Years ago I remember that some friends were amazed that we had talked one afternoon at work and when I learned that they had no specific plans for their wedding anniversary that night, I invited them for a nice meal at home and prepared everything from the time I left work at 5pm to the time they arrived at 7pm, and this included shopping for the food.
There was nothing amazing in the process, and all it took was preparation and organization. Knowing your limits also helps. If you like to entertain at home like I do, you always end up with some failsafe recipes that you can always whip up at a moment’s notice. If you always keep the basic ingredients at hand and you have made the recipes many times before, you can easily make a nice meal after simply shopping for perishables you might not have at hand. This is exactly what I had done that evening. I do not remember exactly what I had cooked, but I remember running across the street from my office to pick up some small shrimps for a seafood first course, then to the butcher for a nice piece of meat, and throwing together some blueberry desert with some nice blueberries I picked from the over 50 acres of brush I used to own at the time. It also helped to have a well stocked wine cellar with a few thousand bottles where I could always match what I was planning to cook with one or many different wines. Like everything in life it only takes a bit of practice and confidence to end up with great results.
Another thing that you should do is to always think about what you can do with what you have at hand in your house. One of my favorite things to do in cooking is to look into the refrigerator and see what we can put together with whatever things we have laying around, including leftovers. At times it can be a challenge, but it keeps you culinary mind well exercised.
One thing to remember though is that if you are planning a special event where you want to show your best, do not try to do a new recipe for that event, unless you practice it first. Not doing so would be asking for big trouble. I have never met a new recipe that I have not fiddled with to make it work the way I like. The time for the fiddling is when you are relaxed in your kitchen and do not have a bunch of guests to attend to. Unless you have lots of experience you should not try to improvise something for that special meal. ‘Iron Chefs’ antics should be left to the pros, and even for them the results can be very hit and miss.
Saying all this, I wrote a new recipe today for a lentil soup that I plan to serve on Saturday when special friends will come over for supper. I am pretty sure that it should come out well, but in a way I am contradicting all that I have said above. The rest of the meal will be tried and true recipes though. I really do not have time to try the new soup beforehand, but I will probably make it either Friday afternoon, or on Saturday morning so if things do not go as planned I can always prepare something else or try to fix the mess without the pressure of our guests being there.
So remember the following, if you have to do something special at the last minute, do some of you favorite recipes that you are comfortable with. Try to have most of the ingredients for them always at hand, so you have to buy a minimum amount of ingredients at the last minute. Always keep at hand a few bottles of red and white wines of different types so that you have something that can match most dishes without having to run around for wine at the last minute. We will talk about what type of wines to keep at hand for regular and/or emergency consumption in the coming weeks. If you have a bit of lead time and want to try a new recipe, practice it before to make sure that it turns out as you expect and you do not run into major problems with your guests waiting at the table. At least, do as I will do next weekend, prepare it with enough time before the guests arrive to be able to cook something else or change the recipe without being under pressure.
Lucito
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
Hola, I am Normita, finally I had the time to write a little introduction about myself as Luc had mention to you a while ago. As Luc said I am his Mexican wife, we have been married almost 5 years on November 25th, during this time we have had very happy times and some very hard time too but I have learnt that all of this is part of the life experience.
Luc and I met through the Internet, one day I was with my friend Lety who wanted to find somebody on the Internet but on that time she did not know how to use Internet so she asked me to do it for her.
I decided to research on the internet and I found a page in which I had to subscribe to know the way it was working so I could teach my friend how to use it so I navigated through that page and I reach into a place where you could search the kind of person you would like to meet.
On that occasion I search for a man that would meet my requirements and I found Luc.
I decided to write him a message in which I was introducing myself, I thought that he would never answered me, as I was not trusty on these kind of things, but I had a big surprise the next day, I had a message from him on my yahoo account.
Inside of me I felt very happy because I had a very happy feeling with him since the first day he wrote me, I liked a lot the way he wrote, I think I fell in love with him since he asked me if I wanted to share his keyboard with him. Since then we have been together at first through the Internet and later married. This happened about 8 year ago and this has been the best adventure I have had in my entire life.
When I met Luc I used to work for an Investment Company (Pioneer International) as an administrator, on that time I was really happy with my job as I had the chance to reach many of goals in my career. I had the chance to travel through Europe on that time too and I will confess you something; when I arrived to Italy to a little town called Padua I met the tomb of Saint Antonio of Padua, everybody said that Saint Antonio was very miraculous to find a couple, so I decided to ask him to send me a good man to share the rest of my life. I can tell you that it really worked because three months later I found Luc my beautiful and lovely husband.
I could tell you lots of stories about our life together but I think I would never finish writing them, so the only thing I can tell you is that with Luc I found my happiness.
Actually I am working in a Canadian company, of course, Canadian Education Centre, in which I am a counselor and my main job is to organize the events for the Centre. This job has been another challenge for me in my career as my new activities are totally different from the activities I used to do in my other job but I love it and it has given me the chance to meet a lot of nice people.
In this space that Luc has created for us I plan to share with you some of my Mexican recipes and other surprises I will prepare to share with you with the help of Luc and my padrino Kurt. I will talk to you later. Normita Carreño de Paquin (on the Mexican way).
A few weeks ago we were exploring the surrounding areas of the new ‘Colonia’, or neighborhood, where we recently moved to and we found a ‘Mercado’ not too far from where we now live. Those ‘Mercados’ are the permanent versions of the street markets or ‘tianguis’ which are normally setup on fixed days on blocked sections of streets. Most ‘Colonias’ have them once of twice a week. They are great sources for fresh produce, chicken, meat, seafood, and everything else from clothing to pirated DVDs. On that day we found some very nice large shrimps with heads on (15-20 count to a pound) at a decent price and we picked up half a kilo for the main meal of the day, which here means the ‘Comida’ which is normally taken at 2-3pm. Since we had been shopping all day, when we returned home we were too exhausted to do anything too involved in the kitchen, so I decided to prepare the shrimps very simply. I decided to sauté them in a neutral oil with just a bit of ‘Chile Guajillo’ and chopped garlic. The ‘Guajillos’ are medium-sized dried red chilies with a very nice deep flavor and very mild in spiciness. They should be available in most Hispanic grocery stores. They give a nice red tinge to the food and a wonderful flavor. We paired the shrimps with a simple pilaf rice and we had the meal ready in about 30-40 minutes. The only bottle of wine we had was a crisp cheap sauvignon blanc from Chile and it proved to be a nice match to the wonderful dish.
Ingredients
3/4 pound large shrimps, shelled, deveined, and butterflied
2 ‘Chile Guajillos’ seeded cut into thin rings
2 small cloves of garlic chopped finely
1 tbs sunflower oil
Preparation
1. Remove the heads and shell the shrimps
2. Clean in a bowl of cold water and devein them, then deepen the incision to butterfly them
3. Pat dry on some paper towels
4. Heat a large frying pan or wok over high eat
5. Add the oil and quickly put the garlic and rings of chili
6. Stir 15 seconds and then add the shrimps
7. Let them sit for 30 seconds to take the eat then start stirring them with a wooden spatula more and more rapidly
8. Cook on both sides until tender and opaque, about 2-5 minutes total depending on the heat of you stove
9. Serve with the garlic and chilies rings on top