Hispanic - - Page 8

by gansie

Los Frijoles Y El Arroz Sólo

Editors Note: I’ll just be honest. BS is on spring break with his girl Alex and I’m in charge of keeping ES afloat. So don’t be shocked when every other post is from a contributor. If you’d like to guest blog on ES this week, the spotlight is yours. Send me an email if you’re up for some snarky food writing – gansie@endlesssimmer.com

Here’s Belmontmedia. You can find more of her writing on Mostly Cabbages.

Also, you’ll see why I admire Belmont so much. Her definition of cheating is amazingly broad.

So I’ve been trying to make my own lunch. I work downtown, and let’s face it, the lunch options are not great. There’s only so many Potbelly sandwiches one can consume before going completely crazy. Also, I’d like to think that whatever I made for dinner (like the poop/puke soup) was so good, I’d like to revel in its deliciousness for another 12 hours and have it for lunch. Sometimes, however, it just doesn’t work.

With that in mind I sent gansie the following e-mail:

from: belmontmedina
to: ganise
date: Thu, March 5, 2009 at 2:24 PM
subject: I feel like SUCH a fraud

So I got home at like 10 last night after working late, going to this zipcar thing, and going to the gym and I was STARVING. So I went out and grabbed a burger at Ulah.

As a result of last night, I didn’t get up in enough time to make lunch this morning, so I remembered I had some leftover rice (from lentils) and grabbed a can of black beans out of the cupboard.

So I am literally eating beans and rice for lunch. Beans. Rice. No onion, no garlic, no peppers, no nothing. (I did find S&P and butter in the office cabinets though).

Pic

in Uncategorized 0 comments

by tvff

Gansie is Rubbing Off on Me

The day job brought me down to D.C. last week and I had the opportunity to put a face to the pixels, as gansie and I grabbed a hot chocolate at Artfully Chocolate | Kingsbury Confections. It was a very nice hot chocolate — semi-sweet chocolate infused with lavender — and I really liked it despite the fact that I felt slightly ridiculous ordering a “Liz Taylor.” The conversation was quite enjoyable, too, but I’m afraid that I came down with something while I was there.

Yep, I think I have the “egg on top” virus, and I’m pretty certain I caught it from gansie.

You can see the latest manifestation of this in the picture above. That would be my first pass at huevos rancheros. Normally, my attempts at cooking Mexican dishes are as good as my ability to speak Spanish. In other words, they suck. But if there is something I’ve learned from gansie, it’s that an egg on top of anything makes it better. A note on the picture: Not the best quality…you can see why Mrs. TVFF and I are on the market for a digital SLR…but I was so happy with how perfect the yolk looked on top of the tortilla that I had to take a picture.

The runny eggs were darn near perfect, and it worked well with a simple salsa (made from scratch) and fried corn tortillas. I’m still kicking myself for not picking up some queso blanco and maybe some sort of beans (black? pinto? refried?), but I guess that just means I’ll have to try it again sometime soon.

Although this dish features a couple of fried eggs, it’s poached eggs that I’ve been messing around with lately…

by BS

Bourdain is Back

Yup, Endless Simmer’s favorite hero/villain is back in action with a new season of Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations. The first episode of the season, which airs tonight at 10 eastern, has Tony traipsing through Mexico, soaking up the sun and salsa, and making us really fucking mad about winter.

At least with Bourdain back and Top Chef returning, we won’t have to go outside much this week.

in Celebs / TV 5 comments

by gansie

How I Met Mariah Carey

I’m sure a lot of you are wondering how I know frequent ES commenter, Mariah Carey. Well, believe it or not, before she became a famous singer married to a little boy, we used to work together in Houston. Yes, this foul-mouthed Jerzy Girl spent almost 6 months working in God’s Country—with Mariah Carey. I almost got into a wreck the first time I saw a gun-rack on the back of a truck. Christ. Texas.

Anyway, so I know this might sound super obvious, but people eat Tex-Mex all the time in Houston. I just never really thought about it before I lived there. But for like every meal, people would want to eat Mexican. It shocked me. I mean, going out for Mexican was like a once a week, at most twice a week, thing, not numerous times a day. Somehow, I got accustomed to it. And I now no longer can stomach a margarita and chili con queso dip. I did, however, find a completely adequate substitution for my fav hang-over food, fried egg and cheese on a begal. It’s absolutely perfect and I can’t believe I never thought to do it before.

Right near our campaign HQ there was this dive of a Mex joint. I mean, terrible. But, they served the most amazing egg dish (and they even served it for lunch!) It was 2 small tortillas filled with scrambled eggs and

in Breakfast / Eggs / Recipe / Veggie 4 comments

by BS

Feed Us Back: Comments of the Week

– A full 50 percent of you say mustard and hot dogs belong together (and mustard narrowly avoids a runoff). The ketchup haters were out in full force on this one:

SAG: People that put ketchup on their dog give me the chills…

But Vio just can’t believe it: My stomach hurts from this poll… It’s ketchup all the way! Mustard is for sausage!!! Ketchup is for hot dogs!

And rooms has an even better suggestion:

in Politics 0 comments

by pinch of minch

A Recipe for the Rest of Us

Breaking news- Endless Simmer most resourceful site on the web!

I’m not quite sure why I love this blog so much. I’m a horrible cook. Horrible isn’t even the right way to describe it. It’s more like bad cooking karma. I look at a piece of toast and it burns itself. Steaks on the grill mysteriously become well-done and chewy in my presence. But, being a huge fan of food, I visit ES to read about BS and gansie’s cooking adventures and look at 80 Proof’s pretty pics, and whenever I’m invited to eat someone else’s cooking, I’m the first one to show up with fork in hand and bib tucked in.

So my friend Marcy is hosting a dinner party, sends me the menu and it looks phenomenal. Yellow pepper and white bean soup. Eggplant Manicotti. I call Marcy and ask if I can bring a couple of friends (an hour before- a serious food party faux pas) and she says she may not have enough food for everyone. I then proceed to blurt out, without thinking, a series of words that I have never, ever, put in the same sentence: “I can make a dish!” She says great, see you in an hour. Oops.

What did I just get myself into? Heart palpitations, pacing around the kitchen, general freaking out ensues. I am a culinary catastrophe waiting to happen, and I just offered to make something?? So I go on Endless Simmer, come across El’s guacamole recipe and decide what the hell, I’ll give it a go.

So I present to you a different kind of recipe. A recipe for survival in the kitchen for one who can’t cook to save her life, and if she ever did, she’d die anyway because she would burn the house down.

in Recipe / Veggie 6 comments

by gansie

La Comida Mas Fresca

(Crabs scuttle in the sand)

Editors Note: Maybe it’s not so bad going back to school. As a teacher that is. ES friend jakeSG teaches DC youth from September to June and then takes a rock star trip in the summer. I’d KILL for a summer vaca. Regardless, jakeSG went back to Costa Rica this year (here’s his take on last year) to lead teens through the hills and farms and lakes of this gorgeous land. You can see the rest of his beautiful pics here and below jakeSG details his fresh from the farm meal.

by: jakeSG

I eat well in Costa Rica, but nothing prepared me for the cooking of Ana Cerdas Rodriguez. The thirty-five year old mother of three spends days jotting down recipes in a handwritten cookbook, some of which she learns from the occasional cooking show on one of the three channels the family gets in Guadalupe de Rivas. Most of the food I get in these homes is terrific, but they all lack the presentation that Anaisa labors to achieve.

She outdoes even the nicest Tico restaurant I’ve been to, framing her gallo pinto (beans and rice for breakfast) in a glass to achieve that perfect shape. Her maduros (slowly sauteed green bananas) are delicate and sweet, never burned.

The Fresh Meal took place on Dia de la Madre, a day in which she shouldn’t have been cooking, but she still intended to show us what it meant to use what you have around. I’ve been reading a lot about food lately (Michael Pollan and Russ Parsons) and the underlying, constant theme is: fresh food is better. Period.

The Meal

The trout was bred by Miguel in his man-made backyard pond; there are over 30 fish swimming there. The twins went about to take out 13 of the biggest fish (I succeeded in catching one puny one), although I did manage to stay dry — something that can’t be said for a cousin of theirs who got a much closer look after slipping on a wet rock.

in Desserts / Fish / Food Travel / Photos 6 comments

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