A Mexican dinner

With some friends coming over I wanted to try something a little different but not too elaborate. I decided on an old standby--enchiladas. I had thought about getting a Costco broiled chicken and saving myself a step, but I already had a bag of frozen chicken breasts from Trader Joe's in my freezer. I partially thawed these, then sliced them into strips and cooked them in an electric pan together with strips of poblano peppers. I then diced both and put a few tablespoons full into the center of large flour tortillas. I added some salsa ( I had a number of jars of different types from Harry and David's), folded and arranged them in a pan, sprinkled with a mix of grated cheeses (the Mexican style, also from Trader Joe's), some fresh cilantro, and some more salsa and set aside. Since the chicken was already cooked all I needed to do was bake in the oven until the cheese was melted and the enchiladas hot. The result was something not at all as goopy as what I usually get in a Mexican restaurant, and it most likely had far fewer calories.

To go with this I had shopped at the Vallarta supermarket for items I would not find elsewhere. I had a bag of dried red corn and a bag of diced cactus leaves (nopales). I had used a small slow cooker for a few hours to cook the corn with some dried chile mix, then I added the nopales. I added some butter at the end. I served this one side dish. The thick kernels are described on another web site as having a "soft, firm texture," which I take to mean they are a bit more chewy than the ordinary white or yellow corn we are more used to.

The other side dish was nothing more than a can of black beans (okay, also from Trader Joe's) mixed with still another salsa.

The nopales may not be to everyone's taste. One of my guests thought they were okra, and unccoked they have much a similar texture which my wife describes as "slimy" (the fluid that gives them this gummy quality can be removed by boiling). I also used them raw in the salad along with diced tomatoes, red peppers, and green onions, although next time I think I will cook them first.

Enjoying ahi

Ahi--the raw tuna used for sashimi and sushi--is one of those wonderful foods I became addicted to while in Hawaii on repeated visits. On New Year's in particular it became something of a tradition in keeping with the Japanese idea of a red-fleshed fish being associated with good luck for the coming year.

Ahi is obviously going to be more expensive here, where it has to be flown in. However, at Costco it's possible to buy nice blocks of ahi (okay, maybe it was originally frozen) at a relatively low cost. It used to be that I would only sear pieces that did not look as appealing when served raw, but lately I've found a way of doing it that I think actually makes the best ahi even more tasty.

First I slice a piece of ahi so that it is less than an inch thick. In a covered pan I heat a few tablespoons of sesame oil mixed with soy sauce and black pepper. To avoid spatter I take the pan off the fire and then drop in the pieces of ahi and top them with toasted black sesame seed. I cover the pan and return it to the stove for a little less than a minute, take the pan back off, flip the ahi, and repeat for the other side. I then either serve the pieces whole or slice them. They can be served either with rice or on a bed of lettuce, as they are at a place such as P.F. Chang's. The ahi practically melts in your mouth.

While tubes of wasabi paste are standard in the market, I've found that it is a lot cheaper to buy a large bag of wasabi powder at an Asian food store and mix my own. Small amounts keep well in the refrigerator.

A fusion dinner

My daughter was one of those at our small dinner party on Saturday. I started with the salad that I described in my post for August 11. At her request I'll include the rest of what we did for the dinner.

For the main course I used the frozen chicken breasts I get from Trader Joe's. When they were just partially thawed I diced these into small cubes and marinated them in a Kung Pao sauce from Williams Sonoma. Using a large wok I stirred and cooked these in sesame oil until the the chicken was done. (I finally learned that the best way to get off the film from the oil that had spattered on my ceramic glass cooktop was, after using a regular cooktop cleanser, to wipe the area with rubbing alcohol and let dry.) Since I cannot eat peanuts, I just made these available in small dishes for my guests to add them in on their own.

To go with the chicken I sauteed a couple of diced onions with kosher salt, a pepper mix I brought back from Australia, and some ground lemongrass. After the onions were done I added in a couple of cups of diced celery and a diced red pepper (for color), then let these cook together until the celery was less crunchy. This I served on the same platter for anyone who might want to use it as a bed for the chicken.

I also made a few cups of a Thai black rice that I had on hand. Most of the recipes I've seen for this black rice show it as a dessert, but here I was using it as a side dish. The rice itself does take a while to cook (I used a slow cooker for it), and when it was soft enough I added a can of coconut milk and some Thai seasoning and also some sliced frozen papaya pieces, then let it cool. ( I also made a package of Near East brand long grain and wild rice for anyone less sure of my Thai adventure.)

For dessert (and to complete the idea of a fusion menu), I served Greek yogurt with sliced figs and some honey I had brought back from Israel.

What I would do differently the next time around is make my own sauce for the chicken. The key reason is that in looking at the ingredients on the bottle I found sugar right up there at the top. I think that with the right blending of the other components (soy sauce, a chile oil, ginger) it should not be necessary to sweeten it up.

Gas or electric?

When we redid our kitchen a few years back, one thing I asked for was that our electric range would be replaced with a gas one. The reason: turn it on and the heat is immediate, turn it off and the heat stops. For those of us who like to cook having this type of response means a great deal.

Of course, I did not really plan on one thing. We have a ceramic glass surface around the burners, just as we did before, but for some reason this new one turns out to be much harder to clean. Streaking seems almost inevitable as though anything that could leave a film will resist all efforts at elimination.

This has had one impact on my cooking: I now try to cook with covered pans as much as possible so that nothing splatters, and even then I remove the cover only when I take the pan away from the range so that nothing drips off it. What this means is that I am going to be steaming whatever I cook much more than might have been the case if I did not cover it. I'm not yet expert enough to know what overall effect this has had on what I prepare, but from what I read in various cookbooks covering a pan is not always a good thing.

This leads me to think about other limitations there are in our kitchen cooking. Years ago I thought doing the blackened whatever that has become part of Louisiana cooking would be great. That was before the smoke alarm would go off. I've learned that if I want my blackened catfish I'm going to have to go in the backyard and set my cast-iron fry pan over a barbecue.

When I watch a cooking show or get to look at some of the marvelous kitchens in a good restaurant I see lots of flames. I also see enormous vents that suck up all the smoke, not these tiny things in an ordinary range hood. I watch things sizzle and spatter and the results are marvelous. But don't try this at home, I've learned. Not unless you're ready to spend a few hours with Barkeepers Friend or one or another of those commercial items whose warnings indicate they will quickly consume your bare skin and, if ingested, turn your internal organs to sludge.

This may be the reason I find a kitchen range, like a kitchen oven, being reduced to fewer and fewer tasks. Boiling water is okay, but for anything else better to pop it in the microwave. Here is the package, just pierce the film and wait a few minutes.

It's as though today's home kitchens are meant to stay immaculate, but, as would be the case with a prospective nun, the only way such purity is maintained is to be entirely untouched by male hands.

Cooking an egg without laying one

Okay, a bad pun.

One of the puzzles I've come across is how many expressions there are for cooking a deuce of eggs. We may bake (shirred eggs are just eggs covered with cream and baked in a ramekin), boil (hard or soft), coddle, fry (sunny-side up or over easy), poach, or scramble them, or maybe just make an omelet or a souffle or a frittata or even a tortilla (the Spanish item, not the Mexican), and we could even devil them. I really think we should also talk about just steaming them, since true poached eggs are immersed fully in water while the items I see available for poaching an egg, especially in a microwave, often have a container above the water with steam doing the work.

Not all these expressions will make sense to a Denny's waitress. "I'd like my eggs coddled, please" sounds like the cook is being asked to talk nice to them before cracking them open. However, it's fun to experiment at home and see what variations are possible with the way an egg can be treated.

I have a couple of favorites. One is an omelet made more or less by folding the eggs together as they cook rather than just stirring them as you would when you scramble them, and the other is a nicely poached egg on a piece of buttered toast.

In the film Julie and Julia there is a bit about poaching an egg by dropping it in a pot of boiling water and getting the white to stay with the yolk rather than scattering away. It does not work too well for Meryll Streep and too often not for the rest of us. My friend Tom suggests the solution is to let the egg cook for a brief period in the water (15 seconds, say) before cracking it open. I find another answer in Harold McGee's authoritative On Food and Cooking. This is to have a large pot in which there is a half tablespoon of salt and a full tablespoon of vinegar for each quart of water. The eggs will disappear and pop up again in three minutes owing to a chemical reaction explained in his book. One point is that a number of eggs can be prepared in the same pot at different times and each will surface when it's ready.

Ever since discovering the Spanish tortilla, I'll occasionally make this for dinner. I take some small potatoes that are already boiled, then dice them and fry in olive oil with diced onion and perhaps some sliced bell peppers or other interesting ingredients, mix in the beaten eggs, and fry again. Sliced in very small sections you have a nice item for tapas if you want this just for an appetizer.

I still have to experiment with using ramekins and trying various ideas for baking an egg. I may find some new favorites to write about later.

Men are from Mars, etc

When it comes to recipes and how to handle them, those classic gender differences that may have their roots in the Stone Age distinctions between men as hunters and woman as gatherers do seem to play a role. Just as men hate to ask for directions while women demand them, guys who cook seem ready to improvise while our mates hesitate to try anything for which they may not have the exact ingredients.

While I have far more cookbooks than most sane individuals, I admit I look at them for probably all the wrong reasons. I look for clues about a spice I might not have thought about, or a trick in preparation that might not occur to me otherwise. Occasionally I actually do try to follow the steps in a recipe, but usually I attempt to get a feeling for how a certain set of tastes and textures should come together. I'm part of the "dash of this, pinch of that" school. After all, it seems rather arbitrary that we need to measure so exactly with the clear exception of baking, where there are crucial matters of chemistry involved.

I was very much influenced in this when I took some cooking classes in New Orleans. The instructors--male, of course--were not concerned about exact measurements or proportions. What counted was that we understood how to make a roux--flour browned in oil--that would be the base for so many wonderful dishes. That was technique. How much of the holy trinity--the somewhat irreverent Cajun expression for the combination of celery, onion, and green bell peppers--we might toss in once this was done depended more on what would fit in the pot with all the other good stuff, such as chicken and Andouille sausage, than on some exact rule of a cup of this to half a cup of that. I liked those guys, even if they were shills for a store's stock of prepared spices.

There finally can be just one rule: how something tastes. The second great tragedy of processed foods, beginning with what we feed our infants, is that almost all subtlety is obliterated through the sheer quantity of salt or sugars added in (the first, of course, is the effect on health). Good spices ought to enhance the natural flavor of what's being cooked, but if someone is especially aware of a spice--an issue when it comes to come to using a hot sauce--then we are not cooking as we should. Either that, or the items being cooked need to be disguised, and now that good meat and fish and good produce are more readily available to us urban types such gimmicks should not really be necessary.

Watching "Julie and Julia"

Okay, after watching the wonderful foodies' film Julie and Julia, I decided to try my own hand at blogging about my efforts to turn what I find in the grocery into something those close to me will rave about. That's not easy. I can write about what happens in my kitchen, but actually turning out rave-worthy meals is something else altogether. I'm starting to get the knack of it, but I have a long way to go.

Only hours after seeing the film did I think about the fact that the wonderful dishes presented on screen had not actually been prepared by Meryll Streep or Amy Adams. That's how well the suspension of belief had worked in my case. Expert chefs had done their job, and even if the results had been less than palatable some wonderful actors would not have given this away. The point was that I wanted a taste--and, even more, I wanted to know how to get these results.

My wife asked me if I now wanted to get a copy of Julia Child's cookbook to add to my collection, which now has about a hundred titles. I'm afraid I collect cookbooks the way would-be authors collect books on writing--or would-be Casanovas collect sex manuals. Maybe this time I'll find the key to realizing my dreams.

I told her, though, that with our cholesterol issues I did not think it was a good idea to go with Julia, for whom there never could be enough butter. I try to make do with olive oil or other less artery-clogging ingredients (although I love the taste of butter, especially Irish butter).

However, I did agree to finally commit some of my own culinary adventures to writing. So often, she reminds me, I will put a lot of things together to prepare a dish she loves and would like to have again, but she knows too well she may never see it again.

This blog is one effort to start recording what I do come up with as well as some of my own thoughts about food and its preparation. In a few days we are having company over and I intend to start off with a salad that I really like.

I use pearl tomatoes (if possible a mixture of types and ideally some heirloom varieties), Persian cucumbers, and a dressing that I prepare with plain yogurt, sour cream, and tzaziki mix (ground garlic and onion).

First I slice the cucumbers fairly thin with one per plate and arrange them. If the tomatoes are not just the size of small marbles, I slice them in half so that I have about eight or ten pieces per plate and I arrange these on top of the cucumbers. I prepare a dressing that is about half yogurt and half sour cream, a couple of tablespoons each with a half-teaspoon or so of the tzaziki mix per serving. I then spread this on top and sprinkle with toasted black sesame seeds (available in Asian food markets). Serve chilled and it's a lovely combination of flavors.