Chicken Tamales

I've been wanting to make tamales for a while and I bought a pack of frozen banana leaves about a month ago. For some reason I was thinking that they were really hard to make, but it turned out to be super easy. I didn't have any masa to make them the proper way (dough layered on the leaf, then topped with filling) so I just followed some of the easier recipes which have you mix the dough directly with the ingredients. I used corn meal mix. They came out pretty tasty, but slightly drier than I wanted, so next time I will buy some real masa and make a proper dough, maybe even with some lard.

 When I boiled the chicken, I made the broth really flavorful by adding chopped garlic, peppercorns, cumin seeds, a sofrito cube, and salt. But by mixing the corn meal mix directly into the stuffing, I really had no use for the broth. Next time I'll make the masa dough out of the reserved broth from boiling the chicken and do it the proper way. I'd also love to make these with chicharron.

Shredded chicken, pepperjack cheese, peas, and sautéed vegetables (onions, green chiles, jalapeño, garlic). The chicken was super easy to shred in the food processor, even while piping hot.

I didn't see any need to tie them, they stayed rolled up perfectly fine without string.  Into the tamalera! Provecho!

Vindaloo with Papas Criollas

One of my favorites is vindaloo, which usually has cut-up potatoes. I really like the little yellow-skinned potatoes called papas criollas, so I thought about making chicken vindaloo using those potatoes cooked whole. It came out pretty good but next time I'd like to try it with the potatoes dusted with a spicy coating and fried until crispy and then added to the curry at the end.

Divali Nagar and Chana Masala

After slaving all night on the demi-glace, I got out of the house and went to a local Divali Nagar festival, hoping to eat some good Indian food. The festival was pretty small and all of the food booths were Trinidadian and other West Indian foods. Still I managed to try a few things and enjoyed going.

Some fried thing (I don't remember) and a chickpea curry stuffed roti called "doubles". The curry was different from other Indian-style curries I've had before: it was sweet and savory and had lots of cinnamon.

A biryani combo: fried rice, another version of chickpea curry, and a samosa and kachori. Although the chana needed some more heat, it was more what I'm used to than the one stuffed in in the doubles. The rice was really good. The green chiles in the rice had a mild, wilted poblano-like flavor which worked really well. The samosa was just potatoes and spices and could have used some meat texture and richness. But the fried potato was amazing; apparently it was coated in gram (chickpea) flour which gave it a very light crispiness after it was deep fried. I definitely want to try that.

As usual after trying something new or different, I came home and tried it. I've made chana masala before but I haven't been too happy with it. I've tried using raw spices and also boxed chana masalas, but I still haven't been able to capture the flavors I want. This time I asked a friend for advice and tried to follow it:

Frying onions and spices (cumin seed, mustard seed, a few cloves and peppercorns, coriander powder).

Add turmeric, garlic and ginger paste, some spicy raw chili, garam masala, some water, simmer and then purée until smooth. Then return to heat and add the chickpeas and simmer until done.

I ate it with basmati rice, some papadums, and spicy pickle. This was the closest I've come to the flavor I want but I still need to keep trying.

Demi-Glace Weekend

After watching several shows and reading a few recipes, I decided to try making my own demi-glace.  Demi-glace is a rich brown sauce in French cuisine used by itself or as a base for other sauces.  It is traditionally made by combining equal parts of veal stock and sauce espagnole, the latter being one of the five mother sauces of classical French cuisine, and the mixture is then simmered and reduced by half.  I have seen recipes which say you can make it in 4 hours and then some say 12 hours or more.  I kinda screwed up with the quantity of veal stock so I ended up having to make the stock twice (the second roasting/simmering is called a remouillage, so it took about 14 hours.  In the end, I had a zip lock bag of ice-cube size frozen demi-glace hunks. 

10 lbs. of veal bones (I found these at Penn-Dutch):

After roasting the bones for about an hour:

Paint the bones with tomato paste:

Cover with chopped mirepoix and roast for another 45 minutes:

Remove the bones to a stock pot and deglaze the pan with dry red wine:

After simmering and skimming for hours, the veal stock/brown stock is reduced:

Strain out all the impurities and gunk:

Now making the sauce espagnole, start with a brown roux:

Then add more fresh mirepoix, some of the brown stock, a bouquet garni, and let it simmer also.  Then combine the sauce espagnole with the brown sauce and let it reduce and cool.

This was adapted from Emeril Lagasse's recipe, but I found it to be too confusing.  Next time I'll find a clearer recipe.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/emeril-lagasse/demi-glace-recipe/index.html

Picadillo Improved

I couldn't give up after the last picadillo I tried, so I actually found a recipe and sorta followed it. It turned out pretty good. I ended up eating the whole batch in one sitting. It was good if you dip it with wheat saltines. The maduros on the side gave a nice contrasting sweet flavor.

• 
  
• olive oil
• sofrito paste (I used several tablespoons)
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 1/2 small red bell pepper, finely chopped
• large pimiento-stuffed olives, coarsely chopped
• garlic cloves, finely chopped
• ground beef 
• tomato paste
• frozen peas and carrots
• chopped cilantro
• salt and pepper
• 
  
• Saute the sofrito in the hot olive oil, add the veggies for a few minutes.  Add the ground beef and brown, then add the tomato.  Continue cooking for a bit and add a little water and then the peas and carrots.  When it's heated through garnish with fresh cilantro and season to taste.  Serve with rice or plantains.

Ti Marie's Kraze Pwavron Sòs

Just the name alone of this hot sauce is worth posting about...

Sofrito

After my last mediocre attempt at picadillo, I decided to take several recipes' advice and make some homemade sofrito to enhance the flavor. This particular version was super easy to make, and I froze it in ice cube trays and then stored in a plastic bag in the freezer.

All the beautiful fresh ingredients

Chop and purée until smooth

Freeze in ice cube trays and this is what you get. Cubes of pure flavor!

1 large yellow onion

1 pimiento (Cubanelle) or substitute with green bell pepper

1 red bell pepper or 1sm jar roasted red peppers

1 medium head of garlic (2 tbsp. minced garlic)

1 bunch of cilantro

12 ajíes dulces (hard to find and may skip) [small sweet peppers]

6 leaves of recao - (Eryngium) (hard to find/skip) [culantro]

¼ cup Spanish olives, pitted

1 tbsp capers

2 tsps salt

1 tbsp black pepper

1 tbsp crushed orégano

½ cup olive oil

Potato Veggie Empanadas

The other day at 1 am I decided to make some empanadas since I had seen someone making them on a restaurant show. I decided to wing it all, including the pastry dough. I've never been good at making pastry dough but each time I learn something new. I didn't have any meat or chicken thawed out at that time of night so I made a potato/veggie stuffing and tried to season it up a lot.

Potato, bell pepper, red chili, some sazón liquido I bought in the Dominican Republic, butter, salt, pepper. To make things quick I "baked" the potatoes in the microwave.

After rolling out the dough:

That's the part where I learned the most. Always make way more dough than you think you will need. First, it's much easier just to roll once and cut out all the circles/pies you need and just discard the rest. Second, this avoids having to take the scraps and re-roll them several times. If you do that the dough ends up very elastic and completely unlike a proper pastry crust. Third, I had way more stuffing than I had dough and it was too late to try to make more pastry dough at 2 am.

After stuffing the empanadas and trying to seal them. I brushed them with egg wash hoping they'd bake up nice and shiny and golden but it soaked into the pastry. If anyone knows how to make it nice and shiny let me know.

Mississippi

Doesn't get more at-home than this: deer sausage made by my grandfather, snap peas from his garden, fresh baked buttered cornbread, and sweet tea. The delicious smell fills the house...

Shrimp Madras Pizza

I've made curry pizzas before but never a shrimp one. This time I made a quick and easy sauce in the blender and then let it thicken and reduce. I like making the pizza on a few overlapping tortillas because they end up nice and crunchy and zero effort for the crust.

Sauce

onion, garlic cloves, whole tomato, Madras curry powder, salt, pepper, lemon juice, dried whole Indian red chili, cumin seed, butter/ghee, heavy cream

Toppings

shrimp marinated in salt, pepper, olive oil, Madras curry powder, lemon juice

bamboo shoots, mozzarella (yes it works with curry), dusted with red chili powder and garnished with cilantro after baking

Verdict:

The shrimp were a good consistency after baking at 500 F for 10 minutes, not rubbery at all. I would do it again and fine tune the sauce a little next time.

Pozole Rojo, Baked Picadillo Meatloaf

After watching Food Network all weekend I was inspired to try a different kind of pozole than I've made before. I also saw this picadillo meatloaf served at some Puerto Rican restaurant.

The pozole rojo was made by browning pig tails and pork boneless ribs with garlic, onions, etc. and then pressure cooking them. Then I added a puree of onions, vegetables, red chilis, tomatoes and spices and cooked until it was done. I forgot the avocados for garnish...

The picadillo meatloaf is full of adobo seasoning, tomatoes, olives, and other spices. The bottom layer is platanos maduros with an egg crust topped with pepperjack cheese and paprika.

Verdict:

I prefer making pozole verde with chicken and tomatillos, it just has more flavor. The picadillo was okay but since I didn't grow up eating that, it doesn't really capture my attention much. It's hard to make ground beef have any other flavor besides, well, beef.

Grilled Chicken/Onion Burrito

I grilled 2 whole pounded, marinated chicken breasts with onions in olive oil until they were browned. I stuffed the whole wheat tortilla with the chicken, onions, fresh spicy pico de gallo, and chipotle mayo. The whole thing ended up being very good although the chicken breast was still a little stringy despite being marinated and brined all night.

Chipotle Mayo (finally got it right, this is almost like the one from Los De Pescado in Cancun)

mayo

a little lemon juice

salt/pepper

1 chipotle pepper (the canned ones in adobo sauce are okay)

a little sugar