Careful, señores … hot plate!
We’ve eaten our way through the oven-roasted chicken-and-taters. Likewise the chili con carne (based on me sainted ma’s recipe from our days in Texas). The other day we settled for a simple repast of smoked oysters, cheese, crackers, and salad.
What to cook next?
Mexican, of course.
Herself harvests her latest crop of sprouts.
There were no dried pinto beans to be had on our last hunter-gatherer expedition to Sprouts (gracias, hoarders).
But I found a 2-pound sack stashed away in a cupboard from a months-ago trip to Keller’s. So I cooked up a pound a la Santa Fe School of Cooking, with onion, garlic, chipotle chile, oregano, epazote, cumin, coriander, salt, bay leaf, and chicken broth.
This takes the better part of quite some time, but it’s not as though we’re up to our nalgas in other chores around here.
Flour tortillas we already had. So, burritos, yeah? Claro que si, hombre.
But burritos without green chile sauce are like a day without sunshine. So I thawed some frozen Hatch chile and got after that.
Also, beans without rice? What are you, high? Rick Bayless has a no-frills recipe for red rice in his “Mexican Everyday,” and even a gabacho can make that drunk with one foot in a bucket, or, in my case, sober with one foot in a lace-up ankle brace.
Herself whipped up a couple simple side salads and that was that. Now we have leftovers for a couple days. And then, we’ll switch focus from Mexican to Italian.
Tags: beans with chipotle chile, green chile sauce, Mexican food, Mexican red rice, Rick Bayless, Santa Fe School of Cooking
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March 19, 2020 at 8:55 am |
Interesting fact–fresh dried beans cook up amazingly fast. I have been getting dried beans from local farmers (within 100-200 miles) from their most recent harvest. I just cooked a pot of white beans in 20-25 minutes. Having lived on the Central California coast for a long time, we actually have a local pinto bean called a pinquito. As the name suggests, they are small pinto beans. Many of the ranchos in California had their own “regional” cuisine. Pinquito beans are a part of that legacy on the Central California coast.
March 19, 2020 at 9:17 am |
Yeah, I think the general rule is the older the bean, the longer the cooking time. And these have been around for a while.
I did these in a pot on the stove, which was not my original intention. I had planned to use the slow cooker, but got distracted (as usual) and just started absentmindedly doing them the hard way. Didn’t soak overnight — just simmered ’em slow for a couple hours, then sautéed the onions and garlic, tossed in all the other goodies, and simmered for another hour.
March 19, 2020 at 9:02 am |
PO’G and Herself: Looks healthy and scrumptious. Thanks for sharing the recipes and your buoyant outlook on self-quarantining.
Best to all of you and HtE!!!!
March 19, 2020 at 9:22 am |
Glad to oblige, JD. How are you folks doing up there in the wilds of Greater Northern Bibleburg?
March 19, 2020 at 1:15 pm |
Doing great! Under blizzard conditions here, 10 inches of snow forecast, etc. I got in a 2-hour core and upper body workout this AM cleaning and waxing our hardwood floor areas. Tonight should be spaghetti (thanks, Larry) and tomorrow will be snow removal.
Banged out 2 hours yesterday MTB’ing and was pleased to see quite a few parents/grandparents w/kiddos out on the trails appropriately social-distancing.
Just took a sneak peek at your next post and have to agree on the staying inside theme. Still plenty of ways to stay healthy and also consider others. Be creative, stay safe and healthy, take care of one another!! 🙂
March 19, 2020 at 9:10 am |
Eating well is always the best revenge! As long as you can get the ingredients that is. I ventured out today and found a few brave vendors at the outdoor market so I scored the usual greens, peppers, eggplant, carrots, celery that we get semi-weekly + a fresh tuna steak as there was one lone fish-monger..Grilled up on our terrace and enjoyed over a bed of salad greens, onion and tomatoes it made for a nice lunch when combined with a fresh loaf of bread and a glass of Sicilian vino rosato.
Here’s a recipe for one of my favorite pasta dishes when you get to Italian cooking-
March 19, 2020 at 9:24 am |
Now that’s what I call grocery-shopping, Lorenzo. I’m content to improvise with what’s on hand, though Herself is contemplating a quick trip to Vitamin Cottage-Natural Grocers for a couple items she deems essential. She won’t find any fresh tuna steaks there, I can tell you that for sure.
March 19, 2020 at 9:24 am |
I went to the grocery this morning. I found the ingredients for ratatouille like in the movie. Now, if the sun is out tomorrow, I can cook it in the solar oven.
https://smittenkitchen.com/2007/07/rat-a-too-ee-for-you-ee/
Today, however, I got lazy and decided to keep the deli workers employed. No health food for lunch. We talking chicken wings, potato salad, and cole slaw. Been a while since I have had a wing or two.
March 19, 2020 at 9:38 am |
There y’go, Paddy me boyo. A treat helps pass the time. We just cobbled together a couple plates of pancakes using some Arrowhead Mills mix I’d forgotten we had. No milk, so Herself used a combo of table cream and water. And it took the last of our maple syrup, dammit.
But it was worth it. A nice change from the usual oatmeal.
March 19, 2020 at 10:58 am |
Ahh, real maple syrup! We stumbled into the local LIDL (they sponsor that Belgian race team with Julian Alaphllippe) awhile back to find pint bottles of the stuff from Canada at a price less than we used to pay back in Iowa. La Prof mixes up an orange zesty pancake mix on Sundays we can pour it on or I’ll fry up some old bread with eggs, milk and a bit of cinnamon as a sort of “Sicilan” toast..it has a bit of orange zest as well.
“Mangia ben!” as we like to say!!