Lomo Saltado (mejor dicho, Puntita de Cuadril Saltado)

What a different experience at the butcher armed with my handy butcher chart! We still asked the butcher for her suggestions, but this time, when she made suggestions, I had a much better idea of what she was recommending. This week we made a relleno de carne and Lomo Saltado. We ended up using Puntita de Cuadril (tri-tip) for both, picadita (cut into tiny pieces) for the relleno and cut into strips (trozos gruesos) for the Saltado (pictured above).

Here’s a recipe for lomo saltado if you want to try it yourself (adapted from Recetas de Cocina):

• 600 gr beef tenderloin (or other tender cut of choice) cut into strips
• 1/2  cup olive oil
• 2 red onions, cut into wedges
• 2 chili peppers (specifically aji amarillo, if you can find it), julienned
• 4 medium to large tomatoes, cut into wedges
• 1 T garlic paste
• 1/4 tsp soy sauce
• 4 T white wine vinegar
• 1/2 cup meat broth
• 1/2 cup chopped green onion
• 1 T chopped cilantro
• Salt
• Pepper

For the french fries:

• Buy them from Pardo’s or your locally available french fry provider

Preparación:

1. Season the tenderloin strips with salt and pepper.
2. In a wok, heat the olive oil and add the tenderloin. Sautee on high heat to sear.
3. Add the onion, chile pepper, and tomatoes, and sautee on high heat for 30-40 seconds.
4. Add the garlic paste, soy sauce, white wine vinegar, and meat broth. Sautee another 20 seconds, season with salt and pepper to taste, and add the french fries. Mix well.
5. Add the green onion and cilantro. Serve with rice with choclo (Cusco giant corn).

Enjoy!

 

Too Much Chocolate?

Cacao grows in Peru, but good chocolate can hard to come by, and chocolate chips, the staple of the Chocolate Chip Cookie, are nearly impossible.

While NESTLÉ  is here, their signature TOLL HOUSE Chocolate Chips are not. (As an aside, have you ever thought about that name before? TOLL HOUSE? Where did that come from?)

So what’s an americana to do when the urge to bake oatmeal chocolate chip cookies strikes?

Well, the first thing she does is scour Wong and Vivanda. Despite the fact that they conveniently locate the bicarbonato de sodio (baking soda) in the baking section rather than the pharmacy section,  they do not carry chocolate chips. Gotitas de chocolate? Lagrimas de chocolate? Anything? No.

Specialty food stores? Sure. S./6.00 for 3 oz of chocolate chips (Belcochips said the container). Warmer.

So, on to the mercados. Everything I could find at the mercados was awful. Sold in bulk without an ingredients list with a too-soft texture and greasy mouthfeel or clearly labeled with vegetable oil as ingredient number 2 (above any chocolate).

Serendipitously, I also happened to be looking for white chocolate for white chocolate chip pistachio rosemary cookies (the pistachios are imported from the States) and after rejecting a Made in Peru “white chocolate” cobertura that had more vegetable oil than chocolate (an especially bad sign in white chocolate), the casera running the booth (now called the magic booth because Marisol has everything), pointed out the bag of Belcolade white chocolate pastilles perched well above eye level. Flipped over the bag to take a look at the ingredients:

• sugar
• cocoa butter (at least 29.5%)
• whole milk powder-emulsifier
• soy lecithin-flavouring
• natural vanilla

Sold. “They make chocolate chips?” I asked Marisol, thinking back to the tiny container of Belcochips in the pantry at home. No. No chocolate chips.

But like any woman obsessed, I wouldn’t give up that easily. I found Belcolade on the web. I found their phone number in Peru, and we called.

Puratos. They manufacture the Belcolade brand of Belgian chocolate. They import the chocolate chips to Peru. And they deliver. The only downside is that 5 kilos is the smallest size they have.

Wait, did I say downside?

Here are our 5 favorite things to make with 5 kilos of mini chocolate chips. What would you make?

1. Orange Chocolate Chippers

2. Dr. Momma Major Milk Makin’ Lactation Cookies (Don’t let the name scare you off. Everyone thinks these cookies are delicious. Here we substitute some chia for the linaza.)

3. Dorie Greenspan’s Port Soaked Cherry Brownies, without the Cherries

4. Haagen Dazs Strawberry Ice Cream (imported from France?!?) with Chocolate Chips

5. ~1 handful chocolate chips inserted directly into mouth

You know you’re outside the Mexican Sphere of Influence When….

…this happens:

It says “Tortillas. Try them with cheese.” What kind of place is this, that it doesn’t occur to someone to eat a tortilla with cheese?

How to Say Top Sirloin in Spanish

I had really taken the standard cuts of meats found in the supermarket in the States for granted. It had never occurred to me that butchery is not internationally standardized. To complicate matters further, butchery isn’t even standardized by language or continent. Each country in South America has different names and traditions for their cuts of meat. Not helpful. Which brings us to Mercardo No 1 in Surquillo where Gisela, one of a number of lady butchers working their counters at the market, looks at me confidently and says, in her best English, “tenderloin,” as she points to the meat hanging from the hook over her counter.

Lomo is what they call it here, and it’s served most frequently sauteed with red onion and peppers, french fries, and, in an ode to insulin spikes, white rice. Se llama lomo saltado, and I can’t lie, it’s one of my favorite Peruvian dishes. Think fajitas served with french fries.  We’re not looking for lomo, though. That would be too easy.

“Great!” I think, back at the meat counter. “She knows some American cuts and their names.” “Sirloin?” I ask hopefully, envisioning (badly, I’ve never really examined our meat back at home) the steaks we were hoping to grill for dinner that night. Peruvian food is excellent, but every once in awhile, you want a taste of home.

Sadly, Gisela’s English does not extend beyond tenderloin. So we go home with some likely looking steaks that she assures us will be good on the grill. Bife angosto, she calls the cut. Or nalga, in Argentina, which is interesting from a broadening of horizons standpoint but doesn’t get us any closer to the steak we want.

As a side note, everyone looks at us like we’re funny in the head when we ask for steaks that are two fingers thick. That’s just not how it’s done here. Thankfully, butchers can take instruction, which is another one of the upsides to shopping at the mercado–more flexibility.

I vow (admittedly, after the second time that this happens and I’m not able to pull up a translation or a meat chart on my phone to save my life) that this will not happen again. If we are committed to shopping at the mercado instead of the supermarket, I need to be a more knowledgeable consumer, and I am a lifetime of trips to the mercado behind the curve.

Which is where this lovely page comes in handy, and I discover that the sirloin I’m looking for is called cuadril sin tapa in Peru! 

American cuts are under EEUU in the table, although I find the image (above and linked) even more helpful. I plan to print and carry this with me until I have things figured out. Maybe it will help you out, too! Remember, cuadril sin tapa only applies in Peru. Look for your country if you are elsewhere.

I’ll let you know how the next trip turns out. This week, relleno de carne is on the menu, and we’re going to need some nalga!

Falling Back Into the Kitchen

After a summer spent largely avoiding the oven in favor of the grill, it hit me today as I loaded the first turkey breast of the season into the oven to be roasted–summer is over.

Even more than the dropping temperatures, the chilly breeze, kids going back to school, the closing of the pools, this was my sign.  After months of marinated chicken breasts (lime cilantro ginger, sriracha pineapple, cumin), shrimp tacos, burgers, cedar plank salmon, and kabobs all cooked outdoors, I rolled out 2 tart crusts, cut and marinated cauliflower for roasting, and, of course, the turkey. While I’ll miss the fruit and the grill, I look forward to savory dishes, hearty stews and crusty bread, simmering for hours and scenting the house with their deliciousness.

Some of our favorite discoveries from this summer that may (or may not) be on hiatus until next season:

• Whole red snapper on the grill (even though I forgot to take the scales off)
• Lime Cilantro Ginger Chicken
• Sriracha Pineapple Anything
• Basil Chicken with Coconut Curry
• Grilled Eggplant
• Polenta/Grits
• Cedar Plank Salmon
• Braised Halibut Steak (out of How to Cook Everything)
• Miso Salad Dressing
• Shrimp Tacos (did we really just discover these this year?)
• Regular Burgers (we had never made our own burgers before; 1 lb organic ground beef from Costco, garlic, salt and pepper ruined us for Hopdoddy and the army of other “artisan” burger joints)
• Turkey burgers
• Chia Gel (inspired by the Chia Co.’s Chia Pods)

Some new must-have pantry items:

• Panko
• Unsweetened Coconut Milk
• Canned Pineapple Rings
• Chia Seed
• Miso

What food discoveries did you make this summer? What’s a favorite fall food that you can’t wait to tuck into?

August in the (SX)SW

While most of the summer puts me in the mood for a combination of lime and cilantro, in August I crave just one thing—green chile. Maybe it was 7 years of living in Albuquerque, NM or maybe it’s just the fruity, spicy deliciousness that adds a warming depth to anything and everything, but when I hear the propane burner on a chile roaster and smell the spice in the air, my mouth starts to water and my mind is crowded with images of green chile cheeseburgers, breakfast burritos (none of this taco nonsense, Texas), and green chile pepperoni pizza. If your mind isn’t immediately filled with a dozen ways to use green chile, I’ve provided half a dozen ideas below to get you started.  Buy your chile roasted or roast it yourself for the most authentic green chile experience!

Here are some of my favorite things to do with roasted green chiles:

1. Put them on eggs. Any variety. Fried, scrambled, hard boiled, although I have fried eggs for breakfast and can’t resist chopping up some green chile to go along. For a more authentic New Mexican experience, put your eggs in a breakfast burrito. Flour tortilla, eggs, tater tots, and liberal amounts of green chile.
2. Green chile cheese grits. The green chile+cheese+corn combo will reappear in various formats. Green chile cheese grits feel like an appropriate blending of our Texas present with our New Mexico past.
3. Green chile cheeseburgers. Take burger, add chopped roasted green chile. Done.
4. Green chile pepperoni pizza. Order your favorite pepperoni pizza, top with chopped green chile. If you want it to go all out, pop it in the oven of heat it up in a skillet to incorporate the green chile into the cheese.
5. Green chile cornbread. Make cornbread as usual. Mix in green chile to taste at the end prior to pouring into your baking dish.
6. Green chile and cheese quesadillas. We use corn tortillas in our house, to take us back to the green chile+cheese+corn theme.

New Mexico is not about green chile in dessert so much. Dagmar’s, a traditional German restaurant, offers a not-so-traditional green chile raspberry strudel (particularly good with sweet cheese to cut the heat a bit), but green chile desserts are otherwise nonexistent. Texas, on the other hand, loves to put green chile in dessert. If you don’t want to mess with fresh green chile in the house, try these delicious (and dessert-y) Texas discoveries:

1. Dark chocolate green chile gelato. Thank you, Central Market for introducing me to this particular revelation.
2. Wackym’s Kitchen Hatch Chocolate Chip cookies (another Central Market find. I can only assume I never saw these in NM because they’re a local producer out of Dallas, but Oh My Goodness are they delicious, like, Top 10 Cookies in My Life Delicious). Now I guess I should make that list….

What’s your favorite use for Green Chile?

P.S. Listen to Central Market’s FABULOUS Green Chile festival commercial here.

Craveable Cabbage

All foods have a perfect preparation. A single, simple cooking style or flavor combination that highlights the best of a food, masks the worst, and elevates an eating experience from a simple meal to a revelation. There are many foods that are excellent chameleons, adapting to flavors and styles with grace and panache, but once you’ve found THE preparation for that food, anything else seems somehow diminished. For cauliflower, it’s roasted, for Brussels sprouts, flash fried. For cabbage it’s lime cilantro slaw.

For 2 months of CSA membership, cabbages slowly stockpiled in our fridge. I was at a loss. Cabbage? Aside from sauerkraut, kimchi, and corned beef and cabbage, I really had no idea what people even did with cabbage.

And then along came Better Homes and Gardens (or the BHG, as I like to call it). A recipe for Shrimp Tacos with Lime Slaw. My relationship to cabbage? Altered forever. The recipe called for red cabbage, but my fridge was full of green; so green cabbage lime slaw was born. Here’s the recipe:

• 2 cups shredded cabbage (red or green, dealer’s choice)
• 1 lime, zested and juiced

Toss shredded cabbage with lime zest and juice in a medium bowl. Use in any dish that could use a slightly sweet, delightfully citrusy, tangy crunch.

Every time I make lime slaw I’m astounded by the transformation created by the simple addition of lime zest and juice. The subtle sweetness and crunch of the cabbage is elevated by the citrusy tang of lime. Each by itself is somehow less. Together, they are unforgettable, even craveable. Craveable cabbage? Surely you jest. Try it and let me know what you think! Or let me know about your perfect food preparations!

We Be Jammin’

This post at Simple Bites pretty much sums up my reasons for making my very first batch of strawberry jam this week. Seduced by the idea of fresh, local, organic strawberries, I went a little crazy with the cheese whiz and ended up with more strawberries than we were going to be able to eat (scandalous). A quick search quickly informed me that all I needed for strawberry jam were strawberries, lemons, and sugar. Turns out that strawberry jam is Monsieur’s kryptonite. I can’t get him to eat brownies or cookies or cake, but wave a jar of strawberry jam under his nose and he’s a goner.

The lemons looked so lovely that I followed Smitten Kitchen’s advice and just started snapping photos (you’ll notice the background in almost all her photos is the granite in her kitchen).

The color of the finished product was intoxicating; so I took some more pictures.

Then I realized that we have a prop room (aka the cabinet with the cutting boards) and that’s when all heck broke loose.

Vintage silver spoon? Why, yes, I think I have one of those.

Thanks to Baguette et Chocolate for the delicious baguette. No thanks for spoiling us so that now we can’t eat anyone else’s baguette.

For the jam recipe, visit the inimitable Kate Payne.

Vinaigrette Just Changed My Life

Mademoiselle

There are moments in each of our lives that we can point to as defining moments. The moment we were born, the moment we learned to ride a bike, the moment we took our first solo drive, the moment we met the person we would spend our life with.

At 9 months, Mademoiselle is having a lot of those moments in rather rapid succession. The moment she slept nearly all night for the first time, the moment she started to crawl, the moment she realized Madame could walk away from her, the moment she stood without holding on to something. And those are just the moments I recognize. I’m sure she’s flooded with life altering moments daily that go unnoticed by anyone but Mademoiselle. Moments before which and after which, life looks nothing alike. And after which, we have a hard time remembering what came before. What was life like before she ate strawberries? Before she could sit up? Before she smiled? Even I have a hard time remembering.

Everything You Need

Certainly making one’s own vinaigrette can hardly compare to crawling for the first time. It certainly didn’t require the mastery of any new motor skills, although it has changed my life and by extension, the lives of all my immediate family members. These are the top five ways that  making my own vinaigrette has irrevocably altered life in our home:

(1) I will NEVER dip my veggies in ranch or butter again (not even artichokes).

There is something about the bright but rich flavor of a classic French vinaigrette (white wine vinegar,olive oil, and dijon mustard) that brings out the best in veggies. Plus, vinaigrette, for some reason, never feels heavy or particularly guilt-inducing for me, unlike eating 2 tablespoons of ranch or half a stick of butter for instance…

(2) I will NEVER buy another bottle of salad dressing.

While I haven’t yet ventured into the world of creamy dressings (I’m going to have to start making this at home first), we consume mostly vinaigrettes anyway, and as fond as I am of Girard, Brianna, and Paul Newman, their bottled dressings just can’t compare to homemade, fresh vinaigrette. Not to mention, my vinaigrettes have no hidden ingredients. I’m not donating a portion of the proceeds from each of my vinaigrettes to charity, but I’m sure Paul understands.

(3) I will ALWAYS own at least 3 types of vinegar: balsamic, white wine, and apple cider.

I can make enough variations of vinaigrette with these 3 vinegars to keep me busy for a long time. Strawberry salad with goat cheese and candied pecans over spinach? Balsamic. Apple salad with blue cheese and toasted walnuts over butter lettuce? Apple cider. Everything else? White wine. I will certainly be experimenting with other vinegars (champagne, sherry, red wine, etc.) and oils (walnut, pistachio (?!?), sesame, grapeseed, etc.), but my fallback vinegars will likely always be balsamic, white wine, and apple cider.

(4) I will ALWAYS have dijon mustard in the house.

For years, we had mustard in the house for use in sandwiches and sandwiches alone. An 8 oz jar of mustard, likely spicy brown, could loiter in the fridge for a year before finally reaching the last spread. Since purchasing my first jar of Maille Dijon mustard at Cost Plus 3 months ago, we have gone through two 14 oz jars and have started our third. Not only has the mustard gone into vinaigrette, it’s also made it’s way into sauces for fish and chicken and Monsieur’s daily eggs as well as the customary sandwiches. I found these bad boys at the Gucci HEB this week and now dream of my own cork-stoppered pot of Edmond Fallot dijon mustard.

(5) I will make 90% of my vinaigrettes to order, that is, moments before they will be consumed, in limited quantities, without a recipe.

It’s certainly possible to make a large bottle or jar of dressing ahead of time and stash it in the fridge and I have, but what I’ve found recently, is that I prefer the flavor of vinaigrette I’ve just made over the vinaigrette that I made 3 days ago. I don’t know if it’s because the ingredients are out of proportion when poured from a larger bottle or that the oil is less fresh, but it’s just not as good. In yet another “who am I and where did this come from” thought, suddenly, making my own vinaigrette immediately before a meal occurs as simple and easy to do. I guess it’s become a habit.

So, I challenge you to make your own vinaigrette this week. After trying the proportions in both French Kids Eat Everything and How to Cook Everything, we’ve settled on a 1 Tablespoon vinegar to 2 Tablespoons oil ratio. So here’s our base recipe. This recipe dresses 2 salads. It can easily be scaled up or down.

3 T Vinaigrette

• 1 Tablespoon white wine vinegar
• 2 Tablespoons olive oil
• 1 teaspoon Dijon Mustard (try to find one without added sugar, like Maille or Trader Joe’s)
• 2 cloves garlic, minced (you could also use shallots, if you’re fancy)
• salt and pepper to taste (For us this is generally 4-6 turns of the grinder)

If you want balsamic vinaigrette, substitute balsamic vinegar for the white wine vinegar and omit the dijon mustard. How easy is that? For apple cider, substitute apple cider vinegar for the white wine vinegar and replace the teaspoon of mustard with a teaspoon of honey (if you’re in the mood for something a little sweet). I’ve also seen restaurants substitute caramel for the honey in an apple cider vinaigrette (the salad was pomegranate and hazelnut over mixed greens).

Once you’re comfortable making one basic vinaigrette, the others suddenly become much easier, even natural, and you may find yourself experimenting with flavor combinations, adding fresh herbs, and all in 30 seconds or less. You’ll wonder why you ever spent $5 on a 16 oz bottle of salad dressing that had been sitting on the shelf for who knows how long. I know I did.

What’s your favorite salad dressing?

Eating Radishes à la française

 

When we first received black radishes in our weekly produce box, I referred to my go-to resource, the Bitt-man’s How to Cook Everything. He suggested eating them sliced with butter, salt, and pepper.

Huh?

My only previous encounters with radishes had been as shiny globes in mounds at salad bars, spicy slices in a restaurant garden salad, or the fastest growing vegetable that we never had any idea what to do with in our garden. Helene at French Foodie Baby had mentioned eating radishes with butter as had Karen in French Kids Eat Everything. But how? Melted on top? Cold in slices? How much per radish? I was quickly paralyzed by my overanalysis of such a simple vegetable and it’s most simple preparation.

The Black Radishes long gone, we received a bunch of red radishes this week, and I resolved to eat them immediately according to the preparation Dorie Greenspan provides in Around My French Table (drool-inducingly gorgeous, this is a book that will jump from temporary visitor, aka library book, to permanent resident in my home):

“If you want to serve radishes in the French style, wash them well, and if they came with stems and leaves, trim their topknots, leaving just enough greenery to serve as handles. Drop the radishes into a bowl of ice water and keep them there until serving. (You can even serve them on ice.) Serve the radishes whole accompanied by very soft butter for spreading on the radishes and a bowl of sea salt, preferably fleur de sel, for dipping; small rounds of dark bread or baguette are optional.”

Well, in 4 hours, our refrigerator froze our radishes; so I didn’t put them on ice. I carved little slices out of them, filled the slices with butter, and salted (and peppered) them. They were a quick, simple, refreshing veggie starter. I will never dip a radish in ranch again. Thanks to Dorie for the cure for my analysis paralysis. Now bring on the butter!