A Mexican Fiesta

I’m sorry that this update has been so long in coming. I was busy with a project all last week, plus I got a touch of something over the weekend that kept me from blogging and cooking. So I’m taking this past weekend off and playing catch-up. This challenge is actually from one week ago.

The challenge was to make a Mexican meal, but not to fall back on the usual suspects. That means no tacos, burritos, enchiladas, fajitas — basically, nothing wrapped in a tortilla. I immediately decided that I wanted to make several small plates, like a tasting menu. Appetizers are often my favorite dishes in Mexican cooking, anyway, and that would give me a chance to try three or four new dishes.

For help, I turned to Rick Bayless, specifically his cookbooks Authentic Mexican and Rick Bayless’s Mexican Kitchen. You may know Rick Bayless from his stint on Top Chef Masters or from his restaurants in Chicago (which I have yet to visit, although my husband has been several times). I love his cookbooks because they make authentic Mexican cooking accessible to the home cook. He gives lots of helpful advice about ingredients, timing, and varying the recipes, and they usually turn out delicious. I won’t be reprinting any of his recipes here, so I urge you to check out his books for yourself.

Here is the resulting menu:

Jicama sticks with lime and mint.

If you’ve never had jicama before, it’s a very refreshing starter. It’s crisp and cool like a cucumber, but the taste is closer to a very mild radish. Look for jicama in the grocery store; it’s a gigantic, waxy thing that looks like an oversized turnip, but it’s easy to peel and cut up into sticks. Marinate the sticks in a little lime juice and lemon juice, chopped mint leaves and salt. We were crunching on these all week long. This was my toddler’s favorite dish of the night.

Tuna seviche.

Seviche is seafood that is “cooked” by marinating it for several hours in lime juice. I’ve never made seviche at home before, mostly because I was afraid of dealing with the uncooked fish. But we like tuna pretty rare anyway, so that seemed like a good fish to use for my first attempt. This was a very refreshing salad, especially because it’s combined with a fresh, vibrant tomato and avocado salsa. A little chopped serrano chile provides a hint of heat.  My husband and I both enjoyed this one.

Melted queso with chorizo, roasted poblanos and tomatoes, served with corn chips for dipping.

This was my favorite dish of the night. I could probably have eaten it until I burst. I used chihuahua cheese, which has a wonderful mild but cheesy flavor. I melted the cubes of cheese in a metal pie plate to try to retain the heat. To the melted cheese I added roasted poblano pepper, crumbled chorizo, scallions and diced tomato. We just scooped it all up with corn chips. I think this mixture would work very well as a topping for nachos. We had about half left over, and it reheated nicely the next night in the same pie plate.

Baked poblano peppers stuffed with chorizo and potatoes, topped with a tomato-chipotle sauce.

This was an intense, flavorful dish. Sharing one pepper was plenty for my husband and me. I had to modify the original recipe, which called for dried ancho peppers instead of fresh poblanos, so this is closer to a chile relleno. I stuffed it with a mixture of pan-fried chorizo and potatoes and sauced it with a spicy tomato-chipotle sauce. That’s parmesan sprinkled on top. It was hot, but not overwhelmingly so. This was my husband’s favorite dish due to the mouth-popping flavor combination.

And I made a delicious red wine sangria to accompany. I mixed cheap red wine with lemon juice, lime juice, orange juice, and seltzer water over ice, and popped in a sprig of mint leaves. The result was way too drinkable!

My husband said that this was my most successful challenge yet, mainly because I stretched myself and made dishes that I wouldn’t normally cook at home. And because everything came out so deliciously. We stretched our stomachs too, as we ate way more than we should. This would make an awesome menu for a Mexican-themed party, especially held outside on the deck on a warm night.

I’m hoping to tackle the next challenge later this week. The challenge is to make a kid’s favorite dinner at home: chicken nuggets and fries. Since I don’t deep-fry, this will require some creativity. Look for the results next week.

Here Come the Wings

This week’s challenge was to make chicken wings, in honor of March Madness. (Apparently, chicken wings are a favorite for snacking while watching sports.)

Now, I am not a huge fan of wings. I usually find them too fatty and greasy for my tastes. So I think I’ve only cooked them once or twice before.

When I don’t know what to start, I turn to one of my reference cookbooks. First on my list is Mark Bittman‘s How to Cook Everything (Revised Edition), and sure enough, I found a recipe for chicken wings in the Appetizers section. Bittman’s recipe promised the tastiness and crust of deep-fried wings without the deep frying. It sounded like the perfect solution. (Since I didn’t modify the recipe, I won’t reprint it here, but if you don’t own a copy of Bittman’s cookbook, you really should.)

Bittman’s method is to first roast the chicken wings with a little olive oil, salt and pepper — turning and basting them halfway through with their own fat — for close to an hour. You then baste them with the flavorful sauce of your choice and turn the oven heat up high to achieve that brown, crusty skin.

Bittman offers six variations of sauces, and we tried three. Of those, we liked the traditional hot sauce (I used my leftover barbecue sauce from a previous challenge) and the ginger-soy glaze the best. Both of these darkened nicely and developed a crunchy skin, while soaking up lots of flavor. The beer-and-butter sauce was a bit too subtle, though, and those wings didn’t get nearly as brown.

My husband and I both enjoyed the end result very much. (The toddler refused to sample them.) The meat was falling off the bones and flavorful, without being too fatty or greasy, which is what usually turns me off about wings. During the long roasting time, most of the fat cooked away, but the meat did stay tender. Adding the sauce just at the end ensured it didn’t burn or get cooked away. I only wish I had made extra sauce for dipping.

I served these with crudites: celery sticks, cherry tomatoes and quartered mushrooms, plus a simple blue cheese dip, also from Bittman’s book, which I made by mixing blue cheese, lemon juice and plain yogurt. I would definitely prepare this yummy meal again for a party or sports-watching event. I think the wings would taste good at room temperature, and so also would make great picnic food.

All in all, a successful challenge! My husband hasn’t issued next week’s challenge yet, so stay tuned to see what it will be.

Super Bowl Challenge: Sliders

This week, I had a challenge for our mini Super Bowl party, which was to make sliders. This was a real challenge for me because (a) I’d never made them before, and (b) I don’t eat beef. My husband requested both a beef and turkey version, so I did get to eat some of them.

Looks pretty good, doesn’t it? I’d say this challenge was an unqualified success. Everyone enjoyed them, and my toddler even ate half of one. I may have been designated the official burger maker of our family, which is funny because, again, I don’t eat beef.

The first issue for me was what kind of beef to use. Many of my cookbooks advise grinding your own meat for burgers, but I wasn’t prepared to go quite that far. I decided on ground chuck because of the higher fat content. Burgers need fat to be delicious.

I also needed a good recipe. After some Internet searching, I settled on this one by Alton Brown (I’m not going to re-type it; just follow the link). This recipe has an interesting technique. You roll out the beef on a large cooking sheet into a very thin layer. You then season the top part and fold it over. Cut that into squares to get the White Castle-style burgers. My only quibble was that the instructions were to cut 8 squares, which seemed to make very large burgers for something that is called “mini man burgers.” I ended up cutting them into 16 burgers, which was just the right size for our tiny hamburger buns.

Speaking of buns, I did attempt to make my own, but my attempt failed gloriously. My dough did not rise. I don’t know if the yeast was kaput, or if I did something wrong in the initial step when I combined the yeast with warm milk. At any rate, I intend to try again sometime in the future, as the pictures of the finished bread in Peter Rinehart’s Artisan Breads Every Day are just way too yummy to resist. Still, for this challenge, we ended up using the backup, which was mini Martin’s potato rolls. Nothing wrong with that.

As for the turkey version, I do have a turkey burger recipe that I have been working on for a while now, and that I think it is pretty good. (Scroll down for it). You do have to add some fat and other flavors to the mix, because turkey burgers will turn into hockey pucks if you don’t. I ended up using the same technique of rolling the ground turkey mix out thinly. Then I added a layer of cheddar to the middle before folding and cutting. The cheddar adds much-needed fat while cooking the burgers, and the little pocket of cheese in the middle is a nice surprise when you’re eating it.

As for toppings, I decided to go traditional. I provided mustard, ketchup, iceberg lettuce, cheddar cheese, pickle slices and pickled red onions (recipe to be posted tomorrow). Next time we make them, my husband wants to try a barbecue version using the barbecue sauce I made for a previous challenge. But for a football game, these little burgers couldn’t be more appropriate. We also had potato skins, cheese bread, guacamole and salsa for dipping — we feasted.

Turkey Burgers

This recipe was adapted from Sara Foster’s Casual Cooking. Makes 4 large burgers or 16 sliders.

In a bowl combine:

• 1 pound ground turkey,
• ⅓ cup fresh bread crumbs
• 2 tablespoons mayonnaise
• 2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
• 1 teaspoon hot sauce
• salt and pepper
• cheddar cheese, cubed or sliced (optional)

Mix well and form into 4 patties or 16 sliders. Optional: insert a cube or slice of cheese in the center of each burger. Either grill or pan-fry in a little oil for 5 minutes each side, until there is no pink at the center and an instant-reading thermometer measures at least 150 degrees. Serve them hot on buns, topping with your favorite condiments.