Asparagus and Avocado Salad

Hurray for fresh asparagus!  Before I go on I should disclose that I bought about 3 lbs of fresh asparagus at the farmers' market this week (along with a LOT of other fresh produce, some of which we already used) and as of today we have only used about half of it.  So you can expect a few more asparagus recipes shortly.  We already made a much lazier version of this Spring Salad of Asparagus, Ramps, Snap Peas, and Peas, with Poached Egg and Lemon Vinaigrette and we are planning on making some asparagus tacos tomorrow.  We will have to wait and see how much asparagus we have left after that, but I'm thinking it will be enough for at least one more dish.  

I guess I should turn to this salad.  I bought My Pizza by Jim Lahey roughly two years ago but we haven't had the opportunity to use it much.  There are a ton of delicious looking pizzas in there (one of which I am considering for our remaining asparagus), but there are also some nice salads and other appetizers.  For us it has become one of those cookbooks I always mean to use, but somehow never do.  I need to fix that because this salad was one of the easiest and tastiest things we have made at home recently.  The combination of asparagus, avocado, lime and mint isn't an intuitive one for me but it works really nicely.  I was worried this salad would be a little too simple, but it works - it's really simple, but the avocado makes it creamy and a little indulgent and the fresh farmers' market asparagus has a lovely grassy sweetness.  Our lime was a little stingy on the juice so I would recommend tasting and adding more lime juice to taste (or a little lime zest if your limes are similarly stingy).  This is a dish I can definitely see us making in the future - it's perfect on days where you just don't want to turn on the stove and/or oven, but a mixed green salad doesn't work.  It makes a really good side dish that could work with a number of entrees, but I can see myself serving it for brunch with a simple frittata or omelet and some fresh fruit.  I don't think I would pair it with pasta, but it could also work nicely with some homemade pizza.  I would probably do a simple pizza without too much cheese and meat - maybe a margherita or stracciatella pizza or a pizza with prosciutto and arugula.  My Pizza also has a spinach pizza called a Popeye Pie that I would pair this with. 

Recipe after the jump!

Arepas with Black Beans, Avocados and Cotija Cheese

Alex and I were left with a dinner dilemma on Sunday.  We had a lot of items in the fridge, but nothing really went together and I had no interest in going to the grocery store or cleaning up after an elaborate meal.  I really wanted something quick and easy.  Once we realized what we had in the fridge, the simplest solution seemed to be to make some form of arepas with the store-bought arepas.  I thought the arepas already had cheese in them, but it turned out that they were plain.  I threw together some black beans, with sauced jalapenos, onions, garlic, cilantro and cumin.  I'm not typically a huge fan of beans but these were actually very tasty.  I'm proud (and a little bit shocked) to say that we ate the entire pan of beans.  The only problem with the dish was was that it needed some sort of a sauce.  I originally considered taking one of the avocados and blending it with some lime juice and other ingredients to make more of a sauce, but we ran out of limes (and I got lazy).  Looking back on it, I wish we had made something like this Avocado-Lime Sauce to give the arepas some moisture.  They were a little dry.  Halfway through the meal I admitted that I really should have thrown half of the avocado in the blender and served the other half sliced because it would have been the best of both worlds.  Beans and arepas (particularly plain arepas) need something saucy and/or creamy to really make them come together.  I had hoped that the sliced avocado itself would be enough, but while it did provide some creaminess, it didn't quite get the job done.  Oh well.  I think it would have made for a really nice sauce for the arepas.  As a side note, that avocado-lime sauce gives me some interesting ideas for a shrimp tostada, but that is a dish (and a blog post) for another day.

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!

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!

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!

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!

Pumpkin Seed Pesto Two Ways

 

 

This base recipe for Pumpkin Seed Pesto came from our Susan Spicer cookbook.  And then I took it and served it two ways - one as a dip for tortilla chips with some avocado mixed in, and then I tossed some chili-rubbed shrimp in the pesto and served that with additional pesto for dipping.  Of the two variations, I preferred the dip.  It was very interesting.  Given the choice I would prefer guacamole, but I thought the dip had a pleasing blend of flavors and a nice lush, creamy texture.  I think the element that really threw the pesto off for me  was the feta.  Perhaps if we had used cotija cheese it would have worked better?  I just thought the feta added a slightly out of key, discordant flavor to the dip that was more evident in the pesto itself, than it was in the dip.  The pesto also seemed a bit... heavier and greasier.  I'm not sure those are the correct words to use to describe it, but I can't think of any better adjectives.  We made a Pan-Seared Salmon with Pumpkin-Seed Cilantro Pesto that I found more successful overall, if perhaps a little less interesting.  If I had to pick one dish to make again (since they are fairly similar) I would pick the salmon because I thought as an overall dish it was more successful.  I also thought that pesto was just brighter and tastier.

Recipes after the jump!

Southern BBQ Rotisserie Chicken Salad

This salad came about as an easy and lazy way to make a midweek dinner.  I have friends who pick up a rotisserie chicken and a big bag of mixed greens every week and use them to make salads for lunch every day.  Now I don't have the motivation to make lunch every day, although I really should because it is the financially responsible thing to do.  But I can't eat the same thing for lunch every day - I just get bored with it and then end up going out to pick something up anyway.  But I decided that a salad with rotisserie chicken and a selection of farmers' market produce would be a brilliant idea for a quick and easy dinner.  Then I got it in my head that we should make this a Southern salad once we saw that Zabars had BBQ rotisserie chickens.  So Alex whipped up a batch of this Crispy Corn Bread, which I had set aside for future corn bread crouton use.  I love corn bread croutons.  And then we stuck with the Southern theme and the Lee Bros and made their Buttermilk-Lime Dressing too.

The best thing about this salad was that it was easy to throw together and involved a number of wonderful ingredients.  Oh and the corn bread croutons.  I loved the corn bread croutons.  They were the star of the show for me.  I thought the combination of the sweetness of the roasted corn, the creaminess of the avocado, and the acidity of the tomatoes were really wonderful together.  I really liked the dressing, but I am not certain that it was the ideal dressing for this salad.  I wish the dressing had a little more punch and substance to it.  The dressing is tart, fresh and acidic, but it needed a little more body.  So I might try the salad again, but try a new dressing....  This dressing is marvelous with fried green tomatoes where its freshness and acidity cuts through the richness of the fried green tomatoes.  But this salad really needed something a little richer.

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!

Chicken Tinga Tostadas

Happy Cinco de Mayo everyone!  Last year we made Skirt Steak Fajitas with Lime and Pepper and Chili-Rubbed Shrimp with Avocado Corn Cocktail.  This year we were a little less ambitious.  I wanted to make something a little different, so I originally wanted to make enchiladas, but then I changed my mind and we made tostadas instead.  I originally planned on making tres leches cake as well as these tostadas, but by the time I got out of work it was too late to swing by the grocery store to pick up all of the ingredients.  Plus the cake is better the next day.  The recipe I want to make for Tres Leches Cake with Dulce de Leche actually requires baking and soaking overnight (which a lot of other tres leches recipes also require).  If we have time this weekend I will bake the cake.  If not, I will leave it for another occasion.

There's a great little hole in the wall restaurant called The Great Burrito near our apartment that does a mean pork tinga.  Before dining at that restaurant I had never heard of tinga of any sort.  It turns out tinga is a typical Mexican stew-like dish from Puebla that can be made with chicken, pork, or beef.  At The Great Burrito you can get pork tinga as a topping for your tacos, tostadas, or nachos, as a filling for burritos, etc.  The pork tinga from The Great Burrito gave me the idea for these tostadas.  We didn't have pork, but we had plenty of chicken in the freezer.  So I went ahead and adapted a variety of recipes that I found on the internet to make our chicken tinga.  I was pretty excited about how the recipe turned out given I really had no idea what I was doing.  The chicken had a pretty intense flavor and a respectable kick after being tossed and simmered in the chipotle and fire-roasted tomato mixture.  Poaching the chicken left it pretty moist and made it a blank canvas to absorb the flavors of the sauce.  When I first tasted the chicken it was lacking some of the sweetness that I remembered from the version at The Great Burrito, so to make it all a little sweeter (and to loosen up the sauce a little) I added some apple cider.  I really like this method of baking the corn tortillas to make tostadas in the oven because they are far less greasy this way and more evenly cooked than if you pan fry them.  So when you put it all together you get a crunchy tostada topped with smokey/slightly spicy chicken, creamy queso fresco and avocados to cut through the assertive flavors of the sauce, garnished with a squirt of fresh lime juice and cilantro.  It's quite tasty.  Don't omit the lime juice because I think the dish needs a bit of acidity and that bright lime flavor to really bring it all together.  I hope that everyone's Cinco de Mayo meal was as yummy as ours!

Recipe after the jump!

Mache and Avocado Salad with Tortilla Strips

I made this salad on a whim.  I bought some a mache and herb salad mix at Fairway yesterday and I wanted to put a salad together to go with the shrimp ceviche that I was planning to serve tonight.  I searched for mache recipes on Epicurious and this was one of the first that popped up.  And it was perfect - exactly what I was looking for.

I thought about adding some crumbled queso fresca or other Mexican cheese to the salad, but it really didn't need any.  The avocado gives the salad the perfect amount of fat and creaminess.  Then you add in the crispy tortilla strips, which provide a wonderful texture and a hit of salt.  It's definitely worth the time and effort to make the tortilla strips, rather than buying pre-made tortilla chips or tortilla strips at the store.  It really only takes a few minutes to make the tortilla strips and they add a ton to the salad.  And the lime juice, honey, and shallot dressing is wonderful.  It's fresh, bright and delicious.  While this salad has only a few ingredients, all of them work together perfectly.

Recipe after the jump!

Shrimp Tostadas with Avocado-Black Bean Salsa

I'm not sure where I came up with the idea of making shrimp tostadas.  Originally I was planning on making some type of shrimp taco, but I decided that we make shrimp tacos far too often.  Then I decided since we had the corn tortillas, why not make tostadas?  I will be the first to admit that I have never made tostadas before and that this was a first for me.  But I thought it was a success!  While the tostadas were kind of difficult to eat (Alex sent a few crispy tortilla shards winging across the dining room table), they were fun to eat and quite tasty.  The black beans were kind of thrown in as an afterthought in order to jazz up the avocado "salsa" a bit.  I thought they would add a different texture and flavor to the dish that would work nicely with the other ingredients.  I'm still not a huge fan of beans of any sort because they're just so starchy and bland, but I thought they were a nice addition to this dish!

Recipe after the jump!

Guacamole with Tomatillo and Queso Fresco

When I asked Alex what he wanted to eat for dinner on Super Bowl Sunday, all he told me was that he wanted guacamole.  And then he forwarded me a recipe from Jose Andres that appeared on Tasting Table.  When I asked him what he wanted to go with his guacamole, he said he didn't care and had no idea.  All he really wanted was the guacamole.  What can I say?  He knows what he wants.  And since he so rarely makes requests, I try to honor them.  So we had guacamole and shrimp tostadas for dinner.  I promise to post about the tostadas later today (if I have time).  And Alex was a happy husband.  Granted, he would have been even happier if the Redskins or the Ravens had made it to the Super Bowl, but beggars can't be choosers.  At least he got what he wanted for dinner.

Recipe after the jump!

Summer Crab Salad with Carrots, Basil, and Lime

 

If you grew up anywhere near the Chesapeake Bay, nothing says summertime more than blue crabs and corn.  Crabs come in many forms - crabcakes, bushels of steamed or boiled crabs, crab dip, softshell crabs, etc.  This crab salad came from the Susan Spicer cookbook one of my friends gave me as a wedding gift.  It seemed like the perfect dish to mark the end of summer 2010, both because the ingredients encapsulate all that is summer to me, and also because after a long weekend of gorging on pork, I really needed something light and fresh.

This crab salad was nice and light, with a subtle sweetness from the crab, carrots, and basil, balanced out by the slight heat from the hot sauce and the brine of the capers.  The lime vinaigrette makes the whole thing taste even more bright and summery, if that is even possible.  My only complaint is that, while this salad was lovely, when I think crab I think Old Bay and there was obviously no Old Bay present in this salad.  So when I took my first bite all I could think was "man, crabs just aren't the same without Old Bay."  But with all of that said, this crab salad was bright and lovely.  Then again, of the two dishes I made tonight - this salad and creamed corn, the corn took the cake.  By a landslide.  But it's not because the crab salad wasn't nice.  Instead the corn is really just that awesome.

Recipe after the jump!

Beef Tacos with Radish and Avocado Salsa

So it seems that I like radishes.  A lot.  Who knew?  After we made (and loved) the Sugar Snap Pea Salad with Radishes, Mint and Ricotta Salata I decided to pick up some more radishes in the hope that we would get more sugar snap peas from our CSA.  But there were no sugar snap peas to be had last week, so I had to figure out something to do with our radishes.  This recipe was one of those recipes that just seemed to come together perfectly.  I had already defrosted a nice skirt steak and happened to have just picked up cilantro, scallions, and corn tortillas the other day.  The only thing we needed was an avocado.

Steak tacos are one of my absolute favorite quick and easy meals. Skirt steak and hanger steak are both so inherently flavorful that they make fantastic tacos. I have made several different variations - on the blog alone I have made Skirt Steak Fajitas with Lime and Pepper, Six-Spice Hanger Steak Tacos with Pickled Onions, and Skirt Steak Tacos with Roasted Tomato Salsa.  This version was delicious.  I loved the salsa.  It had very little heat, but a ton of flavor.  And the combination of the avocados and radishes gave the tacos some really nice textures to go with the bold flavors of the steak and lime juice.

Recipe after the jump!

Chili-Rubbed Shrimp with Avocado Corn Cocktail

Happy Cinco de Mayo everyone!  In honor of Cinco de Mayo I originally wanted to make carnitas, but as the butcher was out of pork shoulder I had to improvise.  I had some jumbo shrimp in the freezer and when looking up shrimp recipes I found this one online at Epicurious.  I sent it to Alex, along with a recipe for skirt steak as options for our own little Cinco de Mayo celebration and he said we should just do both.  It was probably a little overambitious and gluttonous on our part, but Cinco de Mayo only comes once a year so you might as well live it up a little.

Alex and I disagreed over which part of our meal was our favorite.  I thought that the shrimp had excellent flavor, as did the Avocado Corn Salsa, but I somehow preferred the fajitas.  I'm not really sure why.  It was a really close call for both of us as to which recipe won.  For me it came down to a judgment call between the salsa from the shrimp and the grilled sweet onions from the fajitas.  While I love a good salsa, those onions were amazing.  Anyway, more on that on another post.  This shrimp kicks some serious ass.  The marinade is somewhat similar to the marinade I use for shrimp tacos, only I tend to throw in lime zest and use slightly different spices.  I tend to use other chili powders in addition to the ancho chili powder - often chipotle chili powder and a pinch of cayenne pepper for good measure.  But the proportions here allow the other spices to shine as well, instead of it being all about the heat of multiple chili powders.  The shrimp are a little spicy, a little smoky and a little sweet.  The contrast between the shrimp, the lime juice and the Avocado Corn Salsa makes it a wonderful dish - one that I thoroughly intend to enjoy more often now that I have discovered it.

Recipe after the jump!