Tamales

I had an urge to eat tamales the other day, so I made some.  I didn't actually know what went into a tamale, but I did know that I didn't have any corn husks, so I'd have to use an alternative.  I went with waxed paper, and that worked acceptably well.  I also didn't know what to put in the dough, but figured I couldn't go too wrong if I made tortillas, filled them, and steamed them.  The end result was delicious, and I highly recommend to anyone that they try this butchered version of tamales.  

First things first, I made the tortilla dough.  1C masa to 2/3C water, plus a splash of olive oil for good measure, and ~1/2tsp salt.  This made a nice dough, and I divided it into eight pieces.  I rolled out each piece, or smooshed it out with my hands more like it, and put in the filling.  Then I rolled it shut, sort of pinching it where necessary to close the holes, wrapped it in wax paper, and twisted the ends shut.

The filling was sort of random - I had some frozen lebanese meatballs that we'd made a while ago, so I thawed some of those as I sweated some onions and toasted garlic, then mashed up the meatballs (which were like half bulgur wheat anyway), and fried with the onions and garlic until the meat was cooked.  I also had some spinach, which I dumped in the pan after the meat with some garlic.  I think you could pretty much use anything for filling, though having some sort of sauce might be nice.  Next time I think I'll do pumpkin or squash, with some goat cheese or feta or something.  

Once my tamales were all wrapped up, I steamed them for 30 minutes.  I didn't really know how long to steam them, but this seemed about right in my head.  They were pretty tasty after that long, though I have no idea how to tell if they're overcooked. 

Once done, I poured some lime-cilantro-tomatillos sauce over the top, and consumed them all in one sitting and with great gusto.  They were filling, and delicious.  

Lime-Cilantro-Tomatillo sauce
Made ~1C sauce
2 tomatillos
juice of 2 limes
~1C cilantro, rinsed
pinch of salt

Put everything into a food processor, and zap until it's made a paste.  Olive oil might also be delicious to smooth things out, but I didn't get that far.

Mole sauce

Ed gave me all these spices for Christmas, that I figured I should do something grandiose and involved with them. A mole sauce sprang to mind. Back in the day when I worked downtown, my favorite lunch ever was the chicken mole burrito from the burrito cart. I figured I could work some magic on my own, and make one of these fancy-pants mole sauces.

After some research, it turns out there is no set recipe for mole. It's basically just a rich sauce that has lots of spices in it, sometimes as many as 40 ingredients. It seems that the common denominator is chiles, as well as toasting the spices before using them, to get a nuttier flavor. I can do this. I looked up a couple recipes, and settled on something in the middle of like three of them. Quantities here are approximate...

Mole
Made about 4C sauce
You'll want a food processor for this.

Veggies:
3 whole, dried, ancho chiles, de-seeded
3 whole small red peppers, de-seeded
1 onion, diced
5 cloves garlic, sliced
3 tomatillos
1 tomato
Thickeners:
1/4C almonds
1/4C pumpkin seeds
1/4C raisins
1/4C masa flour
Spices
2 tbs sesame seeds
6 whole cloves
12 black peppercorns
1 tsp cumin seeds
1/2tsp ground star anise
1/2tsp cinnamon
1/2tsp ground coriander
1 tsp marjoram

2oz chocolate

As I said above, everything has to get toasted. This is a long process. Make sure you don't burn anything, because that is not good eats - that's burned. Start with the chiles: Take out the seeds, tear them into pieces, and soak them in warm water for 30 minutes. Ancho chiles are already smoked, I believe, so there is no need to toast them first. Although I suppose you could. After 30min, the soaking water will be a beautiful dark red color. mmmm.

Meanwhile, toast the thickeners - put the almonds, pumpkin seeds, and raisins on a sheet pan, and bake at 350F for about 5-10 minutes. Keep a close watch on these, you really don't want to burn them. They're done when the raisins puff up into little balls of hot fruitiness. It's pretty cool. You could pull out the pumpkin seeds and raisins and do another 5min on the almonds, if you felt so inclined. Put those three things in a food processor, and blend until they make a fine paste.

Toast the whole spices in a small cast-iron skillet on the stovetop. The sesame seeds, peppercorns, cloves, and cumin seeds should take ~5min until your whole kitchen is smelling delicious. Once those are toasted, add them to the food processor (or a spice grinder, if you have one), and grind them as finely as you can. Next toast the ground spices - these are even more subject to burning, so again, be careful. Once they're toasted, put everything in a quart saucepan, since that's where it'll end up anyway.

Slice a shallow cross in the bottom of the tomato and tomatillos, so they don't pop, and broil those until the skin is black and peeling off. Peel the skin off, and puree in the food processor, then add to the saucepan.

Sweat the onions, and then toast the garlic. Add those to the food processor, and also add the chiles, and 3/4C of their soaking liquid. Grind it up. Add to saucepan.

At this point you've toasted and ground up everything except the chocolate. I hear Mexican chocolate is best for this, maybe cocoa powder would also work, I used... chocolate chips. They were fine. Heat up the stuff in the saucepan, adding water or chicken stock until the consistency is more sauce-like and less paste-like, and dump in the chocolate. Stir it around, until the chocolate is melted. Remove from heat. If the mixture isn't fine enough, run it all back through the food processor, or a blender, since at this point it is liquid-y enough to do that.

Done! Only a few hours of your day wasted =).

Of course, what to do with the mole sauce is up to you.  I used it as an enchilada sauce.  I forget what was in the enchiladas, but I do remember that the sauce was delicious.  You could also put it in tacos, burritos, serve it with any sort of grilled meat or tofu... endless.  And delicious.

Puff pastry tart

This is an old one, but delicious enough it's worth posting nonetheless.  The last WM5D meeting, which really is just a party, I made a fruit tart the easy way.  Well, two fruit tarts.  The crust was just puff pastry, and the topping for one was frozen mixed berries, and the other was apples.  Topped with whipped cream, this was pretty tasty.  Six of us had no trouble polishing off both tarts!

Ali attacks her tart like a predatory bird.  Velociraptor?

For the apple tart, I peeled and cored the apples, and then cooked them with sugar and butter for ~30min, until they were soft and simmering in their own juices and tasting pretty intense and delicious. Spread on the puff pastry crust and cook according to the directions on the package.  I forget how long that took.  

For the berry tart, I thawed a package of mixed frozen berries.  I spread the berries on the tart, and boiled down the juice until it was thicker and more intense.  That one was also pretty delicious.  I recommend making both of these.  If you're feeling super ambitious, you could cut the puff pastry into squares and fold it in half, to make a turnover, but the ratio of filling to crust was just about perfect with the tart.  

Go forth and make pie!

Fruit and yogurt parfait

I swear, we actually cooked things in March, but I guess I'm a bit back-logged right now. However, I just made the most wonderful dessert/breakfast/snack EVAR, and it looked pretty, so I figured I'd post it. Fruit and yogurt parfaits are delicious, and this was no exception. This one may be healthier than what you'll pick up at Starbucks or whatever, if only because of what goes into it (or what doesn't go into it), but sugar levels and whatnot are all at your control. Go nuts! Or not. This concoction was reliant on the fact that I always have some of the ingredients on hand - like plain yogurt, frozen raspberries, and oats. But you could go out and buy the stuff.

No Ed-rating, as he wasn't here to test it. I don't know how he feels about eating out of a wine glass...

Fruit and Yogurt Parfait

Prep time: ~20min

3/4C yogurt, any variety

~3/4C chopped strawberries or other fresh fruit

2Tbs tablespoons of frozen berries, thawed (keep the juice!)

1/4C oats

~1tbs walnuts, chopped

~1tbs shredded sweetened coconut

~1tbs flax seeds

First, make the crunchy topping. Spread the oats, coconut, flax seeds, and walnuts on a baking sheet, and bake for ~10 minutes at 350F, until the coconut is lightly brown, and the oats have some crunch to them.

Then chop the strawberries, or other fresh fruit. I suppose apples, pears, bananas, melon, mango... well, other fruit, would work. I happened to have strawberries.

Put strawberries in cup of some sort. Or bowl. Doesn't really matter, as you're just going to stir it all up and eat it soon, anyway, but the glass was pretty.

First layer of yogurt. I used plain yogurt, sweetened with some maple syrup. Also, I put down a layer of crunchies before this layer of yogurt.

Then a layer of frozen fruit, thawed. Dump the juice right on top.

The rest of the yogurt on top of that.

And then dump some crunchies on top! At this point, you can eat it - I like to keep the bowl of remaining crunchies next to me, so that as I get through that layer, I can add more. If you add them all at once, they go soggy, and this concoction is way tastier with the changes in texture.