Lucito
Yesterday morning, before we left for the tianguis, we were discussing what we would eat for supper. We had returned late the night before from some errands and only picked up some essentials for the week, and we had no real plans for the food for the day. Normita was thinking something along the line of a simple fish dish, but alas the fish merchant was not there so we could not get that. We looked at one of the many butchers and we finally decided for making some hamburgers as I had not made any for many many months, and it would give me a chance to test the mini-BBQ for which we had finally found the propane bottles for.
As I was walking through the tianguis thinking about how to prepare the hamburgers, inspiration struck and I thought of seasoning the meat with mole paste. Mole is an interesting Mexican specially, normally in paste form, and that is used as a pungent sauce with a variety of dishes. There are tons of recipes for it and Normita published one for Mole Poblano last fall. At the tianguis there are always a few booths, normally from San Pedro Actopan, a village outside of the city that is famous for his various moles and its mole paste industry. We stopped and tasted a few varieties and we settled for some mole almendrado, a spicy concoction with an almond base, and we found out it was also available in a dried format that keep much longer.
We also picked up about a pound of nice beef from the leg that we had ground twice for a nice smooth texture. After we finished our chores and we were ready for lunch, I setup the BBQ and made those nice juicy hamburgers that turned up stunning. I normally prepare my hamburger patties a few hours before and store them on a plate in the refrigerator, so that the condiments in them have time to mix well and marinate the meat a bit. We will certainly make some again in the coming weeks as we both enjoyed them tremendously.
Ingredients
Hamburgers
1 pound lean double ground beef
4 tbs mole almendrado powder
2 tbs soy sauce
2 tbs Worcestershire sauce
2 tbs brandy
2 tbs sesame oil
Salt & pepper to taste
4 Hamburger buns
2 tbs margarine or butter mixed with garlic and onion paste
Potatoes
3 medium potatoes
3 tbs extra virgin olive oil
2 tsp herbes de Provence
Salt and pepper to taste
Preparation
1. In a large bowl break up the meat in a thick layer.
2. Add mole powder, soy sauce, Worcestershire, brandy, sesame oil, and salt and pepper to the top of it.
3. With a fork mix the seasoning with the meat until well incorporated.
4. With your hands create 4 large thick patties and put on a plate to rest. Refrigerate for a few hours.
5. Cut the potatoes in 1/4" slices and place on a large plate.
6. Add half of the herbes de Provence and olive oil as well as salt and pepper to taste.
7. Turn the potatoes and repeat the procedure.
8. Mix the margarine with a bit of garlic and onion paste and spread some inside the buns and on the top and bottom of them.
8. Heat up you BBQ grill and when hot, cook the potatoes on it until well browned.
9. Put the potatoes on an ovenproof platter and into a low oven to keep warm.
10. Cook the hamburger patties until your preferred doneness is reach and reserve in the warm oven.
11. Warm up the bunds on both sides and then assemble the dish. Serve with your favorite condiments.
Lucito
As promised yesterday I am posting recipes for ‘Salsa Verde’ and ‘Salsa Roja’, two staples of the Mexican tables. Wherever you go, whether home or restaurant, when you sit down to eat there are both salsas sitting on the table. Both are very similar in nature and are a nice spicy condiment to use at you discretion to spice up your meal or to use as a dip for bread or ‘totopos’. The salsas are named for their colors, and the difference between the two is the main ingredients. The ‘Verde’ uses ‘tomatillos’ a green ground tomato, and the ‘Roja’ uses tomatoes.
There are many methods of preparing these salsas and they can be made with raw ingredients or cooked, they can be chopped finely or made in the blender. For raw salsas you simply put the ingredients in a blender and pulse until you have the consistency you wish. For cooked salsas the procedure varies with the actual cook. You can grill the chiles and the ‘tomatillos’ or tomatoes on a very hot ‘comal’, a circular sheet of metal that you put directly on a stove’s burner or over coals. Once the skin is burned, you peel them and prepare as usual. An alternative is to chop and cook them in oil then add the chopped onions and garlic. You can also blanch them in boiling water for a few minutes and then peel them before chopping or blending the mixture. With all of the cooked version the cilantro is added once cooked and then you salt to taste.
I specify chiles jalapeños for the recipes, but the salsas are also commonly made with chile Serranos, or with a variety of dried chiles like anchos, chipotles, pasillas, guajillos, or whatever type of chile that the cook prefers. I am posting here a simple raw version of the salsas, but you can experiment with cooking the main ingredients and with different chiles. I normally prefer most red salsas, and Normita’s passion is the green ones. Have fun experimenting with those salsas and leave in the comments your favorite variations.
Ingredients
1/2 pound of ‘tomatillos’ if you decide to make ‘salsa verde’
1/2 pound of plum tomatoes if you decide to make ‘salsa roja’
2 chile jalapeños or to taste
1 large onion
2 cloves garlic
1 cup coarsely chopped cilantro
salt to taste
Preparation
1. Cut tomatillos or tomatoes in quarters and place in blender or food processor.
2. Cut chiles in half and remove the seeds and membrane add to the blender.
3. Cut the onion in quarters and add to the blender.
4. Add the peeled garlic cloves to the blender.
5. Pulse the blender or food processor until you have a coarse salsa.
6. Add cilantro and pulse briefly.
7. Add salt to taste.
Lucito
I was asked a few times in recent days about what to do with the marinated arrachera meat that I gave my recipe for some weeks back. The simplest dish that I have seen is grilled arrachera. This is normally served in a lot of restaurant with some Mexican-style rice and some refried beans as side dishes. Warm corn tortillas are served with it so that you can make some nice tacos and they are garnished with either ‘salsa verde’ or ‘salsa roja’. I will post recipes for both salsas tomorrow, and will prepare recipes for some other delicacies that can be made with arrachera meat. This recipe is best prepared on a real charcoal grill, but can be done easily on a gas grill, or in a grill pan on the stovetop.
Ingredients
1 pound marinated arrachera meat cut into 6" long wide pieces
12 ‘Chiles Serrano’
12 large green onions or ‘Cambray’ cut in 3" pieces
2 cups cooked Mexican-style rice
2 cups refried black beans
12 corn tortillas
‘Totopos’ (dried or deep fried corn tortilla triangles) for garnish
‘Salsa verde’ and ‘salsa roja’
Preparation
1. Over very hot charcoals cook the green onions and the whole ‘Chiles Serrano’ until tender and reserve on a cooler section of the grill
2. Cook the arrachera until the doneness you prefer. It is normally cooked a little more than you would normally prepare a steak.
3. Serve the arrachera on a wide oval plate with the chiles and green onions on top, and with a portion of Mexican-style rice and some refried beans on the side.
4. Top the refried beans with a few ‘totopos’ stuck into them.
5. Prepare tacos with the cut arrachera and garnishes and top with either salsa.
Lucito
I just was reading a blog post on a new wine announcement and the author was saying the following:
"the wines aren’t for the wine-savvy crowd but for the barbecuing dad who wants to have a nice tasting wine without having to learn about terroir and varietals"
My first thought was:
What exactly does knowing technical information about a wine has to do about enjoying the taste of a wine?
I have been involved in the wine trade for over 20 years and I have always been stunned by that kind of thinking. When I met Normita she did not know anything about the technical aspects of wine and of wine tasting, but she sure could easily know if she liked a wine and could greatly enjoy them without this knowledge. Most of the time, the knowledge can even get in the way of enjoying wine. Years ago, when I was organizing weekly wine tastings at the wine store a friend was managing, we did some nice tests to prove this idea of mine. We organized a formal tasting for a group of friends who belonged to a local wine club. All of those people were wine fanatics and they were armed with a vast knowledge about the wines we were planning to taste.
We had originally planned a tasting of over a dozen wines, but to test this crazy idea of mine we decided to narrow the selection to about 6 or 7 bottles and created an event where there would be a blind tasting first where the tasters did not know anything about the wines they were tasting, followed by a regular tasting of the same wines that ranged from good tasting low-end ones to a very expensive, but overhyped, one. The tasters were told that the two flights of the tasting were different wines and that we would compare notes at the end of the evening. I led the tasting, and tasted the first flight blind without knowing which one was which and noted the wines accordingly. We then followed with the regular tasting where the crowd could apply their vast knowledge of the wines to the bottles that they now could see.
The results were amazing. In the blind tasting one of the midrange wines came out ahead by a wide margin followed by the cheapest one, and the expensive one came out dead last. The regular tasting of the same wines coming from the same bottles was totally the opposite. The wines came in exactly in the order of price and reputation. What had changed between the tastings? The wines were the exact same ones, but the tasters now could let their opinion and knowledge color their judgment. I have seen this happened over and over again and it is something that we should always keep to the back of our minds when we taste wines. We should always remember that it is only fermented grape juice and no amount of knowledge should color our opinion on if we enjoy the wine or not. Let us enjoy the wines that we do enjoy, even though they might not have the prestige of some of the overhyped brands, or of the proper vintage and terroir. The important thing is that we enjoy fully what is in our glass. Knowledge is important if you want to analyze the experience fully, and if you need or enjoy the technical side of the wine experience, but remember that this knowledge does not change the taste of the wine in your glass and it might even color your judgment.
Lucito
Just as we finally got the new car the other week, we started thinking about driving out of town to get some fresh air and have some picnics. The weather did not cooperate since then and turned to the worse. Here, around Mexico City, the picnic season is year long, as long as you do not mind some cold morning in the winter, and some rainy evening during the rain season. Winter was finally over and the weather was becoming unseasonably hot, and the rain season was still a few months away, when last weekend the weather turned to cold with daily rain showers or thunderstorms in the afternoon. It put a stop to our plans for a picnic last weekend and we will see how things turn up for next weekend. As I write this the weather is cloudy and it is raining. I could do without this depression-inducing mess…
Those of you who do not know us, would not know the story of how Normita and I met. We were one of those lucky couples who met in the early days of the Internet. Back around the winter of 1998 we started exchanging emails regularly after Normita sent me a message in some forum. She was in Mexico City and I was spending my time commuting and working between Québec and Washington, DC. We started an extended daily email exchange that lasted for 4-5 months until one day her parents were planning a holiday trip to Canada and she decided to take some time off from work and join them. Before she left we agreed to meet in Montreal for a day when her tour was passing through town. We both were nervous about this, even though we had been sharing our thoughts and lives daily for months. Strangely enough we never had spoken to each other and it was strange when she called me the day before we were supposed to meet to confirm.
To make a long story short I planned a nice picnic for our first meeting, and we agreed to meet at her hotel so that I could pick her up. After somewhat of a false start, since they put them in a different hotel across the street and she was calling my cell phone to let me know about this, and she was thinking that I really did not want to see her as I was not answering. What I had forgotten to tell her, was that my cell phone was one of these huge in-car units, as to get any service in the mountains where I lived at the time I needed one of those powerful monsters. I was waiting at the hotel she had told me, and she finally went there to check and it was love at first sight, but that is another story. We left for visiting the city and later to our picnic at the top of the Mont-Royal and we have enjoyed regularly picnicking since the first day we met.
Over the years we have tried many different ways of picnicking in style, and our favorite was always the ones we enjoyed on our pontoon boat on the large lake where we lived in the Laurentian mountains of Québec. We could slowly circle the lake listening to nice music on the stereo and enjoy looking at the scenery while slowly eating our nicely prepared picnic. We also regularly did some fun picnics while cycling. Actually not while pedaling the bicycles, but by cycling to interesting destinations and eating there.
The common denominator to what we have always enjoyed was the style of food we always brought. We have a tendency to get on the fancy side of cold picnics with nice shrimps, smoked salmon, foie gras, and stuff like that. I think that it dates back to the days when I was living alone and traveling all over the world all the time, and I used to have little picnic feasts in my hotel room. I’d buy a bottle of nice champagne, some caviar, foie gras, shrimps, and smoked salmon, as well as a nice baguette and have my little celebratory picnic on the hotel bed. I enjoyed it so much that once a month, when I was at home; I did the same in the living room while watching some movie on TV or listening to some nice music.
Since we like to picnic in style we assembled a nice picnic basket with some nice place settings, good quality cutlery, some nice clothe napkins, and some sturdy quality acrylic glasses, though most of the time we were bringing real crystal INAO standard tasting glasses wrapped in some thick dish clothes, as they are very versatile and somewhat more robust than regular stemware. We have not had the opportunity to picnic much in recent years, but we plan to do so again. In the coming weeks I plan to start assembling a new picnic basket so that we can have it ready for whenever we feel like jumping in the car and having a nice picnic in style. Normita bought me a nice little portable gas BBQ grill last summer, and we only found the proper propane bottles for it last week, so we might get even a bit more involved in our picnicking this time around by preparing some cooked dishes on-site.
In the coming week I will post on how we setup our new picnic basket, reviews of equipment including the grill, and some nice recipes that can be enjoyed with minimal fuss. Hopefully the weather will clear up for the weekend and we will be able to enjoy our first outing. If not we might give it a shot and picnic on the bed like I used to in the old days…
Lucito
As I mentioned a few days ago I was planning to post a few recipes using Oaxaca cheese. Here is another one that is a spicy version of the typical pasta with cheese sauce. It makes for a different taste experience and could also be served as a side dish with some arrachera to make a definitely innovative combination. ‘Epazote’ is a traditional Mexican dark green herb with a very peculiar smell. It is normally available in most Latin American grocery stores. It is used a lot in a variety of Mexican dishes.
Ingredients
5 quarts water
1 1/2 tbs salt
1/2 pound Oaxaca cheese torn into strings
1/4 pound cream cheese
1/2 cup dry white wine
1/2 cup milk
2 tbs butter
3 egg yolks
2 sprigs of ‘epazote’ finely chopped
3 ‘chiles Serrano’ seeded and finely chopped
1 pound fettuccines
Salt and pepper to taste
Preparation
1. In a large pot bring the water with salt to boil and cook the pasta until tender.
2. While waiting for the water to boil, in a heavy saucepan over low heat, melt the cheese in the milk, wine, butter, ‘epazote’, and chiles.
3. Remove from fire and add the yolks and whisk rapidly.
4. Return to fire at the lowest possible setting and heat for some minutes making sure it does not boil.
5. Season with salt and pepper to taste and serve on the cooked pasta.
Lucito
The Padrino, when he visited us last December, had the pleasure to taste Oaxaca cheese. He told me last week that he found a similar Turkish cheese in Vienna and he was wondering what he could cook with it. Oaxaca cheese is a variety of spun cheeses that is originally from the state of Oaxaca in Mexico, and that is currently made all over the country. It is available commercially from the big cheese producers, and of course a much better ‘artisanal’ version is available everywhere from road-sides to the local tianguis.
It is a cheese of ‘squeaky’ consistency, a term coined by one of our Japanese friends in Québec when she called fresh cheese curds ‘squeaky cheese’ as it squeaks on your teeth when you eat it. The Oaxaca cheese is normally pulled into long stringy ribbons during its fabrication and then spun into balls ranging from grapefruit size to huge affairs over a foot and a half across. Its primary use is normally to melt over food, a little bit like mozzarella is used on pizzas.
The simplest Oaxaca cheese recipe to make is a ‘quesadilla’ where a piece of Oaxaca is torn into strings and then placed inside a folded corn tortilla. This can then either be browned in a dry pan until the cheese melts, or pan fried with a bit of oil, or even deep fried. It is then served with your favorite salsa.
A lot of other dishes are topped with Oaxaca as a last step before serving, and pieces of it can also be put in soups to give extra flavor. Following is a simple recipe for ‘Volcanes’ meaning volcanoes, which is very simple to make and very tasty. It is better cooked on a grill, but it can also be made on the stovetop in a dry pan, or in a pan with a little bit of oil.
In the coming days I will post another tasty recipe to make with Oaxaca cheese, and also recipes for homemade salsa verde and salsa roja that are staples of every table here…
Ingredients
4 corn tortilla
8 tbs of refried beans
1/4 pound Oaxaca cheese torn into strings
Homemade salsa verde or salsa roja
Preparation
1. Take each corn tortilla and spread 2 tbs of refried beans on it.
2. Top the beans with 1/4 of the Oaxaca cheese.
3. Cook on a hot BBQ grill, tortilla down, until the tortilla is nice and crisp and the cheese is melted.
4. Top with either salsa verde or salsa roja to taste.
Lucito
For all of those wondering, YES we did get our new car, and we took a few days off driving around town to break it in. Yesterday was a holiday here and Normita took Monday off to make an extra-long weekend. We would have like to go out of town for 4 days, but since we did not get the car until Monday evening, we could not do that. This will have to wait for another weekend.
We decided to celebrate the coming of spring and I researched what was traditional for this time of the year. It seems that egg dishes are the norm and also desserts with honey in them. I prepare a nice smoked salmon quiche for the main course, and I will post the recipe in coming weeks. For desserts I instantly thought about Baklava, but I did not have the patience to bake some as the weather was too nice and the new car was beckoning. I then decided to create a nice honey pie recipe. It turned out stunning so I decided to share it with you. It is very easy to prepare and I baked it before leaving for the day, yesterday morning. Once it was out of the oven and cooled I left it on the counter with a clean dish clothe on top, so it was ready for when we returned.
You can bake this easy pie in a prepared uncooked pie shell, prepare you own dough, use some frozen puff pastry, or do like I did, buy some fresh puff pastry at the supermarket and roll your own pie shell in a few minutes.
An easy trick there is to use a large plastic cutting board so that the puff pastry dough does not stick. Make sure that you put enough flour on both the board and the top of the dough before rolling. With light pressure roll a square of dough to a size that is about 2-3 inches bigger than you pie plate. While rolling the dough flip it over a few times and dust it and the board with flour every time you do so. It only takes a few minutes and I find this much better than most regular prepared pie shells. I prefer to use a sturdy non-stick-coated metal pie plate as they conduct heat better than glass ones.
Ingredients
1 1/4 cup of honey
4 large eggs, beaten
3 tbs butter
1 tbs vanilla extract
2 tbs Scotch
1 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground dried ginger
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
9" unbaked deep pie shell
Preparation
1. In a saucepan heat the honey until it boils, then retire from the heat.
2. Slowly add the beaten eggs while stirring continually so as not to create an omelet.
3. Add the butter and stir until melted and well incorporated.
4. Add vanilla, Scotch, and spices. Stir until you have an homogeneous mixture.
5. Fold in the chopped walnuts.
6. Pour the mixture into your prepared pie shell.
7. Bake in the middle of a preheated 350F oven for about 30 minutes, or until the center of the pie is set.
8. Cool down on a rack before serving.
Lucito
Yesterday we were supposed to receive our new car, as the dealer had told us they received it earlier in the week and they would prepare it for either Friday or Saturday. It seems that they lied to us as the car was arriving in the country from Brazil early in the week, and won’t be at the dealership until Monday or later in the week. We had planned a mini-holiday for the long weekend as it is a holiday here on Tuesday and Normita decided to take Monday off to make a long weekend out of it. As you might think from the above story, we were not in too good of a mood yesterday, but we decided to enjoy the nice windy weather and walk around the neighborhood for part of the afternoon. During our extended walk we came across a nice restaurant that looked very inviting. It is called El Habanero in honor of this most powerful of ‘chiles’ from Yucatan. They specialize in authentic Mayan cooking from Yucatan, and after looking at the menu we decided to return after a bit of freshening up at home.
The restaurant ambiance is pretty informal with a decor inspired by Mayan traditions. It seems that they cater to the business workers during the week and to families and regular client on the weekends. As with most restaurants that cater to local crowds it is not open in the evening, because the main meal here is at 2-3pm. They are open from 8am to 6:30pm from Monday to Sunday. There is a wonderful group ‘el Trio Los Faisanes’ that plays beautiful traditional Mexican trio music daily from 3 to 6pm.
The relaxing atmosphere and beautiful music made us forget our problems and we came out of the restaurant 3 hours later feeling 100% better and in a perfect mood. The wonderful food was a great mood enhancer too.
We started with a ‘sopa de lima’, a traditional Mayan soup consisting of chicken broth, sour limes, lots of shredded chicken breast meat, and fried tortillas. It was exquisite and settled our stomachs for the rest of the meal. The manager recommended that we start with a mixed Mayan platter consisting of two ‘panuchos de cochinita pibil’, two papadzules, and two ‘garnachas de lechon’.
The ‘panuchos’ are miniature corn tortillas served with a layer of refried beans on top, then a serving of ‘cochinita pibil’ a delicious dish made with slow roasted pork with spices and ‘achiote’, an intensely red seed that is ground into a paste then mixed with spices that is a traditional seasoning of Mayan cooking. The ‘panuchos’ are then topped with some spicy marinated red onions.
The ‘garnachas’ are made with some of the same miniature tortillas that are deep fried, and then well drained of the oil after frying. When the tortilla fry they inflate into flat globes and the top thin layer is removed to create a nice little nest to put a filling. The ones we had were made with some ‘lechon’, an exquisitely tender slow roasted suckling pig. They were topped with marinated white onions.
The ‘papadzules’ were again miniature corm tortillas filled with chopped hard-boiled eggs like miniature crepes, and topped with a delicious creamy sauce of green pumpkin seeds.
After this nice sampling we decided to share an order of ‘panuchos’ and one of ‘garnachas’ to finish the meal. They were so nice that we both wanted more after the sampling platter. As is the custom in most Mexican restaurants and homes, various homemade sauces are placed on the table to accompany the dish. What we had was some chopped onions with finely chopped chile habanero, the most potent chiles in the world, and a staple of Yucateca cooking. This very spicy condiment was a great complement to the soup. The other salsa looked like the typical ‘salsa verde’ that is a staple on all tables here. Normita lives for her ‘salsa verde’, but I normally shy away from it as I find the ‘tomatillos’ (green ground tomatoes) and onions in it a tad bitter and at time there is an excess of jalapeños that tends to make it unbalanced. This time the sauce was stunning, with a beautiful green flavor that was exquisite. I thought that instead of the jalapeños they were using habaneros, as the extreme spiciness and the taste hinted to that. We liked it so much that we emptied the bowl as a topping to the ‘panuchos’ and ‘granachas’. We were very surprised to learn that the sauce was simply finely chopped green habaneros in vinegar. The manager told us that he stays away from it as he finds it too spicy, but both Normita and I liked it so much, despite the spiciness, because of the very nice flavor it gave to the food. In any case after the first half of the bowl our mouths were so used to it that we were not noticing the heat. We kind of paid for it this morning when we went to the bathroom, but this is the price you have to pay for eating great spicy food.
Normita had a michelada (beer with lime juice, hot sauce, and Worcestershire sauce) made with a nice blond beer from Yucatan, and I had a few chilled tequilas with the meal and a mineral water to wash everything down. We ended the meal with some flan for Normita and a little piece of cake for me, with an espresso chaser. We both are still full a day later. I guess that it was depression eating, but it surely did the trick…
Pricing was reasonable at around MX$300/person (~US$28) including drinks and tips, and we definitely recommend visiting this charming restaurant if you are ever in Mexico City. We definitely will be returning to try some of the venison dishes and other Yucatan specialties.
Lucito
El Habanero, Louisiana #24, Corner Montana, Col. Nápoles, C.P. 03810, México, D.F., Tel: 5523 2624
I spent some time this afternoon reviewing what needs to be done for the first version of the recipe software. For testing purposes the primary release will be a simple recipe viewer with basic features. We will try releasing it in 4 languages to start with (English, French, Spanish, and German). Those are the languages we speak internally in the business so this will simplify things. If there is demand for it we will release other localized versions, and maybe even a feature to let users add other languages as they please.
I plan to have the first beta software release ready for public testing in about 2 to 3 weeks. In the meantime we will need to recruit a few dozen people who are interested in working with us on this beta test. We will open a beta forum for user feedback and will try to find some interesting way of rewarding the beta tester’s efforts. I’ll have more about this in the coming weeks.
If some of you are interested in beta testing the software please send us a short note at beta@igourmand.com letting us know you interest and why you would like to be included in this beta cycle. Until then have fun in the kitchen.
Lucito