Roasted everything salsa

My buddy Glen and his wife, Christa have a crazy packed tiny garden. He brought me some of their peppers and tomatoes the other day. This recipe is your standard roasted salsa number... nothing going on special here, but as I made it, I was struck by how damn easy and forgiving it is. This time of year, when fresh tomatoes are everywhere, it's easy to make great food for every meal.

For example, dig this roasted tomato pasta sauce that I *thought* I invented until I saw a similar method in some magazine a year or so ago.

Anyway...

Start by charring your peppers. This silly grill grate thing is excellent on the gas stove top for peppers. Once charred, put them in bowl and cover them with plastic to sweat.

Then broil your tomatoes, garlic, and a couple onions.

Meanwhile, pull the stems (but not the seeds) off the peppers and scrape/pick/peel off the charred bits that come off easily. Toss them all in the food processor.

Char/blacken the tomatoes, onions, garlic a bit.

I press out the liquid from the tomatoes. Otherwise, you end up with a very soupy salsa. If I ruled, I'd save that charred tomato liquid for some brilliant thing.

Toss it all in the food processor. You gotta have cilantro. I happened to have a 1/2 a lime to juice and some chopped red onions too -- so that went in too.

Process it until it's done. Salt and pepper and you're good to go. If I did it again, I'd add some fresh jalapeno and/or habanero for that distinctly fresh pepper heat.

John's post-ride breakfast huevos frijoles

Hit it!

We often have pinto beans going in the crockpot. We're big fans of pinto beans. We also love black beans, which also work for this breakfast, but pintos are better.

This is a super simple breakfast that I make all the time. The recipe I outline here is sort of the baseline. A guy could add all sorts of stuff to make it their own. 

You can use canned beans to make this super easy and simple, but making pintos in the crockpot is so easy and cheap and yummy that it's hard to dump beans out of a can. 

For the beans: We take 2 or 3 cups of beans and cover them with water by an inch or so and let it soak overnight. I usually throw a couple dried peppers in there too.

The key to great beans is not to dump out that soaking water. Seriously. Don't do it. You may need to add a bit of water, but don't dump any out. Cook on High for a couple hours, then turn it to Low until they are tender.

Be sure to season/salt after they cook. Not before. We like this "Extra Fancy" seasoning stuff. It's cheap and it's in the Mexican section and there's no MSG. What's not to love?

Chop up some jalapeno and onion and saute them in a pan with a bit of olive oil. You could throw in some garlic if you're into that. Or maybe a bit of habanero. Saute it until it's soft.

Add about 1/2 to 3/4 cups beans and some salsa. The taquero-style sauces are my favorite for this dish. You want lots of liquid going since you'll be sort of boiling/poaching the eggs.

Here's Joe pondering my current favorite salsa. I friggin' love this stuff. But looking at the Herdez site, now I want to find the Arbol sauce. Damn, I bet that's good too.

Plop the eggs on there and cover to poach/steam/boil.

I use a cast iron pan to cover the eggs. This works as a tortilla warmer too. Genius, right?

You can put some cheese on there for melting.

Cook until the egg jiggles, or not, to your liking. Cover with gobs of Valentina sauce and sop it all up with the tortilla: Grub, with a capital G.

Fried eggs are good. Fried eggs with jalapeno are gooder.

I want to think that I invented this. Of course it's been done. How could it not have been done before?

This is a fine, fine meal. For breakfast or perhaps very late night.

Saute some fresh, sliced jalapenos in a bit of olive oil for a minute or so. Then crack the eggs on top of them. Flip 'em for o'er easy or what moves you.

Fried eggs with a dang quesadilla and avocado. Salsa is new-to-me super-rad high-value Herdez "Taquera" salsa.

That's good living.

Cheap eats

We switched jobs around here since the last time we posted stuff. We're bringing in way less money now -- which isn't a bad thing, since we're happily doing new work -- but, it has impacted our high-flying, high-roller lifestyle when it comes to the food budget. This new scheme really suits our true natures. We're both into deals.

So, while we are looking to save a bunch of money every month on our food budget, it's not at the expense of quality. Really: it just means that we're not going out much. I used to go out for just about every meal, every day: definitely breakfast and lunch, and often dinner. Now we make everything. Just doing that, even while buying fancy organic free range grass fed well adjusted meat, makes all the difference.

So, expect to see some cheap, but good stuff here.

First one is a John version of my mom's Braciole. Mom's recipe calls for all sorts of high-zoot stuffing (pecorino, soprasata, ground veal, etc). I swapped out ground pork sausage and swiss. Next time, I'll leave the swiss cheese out and add a layer of hearty greens and some chicken liver. And I'll probably get non-seasoned ground pork and put some dried porchinis, Cognac, and my own spices in there.

We had sage, but no parsley. And instead of the stock-based braising sauce, I just used some fresh marinara -- that hadn't been cooked down/thickened yet.

Good stuff. My mom would approve. As she would say, "make it your own!"

This is good as a main dish, but it's friggin' crazy awesome as a sandwich filling the next day with some spinach, mayo, and jalapenos.

I used beef round, which is generally a pretty useless cut of beef. But it was on sale at Super 1 for $2.48/lb! Word. I got one dinner out of this and 4 lunches. I figure I was in it around about $13. Not bad.

Anyway, for the round: cut it thin and pound it out. Let it rest. Then pound a bit more. Use string to tie these guys up.

Poor man's charcuterie.

Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Cookies (flourless)

I posted on FB about a recipe I found for a flourless "cookie." Then famous Spokane biker, Charlie Greenwood pointed me to these flourless cookies, which blew my recipe out of the water. I've made a batch weekly for 2 weeks and am about to make a 3rd batch for a baby shower this weekend. 

I've used chopped almonds but would like to try peanuts and walnuts. I also reduced the sugar 1/2 C of sugar, maybe a T less than the 1/2 C. You might even be able to do less for a more savory cookie. Try these cookie, whether you are gluten-free or not. They are chewy, moist and remain that way for a few days, delicious and pretty nutritious. Also very easy to make--one bowl, no need to get the mixer out to cream the butter and sugar.

Here's where you'll find the recipe for Almond Butter Cookies. Feel free to use peanut butter like I did or other nut butter.

If that link dies, here's the recipe:

Ingredients

Makes about 2 1/2 dozen cookies

1 cup almond butter (or peanut butter)

1/2 cup light or dark brown sugar

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1 large egg

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 tablespoons maple syrup

1 teaspoon vanilla

Pinch of salt

1/2 cup slivered almonds

1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Method

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Grease a baking sheet with butter and set aside.

In a large bowl, stir almond butter and sugars together until well combined.

Add egg, baking soda, maple syrup, vanilla and salt and mix well. Stir in the almonds and chocolate chips.

Using a teaspoon, scoop out small, walnut-sized amounts of dough and roll them in your hands to form a ball. Place on cookie sheet about 1 inch apart. Bake 10 to 12 minutes, until lightly browned. Cool for 5 minutes.

Super fast awesome chili

I think the deal with proper chili is to use cheap, tough cuts and stew/braise them forever with chilies. And I dig that. But I also like to have a quick pot. Here's a variation of chili that I make with sausage. Super 1 has great, house-made, fresh sausage. I use their chorizo for this one. I always do a different chili thing but there's always a fresh pile and a dried pile of chilies.

My buddy Rachel gave me a handful of super hot little fresh chilies from her garden. I also have some fresh ones from my uncle. Since both Rachel's and Uncle Danny's chilies are so hot, I went with New Mexico dried chili for flavor.

If I get  a hold of pablanos, I roast/peel them, then use them.

This takes 15 minutes to get rolling. Once it's cooking, by the time you're done cleaning, you could eat it. But I like to simmer it for about an hour.

I have this for breakfast with a fried egg on top and a tortilla on the side. Yum.

Remove the chorizo (I've got 5 here) from their skin. Brown em.

While the sausage is browning, chop your stuff: fresh chilies, an onion, a bit of carrot. Don't chop up the dried pepper!

Chopped stuff.

Take the sausage out, but leave the grease in there and cook the peppers, onions, etc

When the onions get translucent, dump some beer or water or wine or stock in there. This is Coffee Joe beer.
Scrape the brown bits up.

Put sausage back in, dump a can of diced tomatoes in there. Beans are optional.  Add a bit more beer if you need to. Throw a bullion cube in there for good measure.
Simmer for at least 20 minutes.
Done!

Chicken pot pie to go

Ready for the freezer. Then delivery. Then baking.

Whoa. Sorry for the lapse there. We're cooking as much as ever, but I've just not taken the time to blog about it.

One reason is that I am too lazy. So I'll do lazier posts. Instead of getting all crazy with recipes, methods, etc, I'll just lay out the basics. There's nothing here that isn't just basic down home cooking that can't be found with a quick search.

Anyway. We've got 3 friends that just recently had a kid. That is: three couples. Each couple recently and unrelatedly had a kid. We're making a chicken pot pie for two of the families. That is: one pie, each for each of two families. The third will get a sack of Zip's burgers.

This is as easy as it gets for super comfort home-cooking radness. It's made even easier by breaking up the tasks across a few days and sharing the workload.

Lots of pics!

Day 1 - Stock n Roast
Buy a whole chicken. Always. It's such a bargain: you get the bird for at least half the price per pound than you pay for any single part. AND you get liver, bones, and all sorts of goodness for stock making. Sometimes I'll buy skin-on, bone-in thighs, but 88% of the time, I just buy the whole bird.

Cut it up in 8 pieces: two wings (chop off the ends for stock), two legs, two thighs, two breasts. Chop the back in half. Save the liver.

Roast it: salt and pepper the wings, thighs, legs, breasts. Leave the skin on. Put them in a roasting pan and roast at 400-425F. Go about 12 minutes, then turn them. Let them go for another 10 minutes or so.

Meanwhile, stock: heat up a pot on the stove top, find some aromatics. Put a bit of canola in the pot and let it get hot. Sear the backs in the oil until they are brown on all sides.

Dump the aromatics in with a couple quarts of water, bring it to a boil and turn it to a hearty simmer for about 30-40 minutes. Skim off the fat. Pour the whole lot through a sieve to save the stock.

Back to the roasting stuff: take the chicken out of the roasting pan and pour the fat out of the pan. Put the pan on the stove top over medium heat and scrape up the bits with a wooden scraper. Pour about 1 cup of wine, or beer, or water into the pan. Heat + wet + wooden scraper: cleans the bits up perfectly. Dump this pan dripping (along with bits) into the stock you just finished.

When the chicken is cool, bone it and then chop it up. Skin and all.

Day 2 - Make the pot pie filling
You've done the hard part. Now just put it all together, warm it up, season it, and thicken it.

Find and chop some aromatics. Ideally, a couple stalks of celery, a couple carrots, and an onion. We didn't have any celery and the only onion we had was a Walla Walla. So, I went with leeks and celery instead. Heat up a pot with a bit of olive oil and get those guys going. You can always chop up bacon at this point too -- makes a nice little chewy treat in there when all is said and done.

Potato is optional, but we had one, so I peeled it, chopped it up, made a mental note to add a touch more salt at the end, and threw it in there too.

Make a roux too. Since I was making two pies (I had to add another 2 cups of stock from our freezer to what's mentioned above), I ended up with about 1/4 cup + a bit of butter and 1/4 cup + a bit of flour. If I wasn't rushed, I would've let the roux go a bit longer to darken it a bit more. I love the smell of roux -- smells like butterscotch.

Once the aromatics start to soften a bit, dump your stock and chicken bits in there. I simmered this until the potatoes were *just* toothsome -- they'll cook a bit more during baking. Now is the time to season. Salt and pepper is all you need. If I had fresh rosemary or thyme, I'd have tossed some of that in there.

Pour off a few ladles of the broth into your roux pot, then dump the roux into your soup to make it a filling. The crust will soak up moisture and so will the potatoes, so don't go all gravy at this point. Back of spoon test should show nice cling, but dripping.

Pull it off the stove, dump it in a thin metal bowl and add frozen veggies (beans, peas, carrots, whatever) to help it cool. Put the bowl in a sink with ice and cool it quickly and package it up for day 3.

Day 3 - Have a Jedi Crust Maker hook you up.

Liza has turned into a crust pro. Find a pro or become one. But don't dump this mixture into a store-bought "shell." It requires a rad crust.

If the crust thing is just not going to happen. Then go biscuits. Preheat oven to 425 F. Dump your filling into a cast iron pan, warm it up a bit on the stove, then cover the top with biscuit dough, in pieces or rolled out. Then bake it.

Otherwise, take care of business and do the dough deed.

Fill the dough with filling.

Top the dough. make it pretty.

Freeze it. And give it all away.

To eat: preheat oven to 425 and bake for at least an hour. Watch for over-browning of the crust after 40 minutes or so. Cover the edges with tinfoil to keep browning at bay.

High heat

As we eat more meat, I am getting more into cooking. Weird how that works. When it comes to meat, I'm really into the sear, which requires a lot of heat to really pull off well.

I've been obsessed with heat before. Years ago when we lived on the west side of the state, I figured out a great quick super hot grilling solution where I used a camping stove under a Lodge cast iron grill pan. I mainly used it for fish.

Lately I've been trying to figure out how to cook tri-tip steaks quickly and yummily. At heart, I'm a cheap bastard, so tri-tips appeal to me because they're usually around $5/lb. If they're cut thick, I'll butterfly them to around an inch or so.

In my opinion, the tri-tip should be seared over a screaming hot fire for about 3 minutes a side. Then let it rest. And slice it against the grain. Piled on bread or over a salad, it's pretty good.

Click for big: dig that char baby! What a difference serious heat makes.

The problem is that in the last 10 years, I've gotten rid of all of my high-heat-makers: I got rid of a hibachi, a small "brazer" grill, and a small Weber kettle. And I can't find that Lodge cast iron grill pan either.

So, today, I made an inferno cooker in the back yard. I don't think this is a good idea as the weather dries out, but the mulch under the bricks is still damp for now. In any case, it raged. With one measly chimney full of briquettes, I had a super hot surface.

I charred some peppers and made a salsa. Then I made the tri-tips, which I rubbed with salt, pepper, fresh rosemary, and garlic. Then I grilled asparagus, Brady style. And toasted some English muffins.
I love cooking over that kind of heat. The peppers just blistered and crackled as soon as I put them down. Nice.

I may have to do a butterflied chicken tomorrow on the big Webber. Maybe with a Mexican angle so we can stuff it in tortillas and have a reason to eat the salsa we made tonight.

I wish Lodge made a bigger, shallower version of their hibatchi.