In the kitchen – Page 53 – Experiments in my New World Kitchen and Garden

Clay Pot Cooking, Part 3

This is the last beautiful shot of one of my favorite pots. It’s very simple and classic and the beans always turn out well in it. I also love it because it reminds me of a really fun trip to Mexico.

I say "last" because this last weekend I had the bright idea to reheat the beans on the grill while cooking a nice lamb roast from The Fatted Calf. The grill wasn’t spotless, let’s be honest, and lamb is rather fatty, so while I frolicked in the pool, the grill started to smoke a lot and really did a number on the pot.

That burnt thing top left is the lamb roast. It was delicious despite the way it looked.

The good news is that heating or cooking the beans like this adds a delicious out-of-doors flavor and while the pot isn’t so pretty, it’s even more rustic and maybe even a little flavored now.

Marrow Beans

Marrow beans are small white beans. Unlike the more glamorous Runner Cannellini or Flageolet, Marrow beans work well in any recipe calling for a white bean, navy bean or alubia. Their texture is light and almost airy but they don’t have that annoying "baby food" texture that navy beans can have.

Normally I cook them with a simple mirepoix but recently I was in a rush and had to use what was handy. This ended up being simply some onions and once soft, a little salt. Guess what? They were glorious.

There’s another bean, apparently from England, called a marrowfat bean. I had thought they were the same but apparently the marrowfats are large like a runner bean. And also delicious, just in a different way.

Preparing Cactus: From Nopal to Nopalitos

Are your cactus ready to harvest? Mine are and since I’ve had a few requests for instructions on getting them ready to eat. I’d thought I’d do a little photo essay.
When the cactus is a paddle, the Mexicans call it a nopal, or nopales for plural. Once it’s cleaned and trimmed, the pieces are called nopalitos.

First, grab a dish towel and hold one end of the paddle as you make a nice clean slice at the base:

Carefully wrap the dishtowel around the thick base of the paddle, but first notice how butch my hands look in this photo:

Slowly cut along the outside of the paddle. There are too many spines to bother with so just cut around the paddle:

Slowly go from base to top and remove the spines. You’ll be surprised how easily they come off but you won’t get them all. No worries. Also a common question is how to skin the paddle, but you don’t. In fact, do your best to just get the spines and as little of the paddle as possible:

Now carefully go in all directions and get every last spine until there are none left:

If you’re grilling your paddle, make cuts as shown so the paddle will cook evenly:

If you’re boiling your cactus, cut it up into little squares. I’d prefer it of you take a little more care than I have in this photo:

Rinse well and let drain:

It’s that easy. If you’re boiling, I have a post here.
Enjoy your nopales, but remember, like love, they can hurt!

Boling Cactus Paddles

The new growth on my biggest cactus plant is screaming, “Eat me!” How can I say no?

I’ve read instructions for boiling cactus and they are all over the map. Today I cleaned and cubed a paddle and added it to a pan of boiling water along with a large slice of white onion, separated into rings. I didn’t have any tomatillo husks handy or I would have added them, too.

At five minutes, the color was still a lurid green and the texture was crunchy but the flavor was too sour and bright for my tastes. It was also too gooey. Cacti release an okra-like substance and at five minutes, it was too much. At ten, the goo was mostly gone and the flavor was much better but still a little too sour. At 15 minutes, everything seemed perfect. Just to push my luck, I went check again at 20 minutes and the nopalitos has lost their texture. I think 15 minutes is about perfect.

You will hear advice to rinse after draining them but this wasn’t necessary at 15 minutes. Just let the drain and then use them as needed, in my case as a taco with a little cotija cheese and Rancho Gordo Rio Fuego Very Hot Sauce.

A Taste of Tamales by the Bay

As I mentioned earlier, we participated in a really fun event called A Taste of Tamales by the Bay. Joan and I went more to help a good cause but ended up having a great time and meeting some wonderful people. And the tamales were really fine.

There were tamales in all styles, from the American Southwest to the Yucatan. I particularly loved these bean filled tamales from El Salvador made by the very vivacious Estrellita of Estrellita’s Snacks. Tamales in El Salvador are moister than many of the Mexican ones and Estrellita’s were wrapped in banana leaves.

The whole event was worth it to eat the mole tamales from the famous Huarache Loco, owned by
Veronica Salazar. I love mole as much as I love Frida Kahlo and chipotle chiles but all of these things are being overdone and could use a rest. This tamal was like eating mole for the first time. Magnificent and memorable!

The event went from noon until 4pm and also included Ceja Vineyards and some great wines, 10 Speed Press and a margarita competition. I was lucky enough to be next to the renowned Mateo Granados who is really making his mark in the North Bay with his Yucatecan cuisine. The tamales are moister and softer but the flavors are bolder.

Who made the best tamal? It’s subjective and irrelevant but the prizes went to Mateo Granados and
Veronica Salazar. They both deserved a prize but I didn’t eat anything that wasn’t wonderful the entire day. Here’s a shot of Veronica and Mateo receiving their prizes from judge Augustin Gaytan, a local teacher specializing in Mexican food, often at Ramekins in Sonoma.

I’d encourage you to go to the Benchmark press website and sign up for their newsletter so that you can plan to attend next year. And to learn more about the group, which describes itself as a training and performance development
organization dedicated to increasing the quality and quantity of legal
services to low-income communities.

More Experiments With Chile Rellenos

Continuing with the stuffed poblano chile experiments, my next filling was wild rice and homemade chorizo.

After preparing the chiles, I cooked some of my homemade chorizo and then added onion (which cooked in the chorizo fat) and later some cooked wild rice. This was the simple stuffing for the chile. But first I made a layer of refried pinto beans, then added the stuffing.The beans give the chile a real indulgent feeling. I also made a tomato sauce from a Diana Kennedy recipe that I promise to dig up. It’s stupid simple and really good. I should know this one by heart.

I stuffed the cavity with grated Manchego cheese and then warmed in the oven until the cheese melted. Finally, I rested the chile in a shallow pool of tomato sauce.

I ate two without blinking.

Cooking Beans for 200

Rancho Gordo agreed to join the Benchmark Institute’s event, A Taste of Tamales by the Bay, and that meant beans for at least 200 people. I had no idea how much to make so I guessed 15 pounds of dry beans. Now, how to make them? I could have done them all in my big industrial roaster/oven thing that looks like a slowcooker from the 1940s but 15 pounds wouldn’t fit in all at once. I eneded up cooking 4 clay pots and one slowcooker batch, thinking the clay really does add something and if I mixed them all up in the end I’d have a pretty great bean dish.

I decided to soak them for three hours and it was fun watching the beans rise and the water level go down. My Brita filter was working overtime.

The different pots all came to a boil at different times but they pretty much agreed among themselves to have the Rio Zape beans fully cooked in about 90 minutes. And they really were great. I can’t help but think that the clay helps the flavor and texture. The crockpot batch had less flavor and a firmer texture but there is no evaporation so it’s hard to know if it’s clay or the open lid that made the other beans so superior.

If you’re curious, 15 pounds ended up yielding 8 gallons of cooked beans, which was about twice as much as we needed.

The event itself was great (I’ll report more on it later) and happily the beans were a big hit.

Experiments with Chiles Rellenos

Like most of us in California, I grew up eating battered and fried chile rellenos, stuffed mostly with gooey cheese but occasionally with picadillo. I recently found a rare copy of the out of print Los Chiles Rellenos en Mexico by Mexico City’s brilliant Ricardo Muñoz Zurita and was inspired to think beyond deep frying and experiment with poblano chiles.

Preparing chiles for stuffing is easy enough, especially after you’ve done it a number of times. The Rancho Gordo website has instructions written a few years ago but they’re still valid. Nowadays I tend to roast the chiles in a hot dry skillet and finish off any little crevices with a blow torch.

This first chile filling was made by sauteing an onion and a chopped serrano chile with some oil and Mexican oregano. When soft, I added some cubed zucchini and frozen corn kernels. It’s April and to be honest, I’ve been buying seasonal for so long it was a little odd buying zucchini and corn at this time of year. I got over it. I then added a cup of cooked Flor de Junio beans and tossed the mixture gently.

This would have been a lovely little dish but who wants lovely when you can have glorious? I packed the opening with grated Manchego cheese and then popped the chiles into a toaster oven until the cheese had melted.

Readers, this was just great! And it opens doors about stuffing chiles. You might even try this inside a bell pepper, but I’d just suggest you get a ripe red one rather than a watery green pepper. It will taste better and imagine the beauty of a stuffed red pepper chock-a-block full of summer vegetables.

To be continued.

More Cooking With Clay

With the vague idea of importing bean pots for resale on the website, I’ve been really going through all my pots and assessing their virtues. I really have never met a clay pot I didn’t like, but I enjoy pretending to be objective.

This pot was part of the crop that my friend Christopher Ann brought back from the Texas border. It’s very big and really needs an entire pound of beans to do it’s thing. Originally, like a lot of things from Mexico, it had a strong soap perfume smell to it. I soaked it overnight in cold water, followed by filling it with water and smashed garlic until the water almost evaporated and then I left outside for two days. Now the smell is neutral and I hope to really break it in this week and make it now that beans are its master!

I think it looks great. It looks a bit glossier in the photo than in real life and I think it will look really good on a barbecue this summer.

Lemon Tuna and White Bean Antipasto Salad

Here’s a tested salad from my friend Leslie in the great Pacific Northwest:

My recipe came from Food & Wine (click for their write up and photo Here).
I doubled the recipe for our group, and for the tuna I used 1 can of Ventresca tuna in oil which comes from the belly and 1 large can
of As Do Mar Tuna In Olive Oil (from Chefshop & The Spanish Table).
But any good quality tuna will work. And also used a good Italian olive
oil in the dressing that I just picked up at Chefshop, which is
currently on sale for just $10 (walk-in price), reg. $30 (they are
still moving last year’s oils out at these discounts).

This
salad is a make ahead dish and tastes even better the 2nd day after
flavors have melded, but I served it the same day as made.

Lemony Tuna and White Bean Antipasto Salad – Serves 4

Ingredients:

* 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
* 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons fruity extra-virgin olive oil (I used a tad bit more olive oil than this to cut the lemon)
* Two 6-ounce cans olive oil packed tuna, drained and broken into large chunks
* 2 cups cooked white beans such as Cassoulet or Alubia Blanca (original recipe calls for cannellini beans)
* 24 pitted Calamata olives, coarsely chopped
* 2 cups thickly sliced celery hearts
* 2 tablespoons capers, drained, or if packed in salt, rinsed
* 2 heaping tablespoons finely chopped flat-leaf parsley
* 2 teaspoons finely grated lemon zest
* 1 teaspoon minced garlic
* Freshly ground pepper
* 2 roasted red peppers from a jar or 4 piquillo peppers from a jar, cut in strips
* Kosher salt

Directions:

Pour the lemon juice into a large bowl and slowly whisk in olive oil. Add the tuna, cooked beans, olives, sliced celery, capers, parsley, piquillo pepper strips, lemon zest and garlic and toss gently. Season with salt & pepper.

To prepare beans: Follow instructions on the Rancho Gordo web site Here. After they are cooked, drain and rinse off the mirepoix for this salad.