

While formed bagels are resting, find the widest pot you own** and fill with ~2" of water. Add soda and sweetener and bring to a boil. [Turn down to a simmer if it gets there well before the bagels are finished resting, then turn back up when they're ready to go.] Place a parchment-covered or oiled baking sheet as close as possible.

Gently drop 3-4 bagels into the water. [Don't go much over half full, they'll expand quite a bit.] Boil on one side for 2 minutes, then use a spatula to flip them over and boil another 2 minutes. Transfer to the baking sheet and repeat with remaining bagels. [They will look soggy and sad, but that's perfectly okay.]

Once all the bagels have been boiled, brush with egg wash and coat with desired toppings. Transfer to the oven and bake 10-12 minutes or until nicely golden brown, rotating the pan after 5 minutes.

Transfer to a cooling rack and cool completely before slicing and toasting.


* Try it, it'll make sense as you go.
** I imagine you could use a roasting pan over two burners, but I haven't tried it.

Spinach Risotto with JG's Tangy Tomatoes

I don't know that this is the best thrown-together meal I've ever had in my entire life, but it's definitely up there. This hot mess is comprised of earthy spinach [brown rice] risotto, tangy vermouth-glazed tomatoes and onions, crispy kale leaves, and a perfectly fried egg. Any of these are tasty by themselves, but the combination is killer.
You have no idea what this tastes like. I had no idea what it would taste like until it was in my mouth... it's really, reeeeally good. It does get a couple bowls, 3 pans and a baking sheet dirty, but it's totally worth it. [Methodology is in the header notes after the jump.]

Recipes: Spinach Risotto and JG's Tangy Tomatoes
Start with the risotto. Do the tomatoes while the rice is cooking and the kale once the tomatoes are finished. Scatter kale on a plate, mound risotto and then tomatoes, and then, once everything else is ready, fry up the eggs and place on top. JG always fries the eggs; I have no idea how he makes them so perfectly.

Spinach Risotto

1 recipe Brown Rice Risotto
1 lb block of frozen chopped spinach
1/2cup frozen lima beans (or edamame, different but good)

Thaw spinach in microwave or on stove. Save as much liquid as possible, pressing the greens into a strainer over a bowl. Include the spinach juice in the cooking liquid.
Add 1/2cup frozen lima beans to the onions at the beginning. Stir in thawed spinach at the end with the cheese, make sure rice is back to near boil before removing from heat.

JG's Tangy Tomatoes

olive oil
1 medium onion, sliced pole to pole in 1/8th" strips
1 pint cherry or grape tomatoes sliced in half, pole to pole
1/2 cup vermouth (divided use)
1/t tsp ground coriander
salt and pepper

Sautee onions with ~1/4 tsp salt over medium high heat until just translucent. Add tomatoes, coriander and 1/4 cup vermouth and reduce heat to a simmer, stirring occasionally and adding a splash or two at a time to keep the pan from going dry, reserving a tablespoon for the end. Cook until tomatoes are soft and pan liquids are viscous. Adjust salt, add pepper and final splash, stir, and turn off heat.


Crispy Kale

3 leaves of kale, ribs removed and torn into ~1 1/5" pieces
spray oil
salt and pepper

Heat oven to 500F. [I use my toaster oven for this] Line a small baking sheet with aluminum foil and spray with oil. Spread kale pieces in a single layer on pan. Spray with oil, the sprinkle with salt and pepper. Bake ~3 minutes or until sizzle-y and edges are beginning to brown.

Whole Grain Almond-Poppyseed Biscotti

I'd drinking too much coffee so I switched to tea for a while, but my mexican chocolate biscotti just don't pair as well. I really love a dipping cookie with my steamy mug in the morning, so I needed a worthy substitute for my go-to chocolate.
I was trying to think of a less staid version of almond biscotti when the almond-poppyseed muffins of my youth popped into my head. They were from a box mix and were always cooked in a circular ring mold on top of a Coleman campstove -- my mom didn't make box muffins at home but my dad usually made breakfast for everyone when we were camping. He'd have a few flavors to chose from, but if I got to pick I always went for almond-poppyseed. You may not be as familiar with this combo as you are with almond/lemon, but these biscotti should make a tasty introduction.

Recipe: Whole-Grain Almond Biscotti
You can use 1 teaspoon vanilla and 1/2 teaspoon almond extract in lieu of Amaretto. I only had one tablespoon of poppy seeds left, but I wanted more and the recipe reflects my desired amount. You can also omit them for straight almond goodness. You can sub whole wheat pastry flour for half or all-purpose flour for all, if you choose.

1 cup sugar
3 eggs
1 T Amaretto

1 cup white whole wheat
1 cup oat flour
1/2 c toasted or dry roasted almonds, coarsely chopped
2 T poppy seeds
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 350F. Line or grease a baking sheet and set aside. Beat wet ingredients just until frothy [don't go to ribbon stage]. Add all dry ingredients and mix until evenly combined with no flour pockets. [It's half oat flour so it won't get tough.] Scrape bowl into two roughly even logs on the baking sheet [this stuff is sticky, don't add more flour], wet your hands, and pat into shape.
Bake 35 minutes or until cracks form on the surface. Reduce oven to 325F and cool logs on a rack ~10 minutes.

Slice into logs on a diagonal, being careful the length of your biscotti doesn't exceed the height of the jar in which you intend to store them. Lay cut side up on the cooling rack [It's a ventilated baking sheet !] and bake for another 20 minutes.
[You can also bake them on a normal sheet, but you'll need to flip them after 10 minutes.]
Cool completely before storing.

Whole-Grain Overnight Waffles

My newest kitchen toy is a Belgian waffle maker, courtesy of JG's mom. It makes me quite happy... and meant I needed to create a new recipe for whole-grain waffles. I had a pancake recipe I liked from Cook's Illustrated, but their solution for fluffy multi-graininess was to grind muesli into a coarse flour, which tasted good but I'm opposed to heroic efforts before 9am... especially when I doubt their necessity.
Using yeast and an overnight batter method means I dump things together the night before and have a richly flavored batter the next morning. Using equal parts oat to whole-wheat flour means there's plenty of insoluble fiber without an excess of chewy gluten from the long sit. Nuts, milk (you could use soy or rice milk), and eggs round it all out on the protein front. Voila! Nutritious and delicious!

Recipe: Whole-Grain Overnight Waffles
You could swap baking soda for the yeast and make them right away, but they won't be quite as good. If you have a sourdough starter, add 1/2 cup unrefreshed to the batter and reduce the instant yeast to 1/2 tsp.

This makes 6 large belgian-style waffles... I usually do a 1/2 recipe for JG and myself.

2 cups warm milk (or soy milk)
2 eggs (separation optional)
2 tablespoons maple, honey, or sorghum
2 tablespoons canola oil or melted butter
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 cup white whole wheat flour
1 cup oat flour
1/2 cup pecan meal (or other nut meal)
2 tsp instant yeast
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt

If separating, collect egg whites into a small airtight container and refrigerate, then whisk together the wet ingredients in a medium-sized bowl. Combine dry ingredients, then stir in to wet until no big clumps remain. [The low-gluten oat flour means you don't have to worry about over mixing] Cover and refrigerate up to 24 hours.
When ready to bake, pull batter (and whites) from the fridge and prepare waffle iron. It should have a foamy, bubbly appearance. Give it a quick stir to recombine or, if whites are separated, whisk the whites until foamy and fold into batter. Cook according to waffle iron instructions.

Sour Cherry Clafoutis... so you don't have to.

Clafoutis seem to be everywhere this year. I finally broke down and made a whole-wheat version because I had these lovely sour cherries from the farmers' market, and I'd never had fresh sour cherries before, and every time I see a recipe for clafoutis it references the traditional Limousin Clafoutis using unpitted sour cherries.
It baked beautifully... but here's the thing: If you don't really know what to expect when some call it "custard-like" and others call it a "pancake dessert," what they mean is it's like a German pancake [which an Americanized apple kuchen]. I've never loved German pancakes, and it turns out I'm not a huge clafoutis fan either. It looks like it's going to be crunchy-crusty on top but texture's just... meh. The picture below isn't out of focus, the center is really... indistinct. I mean, it was fine and I'll slather the leftovers in maple syrup and call it breakfast, but it felt like a waste of my precious sour cherries.
Recipe: Whole-Wheat Sour Cherry Clafoutis for German Pancake Lovers
You can substitute spelt for a gluten-free clafoutis.

1 cup whole-wheat flour [or spelt]
pinch of salt
1/2 cup sugar (plus 1 teaspon for sprinkling over top)2 eggs
1 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla or amaretto
2 cups cherries, whole
powdered sugar, to serve [I was out]

Preheat oven to 400F. Whisk together dry ingredients in a medium bowl. Whisk together wet ingredients in a separate bowl then stir into the dry. Don't overmix, some lumps are okay. Pour into cake pan or skillet, drop fruit over the top and sprinkle with remaining sugar. Bake 35-40 minutes. Dust with powdered sugar before serving.

Migas for Two

This is JG’s recipe for anyone who cherishes breakfast tacos but isn’t likely to make tortillas from scratch first thing in the morning.
If you’re not familiar with migas [literally “crumbs”], it’s eggs scrambled with broken pieces of tortilla chips… a great use for the snerds at the bottom of the bag. It’s a lot like the matzo crackers and eggs I grew up eating for breakfast during summers with LM, but it usually involves onion, chile pepper, and tomato [Mexican mirepoix] and sometimes Mexican-style chorizo or bacon. We usually omit the tomato because the juices can interfere with the egg texture… frankly, you can omit the onions and peppers and just dump salsa on top if you want something super quick. It’ll still be tasty.
We’re using up the last of our favorite tortilla chips from Austin -- yes, we brought a half full bag of chips on a month-long journey -- but we’ve also found restaurant-style, no-salt-added chips at Whole Foods that seem to be a decent substitute.

Recipe: Migas for Two
Easily doubled in a big skillet.

1 teaspoon olive oil
1/2 onion, thinly sliced pole to pole
1/2 serrano or jalepeno, thinly sliced (deseeded if you prefer)
1 slice deli ham, diced (optional)
4 eggs, lightly whisked (Julia Child used to use a chopstick)
big handful of tortilla chips, crushed to no larger than ~1/2 inch pieces
salt and pepper to taste

Sautee onions and peppers in a skillet over medium high heat until brown spots appear. Add ham and cook until just crispy. Transfer to a bowl and return the skillet to medium heat.

Add tortilla chips to the eggs then immediately pour into the skillet. Scramble until the eggs are almost set, stir in the onion mixture --not too thoroughly or you’ll break up your big beautiful curds! – remove from heat, season lightly, and divide evenly between two plates (or unevenly; JG gets 2/3 upon mutual agreement).