Hungry Mouth

Sopapillas Rellenos

Two months since I made a post! I've been busy traveling and entertaining guests plus it's been too hot to feel like cooking. Time to get back in the groove.

One of my favorite New Mexican specialties is Sopapillas (also spelled Sopaipillas). They are a lovely puffy deep fried bread similar to the beignets of New Orleans. Usually served with honey or cinnamon sugar as a dessert, I prefer them with a savory filling. Somehow during the 4 days I spent in New Mexico this summer, I never had a chance to order them. A terrible oversight which I corrected tonight by cooking some up.

I stuffed them with Machaca and served them with Rancho Gordo's Anazazi beans. Let me put in a plug for Rancho Gordo. These are by far the best beans I have ever tasted. I've tried 3 varieties so far and they are all excellent....it's no wonder that great chefs like Thomas Keller at The French Laundry uses them. They are fresh so cook quickly and need no seasoning except salt.

Sopapillas

2 c flour
1 t salt
1 1/2 t baking powder
1 T oil
1/2-3/4 warm water (as needed to form dough)

Combine ingredients and knead on a floured surface for 5 minutes. Wrap in plastic and let rest for 20 minutes. Roll into a square 1/4 inch thick. Cut into 3X3 inch squares. Deep fry in 400 degree oil a few at a time. Be sure to hold them down in the oil initially and flip after a minute or so. If the oil is hot enough they will puff up almost immediately. Fry til nicely golden brown. Drain well and keep warm.

Machaca

1 lb beef chuck
salt
1 onion, minced
3 clove garlic, minced
3-6 roasted Hatch green chiles, chopped, to taste*
1 large tomato, chopped
cumin, salt, pepper to taste

Cover beef with salted water and simmer til tender. Drain (reserve one cup broth) and shred with two forks. Saute onion and garlic in oil. Add shredded beef. Saute 5 minutes. Add remaining ingredients plus reserved broth. Simmer for about 15 minutes til tomato is cooked.

Assembly: Split open sopapillas and stuff with beef. Sprinkle with shredded cheese and serve. For a fancier presentation have ready warm red or green chile sauce. Place stuffed sopapillas in a baking pan, pour sauce on, spinkle with cheese and broil til cheese melts.

*While in New Mexico this summer I bought 30 pounds of freshly roasted Hatch chiles, packed them in a cooler and froze them when I got home. I had a choice of heat levels and picked medium-hot. OMG! These are VERY hot even with all seeds removed. Be sure to taste test chiles before adding.

Hanger Steak on the Grill

Wandering through a fancy grocery store, I discovererd a piece of hanger steak in the discount meat bin. Yes, I confess on occasion I buy meat from the discount bin. It hasn't killed me yet. I decided to buy it because I had never cooked hanger steak. My local grocery stores don't carry it and when I do see it for sale it's prohibitively expensive due to its current restaurant popularity. The fact that there is only one hanger steak per cow might also drive up the price.

The hanger steak is a piece of meat that literally hangs from the diaphragm of the cow. It's similar in texture to the skirt steak (diaphragm) which we encounter frequently as fajita meat. Sometimes it's referred to as hanging tender or butcher's steak (traditionally the butcher claimed it for himself rather than offering it for sale). Hanger steak is a flavorful but tough, grainy piece of meat like skirt and flank, so it must be cooked and carved with care in order to be appetizing. Cook it over high heat briefly to rare-medium rare and slice it thinly against the grain for the best results.

Marinate a hanger steak in olive oil, minced garlic, and fresh herb sprigs (thyme or rosemary work well) for 8 hours to overnight. I find it's easiest to marinate in heavy-duty zip-lock bags.

A few hours before dinner peel an English cucumber, slice thinly at a slant and toss with S & P and a few T of white wine vinegar. Let sit.

Slice a handful of radishes thinly.

Prepare a tomato vinaigrette. Cut a shallow cross in the bottom of 3 large ripe tomatoes. Drop them in boiling water for about one minute, then drop them in a bowl of ice water. The skin will slip off easily when cool. Remove the core and dice tomatoes (get rid of juice). Stir together 4T EVOO, 1 T white wine vinegar, 1 T horseradish, 1 T chopped fresh tarragon (or parsley or basil if you can't find tarragon), and S & P to taste. Toss with tomatoes.

Heat a grill to high heat. Pat steak dry and grill to medium rare, a few minutes on each side. (As you can see I erred on the rare side.) Allow steak to sit covered with tin foil for 5 minutes.

To serve toss a bunch of arugula with the radishes, EVOO, splashes of balsamic vinegar and S & P to taste. Slice steak thinly across the grain. Divide arugula between 4 plates. Fan steak and cucumber slices around arugula. Drizzle tomato vinaigrette over all.

This is an easy light dish that was inspired by a recipe on a CBS news website.

Katz's Deli, New York

For years I have dreamed of trying the renowned pastrami at Katz's Deli in New York City. As a serious fan of good Jewish-style deli, I've lived in frustration in Houston and the Bay Area unable to obtain anything deserving of the name pastrami or corned beef. I satisfied my deli cravings vicariously by reading dining reports of those fortunate enough to eat in NYC, and based on those reports felt certain that Katz's pastrami was the king. And so it is.

I finally had the opportunity to eat there last week.

Thanks to many reports and insider tips, I knew the best way to order. When you enter Katz's you are given a ticket like a movie ticket. Don't lose it! And don't sit down and receive table service. Go directly to the deli counter and stand in line in front of one of the deli servers. Hold a couple bucks in your hand so the deli person can see it and know they will be tipped. Order your sandwich. They'll hand slice it, first giving you a generous sample. They'll place your sandwich on a paper plate and throw some pickles on another plate. Give them your ticket and they'll write the amount you owe on it. Put your tip in the cup, take your plates and then go find a table. If you want something to drink like a beer, go back up to a different area of the counter.

I made a terrible ordering mistake. Even though I had been assured many, many times that their pastrami was the best, I just had to hedge my bet by getting half a corned beef sandwich and half a pastrami sandwich.

The pastrami, identifiable by the black pepper coating, was absolutely superb...by far the best I've ever tasted. It was juicy brisket with just enough fat and a depth of flavor that wasn't overwhelmed by the pepper coating. It was enhanced by being hand sliced the old-fashioned way. I think Katz's is the last NYC deli that hasn't switched to machine slicing.The corned beef was very good but paled in comparison to the pastrami. Don't bother with it. (Also, be careful with those tastings you get at the counter. I was already full by the time I sat down!)

The crispy pickles were just the way I like, barely cured. They hadn't even reached the half-sour stage.

Katz's has no atmosphere to speak of. It's basically a dive, but an authentic one with a long history dating back to 1888 when it first opened.

Oh, you haven't lost that ticket they gave you on the way in? You need it to get out. Hand it to the cashier at the door and she rings up your purchases. $50 charge for lost tickets.

Chateaubriand

I decided to cook a Chateaubriand for an intimate birthday celebration last weekend. I headed to the nearest grocery store likely to have tenderloin roasts for sale (Andronico's, for you Bay Area readers). It had them...at $23.99/lb! Gulp! I just couldn't bring myself to pay that much. Instead I went to Costco where I discovered I would have to buy an entire tenderloin but at the much more reasonable price of $9.99/lb (choice grade). Of course, it was a bit more effort. The Judge spent about an hour carefully trimming fat and silverskin.

At the end we had two smallish (3-4 servings each) tenderloin roasts, 10 one inch thick filet mignons, and enough tenderloin "tips" for at least two meals. Not bad at all for $50.

I found a lovely recipe at epicurious.com which I'll describe here with my variations.

2 lb butt end tenderloin roast
canola oil
1 chopped onion
2 chopped carrots
1 T fresh thyme (or 1 t dried)

Brown roast well on all sides in oil in an oven proof skillet. Add rest to skillet and place in 400 degree oven. Use a remote thermometer and cook til 125 for medium rare. It took my roast about 20 minutes. Transfer beef to platter and tent with foil.

1 c beef broth
1/3 c Canadian whiskey like Crown Royal

Add to skillet and cook over medium high heat til reduced to about 2/3 c. Strain out solids.

Meanwhile make a blonde roux with 1 T butter and 1 T flour. Add roux to strained juices in skillet.

At same time add 1/3 c heavy cream and 2 t coarsely crushed peppercorns. Simmer gravy over medium heat a few minutes til thickened. Salt to taste.

I served the Chateaubriand with potatoes sauteed in butter, asparagus, and glazed carrots and pearl onions. It was excellent and easy. Of course, the best part is I still have many more meals to go for the same price that one small roast would have cost me if not for Costco.

Last but not least, with the dinner we drank a lovely Ladera Howell Mountain 2001 Cabernet. If you are exploring the Silverado area of Napa Valley, definitely make a brief detour and visit this winery (with an appointment). The caves alone make the tour worthwhile...the wine tasting is an added bonus.

Growing Greece

I brought more than memories home from Greece. We were so taken with Greek cucumbers and tomatoes that we decided to grow our own. During our last week in Greece we stopped at every nursery or likely looking store to buy seeds to no avail. We finally found some seed packets in a small curio store in Athens. We bought tomato and cuke seeds as well as horta (wild green) seeds.

We planted the tomato and cucumber seeds in May and they have flourished. We ate our first home-grown Greek salad tonight. The Greek tomatoes, Greek cucumbers and red onions all came from our garden. The bell pepper, olives and feta were purchased. (The feta was added to individual servings at table as my husband does not eat cheese!) The salad was simply dressed with drizzles of EVOO, lemon juice, dried Greek oregano and S & P.

I was amazed at how sweet the tomatoes and cukes were. Despite the different growing conditions, the vegies had the same taste qualities that made me fall in love with them initially in Greece. Unfortunately, the seed packets give no clue as to vegetable variety. What am I going to do for seeds next year?

To serve with the salad I decided to make the dish that my companion ordered throughout Greece because he just couldn't get enough of it; Stifado, a Greek beef stew. The Greeks also make it with veal and lamb.

An example of Stifado as served in Greece:

I cobbled together a recipe from various sources as follows:

olive oil (not EVOO)
2 lbs of braising beef, cut in 1" chunks
flour
12 boiling onions (not pearl onions---they should be about 1 1/2"-2" diameter), peeled
3 large tomatoes, peeled and chopped
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 t fresh thyme
1 T dried oregano, crumbled
3 bay leaves
pinch of cinnamon
5 whole cloves
1/2 t cumin
2 c red wine
2 T balsamic vinegar
S & P

Dredge meat in flour and brown in oil in batches in large Dutch oven. Remove meat to a bowl. Cut cross in base of onions. Add more oil if needed and saute onions for about 10 minutes til starting to brown. Add garlic and saute for a minute. Return meat plus juices to pot. Add remaining ingredients. Season with S & P to taste. Bake at 350 til meat is tender, about 2 hours.

Here is a not very pretty picture of the stew when almost done:

The stew formed it's own luscious thick gravy. It was pronounced a great success. Four of us finished off the whole amount! Serve with a crusty loaf of bread and Greek salad for a lovely and very Greek meal.

A Greek Way with Octopus

At almost every seaside village restaurant on Lesvos we saw octopus hanging from clotheslines to dry. Prior to drying, it undergoes a rigorous treatment which we were fortunate to observe one afternoon while sitting outside a taverna in Mytilini. An elderly fisherman, standing in water up to his knees in the harbor, laboriously tenderized octopus. Holding the octopus by a few tentacles he smashed it against a rock with great force over and over again...about 15 times. He then laid the octopus on the rock and took hold of a flat mallet, rather like the bottom of an ore, and hammered the octopus repeatedly. He then massaged the octopus against the rock for a few minutes. He repeated this with about a dozen octopus over the course of an hour. He then took his catch and headed off. Given the price of octopus, I hope he made a decent day's wage.

Here is the octopus salad I ordered in Sigri. It could have used a bit more pounding.

The Judge is smoking!

He arose early this morning and lit the fire under my $29.95 Brinkman Water Smoker. Mesquite chips were set to soak. The Judge is a master smoker and amazes me with what he can produce on a simple, inexpensive water smoker.

As usual this past Thanksgiving I bought about 4 turkeys when they were .29/lb. I took one out of the freezer on Tuesday and deposited it in the fridge so it was perfectly defrosted by this morning. I also bought about 4 pounds of pork ribs on sale yesterday. The Judge mixed up his masterful rubs which he has no recipe for, of course.

Here is the turkey before it went on:

Here are the ribs:

(

Well, I demanded a recipe and he says his rubs are as follows:

Turkey rub ingredients---

New Mx medium chile powder is the main ingredient
Cayenne
Mustard Powder
Cumin
Oregano
Ground ginger
Garlic Salt
Crushed red pepper
S & P
Tony Chachere's Creole seasoning
Paprika

For the ribs--

take above seasoning mix and blend with equal amount of brown sugar.