Daily Express
Posts about what we prepare and eat for our main meal daily
Early this morning I was going through the freezer to see what I could cook later today. I came across a piece of thick bacon and had a sudden craving for some carbonara. I looked around the refrigerator and could not find any Pecorino Romano or Parmesan to make it so I started looking some more and found some fresh asparagus, mushrooms, and grated mozzarella so I thought that I could prepare some pasta dish inspired by a proper “Pasta alla Carbonara”. When I go prepare our meal around 3pm I will see how I get inspired in preparing it. I have been oscillating all day between a lighter style dish with just a bit of olive oil to make the sauce in the more traditional way to something heavier with lots of cheese and cream in a more Americanized version. Since it is around 30C (86F) in my office right now I will probably go with something lighter with the veggies added. I will report on it later with what I actually will prepare and some pictures.
Lucito
Like I mentioned earlier today, we have had those yummy meatballs that Normita made yesterday, again today. They were even better today as the sauce was much thicker and tasty. Like many types of dishes, this gets better with a day or two of age. Here is a quick picture I took…
The nice meatballs and Mexican rice we had today
The only problem I have is now I have to start thinking about what we will eat tomorrow. It never stops and I am sure I will think of something in time especially when the hunger starts in the evening.
Lucito
We have had a very busy last few days and I did not get a chance to post anything anywhere yesterday. The Daily Express for both yesterday and today is “Albondigas”, Mexican Style Meatballs. Every few weeks Normita prepares them as it is a very quick and easy meal to prepare and it last 2 days, which is great when we are very busy and do not have much time to spend in the kitchen. The meatballs can be prepared fresh with the ground meat of your choice. When Normita prepares them from scratch she does it the traditional way with some cooked rice and eggs in the meatballs. The next time she does some I will document the recipe.
When we find them at the supermarket, we buy some inert gas packed meatballs that tend to be very nice and tasty and we freeze them. This way, on days we do not really have much time to cook, we can have a nice meal with little effort. Normita cooks the meatballs in a thick sauce of fresh tomatoes, garlic, onions, celery, carrots and chipotle. We normally eat them with a side dish of Mexican style rice, like we did yesterday and we will do again today with the leftovers.
It makes for a nice and quick meal that is both tasty and easy to prepare.
Lucito
I finally managed to cook those pieces of suadero on the barbecue earlier today. My aim was to have something nice and very tender to eat, but it did not turn out as planned. The meat became very though and chewy from the dry cooking, even though it had marinated for 2 days. The main reason is that the meat has a membrane that just tenses up and that was too thick to crisp well. Also the texture of the meat once cooked was not as expected. It looked like something like arrachera, bavette, or flank which has long fibers, but it really does not. I should have inspected it better before marinating it, but since I was too tired at the time it is my lost.
The taste was fantastic as the cut of meat is very tasty and with the added flavoring of the marinate it tasted very good. The meal looked great, and the side dishes were perfect for it. If it was not for the chewiness of the meat it would have been a great meal. Here is a look at the plated dish.
The plated poor man arrachera
Looking back at it I should have slow cooked it over moist eat or cooked it until it was very crisp. The stringy texture would probably go either way. I will see what I can do if I buy some again. I was tempted by the cheap price, and I got what I paid for. A big contrast with the nice pork we bought cheaply at the same place as it turned out great.
Since my motto is to learn something new each day, then I will not go to bed stupid tonight as I learned how not too cook suadero! Like in science there are no bad experiments in cooking, just some that yield unexpected results. No I have to go take something for the heartburn…
Lucito
Today we will have some nice looking meat we bought yesterday morning and that has been marinating in the refrigerator since yesterday afternoon. I was looking for something tasty and cheap as I had a craving for arrachera, but they only had marinated stuff at a fairly high price for the area. Without knowing if their marinade was any good I did not want to take a chance. I found a package of something called “suadero” that looked somewhat similar to arrachera meat, but thinner and lighter in color. The meat looked very tasty and to close the deal it was very cheap.
I decided to marinate it overnight in a marinade I have been using for over 25 years. I think I saw something similar in Gourmet magazine back in those days, and it was used to marinate butterflied legs of lamb. This is one of my all time favorite recipe and I will post it in its entirety whenever I have a special occasion to thaw that nice leg of lamb I have in the freezer. I wanted to do it last weekend, but the people we wanted to invite could not make it. It’s our lost and their lost if they miss the occasion we finely prepare it.
Going back the the meat, I researched on the internet and there are not real consensus on what really suadero is in Mexican cuisine. It is described as a thin juicy cut of meat from the breast of the cow, and depending of what you read it can also be from everywhere else including pigs. I need to ask the butcher next time where is suadero came from. The texture is somewhat similar to arrachera but thinner, and to me it looks like the thin muscle covering over the cow’s ribs as there are similar thin muscles on both pork and lamb ribs. I will stick to that definition until I am proven wrong…
The way I marinated it is very very tasty and it normally tenderizes the meat to the consistency of butter. Let’s see if it works as planned on that meat… You start with some onions, jalapeños, fresh ginger, and garlic cloves.
The basic ingredients of the marinade (onions, ginger, garlic, jalapeños)
You roughly chop those and place them in a blender and add some olive oil, sesame oil, soy sauce, honey, salt and pepper. You liquefy the whole mess and marinate the meat overnight or better yet a few days in the refrigerator.
the first piece of suadero in the marinade waiting to be covered by the second one
Both pieces of suadero marinating and getting more tender by the second (we hope)
Later this afternoon, about an hour before we are ready to eat, I will take the meat out of the refrigerator. I will grill the meat on the gas barbecue and baste it slowly will all the marinade. I will also prepare some oven roasted baby potatoes with herbs and olive oil, and grilled some marinated fresh asparagus that for some strange reason have been on sale for about 4 times less than the normal price at the local Walmart. I guess that I am the only one in the area that buys them and they dropped the price dramatically. Their loss and my gain…
I will take some pictures when we actually prepare the meal, and I will post the results later today or tomorrow… Wish us luck…
BTW, the banana bread from yesterday we had for breakfast this morning turned out to be heavenly!!!
Lucito
We went food shopping this morning and the supermarket was full and the people there behaved like animals. Actually that is insulting animals as most behave better than that. We absorbed so much bad energy that we returned home dead tired. I was planning to prepare something nice for this afternoon’s meal, but we returned so late and tired that we decided to eat the leftover pork curry from yesterday with the leftover chicken soup from Friday. This way we will clean the refrigerator and get rid of and clean all of the pots stored there.
I spent some time in the kitchen anyway as I prepare some nice banana bread for breakfast tomorrow and marinated something for tomorrow meal. I will see if I have the energy to post my banana bread recipe later tonight while Normita attends a webinar, and I will adjourn to the kitchen now to reheat the soup and the curry. Until later…
Lucito
I did not post the pictures yesterday because I could not get the digital camera to connect to the graphics computer last night and I was too lazy to even simply reboot the system to see if it would help, let alone actually diagnose the problem. Everything is fine today so I assume that it was just a transient glitch, though the camera is starting to show its age and is starting to act strange at time.
Yesterday’s curry turned out even better than I had thought and the meat was extremely tender and juicy. I had asked Normita how she wanted the curry and she had requested on the medium side, and it turned out that I aimed for that, but ended up more on the medium-hot side. Actually before I knew Normita, and then moved to Mexico I probably would have said it was extremely hot and probably inedible to me at the time, but now my taste has changed and I got accustomed to eat chiles and it was perfect for my taste and Normita devoured her plate so I guess it was good for her too.
I started with part of that nice piece of pork thigh we bought last week. Before freezing it I had cut it in 3 and froze each piece individually. Here is one of those pieces.
A nice juicy piece of pork thigh
I cut it in small cubes so it can cook a tad quicker as it was getting late and then I floured the pieces in a mixture of flour, garlic salt, onion powder, cumin and curcuma.
Cubed pork thigh
Floured pork cubes
I then quickly chopped a piece of leftover onion, some garlic cloves, and ginger. I sauteed the onion in plenty of olive oil and then added the garlic and ginger. Once the onions had taken a bit of color I added the floured pork cubes and browned them.
Some onion, ginger, and garlic
The pork cubes browning with the onions, garlic, and ginger
Once the pork was well browned I added a few cups of beef stock, so salt, pepper, cumin, curcuma, lots of curry powder, and some chili paste. I stirred everything together and let it simmer for about 30 minutes while I prepared some simple steamed rice.
Simmering pork curry
I very simply plated the dish with some rice at the bottom and a nice portion of curry on top. It was simply heavenly!
Plated pork curry on steamed rice
Lucito
Today we spent the day working in the office. Normita is doing updates to a website for a client, and I am building an update business plan for our food/wine course business. The day is somewhat dull outside and now it is raining a bit. I decided to spice things up by making some nice pork curry with one of the pieces of pork thigh we bought last weekend. It is still thawing slowly and I am not sure exactly how I will prepare it. I will let the gods of cooking inspire me when I enter the kitchen.
To keep things easy I will prepare a simple steamed rice to serve with the curry. As usual I will try to post some pictures later.
Lucito
We just finished eating a short time ago and the meal was both very satisfying and very tasty. Normita’s chicken soup had its normal effect of settling our stomachs and relaxing us. Something very needed this week. It is so effective it should be sold in every pharmacy…
Normita's World Famous Chicken Soup - A cure for all ailments
The tacos and accompanying sauce were also very satisfying and we both left the table well fed and in a better mood. What more do you want from a good meal? Now it’s back to work and we both hope to be very productive tonight!
The corn tortillas pre-heating on the comal
Normita preparing the chicken tacos
The tacos cooking on the comal
The plated tacos, one with a bit of homemade salsa and heavy cream inside
Lucito
Today Normita will be doing the cooking duties. I feel a bit off-the-weather and I had a craving for her incredible super-duper chicken soup. It is a simple soup to make and soups are really her specialty. I call her “Normita la Sopera” (Normita the soup maker) all the time…
The recipe for this great soup was published HERE years ago. Have a look at it if you want a great tasting soup that is easy to prepare. We thawed two nice and large chicken thighs an drumsticks and she will use that for the soup with plenty of noodles.
For the main course she will shred the meat and then make some “taquitos dorados de pollo” (golden chicken tacos) with it. Normally those tacos are made with soft corn tortillas rolled with the chicken inside and then deep fried. We prefer cooking them without fat directly on a “comal” the traditional griddle used in all kind of Mexican cooking. Our stove even has one built-in that covers the middle 2 burners of the 6 burner stove top. You simply roll some shredded chicken meat in the soft tortillas and then place them on the very hot “comal” and turn them until they are evenly golden and crisp. She will serve the tacos with some homemade salsa and them with some heavy cream.
I’m starting to salivate just writing about this… I guess that the strange noises I am hearing right now are from my stomach that is growling from hunger… I’m really looking forward to the meal…
Lucito