Category: Cookery

Chile Colorado … y verde tambien

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments
Careful, señores — hot plate! Whoops, never mind . . . these here are cold.
Careful, señores — hot plate! Whoops, never mind . . . these here are cold.

I meant to shoot a couple pix of dinner, but spaced it (lots of balls in the air, trying to get everything to finish cooking simultaneously), so you’ll have to settle for a shot of the aftermath.

We started off with a sparking rosé, corn tortilla chips and the pico de gallo salsa I made last night, segued into chicken and jalapeño quesadillas, and then dove into the main meal, a blend of red and green chile in honor of the holiday — chicken enchiladas smothered in green chile, Anasazi beans with chipotle chile, red chile roasted potatoes and posole. Dessert was an excellent raspberry cobbler prepared by Herself, as I’m not much of a baker.

I wound up having to make two batches of green chile, because the first one tasted not quite right. Not inedible, I thought, but not top shelf, either, and I’m not quite certain why. I ordinarily use a 50-50 mix of hot and mild Hatch chiles, and I suspect the hot ones may have gone slightly off thanks to an overlong stay in the fridge after defrosting. So, thinking that a case of the Chihuahua cha-cha would make a poor holiday gift indeed for my sis and brother-in-law (to say nothing of Herself and me), I whipped up a second batch using only the fresher mild chile and that proved serviceable, after I needled it a tad with some ground green and a dash of ancho powder. I had a few poblanos squirreled away, but there was no time to roast and peel the buggers. As it was, I was still cooking when the kinfolk arrived.

Nobody had to talk to Ralph on the big white phone afterward, so I consider dinner a smashing success. If you’d like to take a whack at these recipes, they’re all in the Santa Fe School of Cooking Cookbook, except for the variation of posole that I make, a one-pot jobber with diced pork that’s so old I can’t remember its origins.

What was on the menu at your place? Leave me some recipes in comments — but don’t expect me to cook ’em anytime soon. We’re gonna have leftovers for days.

Late update: Almost forgot another holiday tradition: Dancing with Herself to “Fairytale of New York” by The Pogues.

The eagle has landed

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 3 Comments

The snowman lives. And the traditional O’Grady-family Christmas flick — Monty Python’s “Life of Brian” — is queued up for viewing just as soon as a certain wine-sipping hash-slinger finishes his pre-holiday cookery.

The posole is done, as are the Anasazi beans with chipotle chile and the pico de gallo, and the green-chile sauce is on deck. That leaves only the chicken breast to cook and shred, the corn tortillas to fry, the cheese to grate and the enchiladas to assemble and cook. Oh, yeah, and the potatoes to dice, toss with Chimayo red chile and chopped onion, and roast. And jeez, the chicken quesadillas. Can’t forget the appetizers.

Back in the kitchen. There’s chicken to cook and shred. If I wait to do the green chile until tomorrow, the house will smell like Santa Fe, but without all the silver and turquoise. Happy holidays to you and yours from the Zen Druid, who hugs the tree, even though he knows that it is an illusion.

Didja get any onya?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments

The Decider has finally turned the money hose on Detroit, and don’t I wish I were standing nearby with a bucket. One of my paychecks has mysteriously gone walkabout again and Visa would like nothing better than to get me by the plums with a downhill pull.

Meanwhile, in the spirit of the holiday season, there’s a fresh rant up at VeloNews.com. No charge. Think of it as my little gift to you this Zappadan.

Interesting concept, eh? I get paid (or don’t, as the case may be) to dash off my little online japes. The editors get paid to read and post it. And the publisher has to write the check (or not). But you, you lucky devils — you get off scot-free. Except for having to notice all those bloody ads for this and that in your peripheral vision, which does tax the eyeballs, does it not?

Not only is my stuff free to you, it’s easily accessible. Couple clicks of the mouse and there I am in all my pointless, content-free glory. It’s a pretty specialized delivery system, when you think about it. If all you care about is reading me, or Lennard Zinn, or Bob Mionske, you don’t have to thumb through a wad of other stuff to get to us. Click, click and off you go.

(More on this later. Herself is screeching that I look like a coconut and am in dire need of a haircut.)

OK, I’m freshly shaven and back to deep thought. I click the mouse for my national and international news, coverage of fringe sports like cycling, leftist political commentary and expert advice I can use to make my life richer (investment advice, recipes from elite chefs, and so on). I know where to go and how to get there.

I would like to read local news, too, and plenty of it, without having to wade through a wad of other stuff that is more easily available online: the aforementioned national and international news; pointless coverage of mainstream professional sports already covered to excess by TV; and the endless smelly pile of treacly features keyed to days of the week (Food, Life, Money, et al). But I can’t get local and regional news — not a lot of it, anyway, and certainly not reliably — with a click of the mouse.

If the Gazette were to do without all the trappings that defined the Newspaper v1.0 and become a strictly local news source, I might subscribe again. But if it keeps trying to be all things to all people, I’ll continue to withhold my pennies and watch it die a slow, lingering death.

Late update: Incidentally, if this post seems even more scatter-brained than usual, it may be because the cats were dancing on my head at 4 a.m. and set me to thinking creakily about some of the excellent comments in an earlier post.

A harbinger of the season

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 3 Comments
The trees are alive, with the sound of weasels.
The trees are alive, with the sound of weasels.

You know the holidays are upon us when the Wonder Weasels take up residence in the trees. We got another little dusting last night, giving me enough to actually shovel after three straight days of “snow,” but it wasn’t enough to keep Turkish (a.k.a. Turkenstein, The Turkinator, Big Pussy, Mighty Whitey the Wonder Weasel, et al) indoors, where it’s warm and dry.

I myself am having trouble cranking up the required motivation to engage in healthy outdoor exercise, like climbing trees, running or cycling. There’s a brisk wind out of the northeast, it’s still spitting snow, and I don’t sport a thick, furry coat like some of the other creatures inhabiting the DogHaus.

Incidentally, last night’s black bean vegetable soup was edible, but unspectacular, even with a hefty salad and some fresh wheat rolls. What it needed was largish chunks of defunct fellow earth creature: chorizo, Italian sausage, ham, bacon, dark turkey meat, anything along those lines. Vegetables are what food eats.

From Black Friday to White Saturday

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 7 Comments

We got another little dusting overnight, just enough to help the body shops keep up to date with their boat payments. It’s a fine day for making a giant cauldron of soup or stew, and I plan to test drive a new recipe this afternoon, one taken from an old issue of Cooking Light magazine.

Mmm, green chile stew. It burns going in, and it burns going out.
Mmm, green chile stew. It burns going in, and it burns going out.

My sis bought me a subscription some years back, but I let it lapse; most of the recipes proved too bland for my taste, and the stories were heavily targeted at women, though men do all the cooking around these parts. But I held onto this recipe for some reason, and stumbled across it the other day while hunting for something I haven’t already cooked a jillion times. It’s for a black bean and vegetable soup, with plenty of cumin, garlic, oregano and chile, and I’ll let you know how it turns out.

Speaking of chile, if it’s cold outside and you’re already sick of turkey this and that, take a whang at this simple green chile stew from the Santa Fe School of Cooking Cookbook:

  • 3 tablespoons vegetable oil
  • 1.5 pounds pork butt, cut in 1-inch cubes
  • 1.5 cups diced onion
  • 1 tablespoon minced garlic
  • 1 pound red or white potatoes, cut in 1-inch cubes
  • 2-3 teaspoons salt, to taste
  • 3 cups roasted, peeled, chopped green chiles
  • 3 tablespoons diced red bell pepper
  • 2 tablespoons chopped cilantro, or to taste

1. Heat the oil in a 6-quart pot over high heat and brown the meat in batches. Set aside.

2. In the same oil, sauté the onions until golden. Add the garlic and sauté 1 minute. Return the meat to the pan along with any juices that have accumulated.

3. Add the broth, potatoes and salt, and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for 1 hour, until the potatoes are tender.

4. Add the green chiles and bell pepper, and cook 15-20 minutes more. Add the cilantro, stir and serve.

You can substitute beef sirloin and beef broth for the pork and chicken broth. But that would be wrong. Ditto using canned green chile. If you didn’t score some freshly roasted New Mexican chile this fall, buy some poblanos and Anaheims from the local grocery, blacken them on the grill or under the broiler, put them in a Ziploc bag and chuck them into the freezer for 15 minutes. Remove, peel, seed and chop. A 50-50 mix of poblanos and Anaheims should work nicely.