Well, it may already be the middle of January, but it still feels like 2013 just appeared yesterday.
To start off the new year, let's go back to the basics. I've already covered roasting a chicken, so now let's take the chicken to soup.
You will now never - EVER - buy Campbell's canned soup again.
If you're sick, even if you're feeling the slightest bit under the weather - this is the soup for you.
If you are homesick, and wish for all the world that you're sitting at your grandma's old wooden table enjoying the tastes of old school amazingness - this is the soup for you.
If you want to impress a sick boyfriend and endear yourself to his living-out-of-state mother, who will henceforth call you an angel and think you can do no wrong - this is the soup for you!
Start off with a whole raw chicken. They can be called fryers, or stewers. And around these parts, they range in price from $1.89 a pound full price to $.99 a pound on sale. When they go on sale, we typically buy 2 and stick them in the freezer. It really doesn't matter how many pounds your chicken is. Bigger chicken = more chicken in the soup!
Put the chicken, neck, and organs in a big pot. Be sure you reach inside the chicken and pull out the little baggie of organs, neck, etc, and remove the plastic bag. Plastic does not taste good in soup.
Fill the pot with water, just so it reaches the top of the chicken.
Add chopped onion, celery, whole bay leaves, whole peppercorns, and salt. Turn the heat on medium, and boil for an hour, till the chicken is cooked through.
Remove the pot from the heat and remove everything from the pot accept the broth - veggies and spices included. If you want to get really fancy, you can strain the broth through a fine mesh sieve or cheese cloth (you've just made chicken consomme!). Throw the veggies and spices away. You've gotten all the good flavor out of them already.
I know the chicken looks sorta icky. Deal with it. It's cooked, and it tastes delicious. Put on your big kid pants and pick that sucker apart. Using your fingers and a knife when necessary, remove the chicken meat from the bone. Discard the skin, bones, fat, and any organ meat that you don't want to eat. Chop the chicken up into bite-sized pieces and put into a bowl for later.
That looks better, doesn't it? Yum. Head back over to the broth. By now, you can see the fat starting to accumulate on the top. Take a spoon and gently scoop the oil-looking fat off the surface. You don't have to get all of it, but you want to get a lot of it.
Now, chop up some onion, carrots, celery, mushrooms, and any other veggie you might like to toss in. Put the broth back on the stove and toss them in. Cook for 20 minutes or so, until the hardest vegetable (in our case, the carrots) are cooked to your liking.
Put the cubed chicken back in the pot and give it a taste. Need more salt? More pepper?
At this point you can take the soup several different ways:
1. Chicken Noodle Soup - Use egg noodles. If you have many people coming over to eat the soup, go ahead and throw them in the pot and let them cook in the chicken broth. If you plan on eating the soup over several meals, I suggest just cooking the noodles for each individual meal. Don't pout. Boil water and wait five minutes. These noodles take practically no cooking time.
My logic here is that microwaved noodles turn mushy or dry. And they soak up all the broth if you portion the soup out individually and then turn mushy. I hate mushy noodles.
2. Chicken Matzoh Ball Soup - missing your Jewish Grandmother? Use Smitten Kitchen's recipe to create Matzoh balls. Add to your soup. Pretty easy.
3. Feeling up for adventure? Add some garbanzo beans, olives, and red pepper to go in a Mediterranean direction. Or perhaps a can or two of chopped green chilis, some hotsauce, and a few slices of tortilla for a more Southwestern flair. A bit of ginger, garlic, lime, and soy sauce will have you reminiscing about that NOVA special on Asia in no time. You can really do just about anything to chicken soup.
Chicken Soup
Makes 1 large pot
1 whole chicken
2 onions, chopped
2 bunches of celery, chopped
3 whole bay leaves
12 whole black peppercorns
5-6 carrots, chopped
1 1/2 c. sliced mushrooms (1 package of sliced mushrooms)
salt & pepper to taste
--optional ingredients--
egg noodles
matzoh balls
whatever else you want to throw in
Remove the whole chicken from the plastic package. Reach in the body cavity to remove any organs, plastic stuff, or other strange odds and ends. Put the chicken in a large stock pot. Add water so that it almost covers the chicken.
To the pot, add 1 chopped onion, 1 bunch of chopped celery - including the leaves, all the bay leaves, and the peppercorns.
Boil for 1 hour, until chicken is cooked through. Remove chicken from the pot and set aside to cool. Remove and throw out all the vegetables, spices, and any bones or chicken skin.
Wait until the chicken is cooled and pull the meat off the bones. Discard the bones and any excess fat. Chop the chicken into small chunks. Set aside.
Skim any excess fat off the top of the broth. Place in a glass jar to throw into the trash later.
Put the pot of broth back on the stove and add to it the carrots, second bunch of celery, onion, mushrooms, and any other vegetables that need time to cook. Boil for 20 minutes or so, until the firmest of the veggies is cooked through. Taste and season with salt and pepper.
Put the chicken back in the pot. Stir.
If you want to add noodles, matzoh balls, or any other ingredients, now's the time!
Enjoy!
Now, since I'm sure you're all dying to hear about it: Taco Tour!!
To start with, the sniffles I had contracted pre-trip didn't leave. In fact - they are still lingering around as a nice deep cough. Still. Lovely.
But at least I had regained my tastebuds by tour time. Thank goodness!
One note about touring anywhere around the holidays - be prepared for things to be closed. Our Eat Mexico tour, as listed in the glossy brochure we were handed when we met our guide, listed 6 taco stops and one tortilla shop stop that we were supposed to make. We made 3 of the 6 and the tortilla shop - with a bonus stop for blue corn Tlacoyos. And we didn't get the promised agua fresca or ice cream. Sad face.
We did get a nice extended stop in this market, in the Roma neighborhood, tasting lots of interesting fruits.
Like this crazy black mushy one - when whole, it looks like a giant, round avocado. But when you cut into it, the insides are mushy black goo. Which is apparently best when mixed with orange juice and rum. Good to know. It tasted nice and sweet without the rum too.
I'll put together an extended post on the tortilla shop. It deserves it. If you've never seen these little tortilla factories before, they are totally worth checking out. You might even have a few in the town you're living in now (I know of at least 5 around here).
Our tour guide, Paco, knew everything about everything. He was raised in Mexico City, fought bulls when he was younger, played chess professionally, and now teaches people about his native food for a living. A pretty sweet gig!
And now for what you've all been waiting for - the Tacos!
First up was the Mole Verde, from a place called Tixtla.
Here's what the menu says about them (hopefully you know Spanish!):
Here's the actual taco I ate. It was great! As opposed to the usual heavy, dark mole, this one was light, herbal, and I could easily have eaten 20 more of them. Apparently the green color comes from special herbs from the region of Tixtla (the place's namesake). A pretty unique flavor. And the chicken breast was nice and tender.
They had all sorts of sauces. I chose to put a large heaping spoonful of the green sauce on a tortilla chip before the tacos came - and I nearly died. Five minutes later, when the coughing subsided, I decided to leave the spicy sauces to Mr. S. He happily spooned some onto his taco. I ate mine plain.
Our next taco was the Carnitas Taco. It came from a nice little corner taqueria, across the street from the market. The pile of pork in the window set my mouth to watering as soon as we approached it.
And when I saw this sign, I knew I had found my new favorite taco place. And possibly the design for my first tattoo.
It's a piggie in a pot! Aaaaaah! I seriously might need this printed on an apron. Or on a canvas to hang in my kitchen. Or all of the above.
And here's the taco. Soooooooooo delicious. Tender chopped pork, topped with a bit of onion and cilantro. Add a bit of salsa from the large dishes on the counter and you've got a magnificent bite.
If you decide (like any sane person) that you now are in need of massive quantities of this pork of paradise, you're in luck! It comes in Karnipacks. Which might be my new favorite word. Ever.
The next thing we tried was the Tlacoyos. I thought at first that these were like Huaraches, a flat corn base, piled high with delicious toppings. Boy was I wrong.
They're actually closer to quesadillas, or Salvadorian Pupusas. Inside the oblong blue corn masa is either cheese, beans, or chicharon. The little oval of deliciousness is then cooked on a large flat grill.
Once it's nice and toasty, it gets split open on the top and stuffed
with cooked cactus, cheese, chicken, pickled veg, huitlacoche, cilantro, onion, and all
sorts of other interesting things.
It's supposedly been around since the Olmecs, one of the first little masa-based snacks on the planet. And here it is in all it's Tlacoyo-an glory:
Oh yeah. So many combinations. I really don't know why I'd never heard of these before. And why I don't see them sold everywhere.
Perhaps this will be the new food trend of 2013? It's got my vote!
Our final taco was Cochinita Pibil. From this storefront across the street from the market.
Cochinita Pibil is pork (again. I love how these people love pig!) shoulder, marinated in orange juice, annatto seed, and some other mysterious spices. All wrapped up and cooked in a banana leaf - making this stuff uber tender. They suggest topping it with pickled red onions, lime, and the region's famous habanero pepper salsa. I left out that last one.
The tacos that were on the list that we didn't get to try were Tacos Guisados (which I've never heard of), Tacos Arabes (which I've never heard of either and am totally bummed on missing. May have to quest after some here in the states), and Tacos Al Pastor (one of Mr. S's favorites that we eat often).
We then walked for many, many blocks to visit Helado Obscuro. They were closed. But judging by their Facebook page, it would have been an awesome treat.
We finished up by opting for the microbrew stop. Paco took us to La Belga, a little tiny store, with beers stacked to the ceiling!
See? I wasn't kidding. There were many Mexican brews to choose from, most of which come from tiny places that don't distribute beyond the immediate area.
We chose our beers from those that they had in the fridge and swilled them in the street. A great end to the tour!
Since we missed so many stops and ended about 2 hours early, the owner of Eat Mexico, Lesley, called us later that evening and offered a partial refund. We really did enjoy the tour, and I feel sketched out by refunds, so I think next time we're in Mexico we'll just set up another tour with them - with a discount, perhaps?
Well, I'm a few days late on my blogiversary. I was happily climbing pyramids and noshing away on mole covered enchiladas in Mexico City. But I'm happy to celebrate with all of you now!
Apparently I started this little project on January 3rd of last year. It's been any amazing journey of self discovery, culinary adventure, mishaps, and good fun.
There's been great immediate success - like conquering Steamed Pork Dumplings
And some pretty epic failure-turned-success - like the ripped and torn butter puff pastry that turned into these amazing Kouign Amann
The 4 that looked weird and had to be, um, "disposed of" were incredibly tasty.
Note to self. Make these again soon.
Then there were the recipes that truly did fail, and are slated for further research and development.... I've got to figure out a better way to do scotch eggs. My current method is just not good enough.
I've been inspired by an amazing group of bloggers: Joy the Baker, Deb of Smitten Kitchen, Sydney of Crepes of Wrath, Jessica of How Sweet, and a whole host of others.
And there's a whole host of delightful-looking things I've seen around the interwebs that I can't wait to try.
Portobello Wellingtons, Dutch Babies, DIY Chai Lattes, Blood Orange Panna Cotta, Bourbon Peach Brown Sugar Ice Cream
Just to name a few.
Here's my top 9 posts (as decided by you, the people):
1. Man-Bait Malt
2.Chili Colorado
3. Minty Oreo Marscapone Cookies
4. Caramel Apple Handpies
5. Alfajores
6. Cream Puffs with Vanilla Bean Whipped Cream
7. Steamed Pork Dumplings
8. California King's Cake
9. Chocolate Covered Spicemallows
Here's to many more in 2013!
It's actually pretty chilly in Texas right now. Good thing I'm headed to Mexico.
A cold front moved in right before Christmas, and it's now chilly enough to have the fireplace at a low roar.
Thank goodness.
There's nothing I love more than a chilly day and a hearty meal. Especially when I've got a head cold the size of an elephant.
For some reason, when I have a cold I just want to stuff my face with carbs - ok, fine. Even when I don't have a head cold I want to stuff my face with carbs.
But at least with a cold I can sorta justify it. (And it just took me 3 beats to think of the word justify - so I know that my cold is in full swing. Come on brain!!).
This sickness better disappear tomorrow! I've got a taco tour booked on Saturday and Lord help me if some cold thinks it's gonna slow me down.
Back to the carbs. What better carbs than pasta? And what is the most carb-filled pasta on the planet? That which has not only regular flour but potato too?
Why, delicious gnocchi!
Some gnocchi is heavy and gummy and chewy. Not this stuff. It's a soft pillow of pasta, perfect for saucing with pesto. Or tomato sauce. Or any kind of sauce, really.
Yay! Pasta! I'll have this cold kicked in no time.
Start with potatoes. Boil them.
Then run them through a ricer or a food mill.
Next up, make a well in your potato tower.
Sprinkle the whole thing with flour and crack an egg in the middle. Add a bit of salt.
Very briskly and gently work it together into a ball. Knead until smooth and not sticky. (Work in a sprinkle of flour at a time if it's still sticky)
Hack off a small ball. Roll into a long rope.
Cut the rope into little ~1" bits.
Roll the bits over the tines of a fork (you're creating ridges on one side and a dimple on the other so that the sauce can stick in the crevices).
Toss the gnocchi in boiling water for a minute or so until they float.
Immediately transfer to a bowl full of ice water (you're shocking them to stop the cooking process).
Once the gnocchi are all cooked and in the ice bath, drain them. Toss them in a pan and coat them with vegetable oil. They can sit covered in the fridge for 48 hours before you use them.
To prepare a gnocchi dish, sautee the cooked gnocchi in a little bit of olive oil and toss in the pasta sauce. You're just browning their bottoms and warming them up.
I typically sauce with pesto, but any pasta sauce of your choice (meat or no meat) will work beautifully.
Gnocchi
Barely adapted from Mario Batali
3 large potatoes (about 3 lbs)
2 1/2 c. flour (may need more, depending)
1 egg
1/2 tsp salt
Boil the potatoes whole, until soft (45 minutes to an hour). Drain and peel. Run through a ricer or food mill to achieve finely ground potatoes. Mound into a small mountain. Make a well in the middle of the mountain.
Sprinkle 2 c. flour over the potatoes. Crack the egg into the well and sprinkle with salt. Use a fork to blend the egg into the flour and potatoes. Once the egg gets blended in, use your hands to knead the dough. Knead gently for 4 minutes, until ball is dry. Sprinkle more flour as needed.
Pinch off a smallish ball. Roll into a long rope, about a 1/2" in diameter. Cut into ~1" bits. Roll the little bit on the tines of a fork to get ribs on the back and a dimple (from where your finger was) in the front.
Boil the gnocchi for a minute or so, until they float. Remove from boiling water and dump into a big bowl of ice water. Work in batches until all gnocchi are in the ice bath.
Drain the gnocchi and place in a large dish. Toss and coat in vegetable oil. Cover and refrigerate until ready to use (up to 48 hours).
When ready for dinner, sautee gnocchi in a bit of olive oil until warmed through and slightly golden on one side. Toss in sauce. Serve!
