A Birthday Celebration that created quite a lot of Dishes

A mid-week birthday during final exams means a low-key celebration for James as he enters his sixtieth year. James made his own birthday dinner of an old favorite: Puerto Rican Chicken Fajitas from the Well-Filled Tortilla cookbook. My role was to bake the birthday cake. When I asked James over the weekend what kind of cake he would like he said something with lemon and raspberries. The New York Times Cooking page had just what the (Ph.D.) doctor ordered! Lemon Sheet Cake with Raspberry Whipped Cream.

This recipe is a 12-step program, beginning with preparing the pan. The instructions call for use of a non-stick spray, but I used Crisco shortening. I did follow the instructions to coat the pan, then cover in parchment, and then coat the parchment, which seemed like overkill, but I must say that I have never had such an easy time removing a cake from a pan when it was time to serve. The recipe also calls for vegetable oil. I used lemon-infused olive oil, which really was the right thing to do.

The recipe also calls for an electric mixer in steps 2, 4, 5, 6, 10, and 11. Still don't have one, so a spoon, a whisk, and some strong arms were put to good use.

Lemons needed to be zested and juiced, and raspberries needed to macerate (a word I did not know before) and then strained. Cream needed to be whipped and flour sifted. We used every mixing bowl in our cabinet, one of which had to be rinsed out so it could be used again. We also used more of our utensils than we usually would with one recipe.

The result was a delicious yellow cake with a thick pink topping. This isn't very sweet, so the flavors of lemon and raspberry come through more than we expected, although neither is overwhelming. 

Photos show our sink after we'd already put round one of dishes into the dishwasher, and our "Julia Child" pegboard with lots of space as as all the utensils were being washed. Unfortunately the photograph of the cake turned out blurry, so I won't be posting it here.

So many dishes!

This is after I'd already washed the flour sifter and put it back in its place. We really did use a lot of utensils.

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.

Scallion Egg Wrap

I saw this recipe in an article from the New York Times that listed what the newspaper's food editors prepared when they didn't feel like cooking. It looked simple and fun so we put it on our dinner list for this week. I started by chopping some scallions and chopped up some mushrooms I found in the refrigerator as well. I heated our small indispensable cast-iron skillet added a bit of butter and sautéd the veggies for just a few minutes and then added two beaten eggs to the pan. The eggs cooked quickly in a thin layer. Once they were cooked (but still just a bit runny) I placed a warm tortilla on top and heated just long enough for the tortilla to stick. Now comes the scary part: the recipe says to "flip onto a plate egg side up". I found this a bit daunting, but with careful use of a spatula and a bit of patience I managed to do this successfully for both the wraps I made. I folded the wraps into quarters as indicated. Since this looked a lot like a Mexican dish, and it was National Tortilla Day, we had tortillas on the side and served with sour cream and salsa. James added some Tabasco sauce to his as well and declared it delicious - and cute!

Chicken Tortilla Soup

I don't think I've ever made tortilla soup from scratch before. James and I have occasionally made it from a kit, but in reviewing our shelf of recipe books while looking for a recipe for some chicken breasts I noticed our seldom used The Daily Soup Cookbook where I discovered the tortilla soup recipe. 

Before getting to the recipe, which I only used as a suggestion, it is important for me to discuss our history with tortilla soup. We usually only enjoy this when we eat at Mexican restaurants - something we have not done at all since before the pandemic. Each time we have some of this soup we remince about the first and second times we ever ate it. The first time we couldn't believe our good fortune in finding a restaurant that made such an exquisite soup. The second time we couldn't believe how the soup could have been so thoroughly ruined (too much salt and burned tortillas).

Both times were during our first trip to Mexico in 1989. Both were also at the same restaurant about two weeks apart. 

As I said, I used the recipe only as a guide for what I ultimately made. Which was way better than either the first or second tortilla soups I tried.

I started with making a vegetable broth by simmering some whole peppercorns, whole coriander seeds, chopped onion, garlic, chopped celery, and some canned diced tomatoes in water. Once the stock was made and strained I prepared the soup by frying a chopped onion and three cloves of chopped garlic in Chipotle-infused olive oil (from L.O.V.E. Emporium). I added some dried oregano, fresh cilantro leaves, and some salt, some canned diced tomatoes, six cups of stock, and some fresh lime juice and simmered for 30 minutes. Finally I added the poached and diced chicken breasts. Once everything was cooked I placed broken up commercial tortilla chips into soup bowls and added the soup on top. This was served with shredded cheddar cheese topping and fresh cilantro garnish.

We had enough for leftovers so I made a change to the second-day offering by adding some frozen corn kernels before reheating.

Of course this would have been even better had I included avocado slices when serving, but alas we had none.

What have I got in my cupboard? New recipes for Stay-At-Home Coronoavirus advisory

This Spanish Tortilla isn't really a new recipe for us. It is essentially the same as this frittata recipe from a few years ago. Typically I'm pretty traditional when it comes to Spanish Tortillas and will only use eggs, onions, potatoes and olive oil (lots of it!) but I didn't want the pepper we bought from the farmer's market to go to waste. We'd already had to toss a nice acorn squash we'd bought but waited too long to use. This is no time to waste food. Limiting trips to the grocery store is what life is all about now.

One way we've been limiting the grocery store visits is by having some additional items added to our weekly milk and egg delivery. This week we ordered turkey tips and I used them as a substitute in for beef chuck in a beef and barley soup recipe I found on the New York Times Cooking page. I ended up making quite a few substitutions in fact. Here's how my recipe played out:
I drained the juice from two 14 oz. cans of diced tomatoes.
I added water to the tomato juice to make one quart of liquid which I put into a big soup pot.
I added the turkey tips along with some salt and pepper some celery stalks and some fresh parsley.
All of this cooked for one hour.
Then 1/4 cup of barley was added and cooked another hour
I removed the celery and parsley and added the reserved canned tomatoes, some frozen peas, and some chopped onion and carrots. 
I brought the soup to a boil and then simmered for 45 minutes.
As I'm writing this I realized that I didn't add the leftover cabbage that was in our refrigerator. It was part of the reason I chose the recipe!

Anyway, I made biscuits to go with this. It was quite good and filling. Now I need to find another cabbage recipe.

Pepper-forward Pasta

When looking for a dinner idea yesterday, I went to the original intent of this blog -- making use of the unused pages in cookbooks we already own. I headed to our easy chair with The Well-Filled Tortilla and Jane Brody's Good Food Gourmet. Followers of this blog -- or those using the search box at the top of the screen -- will know that we have made very good use of both of these volumes (though most of our Jane Brody references are to her earlier Good Food volume.

Because I had made quesadillas (with cheese!) for lunch, I opened Brody's book first. Because I had recently purchased a few boxes of Rao's penne pasta, I looked at pasta entries in the index, rather than thumbing through the book at random. I quickly found Fusilli with Hot Sausage, and quickly decided that penne would be a very reasonable substitution -- especially since Brody grants "or similar pasta" in the ingredients list.

I followed the directions on page 224 pretty closely, except with regard to proportions. Having purchased a pound of hot italian sausage, I used it all for Brody's first step (my second; see below). I  removed the casings and crumbled the sausage as I cooked it over medium-high heat. I then put it into a bowl (it was lean, so no draining was required).

My step before Brody's first step was to roast the peppers. The recipe calls for a 6.5-ounce jar of roasted peppers. Since my adventures with Mexican mole sauces, I almost never purchase roasted peppers, preferring to cook them directly on the stove. In this case, I went a little overboard and roasted three large ones on the rarely-used oblong center burner. I had done this and placed the peppers in a sealed bowl for sweating while I worked the indispensable cast-iron skillet.

Roasting peppers, in progress. I let them get much
more charred than this.

At some point I heated a pot of water with a little oil and salt. I never rush a sauce, but it is good to have the water ready when it is time to cook the pasta.

While the peppers were sweating -- I added some olive oil to the pan, reduced the heat and slowly cooked one diced onion (I have no idea how its size compares to the called-for 1-1/3 cup) and two teaspoons of garlic.

Just kidding about that quantity of garlic:

My friend Joe has convinced me
never to measure garlic again.

After I scraped, seeded, and cored the peppers, I pureed them in a blender with a can of tomato paste (instead of 2 tablespoons) and a little olive oil. I often do this when substituting home-roasted peppers for those that are bottled in oil. At this point I started boiling the pasta.

Once the onions and garlic were softened, I returned the sausage to the skillet and added the puree along with a modest dousing of cayenne pepper and a small bag of frozen corn. Yes, frozen corn. Because Jane Brody said so. The sauce was to simmer for 10 minutes -- it was quite thick, so I added a little bit of Malbec. Never a bad idea.

Once the penne was al dente, I drained it and combined it in a bowl with the sauce and several finely-sliced scallions.

The result was more delicious than photogenic, which I expected. That is why I favored this space with in-progress photos, rather than the final dish. We will definitely be adding this to the repertoire!

Green Chicken

Regular readers will know that The Well-Filled Tortilla is a well-worn cookbook in Casa Hayes-Boh.  This volume by Victoria Wise and Susanna Hoffman is one of the first cookbooks we purchased, at a wonderful independent book store in Tucson over 20 years ago.

The contents are as varied as the taco genre itself. Some recipes -- such as one featuring squid and olives -- are never likely to emerge from our kitchen, but this book remains one that allows us to carry out the original mission of this blog: using the many unused pages of cookbooks that were already on our shelves.

Noticing that I had both a bit of spare time and a few tortillas available, I thumbed through this familiar volume and found a title I had not read carefully before: Red or Green Chicken.

¿Qué?

It turns out, the colors do not refer to the chicken, nor to nautical channel markings. Rather, the authors refer to salsa options within the recipe. I chose green, in the form of a commercial tomatillo salsa, because a decent homemade salsa verde is way out of season around here.

This was a fairly simple, if messy, recipe. I opted for working with boneless, skinless chicken, which I simply boiled until cooked through and then shredded. (To shred chicken Mexican-restaurant style, simpy place it in a bowl and tear at it with two ordinary forks until it is course or fine strands.) Meanwhile, I chopped a couple of onions and cooked them -- in our indispensable cast-iron skillet -- in olive oil with plenty of oregano and a little salt until soft and translucent. I then mixed in the shredded chicken thoroughly over low heat.

I then rolled about 1/3 cup of this mix into each tortilla. I followed the recipe's instruction to soften teach tortilla with a little oil on the griddle first. This made rolling them up rather more messy than need be, and a little painful. In future I'll revert to one of two other methods we use for softening tortillas: microwaving for 30 seconds while loosely wrapped in a paper towel or heating for a few seconds on a hot but dry griddle.

In any case, I placed the rolled-up tortillas (now known as enchiladas) into a baking pan. Six of them fit nicely. I then covered with a cup of the aforementioned salsa verde, followed by a generous cup (maybe close to two) of shredded cheese. I used (Monterrey) pepper jack with a little sharp cheddar, both from our favorite farmer-owned cheese company.  I baked at 350F for 12 minutes.

The result: mildly piquant, slightly complex, creamy, filling, and delicious. Not photogenic, but delicious. We will definitely be making this again!

Sweet Potato & Refried Bean Tacos

I made this dish a few weeks ago, and as I was getting ready to blog about the divine pie I made for Thanksgiving, I remembered that I never posted about this fabulous meal. The recipe has two parts - one for the filling, and the other for the poblano salsa. I dutifully asked James to procure the poblano, tomatoes, and lime but unfortunately assumed onion and garlic were already on hand, only to discover I was wrong. Further complicating the problem was the less than stellar set up I had for roasting the pepper. We usually roast them directly on the flame of our gas stove, but we were at our beach house which has the inferior electric stove top. I attempted to roast the pepper by placing it in an indispensable cast-iron skillet on top of one of the burners and turning it several times, but it didn't work very well. I ultimately decided to simply add the diced tomatoes and diced (semi) roasted pepper to a jar of prepared lime salsa - not an ideal solution, but a solution nonetheless.

The sweet potatoes were roasted in the oven at 425 for half and hour after drizzling with olive oil, chili powder, salt, and pepper. The roasted sweet potatoes were simply served on warmed tortilla shells with a helping of refried beans and topped with salsa and cilantro. We also added some sour cream. A very delicious and hearty vegetarian meal despite the problems with making the salsa.

Quesadillas de Rajas

I'm leaving the photo for this dinner to the professionals, in this case Fred Thompson, who took most of the photos in this lushly illustrated cookbook.
Our quesadillas tasted great, but did not look quite like this.

I was about to start this post with a few street-food memories, but discovered that I have already told most of those tales when we first purchased Latin American Street Food, in a post I titled Calle to Mesa.

Wanting a quick dinner and knowing that we had plenty of tortillas on hand, I picked two books from the shelf -- the old standby Well-filled Tortilla and this newer volume. We have already mined the Well-filled volume for most of its easy dishes, so I opened Street Food first. Its index listings for "tortilla" pointed mostly to detailed articles on the tortilla itself; it was the "quesadilla" listing that took me to Poblano and Cheese Quesadillas, a title that seems a bit redundant, but that had my attention because I love Pueblo and its namesake chile.

This was simple to prepare. I did some kitchen math to modify the ingredient list, which is indicated for serving 8:

4 roasted poblano peppers, peeled, seeded, deveined, and sliced into strips
8 (8-inch) flour tortillas
12 ounces Muenster cheese, thinly sliced (ours was thick; still worked great)
8 ounces soft goat cheese, crumbled
1/4 cup thinly sliced green onions
vegetable oil
Mexican crema (optional)

Gutierrez begins with a nice description of quesadillas in general and the role of poblanos in particular. She writes that the poblano is "not too spice, although some can be hotter than others." One of the most memorable things I read in preparing for our 1989 visit to Puebla is that the poblano can vary tremendously from mild to hot. When visiting a local student's home for dinner, his mother reminded us of this, and I assured her I would be fine, as I really liked hot food. Of course, I drew the extremely hot one, and could only eat the filling! Modern agriculture has rendered the poblano much more uniform and less interesting.

From a previous post: I've done this exact thing before,
and I have essentially stopped buying roasted peppers.

Alas, I knew that our local grocery was only about 25-percent likely to have poblanos on any given day, so I compromised by buying a red bell pepper and a jalepeño, promising myself I'll go to another store before I retry this dish. I brought them home and roasted both directly on the front burner of our stove, turning frequently with our indispensable kitchen tongs. Once thoroughly charred, I placed them in a tightly-covered bowl; a plastic bag also works. After ten minutes, the peppers were ready to be peeled (most of the charry outer bits removed), cored,  and sliced.

While the peppers were sweating (in the covered bowl), I started assembling the quesadillas -- on one half of each large tortilla (we had the 12-inch kind, so only needed one each), I placed several slices of Muenster, then liberally covered them with peppers, and topped with goat cheese and scallions. I then folded them, brushed on olive oil, and placed on the cast-iron griddle. I had the heat a bit too high -- medium heat would have allowed for more even browning, rather than charring!

Still, our results were quite good, and we topped with sour cream instead of Mexican crema for two reasons: we had the sour cream on hand (from our regional dairy cooperative) and I knew our local grocery would not have it.

It was only on reading the recipe page more carefully that I learned Gutierrez makes several salsa recommendations, including a tomatillo salsa that I could have made with ingredients on hand. Something to remember the next time I make these scrumptious quesadillas!

Lagniappe

In 2016, taco trucks became a political buzzword, as a presidential candidate invoked them in a tirade against immigration. His "nightmare" vision of a taco truck on every corner seemed like a dream to me!

Enjoying fish tacos at a family geography night program.

Quesadilla Pie

James and I do love Mexican food, so when I noticed this recipe for Cheesy Chicken Quesadilla Pie on my Facebook feed, and realized that we also had a few chicken breasts just waiting to become part of a nueva receta we starting making our plans.

This simple dish uses one large tortilla shell as the pie crust. It is placed in the bottom of a spring form pan and then toppings and batter are added. Once everything is in the pan it is baked for about 20 minutes. We forgot to get the green chiles the recipe called for when we went shopping, so I substituted a dollop of hot pepper jelly in the toppings, which turned out to be a good idea. This was simple and delicious.We will definitely be having this one again.

Chilaquiles

I don't think this is a strictly "new" recipe because I am sure we've made them before, but since there is no blog post about it, and I made a few innovations in the recipe I used I include it here.

Chilaquiles are a spicy Mexican dish (sometimes used as a hangover cure).  I based mine on this recipe from the New York Times cooking pages. Rather than using canned tomatoes I used a bit of tomato sauce I had left over from another recipe, and then cut up two whole tomatoes. I put them in a blender with a bit of jalapeño pepper, chopped garlic, and chopped onion. When it looked like gazpacho I poured it into a skillet to heat. While the salsa heated I poached two chicken breasts. Once the chicken was poached I shredded it and placed it in the skillet with the salsa, then crushed up some tostada shells we had left from a post-Thanksgiving Chalupa dinner and added them to the mix as well. Once everything was heated together they were served with shredded cheese and sour cream.

This is a good recipe for using up any kind of tortilla chips or shells that are starting to stale, or for the crumbs at the bottom of the bag.

Cooking with Wine

This post is a two-fer. This week I found two recipes from two different recipe books that called for wine, and prepared them over two days. One was from a cookbook called Cooking Seafood and Poultry with Wine, so I was certainly not surprised by the use of the ingredient. 

The recipe actually calls for Vermouth. I knew we had a bottle of such at our beach house, and since that is where we generally prepare any kind of seafood, this recipe for Salmon Steaks seemed like a good one to try. We bought a pound of fresh, wild-caught salmon from our favorite fish-monger Kyler's Catch in New Bedford, Massachusetts  and assembled the rest of the ingredients. Then I read the instructions, which said to marinade for four hours. It was already six o'clock p.m. and we were not going to wait until after ten to eat, so I made an adjustment and put all the ingredients into a pan making the following variations - I used scallions instead of chives, and also added lime juice, and a few red pepper flakes. Once the liquid was simmering I added the salmon, turned down the heat and covered the pan for about 12 minutes (turning once about half-way through). The fish was perfectly cooked, and the flavors were all evident. I've learned a lot about cooking since I started this blog. The most important thing I've learned is that just about any recipe can be adapted to just about any situation.

The other wine recipe came from an old favorite cookbook - The Well-Filled Tortilla. This may very well be my favorite cookbook. We prepare many of our favorite recipes from it, and still find new ones to try even after two decades of use. I don't know how we never noticed the "Good and Plenty Wine-Simmered Vegetables" before. This was easy, and relatively quick and made for perhaps the best veggie wrap I've ever had. The recipe calls for a dry white wine, so I used a Sauvignon Blanc. I used about 1/2 cup to start and added 2 chopped potatoes, a small chopped yellow squash, one chopped tomato, one sliced jalapeno, and a half of a chopped onion. The recipe also called for frozen lima beans, in lieu of which I put in a small amount of mystery beans from a CSA that I found in the freezer labeled simply "Beans 8/14" in my own handwriting. They were fine and I was glad to finally use them. I also added a bit of dry oregano and some garlic salt. Once everything was in the pan, I splashed a bit more wine in and simmered for about 20 minutes. When the potatoes were soft I declared it done and warmed two tortillas on the stove top. We filled the tortillas with the vegetables and added some fresh cilantro and sour cream. Quite delicious and easily made vegan by skipping the sour cream.

Salsa Two-Fer

Perhaps it was because we are soon to be taking our first trip to Puerto Rico, which we have hoped to do for many years. More likely, it is simply because I was craving one of my favorites from our recipe shelf -- Puerto Rican Chicken Fajita. I have no idea how common this actually is in Puerto Rico, but we love it in our house -- chicken breasts hammered thin and charred hot with chopped walnuts (or pine nuts), along with unripe banana slices is wrapped in a big flour tortilla with onion-orange salsa, and sour cream. This recipe allows The Well-Filled Tortilla to earn its title, as well as a prominent spot on our recipe shelves.

One of the major Testaments in our kitchen

I'll digress for a moment to share one recent finding in the "cooking for two" department. When serving flour tortillas, I have had a habit of rolling them up in wax paper and briefly softening them in the microwave. I recently discovered that if I am using our indispensable cast-iron skillet, I can just toss the tortillas into the pan -- as if they were a soft lid -- a half minute before the meal is ready to serve. If I'm serving two tortillas, I put them both in, and then flip them together after a half-minute. This puts the damp sides out, so I invert them for serving. Just try it -- it is easier than it sounds.

For the "Puerto Rican" fajitas, I was careful with proportions, which meant I wasted no chicken, but I had a significant amount of salsa (onion/orange/jalapeno) left over.

Librarian to the rescue! When it came time to use the rest of the salsa, Pam put her information-literacy skills to effective use, searching for the salsa in the cookbook's index to see if the publisher linked it to any other recipes. Oddly, the index item for this salsa does not include the dish from which we first learned of it. The index does list two options: a squid-olive concoction or a fajita with turkey and bacon. Pam has a famously strong aversion to olives and we are both indifferent (at best) to squid. Plus we had chicken left over from the previous effort, which could do for turkey in a pinch. That only left the question of bacon. Let's see.... Yes, bacon!

This recipe required cutting the bacon into small pieces and cooking it slowly, essentially making high-end baco-bits. I prepared these and set them aside. I then cut the chicken breasts into about four "cutlets" each and marinated them in a mixture of diced jalapeno (left over from salsa preparation), tequila, and lime juice. I then seared these on high heat in a bit of olive oil, and we wrapped them in tortillas (warmed as above) with the salsa and sour cream.

The verdict: so delicious it is not even fair to other tacos. We will definitely be making this "leftover" dish again!

Fried Sweet Potato, Chili, and Cream Cheese Melt

It has actually been over two weeks since I made this dish, a variation on a favorite potato cheese melt from the Well-Filled Tortilla. Generally busy-ness, as well a trip to Nicaragua prevented me from posting earlier. A quick and easy dish I started by peeling and dicing a large sweet potato and used my indispensable cast-iron skillet to fry them. The recipe called for frying in peanut oil, but I used chipotle-infused olive oil instead. I heated the potatoes until they were soft, then I chopped and added a jalapeño pepper. Four ounces of cream cheese was dolloped on top and melted. We filled two warm tortilla shells with the potato/cream cheese mix and topped them with salsa and cilantro leaves.

Sizzlin' Sesame

Among the most important things Pam and I still have from our four years in Arizona (1990-1994) are an ability to wrap tortillas and a copy of The Well-Filled Tortilla by Victoria Wise and Susanna Hoffman. Frequent readers of this blog will know that we continue to find new treasures in its pages; the latest is a simple recipe we finally got to just last night.

Spicy Sesame Chicken Fajitas begins with flattening chicken breasts with a mallet (or other implement) between layers of waxed paper or plastic wrap, until it is one-half inch thick. This is what makes  allows for rapid, even cooking, and is what makes this a fajita dish. Strictly speaking, fajita is a particular, thin cut of beef, but it has evolved to refer to other meats prepared in a similar way.

I then sprinkled both sides with sesame seeds, cayenne pepper, and salt. Actually, I only put salt on one side of each, as we all have enough salt in our lives. And the little shaker lid was missing from our cayenne, so it was more of a rub than a sprinkle. Fortunately, a love of heat is something else we retain from Arizona days!

I heated a bit of oil in our indispensable cast-iron skillet and added the chicken once the oil was hot and almost smoking. This allowed them to cook pretty quickly, though I noticed one area that I had not hammered quite thin enough was still a bit pink. So rather than waiting to transfer them to a cutting board, I cut them into strips right in the pan so they finished up quickly. (Do not try this with ordinary cookware!)

I heated some tortillas (we wrap in wax paper in the microwave for 30 seconds) and then we assembled the chicken strips with some avocado slices, plain Greek yogurt (the recipe calls for sour cream, but this is just as good), and Newman's Own mango salsa. This Well-Filled Tortilla includes many excellent salsa recipes, but we knew that this shortcut would be good, and was reasonably close to the mango-jalapeño salsa recommended for this dish. The book also suggests lettuce for this and similar dishes, and as we often do, we skipped that part.

This is a simple dish with many sweet and hot notes, and the fats in the yogurt and avocado provide cooling to offset the cayenne. A variety of wines would pair well with this; we chose the mildly sweet Riesling (not cloyingly sweet like most of this variety) from our friends Westport Rivers, and it seemed to love the mango salsa in particular!

Pam's one-word review came at the beginning of the meal: ¡yummmmmm! And our common question about this page in the book - ¿Where have you been all our lives? (Or at least the 20 years we've had this book on our shelves.)

MOCHA MOLE (MO-ka MO-lay)

Today's post will be a bit odd. Many entries in this space follow a by-now familiar pattern -- a recipe is described or summarized, and then we describe any deviations from the recipe before describing (or bragging about) the results. 

For this entry on mole, I will follow the pattern; what is odd is that the recipe from which I deviate is one I created myself as I was preparing the meal. The deviations are small, however, and as is often the case simply have to do with what ingredients were readily available.

The recipe calls for several of the ingredients from Equal Exchange, for two reasons. First, it is an excellent company committed to just treatment of farmers worldwide. Second, it was having a recipe contest.

Equal Exchange is best known for its coffee, and in fact its coffee director Rodney North is in large part responsible for the way in which coffee has taken over my life. It is now also importing fairly-traded chocolate and more recently tea, as well as some domestic products such as cranberries and raisins.

Because two of its most important products are coffee and chocolate, I decided that I should create some sort of coffee variant on mole. And because the unconventional use of a balsamic from Lebherz Oil and Vinegar Emporium had helped me to win a recipe contest before, I decided a L.O.V.E. potion would be on the agenda again. The recipe calls for some of Lebherz vinegars and is also modified from a mole recipe that we first included on this blog as Mole L.O.V.E. in 2012.

For further good luck -- and just because we enjoy their company -- we reassembled the winning team from that 2012 Bob Marley Coffee recipe contest to share this meal with us.

Before going on I should clarify that mole is a Mexican sauce more properly known as mole poblano, after the state of Puebla where it originated, and where Pam and I spent the summer of 1989. It is pronounced "MO-lay" and has nothing to do with those mouse-like critters. This blog now has several mole variations. 

Here's the newest one. It cites EE and L.O.V.E. ingredients, though substitutions can be made.

INGREDIENTS

One red chili pepper or one small jar roasted red pepper

One cup dry, finely ground Equal Exchange coffee, preferably a Central American blend (NOT brewed)

¼ cup brown sugar

4 T chili powder, divided

1 T paprika

Zest of one orange, divided

1 t black pepper

1 t salt

Whole chicken in pieces or equivalent of chicken, bone-in preferred

4 cloves garlic, minced

2 T Chipotle-infused olive oil

One onion or two shallots

1 t cumin

1 t cinnamon

½ t nutmeg

4-6 cloves

½ cup Equal Exchange raisins

½ cup slivered almonds

1 T Lebherz espresso-flavored balsamic vinegar

1 T Lebherz chocolate-flavored balsamic vinegar

1 Equal Exchange dark-chocolate candy bar, either strictly dark chocolate or with nuts

2 ounces espresso-infused tequila or Kahlua, optional

2 T sesame seeds, for garnish

Corn tortillas

Equal Exchange English Breakfast Tea (because it is smoky), Sangre de Toro, other Spanish red wine, Negra Modelo beer

DIRECTIONS

If using a fresh chili pepper, place it directly over flame on a gas stove, and turn with tongs until well charred. Remove from flame and place in a small zip lock bag or plastic-covered bowl for 10 minutes. Then remove stem, outer skin and seeds, and cut into small pieces. If using jarred peppers, simple cut into pieces and set aside.

In a large bowl, combine dry coffee, sugar, 2 T chili powder 1 T orange zest, pepper, and salt

Roll each piece of chicken in the coffee mixture until coated.

Photo: Ashley Costa

Heat chipotle oil in skillet, cook garlic so that the oil absorbs its flavor

Heat brown chicken pieces in the oil, 3-4 minutes per side; work in rounds if necessary

Transfer chicken to baking dish

To the oil, garlic, and residual chicken fat, add onion or shallot and roasted peppers; cook until onions are translucent

Add spices, tomatoes, tomato sauce, raisins, and almonds. Simmer on medium-high, covered, for 30 minutes, stirring every ten minutes.

Continue simmering, uncovered, and preheat oven to 350 F

Pour in the vinegars and optional liqueur

Place entire candy bar in the center of the skillet. Feel free to take a photograph at this point!

After one minute, or when the candy bar has melted sufficiently, stir to blend vinegars and chocolate into the rest of the sauce.

Pour sauce mixture over chicken and bake at 350 F for 30-40 minutes or until done and tender.

Remove from oven, sprinkle with sesame seeds, and allow to cool for ten minutes.

While chicken is cooling, warm tortillas in a dry, cast-iron skillet on high heat for a few seconds each. Place in tortilla warmer or cover with a towel.

Serve with a favorite beverage. Use tortillas to enjoy all of the sauce!

DIGRESSIONS

Normally I would roast a red pepper on the stove top, as shown in my Busy Kitchen post. In our Whaling House, however, we have an electric stove, so I used red peppers from a jar.

The coffee rub shown is not quite the one described. It was a rub we had on hand, and we did not have Equal Exchange coffee on hand (even though we live near the headquarters, we can only get the coffee online. So rather than use another brand of coffee, I used the rub. The description above approximates the ingredients on the rub.

We faced a similar predicament with the chocolate. EE was once sold in our local grocery store, and I discovered too late that it no longer is. So I got another brand (the name escapes me) of organic chocolate. It includes some pasilla pepper and cinnamon. Assuming such chocolates are hard to find, I recommend cayenne and cinnamon be added to the sauce.

RESULTS

We did -- thanks to friend and photographer Ashley -- have both of the recommended wine with this. The Toro is definitely the best pairing.

The overall outcome was a sauce that was a bit chunky for mole, but highly delicious. 

Verrdict: Eight Thumbs Up!

The Good Read Tortilla

James is adding some old favorites to his Good Reads profile; this is the first cookbook to be included.


The Well-Filled Tortilla Cookbook by Victoria Wise
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

We purchased this book more than 20 years ago, when we lived in Tucson -- where these things are decided. We do not traffic in "wraps" -- just tortillas. As hard as decent tortillas are to find in New England, this book allows us to put them to good use when we do.

Many of the recipes in this book have become comfort food in our home, but we still open it to a new page fairly often. Anyone who loves to cook will find plenty to enjoy in this book. On our recipe blog, we probably cite this book more than any other -- http://nuevareceta.blogspot.com/searc...

Enjoy!

View all my reviews

Coming Out of the Cold

As mentioned in the "Cada Mes" post last week, our summer has been blessed with everything but at-home leisure, putting us well behind our usual pace of a new recipe each week. Well behind. As we get back on track, today's post is not only a specific recipe, but some of what we have learned about how to plan meals.

It began with Pam making a list of today's goals that included a freezer inventory. After a morning row and some extreme yard work, we got together at the freezer door and used a cooler so that we could take everything out and put it on a list. We threw out one or two items that were of miniscule quantity or unknown provenance, but otherwise made a detailed list of everything in the freezer before returning it there. (I did generously volunteer to save space by finishing off a small quantity of vanilla ice cream.)

With the inventory in hand, we each grabbed a cookbook to look for something that would be new to us, interesting, and most importantly that would use something from the inventory. Pam found a chicken salad that we will prepare at the end of the week for our weekly vineyard outing -- details to follow.

Because I knew we had a fresh package of tortillas in the fridge, I turned to our bible, a.k.a. The Well-Filled Tortilla. I have to admit I was doubtful. After all, we have used this book many times over the past 20 years, and much of what remains is either grandiose (even for us) or uses ingredients on the no-go list (olives, tripe). But we had a half-bag of lentils ("half" being the most common word on our freezer inventory), so I checked the index for that word.

On page 221 is a recipe entitled "Indian-style lentils." We were prepared to use the second half of our Sunday for something more complicated, but this worked out very well indeed. We went to our local farm stand at Hanson Farms after deciding the recipe, so that we could get the needed tomatoes there. We planned a grocery-store run for after the farm stand, for any items that would not be there. This is always a good order to shop -- home inventory then farm stand, then grocery.

The rest came from our shelf, fridge, or modest garden. (Actually, mint is not a "garden" item. It is something that the previous owner of our house planted, and which we can now retrieve from random spots all over our property.)

Preparation was incredibly simple, halving the recipe as printed. I put 3 cups of chicken stock (could have been any stock) in a stock pot, along with 1/2 pound of lentils and three medium potatoes, diced to 1/2-inch.  I then added plenty of turmeric, cilantro (in place of coriander), ground clove, chili powder, cumin, and cayenne. I heated to a boil and then simmered for 20 minutes.

I then added a generous splash of lime juice (from a bottle in this case). We then diced tomatoes, tore up some mint, and spooned up a little sour cream that was in the fridge. The only thing missing was something the recipe calls "pickled carrots, optional."

The result; Delicious! I had been skeptical of a dish calling for both lentil and potato, but they worked well together in this case. These tacos paired beautifully with a 2013 Wild Oats Pinot Noir from from San Luis Obispo, California. This is a complex wine with dark fruit flavors and just a bit of spice.

Tostadas Mayoníficas

This recipe puts the mayo in Cinco de Mayo.

We are still catching up from the culinary bounty of two weeks ago, when three feasts in a row preceded a flurry of academic work. We did blog about the delicious tartlets that we made for my attainment day on Saturday the 3rd.

We did not blog separately about my birthday feast on Sunday the 4th, -- which was a re-enactment of the first meal I prepared for Pam -- because the recipe is already on my web site. I prepared the main course as described, noticing a few problems with the ingredients lists in the process; I'll update those soon. This remains a major endeavor, and one worth undertaking at least once a year. I will add that our ability to pair wines has greatly improved over the past thirty years, with Westport Rivers far outshining Paul Masson. Aside from cooking, I spent my birthday reflecting on the day itself, and ending the day by indulging in a movie starring the most famous person to share my birthday.

All of this was prelude to a very nice dinner with friends on Monday the 5th, Mexican Independence Day.

JUST KIDDING! As Latin Americanists who have spent a lot of time in or near Mexico, we know that Mexico's Independence Day is on September 16 and celebrates Miguel Hidalgo's famous Grito de Dolores in 1810. May the 5th, in fact, marks neither Mexican independence nor any other date significant to the entire country. Rather, it is a local holiday in Puebla, akin to Bunker Hill Day in Boston. The holiday celebrates the defeat of French invaders in Puebla on May 5, 1862, and because Pam and I spent the summer of 1989 in that city, we have taken an interest in the holiday, and I have included some information about the battle and about Puebla more generally on my geography blog for kids.

It was shortly after our summer in Puebla that marketing geniuses at a San Antonio beer importer decided to start promoting the holiday throughout the United States. Clearly they were on to something, as our country suspends its 364-day-a-year antipathy to celebrate Mexico, or at least the excessive consumption of Mexican beverages. Thus has May 5 has become, for us, a date to celebrate Mexico, but as far as possible from Mexican restaurants!

To make this happen, we invited over a couple of friends and turned to our old standby The Well-Filled Tortilla, in which Pam found a tostada recipe entitled "crab, watermelon, and breaded chili strips." This is another of those recipe titles that includes have the ingredients, from bottom to top, this recipe is simple:

• tostada shell (this is like a giant, round tortilla chip)
• lettuce
• watermelon cubes
• breaded chili strips
• lump crab meat
• tomatillo mayonaise
• abundant cilantro

Since I never liked watermelon much, we substituted a chilled honeydew melon, which was a perfect compliment to the crunchy, savory ingredients. A single large melon also left plenty to be used in fruit salads and smoothies for the rest of the week.

The recipe -- like several in this book -- is a sort of Russian nesting doll, in that some of the "ingredients" are actually other recipes. The first of these is the chili strips. I wondered how slices of chili would hold batter, and it turns out that the answer is "not well" so that in this instance "breaded" was more like "fried with corn meal." This was not a bad thing, though, and this layer added crunch and a lot of flavor.

The recipe calls for lump crab meat to be picked from whole crabs. This is not really possible this far from Maryland, but I hoped to find some lump meat in local fish markets. What I found was simply imported, canned crab, but since we were fairly well committed to this recipe, I bought some. And since I had no idea how much crab we would actually use, I bought two, one-pound cans, one of which turned out to be plenty for for adults to enjoy this meal.

The tomatillo mayo is an even better example of a nested recipe, as it calls for combining mayonnaise with salsa verde and a few other ingredients, and of course salsa verde is an entirely separate recipe. It was well worth the effort, though, to make a cool, tangy mayo that allowed for the weak pun at the top of this article! More importantly, it was a fabulous topping for this recipe and held up well in the fridge as a more flavorful substitute for mayo all week.

4Matic Crab

This dinner far exceeded the 20 to 40 minutes indicated for preparation time, and was messy both on the plate and in the kitchen as a whole. It was delicious and highly satisfying, however, and paired well with both Negra Modelo (one of those beers at the center of reinventing the holiday) and margaritas.

We are likely to try it again some day, but for the remaining can of crab in our fridge, we are mostly likely going to "Crispy Crab and Breaded Chili Strips" recipe -- another of the nesting-doll variety. It calls for cooking the crab with some wine and garlic, and placing it in a soft tortilla with the same chili strips as those used above.

Blueberry-Vanilla Goat Cheese Quesadillas

We have been rather remiss in 2015 with following through with the weekly recipes. I don't feel bad about it. The New Year started with a death in the family, and one snow storm after another, so getting out  cookbooks and finding something to blog about has fallen to a low priority after mourning, traveling, and cleaning up snow.

The dish I made for breakfast this morning didn't come from a recipe book. I was simply inspired to make it when I happened to notice the two main ingredients next to each other in the refrigerator. We bought the blueberry vanilla cheese from Trader Joe's last week. It is something we usually pick up there and I enjoy it on English muffins or crackers, but yesterday I realized it would make a jim-dandy breakfast quesadilla. The cheese is crumbly and hard to spread, so getting it onto a tortilla shell was more a matter or pressing down on the crumbles with the flat part of a knife rather than spreading. I covered one half of a round tortilla shell with the cheese, folded and then grilled it on the stove-top for a few minutes in each side. As a side dish I sauteed some banana slices.

We topped the quesadillas with some flavored vinegars from Lebherz Oil and Vinegar Emporium. I took a selection of likely pairings from the cabinet and tried them all. I found the Dark Chocolate to be especially tasty. The Wild Blueberry, and Ripe Peach were also good. James tried Wild Blueberry and called it "delicious". 

These were super easy, and super yummy.