Monthly Archives: April 2010
Yesterday I posted HERE that we would be having that nice suadero meat that we had bought Sunday and that has been marinating since then. It turned out that when Normita and I went to sit down and relax before the meal we were both so exhausted that we would not have enjoyed the meal. We decided to make a quick sandwich and keep the nice meat for today. Of course this means that it marinated for an extra day and that hopefully there is still something left in there and that the meat did not just dissolve completely. I have yet to check on that…
So we will have the suadero today with some oven-roasted baby potatoes and grilled asparagus, as planned yesterday. This time I hope that we actually eat it as I am starting to be very hungry, though Normita says she is not. We’ll see how this turns out today… If we actually do eat it I will try to post some photos of the results later.
Lucito
I think that it is time for a bit of recipe reorganization here on the blog as when I was trying to see if I had posted the marinade recipe from yesterday I noticed that it is not that easy to navigate the blog and see all that is there. I am currently looking at alternatives from simply re-categorizing the entire content to a better solution that might involve some additional technology or WordPress plug-in.
If any of you have some suggestions or can recommend a plug-in that could help to better classify the content of the blog please leave a comment about it, or write to me directly at jlpaquin@igourmand.com.
Lucito
Today we will have some nice looking meat we bought yesterday morning and that has been marinating in the refrigerator since yesterday afternoon. I was looking for something tasty and cheap as I had a craving for arrachera, but they only had marinated stuff at a fairly high price for the area. Without knowing if their marinade was any good I did not want to take a chance. I found a package of something called “suadero” that looked somewhat similar to arrachera meat, but thinner and lighter in color. The meat looked very tasty and to close the deal it was very cheap.
I decided to marinate it overnight in a marinade I have been using for over 25 years. I think I saw something similar in Gourmet magazine back in those days, and it was used to marinate butterflied legs of lamb. This is one of my all time favorite recipe and I will post it in its entirety whenever I have a special occasion to thaw that nice leg of lamb I have in the freezer. I wanted to do it last weekend, but the people we wanted to invite could not make it. It’s our lost and their lost if they miss the occasion we finely prepare it.
Going back the the meat, I researched on the internet and there are not real consensus on what really suadero is in Mexican cuisine. It is described as a thin juicy cut of meat from the breast of the cow, and depending of what you read it can also be from everywhere else including pigs. I need to ask the butcher next time where is suadero came from. The texture is somewhat similar to arrachera but thinner, and to me it looks like the thin muscle covering over the cow’s ribs as there are similar thin muscles on both pork and lamb ribs. I will stick to that definition until I am proven wrong…
The way I marinated it is very very tasty and it normally tenderizes the meat to the consistency of butter. Let’s see if it works as planned on that meat… You start with some onions, jalapeños, fresh ginger, and garlic cloves.
The basic ingredients of the marinade (onions, ginger, garlic, jalapeños)
You roughly chop those and place them in a blender and add some olive oil, sesame oil, soy sauce, honey, salt and pepper. You liquefy the whole mess and marinate the meat overnight or better yet a few days in the refrigerator.
the first piece of suadero in the marinade waiting to be covered by the second one
Both pieces of suadero marinating and getting more tender by the second (we hope)
Later this afternoon, about an hour before we are ready to eat, I will take the meat out of the refrigerator. I will grill the meat on the gas barbecue and baste it slowly will all the marinade. I will also prepare some oven roasted baby potatoes with herbs and olive oil, and grilled some marinated fresh asparagus that for some strange reason have been on sale for about 4 times less than the normal price at the local Walmart. I guess that I am the only one in the area that buys them and they dropped the price dramatically. Their loss and my gain…
I will take some pictures when we actually prepare the meal, and I will post the results later today or tomorrow… Wish us luck…
BTW, the banana bread from yesterday we had for breakfast this morning turned out to be heavenly!!!
Lucito
In the coming months we will start posting short excerpts of the various courses, classes, tastings and conference we offer. We are just gearing up production of them as we normally tape all of our events. We are using a very good, but old Hi-8 camera and it is not amenable to quick production as transferring the videos to digital media is time consuming as you have to capture it in real time and the hardware and software we currently use causes problems if you do something else on the computer at the same time. This essentially means that if you want to digitize a 2 hour tape you lose the use of your computer for at least 2 hours. Not useful if you have other things to do.
We are considering various options right now to streamline the capture of the videos, increase their quality, and make producing them a lot less time consuming for us. The first step might be to move video production to another system in the office, but I have yet yet to find one that is not used and has enough power to make this worthwhile. We’ll see about that. In the mid term we will need to get a good quality digital camcorder and a better video-editing suite. I used to have a professional video-editing suite when we still lived in Canada, but it is packed away with most of our stuff over there, and in any case the technology from over 10 years ago is very updated by now as it was all analog-based.
Anyways, enough rambling. Here is a link to our main site where some videos of our current “Introduction to Wine” course are posted:
https://www.igourmand.com/videos.html
You can also subscribe to my YouTube channel here:
http://www.youtube.com/user/DonLucito
Once we gear up production we will be posting the videos on YouTube regularly. We will also start posting cooking videos once we can figure out the logistics of doing it properly.
We lack the proper space to do it well in our kitchen right now as even taking simple photos is not easy as the contrast between either black or white countertops and our dishes that are all white makes life miserable. We are currently looking at various alternatives there too. The ideal would be to move to a bigger house where we could setup a permanent place for the cooking and wine school and operate from there. Right now we rent space in various places for our events and we could alternatively rent commercial space and have a permanent place four our events. Strangely enough a few seconds ago as I was starting to write this, somebody called us to offer us commercial space at a decent price in a large mall. We’ll see what life brings us…
BTW, if somebody in the Mexico City area, or who owns property in the Mexico City area reads this and you have a larger-sized house in a good area of town for rent, please contact me directly at jlpaquin@igourmand.com so we can discuss what you have to offer.
Lucito
A bit after the holiday season this year Normita was in the mood for something different for breakfast one weekend. We used to occasionally buy some bran muffins at the local supermarket when we were grocery shopping to eat for breakfast when we returned home. As everything happening in Mexico in the past few year, things are going down dramatically in quality and prices are increasing just as dramatically. I’ve noticed in the past few months at our local Walmart that baked goods have gone up as much as 50% and the size of the items has been reduced by about one third. Quality is also a lot worse than before.
Due to all of the above we stopped buying most baked goods there, but the craving for something nice remained. Ages ago I used to bake a tropical banana bread with lots of rum inside that the girls at my dental clinic at the time used to enjoy a lot. The recipe is probably in storage up in Canada with most of our things, so that weekend I decided to improvise something. Since baking at very high altitude like where we live (close to 9000 feet) things can be a bit tricky at first, so by trial over the next few weeks I adjusted the recipe until it yields great results all the time. For those who live at saner altitudes adjust the recipe accordingly by adding a bit more baking powder and sugar, and reducing the liquids.
It is something very easy to make and I normally prepare a batch when I get up early in the morning and then bake it slowly. Since we normally have breakfast late around 10am or so, we have some nice warm bread just out of the oven at that time. I had been planning to bake one for the last 3-4 days, but each day we were doing something in the morning that prevented me to do so. Tomorrow morning is our normal house chores morning so I decided to bake one this afternoon while I was in the kitchen preparing other things so that tomorrow and most of the rest of the week we will have some nice banana bread for breakfast.
It is a very easy recipe to make. You start by mixing the dry ingredient together in a big bowl with a spoon.
The dry ingredients all mixed up
You then prepare the wet ingredients in another bowl and mix them well with a spoon.
The wet ingredients well mixed
You then pour the wet ingredients in the dry ingredient and mix well with a spatula and when everything is well incorporated you fold in the garnish.
The ingredients well mixed
The garnishes, in this case raisins and wallnuts, are folded in
That’s it! You then butter a bread mold, pour in the batter and bake in the oven. It is THAT easy!
A well buttered bread mold
The batter poured in the bread mold
The bread baking in the oven
The resulting bread is nice moist and heavy and the richness of the ingredient and the bite of the various alcohol makes it most importantly very tasty. It is a great way to start a day first with a nice fresh grapefruit which are in season and very cheap here these days, followed by a nice piece of moist banana bread with a great cup of very strong coffee. I am drooling just thinking about tomorrow morning’s breakfast.
A nice loaf of banana bread just out of the oven!
Recipe
Dry Ingredients
1 cup flour
1 cup lightly crushed Bran Flakes type cereals
1 cup oat bran
1/3 cup sugar substitute (low calorie fruit sugar)
1 tbs baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbs ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground nutmeg
1 tsp ground dry ginger
3 tbs caramelized sesame seeds
Wet Ingredients
2 mashed bananas
1/2 cup milk
2 tbs margarine
3 beaten eggs
2 tbs honey
1 tbs vanilla
2 tbs orange liqueur
4 tbs rum
2 tbs coffee liqueur
Garnishes
2 handfuls raisins
2-3 handfuls had crushed walnuts
Preparation
1. Mix the dry ingredients together with a spoon in a large bowl
2. Combine wet ingredients and mix them well in another bowl
3. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ones and mix with a large spatula
4. Add nuts and raising and fold them in with the spatula
5. Pour in a buttered loaf pan
6. Bake at 350F for 1 hour 15 minute to 1 hour 40 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out dry
Lucito
We went food shopping this morning and the supermarket was full and the people there behaved like animals. Actually that is insulting animals as most behave better than that. We absorbed so much bad energy that we returned home dead tired. I was planning to prepare something nice for this afternoon’s meal, but we returned so late and tired that we decided to eat the leftover pork curry from yesterday with the leftover chicken soup from Friday. This way we will clean the refrigerator and get rid of and clean all of the pots stored there.
I spent some time in the kitchen anyway as I prepare some nice banana bread for breakfast tomorrow and marinated something for tomorrow meal. I will see if I have the energy to post my banana bread recipe later tonight while Normita attends a webinar, and I will adjourn to the kitchen now to reheat the soup and the curry. Until later…
Lucito
I did not post the pictures yesterday because I could not get the digital camera to connect to the graphics computer last night and I was too lazy to even simply reboot the system to see if it would help, let alone actually diagnose the problem. Everything is fine today so I assume that it was just a transient glitch, though the camera is starting to show its age and is starting to act strange at time.
Yesterday’s curry turned out even better than I had thought and the meat was extremely tender and juicy. I had asked Normita how she wanted the curry and she had requested on the medium side, and it turned out that I aimed for that, but ended up more on the medium-hot side. Actually before I knew Normita, and then moved to Mexico I probably would have said it was extremely hot and probably inedible to me at the time, but now my taste has changed and I got accustomed to eat chiles and it was perfect for my taste and Normita devoured her plate so I guess it was good for her too.
I started with part of that nice piece of pork thigh we bought last week. Before freezing it I had cut it in 3 and froze each piece individually. Here is one of those pieces.
A nice juicy piece of pork thigh
I cut it in small cubes so it can cook a tad quicker as it was getting late and then I floured the pieces in a mixture of flour, garlic salt, onion powder, cumin and curcuma.
Cubed pork thigh
Floured pork cubes
I then quickly chopped a piece of leftover onion, some garlic cloves, and ginger. I sauteed the onion in plenty of olive oil and then added the garlic and ginger. Once the onions had taken a bit of color I added the floured pork cubes and browned them.
Some onion, ginger, and garlic
The pork cubes browning with the onions, garlic, and ginger
Once the pork was well browned I added a few cups of beef stock, so salt, pepper, cumin, curcuma, lots of curry powder, and some chili paste. I stirred everything together and let it simmer for about 30 minutes while I prepared some simple steamed rice.
Simmering pork curry
I very simply plated the dish with some rice at the bottom and a nice portion of curry on top. It was simply heavenly!
Plated pork curry on steamed rice
Lucito
Today we spent the day working in the office. Normita is doing updates to a website for a client, and I am building an update business plan for our food/wine course business. The day is somewhat dull outside and now it is raining a bit. I decided to spice things up by making some nice pork curry with one of the pieces of pork thigh we bought last weekend. It is still thawing slowly and I am not sure exactly how I will prepare it. I will let the gods of cooking inspire me when I enter the kitchen.
To keep things easy I will prepare a simple steamed rice to serve with the curry. As usual I will try to post some pictures later.
Lucito
We just finished eating a short time ago and the meal was both very satisfying and very tasty. Normita’s chicken soup had its normal effect of settling our stomachs and relaxing us. Something very needed this week. It is so effective it should be sold in every pharmacy…
Normita's World Famous Chicken Soup - A cure for all ailments
The tacos and accompanying sauce were also very satisfying and we both left the table well fed and in a better mood. What more do you want from a good meal? Now it’s back to work and we both hope to be very productive tonight!
The corn tortillas pre-heating on the comal
Normita preparing the chicken tacos
The tacos cooking on the comal
The plated tacos, one with a bit of homemade salsa and heavy cream inside
Lucito
Today Normita will be doing the cooking duties. I feel a bit off-the-weather and I had a craving for her incredible super-duper chicken soup. It is a simple soup to make and soups are really her specialty. I call her “Normita la Sopera” (Normita the soup maker) all the time…
The recipe for this great soup was published HERE years ago. Have a look at it if you want a great tasting soup that is easy to prepare. We thawed two nice and large chicken thighs an drumsticks and she will use that for the soup with plenty of noodles.
For the main course she will shred the meat and then make some “taquitos dorados de pollo” (golden chicken tacos) with it. Normally those tacos are made with soft corn tortillas rolled with the chicken inside and then deep fried. We prefer cooking them without fat directly on a “comal” the traditional griddle used in all kind of Mexican cooking. Our stove even has one built-in that covers the middle 2 burners of the 6 burner stove top. You simply roll some shredded chicken meat in the soft tortillas and then place them on the very hot “comal” and turn them until they are evenly golden and crisp. She will serve the tacos with some homemade salsa and them with some heavy cream.
I’m starting to salivate just writing about this… I guess that the strange noises I am hearing right now are from my stomach that is growling from hunger… I’m really looking forward to the meal…
Lucito