Tacos de Pollo

Often as the day moves on towards afternoon my mind wanders to the inevitable thoughts of what to cook for my brood.  Mind you, these are almost always pleasant thoughts. Some days I have such a clear plan of attack, at times even laid out days in advance. And, well, there are others when I've much less of a clue and mild panic starts to build. Add to that some of late-in-the-day appointments and several days of non-grocery shopping and I was at a bit of a loss.

A couple of the staples I try to keep on hand are chicken and tortillas, two things you really can't go wrong with. The chicken freezes beautifully, defrosts in a snap, and tortillas keep for a long, long time in the fridge. So right there you have a protein and a carbohydrate. But, they call out for veggies and other treats to brighten the flavor and make a complete dish.

I'm blessed to have a local Hispanic grocery store close by. The front of La Bamba in Sparkill is a tiny, tidy well-supplied grocery while tucked in the back is an equally excellent and equally small restaurant. (Some day I will do a write up of their food, including the scrumptious tongue tacos). I love their  produce selection,  and not once have I gotten anything but a perfectly ripe avocado off the shelf.

Adolfo Godinez, owner of La Bamba restaurant and grocery store (Tania Savayan / The Journal News )

In less than 5 minutes I was back in the trusty Volvo with a bag full of goodies: tomatoes, a red onion, avocados, jalapenos, cilantro, limes, crema, and queso fresco (a fresh, mild farmer's cheese).

Years of experimenting have led me to the conclusion that boneless, skinless thighs are the only chicken cut to buy. The pieces cook up moist and tender, lend themselves to all sorts of dishes and spicings. I've completely abandoned chicken breasts after all too many sad, cardboard-like creations.

Mixing together a dry rub of salt, cumin, medium hot chili powder, smoked paprika, marjoram and black pepper I patted it onto the chicken. While the poultry cooked on the grill I put together a basic guacamole using:

avocados

tomatoes

onion

jalapeno

cumin

oregano

salt

fresh lime juice

and a little fresh tomato salsa  made of tomatoes, red onion, cilantro, salt,  and a tiny pinch of sugar.

By this time it was getting dark, so rather than stumble about outside at the grill I crisped up the tortillas laying them right over the gas flame of my stove. You have to move fast though, or they will easily burn. With the smell of toasted corn meal wafting through the kitchen I shredded the chicken on top of the tortillas added guacamole, salsa, then a dollop of crema and some crumbled queso fresco...done!!!!

Fruit of the Grill

 

The discovery of a new way to prepare a food, or a twist on an old familiar ingredient, entices me. Yet, I don’t prescribe to such recent trends as liquid nitrogen cooking where olive oil is turned into a solid bubble or frozen foam. As fun as they night be might to sample in a restaurant, they are so far afield from what a home cook can manage that it all ends up seeming a bit silly and pretentious rather than exciting.

It is swelteringly hot and humid today, so much so that kayaking and swimming in the Chesapeake Bay are on the menu too, but not until later in the day when the cooling late afternoon breezes arrive.

Thus, first a hunt and gather trip to the farm stand is in order. There, under the shaded inner rafters, the Mennonite girls bustle about in their long dresses and white muslin caps painstakingly arranging strawberries just so in green cardboard boxes.

My eyes are drawn first to the berries and then on to pyramids of peaches. Soft and fuzzy like miniature versions of a baby’s head, tinged with crimson and mauve. I heft one in my hand, the shape nestles perfectly in my palm. Not local for sure, but when I ask I am told they have arrived from the Carolinas. Their heavenly sweet smell convinces me. In my basket they go, along with a new selection of potted herbs for the garden. This batch includes rosemary, an additional two plants of sweet basil (you can never have enough basil)  and one of the ever so special purple basils. I have plans for this basil. I also have a vision of the peaches meeting the grill since it's far too hot to cook indoors.

5 basic ingredients and a few minutes of prep work gets the dessert part of dinner set in a few moments.

Grilled Peaches

Assume one peach per person

Firm but ripe peaches

Fresh butter

Powdered cinnamon

Honey

Basil (purple if you can get it). Mint can substitute.

Slice the peaches by holding them in one hand and split by running the knife in a circle all around down to the pit. Gently hold each half and twist in opposite directions and the two halves will pop apart. Remove pit if possible, if not it can be left in and removed when served.

Place the halves skin side down on a plate, add a pat of butter to the middle, dust with cinnamon, drizzle with honey (perhaps the tiniest sprinkle of salt to enhance the flavor).

Grill on medium heat, skin side down, until grill marks appear after approximately 5 minutes. Flip over and grill another 4-5 minutes. Gently scoop off the grill using a spatula. Return to plate and decorate with a basil leaves. Serve lukewarm with ice cream or softly whipped cream.

Pasta with clam sauce in 15 minutes

 

Here is another of my go-to dinners, perfect when you've worked, run to the doctor with a kid for a booster shot, voted on the school budget, been met by feline fur ball gifts inside the front door and just don't know what to make. 
You may have noticed we are heavy on the seafood around here lately as my oldest child has reached that moral age when suddenly mammals are off the menu. "I'm a pescatarian now," he announced a few weeks ago. This is probably a good thing since our meat intake had gone too high, and we are now happily bathing our little brains in Omega-3s thus staving off dementia. 
Of course, knowing the staying power of teenage convictions, we fully expect to return to carnivory in the not too distant future.

There are endless variations on this dish. Ideally, I would have had lovely golden fresh linguine, clams from the fish store, crisp white wine and parsley. But hey, I can't be Martha Stewart every day.

Pasta with Clam Sauce

Serves 4-6

1 lb pasta (all I had was angel hair)

4-6 cloves garlic
6 cans of clams
olive oil
basil
oregano
thyme
salt & pepper
hot pepper flakes

 

Start the pasta water.
Chop the garlic, or slice thinly if you prefer.
Chop fresh herbs
Drain the clams, reserving the liquid.

Heat 3-4 tablespoons of olive oil in thick-bottomed skillet. 

 

Add garlic and cook for a minute, do not let the garlic brown. 
Add clam juice, simmer to reduce for 7-10 minutes.
If using dried herbs, add them now.
 
Meanwhile add pasta to salted water.

When pasta is almost done add fresh herbs and spices to the clam juice, followed by the clams. Turn off heat under skillet or clams will become rubbery.

Taste and adjust seasoning. Serve on top of pasta in deep bowls. 
Drizzle with a good finishing oil.

 

Spicy Fish Soup

It's been raining now for weeks it seems, and the chill and damp put us all in the mood for a warming but not-too-hearty soup. Did I not in fact have a quart of shrimp broth stashed away in my freezer? And could I tweak my chicken tortilla soup recipe to work for seafood?
While the container of pink-tinted broth slowly bobbed and defrosted in a water bath in the sink I gathered up the rest of my ingredients.

Spicy Fish Soup

Serves 4-6

• 1 quart concentrated stock, can be shrimp, fish or even chicken broth. Cubed broth or canned can be used too.
• 1 lb monk fish (any white fleshed fish works), cut into bite-size chunks
• 1 bag of mussels
• 1 lb shrimp
• 1 small red onion
• 2 stalks of celery
• 3 cloves garlic
• 1/2 head of flat leaf parsley
• 1/2 head of cilantro (chop stems and leaves separately)
• 1 tsp ancho powder
• 1 tsp green chile powder
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 fresh jalapeno, thinly sliced
• 2 large tomatoes, diced
• large handful of grape or cherry tomatoes 
• 4 potatoes, peeled and diced 
• 1 can hominy (see note below)
• 1 bay leaf
• salt
• olive oil 
• lime

Dice all the vegetables except the small tomatoes
Heat a large, low pan, add oil
Sweat the onions, garlic and celery under a lid for a few minutes, add chopped cilantro stems and some leaves and parsley, spices, tomatoes and jalapeno followed by the broth. 
Add additional 1 to 1 1/2 quarts of water to make a good amount of liquid. Once it comes to a boil, add potatoes and grape tomatoes. Cook until potatoes are tender.
Add hominy, salt and adjust seasoning as needed. Gently stir in seafood and simmer with the lid on lid for a few minutes until shrimp and fish are opaque and mussels have all opened. Discard any mussels that do not open.

Serve with crumbled blue (or yellow) corn chips and a dollop of crema. Sour cream or creme fraiche can substitute for crema.


The degree of spiciness of course depends on just how hot your chili powder is and the amount of jalapeno added. You can tame it by using less of both, or using a milder chili.
As with most soups, this was even tastier the next day when the flavors had melded and matured.

And finally, a note on hominy. Hominy is corn that's been put through a process called nixtamalization. It has a wonderful nutty-corny flavor along with a delightful al dente texture. Most American grocery stores carry it, but I was thinking of good substitutes and imagine that black beans would add an interesting taste and texture contrast, but I think I would omit the potatoes then and maybe stick with shrimp and no other fish. Try it and let me know!

Whole Salt-baked Branzino

Not all meals end up as planned. I had bought bag of mussels, but dallied a day too many and felt they looked a bit on the sad side which is the last thing you want to see with shellfish. So off to the fish store I went. There, buried in chipped ice, were silvery sleek Branzino (aka European sea bass). You find them more and more frequently featured on restaurant menus. The Italians have known about them, and how to cook them, forever. Americans are only now discovering how tasty a fish this really is.

My favorite way to prepare Branzino is also one of the most fun ways to cook fish:  a whole fish entombed in a salt cast. I know it may sound strange, won't it end up super-salty? But, in fact, the end results are a tender, succulent fish. And, it's really fun and easy to make and break down once cooked.
If the thought of dealing with a whole fish--head and all-- is too much, then ask your fish monger to gut and clean the fish but not to fillet it.


This recipe comes from one of my favorite cooking sources: Epicurious. I turn to them so often for recipes and ideas. They have a mobile app too which is perfect when I'm standing in the middle of a grocery store feeling uninspired, or want to check what goes into a certain dish, couldn't live without this site. If you want to see their version of the recipe, it's here.

For 4 servings you will need

• 2 whole Branzino, scaled, gutted, head and tail on
• 1 lemon,  thinly sliced
• 6-8 sprigs of fresh thyme
• 6-8 stems of parsley
• freshly ground pepper
• 2-3 lbs salt (semi-fine works best but I've used regular Morton's & coarse sea salt to good results)
• 3-4 egg whites

Set oven to 400 F. Place the fish on a sheet of oven foil. Lay lemon slices and herbs inside the cavity, season with pepper.
Mix egg whites and salt in a large bowl. The consistency should be that of wet sand, add more egg or salt as needed.
Using your hands cover the entire fish with a nice thick layer of salt/egg mixture.

My trusty sous chef Gustaf adding herbs

Bake the fish for 20 minutes, then let it rest for another ten. Gently crack open by hitting it with a spoon and discard the salt crust.  You can either transfer the entire fish herbs and all on to a serving plate or fillet out to individual plates.

With this we had asparagus. It is the season for it now so we have been eating a lot of it, and living the consequences (in my house it's called asparapee)

 ....and the salsa verde mentioned on Epicurious. 

I did skip the olives and capers as my youngest is not overly fond of either. It was a crisp, fresh foil to the delicate fish. When we were done, two adults and three teens had picked every bone clean. There was even arguing at the table as to whom would get the last bite of fish. Happiness.