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.

Honey Chicken

One lesson I have learned over my years of preparing new recipes is that it is not enough to simply ensure that I have all the ingredients (or reasonable facsimiles thereof) before starting; it is imperative to read the instructions as well. Woe has been begotten on more than one occasion when I discovered that I should have started preparing the food hours before I actually did. So I am pleased to report that I was successful in my preparation of this tasty recipe from the New York Times Cooking pages. A marinade of sherry, honey, line juice, crushed garlic, cinammon, salt, and pepper was easily mixed and poured over the whole, fresh, cut up chicken we'd recently procured from Maribett Farm. The chicken marinated in the refrigerator for about 8 hours and then was placed in the oven for 50 minutes at 350 degrees. As the recipe instructed I basted often and was pleased with the juicy, tender, savory, and sweet meal that resulted. I served this was mashed potatoes on the side and a Chardonnay to complement.

Apple Cake

 

Last spring the Bridgewaters' One Book One Community Read was Thanks A Thousand by A.J. Jacobs. This memoir recounts the author's attempts to thank everyone who brought him his daily cup of coffee beginning with the barista at his local coffee shop and ending with a trip to South America to thank the farmers. Ultimately he thanks about a thousand people, while realizing he didn't even get to everyone. 

As a children's selection along the same theme we found Dawn Casey's Apple Cake which features a young child thanking all the people, plants, and animals who provide the ingredients to make Apple Cake. A recipe is included in the book, so in honor of the start of fall I made it. I made my own almond flour by grinding almond slivers in the blender. The cake is dense and not too sweet although it has 3 cups of honey.

Salmon a la Pamela almondine

We recently discovered that our favorite fishmonger (Kyler's Catch) was indeed open. We should have known since the place has always been impeccably clean. They have done everything right in order to keep the retail side of their business going: masks for employees, sneeze guards, and chairs spaced six feet apart for waiting. It is also still impeccably clean. James donned his own mask and went over on Friday evening and brought back salmon and scallops. I was in charge of preparing the salmon on Friday, and he made dinner with the scallops on Saturday.

I poached the salmon in some leftover Malbec we had in the beach house refrigerator from the previous weekend. I also added some orange slices to pan. Meanwhile, I toasted some sliced almonds in some butter and honey. Once the salmon was cooked I divided it onto our plates and topped them with the almonds. Mashed potatoes made for a dandy side dish and a garnish of orange wedges completed the meal.

I had no recipe for this. I put it together with ingredients we already had. We both enjoyed the meal and will likely make it again, that is if we ever have leftover wine again. Once a bottle gets uncorked at our house it is unlikely to get re-corked. The only reason we had some in this case was because last Sunday we opened a second bottle. Fortunately, we also had a full bottle of the same wine to drink with the meal.

James wore this special nautical-themed face mask for his trip to the fish monger

Salmon and Blueberries

We took Friday off to turn the three-day holiday weekend into a four-day mini vacation at the beach house. Friday's dinner was a salmon recipe we found on the New York Times cooking page.  It wouldn't have occurred to me to put blueberries on salmon, but this was delicious. The blueberries were cooked in a sauce made with honey, shallots, white wine, and vinegar. The recipe called for white wine vinegar, but I happened to have blueberry vinegar from Lebherz Oil and Vinegar Emporium in my cupboard so I used that instead. We baked the fish a bit longer than the recipe calls for - after 10 minutes it still seemed way to undercooked, so we left it in the oven for a few minutes. This looked and tasted great with a lot of colors, textures, and flavors.

Although we cooked with white wine, it paired nicely with a Malbec. We will definitely have this again.

Dos Nuevas Recetas that we invented ourselves

It has been over six years since we started this blog. We usually find our recipes within our collection of cookbooks, although lately we have be finding more on the interwebs. Last week, however, we collaborated on a meal in which each of us created a new recipe, with one shared ingredient. Pam made a pasta-berry salad; James' innovation came in the way of a new steak rub.

I had found a thick, grass-fed sirloin that I wanted to use as a main course. I set it on a plate, and pierced it several times on each side with a fork. Regular readers will know that I frequently prepare a rub based on something I learned from our friends at Equal Exchange -- a mix of black pepper and ground coffee (fairly traded and organic, of course). In this case, I used home-roasted, hand-ground coffee from East Timor by way of our other friends at Deans Beans. Something I learned the first time I used this combination is that the amount of pepper and the amount of time resting with the rub should both be limited, so that the pepper does not begin to pre-cook the meat. In other words, it is possible to over-do this. But using about 1:4::pepper:coffee and resting for 20 minutes or so seems to work well.

Just before grilling -- on the Big Green Egg -- I added a couple of ingredients to the steaks. First, I sprinkled each side lightly with Tabasco and Worcestershire sauce. Then I pressed fresh blackberries into each side, using a fork to get them stuck a bit better. This was a bit messy. I then grilled at about 450. One problem with the coffee rub is that it masks the steak, so there are no visual clues to doneness. I should have used the Thermapen, but instead ended up putting it back on the grill once I had divided it. No harm done.

We had decided to use bow-tie pasta in some sort of side dish with the steak, and Pam remembered that we had previously made some mighty fine fruit-and-pasta dishes (see Pasta with Grapes and Strawberry Pasta). We had just made a trek to Trader Joe's and bought blueberries and blackberries, so we decided try inventing a new recipe. The cooked pasta (about 2 cups) was mixed with a handful of each of the berries, along with a sliced banana. Pam made a dressing by mixing about 6 of each berry, a tablespoon of honey, and a tablespoon of blueberry balsamic vinegar (from L.O.V.E. Oil and Vinegar Emporium), and 2 tablespoons of chopped mint leaves in a blender. The dressing was tossed with the berries and pasta. An eye-pleasing, as well as palate-pleasing dish, and it turned out to be a perfect complement to the steak rub...

Love will keep us together.
But blackberries tied this meal together.

Final verdict: this meal was just a bit different, delicious, and fun to make. And of course it paired well with Malbec.

Mint Chocolate Chip Glazed Popcorn

I love the color combination of light green and brown. Ever since I first saw a house painted with this fun mix I have always wanted to live in a "mint chocolate chip" house. A few years ago when we did a small renovation on our house and added a half bath and I was able to at least have it painted in my dream colors, but it wasn't the same as having a whole house with the hues I sought. This summer when we bought our beach house (aka "whaling house") James suggested that I could finally realize my dream. And so it came to fruition.

Last week I found this recipe when I Googled "healthy popcorn recipes" and I knew it would be the right thing to try at our whaling house. It takes a bit longer than standard salt and butter popcorn, but with about 20 minutes more time you can have a much superior snack. This wasn't too sweet even though it used both chocolate chips and honey and it has a wonderful melt-in-your-mouth quality. James immediately dubbed it the "official snack of whaling house".

Mulled Mead

To celebrate the first chill of autumn (and the fact that we'd been married 10,000 days!) James and I decided to try Mulled Mead using some of our own homemade Mead. We adapted this recipe we found online. 

We started by heating up the Mead in a saucepan, and then added two cinnamon sticks, a few whole cloves, a couple of whole peppercorns, a whole nutmeg (cut in half), a pinch of ground ginger, a dash of cardamom, and a splash of Triple Sec, we let the concoction boil, and then let it simmer for about 25 minutes. We removed the whole spices with a strainer and poured the Mead into two glasses along with a shot of Amaretto and a tablespoon of honey.

A great celebratory drink!

Sweet Savory Chicken

Each week, we look forward to the Boston Globe magazine, which features two or three recipes on a common theme. On January 12, the theme was honey! We have not yet tried the muffins or honey-nut butter, but Pam set the issue aside (during my long travels in the tropics) so that we could try the chicken-tomato-honey dish on a cold New England evening.

We happened to have ALL of the ingredients in our fridge, pantry, or freezer, including tomatoes and garlic from our 2013 farm box share.

I followed this recipe pretty much as written, using about half the chicken called for. We had skinless, boneless breasts, so I added a bit more oil than called for. When I do this again, I will try to use bone-in chicken for even richer flavor, but it turned out quite scrumptious as it was. The only change I would recommend would be to omit the salt; it was not at all necessary.

This was a winner, and will probably be even better for lunches tomorrow.

Have Some Mead, Honey!

It has been well over a year since we wrote about mead in this space, when the original fermentable (predating coffee, beer, wine, and perhaps even tea) was paired with both dinner and dessert for Pam's birthday. A year prior to that, we had shared some over our 24th anniversary dinner.

Mead goes way back!
Cambria Griffith, edibleWESTSIDE

Many bees had contributed to that birthday dinner, which included honey in just about every bite and sip (since Pamela means honey). We had found a wonderful mead to accompany each of these meals, but toward the end of the latter one, we had pretty much decided we needed to make our own, and started the process shortly thereafter.

The process began, of course, with a little bit of reading. All of our zymurgy projects to date have involved kits -- from places such as Beer Wine Hobby in Walpole -- that required very little research. We have been the paint-by-numbers artists of the beer and wine world so far.

I was attracted to Ken Schramm's Compleat Meadmaker, whose title is a meme based on a classic VW hippie owner's manual, the original "idiot" book. If Muir and Gregg could get me through the rebuilding of a 1965 Vee-Dub, surely Schramm could get us through our first batch of this ancient, golden elixir. It was from Schramm that I learned just how long mead has been around -- predating most world religions -- and just how simple the ingredient list is.

All that is needed for mead is honey, water, yeast, and patience. A lot of each, except for the yeast! But where to get 15 pounds of honey? That's right, for a 30-bottle (5-gallon) batch, we would need almost enough honey to balance the family doglet on a scale. One approach would be to get several big jars at Costco, but that did not seem right at all. Why make mead at home without any local ingredients? So I turned to my friend Lori of Moonsong Farm, about two miles from our house. This allowed me to support a local business and would justify the commitment to the local community of pollinators through our modest efforts in the NWF Garden for Wildlife program.

Details are in the book, but the process essentially involves careful heating and cooling of a honey-water mixture in a sterilized vessel, the addition of a small amount of yeast, and closer with a water-locked lid. Following that, we simply waited, and waited, and waited before transferring the solution to bottles. For a small portion of the batch, we added priming sugar (adding sugar to honey sounds strange, but it was necessary), and using beer-bottling techniques instead of wine, to contain the resultant pressure. In this way, we created about two cases of "flat" mead and a half case of carbonated, "sparkling" mead.

After a lot more waiting -- a total of about ten months -- we slightly chilled and then opened a bottle of the wine-style mead. At first we both noticed a bit of astringency at first, but the flavor seemed to mellow and improve with each sip. We certainly look forward to the rest, and to sharing it with friends!

These very bees may have been involved!

I look forward to the advice Schramm offers on other fruits, as we recently enjoyed more the wines of more than a dozen fruits (small samples of each!) at the inimitable Kerrigan Brothers of Appleton. For future batches of straight mead or mead-fruit blends,, we may also use a pump-operated wine filter to reduce cloudiness and bring out the terrific colors of honey and fruit wines!

Apple Sa-Té

In the spirit of Pam's recent post about timely use of our farm-box bounty, this evening's dinner was a use of our latest Colchester Farm harvest that was simple, nutritious, easy, and delicious. Read on -- I think this was quite successful and readily adapted to other available ingredients.

Pam started by preparing a salad with mixed leafy greens, sliced radish, and bean sprouts. She mixed up one of our favorite dressings -- one cup olive oil and a 1/4 cup each of mustard, honey, and balsamic vinegar. These stayed in the fridge -- alongside a Sauvignon Blanc -- while I prepared a stir-fry.

I did so with some trepidation, as my "stir fry" often seems to be more a stew than anything else. In this case, I made a couple of adjustments that resulted in a lighter, more flavorful meal. First, I melted butter in a small pan, stirred in one cup of basmati rice, and then added 2-1/4 cups of water. I brought that quickly to a boil (thanks to our super-duper burner, for which I am very grateful).

I moved the rice to a simmer burner and then heated a generous splash of olive oil on that same high burner. When it was hot but not smoking, I tossed in a package of firm tofu. This I had cut into four large blocks to drain in a sieve, and then cut into cubes the size of Vegas dice. I then added two large pieces of garlic rabe (not the head, just the stalk, which was thick enough to require snipping rather than slicing) in 1/4-inch pieces and about five large, hastily-sliced scallions. I added about a half cup of peas that I had just liberated from their pods and one small, finely-chopped apple. Yes, an apple for a bit of sweetness and texture.

All of this was cooking at high heat as the basmati (which cooks more quickly than most other rices) neared completion. Here is where I think I got smart; rather than adding a heavy sauce as I have often done, I added two or three squirts of soy sauce so that the tofu would brown a bit and then stirred in about a teaspoon of Asian chili Sa-Té paste. I stirred over high heat for only another minute before declaring dinner served. The result: a fresh, tasty and easy meal with a lot of local ingredients picked just a few days ago from nearby soil.