A Corny Labor Day Menu

For our Labor Day weekend dinner, Ann and I brainstormed a menu, then she set a beautiful table and I cooked. The result: a wonderful evening.

Cheers!

Chicharrones with Rosé to Start

Blame the menu on Michelle.

We have all had a busy summer, going here and there. Labor Day Weekend was the first time in weeks that we were all in town simultaneously, so Ann set up a dinner. And we set about creating a menu.

Michelle's gluten-intolerance was a guide in forming the menu. Avoiding gluten was a starting point rather than a serious restriction. After so many years in the restaurant creating all manner of dishes, I find that restrictions help to set limits on my imagination, help to narrow my focus.

In our back and forth about ideas for the dinner, Ann mentioned a panzanella with fresh corn. Naturally, a bread salad was out, but the corn lodged in the depths of my mind and would not be banished.

My mind started riffing on corn so much that I couldn't get to sleep for hours. Lying in bed, I had no doubt that I would cook a corn-centric dinner. Still, the possibilities seemed endless: Blue corn, white corn, yellow corn, red corn. Tortillas, sopes, corn pone. Fresh corn, dried corn, hominy. Grits, polenta, cornmeal.

Before long, what had begun as a dietary restriction had become a theme.

I imposed another restriction, too. The menu should require little last-minute cooking so that I could spend time without our guests rather than in the kitchen. This, if it is not obvious, is exactly the opposite of how we cooked at the restaurant.

Quickly, I knew I wanted to do a quick shrimp salad for an appetizer, a re-do of a salad that Ann has been much taken with since pink shrimp came on the market in mid-summer.

And oddly, I wanted a soup course. Soup is most often a family meal, not a company meal. I am sure that after a hot dry summer, the weather influenced the menu. Sudden consecutive days of cool temperatures and copious rain put out Central Oregon’s raging forest fires and powdered the disconcertingly bare Cascades with a dusting of new snow. It was odd before Labor Day to turn on the gas fireplace to temper the chill in the air—soup weather for sure.

Ann had asked me long ago to make rajas con crema for a dinner party and somehow I dredged that request out of the depths of my brain. That would make a tasty main course that I could make long before dinner and keep warm in the oven.

That left dessert. I am not a dessert guy. I make them just fine, but because I do not really eat sweets, they are hardly top of mind. At Ann's urging, I put one of my spicy sorbets into the mix. I let her suggestion of apricot-chipotle ferment for a while in my brain to see what would come of it.

With those ideas sketched out, I finally fell asleep. That's when I do my best thinking. The results come to me after I awake.

Over the next days, I sketched and refined the menu, again and again, all in my mind. I finally jotted a few things down and over time, whittled and refined, following my own mantra from the restaurant: five ingredients make a dish. If a cook wanted more ingredients, I needed to hear a great justification. I hold myself to that too.

Of all the things that I did at the restaurant, one that brought me a lot of joy was creating special menus such as those for our wine dinners. I hoped that the hours I invested in creating and revising a coherent menu would be lost on guests. They should just be able to tell that the courses flowed seamlessly and seemingly without thought.

Creating and executing our Labor Day menu let me revisit what I loved about the restaurant years without reliving the turmoil. Creating the menu let me exercise a concept that I tried to teach my line cooks over the years: theme and variation. I tried to impart to them to learn a classic dish well enough that they could create meaningful variations of their own. Executing the menu let me revisit many techniques that I developed over the years, things that satisfy chefs but guests never see. 

Back to theme and variation. They are both highly embedded in the menu, there for those who look for them, but subtle enough to let the food shine through without the obvious hand of the author.

Corn and chile became the themes.

 

Everything else was variation.

I had a great time designing the menu; it scratched an itch from the restaurant days that I did not realize needed scratching. But more importantly, I enjoyed sitting with Ann and friends over good food and good wine without being tied to the kitchen.

Pink Shrimp Salad

There are lots of ways to add corn to a shrimp salad ranging from mixing charred kernels into the salad to serving the salad on a tostada to sprinkling corn nuts over the top for texture. The salad that Ann has been taken with, pink shrimp dressed with chipotle adobo and crema, is a bit liquid, so I wanted a container to corral any juices. A sope with its raised rim would be perfect. And blue corn would add a beautiful color contrast and a bit of nuttiness.

Pink Shrimp Dressed with Crema, Green Onions, and Chipotle Adobo
Nestled in a Blue Corn Sope
Wine Pairing: Patty Green Tempranillo Rosé

Sopes Just Off the Cast Iron Pan
Rims Pinched While Warm
Brushed with Oil and Reheated in a Moderate Oven

I have always made sopes to eat while warm, served just out of the pan. For this meal, I had to figure out how to make them in advance, cool them without becoming soggy, and reheat them without drying out. I ended up putting them, uncovered, on an oiled sheet tray to cool at room temperature. Once cool, I brushed them with oil and covered the sheet tray. Ten minutes before serving, I uncovered them and put them in a moderate 325F oven to reheat and crisp a bit. That technique worked—thankfully. There was no Plan B.

Tortilla Soup

I decided on a more-or-less consommé for the soup course, classic technique. I wanted guests to experience a deep and rich broth. They would never see that I made a chicken stock with a hint of cilantro stems and bay leaves, and using that stock and a lot of chicken bones and scraps, I made a second stock. And then I poached all the chicken for the soup in that second stock, essentially creating a triple stock before I defatted and clarified it lightly.

I decided to place all the garnishes in soup bowls and pour the broth over them tableside to keep the broth as hot as it could be. Each guest could add crispy tortilla strips to the bowl as wanted; this way, the strips would not become soggy. The chile component is a touch of chipotle-adobe added to the consommé before clarification. It added a subtle smoky taste and a hint of spice at the back of the throat. 

Tortilla Soup
Garnishes: Chicken, Cilantro, Avocado, Tomato, Radish Slices, Tortilla Strips
Wine Pairing: Eva Fricke Riesling Trocken Rheingau

Rajas con Crema

Poblanos are my favorite peppers, hands down. I am not a huge fan of bell peppers because their green vegetal flavor displeases me and worse, that flavor clashes with red wines prone to pyrazines such as Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon. I vowed never to serve anything at my restaurant that I would not eat myself, so we never ever served a single green bell pepper. We did use vast amounts of poblanos, however.

I love rajas con crema. At its heart, this is a dish of roasted poblano strips (the rajas) cooked in cream. The typical dish includes strips of wilted onion as well. Some add flour to thicken, some add cheese, some add spices: there are many variations on this theme. For my part, I love to cook the rajas and onion with a touch of garlic in cream until it is thick. Then, I add fresh corn kernels, raw, to add a hint of sweet freshness and texture.

Taco de Rajas con Crema
Pepita-Cilantro Salsa
Wine Pairing: Durin Rossese Riviera Ligure di Ponente

I love tacos and short of baking rajas con crema in individual ramekins, I cannot think of a better way to serve and eat this dish. I stirred a bit of cotija cheese into the rajas, to add salt without adding salt. Then I put it in a casserole and topped it with queso chihuahua, a stringy Mexican quasi-mozzarella. It stayed in the oven, hot, until we were ready for it. All I had to do at service was reheat the tortillas.

When I make a taco, I want salsa for it. The idea of pumpkin seed and cilantro came quickly. The execution took a bit more pondering. After considering all the salsas verdes I know how to make, I finally decided to not make a typical Mexican avocado-tomatillo sauce. I ended up with a chimichurri-like oil and vinegar salsa (toasted pepitas, cilantro, crushed red pepper flakes, Greek oregano—not Mexican, shallot, garlic, red wine vinegar, and olive oil). The toasted pepitas gave it a wonderful smokiness that I was not expecting, an experiment gone right. 

This is one of my great variations on a theme, the theme being the classic green sauces of Europe, such as pesto or Tuscan salsa verde. These green sauces even have a South American variation in classic Argentine chimichurri. I merely changed the vocabulary a touch. Pepitas for pine nuts. Cilantro for parsley or basil.

The herbaceous flavors of poblanos and cilantro call for an interesting wine with similar herbaceous notes. The position of the course in the menu called for a red wine. The abundant rich cream in the poblanos called for a high-acid wine. Rossese is a somm favorite: high-acid, interestingly herbaceous, brightly fruity, and pairs with almost anything, including fish and in this case, vegetarian courses. The pairing is fantastic.

For a small batch of poblanos, I torch them with a handheld propane torch, then peel them. But for five pounds of poblanos, that would never work. I borrowed a technique from the restaurant, one I have never documented before. Poblanos generally have three sides that lend them to being cut into three slabs after the cap is cut off and the seeds discarded. These flat slabs roast brilliantly on sheet trays under the broiler. The caps get diced and used for other dishes.

Roasting Poblanos Efficiently

Caps Diced and Used in Other Dishes

Guava-Chipotle Sorbet

Sorbet is something I can make in my sleep. I made a new one each night as an intermezzo for our tasting menu. Adding chipotle to my sorbets is something of a trademark. Nothing bores my palate more than one-dimensional dishes and a fruit sorbet runs a great risk of being one-dimensional. To help it become more interesting, I deepen its acid profile to counter the sugar, broaden its flavor profile with a touch of salt, and hide a sneaky chile bite way in the background. Each bites becomes something new, a little electric, exciting rather than boring.

Deepening the acid profile means more acid, according to the type of fruit. I like lime with tropical fruits, lemon with more temperate fruits, and balsamic vinegar works incredibly well with strawberries.

Guava-Chipotle Sorbet, Tajín Dusting
Lime Polvorón

Because this was a party, I wanted to make a garnish for the sorbet. Naturally, shortbread came to mind and as I thought about it, I recalled the Mexican variation called polvorones. Except, thought my mind, I could make them with white corn masa—instead of flour; remember to blame Michelle—and flavor them with lime zest.

But sometimes it is a long way from an idea to a finished product. Gluten is critical in forming shortbread so that it holds together, so I knew I would be in for a battle.

I researched similar gluten-free doughs enough to understand the basic butter to ersatz flour ratio. But when I started there, the dough wouldn't hold together. I've made enough shortbread to know that I need much more butter to get a dough that would be workable. I added more butter until I got a ball of dough that held together, barely.

After letting the dough rest overnight in the refrigerator to let the masa absorb a little fat, I brought the dough to room temperature and rolled it between two silicone baking pads keeping the dough thicker than I would typical shortbread. I thought the extra thickness would help them hold together in the absence of gluten.

After being sliced into fingers, they went into the oven. The baking was technically successful, and the cookies held together, but the taste test remained. Sadly, the polvorón was chalky, dry, floury, yet without any flour—not good enough for my restaurant standards by a long shot. But then, I would have never served a gluten-free cookie at the restaurant. For gluten free customers, we would have substituted something entirely different, like a stick of oven-dried pineapple.

Yet, I would not be serving it in a restaurant and Michelle deserved a cookie, something her diet normally precludes. I thought I could rescue it a bit by adding moisture in the form of a lime juice, lime zest, and powdered sugar glaze. Besides adding flavor, the acid in the glaze would make people's mouths water, helping to counter the dry cookie. It worked enough for a home dinner where the thought counted more than the execution.

Ode to the Tortilla

I love tortillas.

It wasn't always that way.

I am a child of the early 1960s. Then, on the East Coast, our food was influenced by two things: the post-war 1950s (jiggly Jell-O molds anyone?) and what we call Southern food, the everyday cooking of the South. Black or white, we all ate greens, fried chicken, grits, cornbread, black-eyed peas, and pecan pie. Tortillas did not exist in my world.

Looking back, I am trying to remember how my diet evolved from foods of the South to a diet that frequently features tortillas. In the 1970s, as a teenager, I was aware of corn tortillas mainly because the school cafeteria offered so-called tacos, stale hard U-shaped tortillas filled with ground beef of dubious origin. They were bland and boring, something that I had little desire to eat, but being a ravenous teenager, ate anyway. Then, I had no idea that tortillas were soft.

College added to my culinary vocabulary, but still no tortillas. The college cafeteria did not offer tortillas, as best I can remember, but it did introduce me to bagels and blintzes, foods equally unknown in the Southern food canon. In the latter years of college, when I was cooking for myself, I do not recall tortillas for sale at the A&P. But at a secondhand bookstore, I did run across a used copy of Diana Kennedy's 1972 opus "The Cuisines of Mexico." I devoured it even though I had access to none of the ingredients necessary to replicate her recipes.

Enter grad school. After majoring in French in college, I decided to pursue a degree in computer science. I applied all over the country and ultimately selected Texas A&M because they offered the best financial package. Putting myself through college, I had racked up sizeable debt. By going to A&M, I could just barely squeak by without borrowing any more money, if I lived frugally.

Arriving in College Station, one of the first orders of business was to hit the grocery store, albeit on a razor-thin budget. I walked into an alien landscape: mounds of tomatillos, nopales, dried chiles, cilantro, tortillas, and corn husks for tamales—everything labeled in Spanish. All were items I had just read about in Kennedy's cookbook, but had never experienced. We did not have the internet in those days. I learned by asking questions—constant questions—of anyone who looked like they might teach me something.

I fed myself from the grocery store, gradually learning how to use all those ingredients and consuming big quantities of that essential cheap-eat, the taco, made with the corn tortillas that were for sale at every store.

In exploring the town, I came to notice a steady stream of hispanic workers heading for a particular building, one bearing the sign La Taqueria. Inside, I found a dozen freshly made hand-patted tortillas for a dollar and an abuelita who always ensured that my docena was at least 14 or 15 tortillas. She and I had an unspoken understanding—a dozen tortillas each morning. I was the only white guy in her store every morning and she took care of me as she would one of her own.

Soft, warm tortillas tasting of corn were light years away from the prepackaged store tortillas and even farther from the boxed U-shaped crap my high school tried to get me to eat. Suddenly, I became a full-fledged member of team corn tortilla, eating some fresh and warm for breakfast and the remainder for dinner.

After college, my first wife and I would eat out rarely, for lack of time and resources, and when we did, there was a so-called Mexican restaurant nearby with attractive prices, never mind that it was totally run by non-Mexicans. Here I learned about flour tortillas and found them lackluster. After warm and fresh corn tortillas, everything else seemed wanting.

I find it ironic that a food I had never even seen as a child has become one of the staples of our kitchen. Now in retirement, when I am looking to put a tasty meal on the table without a lot of fuss, tortillas are always on hand. And when I am feeling up to some work, I even make fresh tortillas from the various masas that I have in the pantry.

Here are a few recent meals that remind me just how indispensable corn tortillas have become in our kitchen, despite having been completely unknown to me as a child.

Loaded Quesadilla

Loaded quesadillas are a happy by-product of leftover grilled chicken and baked creamed corn. I topped a quartered corn tortilla and jack cheese quesadilla with creamed corn, sliced grilled chicken, and guacamole. This is much more of a splurge meal calorie-wise than I usually make.

Chef's Tip: The best guacamole is the simplest, made from ripe avocados, lime juice, and salt, mashed gently so that it retains some texture.

Spiced Shrimp Tacos

I coated the shrimp in a spice mix (ancho chile, Chimayo chile, cumin, granulated garlic, Mexican oregano, salt) that I make on the fly, then cook them quickly on the stove top.

Chef's Tip: I love slaw on my tacos for its brightness and crunch. I make it an hour or more before eating, starting by mixing the dressing (apple cider vinegar, salt, and ground chile) in a bowl. Then with a knife, I thinly shred young cabbage and thinly slice a carrot to add to the dressing. I generally chop a little cilantro and mix it in as well. I let it stand on the counter for a while after tossing well, then adjust the seasonings.

Guacamole and Scrambled Egg Tostadas with Salsa Fresca

Here is a dinner that, tostadas aside, takes mere minutes to put on the table. The salsa fresca is chopped grape tomatoes, minced shallots, cilantro, lime juice, and salt. I never intended it to be spicy, but add any kind of spice you like.

Chef's Tip: As much as I would love to deep fry the tostadas, my waist would suffer, so I place them between two sheet trays, to keep them flat, in a moderate oven. I flip and rotate the tortillas after 15 minutes, then once again in 15 more minutes, then every 5 to 7 minutes thereafter until the tostadas are crisp. I make 8 per half sheet tray.

Frijoles Refritos con Totopos; Fresh Corn Salsa

I cook a big pot of beans every week or so. The first night, we eat a bowl of beans with warm tortillas. The second night, I convert the leftovers to refried beans. Sometimes it is fun to cut tortillas into sixths and bake them until they become crispy chips. Chips and dip seems a splurge, but this version is surprisingly healthy. To make refried beans, I finely dice a half onion and cook it briefly in a bit of canola with a finely minced chipotle. Then I add the beans and their cooking liquid, apply my masher to them, and cook until thick. Once thick, I season them with salt. I cook the beans originally with only a little salt; if they had full salt, the refried beans would become too salty after all the liquid evaporates.

Chef's Tip: Raw corn makes a great salsa with mixed with a little tomato, cilantro, chipotle adobo, lime, and salt. If the corn is really mature bordering on too ripe, I will often char it hard in a cast iron pan for a different, if similar, salsa.

Tacos de Tinga de Pollo

Chicken Tinga is so good, so easy, and so much more than the sum of its parts, whether purpose-made or from leftover chicken. I have little use for bland chicken breast, so when I roast a chicken, the breast will be leftover. I shred it and warm it with tomatoes, onions, chipotle, and Mexican oregano until it is dry enough for a taco filling.

Chef's Tip: The best tinga de pollo is purpose made. I brown chicken thighs in a big skillet on both sides before removing the chicken. Then I cook a sliced onion in the pan until limp. I add diced tomatoes and their juice, a minced chipotle, and some Mexican oregano to the pan. I nestle the chicken back into the sauce, cover it, and bake until tender. Then I pull the chicken, let it cool, and shred the meat. The meat goes back into the sauce and reduces until thick, yielding a far superior product. Bonus points for letting the cooked chicken sit in its sauce overnight in the fridge. Like many dishes, it improves overnight.

Shrimp Vegetable Tacos

These are nothing much more than diced onions and poblanos cooked down with minced cilantro stems and a lot of garlic. When the vegetables are soft, I add small shrimp and cook until they are just done. I then mix in raw sweet corn and a handful of fresh cilantro.

Chef's Tip: To make an easy garnishing sauce, thin sour cream with lime juice and season with salt and chipotle adobo to your liking.

A Southwest Dinner

We're getting close to the summer travel season when we are going to be on the road somewhat often. Before we leave for Virginia for my daughter Ellie's wedding, we wanted to have Rob and Dyce over for a casual dinner.

Rob and Dyce Brought the Most Gorgeous Peonies

I really am trying to avoid dinners with lots of last minute cooking so that I can relax and focus on guests. That shifts meals towards braises and dishes without touchy timing. Ann had kindly suggested all manner of dishes, but nothing grabbed me.

Unclear on what to make and rooting through the freezer, I found a bag of cleaned and cubed pork shoulder from a foray to Costco. Their shoulders come in two packs and that's a ton of meat. I typically break down both shoulders into cubes for braises like carnitas and freeze what I don't need right away.

Knowing that Rob and Dyce are fond of New Mexican food had me thinking along those lines and so I decided to make chile verde. After pondering for a few days, I decided to make a posole casserole to accompany the pork, and to offer empanadas for an appetizer. After a week of beautiful weather, it cooled off again and the choice of heartier food seemed lucky and apropos.

Then I remembered the heirloom masa harina that Ann gave me for my birthday and I decided to make tortillas to accompany the meal. And so the menu was set with the only last minute task to cook the tortillas. Somehow in the course of moving, my tortilla press did not make it to this house and so I improvised using a cast iron pan and a cut open Ziploc bag.

Empanadas de Picadillo Dulce, Cilantro Aïoli

Empanadas I make with an egg-enriched pie crust that never fails to bake up flaky and golden brown especially when brushed with an egg wash. Habitually, I fill empanadas most often with picadillo dulce, a sweet and sour pork that I first learned about by reading old Spanish-language recipes in the Biblioteca Nacional de México.

The filling is clearly of Moorish origin, containing almonds, olives, and sometimes raisins, though I have made it my own through the years. This version was ground pork shoulder, almonds, olives, onion, poblano chile, garlic, Mexican oregano, and three types of dried red chile (the majority ancho). I made it sweet and sour with brown sugar and Sherry vinegar. I have outlined the process in a previous post.

Masa Balls for Tortillas

Ghetto Tortilla Press: My 1930's Griswold Skillet

Tortillas on the Table

Chile Verde, Posole-Chipotle Casserole, Tortillas

Chile verde is not a recipe but an idea. At essence, it is cubes of pork braised in a salsa verde. There are as many ways to make it as there are cooks and they are all wonderful. I am certain that I make it differently each time and this time, I used the slow cooker to free our single oven to use in baking the posole.

For chile verde, there are two essential steps. First, make a salsa verde and second, brown the meat and braise it in the salsa.

For salsa verde, I roasted at high temperature (say 400F) a sheet tray of poblano peppers, Anaheim peppers, onions, garlic, and tomatillos. I rotated the chiles as each side became blistered. Once done, I pulled the tray out and covered it in film so that the veg could steam until cool and loosen the pepper skins.

Next up, I skinned and cleaned the peppers, dicing and reserving three or four Anaheims for the posole casserole. The peppers, garlic, tomatillos, onion, and a bunch of fresh cilantro went into the food processor. I blended it until roughly smooth and put it in the slow cooker.

For the pork, in recent years, I have adopted a process by which I only brown one surface of the cubes. This provides great flavor while not drying out the pork. After browning all the pork and putting it in the food processor, I deglazed the pan with a splash of water and poured all the porky goodness into the slow cooker with the pork and salsa. Eight hours later, the pork was tender and the sauce reduced to just the right thickness.

The posole casserole, something I started making in my 20s as a broke graduate student, I assembled in the afternoon and put into at 350F oven about 90 minutes before we were ready to eat. Timing is not critical, a delightfully brown crust is.

I admit that I did not make my own posole, though I could. I bought two 28-ounce cans of commercial hominy, the same Teasdale brand that I used in the restaurant. One can each of yellow and white hominy went into a mixing bowl with the reserved chopped green chiles, half a bunch of sliced green onions, and the kernels of one ear of fresh sweet corn for contrast and variation on the corn theme. Purple hominy (maíz morado) would have been cool, but my store had none.

I bound the casserole with a chipotle béchamel: olive oil and a spoon of flour cooked for a minute, then a pinch of salt and one finely chopped chipotle in adobo. After mixing the hominy and sauce, I adjusted the salt and put it into an oiled baking dish and topped it with a little grated white cheese. The result is as delicious as it is simple.

Making tortillas with modern masa harina is a trivial process of mixing the corn flour with enough water to make a workable dough. Then you roll it into balls and smash the balls between sheets of plastic (or a cut open Ziploc freezer bag in my case) in a tortilla press (or beneath a cast iron skillet in my case). We restaurant chefs are used to adapting and overcoming: no tortilla press, no problem. I can even patty them by hand, old school.

After peeling the masa circle off the plastic, it goes into a hot, dry frying pan on low to medium heat. Cooking both sides takes less than a minute and if I had a flat-top, I could have cooked them all at once rather than one at a time. Naturally, I could have fired four pans on the stove and cooked four at a time, but no matter. We were all busy yakking while I was pressing and cooking tortillas.

It should be axiomatic that a tortilla is only as good as the masa from which it is made. And if you use shitty Maseca or Masa Brosa, you are going to get a shitty tortilla. My masa is from Masienda and is processed from heirloom corn varieties grown on small farms in Mexico. It is expensive relative to the big brands (but even so, tortillas cost cents), but it helps sustain small farmers and preserve heirloom corn varieties.

José Restaurant, Dallas

We considered several options to get to San Angelo TX to visit with Carter for his 25th birthday. The most efficient proved to be to fly to Dallas, rent a car, and drive the four hours to San Angelo. With a return flight to Oregon at 10am on Monday morning, we decided that we would return to Dallas on Sunday evening and camp out at a hotel near the airport, especially given the inefficiency of the rental car system at DFW.

This schedule left us with the opportunity to have a nice dinner in Dallas on Sunday night, a night when many restaurants are not open. Of all the places we could have gone, we chose José near Love Field in north Dallas, an easy drive from our hotel near DFW. José is known for its elevated Guadalajaran-inflected food and drink, a celebrated female chef in AQ Pittman, its use of house-made masa from corn brought in from Mexico, and a segment on "Taco Chronicles," the Netflix show that you do not dare watch if you are remotely hungry or trying to lose weight.

The Very Handsome Floor-to-Ceiling Back Bar at José

As a chef, when I go to a restaurant, I just want the kitchen team at that restaurant to show me what they do well. The restaurant knows far better than I do what they do well. So, why should I order off the menu if I have the option to let my hosts decide? It's a rare restaurant that will roll with a request to just order for Ann and me (there are some technical POS issues, but that's more a cop out than anything), so when I e-mailed asking if they would just order for us, I was pleasantly surprised to get an affirmative response from GM Victor Rojas within a short while.

Just as we were seated, a runner dropped off a basket of totopos and a couple of salsas, one red and one green. The green salsa was one of the standouts of the night. It was almost identical to the usual salsa verde I make at home, except that it was smoother and less rustic. I really enjoyed it. It's the small things for me that make an experience.

Within a couple of minutes of our being seated, Victor appeared at our table bearing amuses and introduced himself. He would take great care of us personally for most of the evening and we greatly enjoyed chatting with him.

Blue Corn Sopecito with Blue Crab Salad

While we were munching on the tiny sopes and contemplating the cocktail menu, I had a chance to look around the spacious dining room of the building that was once a dry cleaner. The industrial steel clear span framing gives a large open interior and high ceilings that leave room for an immense custom floor-to-ceiling back bar that is the focal point of the room.

Back to the table, the star of the sopecitos was not the crab, but the blue corn masa from which they were made. One of the primary reasons we selected this restaurant is because they nixtamalize their own corn and grind their own masa. Nixtamalization is the process of soaking dried corn kernels in a basic solution that dissolves the hard outer shell, the pericarp, of the kernel.

It is a process that my great grandmothers would have used to make the hominy (posole) so prevalent to the Scots-Irish Appalachians. When I was a boy, I would often see ash hoppers at country auctions. People would fill these hoppers with ashes from the fireplace and the rainwater would filter through the hopper and drain into a bucket below. The solution in the bucket would be lye, potassium hydroxide. Today, rather than using lye, we use refined hydrated lime (calcium hydroxide) called cal to nixtamalize corn.

Victor helped us choose cocktails. I had a riff on a Manhattan called the The José Way Manhattan, a dark complex mixture of mezcal, amaro, Banane du Brésil, vanilla, and Angostura bitters. Ann had a smoked tequila Old Fashioned of reposado, agave, and a couple of bitters. We really enjoyed our cocktails; they are similar to what we are making currently at our home bar where Ann's Oaxacan Old Fashioned will hang with anybody's.

Ann and Her Smoked Tequila Old Fashioned

The José Way Manhattan

Victor also brought us small glasses of the house mezcal and said that he had gone to Mexico to help make it. After smelling its unusual fruity nose similar to an eau de vie or schnapps, I asked how it was made. It is a pechuga of 100% espadín piñas. The pechuga used in the redistillation came from things that he sourced at the market: apples, guavas, and chile chilhaucle. I have had pechugas flavored with all sorts of things, but this was the most unique mezcal that I have ever tasted, a smooth and highly refined spirit that I enjoyed.

Arugula with Peaches, Fresnos, Grilled Okra, and Goat Cheese

Next up was an arugula salad course, the standout of the meal for me. The salad was plated on a spread of goat cheese from fairly local (Waco) Pachi Pachi Farms. The best parts were the fresh salad ingredients: sliced peaches, sliced mildly spicy Fresnos, and the revelatory ingredient, sliced grilled okra. I also loved the crunch of the toasted quinoa sprinkled on the salad.

As a southerner, I have grown, harvested, and cooked okra all my life. Even though I have cooked it myriad ways, I never thought to grill it gently. The smokiness from the grill enhances the small tender okra without activating any of its slime. In the highest form of chef flattery, I may rip this off, if I can ever find some tender baby okra out here in Oregon where it is essentially non-existent. 

Champagne Telmont

Our cocktails were done after the salad, so wanting a wine that would be able to stand up to anything that might come next, we went the sparkling route, ordering a bottle of Champagne Telmont. A label that we have not had before, it was a fine all-purpose wine with lots of red fruit dominating the nose, the palate balanced by a healthy addition of Chardonnay.

Dobladas de Pollo Enmoladas

Our first course with the Champagne was a plate of dobladas covered in mole. I detected chicken thigh meat, poblanos, and a white melting cheese inside the fresh tortillas and the top had a good sprinkle of queso fresco. To be honest, I wasn't expecting mole in a self-styled Jaliscan/Guadalajaran restaurant, but I have never met a mole I did not like.

Victor referred to the mole as "aged mole," meaning that each new batch contains some of the previous batch, old school, the way it has always been and should be done. He regaled us with the story of the line cook who thought to put the final batch of mole before COVID into the freezer to be used as a starter on the far side of the pandemic. Good looking out!

The mole on these dobladas was a fairly dark, fruity, complex sauce that in my world I would call a mole poblano. As much as I loved this mole, I cannot help but wonder how this combination of chicken, poblanos, and cheese would respond to a mole verde or pipián.

The star of this dish was neither the mole nor the filling. To quote Ann, “that tortilla though!” She would have been content with a stack of those tortillas and a ramekin of that excellent salsa verde. As would I.

Carne Asada, "Patatas Bravas," Salsa Roja

The Carne was an Excuse to Snack Fresh Tortillas!

We would get more awesome tortillas with our next dish, a cast iron dish of carne asada, onions, and peppers, served with whole roasted potatoes tossed in spice ("patatas bravas"), and a beautiful salsa roja. The eye opener from this dish was the salsa roja, an intense concentrated tomato sauce. The sauce was enhanced with smoky chile morita. The texture of the sauce and the smokiness reminded me in the best way of a beautiful roasted eggplant sauce.

Again, while the meat was awesome (sous vide tenderloin, I think), the tortillas and the salsa roja stole the thunder. Ann and I asked for more tortillas with which we polished off all that delicious sauce.

Coconut Flan with Candied Amaranth and Pepita Topping

Neither Ann nor I are dessert eaters because sweet flavors are not really our thing. Flan is so often cloying and pedestrian, but not so in this case. The pastry chef had a deft hand with the sugar and the addition of coconut milk made this flan much more interesting than usual. 

After dinner, Victor brought us little glasses of dark, barely sweet Fernet-Vallet as a digestif, a nice parting gesture. We thanked him profusely for his hospitality, the willingness to order for us, the excellent staff training, and of course, a delicious meal for which I would like to thank all the BoH team, especially the prep cooks and dishwashers who never get any credit, but without whom, nothing would happen.

The stand-out components of our meal were none of the star players. The glory goes to the supporting actors: the masa, the grilled okra, the salsa verde, and the salsa roja.

I compliment Victor, a consummate hospitality professional, and the service team on their attentiveness. I always love going to a restaurant where the entire service team takes responsibility for all guests, not the usual "not my table, not my problem" attitude. The FoH staff at José are well trained. Not a lot of guests would notice this, but then, I'm not an average guest, having owned, cooked at, and run a fine dining restaurant for a very long time.

One Chicken, Three Meals

I've been wondering a lot recently about how to help people who don't have a lot of money make meals economically. What I see at the grocery store really causes me pause: almost all carts of groceries contain extremely expensive pre-prepared and probably not very nutritious foods, while very few carts actually contain items designed to be cooked into healthy meals.

I haven't really made any headway in figuring out how to help such people, but I thought I'd share how I put three dinners for two on the table for about $20. It all started with a single chicken, a 6-pound behemoth for which I paid $8.

Meal 1: Roasted Chicken and Roasted Asparagus

Roasted Chicken

This is as simple as dinner can get. I rubbed the entire chicken with olive oil and sprinkled it with salt and fresh thyme leaves. I put it on a sheet tray into the oven and cooked it until the thighs came up to 165 degrees in the thickest part, about 90 minutes in the oven at 375F.

When the chicken was done, I left it to stand on the stove while I put another sheet tray of asparagus drizzled with a little oil and salt into the oven. We ate the thighs, legs, and asparagus about 20 minutes later.

Additional cost for this meal $2.50: big bundle of asparagus: $2.50; fresh thyme, salt, olive oil: pennies

After dinner, I collected all the roasting juices from the chicken pan by adding a bit of hot water to it and then pouring it into a container. These juices were for soup later on. I sliced 3 nice slices off each breast and saved them for crunch wraps the next night. I also saved the bones from the legs and thighs as well as the chicken carcass for soup.

Meal 2: Chicken Tinga and Chipotle Refried Bean Crunch Wraps

Chicken Tinga and Chipotle Refried Bean Crunch Wraps

Using the leftover slices of chicken breast, I made crunch wraps with a layer each of chipotle refried beans, chicken breast in tinga sauce, and cheese.

To make the refried beans, I sweated an onion, finely diced, in oil until translucent. I put half the onion in the blender for the tinga sauce. To the remaining onion in the pan, I added two 14-ounce cans of drained and rinsed pinto beans. Then I added the tiniest pinch of Mexican oregano and one chipotle pepper, super finely minced. I added a touch of water to get things cooking and as everything cooked, I mashed the beans with the back of my wooden spoon. When the beans became tight, I turned of the heat.

To make the tinga sauce, I added to the onions in the blender a drained 14-ounce can of tomatoes, a chipotle, a pinch of Mexican oregano, and a pinch of salt. After blending this briefly using a couple of pulses of the blender, I added the sauce to a small pan on the stove where I heated it gently and reduced it to remove any excess water.

When I was ready to assemble the crunch wraps, I put the chicken breast slices in the warm sauce to reheat. Then I built the crunch wraps with a layer of beans, then the chicken slices, then a scant half cup of grated cheddar cheese. I mixed the leftover tinga sauce into the unused beans and had that for lunch the next day. See this post for the crunch wrap technique.

Additional cost for this meal $4.25: 2 cans pintos; $1.25, 1 can tomatoes: $1; tortillas: $0.50; onion $0.50; cheese: $1; 2 chipotles, Mexican oregano: pennies

These crunch wraps are actually massive and could stretch for two meals. After eating my entire one for dinner, I did not eat breakfast the next day, being still sated from dinner.

Meal 3: Chicken and Stars Soup

Chicken and Stars Soup

One of the primary reasons that I roast chickens is to have the carcass leftover for soup. I put into a soup pot the carcass, the leftover roasting juices, a couple sprigs of thyme, a quart of chicken stock, the ends of five carrots, the outer leaves of a leek (saved for soup from a meal earlier in the week), and the frilly leaves from a bunch of celery. After topping the carcass and vegetables with water, I put a low flame under it and went for a 90-minute walk.

When I came back, I turned the pot off and removed all the solids from the stock. After the chicken cooled, I picked all the meat from the bones (the remaining breast meat, the wings, and the oysters in the back) and saved it, pitching the bones and veggie scraps.

I cut one onion, four large carrots, and four stalks of celery into large pieces and put them in the stock and let them cook for an hour. When we were ready to eat, I brought the soup to a rolling boil and added a small 200g bag of pasta stars (estrellas, stelline) and the chicken meat and cooked the pasta for ten minutes.

Additional cost for this meal $5.25: chicken stock: $1.50; pasta: $0.75; onions, carrots, celery: $3

If I were on a budget, I would not have added the chicken stock, but soup is always better if you make a double stock from stock and bones rather than a single stock from water and bones. After two bowls of soup apiece, we had two additional bowls leftover for lunch.

Bottom Line

For these three meals for two, I spent right at $20. As a bonus, we had three lunches from the leftovers, all from a single chicken. I'm always thinking when I am shopping for groceries items that I can cook for one dinner and have leftovers to repurpose for another dinner.

Old Chef, New Trick

The last time I ate at Taco Bell would have been when my daughters were tiny young things. My eldest, Lillie, loved their bean burritos and would ask for them from time to time. And very occasionally, I would relent. You're beat; it's late and you're scrambling to get groceries after work; the kids are screaming; you know the drill!

Time flies and now that little girl is an internal medicine resident at a hospital in North Carolina. Seemingly without my noticing, it has been a very long time, a full generation or more, since I ate at Taco Bell (or for that matter, any fast food joint). As a consequence, I have no familiarity with their products, bean burritos aside, if even they sell such a mundane (although pure profit) item any longer.

Apparently in recent years, Taco Bell makes a thing called a crunch wrap, which according to hearsay is their biggest selling item, but one of which I have been woefully ignorant. Call me culturally illiterate.

Chipotle Black Bean Crunch Wrap

Ann and I first encountered crunch wraps at a local vegan food truck, a large flour tortilla folded to completely enclose a vegan filling and then the whole shebang browned on a flat-top. When I tasted Ann's crunch wrap, even though I wasn't enamored of the filling (not a huge fan of vegan cheese; sorry Tony!), I thought that the idea in itself might deserve to be permanently enshrined in the stoner-food hall of fame. 

Recently, Ann asked me to make crunch wraps for dinner so I made sure to get some really big flour tortillas at the store. Then, it was just a matter of making a decent filling (onion, poblano, cilantro stems, garlic, black beans, minced chipotle, cumin, New Mexico ground chile, salt, and Mexican oregano) and rounding up some other filling ingredients (cilantro leaves, sliced green onions, pickled jalapeños, grape tomatoes, and cheese).

The next step was to reverse engineer the fold to encase the fillings, which proved to be trivial. I understand that Taco Bell puts the crunch in the crunch wrap using a tostada that also helps stabilize the whole assembly.  For my part, I merely cut down a piece of flour tortilla to lay on top of the filling to give the large flour tortilla a good surface against which to seal. The whole thing folded naturally into a hexagon as if it were intended that way. I got it on the first try.

I didn't feel like it needed a tostada, but then, I'm not marketing to stoners and I don't need my crunch wraps to be stable for portability.

While my experience was trivial, I'm sure that the food engineers at Taco Bell spent countless hours determining how to fold the tortillas in a cost- and time-efficient manner such that their employees could knock them out profitably and consistently across all their stores. [My limited consulting with a large food manufacturer has shown me first-hand what a huge and involved process this is.] And no doubt, there is probably a patent or two lurking about the PTO to protect their product from commercial imitators.

Taco Bell: thanks for the idea! New trick for the old chef!

These stoner-food gems were so good, I confess to have made them two nights running, albeit with slightly different fillings each time.

Crunchy Fish Tacos

I've recently revived an old technique for fish tacos and Annie loves the results. Here's how I turned a couple of Pacific Cod fillets into fish tacos.

Pacific Cod Fish Tacos

In recent years, I have been coating fish fillets for tacos with a spice rub and roasting them in the oven. This is certainly a healthy way to eat fish, but many people will miss the crunchy crust of fried fish in their tacos. That got me asking myself how I can get a crispy crust on fish for tacos using a minimum of oil.

Thinking back many decades to when I was just learning how to cook Chinese food (as if there is but a single Chinese cuisine, ha!), I remember using cornstarch not only to thicken sauces and soups, but as a way to coat meat for wok frying. And so I decided to use a bit of cornstarch on fish fillets and to fry them in as little oil as possible.

I cut the cod fillets into pieces that will fit into my pan and then sprinkle both sides with seasonings (sometimes my fish rub, link above). For this particular batch of fish, rather than use a rub, I merely sprinkled both sides with salt, ground New Mexican chile, and a touch of granulated garlic. Then I put a thin coat of cornstarch on both sides.

Pan-Searing Pacific Cod Using Almost No Oil

We eat a lot of tacos at our house because they are quick, tasty, and who doesn't love finger food? One way that I make them quick to prepare is by keeping a lot of garnishes on hand in the refrigerator on a regular basis. These include pickled jalapeños, salsa verde, romaine bottoms, and a squeeze bottle of thinned chipotle sour cream. By planning ahead, tacos take less than ten minutes to bring to the table, just what I want on a busy day or on a day when I don't have the energy or desire to cook an involved meal.

Fish Taco Toppings: (L-R) Pickled Jalapenos, Tomatoes,
Salsa Verde, Cilantro, Chipotle Sour Cream, and Romaine

I've published the recipe for salsa verde before, but it's just a bunch of cilantro, a large can of drained tomatillos, a serrano chile, two cloves of garlic, and a pinch of salt, all blended. We use romaine lettuce on our lunch sandwiches and I always keep the bottoms of the bunches in a bag in the fridge. When it's time for tacos, I slice the bottoms thinly for a crunchy garnish. Chipotle sour cream is merely sour cream, water, salt, and chipotle adobo.

Black Bean Tostadas with Poached Eggs

Huevos Rancheros, rancher-style eggs, makes a wonderful breakfast and, in my book, an even better dinner. It's a dish that Americans love and have adopted and modified (or corrupted, depending on your punto de vista) and taken (or stolen) as their own. The original dish was probably lightly fried tortillas topped with eggs and pico de gallo (salsa fresca), but has evolved beyond that, especially in the States where it almost always includes beans and cheese. Following is another loose variation on the theme, black bean tostadas with poached eggs, from a dinner last week.

Black Bean Tostadas with Poached Eggs

While I love to fry tortillas in oil for the rancheros, it's better on my waistline if I bake them between two baking sheets so they become tostadas. About 25 minutes in a moderate oven with a couple of turns will do it. Baking them between two sheet trays keeps them relatively flat.

Tortillas Baked Between Two Sheet Trays

Left over in the fridge, I had a little salsa colorada (dried red chiles, chile soaking liquid, garlic, Mexican oregano, and salt, all blended and fried in oil, then thickened with a little masa harina). So I put a bit of that on top of the tostadas before spooning on frijoles refritos (see below). The salsa helps start softening the tostadas so they become more like the lightly fried traditional tortillas.

Salsa Colorada

While the tostadas were in the oven, I made some quick refried black beans, cheating by starting with two cans of precooked black beans. I start by cooking very finely minced onion with minced garlic and minced cilantro stems in oil (lard, traditionally) until the onions are translucent. Then in go the beans and some liquid (bean cooking liquid, stock, water, whatever). You wouldn't hate me if I said that a finely minced chipotle may have fallen by accident into the pan as well?

Next, as the beans start to come up to a gentle boil, I introduce them to my bean masher, Sra. Machadora, my antique maple bean masher. After working them over for a few minutes until they are smooth, but not too smooth, I reduce the liquid to the consistency I want and then season them. Don't salt them before reducing the liquid or you risk oversalting them. 

Introducing the Beans to the Machadora (Bean Masher)

To complete the dish, we need some salsa fresca aka pico de gallo. I wasn't looking for anything fancy here, just a rough condiment of tomato, onion, serrano, cilantro, lime juice, and salt. It could not be any simpler, or better for that matter. 

Salsa Fresca/Pico de Gallo

The plate-up is trivial. Schmear the tostadas with salsa colorada, spoon over the frijoles, and add a poached egg. Most versions use fried eggs, but I love poached eggs. They are way sexier than fried eggs, plus I can cook six at a time versus only three fried eggs. I prefer to serve everyone at the same time. On top of the eggs, a spoonful of salsa colorada and another of pico de gallo with a sprinkle of grated cotija cheese finish the dish. ¡Buen provecho!