Rio Fuego Bloody Maria

Erik Ellestad is one of the Bright Young Kids preparing and creating modern cocktails. I’m pretty much “old school”, as in gin martinis and Manhattans, but anytime a Rancho Gordo product can be incorporated into a classic,  I’m all for it. Especially since I think the bean martini is a few years away.

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from Erik:

1 Dash Celery Salt
1 Dash Lemon Juice
1 Dash Worcestershire Sauce
2 oz home made tomato juice
3 oz clam juice
1 1/2 oz Rain Vodka
1/2 teaspoon prepared horseradish
1 dash Rancho Gordo Rio Fuego Very Hot Sauce

Roll ingredients in ice
between cocktail shakers. Strain into ice filled glass and give it a
good grind of black pepper. 

Note: This recipe is adapted from the “New and Additional Cocktails” section of the second edition of the Savoy Cocktail Book.

In any case, I often find Bloody Mary’s a bit thick. Using the clam juice
thins out the tomato juice. It’s not too clammy or anything, more of a
hint of the sea. Nice, really. The Rancho Gordo Very Hot Sauce and
horseradish give it a little bit of a kick.

You visit Erik’s blog for more inspiration. He also is the booze host at eGullet.

Beef Tacos in Jalisco

This last spring, I was visiting my friends Maria and Isidro at their home in Jalisco, Mexico. They were great hosts and it was really different than visits to their home here in Napa.

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Maria loves to cook and talk about food. Everyday, the tortilla man came by with a package of fresh tortillas and she laughed at how fast they seemed to go with me visiting. Isidro likes to forage and trade fruit, cactus paddles and citrus and Maria incorporates them into the meals. They tended to eat a lot of vegetables, chicken and some beef but no pork. On the table at every meal was her salsa made from de Arbol chiles and it was memorably hot.

I talk a lot about tacos and on some level, think almost anything fits on a warm tortilla, but the traditional dishes are there for a reason and Maria likes to make these beef tacos. It was casual but hardly haphazard.

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Each tortilla had a scoop of ground beef, some coleslaw, a few beans and salsa. The slaw was the perfect counterpoint to the hot salsa and the beans and beef gave the tacos body. Cold beers were always nearby for obvious reasons.

More on Sangrita

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My neighbor at the Ferry Plaza farmers market is Happy Girl Kitchens.
Todd and his wife Jordan have lots of really unusual and delicious items but I was blown away by his spicy tomato juice. It turns out he makes it by straining his fresh salsa. Now that tomatoes are in full swing and so juicy, your fresh salsa can be sitting in a pool of tomato juice. This makes an excellent sangrita at drink time.  I made the above from some glorious tomatoes from Eatwell Farm and cucumbers from from my neighbors at Catalan Farms and even drained, you could still taste the cucumbers. I added a spash of Rio Fuego Very Hot Sauce for good measure. Gosh, but I love summer!

 

Jamaica Agua Fresca

If all the talk about how bad soda is for you is getting you down, you could switch to an easy-to-make alternative that tastes exotic and is loaded with vitamin C.

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Dried hibiscus flowers taste weird and good. You might remember a version from your old hippie days called Red Zinger (yes, I was there, too.) In Egypt, I had it as “Karkade ” only it was sweeter and denser than the Mexican version.

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Take about a cup of dried hibiscus flowers and place them in a small stock pot. Add about a cup of sugar (or a cone of piloncillo), fill with water and bring to a boil. Allow it to steep and then strain it. Add some lime juice and more sugar or water if needed.  Cool and serve. I like to add some canela/cinnamon as well but I’m a very daring sort of person.  You could also top it off with a little fizzy water but let’s end our creativity right there.

Giant White Lima Beans

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People often are offering me their beans to sell as a Rancho Gordo product. It’s almost always a  mistake but I did get a hold of a small quantity of these huge Limas, from Peru, home of the orginal Lima bean. I was dubious at first but I made them for friends and we all went a little giddy over them. Despite being Limas, they’re creamy and rich and when cooked with just olive oil, onion and garlic, they’re almost buttery. Did I mention how huge they are?

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The beans on the right are the raw beans and the left shows how large they get when cooked.

We’re selling these only online as they’re not a locally grown product and it’s inappropriate to sell them at the farmers market.

Making Masa from Scratch

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More and more, tortillerias here in the states and in Mexico are switching from fresh masa, made from nixtamalized corn, to instant masa harina, which is made by just adding water. While the masa harina is fine and preferable to most store-bought tortillas, as with most things, doing it the old fashioned way tastes better. But as I discovered, it’s no easy feat.

The first step is to boil dry, starchy corn and add CaL, or the mineral lime, to the water.  It turns the corn a beautiful, lurid yellow. I  boiled for an hour and then let it sit overnight.

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The next morning I rubbed the corn vigorously as I strained it and most of the slimy skin came off.  So far so good and so easy. But how to grind it into that lovely dough we call masa?

I started out with the meat grinder attachment to my Kitchen Aid mixer. This made little corn sausages, not masa. Then I was told that you could do it in the bowl of a food processor. I was doubtful, even when I heard this came from TV’s Alton Brown. It doesn’t work. But it made a nice mash for me to feed the chickens.

The next step was to use a metate, as millions of Mexicans have done for centuries.  How hard could it be? Well, step one is finding one in the United States. Molcajetes are easy enough to find on eBay but metates are rare. But I did finally find one in Texas.

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I’d watched a lot of Mexican women use these and I really thought I’d get the hang of it pretty quickly. Friends, life is full of jokes and the thought that I could master a metate on a lazy Sunday morning is one of them. Other than being dog-tired, my real concern was not letting my sweat drip into the masa! Finally, after what seemed like hours, I had a sad little lump of masa, not fit to show off.  The metate is a thing of beauty and I think it will sit nicely in my garden as an objet d’art. If you are as stubborn as I am and are going to continue searching for one, be aware that American Indians refer to their mortar and pestles as metate and mano, much like the Mexicans use for molcajete and mano. An Indian metate is what a Mexican would call a molcajete.

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I had one last trick up my sleeve. I had a plate grinder I’d bought years ago hiding in my pantry. With the nixtamalized corn I had left, I put it through the grinder to see what would happen. Guess what? It worked. It took two passes and it was a lot of work but it made fine masa. But it was hell to clean it up and in the end, instant masa harina isn’t looking too bad to me.

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It’s not likely I’ll do this again soon but it was a great learning experience and I have a deeper appreciation for what indigenous women have done for years to keep their families fed.

Easy Chicken Pozole

I had some extra corn from my masa experiments and decided to make pozole in the Mexican manner. In New Mexico and the Southwest, this means making a stew using prepared hominy, like we sell at Rancho Gordo. It Mexico, it means using canned or making nixtamal from dry, starchy corn by cooking it with CaL to remove the skins.

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After all the masa making, I was feeling kind of lazy, so in a large clay pot, I plopped the treated corn, some skinned chicken thighs and legs, chile powder, onions, garlic, Mexican oregano and salt. I let this gently simmer for two hours and then shut the heat and went off to work. That evening, I heated it up again on very low and all I can say is wow. This would probably work well in a crock pot. The chicken was falling off the bone, which was a bit of a bother fishing out all the bones and cartlidge, but the flavor was worth the pain.

Pozole

There’s almost nothing as wonderful as a bowl of pozole, with the hint of fat gently shimmering on top, followed by some chopped onion, cilantro, a splash of pineapple vinegar or lime juice and a cool beer on the side.

Cooking With Clay, Part 6

Yet another of the beautiful cazuelas from the beautiful Christopher Ann made it’s way on to my table recently. I don’t know if you can quite tell from the photo but this one is huge. And it’s shallow so I would think the real advantage would be lots of evaporation for a richer, reduced sauce.  The dish gently simmered for several minutes after removing it from heat and placing it on the table.

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Take chicken thighs and gently poach them in water that’s been seasoned with aromatic vegetables like onions, celery, carrot, etc. Allow the cooked thighs to cool in the water (now stock) while you prepare the sauce.

The sauce is simple 3 parts Ancho chiles to 1 part Guajillo chiles. After toasting the dry chiles on a comal, soak them in warm water for about 20 minutes. Add the chiles and some soaking water to a blender, along with white onion, garlic, cumin, cinnamon, clove and Mexican oregano. When well blended, push the thick sauce through a fine mesh sieve with the back of a wooden spoon, leaving behind any seeds or skins. This step isn’t necessary if you’re using only Anchos, but Guajillo chiles have a thick skin and you really need to do this step. You can also use a food mill. Do this  right into the cazuela, or pot you’re cooking in, after you heat up a spoonful or so of lard or olive oil.

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Fry the thick sauce for about 10 minutes, stirring constantly as it splatters.  Slowly thin the chile sauce with some of the chicken poaching liquid until you have your desired consistency. Add the poached chicken pieces and allow to cook for about 10 more minutes. Check for salt and splash with pineapple or rice vinegar right before serving. Unlike breasts, thighs are very forgiving so you can leave this to simmer on very low for quite some time.  I think bone-in thighs are superior to the boneless variety.

Eating Pebble Beans

So we sampled the Pebbles this weekend at the farmers market and they were a big hit. They are dense like a Pinquito and meaty like a Black Nightfall.

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As usual, I just sauteed some onion, garlic, celery and carrot in olive oil until soft, then added the soaked beans and gently simmered until cooked after bringing them to a hard boil. I used 2 teaspoons of salt for a pound of beans, after they were soft.