Hispanic - - Page 4

by BS

Stuff This! Top 10 Most Creative Stuffing Recipes

As you may have gathered by now, we’re not exactly Thanksgiving traditionalists here at Endless Simmer. But stuffing is one thing we simply will not go without. (You gotta have something to soak up all those pumpkin martinis, right?) Of course, we’re not talkin’ bout plain old sausage-spiked bread stuffing. These 10 creative recipes get crazy with the size, shape and flavor of Thanksgiving stuffing.

10. Stuffing Muffins

We’ve seen this one quite a bit lately and think it is just cute as all hell. Bake your stuffing in a muffin tin and then serve it in place of rolls. Genius.
Recipe: Cooking on the Side

9. Mofongo Stuffing

It doesn’t get much tastier than mofongo — a Puerto Rican specialty of fried green plantains mashed up with bacon, sofrito and olive oil. Oh wait, it does get better. You can stuff that baby in a turkey. Yum.
Recipe: Always Order Dessert

8. “Meatloaf” Stuffing

Cranberry sauce isn’t the only thing that’s allowed to bring a weird pre-packaged shape to the T-day table. Bake your stuffing in a loaf pan and serve everyone a hearty slice of meatloaf stuffing.
Recipe: Bread et Butter

7. Fried Stuffing Croquettes

This one’s intended for leftover stuffing, but if you’re ambitious you can make it the day of. Rolled-up balls of stuffing are coated in panko (love that bread-on-bread action), then deep-fried. For a special surprise, toss your other leftovers (turkey, gravy) in the center so they ooze out when you take a bite.
Recipe: Menu in Progress

by BS

Feed Us Back: Comments of the Week

– I’m a little surprised that blondee47‘s thoughts on Top Chef: Just Desserts didn’t stir up more controversy here at ES:

This show is a big gamble for these reasons:
…all I can say to Gail is that she had better not put one pound on because if it isn’t written in her contract then it should be (for her sake). All woman have a much higher tendency to gain weight quicker than her male counterparts.
… if she does unfortunately begin to gain weight this will, singlehandedly, be the beginning of the end for pastry chefs and bakers everywhere; not to mention her own self-esteem
…finally, depending on the pros and cons of Top Chef Desserts, it could very well be an added bonus to the Obama campaign for healthy eating and the cutting out of high gylcemix indexed foods of which Desserts rank the highest, fruit included or it can raise the awareness of portion control with every aspect of each challenge.

Gail there is a lot riding on this for the average viewer and these are just my thoughts on it as a non-industry person but nevertheless a lover of food.

– Much less controversial are chilaquiles. But Don adds a new spin:

in Desserts / TV 1 comments

by tvff

¡Chilaquiles!

I know I’ve mentioned it once or twice before, but I seemingly fall in love with a new dish every time I go on vacation or take a business trip somewhere new. It’s only natural, then, that I want to come home and relive a little bit of the memories.

Sometimes, this leads me to an ambitious desire to create perfectly-crafted plates of spaghetti carbonara or a top-notch French press café au lait, knowing that it’s worth the effort if I can just recreate a bit of that greatness. And then, sometimes, I’m just willing to raid my pantry for a cheap imitation.

The gears started turning for me a few weeks back when gansie shared her experience pairing a fried egg and some potato chips (hat tip Monica Bhide). That took me back to my honeymoon in Mexico and my first exposure to chilaquiles. In case you’re not familiar with the dish, it’s the ultimate hangover breakfast food: leftover fried tortillas simmered in salsa and topped with whatever else you may have laying around. And if one of those things happens to be an egg, all the better.

It’s a wonderful dish because it’s filling, it’s fried and it’s scalable, meaning you can include as much or as little above and beyond the basic ingredients of tortillas and salsa. If you happen to have some pulled chicken or carnitas around, it’s a perfect way to take a snack or breakfast dish and turn it into a dinner entrée.

The preparation below is certainly geared to a non-Mexican kitchen, so please don’t trash me in the comments for being inauthentic. I’m sure your abuela’s version is vastly superior. I’m looking for something easy that I can assemble while nursing a pounding headache.

in Breakfast / Eggs / Featured / Recipe 5 comments

by Borracho

Friday Fuck Up: Taking the Red Eye

They look so delicious, right? But every chili pepper has a dark side. So far I have only written a few blogs for ES so I am filled with pride and a little shame that I can already add this post to the long legacy of Friday Fuck Ups.

After my initial post for ES, I have been enthused with trying out some new ideas and so I thought I would make a few dishes this weekend (which will be posted in the near future): poblano and chorizo risotto, tilapia tacos, homemade tortillas and a few salsas you’ve already heard about. I picked up all my ingredients including jalapeno, poblano and chipotle peppers. I only needed a dozen jalapenos so I roasted them on the grill and decided that I should be fine just using my bare hands to scrape out the seeds….

in Personal 9 comments

by BS

Don’t Stop Sous Vide-ing

One last sous vide post for ‘ya!

When we last left our humble SousVide Supreme machine, we had learned that cooking sous vide is not quite as revelatory as Top Chef had led us to believe, although it is pretty darn impressive for cooking meat exactly perfect through every bite. Now you know we weren’t gonna send this bad boy back before finding out how it can handle an egg.

And once again, the answer is “perfectly…if you’ve got all day.”

in Eggs / Recipe 1 comments

by Borracho

Carnita-Vore

Editors’ Note: Please welcome new blogger Borracho, who is joining the ES team to share stories of Hispanic cooking, foodie football fests, and more.

The wifey and I recently ventured out to a new local Mexican restaurant, and due to my almost maniacal obsession with all South of the Border cooking, I was delighted to see a simple carnitas plate on the menu. However, what came out, while very good, was not exactly what I was looking for. It is tough to find carnitas that are the same at any two places. The word carnitas just means “little meats,” so they can be made of beef or pork and can be fried, braised, put in a slow cooker, thrown on a Foreman grill…you get the picture.

By the time we left the restaurant, my mouth was already watering at the idea of coming up with my own version. For me, ideal carnitas are the crispy on the outside, moist on the inside nuggets of pork gold I had from a street vendor in Mexico. That version had been simmered for hours in a large amount of lard. While I believe lard does not get nearly enough respect, leaving a couple pounds of it simmering on the stove for 10 hours would just be cruel to our dog, Guinness, so in stead I decided to go with a mojo as the base liquid to cook my carnitas in.

in Pig / Recipe 3 comments

by BS

You Can Still Soup in Summer

Who says soup’s not for summers? Rachel from over at Good Bite brings us a one-pot recipe that’s prefect for drowning the heat in.

The best summers in Texas are those spent indoors. For three months the heat blazes and iced tea becomes a daily necessity, along with light delicious fare. With summer staples like sweet yellow corn and squash readily available, thoughts of barbeques, picnics and bowls of caldo brimming with vegetables fill my head. Infinitely adaptable, simple and sublime, caldo vegetal is a Mexican vegetable soup that begins with a basic stock and results in a trifecta of spicy, tangy, cheesy harmony.

A veritable laundry list of vegetables are first sautéed in a great big pot with plenty of onions and garlic. Gently rubbing the herbs between my hands, the heady aroma of Mexican oregano infuses the squash, carrots, jalapeños and green chilies with a warm, earthy essence. Chicken stock fills the pot, mingling with smoky ground cumin, coriander and fresh cilantro. Sneaking in for a taste, the slow burn of the spicy broth and chilies serves up just the right amount of heat to slurp and savor the rich complexity of flavors. As the caldo gently bubbles on the stovetop, big rounds of corn bathe in the simmering broth. In shallow bowls, yellow squash and zucchini peak out from under the golden liquid as sprigs of cilantro and fresh limes lay alongside crunchy tortilla chips and sweet corn. Difficult as it may be to disturb this beautiful arrangement, a generous sprinkling of cheese goes on top followed by a less than delicate stir until the caldo is delightfully messy looking. Simple, delicious and completely casual, caldo vegetal is light summer fare at its best and a soup worthy of cranking up the air conditioning.

Caldo Vegetal (Mexican Vegetable Soup)

in Veggie 0 comments

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