Charred Asparagus Tacos with Creamy Adobo and Pickled Red Onions

There are a lot of things that I love about this recipe.  The first is the asparagus itself.  Fresh asparagus is one of the things I love most about spring.  Charred in a pan with evoo, s&p, the asparagus was sweet but grassy.  The second is how wonderful the creamy adobo sauce is.  This is a sauce that I want to slather on all sorts of dishes - it is spicy, sweet and tangy.  Actually, I think this sauce would work really nicely with skirt steak tacos.  I told Alex that if we ever have people over for a Mexican fiesta I want to simply grill up some skirt steak for tacos and make these asparagus tacos.  You can use all of the same fixings for both sets of tacos, whip up some homemade guacamole and some elote and it will be an amazing meal.  Somehow you taste all of the various flavors here - the adobo sauce adds a ton of flavor without obscuring the flavor of the asparagus or the sweetness of the pickled onions.  My two biggest complaints about the Smoky Chicken Tinga Tacos we made were that the flavor of the chipotles obscured everything else and the tacos didn't have any texture.  All you tasted was heat and everything was soft.  This dish had varying textures and serious depth of flavor.  It was sweet, spicy, crunchy, creamy and tangy.  In a nutshell, these tacos were delicious.  And I will be adding them to my regular taco rotation.  They were great with fresh asparagus, but with all of the other flavors and textures going on, normal supermarket asparagus would work too.

Recipe after the jump!

Rodrigo-Style Fish Tacos

I wanted something healthy and easy for dinner tonight after feasting on black and white cookies and other baked goods today and immediately thought of seafood.  So I sent Alex off to pick up some chicken for tomorrow night's dinner and headed to the seafood counter.  Fairway had some wild striped bass fillets that looked really nice and decided that we should make fish tacos.  I love tacos.  And I love seafood.  So it is natural that I try to combine the two fairly regularly.  I found the recipe for Rodrigo-Style Fish on Serious Eats several months ago, but we never got around to making it.  I looked at it while at the grocery store and decided that we could make some variation on it and turn it into tacos.  I didn't read far enough to see that the author already suggested serving the fish with corn tortillas, but clearly we were on the same wavelength.  Since the striped bass I picked out looked so nice I adapted the cooking method to basically season it with salt and pepper and sear it using another recipe/cooking method that I found online for perfect seared fish.  I highly recommend trying the cooking method for the fish.  Our striped bass was beautifully cooked, with a wonderfully crispy skin and a moist, flaky flesh.  It was perfect.  This fish would have worked with a just a squeeze of lemon, but I thought the sauce was a really nice touch - full of citrus and herbs.  I never would have thought to use Maggi sauce because when I think of Maggi sauce I think soy sauce and Asian food, but it added a nice saltiness to the fish.  I'm a huge fan of this recipe.  I would definitely try both the fish and the tacos again separately and together, and also with other types of fish depending on what is fresh.

Recipe after the jump!

Tacos de Camaron

There is a restaurant in the East Village called Mercadito that has the best shrimp tacos I have ever tasted.  They also make really good fried fish tacos and guacamole, but it's the shrimp tacos that really stick with me because the shrimp are in this creamy, spicy chipotle sauce that I love.  Yum.  About a month ago I saw a recipe on People.com for those tacos and I got really excited.  We had originally been planning on making a variation on some shrimp tacos that I had at Nada in Cincinnati, but I got all excited when I saw this recipe.  The tacos were good, but I'm not sure how faithful they are to the recipe that the restaurant actually uses.  At the very least, they have to puree the chipotle sauce because the shrimp is bathed in a really creamy, spicy and rich sauce at the restaurant with no discernible chunks.  This version was a lot more rustic (and a lot spicier than I remember), which isn't necessarily a bad thing.  The sauce was a lot thinner - I think to replicate the sauce you would have to add some more butter and puree.  It might need a little something to give it some more oomph.  I didn't bother to take a bunch of pictures trying to get a really nice one because the tacos looked like a mess on a tortilla and there's really only so much you can do about that.  So long as you aren't afraid of mess, spice or chipotles, they are very tasty.  These aren't the best shrimp tacos we have ever made, but I would make them again with a few minor tweaks.

Recipe after the jump!

Stacked Veggie Enchiladas

I have been trying to come up with a really good recipe to break my blogging fast, but we haven't been cooking much recently.  I've been busy with work and we have been a little lazy of late - when we do cook, we tend to stick with easy riffs on dishes we have made in the past.  I just don't have the energy to make elaborate meals when I am this busy.  Alex has also been pretty busy with school so he hasn't had the time to cook either so the blog has just been kind of hanging out there all alone.  Sorry blog - I just don't have time for you like I used to.  And I can't see that changing anytime in the near future.  I salute anyone who works full time and still manages to post several times a week, but I don't think I can do it anymore.  Anyway, I kept trying to come up with something really amazing for the blog (rather than the random salads and such we have been making recently), but I finally decided that I needed to just post the next thing I made that was new.

I'm not sure why or how I started thinking about making enchiladas, but this dish has been a few weeks in the making.  It's the end of the summer and a lot of my favorite vegetables (like corn) are about to disappear from the farmers' market so I wanted to take advantage of them while I can for this dish.  I was originally going to make chicken and zucchini enchiladas with salsa verde, but I changed my mind once I saw fresh corn at the market.  I also abandoned the idea of salsa verde once I realized that I had everything I needed at the apartment to make a quasi-traditional red enchilada sauce.  I used a recipe from Homesick Texan for the sauce and then started playing around.  I threw onions, zucchini (also from the farmers' market) and corn in the enchilada filling.  I also added some cilantro stems, which is a recent thing that I secretly love doing.  It's my new little thing.  I didn't feel like going through the process of rolling my enchiladas so I stacked them instead (kind of like a Mexican lasagna with corn tortillas instead of noodles).  And then I threw it all in the oven and baked it.

All things considered, I think this was pretty successful.  We have only made enchiladas once or twice before (and never stacked enchiladas) and I'm always pretty happy with myself when we are winging it on something this new and it turns out.  I would probably play with the recipe a bit in the future to make it perfect, but it was pretty good.  The sauce had good flavor - nice and smoky, with some heat without being bitter or gritty.  The vegetables had good flavor too (although you could swap out the veggies we used for whatever was in season).  I had originally worried that the vegetable filling wouldn't be filling enough without some black beans or another zucchini, but I think we ended up with just the right amount (and it was plenty filling).  One thing we did mess up on - we forgot to cover the enchiladas with tin foil for the first 20 minutes, which would have helped the enchiladas stay moister/saucier.  Oops.  That was both Alex's and my chief complaint - that the enchiladas dried out a bit.  I would definitely cover them in the future. 

Recipe after the jump!

Charred Corn and Zucchini Tacos

Hurray tacos!  I love tacos.  And I love fresh corn.  So I knew this recipe was going to be good.  There are actually a ton of corn taco recipes out there so before fresh corn season ends I hope I have the chance to try out a few more.  This recipe was one of the easier ones out there and didn't require an additional trip to the grocery store.  It also included a number of ingredients that I love (corn, zucchini and cotija cheese) and that are at the peak of their season right now.  I thought these tacos were nice (and very summery), but I'm positive that the perfect corn taco is out there.  I just know it.  I tried the tacos with two different salsas and I thought the salsas added another level of flavor that I really appreciated.  I might try the corn-zucchini filling for quesadillas, enchiladas or tostadas.  And I wonder if some blackbeans would make a good addition?  So many thoughts, so little time left before fresh corn goes out of season...

Recipe after the jump!

Chilaquiles with Southwestern Pulled Brisket

What do you do when you have like 3/4 of a pound of Southwestern Pulled Brisket left in the fridge and 3 ripe avocados?  You could make more of the same tacos, but that's kind of boring.  I guess you could make sandwiches, but that's pretty boring too.  We had roughly 20 corn tortillas leftover from the tacos (Alex bought the family-sized package) so it made sense to make more tacos or something that uses tortillas rather than going out to buy bread.  I wanted to make migas or breakfast tostadas, but Alex decided (and since he was cooking I couldn't protest too much) that he wanted chilaquiles.  By the time I got home from work he had already put together the red chili sauce and fried up the tortillas.  I have to say, it's pretty nice to come home to a homemade meal that is already well underway!

The red chili sauce was not my favorite - I thought it was a little bitter/harsh.  It had a nice spice level, but I was a little alarmed by my first taste of just the chili sauce-coated tortillas.  But the bitterness worked fairly well with the leftover brisket (which was sweet and meaty) and the leftover pickled shallots (which were slightly spicy/sweet and nicely acidic).  If you don't have brisket you could try serving with a fried egg (or poached eggs) and the fatty richness of the oozing egg yolk might also work with these chilaquiles.  In that case I might add some honey to the red chili sauce to add a little sweetness to counteract the bitterness.  I wasn't originally planning on squeezing fresh lime juice on the top of the chilaquiles because I didn't want to make them any soggier than they already were, but I needed the additional freshness, acidity and bright flavor of the lime to really make it work.  When I tried another bite of everything after squeezing the lime over the top it all came together nicely.

Recipe after the jump!

Red Snapper Tacos

 

I will be the first to admit that these tacos were initially conceived of as a guacamole-delivery system.  The thought process went something like this - I wanted to make guacamole, tacos taste good with guacamole, so I should make fish tacos.  And that my friends was how lunch was planned.  I have always had a soft spot for fish tacos.  When my mother and I went to San Diego a few years ago for a mommy-daughter bonding weekend I gorged myself on fish tacos of all kinds.  One night we went to happy hour at a restaurant called South Beach Bar & Grille on a recommendation from a friend of mine and it had perhaps the best fish tacos I have ever tasted.  They were so fresh and delicious.  I love baja fish tacos (lightly battered and fried fish with a crunchy cabbage topping) and theirs were totally perfect, but I also liked their grilled fish tacos.  Every once in awhile I decide to make fish tacos at home and when I do they are always grilled.  I have tried a number of different types of fish including tuna, mahi mahi and snapper (and my usual seafood taco default is shrimp because it's cheap and easy), and they have all worked well.  I totally believe that certain types of fish lend themselves better to fish tacos than others.  Salmon and swordfish are both too meaty and heavy for me.  When I want a grilled fish taco I want something light and fresh.  These red snapper tacos fit the bill perfectly.  We have several different types of chili powder in the apartment so I picked two and seasoned the fish lightly before grilling.  I wanted to top the tacos with something (in addition to the Mango Pomegranate Guacamole) and we had some cherry tomatoes in the kitchen so I threw together a quick tomato salad.  It all came together relatively quickly and easily.  I'm not saying that these fish tacos can in any way compare to those at South Beach Bar & Grille, but they weren't half bad for some lazy fish tacos in an UWS apartment.

Recipe after the jump!

Mango Pomegranate Guacamole

It seems that most of my best menu planning recently has spontaneously occurred while stretching after spin class.  I'm not sure why that is, but it seems that everytime I go to spin class on Sunday afternoon I come home with a bunch of new ideas for dinner and/or lunch.  For example, the Char Siu Noodle Soup that I made last weekend and the Sping Chicken Soup with Matzo Balls were both post-spin class ideas, as were this guacamole and the red snapper tacos that I served it with.  As I was sprawled on the rubber mat at Equinox yesterday I kept thinking about the number of avocados (4) we had in the apartment.  I bought the avocados for a salad we made a few days ago and we had a ton left that I didn't want to go to waste.  The logical conclusion was that we needed to make some guacamole.  I already had a recipe in mind for Sunday lunch, but I decided to scrap it (or save it for dinner) and make some guacamole instead.  The guacamole that immediately came to mind was a version we had at La Condesa in Austin, Texas that included queso fresco, pomegranate molasses and pomegranate seeds.  It sounded like an odd combination but it was really tasty.  And then I thought, ok, let's make some guacamole with pomegranate seeds and serve it with fish tacos (more on the tacos later).  Since we had a bunch of mangos left over in the apartment from a recent trip to Whole Foods, I decided that I would make a mango salsa to serve with the fish tacos.  Then I stumbled across this recipe and decided that rather than make a mango salsa for the tacos and a pomegranate guacamole for the appetizer, why not make a mango, pomegranate guacamole and kill two birds with one stone?  Perfect!

I think that this guacamole was a fun variation on traditional guacamole.  I liked the bursts of sweetness from the mango and the pomegranate seeds.  Alex can't make homemade guacamole without a pinch of ground cumin (it's kind of his thing) so he threw some in while I was putting together the fish tacos.  I still think that the pomegranate guacamole we had at La Condesa was better so the next time I start jonesing for some pomegranate guacamole I will try to recreate that one.  But if I were to have people over and offer up a guacamole and salsa bar with several versions of each (maybe for Cinco de Mayo), this one was totally interesting enough make the line up.

Recipe after the jump!

Green Chili with Pork

When it's cold outside soup sounds like the best thing in the whole wide world.  And I'm not usually a chili fan, but there is nothing more seasonally appropriate than a bowl of steaming hot (both in temperature and in spice level) chili when it is insanely cold out.  This week was absolutely perfect for chili.  Since I don't like pinto beans (or a ton of beans of any sort) in my chili I usually end up defaulting to a chicken or turkey chili with white beans, but I thought this green chili with pork recipe sounded like an interesting bean-free alternative when I stumbled across it sometime last winter.  And it was interesting.  I wish the flavor of the cilantro came through a little more clearly, but the chili had a nice spice level and the flavor overall was quite good provided that you like pork (it was quite porky).  I loved the substitution of hominy for beans because in my humble opinion, hominy and corn are way better than beans.  You might or might not agree with me there, but beans just don't do it for me.  I think you could totally lighten this chili up by adding more vegetables - some zucchini would have worked nicely.  Another bonus for me was that the chili didn't need to simmer for hours and hours to develop its flavors, although a little more simmering wouldn't have hurt.  Overall it was a nice hearty winter dinner!
Recipe after the jump!

Swordfish with Chile Pesto and Avocado Salad

We really need to make more swordfish in our apartment.  Every time we make swordfish at home (and don't screw it up because we have done that before) I am reminded that I really do like swordfish.  We probably make it about twice a year, but I really think we should bump it up to every few months.  If all of our swordfish recipes turned out this well I think we would definitely make it more.  The swordfish itself was juicy and perfectly cooked.  And the chile pesto was very interesting - it had a ton of chile flavor.  I would use it again with pork and maybe beef.  I would also consider using it with duck.  My one complaint with the pesto was that the texture was a little gritty and in some bites you ended up with a big chunk of dried chili.  But it had a lot of good flavor.  We added a little honey to the pesto because it was initially a little bitter for us, but a tsp or two of honey nicely counteracted the bitterness of the dried chilis.  I would definitely recommend serving with some avocado salad because the creaminess of the avocado works really nicely with the meatiness of the swordfish and the spice of the pesto.  If you were to make the recipe as written and serve the swordish as a topping for tacos, don't forgo the avocado slices.  I wished we had topped the swordfish with a few pepitas for crunch and texture (or perhaps thinly sliced some corn tortillas and fried them until crispy), but even without that additional textural element it was pretty tasty.

Recipes after the jump!

Hurricane Cooking - Dan Barber's Brussels Sprouts, Mexican Chicken Soup, Lettuce in Sesame Sauce

First things first - the hurricane hit and we are A-OK.  I know that much of lower Manhattan (as well as various suburbs and boroughs of Manhattan) are underwater and without power, but we survived pretty much unscathed.  While we were cooped up in the apartment we ended up cooking quite a bit, so this is going to be one large post containing a number of new recipes that we made over the past few days, in no particular order.  We also made a bunch of recipes that we have made before (like these Buttermilk Biscuits with Green Onions, Black Pepper and Sea Salt) And due to the weather, we don't have pictures of all of the recipes, which is unfortunate, but what can you do?

First up is this brussels sprouts recipe, which I saw on Serious Eats and got really excited about because it couldn't be easier.  Once I started reading further I realized that it is a little finnicky and tedious in that you are supposed to make sure all brussels sprouts are first added to the pan cut-side down, and then "turn each sprout over carefully on its back" after the brussels sprouts have seared up nicely on the cut side.  We cut corners a bit and weren't as precise in the cooking process as perhaps we could have been.  Things I will use from this recipe - the cooking method.  You get an unreal amount of caramelization on the brussels sprouts in a fairly short time period.  I would probably try different vinegars and seasonings in the future, but it was a beautifully simple recipe.  You got nice sweetness from the balsamic, balanced nicely against the nutty flavor of the caramelized brussels sprouts.  It wasn't the most amazing recipe I have ever made, but it was a really nice, simple side.

Now for the Mexican chicken soup.  This was something of a day long endeavor.  I started prepping the stock while on a conference call at 11:00 am.  The stock took about an hour to prepare, before we let the chicken cool in the stock for another few hours.  Around 6:30-7 pm we got started on making the soup to serve to some of our neighbors.  It smelled wonderful while it simmered away.  By the time the soup was ready I was really hungry and excited to finally taste it.  We don't often go to the trouble to make homemade stock and every time we do it really excites me because soup made with homemade stock is better than soup made with boxed stock by several orders of magnitude.  And when you make homemade stock you can season and modify your stock so that the flavors best suit the soup you are preparing.  This time I added various ingredients that are typical of chicken stock (onions, carrots, celery, thyme, garlic, bay leaves) and a few ingredients that I think of as being typically Mexican (chilis and cilantro).  I think that the flavors of the soup were really interesting.  I was a little worried about the texture of the blended hominy and chilis, but it ended up being nicely thick and hearty.  The chilis gave the soup a nice slightly sweet, slightly spicy flavor.  I will definitely be making the soup again because it's great cold weather fare and pretty simple.

Now for the Lettuce in Sesame Sauce.  I'm not really sure what there is to say about this recipe - I have a feeling that the sesame sauce is not going to appeal to a lot of palates.  I told Alex I thought the salad would go really nicely with a batch of Sichuan Dumplings in Chili Oil.  The combination of the thick and nutty sesame sauce would be nicely offset by the sweetness and heat of the chili oil.  We ate it with fried rice, which wasn't the most ideal pairing, but we had a limited selection of ingredients left by Tuesday afternoon...

Recipe after the jump!

Corn and Pepper Jack Quesadillas with Radish and Cabbage Slaw and Mexican Tomato Salad

I'm not quite sure how this happened (because it was not intentional), but this week we did Meatless Monday and then ended up with a Meatless Tuesday.  I hadn't actually thought about the fact that we were serving vegetarian meals two nights in a row.  Granted, it would not have made much of a difference because I wanted to use up our corn and tomatoes from the farmers' market.  It just kind of happened...  And when you buy as much produce from the farmers' market as I did this past Sunday, a few vegetarian meals are inevitable.  I have another vegetarian meal on tap for later in the week.  Don't worry though - tonight for dinner we will be making pork schnitzel.

I have to admit that this dinner came together kind of randomly.  We picked up tortillas and a shredded pepper jack blend this weekend at Trader Joes, so quesadillas sounded like a natural use for both of those ingredients.  And I had one ear of corn left over from Monday's Corn on the Cob with Lime Salt, so I figured I would throw some corn in the filling to the quesadillas.  And I got the idea to add mayonnaise to the filling from a recipe I found on Epicurious.  I was a little skeptical but I went with it and it really worked.  I had tomatoes to use, so I was going to make a salsa, but I decided to make a pico de gallo-esque tomato salad instead.  We also had radishes left over from the farmer's market so I wanted to make some sort of cabbage and radish salad/slaw of sorts.  So we ransacked the fridge (and I picked up some new cabbage from the grocery store since ours had seen better days) and we threw in a little bit of this and a little bit of that and made dinner.  I thought that considering how random my meal planning was this time, dinner turned out surprisingly delicious.  The brightness of the slaw and the acidity and faint heat of the tomato salad paired beautifully with the richness of the quesadillas.

Recipes after the jump!

Chilaquiles with Pepitas, Charred Corn and Black Beans

There are a few things in just the title of this recipe that caught my eye - charred corn and chilaquiles.  I love chilaquiles and you just don't see them enough here in NYC.  I guess it's not sexy enough for all of the upscale Mexican restaurants in the city and there really aren't many decent hole in the wall Mexican places either.  And of the Mexican restaurants that I know of, none of them except for Cascabel serve chilaquiles (although I am sure that there are others out there that do).  Earlier this year The Village Voice had a blog post about how chilaquiles are finally making their way to NYC.  I am going to have to try out some of their recommendations.  Actually, looking at Toloache's brunch menu I totally have to go there.  They have all sorts of yummy things on there - including chilaquiles.  I think these chilaquiles would have benefited from the addition of a little crema for additional creaminess and a nice tangy flavor.  The toppings were all a little on the dry side (think corn, beans, onions and pepitas) so it would be been nice to have a little something else to lend some moisture.  Otherwise, I thought it was a good dish.  I know I am being a little picky here, but the dish required a decent amount of time and effort so I had hoped for it to have slightly more wow factor, but I think that the crema would totally have made the difference.  Oh well. I have another chilaquiles recipe from Rick Bayless to try out and next time I will make sure to have crema on hand so we don't run into that problem again.

Recipe after the jump!

Esquites (Mexican Street Corn Salad)

 

As far as I am concerned, elote (Mexican corn slathered in mayo and topped with cheese, lime juice and chili powder) is one of the best things to happen to corn since...  Well, since ever.   I discovered elote a few years ago at a Mexican restaurant in NYC and haven't looked bad since.  It is just so delicious.  I have never heard of esquites, but according to Wikipedia, esquites is what happens when you cut the kernels off the ears of corn and make a salad out of the elote, rather than serving the whole corn on the cob.  Although I have been tempted several times to just bite the bullet, we never made elote at home because I have an aversion to adding mayo to dishes.  Somehow I can eat dishes at restaurants that I know include mayonnaise (provided that the level of mayo isn't crazily apparent), but making anything at home that includes more than a tbsp of mayonnaise just isn't my thing.  But this dish might change my mind.  Somehow it seems more palatable to me to add a little mayonnaise to a corn salad, rather than slathering it all over corn on the cob.  I know it makes no sense, but sometimes I just don't make sense.  I am ok with that (and I like to think that Alex is too).  This dish had everything that I love about elote (the combination of sweet corn, salty cotija cheese, cilantro and the warmth of the chili powder is delicious) in a form that I think works better for apartment living.  If we had a grill it would be a lot easier to grill whole ears of corn, but in an apartment it works better to just cut the kernels of corn off the ears and sear them in a cast iron skillet.  And it is just yummy.  I don't know if traditional recipes for elote include scallion greens and jalapenos, but I thought both were really nice additions to the dish, which made it feel a little more salad-like and gave it some additional freshness and flavor.  I would make this dish as a side for any Mexican meal - some esquites, fresh guacamole and tacos sounds like a perfect summer meal to me!

Recipe after the jump!

Carne Adobada (Grilled Adobo-Marinated Skirt Steak) and Corn Pudding

We made these dishes last weekend when we had friends over for dinner, but I didn't get around to posting about them until now.  I guess that's because I didn't find either dish to be super exciting.  They were both good.  I was happy to eat them.  But neither blew me away.  Alex was in the same boat.  With respect to the steak, think that the flavor was pretty good, but we were both hoping for a little more kick or pizazz from the adobo.  We tried eating the steak as tacos (with corn tortillas, jalapenos and cilantro) and then alone; I think I preferred it solo.  I thought that the flavor of the steak was muted enough that the corn tortilla masked it a little too much.  I wish we had made a salsa or something to go with it, but we ran out of time.  And I'm not really sure what kind of salsa I would had served.  The recipe was intended to be served as part of a taco party menu and there were two salsa recipes and one guacamole recipe on the menu.  I wish we had made one of them because I think that would have made a real difference and then the tacos would have been much more successful.  

As for the corn pudding, it was sweet and I thought the flavor of the roasted poblano pepper was really nice in it.  Even though the poblanos were just on top, the flavor really permeated the entire pudding.  And the texture was really nice - tender and creamy, but not as fluffy and airy as a souffle, or as dense as cornbread.  It was also nicely moist without being wet.  But it was fairly labor intensive to make (almost like a souffle since you had to separate the eggs and whip up egg whites).  To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure that the flavor of either dish was worth the time and effort.

Recipe after the jump!

Jicama, Radish and Pepita Salad

I love this salad.  It is everything I wanted it to be - fresh, bright and clean.  The flavors work together really nicely to give you a wonderfully refreshing salad with a hint of sweetness (frmo the honey and jicama) to counteract the slight peppery flavor of the radishes and the salty flavor of the roasted salted pepitas and Cotija cheese.  It also has great texture (lots of different types of crunch).  I was really happy with it.  And I know I will make it again because it is exactly the type of salad that I crave all spring/summer long.  In a throwdown between this salad and my other favorite "Mexican" salad (Mache and Avocado Salad with Tortilla Strips), I'm not sure exactly which one would win.  They are both delicious and easy to make, but they are very different salads.  I'm going to call it a tie because I'm not sure I could choose a winner (and because I will definitely be making both salads for years to come).

Recipe after the jump!

Mexican Brownies

I served these brownies as dessert during a recent dinner party with a Mexican theme.  I had a bunch of different dessert ideas but Alex requested that I make the "easiest" dessert option as we were already trying out 3 other new dishes.  So I went with brownies because I figured brownies were easier than either a Mexican Chocolate Tart with Cinnamon-Spiced Pecans or Mexican Wedding Cookies.  I took a really basic brownie recipe (one that is fairly similar to the Cocoa Brownies with Browned Butter and Walnuts recipe I made awhile back) and added cinnamon, cayenne and chocolate chips to give it a little extra something.  I spent a few minutes deliberating about the use of cayenne versus ancho chili powder or another type of chili powder, but Alex and I decided that we wanted a hint of heat more than we wanted the smoky flavor of chili powder.  I also used Dutch-processed cocoa powder because I thought it would be smoother (and less bitter) than regular unsweetened cocoa powder.  I briefly debated that decision too until I realized that all we had was Dutch-processed cocoa powder.  I wanted to use bittersweet chocolate chips instead of semisweet, but Alex was busy and I couldn't reach the bittersweet chocolate chips so I just went with semisweet.  I also thought about adding pecans, but Alex is not a fan of nuts in baked goods so I decided to leave them out.

I thought that the brownies had a really nice smooth chocolate flavor and creamy texture with just a hint of cinnamon and cayenne.  I would say that the brownies were fudgy, rather than cakey (although they weren't super fudgy).  I liked the addition of the chocolate chips for a little texture and richness, although I wish that I had added the pecans for a little more texture.  We served the brownies with some nice vanilla ice cream and I thought they were a very nice ending to a successful meal (more on the rest of the meal later).

Recipe after the jump!

Black Beans and Rice with Chicken and Apple Salsa

Even though I am typically not a fan of black beans I was really drawn to this recipe.  It just sounded so interesting - so different from the things we typically make.  And if we had made the recipe as intended (using a store-bought rotisserie chicken instead of roasting our own chicken breasts), it would have been a fairly quick and easy meal to throw together, so that was another draw.  As it turns out, I actually like black beans.  Or at the very least, I really liked these particular black beans.  My main problem with black beans is that they are often starchy and muddy tasting, with a really mushy texture.  These were really flavorful and we left them pretty much intact so they still had a little texture.  We added some serrano chilis to the black beans and the salsa to give it all some kick and I think that touch was key.  A little spice can work wonders for me.  The beans went really nicely with the chicken, the apple salsa and the brown rice.  I thought it all just worked really nicely together.  Alex and I were both surprised by how flavorful the dish was.  He actually liked it so much that he brought in the leftover beans, rice and apple salsa to work - even though he thought it made him look like a hobo since that entire portion probably cost less than $0.50.

Recipe after the jump!

Chili-Marinated Skirt Steak Tacos and Green Salsa with Avocado

Sometimes we get stuck in a rut.  Sometimes we try to mix it up.  This dish came about when I was trying to use one of our cookbooks that we never use - Rosa's New Mexican Table.  I bought the cookbook ages ago at Costco or Sam's Club when I saw that they had the recipe for their homemade guacamole and salsas, plus several other interesting recipes in there.  And then it proceeded to sit on the bookshelf.  For years.  We have our go to cookbooks and the rest tend to get lost in the fray.  In case you were wondering, our go to cookbooks are probably Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics: Fabulous Flavor from Simple Ingredients, Hot Sour Salty Sweet: A Culinary Journey Through Southeast Asia, our two Fuchsia Dunlop cookbooks and Into the Vietnamese Kitchen: Treasured Foodways, Modern Flavor.  Runners up probably include The Asian Grandmothers Cookbook: Home Cooking from Asian American Kitchens and Crescent City Cooking: Unforgettable Recipes from Susan Spicer's New Orleans.  We really need to branch out into our other cookbooks more often.  I periodically page through all of the cookbooks that we don't regularly use and pick out recipes that I want to make.  We have tons of recipes on deck from those other books and yet they still don't get made.  Perhaps making at least one recipe from each of our cookbooks should be my goal for this year.  In case you're wondering, we probably have about 30 cookbooks, so that should keep us busy for awhile...

This salsa recipe came straight out of the cookbook and the taco recipe was inspired by a recipe in the cookbook.  We rarely marinate our skirt steak when we make tacos because it has so much flavor on its own, but every once in awhile I like to mix it up.  Plus we had all of these dried chilis in our pantry that I wanted to use - cascabels, ancho chilis, chipotle chilis, chilis de arbol, etc.  So I got out my blender and decided to whip up some marinade.  In the end, I thought the tacos were good, but not amazing.  The steak by itself was almost overwhelmingly smoky/aggressively flavored with the dried chilis. It wasn't exactly spicy, but it was heavily spiced (if you get what I am saying).  But the coolness and brightness of the salsa went really well with the marinated steak and gave it some much needed acidity (as did the squeeze of fresh lime juice at the end).  And I really thought the creaminess that the avocado gave the salsa was an interesting touch.  Altogether it worked, but it wasn't my favorite skirt steak taco recipe.  I  will probably make the salsa again in the future, but I think the tacos themselves are doomed to be a one time experiment.  It's not the type of salsa that I think would work well as just chips and salsas, but I think it would work well as an accompaniment to any meat dish.  I think the cookbook actually says to serve it with empanadas and other fried food, which sounds like a brilliant pairing.
 
Recipes after the jump!

Chipotle Meatballs

Alex has proposed a challenge - one whole week of cooking where we are not allowed to use any recipes and have to come up with everything all on our own.  It's going to be a tough challenge, but I am game.  But it can't be this week because I have already planned out all of our meals for the week!  Whatever week we end up picking for our challenge, I will let you guys know in advance.  Or at least I will let you know which dishes are part of the challenge.  And it might end up taking more than a week - I think I am going to adapt the challenge a little to do seven meals that are uniquely ours, even if it takes two weeks. 

For this week we are still using recipes that I picked out from other websites, cookbooks, magazines, etc, like this one from Simply Recipes.  The reason I wanted to make this recipe (aside from the fact that it sounds delicious) is that it would use up the ground pork in the freezer and the remaining chipotles in adobo and crushed tomatoes that we used to make our Smoky Shrimp, Hominy and Tortilla Soup.  It also had the added benefit of using up our remaining scallions and a half of an onion we had in the fridge.  Sometimes things just work out and it's wonderful.  And everything worked out with this recipe - it used up random ingredients in the fridge and it was really tasty.  We served it over brown rice and I thought it was delicious.  We were both a little worried that the flavor of the chipotles would completely overwhelm the flavor of the meatballs themselves but between the bacon and the ground pork the meatballs were porky enough to stand up to the spicy, smoky flavor of the chipotles.  Considering that they were only briefly simmered/tossed in the sauce, they soaked up a surprising amount of flavor while retaining their integrity.  I thought served over brown rice they were a fun variation on your typical Italian-American spaghetti and meatballs.  And who doesn't love a good spaghetti and meatballs?

Recipe after the jump!