Chuzos y Salsa

Latin American Street Food

We have developed quite a few holiday traditions -- including Christmas lasagna. The friends with whom we have enjoyed vegetarian lasagnas the past few years have moved away, so I asked Pamela whether she might want to make a lasagna -- something she is good at and enjoys when she has a day free to do it. She had already been thinking of doing that when our son and daughter-in-law visit just after the holidays -- a splendid idea for a dish that feeds far more than the two of us.

So I went into full Nueva Receta mode, and started browsing through our cookbook shelves. I stopped at Latin American Street Food by Sandra A. Gutierrez, remembering that the last time I looked at it, I decided that the dishes that looked most appealing also looked too complicated for that day, so I had reshelved it. 

The geography lessons keep coming: all workers should be respected, in part because no job is as easy as it seems from a distance. This is particularly true of a lot of work involving food, and especially in the informal sector. We think of street food as easy because it is made to be easy for the customer; it should not be surprising that this often means it is a bit complicated for those who make and serve it.

But this was to be for our main Christmas meal -- in a house with no kids -- so there would be time for something good from this volume. Because we had recently purchased some local stew beef, I quickly settled on the recipe for Chuzos de Carne -- beef kabobs in beer marinade. This recipe from Colombia called for soaking a pound (or so) of beef cubes overnight in a mixture of one cup (or so) of dark beer, mixed with the following:

• a quartered lemon
• 1/3 cup olive oil
• 1 small white onion, roughly chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
• 2 bay leaves
• 1-2 tsp cumin
• 1/2 tsp thyme
• salt and ground black pepper

Because I was preparing this at night and would be cooking it at the other house, I sealed all of this tightly in a large mason jar. A non-reactive bowl would have worked as well.

Gutierrez recommend serving this with a Colombian hot sauce, but she also mentions that she sometimes makes this in a much larger batch and serves it with several different sauces; she says any sauce in the book would do, so I thumbed through the volume until I found a Peruvian Spice Onion Salsa, which she also calls Salsa Criolla. 

For this I thinly sliced a red (aka purple) onion very thinly on the bias (Pamela looked that up for me -- it just means at an angle) and covered it with cold water. After 20 minutes, I drained it an mixed it with:

• 1 small pepper (see below)
• juice of one lime
• 1 splash of red wine vinegar 
• salt and ground black pepper
• 1 glug of olive oil

As you can see, I don't consider such niceties as teaspoons and tablespoons important in the making of salsa. For those who care, Gutierrez did mention a tsp of the vinegar and 2T of the oil. I let all of these ingredients meld for a couple of hours and added a handful of freshly chopped cilantro just before serving.

As for the pepper, the author first learned about this salsa from fish carts in Lima, so it calls for a Peruvian pepper known as aji amarillo. I correctly guessed that even our big local grocery would not have this, so I looked up possible substitutions. On the heat-flavor-availability trade-off matrix, I decided habañero -- used judiciously -- was my best bet. I had to buy a whole little tray of them and a little goes a long way, so I'll be using it in other things as much as I can! 

To put this meal together, I began by draining the beef in a colander and discarding the rest of the marinade. I did not pat the beef dry. I had intended to cook this on skewers -- as the name kabob implies -- but the weather was frightful, so I availed of the other alternative Gutierrez provides: stir-frying over medium-high heat in an indispensable cast-iron skillet. This added to the wonderful aromas that were already filling the house from the preparation of the salsa and the mere opening of the jar of marinade. 

I served this with the Mendoza Malbec Agua de Piedra (among my very favorite Malbecs), some oven-roasted potatoes, and mushrooms I had prepared in a reduction of port. We topped the beef generously with the salsa. 

The result was a fabulous mixture of flavors and textures -- worthy of a feast day for two. A friend who saw this photo online joked that he could smell it from miles away, and I think this was barely hyperbole. Walking into the house hours after the meal, the aromas were still satisfying.

Lagniappe 

We have been reading a bit about the concept of recipe jump buttons, which some cooking bloggers are providing and some recipe seekers are demanding. Those will not be appearing here for a few reasons.

The most important of these is that we consider food a vehicle of culture -- along with language, religion, and music. Abstracted too extremely, the "how" of cooking misses the point of the "why" and we are big fans of both.

Also important is that we are writing about cooking in part to encourage those who are not yet confident cooks to take some chances with something more challenging. We also sometimes alert experienced cooks to possible pitfalls in the original recipe we are using. Finally, we often innovate -- especially if we are do not have a particular ingredient on hand. Providing the whole story of a meal gives readers a chance to consider alternatives we have mentioned, or to understand the meal better so that they can make adjustments of their own. 

In the case of these recipes, I can confess that I did my own visual jump to the ingredients list and then to the instructions -- always do this at least a day ahead of time if possible. I then took the time to read the stories of the chuzo and the salsa while they were melding and marinating -- I highly recommend the book just for these stories!

We also were thinking of this in terms of a recent homage to Fannie Farmer, a Bostonian and fellow Unitarian. She is famous for introducing standard measurements that democratized home cooking and certainly has made this entire Nueva Receta project possible. At the same time, we wonder, did she make cooking seem like something a bit too, well, cookbook?

And finally, speaking of stories, we think there are some good ones around our first and second uses of Street Food. They are Calle to Mesa (2014) and Quesadillas de Rajas (2017).

Vieja Black Bean Quesadilla Receta

I mentioned these quesadillas in two recent blog posts -- first when I posted about shrimp I made instead of these and next when I posted about the wine I prepared to serve with them. In the process, I realized that because we have been making this since before we started the blog, we never got around to post it. So herewith, a Vieja Receta we enjoy several times a year. (The recipe is old, not the beans or the quesadilla!)

The recipe came from a booklet -- long ago discarded except for this page -- of recipes from a honey company.

To prepare these, I heat a can of black beans in our indispensable cast-iron skillet. The original recipe calls for rinsing and draining the beans; I prefer to cook them a bit longer and reduce the liquid that way. We add a cup or so of commercial salsa, though home-made would be even better. I add a dollop of honey and mix thoroughly. Because salsa adds water, it is important to cook long enough for some reduction.

While it is cooking, I shred cheese -- usually a mix of cheddar for bite and Monterey jack for smoothness; queso fresco would also be terrific. I either put the cheese on one half of each large tortilla or covering a small tortilla. Recent supply-chain issues pushed me to the latter this time. 

I then forget to include the called-for jalapeños and cilantro, because I have not looked at recipe in a long time. I heat the indispensable cast-iron griddle (on the other side of the stove) and put a bit of oil on it. I then spoon the bean mixture onto the cheese and either fold over the tortilla or place a second tortilla on top, as appropriate. I carefully place each quesadilla onto the griddle when it has reached medium-high heat. I almost immediately reduce the heat and when one side is done, very carefully turn each quesadilla.

Getting the heat right takes some practice. The idea is to gently brown the tortilla without burning it, while giving the cheese enough time over heat to melt thoroughly. 

The result is Casa Hayes-Boh comfort food. I can prepare this in about the time it took to write these few paragraphs. This simple, vegetarian dish is always enjoyable and went very well with the Glüwein we had for our solstice dinner.

Sad Irony

Although I always picture the honeybee from the cover of the original booklet when I make this recipe, I forgot the honey this time -- remembering it only after eating a couple bites. It was still delicious, but differently so.

Glücklich Glüwein

For the solstice earlier this week, Pamela found a recipe we could prepare without returning to the grocery store -- we had not thought about it before my most recent foraging. I was especially grateful because I was still a bit annoyed by the abrupt transformation of our closest store from full service to garish self-serve, just in time for the holidays. I am not exactly boycotting, but I was certainly not ready to head back. 

As we often do on cardinal and cross-quarter days, she opened our Wicca Cookbook. Main-course recipes mainly involved lamb, which we tend to avoid. A beverage option was appealing both for its simplicity and the expected level of coziness: Glüwein.

I poured a bottle of delicious Carmenere into a large pot and since the recipe called for more than twice this amount, I did some quick kitchen math to arrive at this list of amendments:

• 4 cinnamon sticks
• 6 whole cloves
• some lemon juice
• some orange juice
• some orange peel

I slowly raised this mixture to a boil and let it gently simmer -- covered -- while I made quesadillas. Since this was to be quick dinner and the Glüwein was supposed to simmer for an hour, I just slowed down the dinner prep and compromised at about 45 minutes. The recipe does not specify this, but I poured the mulled wine through a strainer into a bowl before transferring it to a serving pitcher. Not very rustic, but elegant and still very hygge. 

It may be tempting to use a cheap wine since other flavors are being added, but it was definitely worthwhile to use a wine that was very good -- and full-bodied -- on its own as the base for this concoction. The Carmenere is from the Colqui Valley of Chile and is very comparable to the Malbecs we more often drink. 

As cozy as the wine itself was the presentation. A habit we have had for 35 years has been particularly valuable throughout these unprecedented times of forced togetherness: we set the table for each meal, with cloth napkins and the like -- even a candle or oil lamp at dinner. Our pitcher and mugs were perfect for this -- and I did not think of their sun motif until we were seated. 

Lagniappe

Those quesadillas are a household favorite that had not yet appeared on this blog. I will be adding the very simple recipe shortly.

Pre-Fried Shrimp

 Let's not think of this as a calendar malfunction, but rather as a public service. 

Followers of this blog (and we think there are some) will know that we are suckers for "National Day" entries as an excuse to try new things. We usually find these because Pamela remembers to check -- again, regular readers will know that this is often a "day of" realization, and that we sometimes impress ourselves with the alacrity of our mid-day pivots.

So today was not entirely unusual -- early in the day I heard that today was National Fried Shrimp Day. I mentioned this to Pam and we decided we should mark the day. We already had plans for black bean quesadillas (I'm realizing that this Hayes-Boh standard is not yet on this blog) and I also have never fried shrimp before. So when Pam sent me a couple of recipe links, I decided right away that I would try the simpler of the two, and that I would make a small amount as an appetizer. I was in Fairhaven for the day, so I would be able to pick up some shrimp at Kyler's (the only place we buy seafood) on the way back to Bridgewater. 

And then I remembered that this is Monday. Because it is so busy on weekends, Kyler's closes its retail store on Mondays -- this has caught me flat-footed (or flat-finned) a couple of times in the past. I had already committed, so I set my coastal snobbery aside and made the shrimp purchase at our local grocer. I also picked up some peanut oil and some cocktail sauce.

I followed the simply titled recipe Fried Shrimp by Jonathan Reynolds on New York Times Cooking. Although the title is simple and the directions are both brief and very clear, I have to admit I was a little nervous about this -- and not just because of that one time a friend started a small kitchen fire while trying to fry shrimp. I was more afraid of a breading failure than of a conflagration.

I did make two kinds of modifications to the the instructions Reynolds provides. The first kind was kitchen math. Because I was using a half pound of shrimp instead of two pounds, I used a saucepan instead of a Dutch oven. This allowed me to us a small bottle of peanut oil.  Similarly, I reduced the egg/milk mixture to a single egg and half the milk. The second kind of mod was for flavor. As I often do with any kind of breading, I added Tabasco to the wet ingredients and Old Bay to the dry. Plenty of each.

Only when the shrimps were sitting in a bowl coated with panko (in lieu of cracker crumbs) did I venture to begin heating the oil. I applied medium-high heat and checked the temperature frequently. When it was close to 365F, I added the shrimps one by one.

As they simmered, I could see the breading going from skimpy to skimpier, and I realized I had no easy way to test for doneness. After a couple minutes, though, I skimmed a couple of them and realized the color was not yet uniform, so I let them go about a half minute more. I quickly removed them all to a paper towel, using a bagel skimmer. 

We let them cool long enough to open a bottle of coastal-grown dry Riesling from Westport Rivers. During this time, I nearly convinced myself that this was to be a one-off project. The results were not photo-worthy and this was clearly a dish that would be cheaper to buy than to make. But the proof of te pudding (or shrimp) is in the tasting. These were quite delicious -- and also filling. We decided that what we prepared as an appetizer would serve as our entire meal.

And being somewhat agog at the unit cost of high-temperature peanut oil, I sieved and bottled it for my next frying project. 

That Calendar Malfunction 

And now for the calendar PSA. In the midst of my cooking, Pamela checked the National Day Calendar and reported that it did not list today as shrimp day. We joked about having an unofficial celebration, as if there were anything official about the many other National Day celebrations we have had. After the fact, though, I noticed that tomorrow is indeed National French Fried Shrimp Day. If you are reading this in time, you can honor the day as you honor the solstice -- on December 21.

National Cookie Day - Brownie Cookies (with coffee!)

Saturday (December 4) was National Cookie Day according to the National Day Calendar. For me cookies are homemade (or go home!) so I took a gander at the subset of cookbooks we keep at our weekend house and found a seldom used coffee cookbook which I assumed would include a choice of dessert items. Indeed it did, and I selected Brownie Cookies mostly because the ingredient list included nothing I would need to run to the store for. Although I did notice that it called for instant coffee, as did most of the other recipes. We never have instant coffee on hand, but since the instructions said to dilute one T. of instant coffee granules in 2 T. hot water James and I determined that brewing a small amount of super strong coffee would bring the same result - an excellent use for our Melitta single-serve pour-over brewer.

As cookies often do, this recipe required two mixing bowls. I mixed the dry ingredients together, and then everything else except the eggs and chocolate chips in a separate bowl as instructed. However, I accidently then put the eggs into the dry, rather than wet bowl at which point it seemed that the better part of valor was to simply beat everything together. 

The cookies did have more of a consistency of chewy brownies than crunchy cookies. A bit on the sweet side. I usually cut the recommended sugar in a recipe by 1/3 to 1/2 which I neglected to do. It really is something I need to remember.

Measurements for flour are 2 1/2 c.

for cocoa powder 1/3 c.

for brown sugar 3/4 c.

for chocolate chips 1 1/2 c.

Bake at 325 for 9-11 minutes

6.28 or Two Pies

We were happy this Thanksgiving to get back to our usual tradition of having dinner with our friends Lisa, Rob, and their children. Last year's Thanksgiving "lite" was better than not getting together at all, but for us spending the day together cooking and laughing is just as important as the enjoying the meal. 

As is often my role in this annual celebration, I made dessert. I like lots of kinds of pies, but my favorite is key lime. However, I discovered from Atlas Obscura that in fact Sour Orange Pie predates  key lime as Florida's favorite. I don't think I'd ever heard of Sour Orange Pie before, and I don't know where I would even find sour oranges, but luckily the recipe explains that equal parts orange juice and lemon juice can be substituted for the sour orange juice. The pie is much like a key lime pie, with a citrusy-custard filling and load of whipped cream on top. 

This calls for a graham cracker crust "either pre-baked or store bought". I of course made my own crust. Luckily James found that our local grocery store actually sold graham cracker crumbs for just such an occasion. Whenever I've made a graham cracker crust in the past I've had to crush the crackers myself, and always wound up with rather inconsistent crumbing.

The pie was sweet and tart. It turned out that I liked it as much as I do a good key lime.

The very first pie I remember liking was a chocolate pie. I think I had only had store-bought fruit pies up to that point in my then-short life, and they were nasty. Pies of all sorts can make me happy now, as long as they are not store-bought (even bakery pies rarely thrill me). I like mine homemade. As an adult I have always enjoyed pecan pie (even though it is often cloyingly sweet). When I saw a recipe from the New York Times for Chocolate Pecan Pie it seemed like a perfect celebratory dessert that brought together two of my favorite types of pie.

This one has a flaky crust. Crust making always feels like a major project to me, but must needs and all. This recipe calls for putting the crust ingredients in a food processor, which I do not own. So, I did what I always do in this situation, I used my blender. The crust ultimately turned out flakier than any other I've made, so I may follow this process in the future. And my resolve not to purchase a food processor remains in tact.

Image: shamelessly lifted by James
from Texas Smokehouse

The filling calls for bittersweet chocolate "to give depth to what is traditionally an achingly sweet pie". James went to the store on Monday before Thanksgiving to buy the ingredients we needed, which included bittersweet chocolate. He called me from the grocery to ask if chips would be okay, to which I responded that if he could find bittersweet chocolate chips that would be great. When I was ready to make the pie on Wednesday I noticed that there was a bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips, and asked if he also bought bittersweet chocolate. No, he hadn't. Did it matter, he wanted to know. Of course it matters. We don't want our pie to be "achingly sweet" after all. Back to the store he went for the appropriately sweetened chocolate. The pie was very good not only because it wasn't too sweet, but the filling also included bourbon to give it a "grownup finish", plus more pecans than many recipes call for which gave it better texture as well as a better flavor.