Fear and Roasting in Tucson

There are two things you never hear people say.  The first is “I want to grow up to be a junkie.”  The second is, “I’m glad I drank tequila last night, because I made a lot of good decisions.”  Hence, the title of my blog this week. I’m proud that I have managed to go this long without making Mexican food.  This week’s dinner came about through a strange set of thoughts and ideas.  I wanted to make something spicy, and that made me think to make a drink from mint so it would have that cooling sensation to compliment the spice.  I was going to make a mint syrup and mix it with Absolut Mandarin.  Mandarin has a special place in my heart.  Very early on in my alcohol education, I found myself at House of Blues in Chicago.  At that time I learned that Corona comes in cans and that you can sell cans of Bud Light for $5.  I discovered that Absolut Mandarin was priced at $5.50, so the most bang for the buck was that.  I proceeded to drink and order rounds of Mandarin and cranberry for my friends.  We would have been quite fashionable, had it been eighties night. 

I have always wanted to make enchiladas from scratch, meaning, enchilada sauce.  I had some decent ideas of a good, original Mexican meal with enchiladas as the main course, but obviously, if that was the meal, vodka would not be welcome, so I had to switch to tequila. 

Main Course: Citrus-Chipotle Chicken Enchiladas

Sides: Margarita Succotash and Roasted Tomatillos with Pepper Jack Sauce

Beverages: Mintarita and Dos Equis

Emily’s Proclamation: So delicious it disrupted my lunar cycle. 

I was really nervous about mixing mint and tequila.  I wasn’t sure I could make it taste good.  I’m not really much of a tequila drinker.  I bought my best friend a shot of Santa Fe’s finest tequila when we were driving through.  A shot should never involved swallowing multiple times even after you pour half of it down the front of you.  Needless to say, the next morning was a little rough.  So I made concentrated mint syrup and mixed that with fresh squeezed OJ, agave nectar, and tequila.  It wasn’t horribly pretty (the mint leaf garnish helped) but it was quite tasty. 

I have a friend at work who was born and raised in New Mexico.  At happy hour, she gave me a lengthy dissertation on how to make authentic New Mexican enchilada sauce.  I took this as a sign.  I bought a large bag of dried Colorado chiles and some freshly ground cumin.  I was going to make chicken stock from scratch from the chicken bones left over from the chicken thighs I bought to make the chicken filling.  However, I ran into a small snafu.  In the excitement of the moment, I bought the boneless, skinless thighs on sale.  If you’re going to make chicken stock from chicken bones, you need to purchase those with the meat you buy.  Awesome – 2 master’s degrees and I still can’t remember to read the only 4 words on the package.  Fortunately, chicken stock was on sale at the other grocery store. 

I washed the chiles and then ripped them open to de-seed them.  Why does everything awesome have to have tons of seeds?  I decided to get a habanero to make sure the sauce had the right amount of heat.  However, I’ve wised up a little bit and decided to wear gloves while handling the pepper.  The problem with this is that I could not find food handling gloves, so I had to improve.  Michael Saranhands.  I browned garlic, onions, chiles and then slowly added water and chicken stock to rehydrate the peppers.  I put in some other spices and then poured the mixture in with a few diced tomatoes and blended till smooth.  I had to add a little extra liquid to get the right consistency, but I got there.  Then I poured the mixture back into a pot and simmered for hours.  I didn’t really simmer for hours, but it made it sound like it was going to excellent, just because I said that.  I did let it simmer for a little while, just not hours.   

The margarita succotash I think is the most intriguing menu item this week.  When I was a kid, I thought succotash died with the pilgrims and their biological warfare against the native Americans.  However, the restaurant I worked at in South Carolina had succotash as a side and it was delicious.  (No comment that a South Carolinian restaurant serves pre-Civil war cuisine as average fare)  My understanding of succotash is that it contains corn, beans, and is flavored with some type of fatty, salty pork.  How hard can that be?!  I needed to give this a hispanic flare, so I used black beans and chorizo, instead of bacon, and then added jicama. 

If you’ve never had jicama before, it’s awesome.  It looks like a rutabaga, feels like a potato, tastes like a sweet French fry, and eaten by people with great tans. 

I was really happy with the chorizo too, because it was way lean.  I didn’t expect that.  So I used all those ingredients and added a roasted poblano, fresh lime juice, and tequila.  I let that simmer and boil for an hour or so, and named it after a delicious drink.  I liked it, because it was tasty and looked good too. 

I’ve become a big fan of tomatillos, because they’re really cheap out here and easy to cook.  They have a flavor very similar to fried green tomatoes, just a tiny acidic sourness to them.  I thought they would be an easy and healthy addition to the meal, after all, it’s un-American to only have 1 side dish for dinner.  So I roasted these under the broiler on both sides and then made a low-fat pepper jack cream sauce with some garlic to drizzle on top.  I know, you think cream sauce automatically means unhealthy, but I used 2% milk and non-fat Greek yogurt to get the right consistency.  I would have used skim milk, but it wouldn’t help with the spiciness of the food.  I had this manager at a restaurant who was addicted to spice-induced pain.  Honestly, he would order hot sauce over the internet and then put small drops on whatever fish was being served to see if he could handle it.  Dumb.  I love spicy food, but at a certain point, you sacrifice flavor for heat.  I digress.  You’ve heard people say to drink milk when you eat something spicy, because that will help, right?  The reason for that is that spice-heat from chiles is caused by a chemical called capsaicin.  Capsaicin isn’t soluble in water (or saliva), but it is in fat or oil.  So if you have a food with a little fat in it, it will help cool the heat.  That’s why I didn’t use skim milk, but 2%, because it would help cut the spice of the enchilada sauce. 

After all the cutting, chopping, simmering, sipping (gulping), blending, sautéing, and braising, it was time to put everything together. 

I wrapped the chicken mixture in the tortilla, filled the pan, poured the sauce over everything, threw on some cheese and baked it for 20 minutes or so. 

That’s dinner.  It’s not the absolute healthiest thing I’ve made, but I only used 1 ½ tablespoons of oil in the whole thing.  The worst thing was the cheese and I didn’t use that much.  So it could have been better, but it also could have been a whole lot worse. 

I included one of those obnoxious pictures of a southwestern sunset, but it is really pretty.  That was what the sky looked like while we were cooking.  I’m traveling next week, so there may be a post, there may not be.  It depends on whether or not I eat in the next 2 weeks. 

Tuscany via Wyoming

This week some new and fun things.  I learned all about how to boil an egg and Emily was given some garlic from Wyoming by a coworker.  Before I get into the fun stuff, I’m going to rant about a trip to the grocery store.  When I came out to get into my car, I was parked next to an SUV with a vanity plate that said “BOTOX.”  Seriously?  First of all, if Congress wanted to really do something worthwhile, they should pass a law that states if you don’t have something interesting or clever to put on your license plate, don’t freaking get a vanity plate.  Of course, that would probably evolve into some type of national crisis with one party threatening to close down all the highways to avoid doing anything.  Second, “BOTOX,” if you’re that big of a fan, you probably shouldn’t be telling everyone about it. 

This week’s meal was a little bit easier to come up with than the turkey burgers.  I was planning on having some of our friends out for dinner this weekend, and one of them is allergic to gluten.  And, I needed something Italian to go with the lemoncello, hence a gluten-free Italian meal – enter Tuscany (I’ve heard they don’t use a lot of actual pasta there, at least, that’s my theory for this week).  The other thing that worked out well is that Emily and I decided to have a picnic in our parking lot, so we got some meats and cheeses that I could double up with the meal on Sunday. 

Starter: Truffle marinated mushrooms

Salad: Classic Caesar

Entrée: Chicken Saltimbocca w/ figs and stuffed portabellos

Emily: The sage n’ fig sauce was the 2^nd best thing I’ve ever put in my mouth.

Beverages: Lemoncello and Vipra Rossa Super Tuscan

Lemoncello is best served ice cold and in tiny glasses.  I’ve always had it served to me ice cold, but not necessarily in small glasses.  THE most memorable “medium” sized glass of lemoncello I had was at our weekly poker game.  I took my first sip of lemoncello at 7:10.  I was out of the poker game at 7:32.  Small glasses. 

I’ve been trying to get into Italian wines more, but I find it more overwhelming than French wines.  I saw a map of Italy’s wine regions, and there’s like 30 of them.  But I did learn a few things this week.  First, chianti almost always has white wine mixed in with it.  News to me.  I was trying to find a Sangiovese, because it tends to be a lighter red wine, which would go well with the chicken.  I don’t have anything against chianti, but I think it should only be had with pasta and a tomato based sauce.  I also learned that “Super Tuscans” are wines made with the original Italian grapes but have been blended with merlot or cab or another new world wine.  I lucked out to find one that was Sangiovese and Merlot and affordable. 

I didn’t really plan on making marinated mushrooms, at least, not how they turned out.  When I decided to make Caesar salad, I wanted to spice it up a little bit, so I thought about adding marinated mushrooms.  I got really excited, because I’ve been eyeing this truffle oil at the store, but haven’t had a good excuse to take the plunge.  But then after some further thought, I realized mushrooms don’t really belong in Caesar salad and would look bad.  I always like to add egg and roasted garlic to my Caesars and I figured that would be original enough.  But I really wanted the truffle oil, so I got the best of both worlds.  So some truffle oil, balsamic, spices and overnight in the fridge with some feta (on sale!) sprinkled on for an appetizer. 

I’ve always wanted to make my own Caesar dressing.  I’ve never had the nerve to order a Caesar salad with anchovies at a restaurant, even though the dressing always has anchovies in it.  I made it a little too lemony and it was hard to make it “light.”  Salad dressing from scratch always needs way too much oil.  So I subbed with my old standby, yogurt to give a little body and cut the lemon a little bit.  And now this brings us to mine and Emily’s egg-off (done strictly for research purposes).  I’ve always boiled eggs by throwing them into boiling water and then neglecting them for 20 minutes or so and then they’re done.  However, there is a reason it’s called an “egg timer.”  I’ll spare you all the details, but I am going to give a general table for future reference regarding boiled eggs.

1 minute egg: Don’t bother

2 minute egg: Still really gross

4 minute egg: Edible after not eating for 3 days

6 minute egg: Perfect for breakfast, like an over easy egg

8 minute egg: Great texture and solid enough to slice for salads

So all that for Caesar salad. 

And now on to the main course.  I’m taking a page out of Mark Zuckerberg’s book.  I may not have killed my chicken before I ate it, but I certainly made sure it was dead.  I pounded those chicken breasts like the wheelbarrow with a broken wheel. 

I put in some prosciutto and mixed spinach, garlic, and goat cheese and put that on top of the ham and rolled it up to cook.  I had to use a toothpick to hold everything together.  I really hate using toothpicks for that.  I feel like it’s cheating.  I wish someone would develop edible superglue that tasted like bacon to use in such instances. 

The stuffed mushrooms are filled with bruschetta.  Emily and I got smoked mozzarella for our picnic so I used that with the tomatoes to add some flavor.  She loved the cheese.  I thought it tasted like creamy charcoal gum, so I mixed in a little regular mozzarella as well. 

What topped the whole meal off was the fig sage butter sauce I made for the chicken.  I thought that Arizona was enough like Tuscany to find fresh figs.  Fortunately, this is America and not only do we have the freedom to act like jackasses when it comes to our license plates, but we can buy dried figs.  They added a really nice texture to the sauce.  It also had some shallots, wine, and of course, butter (not much though).  Sage is such a great fresh spice and not commonly used, so it still has a unique flavor. 

 That's it for this week.  Next week I have a twist on a nostalgic drink and I'm thinking something spicy...very spicy.