Pulled pork tacos

Yes, delicious pork tacos. But first, indulge me for a minute while I embark on some quick link-dropping and tangent-going, and don't you dare pull a tl;dr on me. I never write any more. You'll get to the photos soon enough.

So I was reading Peter's blog (which I actually still do, Peter, even though I'm too busy saving myself from tendonitis to comment from my iPhone) and found out about Ruhlman's stance that "suck it, you all have plenty of time to cook. And what."

To borrow a phrase, I call bullshit. Now, granted, I am currently fortunate enough to be a stay at home mom (err, a work from home mom), so in theory I have plenty of time to loll around the kitchen for long, slow braises and staggeringly articulate yeast-risings - more time, in fact, than when Scott and I were a couple of blithe DINKs with weekends to burn.

To that I say, "you've gotta be fucking kidding me."

Anyways, Peter linked to a response from Married...with dinner, and at the end of Anita's pleasant diatribe, she vows to share time-saving tricks for home cooks on a weekly basis, and implores her readers to offer their own. So we can all eat like we have time to burn, when in reality, few of us have this luxury. And here we are.

Life as the recently-mated consists of a series of two-hour blocks. Two hours of napping (yay! do stuff!) are followed by two hours of attentive snuggling and neuron-firing playtime. Rinse and repeat. Two hours is still a lot of time, true, but did I mention I work from home? Plus, what if I just put something delicate in the oven, then have to abandon it for maternal duties? This has happened, by the way - I had to run upstairs to nurse Zeph back into submission and had to just lay there with my tit out, listening to the oven timer beeping away for 15 minutes until Scott got home from work. The food was saved this time, barely, but I know I won't always be that lucky.

My culinarian identity has been seriously compromised for the past year or so, so as a saving throw, I have become a recent convert to pressure cooking. Yes, old timey, frighteningly sputtery and clattery pressure-cooking. I can spare enough time a couple times a month to pressure-cook poundage of beast or beans (the pressure allows the boiling temperature to exceed 212 degrees, which drastically cuts cooking time), then freeze for easy reheating at a later date. This means I can eat feijoadas from homegrown heirloom beans (dried and stored) with brisket and ham shank an hour after starting it, and again a month later in only 10 minutes. (In fact, when I cook beans these days, I only cook the whole bag and freeze the cooked legumes in 1-cup portions. This takes about 15 or 20 minutes, and saves lots of rupees, too. Canned beans are for suckers.)

So my protip of the week: get over your fear of the pressure cooker. It was good enough for grandma, it's good enough for you.


Okay, so to the tacos already.

Another lazy-evening, time-strapped, just-put-the-baby-to-bed dinner, tacos are such an easy way to deliver protein, starch and a little veg to the sleepwalking. Particularly if one is fortuitous enough to have pressure-cooked a 5lb. pork shoulder the prior evening (which, itself, took only about 45 minutes).

All I needed was to add some cumin, Mexican oregano (actually a verbena, and not even in the same botanical family as oregano) and achiote to the leftover pork shreds. Reheated pulled pork always tastes fine as long as there is plenty of delicious grease to cushion against drying.

For authenticity (and because it is Correct), tacos should contain only meat, onion and cilantro, and be served in two corn tortillas. The second tortilla is for cobbling together a spare taco from any fallen taco flotsam. Hot sauce is encouraged, and a spritz of lime livens everything up.

Serve with an ice-cold Negro Modelo and radishes for coolness.

Feijoadas grandes

Last summer I was totally knocked up and not good for much. Thank god I still had the presence of mind to a) grow a vegetable garden that included scarlet runner beans and b) utilize some of October's nesting instinct to harvest all of the beans and dry them instead of squandering all that precious energy on retarded shit like vacuuming all of the lampshades.

Scarlet runners (Phaseolus coccineus) are one of my favorite garden plants. I've been growing them for awhile, both for their beauty and their flavor. Hummingbirds love them (in flower), and they make a tasty alternative to flagiolets for cassoulet. They resemble a butter bean or a cranberry bean in flavor, but for this application - in fact, Brazil's answer to cassoulet - I was shooting for a more fashionable alternative to a black bean.

Feijoada is the national dish of Brazil, but variations exist in Portugal as well. Brought to the country by slaves, it traditionally uses black beans and less-popular cuts of pork such as snouts, ears, and trotters. As is typical of peasant fare, the dish has evolved over the years to include a wider variety of meats (depending on the cook and the country in which she lives), though still primarily features pork products cooked with black beans. Mine uses smoky piggy meats such as linguiça sausage and smoked ham shank, a Mexican langoniza (like chorizo, but with beef and pork), bacon and corned beef brisket (looked for carne seca, but was unsuccessful).

Since mine had only been dried for a few months, they didn't need much soak. I let them sit long enough for the skins to wrinkle, though I could've left them overnight. I didn't see the need, though, since I was planning on using a pressure cooker for at least part of the cooking. I think I probably had about 2 or 3 cups of dried beans all together (they filled a pickle jar 3/4 of the way).

I heated my large crockpot over medium-high heat and added 1/4 lb of bacon, one whole linguiça sausage, 1/2 lb of langoniza (left whole) and a 1/2 lb corned beef brisket (without the corning spices) placed fat side down to render out that tasty fat. Meanwhile, I chopped a large onion and minced 4 cloves of garlic and added them to the pot to brown in the rendered fat. I tossed in 4 bay leaves and a dried red chile and then the beans, the ham shank and about 3 or 4 cups of water (I didn't think to measure). You really don't need to add any salt because the meats contribute plenty, but besides that, salt toughens the beans and stalls cooking. You can always season at the end if your arteries really need a stiffy.

I cooked the whole lot at between 10 and 15 psi for about 30-45 minutes, until the beans were tender and the ham shredded off the bone. The beef should be tender enough to yield to the slight pressure of a knife; slice it and the sausages into thick slices and luxuriantly drape the meats over the beans.

Serve with rice, collard greens, orange slices and caipirinhas (a cocktail of cachaça, sugar and limes).

Tallarines con guasanas y carnitas

Don't be afraid - it's just pasta with fresh chickpeas and shredded pork. I threw in some calabacitas (a small, rounded zuke relative), too, just 'cuz. I also found out that there is a Spanish word for pasta, and decided to use it instead of "spaghetti" to make my meal appear to be more cogent than fusion.

Imagine my delight at finding fresh chickpeas at Winco foods. I never shop there, but was helping a friend bargain-shop and I was actually really surprised at their variety of Latin produce and wealth of bulk bins (though I still think Cash & Carry has better meat deals, if you don't mind buying in 10lb increments). Normally steamed and shelled directly into the mouth (like so much edamame), guasanas are an interesting Mexican vegetable. I don't know of any other legumes consumed as a fresh vegetable in Latin America, come to think of it. The lanuginous pods bear one seed, though the occasional twin is present. I'd never seen them before, and brought home a bag of them to try.

I sautéed the shelled chickpeas with minced onion and garlic, some minced red chili and sliced calabacitas. I added generous pinches of fresh-ground cumin, achiote and Mexican oregano, salt and pepper. Then I shredded the leftover pork steaks from last week (I made this dinner last week, too, but am just getting to it), added a few unctuous spoonfuls of the tomato-caramelized onion gravy (similarly leftover) and simmered until the shreds of pork buckled under their own weight. I ladled the mixture over cooked spaghetti, and sprinkled on some crumbled cotija and torn cilantro. The spicy, silky carnitas married well with the nutty, lightly crunchy guasanas and the salty, dry cotija and verdant cilantro brightened the whole plate up nicely.

Serve with a spanky Pinot Noir and a hot date with a stationary bike.*



*I finally made a trip to the gym after more than a month, with a taped-up broken toe and a permission slip from the orthopedic surgeon. The bike is okay as long as I keep my foot straight, and so I kicked back and enjoyed a magazine while I did the exercise of the lazy. I will, however, feel the upper body strength-training tomorrow.

Chicken enchilada soup and kabocha squash taquitos

I pulled some leftover soup from the freezer the other day, to make room for a tub of ice cream, and got around to heating it up for dinner. You can scarcely contain your excitement, right? Well sit tight, pretties, it actually gets interesting.

The soup was some of my spicy chicken-chile soup, or what I like to call sopa del fuego (aka "soup of fire", or Napalm in a Bowl). Holy shit, you know what? When I was pulling up that link just now and saw the recipe and photos of that Napalm in a Bowl post from January 2008, I came to the realization that the soup we ate tonight was literally the same soup from 13 months ago. I need clean out my freezer more often.

It was still good though! And slightly improved. Here's how, in a winding tangent: I was craving a crunchety taquito-type thing, had some leftover roasted kabocha that needed eating, and figured hey, squash - properly spiced and seasoned with cumin, achiote, Mexican oregano (actually a verbena) and diced chipotle* en adobo and onion - would be an excellent taquito filler. I hadn't, however, planned for the epic fail of rolling stiff corn tortillas without proper steaming, and ended up with several cracked and torn tortillas which were summarily tossed into the soup. Hence, enchilada soup. Besides, the broth is pure enchilada sauce. Top it with a dainty quenelle of crème fraîche (the last of it, I swear) and torn cilantro.


The rest of the tortillas were fail-free after microwaving them in a bowl (with another on top as a dome lid) with a sprinkle of water to hydrate. Scott helpfully suggested rolling them like streudel, so I gave the tortillas a complete smear of the squash mixture before rolling them up like cigarillos. Spritzed with some cooking spray (I only use the pure canola oil version that Trader Joe's makes) and baked until toasty in a 400 degree oven for 15 minutes. Rotating halfway helps address the hotspot in my oven and ensure even browning. Next time I'll totally add black beans and sweet corn to make them more nutritionally complete, then someone will comment that they look like Southwest Eggrolls from Chili's and I will get hell of Google traffic from assholes who want to recipes to cook garbage chain restaurant food at home (you think I'm kidding? More than 10% of all of my traffic comes from people Googling the Olive Garden's chicken gnocchi soup.)

Serve with a lime margerita (on the rocks) and Pepto Bismol (straight up).


*I'm taking this opportunity to spank everyone who insists on spelling and (pronouncing) it "chipolte". Let's get it right, people. Say it with me: chee-pote-lay. Chipotle. And remember, when in doubt, Google is your friend.

Heirloom pico de gallo

My tomatoes are really coming on good now. I have to go out every day to keep up with them! Otherwise those fucking raccoons will steal them, take a few bites and then leave them there to rot. This is what they've been doing to my pond plants, anyways. Fucking raccoons.

The rest of my jalapeños, I'm letting ripen to red so I can smoke them into chipotles. But once in awhile I actually need a chile for something, and it is so satisfying to just step out into the garden and help myself. My half-assed efforts are finally paying off! Thank you, unseasonable heat and rainstorms.

Pico de gallo is such a no-brainer for using up tomatoes. It's one step away from gazpacho, but unlike gazpacho, I actually like pico de gallo. Oh, don't look at me like that. You have disbelief on your face. What, I don't like everything. Surprised? I'd rather just dip some crispy tortilla chips in this than pretend I'm eating soup when it's too damn hot for soup.

I grabbed a day's worth of yellow pear tomatoes, a few Sungolds brought to the office by a co-worker (I really can never pass up free produce, especially if no one else was taking any), and a fist-sized Cherokee Purple. Gave them a gentle dice with a sharp knife (to prevent mashing them), minced some onion, garlic and a jalapeño, then a handful of chopped cilantro, salt and pepper. That's it! If you're one of those people, you could throw in some cucumber and give the whole lot a blitz to make gazpacho. But really, why would you? Pico de gallo is way better.

It's particularly nice draped across a brekkie burrito, too. Quite nice indeed.

Corn and roasted poblano pudding with calabacitas and mole chicken

This is just a quick post to get in my five for the week. I spent the afternoon at the river at Sauvie Island with Scott, picking blackberries, drinking a beer with our toes in the river, and then picking up some nice produce at Kruger's Farm Market. I'll tell you all about it later, but right now I'm full of delicious burgers and want to watch a DVD and have a cocktail, and not blog. I do wanna tell you about what I did with all those lovely chiles I showed you the other day, though, real quick.

So, it turns out that making chile rellenos from peppers the size of walnuts is a fool's errand. Instead, after I roasted the poblanos,* I decided to use them in the corn pudding. And hot damn! Am I ever glad I did. The corn pudding was so simple - just sautéed onion, garlic and corn with diced, roasted poblanos mixed with a couple beaten eggs, a splash of cream, a little blue cornmeal and a couple handfuls of grated cheese (jack and sharp cheddar). Bake in a buttered souffle until golden and set. So good scooped onto a plate with some summer squash confetti. Or sliced and browned in a pan with a thick slab of ham and some fried tomato for breakfast (I'll tell about that later, too).

*anchos are the dried form of poblanos, I forgot that on Thursday's post.

For the calabacitas (Mexican summer squash vegetable dish), I sautéed diced pattypan and yellow crookneck squash with some of my Royal Burgundy beans (they got a bit big and needed a chop), diced red bell pepper, chopped green olives and chopped dried cherries. Add some cumin and cinnamon, salt and pepper and it's a thing. Kind of like a vegetarian/healthy empanada filling. Oh snap, I am totally going to make this into an low-cal empanada, Ben!

The salty olives and sweet cherries really brighten up. It looks kinda like circus barf, but it was really good.

I had some chicken thighs that I simmered in a poaching liquid spiked with achiote, Mexican oregano, garlic, dried shallot and bay leaf. Then I shredded it and soaked it with mole I pulled from the freezer (from the venison tenderloin that I cooked for Norm). This busy plate looks a tranny mess, but good lord it was tasty. Add a basket of warm, soft, flour tortillas and a basic Argentinian Malbec (we had Don Miguel Gascón 2007 - the chocolate covered cherry is a no-brainer with the mole, but not too serious for the bright veg medley) .

Cazuela de Chorizo y Queso

...or Mexican Lasagna

...or Lowering the Bar

This time of year, I usually have to make a concerted effort to pull shit out of the freezer ahead of time so we have some dinner options. Once in awhile, though, I get too ambitious (really, just once in awhile), and pull 5 meals' worth of meat out of the freezer and then just, oh forget about it for a week. Then it's a harried scramble of profanity to cook it all in time. These are the times when I either have stroke of utter genius, or completely phone it in with this Hamburger Helper-esque abortion. This meal was the latter.

This time we had a venison backstrap, some ground turkey, and about 18 inches of Mexican chorizo in the mix. Whoa, turns out the carnicería near our house has really fucking good chorizo! Unfortunately, this was discovered after I already turned it all into a red-headed stepchild of Bolognese, using some leftover green and yellow bell peppers, some roasted jalapeños (from the freezer) and some onions. Diced it all up, fried it in the delicious orange chorizo grease. Added some Mexican oregano and a bit of cumin. One more run through the fridge - oh, here's a little container of sliced black olives, a half a can of black beans and one more sad kohlrabi (peeled and diced). In they go. I threw in a can of El Pato Mexican tomato sauce, and to cut the heat, I added some regular ol' stewed tomatoes.

I had a package of Trader Joe's no-boil lasagna noodles, a package of shredded cheddar/jack, and a hunk of cotija that had about ten minutes left on it. I had a tub of expired (but not-yet-sour!) cottage cheese, which I blended with some cilantro scavenged from the garden, and it was a reasonable facsimile for ricotta.

Gah, even the photos came out bad!

Oh god, what an embarrassing mess this was. A fucking mess! But oh, hey I almost forgot? Greasy, spicy sausage, sheets of pasta and gooey cheese all fresh from the oven ALWAYS TASTES GOOD. I win. Take that, Creepy Anthropomorphic Talking Glove!

Los Gatos Comida Salvadoreña

Oh man, so I was in the field for a couple days last week, this time in central Oregon. My intrepid coworker and I were feeling a bit peckish, and still had at least 4 hours to go before we hit Prairie City (oxymoron that it is). We stopped in Madras, the last "urban" area we'd see for awhile on Highway 26, nearly screeching to a halt upon finding a pupusería on the main drag.


Tammy ordered up a horchata to sip while we waited. I'm normally a pretty adventurous person, but I just can't wrap my mind around horchata. I dunno. It sounds like a tahini milkshake. I had a Diet Pepsi for the caffeine.

I ordered up some pupusas and platanos con frijoles y crema, Tammy ordered tamales de pollo. We were overjoyed when our plates of hot and cheesy arrived dressed with a crunchy slaw.

The pupusas revueltas were filled with frijoles and melted cotija - dense and chewy - yet they bore an airy quality that begged you to devour the whole damn platter. The tortillas were made of rice flour (de arroz is the typical Salvadoran way), which gave the whole dish a bit of lift.

The tamales came wrapped in banana leaves, a steamy pillow of tender masa and shredded chicken. The house-made salsa roja cooled off an impatient bite to just below palate-scarring napalm.

"I want to eat nothing but this for the rest of my life," cooed an ecstatic Tammy upon tasting the unctuous sweetness of fried platanos swabbed through cool crema and earthy frijoles refritos. Luscious and umami, hot and creamy delft all in one bite.

Los Gatos Comida Salvadoreña
129 S 5th Street
Madras, OR

Huevos Rancheros

I needed to take a little vacay from the blogging for a few days, because when my hobbies start to feel like a second job, I usually abandon them altogether. I don't want that to happen! I don't want to resent my blog. Also, I didn't eat at home much over the weekend.

Anyhoo, I meant to share my huevos rancheros with y'all. I have to be honest, though: while the photos came out very pretty, I don't think it tasted great. Does that ever happen to you? I feel like an imposter even showing this to you. The beans could've used some seasoning, the potatoes needed another five minutes on the stove, and I should've fried (or at least toasted) the tortillas. Oh well. Pretend it tastes awesome.




Huevos Rancheros

1 large waxy potato, diced
1/2 c onion, diced
1/2 c red bell pepper, diced
1/2 jalapeño, seeded and minced
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp Mexican oregano
1/2 tsp paprika
1/4 tsp chili powder
pinch chili flake
S&P to taste
4 corn tortillas
1 c cooked black beans
2 eggs
Accoutrement: sour cream, salsa and/or hot sauce, chopped cilantro

Fry the potatoes, onion, bell pepper and jalapeño in a little oil over medium-ish heat. Add the spices and a bit of water. Cover, and cook over low-ish heat until potatoes are tender. If you want, you can jack the heat back up, add some more oil and get a little crispy edge on the potato, but I always fuck this up when the potatoes (inevitably) stick.

While you're heating up the beans (btw, go ahead and give them a little salsa or at least some cumin, S&P), fry your eggs. I prefer "over medium", because while raw yolks are delicious, runny whites are fucking foul.

Heat up your tortillas by either toasting them until cripsy in the oven (give them a spritz of cooking oil and a pinch of salt if you do this) or fry them, if that's how you roll. I fucked this up by just heating them on top of the covered potatoes, which steamed them. This works great for flour tortillas, but corn tortillas taste stupid when given this treatment (unless you're making tacos).

Plate the tortillas, add a scoop of potatoes, then beans, a dollop of sour cream and salsa, the egg, then a sprinkle of chili flake and cilantro, and some S&P. Bueno appetito!

Napalm in a Bowl

I just realized I have a shitload of chiles in various forms around the kitchen - canned chipotles en adobo, a dozen fresh jalapeños, a big jar of various dried chiles, and some nice anaheims and red bell peppers. It's a capsicum wonderland! Also, I haven't made my chicken enchilada soup in awhile, and today it is fucking FREEZING out (like in the 20s, clear and windy). So I decided to make some nice spicy soup for dinner.

So I start going through the cupboards and freezer to see what else I can purge from deep storage. This is my favorite part of cooking sometimes, just taking stock of my reserves. I find a tub of poultry stock in the freezer leftover from the holidays. It is as rich and brown as beef stock from roasting the birds (turkey, cornish game hens and chickens) prior to converting their carcasses to velvety broth. I like to chop up the hollow bones with my cleaver to get every atom of flavor into that unctuous stock, and I really think it shows.

And oh, how nice! I also find a little reminder of sunnier days: a freezer bag of corn cobs left over from summer's harvest. I grew corn in the garden - our first vegetable garden in the new house - and we relished every kernel. Ever the frugal gourmet, I saved the cobs after cutting the corn from them and froze them for a later broth. Corn cobs add something so indescribably sweet and earthy to broth for chowders (and my spicy chicken enchilada soup).

This got me sort of thinking about my childhood. We were on food stamps when I was a kid, and frequently received donations from the food bank. I have eaten the "gub'ment cheese", and not ironically. But aside from converting 50 cents' worth of dried beans into a week's meals, I don't think my mom really knew how to stretch a food dollar other than buying generic. I don't think it would ever have occurred to her to save bones or corn cobs in the freezer for later stock-making. Instead, she'd buy a box of bouillon cubes or a gravy mix packet. The funny thing is, even though I can afford nice things now, I am far more parsimonious and resourceful than my mother ever was when I was growing up (sometimes I joke that my last life was spent during the Depression). And I think my soup is the better for it.

So I'm making the soup, and I give the broth a taste. Haha, wouldn't you know the soup came out way too spicy! And without enough corn kernels left in the freezer I had to add a can of pinto beans to starch it up a bit. So this is a new soup. And I shall name it:

Sopa del Fuego (con frijoles)!
Makes ~8 bowls, give or take

This soup is so hot it makes my eyeballs sweat, yet it is somehow not really too hot. It has so much excellent chile flavor, and the cool sour cream and verdant cilantro balance this flavor perfectly.

1 cup corn kernels (frozen or fresh - canned would probably not be the best choice for this)
1 fresh jalapeño
6 cups chicken stock, preferably home-made from the carcasses of birds you've eaten in the past
4 corn cobs, if you save that kind of thing
6 large dried chiles such as ancho, pasilla or guajillo (I use a combination of these), seeded and stemmed
2 cloves garlic, peeled
4 or 5 sun-dried tomatoes
2 bay leaves (not California laurel!!)
2 chipotle chiles (canned "en adobo"), plus a tablespoon or two of the adobo
1 7 3/4-oz. can tomato sauce (I used Mexican hot style by El Pato)
1/2 c chopped onion
1/2 c chopped bell pepper, any color
8 oz. ground chicken breast, broken into bite-sized pieces
1 tsp ground cumin seed
1 tbsp Mexican oregano (regular oregano is an acceptable substitute but really not the same at all)
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
2 cups cooked beans (pinto or black is probably best; I used pinto)
S&P to taste
sour cream
fresh cilantro, chopped

Roast corn kernels and jalapeño in a 375-degree oven for about 15-20 minutes until the corn is slightly browned and the jalapeño slightly softened. Seed and stem the roasted jalapeño and mince.

While the corn and jalapeño are roasting, bring 2 cups of the stock to a boil. Add corn cobs, dried chiles, garlic, sun-dried tomatoes and bay leaves. Cover and simmer for 15 minutes. Remove corn cobs and bay leaves, and discard. Puree the remaining stock, chiles (including the chipotles), tomatoes and garlic in a blender or with an immersion blender. Strain through a fine sieve to remove the chile skins and errant seeds, rubbing the flesh through the mesh with a rubber spatula or wooden spoon. Scrape the puree off the outside of the sieve to get every last drop.


Return the puree to the pot and add remaining 4 cups of stock, adobo and tomato sauce. Bring to a simmer and add all of the other ingredients except the sour cream and cilantro. Let it do its thing for about 30 minutes on low heat, stirring once in awhile. Add salt and pepper to taste. I added about a teaspoon of sugar at the end because it was really spicy.

Ladle into bowls and top with a spoonful of sour cream and sprigs of fresh cilantro. I also like to throw some tortilla strips on top for crunch. For the tortilla strips, just slice a corn tortilla into 1/4"-thick strips, spritz with cooking spray and sprinkle of salt, and bake at 350 for about 5 minutes or until crunchy. You could also just crumble up some tortilla chips if that's how you roll.

Bueno appetito!

So, I'm on a diet

Yeah, that's right. I'm watching the weight again.

Anyways, tonight I made a yummy diet-esque dinner, and since I've decided I'm not ashamed to admit I'm counting calories, I took a photo of the buffalo taco salad I made for dinner. And guess what, bitches? I'm giving you the (admittedly simplistic) recipe.


Insalate del Cibolero (I totally made this up. It means something like "buffalo hunter's salad", I think. But doesn't it sound Important and Amazing now?)

(Serves 2 quite comfortably, thankyouverymuch)

8 oz. ground buffalo
1/4 c diced onion
1/4 c diced each anaheim, poblano and sweet pepper (such as mini bell) (3/4 c total)
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tsp ground cumin (fresh-ground if you can swing it)
1 tsp oregano (Mexican)
1 pinch cinnamon
S&P
4 tbsp salsa
1 corn tortilla, sliced into thin strips (1/4" thick)
cooking spray or olive oil
bag o' salad (I think that's like 4.5 cups per serving or something). I like butter lettuces.

Optional toppings: grated cheese, sour cream, fresh cilantro, lime wedge, avocado, etc. (I used low-fat and fat-free versions of the dairy, and tragically, didn't have any cilantro, lime or avocado on hand.)

Preheat oven to 350oF.

In a non-stick skillet (spritzed with cooking spray), brown buffalo over medium-high heat. There will not really be any fat to pour off, and besides, it's already included in the calorie count so live a little.

Add onions, chiles, garlic, cumin, oregano, cinnamon and S&P and saute until veg becomes glossy and slightly softened. Turn down to low and add salsa. Gratz, you just made chili con carne.

Spread tortilla strips on a baking sheet and give them a quick spritz of cooking spray and a pinch of salt. Toast in oven for 10 minutes until crispy and tortilla chip-like.

Plate your lettuce (a bag makes two huge plates). Top with meat and veg mix, the tortilla strips, and the other accoutrement that I sure hope you're treating yourself to since you're having a fucking salad for dinner.

If you feel like it, you could just say "fuck a salad" and eat the meat/veg mix in a tortilla, in which case you'd be eating a taco.

Bueno appetito!

480 calories (with 1 oz 2% milk cheese and 2 tbsp fat-free sour cream, and that was splurging) 23 g fat
37 g protein
5 g fiber (more if you have avocado)

Buffalo-Chanterelle Empanadas with Mole

A recurring theme is emerging: too many chanterelles, plus an impending frost that requires me to pull my millions of tomatoes while still green, equals chanterelles and green tomatoes going into damn near every dish these days. They taste good together, though, so I guess I win. And it forces creativity, since I can never let a single thing go to waste (and no one wants to take any green tomatoes off my hands).

I sometimes feel like the Little Red Hen (or some other storybook martyr), trying desperately to convince my neighbors and coworkers to take some (insert surplus item here). They always politely refuse, saying they don't know how they'd use (surplus item). When I tell them they could very easily make (A), (B), or (C) with it, all very delicious! they admit that they in fact don't actually care much for (surplus item). However! If I bring over some little yummeh (such as (A)) made with (surplus item) they greedily help themselves and have to confess that they didn't actually know that (surplus item) could be so good, because they'd only had it improperly prepared as (D) or (E) by their unskilled mothers/wives or had never even heard of it before!!

People can be so lazy and uninspired when faced with daunting surplus items, but I refuse to be one of them! So here is yet another use for chanterelles and green tomatoes.

(I listed out the recipes in order of when they should be made. Since the dough needs to sit in the fridge for an hour, it buys you time to get everything else ready.)


Empanada Dough
Yes, I culled the dough recipe from Joy of Cooking, since I don't have an abuelita to show me these things. Sigh.

3 c all-purpose flour (I used whole wheat, and it was fine)
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
10 tbsp (1 1/4 sticks) cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
1/2 c lard or vegetable shortening (I used shortening, which worked great)
11 to 13 tbsp ice water

This is way easier if you use a food processor! In fact, I'm not even gonna bother with the other directions.

Combine dry ingredients in food processor and pulse a few times to mix. Add butter and lard or shortening and pulse until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Transfer mixture to large bowl and sprinkle water over the top.

Mix gently with a fork until dough is damp enough to gather into a ball. Shape into a flat disk and wrap tightly with plastic wrap. Fridge for an hour.


Mole de Gringa
My mole is slightly non-traditional (no tortillas in it), but it has a smooth texture and tastes pretty convincing.

2 c chicken stock
5 large dried chiles (I use a combo of pasilla, California pod and ancho), seeded and stemmed
5 sun-dried tomatoes
2 cloves garlic, peeled
1 bay leaf
1/4 c pepitas (pumpkin seeds)
1 tsp. cumin seed, lightly toasted
1" piece of cinnamon stick
1/2 tsp. unsweetened cocoa powder*
salt to taste
sugar to taste (if the mole is a tad bitter, a wee spoonful helps)

*In a pinch I once used a coupla squares of Dagoba Xocolatl chocolate bar, which is 75% cacao and has lovely bits of cacao nib and chile flake. It was really good!

In a small pot, bring chicken stock to the boil. Add chiles, sun-dried tomatoes, garlic and bay leaf, and turn off heat. Lid the pot and leave to sit 10 or 15 minutes until the chiles and tomatoes are softened. Meanwhile, toast cinnamon and cumin in small pan over medium heat until fragrant, and grind to a fine powder in a mortar and pestle or spice grinder.

Remove bay leaf from stock-chile pot, and puree until smooth. Pass through a fine-mesh sieve, scraping the flesh through with a rubber spatula or wooden spoon. Return mix to blender and add pepitas. Blend until smooth again. Return mix to pot over low heat. Add cinnamon, cumin, cocoa, salt and sugar (if needed) and simmer for about 5 minutes or so to let the flavors meld.

I've never had any leftover, but I'd suppose it keeps for about a week in the fridge or a few months in the freezer. This mole is the base for my chicken enchilada soup. It is also nearly fat free (except for the pepitas)! So you might wanna add a scant teaspoon or two of a nutty oil to round out the flavor if using it directly as sauce.


Empanada Filling
I omit the raisins and olives, 'cuz there's just enough going on in here already.

1/2 lb. ground buffalo
2 roasted poblano chiles, peeled, seeded and chopped
1 c diced potato (I used 3 fingerlings)
1 c diced onion
1 c diced green tomato
2 c chopped or shredded chanterelles
1 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp. Mexican oregano
S&P
1/4 c mole
1/4 c cotija (queso seco) or I guess you could use ricotta salata or some other dry white cheese
1/2 c chopped cilantro

Brown buffalo in a medium skillet (with a little olive oil) over medium-high heat. Transfer to a bowl when browned. In the same pan, saute onions, potatoes, poblanos and tomatoes for about 10 minutes. Pan will be a bit sticky, but just add the chanterelles and the juices they release will deglaze the pan nicely. Season with the cumin, garlic powder, cinnamon, oregano and S&P. Simmer down for a few, stirring now and again.

Add the cooked buffalo back to the pan, and the mole. After a minute add the queso and the cilantro, stir, and turn off the heat.

By now, hopefully, it's been an hour and that dough is ready. (It shouldn'tve really taken that long to make the mole and filling, though, so you might just need to have a little glass of wine and clean up your kitchen to kill the last 15 or 20 minutes.)

Assembly:

Heat oven to 400F.

Divide dough into quarters. Roll out each dough chunk 1/8" thick and cut out 6" rounds. I just cut around a saucer to do this.* You'll have to re-roll scraps to get approximately 10-12 rounds.

Brush the edges with a little eggwash (1 egg beaten with 1 tbsp milk), and add about 1/4 c filling to one side of the round, then fold closed and use a fork around the edges to gently seal (and give a pretty effect). Poke a few fork holes in the top to vent, and place on a cookie sheet. Repeat for the rest, spacing them 2". Brush the tops with remaining eggwash.

Bake until browned, like 15 minutes. It took longer to write this post than to make the damn things. Serve with mole, maybe some cilantro and sour cream if you like.


*Later, Scott said maybe little 2 bite-sized ones would be pretty great like as appies, in which case you could use a 4" cookie cutter and just like 2 tbsp or so of filling in each.

I totally forgot to make my fried plantains to go with these beauties, so it's a good thing I still have some leftover filling. Tacos and fried plantains for dinner tonight!