Steve Sando

Shrimp Cocktail, Mexican Style

You may not know this about me, but I’m a complete and total freak for shrimp. I just love them to the point of guilt. My pal Christopher Ann shared her recipe for a typical, yet wonderful, shrimp cocktail and it inspires me to go straight to the kitchen.

From Christopher Ann:
Coctel de Camarones
Mexican-style Shrimp Cocktail

1 lb boiled, cleaned medium shrimp (see below)
1 1/2 C tomato juice
juice of 1/2 large lemon
1/2 C catsup
1/2 C chopped green onions
1 ripe tomato, seeded & chopped (you can peel them and when I have
homegrown tomatoes with their skin a little tougher, I do, but most of
the time, I don’t bother. In winter, when you can’t get flavorful
tomatoes, I use those ‘Nature Sweet’ cherry tomatoes, and I don’t peel
them)
cilantro, chopped, to taste
1 jalapeno, minced (optional — I only add this if I’m sure that my guests like it)
Dash or two Worchestershire
Tabasco, or Tapatio, or other hot sauce — preferably Mexican if you can get it (edited to add: Hey Chris, what about Rio Fuego?)
avocados

Combine
all ingredients except avocados. Chill for several hours. Traditionally
served in large goblets, like beer schooners, called ‘copas’ in Mexico,
or in large parfait or Pilsner glasses. Pour the cocktails into copas.
Slice your avocadoes in half. Hold the half with the seed in one palm,
and with a sharp knife, whack into the seed. Twist and pull and the
seed should come out easily. Now whack the knife holding the seed onto
the side of the sink, and the seed should fall into the sink. Now cut
your avocado halves lengthwise again. Starting at the narrow end, you
should be able to easily pull off the skin. On top of each ‘copa’ of
shrimp cocktail, arrange two crescents of avocado. You can also
decorate with a sprig of celery. Serve with saltines, extra slices of
lime, and a selection of hot sauces.

Boiled shrimp:

I usually just make this with cooked shrimp I buy from the store, but it is obviously better when you boil the shrimp yourself.

24 shrimp, shells on
1 C water
1 clove garlic, chopped
dash pepper
1/3 C lime juice
1 jalapeno, chopped

Put
everything in pot and boil until liquid reduced to approx 3/4 C. Add
shrimp and cover and simmer 2-3 minutes, until shrimp are just
beginning to curl. Remove shrimp immediately to cold water. When
cooled, clean shrimp and chill.

Note: If you serve this with
mixed seafood, such as fish, squid, etc., it becomes a ‘Coctel
Campechana,’ or ‘Mixed seafood cocktail in the style that women from
Campeche make it.’

Chiilaca Chiles in Action

Previously I wrote about chilacas and now Catalan Farms (my neighbors at the Ferry Plaza Farmer Market) have a big harvest of them. You can also find them in Latino grocery stores, especially those that cater to folks from the state of Michoacan.

I took mine last night and made this ugly but delicious dish:

In a saute pan, I fried two rashers of Fatted Calf bacon and then removed them when they were crisp and drained them on paper toweling. Excess fat was then removed but let’s not get nuts about it. In the remaining bacon fat, I fried onion, garlic, chopped chilaca chiles that had been roasted and peeled and some corn kernels. I removed it all from heat and then added some grated cotija cheese.

If there were leftovers, this would have been a fine filling for an omelet. There were no leftovers, however.

Rancho Gordo Hominy Stew for the Slow Cooker

Inspired by some of the slow cooker recipes in Rick Bayless’ Everyday Mexican, I started playing around with some ingredients and came up with this really super stew. It’s very much like pozole but I don’t want argue with anyone so I’m just going to call it a hominy stew.

(I didn’t take any photos so you’ll have to make due with this image of lovely Lina Romay. She was the lead singer in Xavier Cugat’s orchestra and I believe she was even Mrs. Cugat at one point, long before Abbe Lane or Charo. You can share this information while ladling the stew into your guest’s bowls.)

Rancho Gordo Hominy Stew for the Slow Cooker

1 cup dried Rancho Gordo prepared hominy/posole
1 cup Yellow Indian Woman beans
1 1/2 pounds chicken thighs
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 celery stalk, chopped
1 carrot, chopped
2 ounces Rancho Gordo New Mexican chile powder
7 cups water
1 tablespoon Rancho Gordo Mexican Oregano
2 teaspoons salt

1. Add all the ingredients to a slow cooker and stir.
2. Set on High for three hours and warm after that. If your slow cooker is not programmable, set at high but you’ll need to check it after about 4 hours.
3. Squeeze some lime into ladled bowls and serve.

It’s that easy. No soaking and no fussing.

Pozole in Taxco

One doesn’t got to Taxco for the food. It’s not bad, but for me, there were few "a-ha!" moments. However, it’s a pretty hillside town and I had a lot of fun there, even if much of the time was spent watching my lady friends shopping for silver jewelry (Zzzzzz……….)

Easily the best meal of the trip was the pozole stew at Pozoleria Tia Calla. The restaurant keeps odd hours and we seemed to keep missing, but when we finally sat down to a bowl of the hot liquid love, it was worth the bother. This pozole was loaded with chicken, hominy, avocado and chicharrones, the rich but light pork rinds that are so easy to enjoy.

If you were going to replicate this at home, I’d make any chicken pozole recipe and then add the chicharrones right before serving so that they’re still crisp.

One Way to Really Enjoy Popcorn

I used to cook my popcorn in a hot-air poppper and pretend to like it but in all honesty, I’d rather chew my own shoes. Or add copious amounts of butter. I now have a crank popcorn popper for the stove-top and I really like it. It also is good for roasting raw nuts, like peanuts or almonds, with chile powder, garlic and salt.

But true happiness comes from taking our Rancho Gordo Premium Crimson Popping Corn and cooking it in a wee bit of duck fat instead of oil. It’s how I define a good time.

San Francisco Ferry Plaza Farmers Market watch: My neighbors, Catalan Family Farm, has chilaca chiles so you should get them while you can! I wrote about them earlier here.

Even More on Sangrita

Yes, yes, I know. Many sangritas are not tomato based. It might even be true that the best ones have no tomatoes. I once told some fellow gringo travelers how I was planning on making a sangrita from the “mature” tomatoes I didn’t sell at the farmers market and they looked at me in horror: Sangrita has no tomatoes! Of course, every sangrita I had after that was tomato-based. And delicious.

On Sunday I had friends over and with Sunday being Sunday, I was running late. No time to make an authentic or unauthentic sangrita! So I cheated and took a 2 quart jar of tomato juice and added an entire bottle of Rio Fuego Very Hot Sauce, and the juice of one lime and mixed it together and served it as sangrita with our tequila shots. I’ll be honest, it couldn’t have been better, but next time I may try adding the juice of an orange as well.

Pickin’ up Paw Paws

At the Saturday market, you may have noticed Lagier Ranches with paw paws. John has been growing them for a few years but I never bothered tasting them. I wish I had.

The fruit is somewhere between a mango and a banana and if it didn’t have such big pits inside, I think it would be a more popular treat. John gave me sheets of information on paw paws but I quickly lost interest. The real point is they’re delicious and I’m inspired to get a few trees and see if I can’t grow them in Napa.

In the photo, John Lagier, who normally doesn’t look so much like David Crosby, offers up some of his delcious paw paws. I say get them while you can.

Nuts for the Holidays

I was on Lake Chapala with my friends Isidro and Maria during Easter week and all along the lake, little cafes and bistros were set up. It seems my friends take great pleasure in trying to get me drunk on "coco loco", which is just a fresh coconut with some booze in it.

I went along with the gag but really I more interested in the coconut "meat".

Starchy Corn for Posole, etc.

I’ve been working hard to find some decent Mexican-style corn that’s grown here in the states. I want an heirloom variety and as close to organic as possible. It’s rough. But I did get a sample from one of my bean guys from this year’s crop. It’s a variety bred to have a very small cob while the kernels are stay pretty big. I haven’t cooked it up yet but if it’s a go, we should have this available by next year, maybe a little bit of it this year.

I have access to slave labor, should it be needed. Don’t worry. His hands are washed!

Pasta with Tomatillo Sauce

I don’t know if you grew tomatillos this year, but now they seem to be going nuts around here.

These tomatillos milperos were from the bean fields. They’ve pretty much decided to stay, so year after year, we have great green salsa. The purple ones tend to be sweeter.

If you find you have a surplus, you can always can them in a water bath. I add some lemon juice but I’m told there’s enough acid in them that you can just do it in water. Am I nuts to be nervous?

The other night, I made this glorious pasta dish that I think really sums up California cooking:

It’s penne rigate smothered in some warmed up tomatillo salsa with cubes of queso fresco. You could use fresh mozzarella (or even feta, but I wouldn’t.) It looks dry in the photo but the sauce is somewhat clear against the pasta. The salsa was pretty hot so this wouldn’t be for everyone but I liked the idea of pasta for dinner and the merging of Italy and Mexico, although in truth, I bet Italians and Mexicans would both be horrified!