Taste of New Mexico: Carne Adovada

Marinated overnight and then slow cooked until falling apart tender, Carne Adovada melds the flavors of New Mexico Red Chiles, cumin, oregano and garlic in this traditional New Mexican pork dish. Recipe below.

New Mexico loves its chile peppers. There is simply no way you can overstate this fact. According to a fascinating article by Bonny Wolf at NPR’s Kitchen Window, New Mexico is the largest producer of chiles in the United States. And as Ms. Wolf sees it, there’s more to the state’s fascination than mere agricultural pride:

…In New Mexico, chiles are more than a crop. They’re a culture, a way of life. It is unimaginable to New Mexicans that people eat food untouched by their state’s chile.

There’s even an official state question: Red or green?

And if you can’t decide if you want red chile or green chile, you may answer, “Christmas,” and you’ll get some of both.

Interestingly, red or green, it’s the same New Mexico chile [also known as the California or Anaheim chile], just at different stages of development, either picked green or allowed to ripen into red on the vine. It’s what happens to the chiles afterward that makes the difference in the sauces’ flavors. Again, Ms. Wolf: “Green chiles are roasted, peeled, seeded and either used right away or frozen. Dried red chiles are ground into powder or strung into the lovely, deep-red ristras — strings in Spanish — you see hanging in many New Mexican homes. Northerners usually hang ristras for decoration while New Mexican cooks use the pods throughout the year to season food. Because the climate is so dry, there’s no fear of mold.”

On our recent trip to New Mexico, we rarely went a meal without being asked the official state question. And there wasn’t a wrong answer—both were delicious. We got our first sampling of both at Duran’s Central Pharmacy in Albuquerque; you actually walk through the pharmacy to get to an unassuming restaurant that serves up great New Mexican fare at very reasonable prices. We encountered excellent examples of red and green chiles in a number of restaurants: Little Anita’s, also in Albuquerque, and Maria’s, a friendly, rambling, down-to-earth place in Santa Fe recommended to me by Toni over at Daily Bread Journal, to name a couple.

We had plenty of delicious non-New Mexican food too. Crêpes at La Crêpe Michel in Albuquerque’s Old Town, transcendent burgers in the beautiful patio at Apple Tree in Taos, inventive tapas at La Boca in Santa Fe… And on our last night in New Mexico, craving something like we’d find at home in Chicago, we headed over to the neighborhood around the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque and ended up in a Korean BBQ joint. Just what we were looking for.

But my favorite New Mexican dish, hands down, was Carne Adovada. A traditional New Mexican dish, it is meat—most often pork—slow cooked in adobo sauce. We had it at the rightfully popular Tomasita’s in Santa Fe. Housed in a 1904 red brick station house adjacent to the Santa Fe train station, Tomasita’s has been a fixture since long before the railyards became the Railyard District, an up and coming neighborhood of hip shops and restaurants [and a welcome relief from the tourist hothouse that the heart of Santa Fe can be].

From the first bite, I knew I would have to try to make carne adovada. It was falling apart tender and coated in an almost velvety red chile sauce, not buried under it as many New Mexican dishes seemed to be. And it had a wonderful blend of flavors with just the right amount of heat. This hearty dish can be served with flour tortillas, in taco shells or with rice and beans, as I did here.

There are about as many takes on carne adovada as there are cooks. They range from fairly complex [like one from Kate in the Kitchen that has you make your own adobo sauce from dried chiles] to overly simple. One version from a Santa Fe cooking school, of all places, dispensed with the marinating and only cooked it for an hour! Even I could tell that was a recipe for an underflavored, chewy disaster.

In the end, I settled on a recipe somewhere in the middle complexitywise and doctored the heck out of the spice levels. Then when it came out of the oven and the sauce was a watery, bland mess that wasn’t sticking to the blondish chunks of tender meat, I did more doctoring, with the ever supportive Marion at my side. Here’s how that played out, by the way. First I looked at the way too liquid sauce. Not good. Then I tasted it. Even less good. Then I called for back-up. Marion suggested we transfer the meat to a bowl and work on the sauce, adding more spices and boiling it to reduce it. A good start tastewise, but still far from the velvety coating sauce we remembered from Tomasita’s. I’m sure I had a deer-in-the-headlights look at this point, until Marion uttered three magic words: “Make a roux.” I did. It worked. In the recipe below, I’m going to write it as if it’s how I’d planned to cook it all along. And how I will cook it the next time I make it. Continue reading “Taste of New Mexico: Carne Adovada” →

Black-eyed pea salsa, big-flavored steaks

Black-eyed pea salsa with chili powder, fresh tomatoes and bell pepper—a perfect complement for curry-marinated steaks—can also liven up grilled fish or chicken breasts. Recipes below.

We’ve just returned from a wonderful visit to the mountains of northern New Mexico—Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Taos and Los Alamos. For next week’s post, I plan to try to cook one of our favorite traditional New Mexican dishes we had there. This week, though, things are a little too hectic for the cooking of anything interesting. So I’m revisiting something from the Blue Kitchen archives. And while it has nothing to do with New Mexican cuisine, it’s got a lively, big flavor that reminds me of some of the great meals we had on our trip.

I love red meat. Growing up, though, ground was about the only kind of beef I knew, aside from the occasional stringy pot roast—burgers, meatloaf, spaghetti sauce, more meatloaf… I wasn’t introduced to the wonders of steak until I was in college, and then it was at one of those cafeteria-style joints called BEST STEAK HOUSE [or something equally overpromising] where you watch hairy-armed men tossing steaks on permanently charred grills with flames shooting up all around as the fat sizzled off. A steak dinner with baked potato and iceberg lettuce salad set you back maybe four or five bucks, and it was love at first gristly bite.

I have since graduated to better cuts of meat—and from medium-well to medium to medium-rare to rare. But the pure primal satisfaction that is steak remains undeniable.

Although one of my favorite ways to prepare steak is what I call my French bistro steak, seared in butter and the pan deglazed with red wine, the black-eyed pea salsa and curry marinade make these steaks another big favorite at our house.

Black-eyed peas are another food item very popular in the South [like the okra in my Creole Chicken and Okra Gumbo]. According to About.com, the black-eyed pea “is thought to have originated in North Africa, where it has been eaten for centuries. It may have been introduced into India as long as 3,000 years ago, and was also a staple of Greek and Roman diets. The peas were probably introduced to the New World by Spanish explorers and African slaves, and have become a common food in the southern United States, where they are available dried, fresh, canned, and frozen.”

Even though the salsa for this dish is named for black-eyed peas, there are lots of flavors at play here. When you first start cooking the green pepper and chili powder, the aroma will be less than encouraging. Don’t worry, though—when the other ingredients are added, it all comes together fabulously. And when it gets together with the steaks with their peppery curry marinade, the results are amazing. Continue reading “Black-eyed pea salsa, big-flavored steaks” →

Spicy turkey burgers: A little hot but not haute

Chili powder, cumin, fresh jalapeño peppers and cilantro liven up quick and easy turkey burgers. Recipe below.

When did burgers get all uptown? The New York Times reports on this growing trend “In Paris, Burgers Turn Chic.” Beef patties on sesame seed buns are even turning up in three-star restaurants there. The attraction? The Times quotes Paris restaurant consultant Hélène Samuel, who sums it up thus: “It has the taste of the forbidden, the illicit—the subversive, even. Eating with your hands, it’s pure regression. Naturally, everyone wants it.” No, Hélène, tearing apart an entire roast chicken with your bare hands and eating it is pure regression. Eating a burger with your hands is just how you do it. But if you read some of the amazing things French chefs are doing with the lowly hamburger, you’ll be as inclined to forgive Ms. Samuel’s primal enthusiasm as I was.

I’m not so inclined to forgive the excesses reported by Yahoo! Travel in “America’s Most Expensive Burgers.” Okay, so $17.50 for a caviarburger at Serendipity 3 in New York City sounds reasonable enough. And $27 for a Daniel Boulud hamburger stuffed with short ribs, foie gras and truffles isn’t out of the question [sounds pretty good, in fact]. But no amount of shaved black truffles makes a hamburger worth $150. And a couple of restaurants, both in Las Vegas, even pair burgers with rare bottles of French wine and charge $5,000 and $6,000 respectively. Ordering these is a sure sign you’ve got too much money and not enough brains.

But on a simpler, less astronomical level, we like burgers a lot. They’re a quick and easy, totally satisfying weeknight meal. And if eating them with your hands isn’t exactly pure regression, there’s undeniably a nice, relaxed informality to it. Generally, we use ground sirloin for its low fat content. I know most chefs advocate using fattier ground beef for its juiciness, but as long as you cook ground sirloin on the medium rare side, it remains plenty juicy.

Lately, though, we’ve been occasionally enjoying the lighter taste of turkey burgers. Unlike whole roasted turkeys with their distinctive robust flavor, ground turkey presents kind of a blank canvas not unlike chicken breasts. Here, jalapeño peppers, onion, fresh cilantro, chili powder and cumin create a lively, satisfying burger with just a little heat Continue reading “Spicy turkey burgers: A little hot but not haute” →

Barbecued chicken, ’Bama style

Mayonnaise, cider vinegar and horseradish come together in the surprisingly subtle, tangy Alabama White Sauce first created by Big Bob Gibson in 1925. It adds great flavor to pork, beef or—as you’ll see here—grilled chicken. Recipes below.

SEEMS I’M ALWAYS QUOTING COMEDIAN STEVEN WRIGHT’S LINE, “It’s a small world, but I wouldn’t want to paint it.” Recently we were at our friends Allen and Sharon’s house for a barbecue. When I asked about the origin of the promising-smelling Alabama White Sauce Allen was slathering on the chicken, he said it was from Big Bob Gibson Bar-B-Q, a fixture in Decatur, Alabama, since 1925. We’ve not only been to Big Bob’s, Marion has an oversized T-shirt from there that she sometimes uses as a sleep shirt! Continue reading “Barbecued chicken, ’Bama style” →

Grilled sausages by the book, er, magazine

The juices of Italian sausages flavor red bell peppers and onions when they’re all cooked together on the grill. Recipes below.

I said last week that I like cookbooks with lots of photos. Let me amplify that statement: I like cookbooks with lots of color photos. Printed on slick paper to bring out every nuance—flecks of herbs, the sheen of cooking juices on a roast, the trail of a bead of condensation on a chilled wine glass. So imagine how less than interested I was in a cooking magazine that features line drawings and black and white photos on non-glossy paper.

I know, I know. Cook’s Illustrated is one of the best cooking publications out there. They’re America’s Test Kitchen—it says so right there on the cover. They don’t just cook something a time or two and call it close enough for government work. They cook it again and again and again—I’ve heard “a hundred times or more” bandied about—until they get it exactly right. Food bloggers everywhere rave about it.

But there’s just something so Highlights for Children earnest about its look to me that I’ve never been able to get past. Visually, it’s the sensible shoes of food magazines for me, singularly uninviting.

Still, when our neighbors Tom and Michael raved about it over dinner recently, I thought it was high time I got over myself and check it out. What I found, of course, was a wonderful new [to me, at least] resource. Picking up the current edition shown here, in addition to a recipe for Better Grilled Sausages with Onions and a couple of variations on the theme that led to my own variation above, I found secrets for great grilled chicken, tips for keeping produce fresher longer, an exhaustive comparison of silicone spatulas, a baker’s dozen of quick tips and a whole lot more. All packed into 52 pages refreshingly bereft of restaurant reviews, travel articles and other distractions that crowd the pages of more and more supposed cooking magazines. Also bereft of advertising. Since that’s what I do for a living, I was somewhat ambivalent about that.

But what I really liked about my first issue of Cook’s Illustrated is that they don’t only tell you how to cook something, they tell you why certain steps and techniques work. And for that matter, why some don’t. So you don’t just learn to cook a dish, you learn techniques and tips you can use elsewhere.

Of course even though the title for this post says by the book, I had to tamper with the recipe. No big changes, mainly just treating the red bell pepper differently to integrate it more into the dish. If you want to see the thoroughly tested version of the recipe, pick up the magazine. Continue reading “Grilled sausages by the book, er, magazine” →

Chicken, goat cheese, arugula and… apricot jam?

Yes, apricot jam adds a perfect unexpected note to this summery sandwich of chicken, goat cheese and arugula. Recipe below.

As anyone who spends much time in the kitchen knows, inspiration can come from anywhere. A recipe you’ve seen, a farmers market find, what’s on sale at the grocery store—even something you found in the back of your pantry. The inspiration for the sandwich above began with a photograph. Specifically, this one: Continue reading “Chicken, goat cheese, arugula and… apricot jam?” →

Bawdy chicken: Spicy Grilled Chicken Paillards

Cumin and paprika add plenty of flavor to Spicy Grilled Chicken Paillards, but not much heat, as do orange juice, lemon juice, honey, cinnamon and red pepper flakes to the sauce. Recipes below.

MARION HAS ACCUSED ME IN THE PAST of being a culinary Francophile. And I’m the first to admit she’s right. Casting about for some grilling ideas for this week’s post, I came across a chicken recipe that called for chicken breasts sliced or lightly pounded into flattened pieces. If they’d used the modern term for this thin cut of meat, cutlet, I probably wouldn’t have given it a second glance. But no, they used the older French term, paillard (pronounced pah-YAHR), apparently named for a late 19th century Parisian restaurateur. Okay, I was interested. Continue reading “Bawdy chicken: Spicy Grilled Chicken Paillards” →

Pasta, vegetables and overcoming deal breakers

A mix of vegetables takes center stage in this Pasta with Chickpeas, Fava Beans, Pecans and Spring Peas, with bacon playing a supporting role. Recipe and variations—including vegetarian and vegan versions—below.

Sundays are often when I cook whatever I’m posting the following Wednesday. But this past Sunday found me spending more than an hour at the Crafty Beaver hardware store, puzzling out what I needed to solve a minor plumbing problem and build a small bookcase. [Don’t be overly impressed—the bookcase is going to be, shall we say, elegantly simple.] Then I spent a good chunk of the afternoon solving said plumbing problem and starting on said bookcase. When it became clear I wasn’t going to get around to cooking, Marion offered to make this wonderful dish, solving both dinner and what to post. All I had to do was not start devouring my meal before I photographed it. I’ll let Marion tell you how this excellent pasta came together.

The other day the New York Times ran an article by Kim Severson in which good cooks were asked about their recipe deal breakers, “those ingredients or instructions that make them throw down the whisk and walk away.”

Experienced, talented cooks cited abstruse ingredients [48 freshly picked grape leaves, vast quantities of fresh animal blood], fussy or intimidating instructions [the recipes of Thomas Keller were particularly noted], recipes with several recipes within them, recipes that demand dangerous conditions, extreme equipment [a couscousière, cornet molds—and I say that as, um, the owner of cornet molds, and of a heavy copper tin-lined tarte Tatin pan, hauled home from Paris, that has become a place to keep our bananas]. My favorite example was the author’s own: She will not make any dish that requires an assistant. That made me laugh out loud.

Like every person reading the article, I immediately started putting together a similar list in my head. What magic words stop me from trying a recipe? Here are a few:

3 sticks butter
1 cup lard
The phrase “on the third day”
Any amount of insects [I will cheerfully eat pretty nearly any organ meat, but cannot make myself even consider eating an ant, a grub or a cicada]
Dried bean curd sheets [I shy off thanks to a series of ridiculous kitchen disasters years back that pretty much became one of those little private running jokes, in this case between me and a never-conquered recipe called Tinkling Bells]
“Have your butcher bone the pig, leaving the head intact” [that recipe, by the way, also includes the phrase “re-form the pig in its original shape,” which sounds so wistful somehow]

I have been cooking certain cuisines for years, but a long time ago I recognized that no matter how far I reach, there is always going to be an unbridgeable gulf between me and the most genuine examples of these foods. I have already said I am not going to eat anything with insects in it. I am not going to eat anything that in the US is construed as a pet. I am not going to eat any endangered mammals, and certainly not their paws.

Also, I am not going to cook anything out of a book the size and weight of a table, no matter how elegant the illustrations.

Years ago, I was standing in our back yard and reading some Martha Stewart magazine and came across a recipe for a ham baked on new-mown grass. There was a great deal of information about the grass you should choose to mow, how to make sure it is pristine, how to cut it… All I remember is opening my fingers and letting the magazine fall out of my hands and walking away from the magazine, which I believe eventually blew out of our yard or perhaps even decayed there, I don’t care, whatever, and I never read any other Martha Stewart publication again until a couple of weeks ago, when my sister [who for a couple of years had been saying, “It’s not what you remember!”] snuck a copy of Martha Stewart Living into a pile she was passing on to me. Okay, so I read it, fine, and once I navigated past the annoying crafts and the too many pastels I came across a pasta dish that, of course, sounded good, so good we had to mess with. Meaning that, for today at least, one of my ancient deal breakers has been overcome.

This descendant of Martha’s recipe asks you to cook the pasta in a moderate amount of water until the water is all absorbed and concentrated and cooked away leaving just pasta. I am usually nervous about this approach, not least because it means standing over the stove for seven or eight minutes and stirring pretty often, rather than wandering off to pick up the newspaper or look out the window at a puzzling brown bird. But I really like the technique here. It endows the pasta with a depth that is needed in a dish this spare.

This recipe begins with a lot of pasta—one pound uncooked—so it will serve five to six people easily. The next day Terry was able to celebrate Take Your Wife’s Cooking to Work Day. Continue reading “Pasta, vegetables and overcoming deal breakers” →

To grill or not to grill: Rosemary Pork Chops

Grilled asparagus and grilled zucchini make perfect sides for grilled pork chops marinated in red wine, rosemary and garlic. Recipes below.

I don’t grill a lot. I’ve already given my reasons for being less than enthusiastic about this form of cooking that borders on obsession for many home cooks, both here [in which I sang the praises of a good pan and a hot stove] and here [where I did haul out the grill and produced some juicy, tender Hoisin Chicken].

But as warm weather approaches each year, I have moments of viewing my lack of interest in grilling as a culinary personality defect, a flaw to be corrected. So this past weekend, the grill came out and I produced not just one dish, but three. For the main course, I made Pork Chops with Rosemary. These chops can also be made with the aforementioned good pan and hot stove; see Kitchen Notes. For sides, I made Grilled Asparagus and Grilled Zucchini.

The weather was less than promising as I started prepping in the kitchen, yet another reason I’m not overly excited about grilling. My track record in this regard is not what you’d call stellar. In fact, if you’re ever experiencing severe drought where you live, invite me over to cook out. The bluest of skies will cloud up and produce a deluge just about the time I start firing up the charcoal. Miraculously, though, on this most unsettled of weekends with storms popping up everywhere and a tornado ripping through the far southern suburbs, it rained before and after I cooked, but not a drop fell during. Continue reading “To grill or not to grill: Rosemary Pork Chops” →

Spicy Chicken Salad: A little hot, but very cool

Hot giardiniera gives this summery Spicy Chicken Salad a little heat and big flavor. It’s great on sandwiches or on its own. Recipe below.

When the warm weather hits and the great outdoors beckons, we tend to get lazy in the kitchen. We still want good food, but we want it to be fast and easy to make and satisfyingly filling but not too heavy. Like chicken salad. To me, some leftover chicken and a little mayo is one of the great blank canvases of summer, ready to take on all kinds of flavors and personalities. Continue reading “Spicy Chicken Salad: A little hot, but very cool” →