Jerked Chicken Tacos with Mango-Chipotle-Vanilla Salsa

I don't guess it comes as any surprise that we eat a lot of tacos here at the casa. I love street food and a tacos are a big part of that for me. You can find a taco truck anywhere out here. I'm always thinking of new taco ideas just to shake things up and this week I decided to make jerked chicken tacos.

Jerked Chicken Tacos with Mango-Chipotle-Vanilla Salsa

You can see the tacos above in the photo. They also got some slaw on them before we ate them, but I wanted to photograph them without the slaw so you could see how attractive the mango salsa is with its contrasting flecks of chipotle. There's a recipe for the salsa at the end of this post.

Jerk Paste Ingredients

I'm a big fan of jerked chicken (pork and goat too!) and I like to make it even though I don't have any pimiento wood over which to smoke the chicken. We used to mimic this at the restaurant by adding allspice berries to the wood chips when we were smoking the meat. At home, I skip this step.

Jerk paste varies from person to person as do most things in life, but all versions are good. The one time that I wanted a habanero or Scotch bonnet pepper from my store, they don't have it. So I substituted serrano instead. Serranos have straight ahead heat and lack the apricot fruitiness of a good habanero or Scotch bonnet, but what's a guy to do?

My paste consists of ginger, shallots, green onions, serranos with seeds, fresh thyme, and lots of freshly ground allspice. After mincing everything by hand, I let the food processor combine everything and then I finished the paste to taste with some salt and equal parts of brown sugar and vinegar.

Shallots are not super traditional in jerk paste, while garlic is obligatory. I find that shallots help bulk out the paste and they turn plenty garlicky when puréed in the food process or blender.

Boneless Chicken Thighs in Jerk Paste

I skinned and deboned a bunch of chicken thighs (saving the bones and skin for stock) and covered the thighs in jerk paste. They stayed in the refrigerator overnight.

Jerked Chicken on the Grill

If I had the right set up, I'd love to smoke my chicken low and slow, but alas, I am limited to my grill. Still, it gives great flavor to the chicken, just not quite the traditional flavor.

Mango-Chipotle-Vanilla Salsa

To accompany the jerked chicken on our tacos, I made a spicy mango salsa. The unique thing about this salsa is something that I stumbled onto while playing with mango salsa years ago at the restaurant: vanilla is a haunting dance partner for mango. We used vanilla beans at the restaurant; at home, all I have is extract, good quality extract to be sure. I don't use enough vanilla to warrant purchasing beans. We bought them buy the half kilo at the restaurant and would use a dozen or more beans a week, mostly in flavoring desserts, but sometimes in more savory applications such as this salsa:

1 large very ripe mango
2 chipotles en adobo
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup agave nectar
1/4 cup rice vinegar

2 cups water 

few drops of vanilla extract

Put all the ingredients in the blender except the vanilla and process until smooth. Season to taste with salt (which will help pop the vanilla). Then add vanilla a few seeds or drops at a time until you are happy with the flavor. But remember, too much vanilla is too much: go easy. If your mango was not very ripe, you may need more sugar to balance the sauce. I would use brown sugar. You could also use lime juice in place of the milder rice vinegar for a more tropical effect, but for this salsa I prefer the milder less puckery rice vinegar.

Grilled Tequila Lime Chicken with Mango-Chipotle Salsa

For me, the hardest part of making dinner is deciding what to cook. Fortunately, Annie is pretty good about throwing out ideas, such as the tequila lime chicken she mentioned last week. I decided to do the chicken as tacos topped with mango salsa. Mangos are 48 cents each right now, so we have a bunch in the house. Recipes below.

Tequila Lime Chicken Tacos with Mango-Chipotle Salsa

You can use whatever chicken you want. I have no use for chicken breasts, so I always buy thighs. I boned out 6 chicken thighs for this dish, using the skins and bones for making chicken stock. And then putting the skins in Charlie's dinner to try to put some weight on him. His tumors are making him really skinny.

Grilling Marinated Chicken Thighs

Tequila-Lime Marinade

Mix the following ingredients and place in a seal top bag. Add the chicken and marinate for at least an hour and preferably overnight. The sugar in the agave syrup will really help give you great grill marks on the chicken, as you can see above. This would also be great for shrimp.

zest of one lime
juice of one lime
1-1/2 ounces tequila
2 tablespoons agave syrup
6 cloves garlic, finely minced
stems from one bunch of cilantro, finely minced

Mango-Chipotle Salsa

Mango-Chipotle Salsa

This is about as simple as salsa gets. Mix all the ingredients. The quantities below are for your benefit. You don't actually think I measured anything, do you?

1 ripe mango, diced
juice of half of a lime
3 green onions, sliced
1/3 bunch of cilantro, chopped
finely minced chipotle, to taste
salt to taste

A Tale of Two Shrimp Seviches

If there's a summer must-have for me, it is seviche. I've made a lot in my life (see scallop seviche here and yellowtail snapper here), but not so much lately. Here in the über-agricultural Willamette Valley, we have all the vegetables you'd ever need for a great seviche, but opportunities to buy fish that you would willingly consume raw are slim. How paradoxical that we are just barely inland of the vast Pacific Ocean!

Tequila Shrimp Seviche

In the absence of fish, there's always vegetable seviche and I've made plenty of that in my life, but I need seafood for the dish to feel authentic. What to do without sushi quality fish? I have been using cooked shrimp and it's working to the extent that some seviche is better than none, an acceptable compromise.

Recently I have made two shrimp seviches, the first a more or less traditional seviche and the second based on mango, a little more non-traditional.

The first, pictured above, contains whole shrimp, tomatoes, cucumber, celery, orange pepper, poblano pepper, red onion, red jalapeño, and cilantro, dressed with lime juice and a shot of tequila. You might think that celery is bizarre in seviche. You'd be right that it is a bit unorthodox, but a yucateco line cook was showing off his chops to me once and gave me some of his seviche containing celery. I've been hooked ever since.

The citrus needs time to work. I took the photo above about 15 minutes after assembling the seviche. It was much better the next morning after hanging out in the refrigerator and coming together.

Shrimp, Mango, and Chipotle Seviche

The second seviche contains diced shrimp, mango, sliced red onion, tomatoes, cilantro, garlic, chipotle, salt, and lime juice. The photo above shows it after sitting in the refrigerator for five hours. I truly love the flavors of mango and chipotle together: they are a pair whose sum is greater than either of the parts. In fact, we used to make mango-chipotle sorbet for an intermezzo at the restaurant.

Why no recipes?

You don't need a recipe for seviche, just the basic procedure and a few tips.

The basic idea is to gather and chop your vegetables, fruits, cilantro, and seafood. Juice enough citrus to bathe everything in, then mix all the ingredients in a non-reactive bowl. Add your favorite spice and salt to taste. Refrigerate for at least a couple of hours.

For spice, anything goes. I've had fiery snapper seviche from the Yucatan with habaneros. I have had tame scallop seviche with a sprinkling of dried chile flakes and some lemon zest. Fresh chiles, dried chiles, canned chipotles in adobo, sambal oelek, Tabasco sauce: they all work, depending on the flavors and spice level you want.

The acid in the citrus juice denatures the proteins in the seafood, yielding the firm quasi-cooked texture of seviche. Lime juice is not required: any citrus or combination works great. I love both yuzu and Seville oranges aka bitter oranges in seviche. Grapefruit is fun for a change and in a pinch, vinegar can be effective (think escabeche).

Finally, because fish is so expensive, I use a lot of vegetables and fruits to stretch the fish. A quick list of vegetables and fruits: tomato, red/white/yellow/green onion, shallot, garlic, celery, jicama, citrus segments, mango, papaya, watermelon, dragonfruit, avocado, corn, cucumber, red/green/yellow peppers, radish. The list is practically endless.

Cooking Shrimp for Salads

My favorite way of cooking shrimp, so that it is flavorful but not soggy and overcooked is by poaching it in a court-bouillon. To chefs, that's the classic French term for a broth of water, an acid (white wine, vinegar, lemon juice), and flavorings in which you poach seafood, sweetbreads, and so forth.

Shrimp in a Court-Bouillon

Into a pot large enough to hold the shrimp, put sufficient water such that the shrimp will be submerged when added. Then add a splash of white wine vinegar, 2 or 3 bay leaves, a few celery or lovage leaves, a couple parsley springs, 15-20 whole black peppercorns, and salt to taste. The bouillon should taste good to you. If it does not, adjust it. If I use white wine instead of vinegar, I usually drop in a half a lemon for acidity.

For most smaller sizes of shrimp, I like to add the raw shrimp to the boiling court-bouillon and immediately turn off the heat so that shrimp poaches gently in the hot broth. Bring the court-bouillon to a rolling boil and let it cook for 2-3 minutes to extract flavor. Then add the shrimp, turn off the flame, and check the shrimp every couple of minutes until they are just set. The shrimp will change color as they cook.

By smaller shrimp, I mean 16-20 and smaller. That is, shrimp that measure 16 to 20 (or more) per pound. For the really large prawns, it is generally necessary to keep the water at a slow simmer to cook them through. Then again, the really large prawns are probably better suited to the grill than to seviche.

Post Script: What's in a Word?

Years ago, a customer reprimanded me because on my menu, I spelled seviche with the letter S as I do in this post. He was unbudgingly certain that it is spelled ceviche with the letter C. "What about cebiche?" I asked him, having seen it spelled that way in much of South America. By the way, all three spellings are pronounced identically, because Spanish speakers pronounce the letters V and B the same.

It tickles me sometimes when people think that every word has a single absolute spelling, ignoring regionality of dialects, differences in pronunciation, differing systems of transliteration, and just plain old spelling preferences among countries. Think flavor and flavour. If you think of spelling as our feeble attempt to record sounds on a sheet of paper, you might be more open to variant spellings.

My references for spelling are Mr. Webster and the OED and both of them preferred seviche when I was learning to spell. For consistency, I continue to spell it that way and index this blog that way.

But I am under no illusion that everyone spells it this way. For giggles, I generated a couple of Ngrams showing the frequency of use in books of the three spellings since 1950. The first chart shows the frequency in English-language books, the second in Spanish-language books. You should take this with a grain of salt: while spellings in books represent careful language as a result of editing, they are sometimes inconsistent with spellings in more casual media. And the results are limited to the set of books that Google has scanned. Click to enlarge the graphs.

Seviche/Ceviche/Cebiche Distribution in English

Seviche/Ceviche/Cebiche Distribution in Spanish

Things that I find interesting:

1. Despite Webster and the OED preferring seviche when I was a kid, the English-speaking world seems to have adopted ceviche. Now if you look up seviche in Webster's dictionary, you see that it is a variant spelling of ceviche.

2. The Spanish-speaking world prefers cebiche, but also uses ceviche.

3. In English, seviche and ceviche were running neck and neck until about 1982 when ceviche started to gradually assume the lead over the next 20 years. I learned how to spell seviche long before 1982. Cebiche never gained any traction.

Who knew?

Language is never constant, but I bet seviche is around for as long as there are citrus and seafood on this planet.

Olive Oil, Salt, and Pepper

Hundreds of times in my career, I was asked what kind of special seasoning I put on a piece of protein to make it taste so good. When I replied, "olive oil, salt, and pepper," people almost always thought that I was being a smartass—I am a pro at that too—but I was being serious.

Grilled Wahoo/Ono with Mango Salsa and Asparagus

If you have a pristine piece of meat, poultry, or fish, you don't really need to do anything to it to make it taste great. As I told the cooks coming through my kitchen, all you have to do is not screw it up. I'm sure I used a bit more colorful chef language than that, but you get the gist.

As a rule, if I had a nice cut headed for the grill, I would brush it with olive oil, salt, and pepper and let it shine, just like I did for the wahoo in the photo.

This wahoo, more often than not called by its Hawaiian name ono out here on the West Coast, came from Northwest Fresh Seafood over in Newberg. When the loin came out of the cooler, I could see that it was special. I have handled hundreds of loins of wahoo in my life and even from ten feet away, I could see how tight and clear this one was.

Olive oil, salt, and pepper did its magic once again.

I have to say that I am really happy with my new grill: I got those deep grill marks on both sides of the fish without it being overcooked in the middle. Working this Weber home grill, I can get results just as good as using the huge cast iron Vulcan grill at the restaurant. Call me tickled.

Halibut with Grapefruit-Mango Salsa

Halibut, Grapefruit-Mango Salsa, Asparagus

Yesterday turned out to be a really nice day and so Ann suggested putting something on the grill. I picked up a piece of halibut at Costco, a nice even piece, perfect for grilling. I don't eat much halibut because I believe it to be overfished and not a well-regulated fishery. This would be the first time in a decade. I didn't have a lot of choices at Costco and this was the only fish that they had that is really suitable for the grill. Halibut, because of its meaty nature, grills like a dream.

I grabbed a couple pink grapefruits, an Ataulfo mango, a bunch of cilantro, and a jalapeno at the mercado on the way home. These got combined with a shallot, sambal oelek, and sherry vinegar to make a sweet-sour salsa. The pink grapefruit was sweeter than the golden mango.

To go with the fish, I roasted asparagus from the farmers market for a few minutes in a really hot oven.

Quick, simple, and easy.

Craggy Gardens, NC

Thursday morning saw us take breakfast in the dining room of the B&B, starting with "Mango Madness," sliced strawberries, diced mango, and blackberries tossed with sugar and mint. Our second course was oeufs brouillés on puff pastry with a couple of slices of smoked salmon and a ramekin of mushrooms in cream. I call the scrambled eggs by their French name because they were whisked in the classic French style yielding very wet scrambled eggs with really small curd. We've served a lot of duck eggs this way for tasting recently. They are delicious.

As interesting as the conversation around the breakfast table with the other guests was, our agenda was to go to the peak of Mount Mitchell, the highest peak east of the Mississippi, so we took our leave quickly and headed north.

Mango Madness

Oeufs Brouillés, Smoked Salmon, Mushrooms in Cream

Already on the north side of Asheville, we picked up Town Mountain Road and followed it to its termination at the Blue Ridge Parkway. It's clear that at least close to town, a lot of money lives out this road: lots of high priced houses, impeccably manicured lawns and gardens, fancy gated communities, the works. Further out the road and closer to the Parkway, it became much more rural and closer to the scenery we had seen the first few days of our trip.

Our rough agenda was to meander the Parkway to Mount Mitchell, climb it, and then head down the mountain to Burnsville, grab some lunch, drop in and say hello to Neil and Kay, and then head back to Asheville for dinner. Craggy Gardens wasn't either in the picture or out of the picture, but I wanted to stop there if we had a chance, which it turned out, we absolutely did.

One of the Reservoirs Just off the Blue Ridge Parkway

The Craggy Gardens Visitor Center is situated in the middle of a large parking area in an exposed saddle on the west side of the Parkway. It is also perched at the top of a very steep precipice affording outstanding views out of the windows on the back side of the tiny little gift shop/visitors center. We arrived at the Visitor's Center after errantly ending up at the Craggy Gardens picnic area a little further south on the wrong end of the trail that we wanted to walk. We merely wanted to see the bald, not engage in a long hike. A quick check of the map on my phone sent us in the direction of the Visitors Center where we took the trail at the southern end of the parking area and it was a very short walk indeed to the bald where we spent 20 minutes or so nosing around.

Walking Through the Rhododendron Thicket

Just a short way up the trail through the overarching rhododendron thicket, the trail opens onto the bald and just off to the side is a shelter. Looking at the unusual post and beam construction with twin posts, linked by notched bridging, supporting the roof leads me to believe that this is an old shelter. A closer inspection led my inner woodworker to suspect that this wood is chestnut and if so, that would date the shelter to the early part of the 20th century or before, given that the chestnut blight wiped out all the chestnuts basically by the beginning of the second World War. Maybe it is a Depression-era work project like a lot of the amenities on the Parkway.

Craggy Gardens Shelter

Walking the Bald Past Mounds of Catawba Rhododendrons

The bald, exposed at 5500 feet, must have pretty horrific weather at times and certainly a very short growing season when compared to the valley floor. This is readily evident in the stunted growth of the trees, especially this one with the very twisted branches that topped out less than my height, yet with a trunk that is probably ten inches in diameter.

Stunted Tree, Maybe 6' Tall but Very Old

Catawba Rhododendrons in Full Bud, Craggy Pinnacle to Right

Unfortunately, the Catawba rhododendrons open fairly late, especially at this elevation, and we were too early for the bloom by a few weeks. It must be a glorious sight to be up here when all the rhododendrons are in bloom! The floor of the rhododendron thickets had some flowers we had not seen in any great quantities on this trip: wild hydrangea, red trillium, and a bleeding heart relative called squirrelcorn (Dicentra canadensis) that I had not seen before.

Wild Hydrangea

Red Trillium, Trillium erectum

Squirrelcorn, Dicentra canadensis

One other surprising thing for me was the Northern Juncos who were clearly settled in for the summer here. I have not encountered breeding juncos south of upstate New York before. We watched several of them gathering nesting materials and here is a great photo of a male on territory giving his trilled "This is my turf!" call. Back home, the last of ours migrated north just a week or so ago after spending all winter with us.

Northern Junco, Trilling

After our short morning hike, we would continue north up the Blue Ridge Parkway, climbing and climbing towards Mount Mitchell.

Taco Party!

Black Bean Taco, Cotija, Cilantro, Chipotle Salsa

Sunday afternoon Ann got a text from Kelley asking if we could meet at a winery on Monday afternoon, that they were in Virginia for the day. Because of renovations at the restaurant, I couldn't meet but suggested that we have dinner at our place early Monday evening. On Monday morning, Ann and I talked about what to make for dinner and we got precisely nowhere. Some time later, she texted me saying that she felt like Mexican. I suggested do-your-own tacos and she suggested cheese dip and chips. Deal done.

Pregame Margaritas

After a long day at work, I finally got home with groceries and set to prepping dinner. I asked Ann to throw some music on, a little banda to prep to, to liven things up. While I was getting things ready, she found a can of margarita mix in the freezer and put together a batch of margaritas for us. The margaritas were a great pick-me-up after a long, hard slog at work and running all over town doing errands for the restaurant.

Happy Trio

Mark and Kelley arrived about 90 minutes after I did and I had just managed to finish prepping dinner maybe 10 minutes before they arrived. As Ann requested, I made some nasty cheese? dip for chips: Velveeta, cilantro stems, chorizo, chipotle salsa, and a little Sherry vinegar to help cut some of the fat.

Queso Fundido and Chips

I got both corn and wheat tortillas. I'm a fan of corn, Ann of wheat. For fillings, I cooked some fresh chorizo, some black beans with onions and poblanos, and some shrimp with mango and chipotle. For toppings, we had pico de gallo, cilantro, chipotle salsa, nopalitos, and queso cotija. And we all sat around the island in the kitchen, made tacos, and caught up. It was a great evening!



Taco Spread: Chorizo, Black Beans, Shrimp and Mango

A Relaxing Weekend

This past weekend was about feeling good about getting some work done in the yard and then rewarding ourselves by relaxing. Sunday we made a trip to Delaplane Cellars after a morning in the yard. And Monday, after a morning in the yard and a short trip in to work, we ate and sipped wine during the afternoon. I needed a slow leisurely weekend to start to feel good about the yard and to just slow down and enjoy. It was a great weekend!

Relaxing Lunch on the Deck at Delaplane Cellars

Sunday morning started sunny and pleasant but the humidity was up and by 10:30 or so, it seemed like the clouds were building for afternoon thunderstorms. But the nice morning let me get a lot of needed work accomplished in the yard. The younger wisteria are growing like crazy now and need weekly work to train them to our pergola. And since we are gardening on a budget, I was able to transplant a volunteer maple tree and a volunteer crape myrtle from one of the front beds to our property line out back. It felt good to finally get something accomplished in the yard rather than merely trying to recover from the damage from last winter.

In the afternoon, even as the clouds piled up in the sky, we made the quick drive to Delaplane Cellars where we tasted through the current line up and then retired to the deck with a bottle of 2012 Left Bank Bordeaux blend. Left Bank is the blend from the winery's own grapes and though the fruit is very young, it makes for a delicious and easy drinking red.

We saw Jim mowing grass between rows as we lunched and ultimately he and then Betsy joined us out on the patio where we chatted for a couple hours before we had to head home in the late afternoon.The wind got up a couple of times forcing us to furl the umbrellas and we got a few stray raindrops, but it didn't ever amount to enough to force us in. Back home in Winchester on the other side of the Blue Ridge, we saw that it had rained in our absence. Good luck for us!

Monday Lunch: Chipotle Black Bean and Mango Tacos

I worked hard all last week to keep my Monday workload to a minimum and that let me work a couple more hours in the yard before heading in to work to finish up my Monday chores. On the way home, I stopped at the market and grabbed some things for lunch and dinner. Lunch, out on the patio under the umbrella, was these black bean and mango tacos that took all of five minutes to put together from canned black beans, a mango, a bunch of cilantro, a bunch of green onions, and a can of chipotle salsa.

Shrimp, Lop Cheung, and Vegetable Lettuce Wraps

Dinner was another outdoor affair, this time, lettuce wraps with a dipping sauce. For the dipping sauce, I used the white parts of the green onions and the stems of the cilantro from lunch, along with garlic, sambal oelek, lime juice, fish sauce, and agave nectar just to take the edge off the lime.

I threw together a quick stir fry of lop cheung, tiny shrimp, sugar snaps, lime leaves (discarded before we ate), garlic, white pepper and fish sauce. This I mixed with the raw ingredients: pineapple, roasted peanuts, fresh tomato, orange sweet pepper, and lots of Thai basil. As you can see in the photo, the wraps are mostly vegetables with a tiny bit of shrimp and sausage for flavor.

What a Great Day!

Black Bean Salad with Chipotle-Marinated Shrimp

Now that we are just back from our annual vacation, we've got to get serious about shedding some of those excess winter pounds. And the warmer weather is pushing us too. When it's warm outside, we naturally gravitate to eating lighter, such as this salad.

Black Bean Salad with Chipotle-Marinated Shrimp

Last night, I decided to make a big salad in the manner of a vegetable seviche that I did at the restaurant week before last. The shrimp to go on top were an afterthought. Most of the vegetables are raw. One ear of corn and the red onion were charred, but still not cooked through. The nopalitos are pickled. I tossed everything together with the juice of a lime, some salt, and a couple tablespoons of chipotle salsa.

Salad Mise en Place

A quick trip to the grocery store yielded the ingredients for a wonderful salad: cilantro, grape tomatoes, black beans, chipotle salsa, nopalitos, lime, red onion, poblano, orange pepper, green onions, Ataulfo mango, garlic, cumin, and fresh corn.

Charring the Red Onion and Some of the Corn

For a change of pace, I decided to char the red onion before chopping it, as well as one ear of corn. Yes, this is directly on the flame. The other ears of corn, I left totally raw.

Shrimp in their Marinade

The shrimp marinade is finely minced cilantro stems and garlic, zest of the lime, salt, toasted and ground cumin, a touch of olive oil, and a tablespoon of the chipotle salsa.

Fish Tacos with Mango-Vanilla Salsa

We seem to eat a lot of tacos, tacos suaves, soft tacos in particular. Just click the tacos label in the web view (not the mobile view) to see the various taco postings. There's a reason for that. Tacos are delicious, healthy enough if you use corn tortillas and watch what you put in them, and so easy to fix.

And name somebody who doesn't like tacos. [No, not her. She won't touch anything with her hands because she's afraid of getting a little dirty. No, I meant name somebody who likes to eat who doesn't like tacos.]

This taco isn't very photogenic because I just didn't feel like decorating it, I was starving and I crushed it seconds after snapping this shot with my cell.

Pan-Seared Mahi-mahi and Mango-Vanilla Salsa Taco

I don't usually eat mahi because I find it pretty boring. But when it is fresh, it is decent enough and cheap enough fish. I remember having to fight the bastards off the hooks when we were out tuna fishing. They are seemingly everywhere. I ordered some for a friend and when my fish guy sent me a little too much, I took the excess home for a few dinners during the week. I cut it into thin 1.5 to 2-ounce slices so that it would sear quickly.

Ann Made a Salad While I Seared the Fish

Salsa Mise

Salsa 101. You need cilantro. Check. You need a fruit. Tomatoes aren't in season, but I got a nice mango. Check. You need some onion. Green instead of the usual yellow or white. Check. You need some acid. Lime, check, but you could use lemon, tamarind, or vinegar. You need some heat. No fresh peppers, but I have some chile-garlic sauce. Check. After that, it's all improv on your part. With mangos, I love a touch of brown sugar (or dark rum) and vanilla extract. See the vanilla extract my mother made for us for Christmas? Yay us!

Food Porn

If this picture doesn't get your juices flowing, why are you reading this?

Tacos de Chorizo

Sometimes, I just get cravings and that makes it really easy to decide what to eat. It's those times when I have nothing specific in mind that makes it hard to decide what to make, because I love just about everything. Yesterday was not one of those indecisive days: I woke up craving tacos de chorizo.

And not just tacos de chorizo, but tacos of nicely spicy sausage topped with a sweet-tangy mango salsa and plenty of raw onions and cilantro. And that is precisely what I made.

I prepped the fruit and vegetables all at once over the course of about 15 minutes while talking with Carter about his homework: mango, white onions, green onions, cilantro, jalapeño, poblano, and garlic. The mango went in a bowl with a bunch of green onions, one quarter of a white onion, half a bunch of cilantro, half the (admittedly huge) jalapeño, and 5-6 gloves of minced garlic. This I mixed with a bit of salt, juice of a big lime, and just a touch of agave nectar to balance it out. Notice the color of the salsa. I wanted a fresh, bright green relish to top off the tacos.

Mango Salsa: Sweet, Tangy, Spicy, and Very, Very Fresh

I bought some locally made chorizos, labeled "del Perron" (big dog), which were touted as super-picante. Really? I didn't notice. Setting aside one quarter of the white onion and the other half of the bunch of cilantro for garnishing the tacos, the remainder of the ingredients went into the pan: 5-6 cloves of garlic, half a white onion, the remaining half jalapeño, and a whole poblano. Once these started to work a bit, in went the chorizos and in seconds, we were eating.

Tacos de Chorizo Fully Garnished with Mango Salsa, Onions, Cilantro

Fresh, simple, and craving oh-so satisfied!

Bánh Mì Thịt Nướng

Monday was our anniversary and we spent the evening at Carter's football game. Most people would go out on their anniversary and we might have too, because Monday night is usually date night. But during football season on Monday nights, well, we are obliged to go cheer on Carter and his mates (who, incidentally, were crushed 35-0, ouch!) instead of going out or (given the lack of decent restaurants in our area) staying in and fixing a nice dinner.

After a long, hard slog at the restaurant on Monday, I needed an easy dinner and, for obvious reasons, a somewhat special one. And it seemed pretty clear that rather than trying to bolt something down before rushing out the door for the almost hour-long drive to the game, that I would pack a dinner for us to take to the game. So I got to thinking about portable, easy-to-eat food and naturally, sandwiches fit that bill really well. I don't eat many sandwiches, so when I do, I want them to be spectacular, especially for my anniversary dinner.

When I think sandwich now, I think bánh mì if for no other reason than we just launched a very successful pork belly bánh mì on our new fall lunch menu at the restaurant. I wanted to change it up because pork belly is more successful when it is hot and hot food and football games just don't mix. So, on my way home, I stopped at the market and picked up some lemongrass and a package of very thinly sliced pork, labeled both bistek de cerdo and pork cushion meat. Grilled marinated pork is common in Vietnam and is known as thịt nướng, grilled meat, and the meat is understood to be pork.

Now I don't know about you, but I understand bistek de cerdo a lot more than I understand pork cushion meat, and I am a professional chef who butchers whole hogs from time to time. Because I butcher hogs, I recognized that the meat came from the shoulder, which is what I wanted. But the whole cushion thing is still a mystery to me even after looking it up. [I looked it up in the IMPS where USDA specs it as a real cut, 405B, that we never use at the restaurant.]



Pork Shoulder in Marinade, Ready for Grilling

Anyway, thank you to the butcher that put this boneless piece of Boston butt on the slicer and converted it to thin steaks for me. I marinated the steaks in a rub of lemongrass, garlic, black pepper, palm sugar, and fish sauce. They probably sat in the fridge for 90 minutes before grilling.

Pork Steaks Grilled; Baguettes Toasted

The steaks were on the super hot grill about 60 seconds on each side. I brought them and the toasted baguettes into the kitchen where I built them into sandwiches. I have come up with a spicy mayonnaise that I love on my bánh mì, rather than the traditional, yet boring plain mayo. I mix equal parts of sriracha, hoisin, and finely minced garlic and cilantro stems with two parts of mayo. This goes on both sides of the bread.

I made a quick slaw of julienned carrots and daikon mixed with nước chấm, which I make from time to time and keep in the refrigerator as needed. My nuoc cham is a heavy syrup of rice vinegar and white sugar thinned out with fish sauce, lime juice, crushed red chiles, and minced garlic. Yours might be different.

On the spicy mayo-slathered baguette went a layer of sliced cucumbers, a layer of carrot-daikon slaw, grilled lemongrass pork, tons of fresh cilantro, and a good sprinkling of crispy fried shallots. A lot of people add a layer of bird chiles or other chiles, but I just build the spice into the mayo. I like an even distribution of heat and am not very happy when the fresh chiles squirt out of the side of the sandwich when I bite into it!

Mango and Red Pepper Salad

To accompany our sandwiches, I made a savory mango and red pepper salad by roughly dicing the two fruits, and dressing them with lime juice, fish sauce, the merest hint of agave nectar, and a lot of Thai basil, fresh from our garden. I love the salty, citrusy nature of this salad, primarily because it is so unexpected. Your brain expects mango to be sweet, yet this salad is anything but sweet.

And that is the saga of our anniversary dinner. It was probably the best food that I have ever had at a football game anywhere. I know the people in the stands around us were jealous! Sorry for no pictures: they weren't going to come out in the dark anyway. You'll have to use your imagination.

Brochetas de Camarones, Mango-Habanero Salsa

I was looking for something easy for the grill yesterday when it struck me on seeing some beautiful shrimp at the market that I should do skewers/kebabs/brochettes/brochetas. I am usually philosophically opposed to skewers of mixed foods because the foods generally have different cooking rates and to get everything cooked, naturally something else must be overcooked.

Here's a tip for you for doing skewers. Put each different item on a separate skewer so that you can take it off the grill when it is done. Then you can take a little bit from each skewer to make up each plate.

Shrimp, Tomato, Pineapple, and Pepper on Sugar Cane Skewers

In this case, I wasn't worried because the tomatoes, pineapple, and sweet peppers are all ready to eat in their raw state, so all I had to worry about was cooking the shrimp, which took about three minutes on the blazing hot grill. The marinade you see is minced garlic and cilantro stems, panela (unrefined sugar cane sugar), dark rum, olive oil, black pepper, and a touch of fish sauce.

While I was at the market, I grabbed a six-foot length of sugar cane and split it into skewers. Ann and Carter seemed to enjoy nibbling on the scraps.

Don't Let the Beauty Fool You: Habaneros are Wicked Hot!

Aren't these habaneros gorgeous? Ann kept wanting to taste one in her bull-in-the-china-shop way and I kept telling her to leave them alone. I think it was Carter's Jamaican friend who finally convinced her, "You don't want to do that!" I'm not a big fan of habaneros because I find them too fruity for most applications, but the one place that I like them is in fruit salsa.

And, where did the fake énye from? It's habanero, after Habana, not habañero. Oh, and quoting Ann later, "You put in just ONE?" "Yes, without the seeds." I told her. Don't mess around with them!

Mango Salsa with Habanero, Black Beans, and Pineapple

And lo! Fruit salsa. Mango, slightly on the green side as I like it best for salsa, black beans, pineapple scraps from the skewers, cilantro, red onion, red pepper from the garden, lime juice, and panela.

Panela

You might know panela by a different name or shape. From Mexico, it generally comes in small truncated cones and is called piloncillo, after the truncated cone shape into which the sugar cane syrup is molded. You also find it in blocks, bars, and big squares. In Mexico, the term panela most often refers to a cheese, formally called queso de panela (cheese molded in a basket), and abbreviated simply to panela. Panela is identical to the jaggery that you will find in Indian groceries; jaggery I see most often as hemispherical lumps or broader, relatively squatter cones than piloncillo. No matter what it is called; it is all the same stuff. If you had to substitute something for it, dark brown sugar would kind of work, but it would be better to use a splash of molasses with some other sweetener for panela has a great molasses undertone to it.