Monthly Archives: December 2005
Hola amigos, this time I came out with a very Mexican recipe "Mole Poblano". Mole is one of the most important dishes in my country, you can find it prepared in many different ways depending on the region it is prepared. It is a type of aromatic sauce in which different foods are cooked and it can be red, black, green, etc. This particular Mole comes from Puebla. The city of Puebla is a beautiful colonial town located 132 km from Mexico City by the federal highways 150D and 190 in the State of Puebla, Mexico. If you want to know more about them, please follow these links:
Mexico City: http://www.tourbymexico.com/df/df.htm
State of Puebla: http://www.tourbymexico.com/puebla/puebla.htm
Town of Puebla: http://www.tourbymexico.com/puebla/puebla/puebla.htm
Puebla: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puebla
Here is the recipe:
Mole Poblano with turkey (optionally with chicken)
Ingredients
Mole
1/2 cup, plus 2 tbs of vegetable oil
1/2 pound of chili anchos deveined and seeded
2 pounds of chili pasilla deveined and seeded
3/4 pounds of chili mulatos deveined and seeded
5 chilies chipotle in adobo (or to taste)
1 1/2 pounds of tomatoes
1 medium onion finely diced
10 cloves of garlic
1/3 pound of peeled almonds
1/4 pound of peeled peanuts
8 cloves
1 tsp of black pepper
1 2" piece of cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon of anise seeds
1/4 pound of seedless raisins
1/5 pound of bitter cooking chocolate
1 tsp of sugar
2 tbs of salt, or to taste
½ cup of sesame seeds
Turkey
9 pound turkey cut in pieces
16 cups of water
4 cloves of garlic
1/2 of an onion peeled
1 tbs of salt
Preparation
1. In a large cast iron pot, put the turkey, the water, the garlic, the onion and the salt. Set fire to high.
2. When it starts to boil cover it and lower heat to medium and cooks for one hour or until the meat is well cooked.
3. Remove the meat from turkey and save the broth.
4. Put 2 tbs of oil in a pan, add the chilies anchos, pasillas, and mulatos and sauté them for a few minutes.
5. Put them in a pot with water and let them soak during 30 minutes.
6. Take out the chilies from the water and mix them in a blender. Reserve them.
7. Sauté the chilies chipotle and the tomatoes in the same pan.
8. Peel the tomatoes and mix them in a blender with the chipotle. Reserve them.
9. In the same oil where the chilies were fried, fry the diced onion and the garlic during 2 or 3 minutes, until they become transparent.
10. Take them out and mix them in the blender. Reserve them.
11. Fry the almonds during 5 minutes in the same oil, then add the peanuts, the cloves, the black pepper, the cinnamon and the anis seeds and fry them for 3 minutes more.
12. Mix these with the raisins in the blender and reserve them.
13. Heat the rest of the oil in your cast iron pot. Add all the reserved ingredients cook them during 5 minutes, stirring constantly.
14. Add the chocolate and the sugar without stopping the stirring.
15. When the mixture boils add 4 cups of the turkey broth.
16. Cover the pot and cook it on a low fire during 20 minutes.
17. Add the salt and taste the seasoning and adjust. If the Mole is very tick add more turkey broth.
18. Add the pieces of turkey, cover the pot, and cook on medium heat for 10 minutes.
19. Meanwhile roast the sesame seeds in a small pan on medium heat until they are well toasted and acquire a golden color.
20. Once the turkey is heated through, serve it with a sprinkling the sesame seeds and a generous amount of Mole.
Enjoy it!
Normita
As you might have noticed we have started again to post regularly. We also have been very busy working on the first version of the recipe viewer, and as we work on it we have been broadening the scope of the core product. What started as simple way to share recipes will grow into a much more useful product for the cooking enthusiast community. It is a bit too early to start listing too many features, but let me assure you it will be a nice product that will be worthwhile to wait for. With the help of Kurtito in Austria, who by the way still has not delivered the blog entries he had promised me, I am building the core database of the product. To help make creating recipes easier we are creating a logically-arranged list of ingredients that we will be able to use in the recipes. We have gone through 3 revisions already and hopefully we will finalize the final structure in the coming days.
The primary database, as most of our software is, will be in English, French, Spanish, and German since they are the languages in which we work internally in our group. Other languages will later be added as we get demand and find external resources to translate. We are also currently working on a universal unit converter so recipes written using one system of units can be transparently converted to the user’s system of choice.
Once this basic database is completed, we will release the first version of the basic free viewer and all our posted recipes in the .rxf format. We also plan to establish a repository of recipes on our main website at www.igourmand.com. I will keep you posted regularly as we progress on this project.
Lucito
A week and a half ago we celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary. For the occasion I prepared a special meal and we decided to celebrate the occasion alone together and renew our vows in a nice ceremony we designed. Normita had told me that she wanted some cream soup to start the meal, so I designed a special recipe that we tried for the first time that afternoon. It was both stunning and filling. We each had a solid bowl of it and then we were so stuffed that we barely touched the main course. I would recommend that this soup be served in smaller portions than a lighter soup. It makes a great starter for a late autumn meal when you want to bundle up in front of the fireplace and relax.
Ingredients
4 tbs butter
1 tbs sunflower oil
1 1/2 cup salted cashews
1 large leek cleaned and chopped
2 cups chicken stock (can be made from powder)
1/4 cup sweet cooking sherry
1 cup milk
3/4 cup heavy cream
2 Oz brandy
Salt and Pepper to taste
Chopped chives for garnish
Preparation
1. Put butter and oil in a pot and melt
2. Add chopped leek and cashew and cook covered until the leek in nice and golden (~10 minutes)
3. Add 1 Oz of the brandy and carefully light to flambé
4. Once the flames die down add the chicken stock, the milk, and the cooking sherry and simmer for 20 minutes
5. Once the cashews are nice and tender purée the soup in a blender until very smooth
6. Strain the soup back into your cleaned pot and add the heavy cream and the rest of the brandy
7. Fold the cream in and add salt and pepper to taste
8. Simmer for a few minutes more
9. Serve with chopped chives as garnish on top of the soup
Lucito
This time I am going to share with you a nice recipe, this one is very popular at the Canadian Embassy in Mexico, somebody passed it to me but do not tell this to the creator of the recipe:
Ingredients
1/2 cup of cold water
1 1/2 envelope of gelatin
1 cup of chicken stock (can be made with powder)
1/2 cup of cream
1/2 cup of mayonnaise
1/4 pound of cream cheese
1 cup of chopped cilantro (coriander)
1 clove of garlic
1/2 of a large onion
1 1/2 chili jalapeños
Salt and pepper to taste
Preparation
1. Dissolve the gelatin in the cup of cold water.
2. Blend the rest of the ingredients in an electric blender or food processor.
3. Heat the gelatin and mix with the blended ingredients.
4. Pour In an antiadherent mold and let cool for one hour.
5. Refrigerate 3-4 hours or overnight.
6. Serve with crackers.
Normita.
Later this week, if time permits, I will be posting a fist draft of the recipe exchange software program. This first version will be a simple recipe viewer running on the Windows platform. It also will be able to create files in the Recipe eXchange Format (.rxf) that people can submit to this site or trade with others. This program will be a free viewer that will be regularly updated with new features. I have a good idea where we are going with the software, but before announcing any specific plans, I prefer testing those advanced features internally to make sure that they are useful and that we are going in the right direction. The ultimate goal will be to create a useful suite of tools that can be used by everybody from people who are interested in cooking to professional chefs. As all the software we design it will be modular in nature and users will be able to customize it to suit their exact needs, and add features as they need them. The basic viewer and tools will always remain free and unencumbered by advertisement or other forms of annoyance. I do not like using software that nags me all the time or that is always trying to push things down my throat. We will eventually release some commercial versions of the software that will build on the basic set of features. The method of distribution or the exact features still remain to be determined and will ultimately be decided based upon the feedback from users. We will setup a discussion forum for the software once the project starts to be operational, and a user base is established. I’ll have more on this project later today or tomorrow once I have time to prepare things for distribution.
Lucito
There are some recipes that are born from combinations of favorites with a twist. Some years back we used to make ‘Penne alla Vodka’ pretty regularly and liked the tangy burn that the vodka brought to a simple pasta dish. When we moved to Mexico, to work with local flavors, we tried it with some tequila with tasty results. More recently we were doing, once in a while, some pasta with spinach and blue cheese and one day I added some tequila to yield fantastic results. It is one of those dishes that can be made in less than half an hour for some very fancy results with minimal efforts. The perfect dish for a Friday night when you are not going out after work and want something to eat that is a little more upscale but without the fuss of preparation. To save you the effort of washing and removing the stems of the spinach, you can pick up a bag of washed baby spinach and cut the most time-consuming part of the recipe. Paired with a robust red like a Madiran to hold it’s own against the strong flavors it is a stunning meal that is both quick and easy to prepare. If you want to treat yourself warm us some nice thick-crust rustic bread and some nice butter mixed fresh basil and all of your worries will go away. The ultimate comfort food.
Ingredients
Pasta
1/2 pound dried pasta of your choice
3 quarts water
1 tbs coarse salt
1/2 pound spinach well washed, stemmed and chopped if large
Sauce
2 tbs butter
1/4 pound blue cheese
2 oz tequila
2 tbs pine nuts toasted and finely chopped
Salt and white pepper to taste
Freshly grated parmesan cheese for garnish
Preparation
1. In a large pot put water and salt and bring to boil at high eat.
2. When the water is boiling, reduce heat and put the pasta in it and cook according to the package until tender.
3. When the pasta is almost ready put the spinach in and blanch for 30 seconds until wilted.
4. Drain the water from the pot return it to the fire with the pasta leaving a few tablespoons of the cooking water.
5. Put the butter, the blue cheese, the pine nuts, and the tequila on the pasta and stir until melted and well incorporated.
6. Serve topped with a white pepper and some grated parmesan.
We are finally back online after over a month of fun getting things ready in the office. We decided to move the blog from our Blogger account to our in-house server on a new website we are in the process of designing. The transition did not go as smoothly as planned as we were busy at the beginning of the month with family visiting from Canada for a few days, and then we were plagued by a series of hardware problems one after another. First my main monitor blew up on me, then the server started freezing intermittently due to a failing power supply, it stabilized for a while then started freezing again so I changed the guts of the system and it seems to work more smoothly now. Let’s hope that things will now go well so that we do not have any further problems with the hardware.
As you should have noticed we extensively redesigned the blog and the host site. This is a first draft and we will make some further refinements over the next few weeks once we have time to settle comfortably into this new home.
While things were going crazy in the last month we also had put a halt in the development of the recipe viewer and other features we plan to add to the site. There was just not enough time in the day to work on the blog, redesign the site, do our regular work, and attend to all the problems with the hardware. Things should be a little less hectic in the coming weeks so that we will have to move forward instead of backward with all the new projects.
Keep an eye on the blog as we will try to start posting daily starting today. Normita had finally written a short introduction a few weeks back, and I am now trying to convince our Padrino in Vienna to introduce himself and start posting interesting stories from Europe.
A lot of new things will soon be ready, so stick with us and enjoy the fun.
Lucito