Carne adovada

I'm not sure why I haven't written this up yet, but it's well past due.

Carne adovada.

As far as I can tell, this is a pretty localized dish from north-central New Mexico but has migrated out a bit.  Sadie's used to be the standard.  Back when it was a little hole above a bowling alley the food was so good that it got in the way of bowlers on a good night.  Then they actually bought a full space and it was still good.  But I haven't had theirs in years and I've had to make do with my own.

The basics are simple: you're going to make pork as hot as you can with a red paste or sauce and then, pretty much invariably, add raw onions.  Huntley Dent has done his research and has broken down the basic dish into two categories: wet and dry.  Wet means a nice red sauce that can be eaten with tortillas; dry is more of a rub than a sauce and is meant mainly for the meat itself and not as a sauce.

But there are many more variations.  Is your pork (and it's always pork) sliced thin or cubed (1-2 inches isn't uncommon)?  Does the flavor come from the sauce or the meat?  Do you spice it or just let the chili speak for itself?

If I'm at a diner in, say, Espanola, I'll take cubed any time.  I don't know what they do to it to make the flavor permeate and I'd rather not speculate.  But a breakfast with carne adovada, hash browns, and tortillas is to die for if you find the right place.

But.  If you're doing it yourself, here's a basic recipe for a wet, thin-sliced dish best served with tortillas.

In a food processor, combine:

• 1 medium onion
• Several pinches of cumin
• Double the cumin with oregano
• 3 generous tablespoons of white vinegar
• 1 package of hot to very hot chile powder, preferably Chimayo but any will do if it comes to it
• Cayenne if you want more heat
• Water until you have a paste

And then slice your pork.  Thin, please.  Something like 1/8th inch.

Also, onions.  Sweet is good here, so if you can get vidalias, good.  Otherwise standard yellows are fine and whites are okish if you're going for maximal effect of the hot.

Layer the pork slices, then onion, then sauce in a baking dish (pyrex is best here).  A second layer is great.

And then let that sit.  For at least 12 hours.  Preferably more.

To finish it, bake covered in foil at about 325 for half an hour then remove the foil and return to the oven for another half hour.

Shred both the pork and the onions and serve that in flour tortillas with cilantro and whatever else you'd like in the mix.  Pico de gallo is good here.  And if you did it right, have water on hand.  Lots of water.

Pad thai

I've done this a few times now. It isn't what you get from a Thai restaurant. Apparently it's also even closer to the real thing than what you can get in this country.

I based this largely on several readings of this extensive post. It's really good. And then I ignored much of the advice and came up with the following.

So, two parts: sauce and assembly.

Sauce

• 1/2 cup fish sauce, more or less. The stuff is salty so take that into account.
• 1/2ish cup -- maybe more -- rice wine vinegar. This was basically because tamarind paste is hard to find; I'm sure it's better done the right way.
• Pure cane sugar -- more than expected
• Sriracha (plenty)
• Garlic-chili paste (also plenty)
• Water to take salt down and get a sauce that will reduce properly under very high heat

Let that all combine for some hours on low heat. You can even keep it for some weeks. Fish sauce is an amazing preservative.

Prep

As per suggestion, I've decided that woking up one serving at a time is the best way to go. Not only does it let you customize to the taste of your fellow eaters, it just comes out better.

But first, noodles. I've used pho. Soaked in hot tap water for less than about five minutes. Make sure these are ready to go.

Take your choice of proteins. I like chicken for this; beef is too aggressive, I hate shrimp, and I don't much care for tofu. If you're going to use shrimp, be sure to add it later than you would the chicken (which goes in first).

Slice your chicken, preferably breast for this (trust me, you won't miss the fat), quite thin. This is rather important, as you really don't want any single serving to be in the wok for more than, say, 90 to 120 seconds.

Crush some peanuts, preferably unsalted. The easy way: put a bunch of peanutes in a ziploc bag and either use a rolling pin to roll them into near pulp or, say, a cast iron pan. Either works.

Dice some green onion.

Chiffonade some basil, preferably Thai or purple, but we've talked about those before.

Wash some bean sprouts. More than you think.

If desired, let about an egg per serving come to room temp. I also hate egg, so I don't add this myself, but it's not only traditional, it's almost required to be "real" pad thai.

Assembly

Heat peanut oil, plenty, in a wok. Toss in any non-seafood with a small ladel-full of the sauce. Cook that nearly through as quickly as possible.

Add noddles and bean sprouts.

If using egg, push everything in the wok to one side save some of the sauce and basically scramble the egg very quickly on the bottom of the wok.

Add shrimp here and make damn sure the heat is high enough to cook quickly.

Add peanuts.

Add more sauce, probably a few ladels if your heat is high enough.

Finish with basil, green onion, etc.

Serve with lime slices and more peanuts for maximum effect.

Mmm. Realish pad thai.

Orange quesadillas

Dead simple if a little weird.  But trust me; they're good.

Slice:

• 1/2 medium orange
• 1/8 or so white or yellow onion

Preheat the oven to 450.

Sprinkle a large (I think we're calling these "burrito size" now) tortilla with the onions.  Add either sliced or shredded cojack in a relatively thin layer.  Sprinkle the orange chunks over that.  Add Cholula for some heat; you really don't want to add the acid that comes from Tabasco here.

Layer on another tortilla.

Bake for 15 minutes on a high rack, flipping once at about 10 minutes.

Let that cool, slice, and eat.  Absolutely delicious.

Edit: and by all means serve this with guacamole.  It really is a perfect compliment.

Pico de gallo

Pico de gallo.  Yeah, this usually means some combination of tomato, onion, and sometimes something vaguely hot; often jalapeno.  It's usually boring and comes off more as a salsa that someone forgot to blend than anything else.

This is not the pico de gallo I grew up with.  Not even close.  What I know, as far as I can tell, is all New Mexico.

Combine:

• Four fine chopped clementines (or equivalent amount of orange; the clementines are nicely sweet though)
• One medium jicama, cubed up into something like 3/8 inch chunks
• One generous handful of parsley (replace with cilantro if desired), choppped
• Red pepper flakes to taste
• Optionally, you could add some lime juice.  I'm personally not a fan, especially if you've already used clementines -- there should be more than enough liquid in there already.

I suggest taking the amount of red pepper flakes up or down depending on how much the pico is supposed to be a cooling agent for other foods.

Toss all that around and it's ready to serve.  If you've never used jicama you're in for a real treat.

And for goodness' sake, don't use tomatoes.

Black beans

This one's easy.  And tasty.  You can modulate spice if need be, and they're slightly (but only slightly) on the unusual side for just standard black beans.

Chop:

• One half white/yellow onion.  Pretty small bits.
• Four or five cloves of garlic

Sweat in olive oil.  Add:

• About 1/3 of a 7oz can of chipotle peppers in adobe sauce, rough chopped, with some of the sauce itself.  This stuff is potent, as it turns out.  Save the rest for another day.

When that's all nicely combined, add:

• Two cans of black beans, one of them without liquid
• One can chicken broth

Bring all that to a boil and reduce it down until the liquid is just covering the beans.  Cover, reduce heat, add some salt.  You can hold that warm as long as you need and beans will just get softer and mushier, which can be desirable.

Tri-tip burritos

For some reason summer for me means tri-tip.  And tri-tip is good.  And very occasionally on sale enough to justify.

After experiencing several experiments on a small smoker (thank you very much Mr. McCormack; all was quite welcome) I decided to give it a shot on my own.  Which naturally meant not traditional smoked beef; that would be too mundane.  Even if I did have a smoker.

Solution: slow-cooked, heavily marinated beef with green chile in a tortilla.  How could that go wrong?  (In this case, it actually didn't.)

Marinade/sauce

In a food processor, combine:

• Garlic
• Cumin
• Oregano
• Ancho (for smokey flavor so not too much; this isn't your heat source)
• 1/4 package of hot chile powder (hot molido, in this case; this is your heat source)
• 50-50 white vinegar and water until there's a thin paste (it's easy enough to modulate the amount of vinegar down a bit, but you do need a decent amount to tenderize the beef)

Cover your tri-tip with this stuff, pour the rest in a baking pan with the meat in it, cover and chill.  Probably best overnight, and probably better if you pierce the meat several times.

Green sauce

The next day, or whenever you're nearly ready to start actually cooking the meat, start up your green sauce.

In a sauce pan, sweat in olive oil:

• 1 medium onion, 1/4 inch dice or so
• Garlic, minced
• Some whole cumin

In the meantime, thaw 1 container green chile (yeah, i used Bueno extra hot for this as well; I could live on that stuff).

When the onions are basically transparent, add:

• 1 yellow or orange pepper (red will do; going for sweet here) in smallish chunks

Sweat that down a bit, then add the green chile (likely still partially frozen), some water, and turn the heat up.  Let it come to a boil.

Thicken as desired with cold water/flour until reasonably thick -- you want it to drop, not run if that makes sense.

In the meantime, start on the meat.

Meat

Bring an oven to 450 or so.  Bring meat back to room temp on the counter; probably start this just before you start on the green sauce.

To do this properly, heat up your cast iron and Maillard that thing on all sides.

Then throw the meat in a baking pan, uncovered, for 20 minutes or so (100 F?) and toss it in the hot oven.

Take it out, remove from pan and set the nice pasty bits aside, wrap in foil and return to the oven until it reaches 125 - 130.

Remove, let sit for 10 - 15 minutes in the foil, then slice thin against the grain.  Return slices to the now likely cool sauce with any retained juices.  Toss around to coat a bit.

Final product

Heat tortillas.  Place meat in tortillas.  Smother in sauce.  Try to close and eat without making a ridiculous mess.  Chopped fresh cilantro would be awesome here as well.  Consider avocado and black olive as well.  Maybe even some lettuce of some flavor.

Serve with black beans perhaps?  Pico de gallo wouldn't hurt either.

Basic beef stir fry

(Part 3 (1 is here; 2 is here) of what I've taken as a challenge from my cousin.)

Since I can't sleep, I might as well write, right?

I'm assuming that I got my taste for noodles with stir fry from my mother who got it from Taiwan.  Most parts of China and southeast Asia would insist on rice instead.  So we'll go with rice this time.

First, get your rice started.  Do it as you will.  I'm not violently opposed to rice cookers even.  But a stove top Basmati really is better.

Basic ingredients:

• Beef, sliced thin.  Preferably a cut without too much gristle.
• Bell peppers, sliced as you like, but I also like to do long and thing for this
• Water chestnuts, lightly chopped
• Bok choy, chopped
• Ginger, garlic, the usual

Also have on hand and ready:

• Rice wine vinegar
• Soy sauce, and please use some type without MSG and with salt
• Sugar
• Corn starch
• Water

Heat your wok.  Add oil -- preferably peanut at this stage.  Maillard the beef; it shouldn't take long.  White sesame seeds are optional at this point but oh so tasty.  Remove and set aside.

Wipe the wok with a paper towel once it's cool enough to do so.

Add about a 50/50 blend of sesame oil and, if you can find it, Mongolian hot oil.  Vegetable time, but only go about half way through the cooking process.  Usual order; start with garlic, add ginger, add peppers, add water chestnuts.  Then bring the heat way down.

And this is where we develop the sauce.  It's pretty much to taste, but the listed ingredients will give you an idea of where to start.  Both the sugar and the corn starch will thicken, and the water is obviously there to make sure it isn't too thick.

When you're happy with the sauce, turn the heat back up a bit, add the beef, and toss in the chopped bok choy.  If you've timed it right, the rice should be about done as well.

And that's a meal.

Bastardized chicken curry thing

This isn't curry.  This is barely Indian.  This is not how you make Indian food.

It is, however, simple and quite tasty.

This was stolen and modified from, I believe, Food and Wine, although good luck finding it on their god awful website.  It literally took me 80 minutes the first time -- and I knew what I was looking for.

The link to the original recipe is here (and OK, the website has improved).

But like I said, it's been modified through much trial and error.

First, a side point that will become relevant later: garam masala is a finishing spice.  It is not one of those things you toss in and let stew for hours or some such.

Basic ingredients:

• Oil of some sort; standard vegetable seems to work fine
• Yogurt. In this case any plain variety is fine but I still like full fat.
• Red onion; sliced
• Four to six jalapenos.  Red if you can get them.  Seeded if you're feeling weak; otherwise leave them in as extra capsaicin on the tongue never actually hurts.
• Chicken breasts; probably three or four to serve four or five.
• Turmeric
• Curry powder -- I think hotter is better but moderate as you will
• Garlic, and naturally the more the better; finely chopped
• Naan or pita
• Tomatoes
• Lettuce of some sort
• Garam masala

Slice the chicken into something like 1/8 inch strips and toss those in a bowl.  Cover in yogurt and add sliced jpeps if you dare along with the curry powder and turmeric until the whole thing is nice and yellow and spicy.  Let that sit for a bit; at least until you're done with the rest of the recipe and preferably up to an hour.

Slice tomatoes to taste and chop the lettuce.

Slice the onion; heat the oil.  Sweat them a bit until just barely translucent.

Toss in the chicken mixture with the onions.  And keep tossing.  And tossing.  Otherwise the yogurt will separate.  This should simmer down nicely.

Drop the heat.  This is kind of important.

Start with your chosen bread.  Either toast the pita or tell whatever the naan package tells you to do.

Add more yogurt and garam masala to taste; both will sour the mixture but in a good way.

Serve the chicken/onion/yogurt thing with the tomatoes and lettuce plus the bread.  Really can't go wrong on this one though I really wouldn't call it Indian food.  Either stuff the pita or do the more traditional thing and just scoop ingredients from the plate.  In fact, this wouldn't go wrong with the Ethiopian method of serving everything on a platter and letting everyone scoop from there.

Orange chicken tacos

Hot, sweet, and acidic makes a great combination if you can balance it right.  An orange salsa chicken wrapped in tortillas is a good way to balance all of that.  Call them burritos, tacos, whatever.  But it works well.

Two variations.  The first is my modification of a family recipe and the second is the original.

Baking method

Thaw one can of orange juice concentrate enough to get the thing out of the cardboard tubing.  Dump that in to a pyrex baking pan.

Add a generous amount of jarred salsa; Pace Picante seems to work best -- hot is better but medium seems to work just fine.  Go for about 3/4 of the amount of concentrate.

Add three or four frozen chicken breasts.

Toss into the oven at about 350ish.  Bake until the chicken is nearly done and the orange juice/salsa mixture has reduced a bit.

Remove and slice the chicken relatively thin.  Replace it in the mixture and return to the oven until the chicken is done and the sauce has reduced a bit further; bumping the heat here isn't a bad idea.

Remove the chicken again and keep the remaining mixture as a sauce.

Grilling method

This one takes a bit longer but the ratios are about the same.

Combine orange juice (concentrate doesn't work as well here), salsa, and thawed breasts.  Cover and marinate in the refrigerator for at the very least one hour and at the most about eight.

Pull the chicken; grill it until done to taste.  Slice to serve.

Serving

Flour tortillas seem to compliment these flavors better than corn but either will work.  Use whatever normal fixings you would for a taco or whatnot; lettuce, cheese, black olives, etc.  Guacamole is for some reason contraindicated but fresh avocado slices seem just fine.  If you use the first method I'd recommend staying away from excess tomato; there's already plenty of acid.

Assemble at the table; simple as could be.

Alternatively, this can work out exceptionally well on a salad.

Oh, and the leftovers can be put to many a good use.

Enchiladas

This can be done the right way or the wrong way as far as I'm concerned. Most people do it the wrong way.

Enchiladas do not need to be rolled to be good. In fact, I really prefer them stacked.

This style really isn't found outside of New Mexico as far as I can tell, though we have at least one decent restaurant in Denver that stacks memorably.

Homemade is still better.

This is a variation that, as family legend recalls it, came in a supplement to an Albuquerque phone book[1] with a few variations from Huntley Dent[2] and experience. Without further introduction:

In a skillet -- preferably cast iron as that doesn't stain -- slowly heat some oil or shortening. I'm really digging butter these days but that's more of a personal choice. You'll be making a roux[3], so add more than you need just for base vegetables.

Dice some onions. White seems best. One, maybe two if they're small.

Dice some garlic. Maybe four or five cloves; this one doesn't need to be overkill.

Add all to the skillet. Onions should remain semi-firm and the garlic should be fully extracted for flavor.

In the meantime, mix a packet of red chile powder -- available at
decent grocery stores, and labeled for heat -- with water. It'll clump;
be persistent.

Chimayo and hot new mexico are my favorites for this one.

When onions are done, add flour to match the oil, cumin, and a touch
of oregano. Make a roux.

Take off heat, add powdered chile and water to roux. Back to heat,
bring to a simmer and cover for a bit. Don't let the sauce burn; it
seriously affect taste.

When the sauce is done, layer thusly in pyrex (for easy cleanup):

Sauce
Corn tortilla
Onion/garlic mix
Shredded cheese (I happen to like cojack but cotija is great here too)

Keep stacking, usually about 3-4 tortillas high.

Bake at 375 until all the cheese is melty and the tortillas have slightly crispy edges.

Garnish with lettuce and tomatoes. Guacamole is a great side here as well.

___________________
[1] No, seriously.

[2] See my Manifesto.

[3] If you don't, well, I'll write that up someday. But you should. They're important.