Some of you must be wondering why posting has been light and the promised site updates still are not up. The story is a long one, but I will keep it short. If you have been a regular reader since the start, you remember that when we launched the site it was down most of the time due to the fact that when we moved to the new condo we had frequent power failures that were keeping the server silent for days at a time. After a month or two the situation stabilized and we managed a long uninterrupted period of power. About 3 weeks ago the regular blackouts started again and we have been experiencing blackouts almost daily. On Friday we had a long conversation with the utility company, and the jest of it is that there is a huge amount of new construction in our neighborhood, and the construction companies overload the grid by illegally connecting to it and thus bring it down on a regular basis. They are doing their best to prevent this and to fine the people, but it is difficult to prove and they do the same thing again the next day. Hopefully things will improve in the coming weeks. We also plan to upgrade out server as it is starting to show the wear of all of those power peaks followed by abrupt failures. We are also looking getting a huge UPS for it and the router so that we can keep running while the power is down. We are also looking at the possibility of purchasing a cheap generator so we have stable power.
Another thing that kept us from publishing was that some unexpected urgent work showed up, and the delivery was made difficult due to the lack of power. At least we finally delivered and we will be able to resume regular postings by tomorrow and also we will be able to finish the site upgrades we were promising last week. Until then have fun in the kitchen.
Lucito
I came across an interesting little kitchen gadgets today while reviewing some RSS feed and it seems to be a great thing when you have to prepare some food that need to be tied with kitchen twine. It is called the Food Loop and it is simply a silicone tie rap that is heat resistant up to 675F and it would be very useful when you are trying to tie a roast and you are running out of hands. I have no idea if it works properly and even of the price as they seem to only list stores where it is available, but it would be a very valuable aid in the kitchen if it works as advertised. Since I do not endorse the product and actually never have tried it, the only thing that I can say is buyer beware. If they are affordable and work well I would not mind having a dozen or so in my gadget drawer.
Lucito
Today I was going through hundreds of photos to select some that I will use for the redesign of the blog. I came across some pictures of dishes I cooked or cooked by great chefs I know. They all brought back some fond memories and I would like to share a few with you today.
Here is some Sweet and Sour Pork Cheng Tu Style from a Chinese meal I did for a Christmas party for Normita’s office a few year’s back.
Orange Beef from the same meal.
Shrimps in Black Bean Sauce .
Chicken Stuffed in Cucumbers.
And finally the entire table with the light meal…
The marvelous sweetbreads prepared by Chef Olivier of Cheval de Jade, our favorite restaurant in Mont-Tremblant. I proposed to Normita there a crazy summer on her birthday!
What Normita had the same night at Cheval de Jade, Salmon in Potato Crust.
My famous Oriental Scallop and Leek Soup that always makes a stunning start to a meal.
A Sweet Onions and Port Pie with a topping of goat cheese that I invented for our wedding anniversary a few years back.
A nice array of Sushi that our Japanese Chef friend Koishi prepared for us and delivered home in the woods, back in the days we were living at the edge of a wonderful lake in Québec.
Fried Shitakes at Soto the japanese restaurant where Koishi worked at the time.
A nice Japanese Fish Salad that I prepared as part of a nice homemade sushi meal.
A nice invention of mine for Valentine day somes years ago. Duck Breast Glazed in Honey with a Mango and Strawberry couli.
Memories from our honeymoon in Ixtapa. We went fishing one day and I caught a nice Dorado. We stopped at Isla de Ixtapa on the way back and they prepared it grilled on wook fire. A wonderful Dorado a las Brazas.
One of my all-time favorite creations, Grilled Bavette de Boeuf with Port Sauce with Salardaise Potatoes. The Padrino was known to fly to Canada, back in the days we lived there, just to have his fix of it. That and incredible quantities of fermented beverages.
A nice creation of mine from years ago, Thai Style Fish in Rice Paper. I found a full pictorial on how to prepare it that I will post one of these days.
I hope that you enjoyed the little pictorial history, and now I am starving from looking at the pictures, so I will go to the kitchen and prepare something tasty to eat…
Lucito
We are just emerging from a 2 week long programming binge to get one new product version out of the door, and I finally delivered late this afternoon. I then decided to review what the plans are for the coming months. We have to prepare and launch another new line of products in the next few months, but before we start we might have a semi-quiet week or so before we sit down with clients to do final interviews about business processes and start analysis so I will try to exploit that short period as best I can.
Tomorrow I need to catch up on office things that have been left untouched over the last few weeks and try to take it easy a bit as I worked through the last few weekends without rest. We have some meetings scheduled for Thursday morning, but after that I plan to update the looks of the site, redo a few little things on the blog, post the Padrino’s short bio that he finally it delivered this morning, and do some analysis before forging ahead with a preliminary version of the basic free cooking software package. We will definitely take the weekend off as I need rest, and it will be nice to spend some time with Normita as she had to work a lot too on weekends over the last month.
If all goes well, and I do not get swamped unexpectedly with works, you should expect a beta version of the basic cooking and recipe software to be available for download in about 2 weeks. Once well tested and stable we will slowly start adding features to the product on a regular schedule. We have yet to decide on which environment we will develop the product, as I would like to create a multiplatform tool that can run on Windows, Linux, and MacOS, but we will need to see first how we will structure it and how much already written code we can leverage. I will have more on that when I finish the analysis on Thursday. Until then have some fun in the kitchen…
Lucito
Sorry for the lack of postings in the last few days, but works has been hectic combined with major power problems in the neighborhood bringing down the server on a regular basis. We blew up more equipment with the power surges and this is not making work any easier. I hope that the electricity company manages to fix their problems as we have had power failures daily for the last few weeks. Hopefully on my side I will manage to catch up with work on Wednesday so that we can start posting on our regular schedule.
Tonight’s recipe is a creation that I did for Valentine’s Day. Normita wanted to have a cheese fondue, and we could not find a fondue dish in time. Of course a week and a half later there was one on promotion at the local supermarket so we will have our fondue one of these days when we are in the mood again. These cannelloni are easiest to make with the type or pasta that does not require pre-cooking. If you prefer you can use the regular pasta and pre-cook it.
Ingredients
4 green onions, finely chopped
1/4 pound brown button mushrooms, sliced
1/4 pound portobellini mushrooms, sliced
3 tbs butter
3 tbs flour
1 1/2 cup white wine
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 parmesan, grated
1/2 cup cottage cheese
1/4 cup mozzarella, shredded
1/2 cup gruyere, shredded
3 1/2 ounces prosciutto, finely chopped
1/3 pound sliced emmental
1 large egg
1 tsp herbes de Provence
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp white pepper
1/3 tsp nutmeg
8 cannelloni
Preparation
1. In a heavy pan sauté the green onions and the mushrooms in the butter until the mushrooms are nice and soft. Reserve 2 tbs of the mushrooms.
2. Lower the heat and add the flour and cooked until it slightly starts taking a bit of color.
3. Slowly add the white wine and stir until very thick then add the cream.
4. Season with half the salt, pepper, and nutmeg.
4. Once the sauce is nice and smooth add half the gruyere and parmesan and stir until nicely melted into the sauce. Keep warm while preparing the rest of the recipe.
5. In a bowl mix the remaining parmesan and gruyere, the ricotta and mozzarella, the egg, the remaining salt pepper and nutmeg, the herbes de Provence, and the prosciutto.
6. Fill the cannelloni shells with the mixture.
7. Place a bit of the sauce at the bottom of an ovenproof dish and place the cannelloni on top of the sauce.
8. Poor the remaining sauce on the cannelloni and top with the sliced emmental.
9. Bake in a preheated 400F oven for 20 to 25 minutes until the sauce is bubbly and the cheese is melted and golden.
For those of you who tried to access the blog for most of today and could not, the reason was that a large chunk of Mexico City was without power, including our neighborhood. This meant that our office’s server was down, taking down the blog with it and that I lost a full day of work. Now I’ll have to work most of the night to meet pressing deadlines. I did not even have time to have lunch yet so I’ll take a short run to the kitchen and make something quick before getting back to work.
Lucito
A few days ago I posted a comment I had made on another blog about cooking for two and how to deal with leftovers. My advices was mainly to know your appetite, cook the required amount, and if you need to cook more plan what you will do with your leftovers ahead of time. This stuck to the back of my mind and I thought about how we normally handle this here as there is only the two of us. Our goldfishes and the colibris we feed outside do not count…
Here in Mexico the main meal of the day is what we would call lunch in Canada or the US and it is taken at 2-3pm instead of noon. The evening meal, which all of my life was the main meal, is either very light or just some fruits or a sweet bread. I have a tendency to skip it entirely unless I have a sudden craving for something or other. In a way I prefer this style of eating, as you never go to bed with a full stomach and lay there wondering why you cannot sleep because you ate so much. It still feel strange for me to go out to a nice restaurant in the middle of the afternoon, so we normally go out to restaurants in the early evening when we do so. If I go out on a business lunch, I can normally count that the business day will be over at the restaurant. Most serious business is done over a meal, so it gives you a good change to develop solid business relationships and eventually long-lasting friendships.
I am going through this long-winded story to explain the simple fact that during the week I mostly prepare lunches for Normita in the morning and will eat an easy-to-prepare meal in the afternoon as I do not have the time to do anything more involved. I always do single portion dishes so we normally do not have leftovers. When I do have leftovers, normally I use them the next day. On Fridays and weekends things are different as Normita normally finishes work early on Fridays and she joins me for lunch, and we normally plan something more involved on Saturday and Sundays. Friday’s lunch I plan a meal for two and I make sure that I do not have leftovers, so I cook accordingly. The weekend’s meals are a bit different, when we have company I deliberately make more than required, as I never like running short of food for the guests. I tend to use the leftovers the next day or freeze them if we cannot use them all. When we are alone, depending on the dishes we planned, I either will cook just enough, or plan the lunches for the beginning of the week around the leftovers.
Some dishes are much better in larger quantities like stews, soups, roasts, and things like that. I always do a larger portion and deal with leftovers according to their volumes. We used to freeze leftover soups, but now we shy away from doing that as we do not have much room in the freezer and also we ended up with unidentified blocks of ice with bit and pieces in them, and some months later we ended up throwing them away. Now I prefer using them right away and preparing lunches for neighbors and acquaintances.
Lucito
We are starting a new month and it seems that yesterday we were preparing for the end of the year and now we are already in March. Here in Mexico City the trees are already starting to bloom and soon the hot season will be upon us. Our real summer weather is normally from late March to the end of May as after that the rain season starts. In honor of the upcoming summer here are some pictures we took a few years back at the ‘Mercado de Jamaica’ a large world-renowned flower and fruit market just south of the historic center of the city, near where we used to live. It is a wonderful place to visit if you come to town as it had a huge variety of flowers for sale as well as a wide choice of fruits and vegetables. During the holiday seasons it gets very crowded as the entire city passed there to get seasonal offerings. It is a colorful mixture that is typically Mexican.
Lucito
Some weeks ago the Padrino asked me about what cuts of meat would be best to make arrachera in his native Austria, and also how to marinate it. The thought never had broached my mind as we normally just go to the supermarket or the butcher and pick up some arrachera already marinated. For those of you not in the know, arrachera is a very tender and juicy Mexican specialty cut of meat that is normally served grilled. Arrachera meat is a muscle between the thorax and the abdominal cavity that includes the diaphragm. In other markets this cut of beef is called Boneless Beef Plate Skirt Steak. It is also known as fajita meat, inside skirt steak, outside skirt steak, hanger steak, and Philadelphia steak. My favorite cut the French ‘bavette’ is also considered skirt or flap meat, as well as the flank. All of those cuts can be substituted to make nice arrachera. The meat is cut in thin strips, flattened, and marinated. Some form of meat tenderizer is used and I tend to shy away from anything with MSG and try to use vegetal-based tenderizers mostly made from papaya extracts. The strips of meat can be used in a variety of ways from being grilled as steaks to sautéed in small bite-sized pieces and used in tacos.
Ingredients
1 pound arrachera meat cut in strips
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 tbs Porto, Sweet Sherry, or red wine
1 lime, juiced
1 tbs vegetal meat tenderizer, or according to instructions on package
1 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp ground black pepper
Preparation
1. Put the marinade ingredients in a large zipper bag
2. Place the meat in it, expel the air, and zip the bag
3. Mix the meat in the bag until well covered by marinade
4. Place in refrigerator for 2 days
5. Prepare in your favorite arrachera recipe
Lucito
I’ve been trying to post the following on another blog and ran into troubles with their posting system. I’ll try again later when the phase of the moon might be better, and in the meantime I decided to post it here and expand a bit on the subject. I will come back to it in the future as it is an interesting subject that I have to deal with regularly.
Over the years I have found that the easiest way to handle cooking for two is to cook only what you need for the meal you are preparing. We always have a tendency to cook too much for fear of running out, but careful planning of portions can be done with most recipes. To do this successfully you need to know your level of appetite and roughly how much a recipe will yield. This can get tricky when you are very hungry, but after a while you can manage to gauge your appetite against your favorite recipes.
At times it is difficult to cook in smaller quantities, as some recipes cannot easily scale down, so then you should plan what you will do with the leftovers carefully ahead of time. Our normal routine in the kitchen here is to prepare larger meals on weekends when we have more time to enjoy them, and use the leftovers for our main meals during the first few days of the week. I always prepare my wife’s lunches, and normally for Monday’s lunch I use leftovers from Saturday, and Tuesday’s are the ones from Sunday. Whatever cannot be eaten within a day or two we freeze or give away.
As an example yesterday we invited my in-laws over for lunch, and I had prepared some Szechuan hot and sour soup and some chicken Cheng Tu style with some steamed rice. I had deliberately made more to use this week. After the meal, when they were gone, I put some rice in the bottom of plastic containers with the chicken dish on top. I also prepared some containers with portions of soup. There were still some leftovers so I froze some single portions for later use next week, and heated up a meal for a neighbor at lunch time today.
To recap:
1. Know how to gauge your appetite
2. Learn how to reduce the portions of your recipes to yield less or no leftovers
3. If it is impossible to reduce the portions, then plan ahead to use the leftovers in the coming days
4. Whatever cannot be used in a few day, freeze or give away
5. Make sure that you use your frozen leftovers as it is not worth the energy to freeze them if they will not be eaten in the coming weeks
6. Get a huge dog that can become your ALDU (Automated Leftover Disposal Unit)
One of the things that is the most annoying when cooking is converting the recipes to the quantity of food you want to prepare. We are building our recipe viewer to handle this chore automatically, but since we have not decided when we will release it this does not help much right now. We are in the middle of finalizing a major new release of our business management and point of sales systems, and this is consuming all of our cycles right now. Hopefully in the coming weeks we will be able to assign some cycles to this project and announce a firm launch date. I will keep you posted.
Lucito