Super Bowl Dip

After many years of cord cutting, we're finally able to watch the Super Bowl at home for the first time in ages. When we realized this, of course, we had to have some food to go along with the game. Pretty much immediately, I thought of the quasi-traditional 7-layer dip that so many people serve. And I asked myself, "How can it make it tastier and more fun?"

Ready to Watch the Super Bowl

I spent a little time thinking about what might comprise the layers in the dip and started making a list of things that individually would be really good with nacho chips.

You can see what I came up with from bottom to top in the photo above:

• Chipotle-Garlic-Bacon Frijoles Refritos. I debated the longest time about what kind of beans to use for the refritos, finally settling on pintos rather than either black beans or mayocobas. Traditionally, beans are refried in lard which I don't have on hand. Rather, I fried up a few slices of bacon and put the cooked pintos, a couple finely chopped chipotles, and rather a large amount of minced garlic into the bacon grease. After I mashed the beans to smooth and cooked them until they separated from the edge of the pan, I chopped the bacon and added it to the beans before seasoning them.

• Salsa Fresca. My fresh salsa is easy to make and delicious, consisting of finely chopped grape tomatoes (in lieu of large tomatoes in the late summer), white onion, cilantro, a finely minced jalapeño, with lime juice and salt to taste.

• Tinga de Pollo. I haven't made this delightful taco filling in a few months and I don't know why as it couldn't be simpler. To prepare it, I place slabs of onion in the bottom of a roasting pan, then layer on a bunch of chicken thighs lightly dusted with a spice mix of New Mexican ground chile, cumin, granulated garlic, salt, and Mexican oregano. The thighs roast until they are done and ready to come off the bone. After they cool, I pick the meat off the bones and add it to half the onion slabs that I have roughly chopped. The other half of the onions goes into the blender with a couple of chipotles en adobo and a small can of tomatoes. After I blitz the sauce, I pour it over the chicken and onion mixture and cook it down until most of the liquid is evaporated to make a delicious taco filling.

• Queso Fundido. Who doesn't like a gooey queso with chips? There are all kinds of ways to make queso fundido (melted cheese) but honestly, the easiest is just to throw some Velveeta and a little milk into the microwave. I added pickled jalapenos and chopped pickled nopalitos to the queso to give it a bit of zing.

• Chorizo. Mexican chorizo may be my favorite taco filling, especially when mixed with eggs. No eggs in this batch of chorizo, however, that I made from pork shoulder, ground Chimayo chile, cumin, garlic, salt, Mexican oregano, and a touch of red wine vinegar for acidity.

• Guacamole. It wouldn't be a Super Bowl dip at all without guacamole. The avocados are tiny now and hard as bricks, so I bought a bunch of them and kept them on the counter for a week to ripen. I made the simplest guacamole ever from avocados, salt, and lime juice, just looking for a nice citrus flavor to lift the rest of the heavy ingredients.

• Cotija Cheese. Grated cotija serves the same role in Mexican cuisine as pecorino does in Italian. I wanted it not only for its white color to serve as a backdrop for the top garnishes, but also to add a bit of saltiness to the dip.

• Top Garnish. The point of gilding this particular lily was to bring to freshness to the rest of the ingredients. On the top, I spooned on the remainder of the salsa fresca and scattered over some sliced green onions. Before topping the whole with a little bouquet of whole cilantro leaves, I used a squeeze bottle to drizzle on a crisscross of thinned chipotle sour cream.

Chicken, Nopalito, and Black Bean Tacos

I like to make these tacos when I have chicken left over in the refrigerator from some previous dish. By bulking out the chicken with onions, nopalitos, and black beans, seven or eight ounces of chicken will easily and fully feed two people by making a dozen tacos.

Chicken, Nopalito, and Black Bean Tacos with Pineapple Salsa

Garlic, Nopalitos, Chicken, and Onions

Start with a large yellow onion cut into strips, a couple cloves of minced garlic, a cup or so of pickled nopalitos, and something under a half a pound of pulled cooked chicken. In a pan filmed with oil, cook the onions until they become translucent. Add the garlic and cook for a minute or two longer. Next into the pan go the chicken, nopalitos, and a drained and rinsed can of black beans. Splash the pan with a little water just to get all the flavors to mingle and stop cooking when the onions are crunchy-soft. I could eat tacos of just these onions!

Kelley and Mark

It all started with a random message on Facebook from Kelley last week telling us she missed us. Such is the connectivity or lack thereof in Pocohontas County, WV in the dead zone around NRAO that we are relegated to communicate via FB Messenger. Ann and I have been kicking around the idea of meeting both Kelley and Mark at some halfway point between here and there, about Seneca Rocks, and we mentioned that to her as something we had to do in the spring after they get done with their ski season jobs at Snowshoe.

Long story short, Kelley decided that we needed to do this on Monday and so I cleared my calendar for the 2-hour drive, to hike a little and socialize a lot. But then it turned out that this early in the season, Mark had three days off and they decided to come back to NoVa to attend to some family matters. So they came to our house yesterday late afternoon and stayed for dinner en route to NoVa.

The Three Musketeers

I wanted something really simple for dinner and was thinking about tacos, but I wanted something even less work than that so we could visit and catch up rather than work in the kitchen. I hit on the idea of nachos and then the idea of buying a rotisserie chicken and shredding it on the nachos came to me, so I grabbed a chicken, some grated cheese, and a bag of chips from Costco, and from FoodMaxx some fresh jalapeños, cilantro, a jar of nopalitos, and a can each of black beans and pinto beans.

At home, I drained and rinsed the beans, picked the chicken, pulled the cilantro, and sliced the jalapeños so that at dinner time, all we needed to do was fire up the oven and make some nachos.

Ann Decorating Nachos; Mark Filching Nopalitos

In the photo above, note the so-called "pumpkini," a squash of unknown heritage that Kelley brought along. Most squashes and gourds are somewhat edible and if nothing else, you can generally make soup from them, even if they are super stringy. We got into this one today and found that it has about 1" thick bright orange flesh that is not at all stringy, but it doesn't have any flavor either. It is headed for a squash cream sauce for ricotta gnocchi with chanterelles, rabbit confit, and cavolo nero.

We made two sheet trays of nachos, the first with black beans and the second with pinto beans, between rounds of Cards Against Humanity. A little Prosecco and some red wine might have been drunk. During our match, somebody got the "swooping" card, which none of us could recall ever having encountered before and the reference to which none of us got, so of course, we turned to Urban Dictionary, the arbiter of all things Cards Against Humanity, and found the joke was on us. No spoilers here. Go check for yourself.

Chicken and Pinto Bean Nachos with Nopalitos and Jalapeños

We haven't seen Mark and Kelley since we stayed at their house two Aprils ago and it was just a fantastic short visit to catch up. With my schedule giving me only a single day off a week, opportunities to see them, a 7-hour round trip away, are scarce. We miss them terribly.

Cleaning out the Fridge

It's November. And with that and the inherently shorter days come slower and slower evenings at the restaurant. Making lemonade from lemons, I decided to come home for dinner last evening and let the crew handle the kitchen. For dinner, I would just clean out the fridge and the pantry and throw something together quickly. If nothing else, this certainly keeps my improvisational cooking skills honed and provides at least a little bit of enjoyable mental gymnastics, say, as opposed to the mental gymnastics of capitalizing restaurant equipment or of computing food costs.

But first, a celebratory bottle of wine out on the patio on one of the very last chances this year that we're going to be able to get outside. A good friend brought a bottle of 2005 Rioja Alta Gran Reserva to our paella party on Sunday, and miracle of miracles, it didn't get swilled. So we opened it. And it was shot. All the fruit was gone and nothing left but a lot of sour acid. Damn!

2005 Rioja Alta Gran Reserva: Shot

And so we moved on to one of the last bottles of Fonterosso Chianti, the wine that we brought in for the paella party.

Bright Cherry Chianti

Results of Foraging

After it got too dark and too chilly to sit outside, we brought our glasses of wine inside and I got to work mining the refrigerator and pantry for dinner. I found chicken thighs, mangy green onions, a bit of cilantro, garlic, terribly mangy jalapeños, a half a can of fat free refried beans, a few nopalitos in the bottom of the jar, a tiny can of chopped green chiles, a large can of diced tomatoes, and some leftover paella.

The plan as it formed in my head was to do a quick casserole with rice on the bottom, seared chicken thighs smeared with refried beans on top of that, and a quick tomato sauce over all. 45 minutes in a low (350F) oven should finish the dish.

Paella Rice in the Bottom of Roasting Pan

Searing Floured Chicken Thighs

I found some time ago that refried beans (the no fat ones) are a great way to get some unctuous mouthfeel into a dish without adding any cream or fat. Once baked with the chicken, you hardly know that they are there, but the dish becomes rich and satisfying without being overly unhealthy.

Chicken Thighs Coated with Refried Beans

The sauce was everything left. I drained the tomatoes, chiles, and nopalitos and then added those to a sauté of green onions, garlic, cilantro stems, and sliced jalapeños. I had to add a touch of water to bring the sauce together and after cooking for three or four minutes, I adjusted the seasoning with some salt and a splash of Sherry vinegar (the tomatoes didn't have enough acidity) and poured the sauce over the chicken.

Refrigerator Sauce

Oven Ready

This turned out to be a super delicious and super filling dinner. My improvisational cooking skills still seem to be intact!

Nachos

Ever had a craving for something? Of course you have. Yesterday, for me it was black beans and nopalitos. I was headed home early afternoon after a morning of deskwork and wanted some lunch. I knew I had some roasted salmon and a some black beans in the refrigerator. The black beans were left from the other night with roasted rockfish. I was going to make a salad with chunks of salmon, black beans, and I wanted something pickled with that, nopalitos to be precise.

I texted Ann to inquire if we had nopalitos in the fridge and she replied, "Yes. Nachos?!?!!" I wasn't in the mood for nachos, but didn't want to disappoint her either.

I grabbed a chunk of queso chihuahua out of the cooler on the way home. And on the way home, I grabbed some green onions, chips, and cilantro at the market. At home, I shredded the queso, thinly sliced a couple of fresh jalapeños from the fridge, sliced the green onions, and pulled the leaves off the cilantro.

Fully Loaded Nachos

I turned Ann loose on decorating the nachos and this is what she came up with; these just out of the oven, before being topped with fresh cilantro. They were so not healthy, but they were so good!

Food Porn Version of Same

Warm Black Bean Salad

We've been really trying to watch what we eat and to make sure that our carbs are complex and healthy. Beans fit that bill wonderfully. And we love beans, so it is win-win.

Black Beans

Ann has been asking me to make her batches of black bean burgers that she can eat during the week when I am not there. I like to cook the beans one day and then let them refrigerate overnight so that we can form them into patties. While the beans are still warm, I'll add a tiny little bit of masa harina to them to help them stiffen when they cool.

Of course the first night before I add the masa and before the beans are refrigerated they make a wonderful warm salad when topped with chipotle salsa, fresh tomatoes, pickled nopalitos, green onions, sliced romaine, and cilantro. The black beans themselves are cooked with poblano chile, onion, lots of garlic, cilantro stems, cumin, ancho powder, and oregano.

Seven-Layer Dip Bowl

Delicious and Healthy, Too!

This cold wet weather is not helping the restaurant business one bit, but it is giving me more time at home with Ann, so that's something of a win, no? Last night was another in a long series of slow week nights and so I decided to go home and make dinner for us. It's no secret that Ann and I are slowly trying to work off all that winter weight we put on and so we are being a bit more selective in what we eat.

We haggled a bit on the phone over dinner, throwing out one idea after another. It all kept coming back to the thawed ground turkey in the fridge. It finally dawned on me that we could do a really healthy version of the horribly unhealthy seven-layer dip, yet put it in a bowl so that we could eat it without the usual tortilla chips.

The layers are up to you, but I avoided the cheese and sour cream in my bowl because of my lactose intolerance. Ann went for both from her stash in the fridge. This is not a quick or haphazard meal. Between vegetable prep and milling spices and adding cook time for the beans and the turkey, this was a solid 30 minutes of work, even for a very quick professional chef.

The bottom layer for both of us was ground turkey which I added to a sauté of onions, poblanos, and garlic and cooked until just done through. Then I seasoned with salt, cumin, ancho powder, oregano, and the barest hint of cinnamon. A spice mill really helps. Get one. Keep your spices and chile peppers fresh and rotated and mill them to order. It does make a difference.

For the beans, the second layer, I opted for something texturally between soup beans (frijoles de la olla) and refried beans (frijoles refritos). I started by draining a large can of cooked pintos: I love to rehydrate dry beans overnight, but that's not a possibility much of the time, especially on a day when I didn't anticipate being home for dinner. Canned beans aren't as economical or even as tasty as dried beans, but they sure are one of life's great convenience foods and there's no shame at all in using them.

In the bean pot, I started  a sauté of diced onion, diced poblano, minced garlic, and minced cilantro stems. Once this cooked down for a bit, in went the beans, about two ounces of the adobo off a can of chipotles, salt, and water to cover. I cooked the beans in parallel with the turkey. Once the turkey was done, I moved the beans to the high burner and brought them down rapidly. Towards the end, I smashed some beans against the side of the pot with my spoon and this thickened the sauce quite quickly. I finished them like refried beans, cooking them while stirring often, until the beans started to pull away from the side of the pot.

On top of the turkey and beans, I layered chipotle salsa, halved grape tomatoes, nopalitos, green onions, and topped the whole thing with cilantro. Cubes of avocado and fresh, raw sweet corn would be great in this, in season.

This dish has it all: extremely tasty, high protein, low fat, high fiber, and has only complex carbs in the beans. It's a winner even if you doctor it with a bit of cheese, sour cream, or both.

Margaritas and Nachos

Sunday, a date with junk food. It's been a year since Nachos and Margaritas. If you're going to be bad, be bad. We were bad!

Ann made the nachos while I juiced the limes and made the margaritas.

Ready for the Oven

The chips got a generous helping of black beans (refried in lard), nopalitos, pickled jalapeños, and cheese. And once out of the oven got a handful each of green onions and cilantro.

Ready to Eat

Squeezing Limes for Margaritas

Almost an emergency: no Cuervo to be found! Fortunately there was a bottle of no-name tequila plata in the far corner of the liquor cabinet. When I asked Ann what kind of tequila it is (it apparently predates my tenure at the house), she said, "It's hangover tequila!" Oh boy! We were bad.

Pork and Nopalito Enchiladas

I felt like cooking this weekend, despite a huge sold-out wine dinner on Saturday night. As the younger guys shoulder more of the load in the restaurant kitchen, my days are moving more and more to logistics and paperwork and my nights are going more the direction of third wheel, in the crew's way, except on busy nights when I am quarterbacking, what we in the business call expediting. None of this involves a pan in my hand and so I think my cooking at home is my way of compensating for this, for finding again what was so enjoyable that it got me into the business. Enough introspection; I made some kick-ass enchiladas on Sunday.



Pork and Nopalito Enchiladas/Guajillo Salsa Roja

Not sure what the genesis of this dish was. I know Ann and I were coffeeing in the sunroom as we do pretty much every Sunday morning, talking about dinner as we do pretty much every Sunday morning, and somehow enchiladas came up, which was enough for me to run with.

Pulled Pork, Nopalito, Green Onion, and Cheese Filling

A quick trip to the supermercado yielded a slice of pork shoulder, some guajillos, a bag of tortillas, a bunch of green onions, a couple cans of tomatoes, and some quesillo especial, grated cheese for pupusas. I have a couple of jars of nopalitos in the refrigerator and I decided to use up some of them in the enchilada filling which also contains the shredded pork shoulder, green onions, some quesillo, and a little bit of the guajillo sauce to moisten it.

Rubbed Pork Shoulder, Tomatoes, Guajillos, Garlic

I wanted to roast the tomatoes hard to give them a bit of a char and I wanted to slow cook/roast-braise the pork until it was fork tender, but not having someone to wash dishes for me, I wanted to use a single pan for the entire operation. I put the tomatoes, a few guajillos, and a dozen cloves of garlic around the outside of the roasting pan, with the rubbed pork shoulder in the middle. The spice rub that I use for pork differs with my mood and the flavor profile I am looking to achieve. This one was pimentón (smoked paprika), cumin, garlic powder, oregano, cinnamon, salt, and black pepper. Because of the spice rub, I did not add any additional seasonings to the salsa roja.

Roasting the Tomatoes While Braise-Roasting the Pork

I tented the pork so that it would roast-braise under its lid while the tomatoes, chiles, and garlic roasted around the edges. I roasted until the tomatoes were good and caramelized, the chiles a little charred, and the pork was falling apart. Meanwhile, I soaked the remainder of the stemmed and seeded guajillos in warm water for a couple hours. Into the blender went those chiles with the roasted tomato mixture and out came the most wonderful salsa roja. Three ounces of guajillos to two 28-ounce cans of tomatoes was just about a perfect ratio. Guajillos are a kitchen workhorse everywhere, having wonderful chile flavor with little to just a bit of spice. If you don't know guajillos, it's time to meet them.

Nachos and Margaritas

I took my cue from Ann on Sunday. She was in the mood to eat bad and by bad I mean junk food. I suggested fully loaded nachos and margaritas. She agreed most enthusiastically and we headed out to FoodMaxx for supplies: blue corn Tostitos, hint of lime Tostitos, cilantro, green onions, queso quesadilla, refried pinto beans, jalapeños en escabeche, and chipotle salsa. At home, we had a jar of nopalitos to add to the mix. Once the nachos came out of the oven, we poured the chipotle salsa over the top. San Marcos makes a great salsa that is just blended chipotles and adobo. It's a winner.

Hot out of the Oven

Prepping the nachos was a tag-team effort. Ann put half the toppings on the chips and I put the other half on. Carter, hearing rustling of chip bags, made a hasty appearance and made a raid on the chips. He expressed concerned that we were making "Ed nachos," the derogatory teen term for "fancy" nachos, when he saw Ann putting jalapeños and nopalitos on the chips. But I notice that this did not stop him from eating the chips or coming back for seconds or thirds.

Nachos with Chipotle Salsa

I love FoodMaxx, but they don't have a good selection of gringo food there and I guess that frozen limeade concentrate is gringo food. I was surprised to find Tostitos there too; previously their selection of chips was nil. So, we settled for a can of passionfruit concentrate from which to make our margaritas. [It was a lazy Sunday and no, I was not juicing a gazillion limes for real margaritas. So there.] It's not the same thing, but at least passionfruit has good acidity. Even though I added extra lime juice to the margaritas, they still came out a bit sweet. We should have thrown in the towel and made the extra trip to the regular grocery store.

Passionfruit Margarita

Nachos

It's not very often you'll see junk food on this blog, but Ann wanted nachos and we had a bunch of stuff around from which to make them, so nachos it was. They were delicious even if they did conjure up distant memories of college and pitchers of really bad beer!

Nachos with Nopalitos and Black Beans

Right out of the Oven

I cut up some old tortillas and Ann and I tag-teamed frying them. Then they got topped with black beans, nopalitos, pickled jalapeños (but only a little because our last batch is screaming spicy), cheddar cheese, queso Chihuahua, and green onions. After the nachos came out of the oven, I sprinkled on a bunch more green onions, a handful of cilantro leaves, and squirted the top with a smoky pimentón sauce.

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

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.