Peruvian Roast Chicken with Green Sauce

This is totally embarassing.  Alex and I made this roast chicken back in February or March.  And then I forgot to post it.  I really thought it was up on the blog.  And then I was looking today today at other recipes that I had bookmarked to try and came across the draft of this post.  The recipe was on there, the picture was too (even though it's not a very good picture), but I never got around to adding any text.  Fail.  

Roast chicken is one of my favorite things if it is well done.  And Peruvian roast chicken seems to be, on average, a lot better than your average roast chicken.  I don't know how they season it traditionally but their rotisserie chicken is magical - even the white meat is juicy and flavorful.  I also love that spicy green sauce you get at Peruvian restaurants to go with their roast chicken.  It's pretty much the best thing in the world.  So it's a little shocking that it took me this long to make it at home.  In my defense - it turns out that there is a whole lot of mayo and sour cream in the sauce.  I don't know why the addition of mayonnaise and sour cream to a sauce that I know will be spicy and delicious bothers me when I make it at home, but it throws me for a loop.  However, I am going to have to get over it because this stuff was pretty delicious.  It's creamier than what I usually get at the Peruvian restaurants that I go to, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.  It also doesn't taste quite the same, but for a homemade version (that we adapted from Serious Eats), this was close enough for government work.  Ours had some pretty good kick so if you want your green sauce a little milder, leave out some of the jalapeno seeds.

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!

Arepa with Chorizo and Creole Sauce (Arepa con Chorizo y Hogao) and Green Beans with Almonds, Smoked Paprika and Cumin

Last weekend was the first weekend in some time that we visited the farmers' market behind the Museum of Natural History.  Every time we go to the farmers' market Brady drags us to his favorite vender, Roaming Acres, for a free snack (homemade ostrich dog treats) and a smoked ostrich tendon dog chew.  They look bizarre but he loves them and I would rather he eat ostrich tendon than cow penis (aka pizzles) or cow snout (aka moozles).  As luck would have it, they happened to be sold out of his smoked ostrich tendon but we decided to try some of their fresh sausages for us.  The farmer recommended their Colombian chorizo so we bought a package.  The only problem was that neither of us had ever tried Colombian chorizo (and the farmer had warned us that it had a very different flavor than Mexican or Spanish chorizo) so we had no idea what it tasted like or whether it would be crumbly and loose like Mexican chorizo or firm like Spanish chorizo.  We basically had no idea whatsoever what to do with our sausage after we got home.  So it hung out in the refrigerator for a few days until I was inspired enough to spend a few minutes poking around for recipes.  This one won because it sounded different and interesting, but was still pretty easy to throw together.  Then I had to decide what kind of side to serve with our arepas.  We haven't made green beans in awhile so I picked some up at the store with the idea that we would make a play on green bean almondine.  I decided that we would season our green beans simply with cumin, smoked paprika, garlic and lemon juice, all of which I thought would work with the flavor of the arepas.  And just like that, dinner was in the bag.

One thing I will say about these arepas - they were really easy to put together.  They required a number of pots, pans and trays (one each to cook the sausages, the hogao and the arepas themselves), but irrespective of the number of pans and dirty dishes, they came together with very little effort.  And they were satisfying.  I'm not saying they were the most delicious thing we have ever made, but I enjoyed them.  For those of you who are curious, Colombian chorizo is firm like Spanish chorizo but it lacks that paprika-flavor and is not smoked, cured or otherwise cooked.  Except that both products are raw/uncooked and I didn't think that it was similar to Mexican chorizo, which is much spicier and crumbly.  I liked our variation on the green beans too.  They had nice flavor and weren't hard to throw together.  And I think their crunch and bright flavor were a nice match for the heavier arepas.  The flavor of the green beans was just similar enough (thanks to the ground cumin) to work, while still providing a really interesting and bright pop of flavor.  The green beans added texture and were just substantial enough (I think salad would have felt too light).

Recipes after the jump!

Shrimp with Garlicky Cuban Mojo

I have been thinking recently that I make way too much shrimp.  Sadly shrimp has become my go-to seafood.  We always have it in the freezer and everytime I go to Fairway I find myself buying more.  Part of that is due to the fact that shrimp doesn't suffer as much from being frozen.  With some types of fish I am always convinced that the texture (and flavor) really suffers when you throw it in the freezer.  You lose any freshness the fish once had, it sometimes starts to smell funny, etc.  Maybe it's entirely mental, but that's how I feel.  So we eat a lot of shrimp.  And I mean a whole lot.  If you look at the recipes we have made you will see just how often we eat shrimp.  It's kind of sickening really.  But I can't help it!  We cook it so often at home that I almost never eat shrimp at a restaurant because I'm getting more than enough at home.  So I guess we will have to try to switch it up a little more.  Perhaps try out a few different fish and shellfish recipes.  I have two swordfish recipes that I have been wanting to try, so that will be our first seafood experiment.  And I have been wanting to cook clams or cockles for awhile, so that will be next.  After that who knows?

Anyway, back to this particular recipe.  I liked it, but I didn't love it.  There was nothing about the dish that really blew me away.  I thought the mojo would make an interesting marinade, but it was a little on the sweet side for me.  Alex said he wanted more heat.  I just wanted more... something.  More depth of flavor?  More wow factor?   Crushed red pepper flakes are probably a good place to start.

Recipe after the jump!

Aguachile de Camaron (Spicy Shrimp Ceviche)

So I'm not sure about everyone else, but for some reason I am always skeeved out by the idea of making raw or lightly cured seafood at home.  I've wanted to make ceviche for some time, but the thought of eating raw tilapia or other seafood at home threw me off.  But it never deterred me from ordering it in a restaurant.  And as Alex pointed out to me this evening, the likelihood that the suppliers for most hole in the wall ceviche restaurants provide higher quality seafood than I can find at Whole Foods is unlikely.  So I guess I was being silly.  

Depending on how spicy your serrano chilis are, you might want to reduce the amount of chilis in your dressing.  Alex used the full three, plus ours are pretty spicy, so the ceviche packed a serious punch.  According to the Google search I did, aguachile is essentially a very spicy ceviche with a lime and green chili dressing.  Sounds delicious, doesn't it?  Given that my mom was the one who gave me this recipe, I assume she intended for it to be pretty spicy.  I have no idea where she got the recipe from - I know that she has a Peruvian friend named Charo who brings over ceviche mixto from time to time, but I don't think the recipe came from Charo because it's not a traditional recipe.  Charo's ceviche is dressed simply with lime and full of red onions, and is accompanied by potatoes or yucca.  And it's never spicy.  Knowing my mom, she probably found this recipe in a magazine awhile ago and modified it a bit and then passed it on to me.  And then I modified it a little more.  All I know is that this ceviche was pretty freaking good.  It has a lot more fruit in it than most ceviches that I have tried, but I thought it was pretty delicious.  The adjectives that come to mind to describe the dish are spicy, sweet, bright and fresh.  I would definitely make it again!

Recipe after the jump!

Tres Leches Cake

So this cake was the result of the fact that literally none of the four grocery stores I tried on the UWS carry peanut butter chips.  I was trying to make this Black-Bottom Peanut Butter Mousse Pie to bring to a dinner party, but without peanut butter chips I had to come up with a plan B.  I have been meaning to try to make tres leches cake for some time now and I figured now was the perfect opportunity.  I was also planning on making a Latin American dish for dinner the night after the dinner party, so I figured tres leches was definitely the way to go.  I looked at several recipes while trying to decide exactly how I wanted to prepare my cake, including this recipe from Ree Drummond's blog, The Pioneer Woman Cooks, an Alton Brown recipe, an Emeril recipe, and this recipe from Food & Wine.  The Food & Wine recipe had a particularly intriguing cinnamon-scented dulce de leche component that you drizzle on top of the cake after it is completed, but I didn't have the time or the whole milk to make it.  But I am definitely going to make it the next time I try my cake because it sounds amazing.  One of my favorite versions of tres leches cake I have ever eaten was at a restaurant in Maryland where they serve the cake drizzled with a cinnamon simple syrup of sorts.  It is amazing - kind of like red hots in liquid form.

This cake recipe is easy, but it does require several steps and lots of dish washing.  When I prepared it I used my stand mixer three times, which required three washes, various measuring cups, etc.  So if you're looking for a recipe that doesn't make a mess of the kitchen, this probably isn't the recipe for you.  But if you don't mind a little dishwashing so long as it produces delicious results, I say give this recipe a try!  The cake is delightfully moist, sweet and somehow light.