Hispanic - - Page 5

by BS

Taco Topping Revealed

Well maybe this one was not as crazy as I thought. While I loved your guesses of pickled daikon radish, sauerkraut, curried onions and more, a bunch of you, starting with our own ML, guessed that my mystery taco topping was in fact spaghetti squash.

Finishing up the winter squash season, the veggie gf and I baked up a butternut squash (fine, I’ll admit, we microwaved it — but almost every recipe online says to do it that way!) And it only takes like ten minutes. Our first use was for some faux sesame noodles —spaghetti squash mixed with soy sauce, sesame oil, rice vinegar, crushed red pepper, sesame seeds and a little sugar—it was delicious, but if you’ve ever made an S squash before, you know we had about two pounds leftover.

Name That Taco Topping

The veggie gf and I got a little crazy with our tacos recently, finishing them off with an unsuspecting ingredient — the glistening yellow-y stuff on top that kinda looks like cheese.

Who knows what the secret topping is? Your guesses in the comments please. (Don’t guess cheese, fools.)

by BS

In The Mix: Coca Leaf Liqueur

Our recent rundown of the Top 10 New Things to Put in Your Drink inspired ES’s newest feature, In The Mix, a look at the coolest/craziest/most outlandish new ingredients — alcohols and mixers both — we’ve seen popping up in cocktails.

In honor of St. Patrick’s Day we’re kicking it off with an alcohol that’s relatively green to the market and also very, very green.

Agwa de Bolivia starts with coca leaves (yes, those coca leaves) plucked in Bolivia, transported by armed guard and sent to Amsterdam to have their cocaine alkaloids removed (sorry, kids). The coca is then distilled and mixed with stimulants like ginseng and guarana to mimic the “oxygen buzz” Bolivian farmers get when chewing coco leaves at high altitudes.

Our tasting team tried Agwa straight (ugh) and mixed with club soda and lime, which brought out a refreshing, floral flavor everyone liked, although if I experienced an “oxygen buzz” I have to say it wasn’t so wildly different from a good old beer buzz.

Normally I’m a proponent of just drinking Guinness on St. Patrick’s Day, but if you must imbibe something unnaturally green, you could do worse than Agwa. For something crazier than club soda and lime, the Agwa folks have a whole bunch of more creative drink recipes over on their YouTube channel, or try it at bars like New York’s Macondo, where it’s mixed with honey, agave nectar, avocado (!) and lime.

in Drinks 0 comments

by BS

What’s In Season: Cherimoya

Spring is this close and that means our long winter nightmare of farmers markets with only apples and sweet potatoes is just about over. Hopefully, this will be the first weekend when we show up to the market and say, “ooooh, what the hell is that?!”

To help us decode our anticipated bounty, our pals over at Good Bite have launched a weekly column on What’s In Season, focusing today on something I’ll admit I’d never heard of:

You may have seen this irregular, green, leathery-skinned fruit at the supermarket but it originates from South America. A cherimoya, or custard apple, tastes like a combination of banana, pineapple, and papaya with a cream-colored flesh flecked with black seeds. Cherimoyas should be firm without blemishes, and can be stored at room temperature until slightly soft and ripe. To serve, chill the cherimoya, cut it in half, spoon out the seeds and eat the flesh with a spoon.

As far as cooking, cherimoyas are frequently used in dessert recipes such as custards and puddings, hence the name “custard apple.” Because cherimoyas are in season right now at local farmers markets, next time you see one of these odd-looking fruits, rather than stare at it unknowingly, score a cherimoya to try raw or in one of the following recipes:

Top 10 New Things to Put in Your Drink

We’ve certainly never been against drinking here at ES — it just traditionally takes a back seat to eating. However, in the last year we’ve found ourselves getting more and more excited about cocktails — because every time we go out we discover our favorite ingredients have migrated from the plate to the glass. From fruits and vegetables to spices and more, here are our top 10 favorite new things to mix in our drinks.

10. Saffron

A saffron ice cube anchors the Venetian, one of several new food-inspired cocktails at Tulio in Seattle.

Not just for paella anymore, the Spanish spice has started showing up in cocktail glasses, too. Saffron Restaurant and Lounge in Minneapolis has mixed the pricier-than-gold flakes into saffron-mango mojitos, saffron-blood orange martinis, and their current offering, the gin-based Saffron Rose. Tulio, an Italian restaurant in Seattle, recently introduced The Venetian — a vodka cocktail poured over an orange-y saffron ice cube. For those experimenting at home, the folks over at Video Jug have a video on how to mix a saffron vodka martini. (Tulio photo: Evan Johnson)

9. Beets

Fresh beet juice, ginger and vodka make up the Beetnik at Colorado's Dogwood Cocktail Cabin.

It’s hard to make a drink look more dramatic than when filled up with bright red beet juice, as in the beet sangria at New York’s Tailor or the Beetnik, a vodka-ginger-beet concoction served at Crested Butte, Colorado’s Dogwood Cocktail Cabin. Meanwhile, the gals at The Humble Kitchen have a recipe for their own tequila-based Beetnik. (Dogwood photo: eenwall)

8. Mole

Mole bitters liven up the Palermo Gentleman at Death + Co. in New York.

Mexico’s spicy-sweet chocolate treat is making the surprising transition from tamales to cocktails via Bittermens Bitters newest product, Xocolatl Mole Bitters. A neat way to add quite a substantial kick to any drink, the mole bitters are showing up in new cocktails like the tequila-based Chipilo at Brooklyn’s Buttermilk Channel and several options at Manhattan’s Death + Co. (Photo: Vidiot)

7. Sriracha

Every Top Chef contestant’s favorite secret ingredient can save a cocktail menu too, as in “El Scorcho,” a fiery mix of habanero infused vodka, sriracha, and jalapeno foam at Bend, Oregon’s Blacksmith restaurant. The sauce also makes a great replacement for Tabasco in bloody Marys — the blog White on Rice Couple has a great recipe, and if you want to get super-serious, check out their instructions on how to make sriracha from scratch. (Photo: White on Rice Couple)

6. Chinese Five Spice

A Chinese five spice grilled lemon garnishes the Fortune Teller at Bar Pleiades in New York.

Another ingredient Chinese chefs may be shocked to discover in American cocktails, C5S is showing up both as a garnish, as in the Fortune Teller drink served at the Surrey Hotel‘s new Bar Pleiades in New York, and as the basis of a drink, such as Imbibe magazine’s Five-Spice Fizz. (Photo: Bar Pleiades)

Next: Top 5 New Things to Put in Your Drink

in Drinks / Eggs / Endless Cocktails / Featured / Lists / Trends 13 comments

by BS

It’s Ice Cream Season Somewhere

It’s time for a long overdue report from my trip this fall to Puerto Rico. The beaches were great, the music was captivating, people were friendly, but I’m sure you know I was mostly just there for the food.

It’s well known that these people can do amazing things with plantains, but I was more impressed and surprised by their many creative uses of corn. Nearly every crowded street corner and popular beach has a vendor selling sorullitos—tiny, tasty little fried cornmeal sticks, sometimes plain, sometimes filled with cheese, always to be dipped in that Puerto Rican delicacy Ariel mentioned yesterday: MayoKetchup. Then of course there are also the omnipresent arepas, corn cakes stuffed with meat or cheese, available both in fancy restaurants and at many street vendors for a dollar or two.

But I was most taken with what you see above: corn ice cream. Seriously! Rex Cream, a little ice cream parlor in the western town of Mayaguez, makes this crazy concoction, which is sweet, with just a little crunch of cornmeal in it, and liberally topped with cinammon.

Feed Us Back: What’s the craziest ice cream you’ve ever eaten?

in Desserts / Food Travel 5 comments

by BS

Plantains Three Ways

Fruit is pretty great and all, but how much better is it when deep-fried? Am I right?

Well, I know I am. Having grown up on Nuyorican restaurants, I’ve been a pretty rabid plantain fan for a long time. But one longtime frustration was that I could not, for the life of me, figure out how to recreate these delicious little fritters at home. But, after much experimentation and web browsing, I’m happy to report I’ve started to get the hang of it. The secret turns out to be the same secret as every other delicious restaurant food: you’ve got to throw all delusions of semi-healthiness to the wind. Oil, baby. Lots of it. Like seriously, gallons. Cooking plantains in a tablespoon or two of oil always resulted in bland, starchy discs with not-quite-right texture, but once I worked up the courage to really douse them in oil, I’ve been able to make both sweet, rich plantains from super-ripe bananas, as well as crispy, more hearty ones from green bananas.

You don’t necessarily need a deep-fryer, but you need to cut those plantains thin, fill your saucepan up with a whole lot of the golden stuff, get it nice and bubbly, then let ’em fry for just a few minutes.

That dilemma solved, obviously I was ready to start getting a little wacky. As much as I love eating plain crispy plantains with the simple garlic sauce they serve at Puerto Rican places, I wondered if they couldn’t stand for a little spicing up at home, so I took three different attempts at crafting a more creative plantain. No, this is not a lame, haute cusine “three-way” dish, but merely three different ways they can be prepared…