Matt's Card File

What Matt cooked

[mattscardfile]

Ingredients (in order of appearance)

2 bottles of stout

6 bell peppers: 2 green, 2 red, 1 orange, 1 yellow

6 large Polish sausages (uncookt), about 2.7 lbs altogether

olive oil

6 grocery-store “torpedo rolls”

mustard

kraut

Method

Opend the 2 bottles of stout, pourd them carefully into a big measuring cup, let them warm up & get a little flat. 

Chopt the onions and peppers medium style. 

Vented the sausages and browned on all 4 sides in a big wide pan over medium heat, 2 minutes on each side; then removed from the pan. 

Fried the peppers & onions in the same pan with some olive oil and salt & pepper. 

Once the peppers&onions got a little soft, added the sausages back in and the beer. 

Covered and let it come to a boil. 

Uncovered and let almost all the beer boil away. 

Split a roll and popped in a sausage. Spread mustard all over it. Toppd with kraut and the cookt peppers&onions. 

Turnd out perfect. 

[mattscardfile]

This as a glaze for collard greens?  

UPDATE: Did it. Wasnt that great.  

[mattscardfile]

Greens

Washd 2 bunches collard greens well and sliced into ribbons.  Sautéed a little in olive oil in a medium-size, light steel pot with comino molido, salt and pepper. 

Added: Homemade chicken broth, maybe 3 cups Apple cider vinegar, a good pour A couple spoonfulls of honey The juice of a large orange

Boild it til the greens were done, which was surprisingly quick.  Straind the greens with a colander and saved the pot liquor for breakfast the next day. 

Really good. 

[mattscardfile]

Leek and Potato Soup

Sautéed the white parts of 3 leeks with a lot of olive oil in a large, thin steel pot.  Added 4 russet potatoes cut into pieces and a pint of cream.  Refilld the cream carton with water and pourd it into the pot sevral times until the potatoes were coverd.  Boild on high, stirring often to make sure nothing burnd, until the potatoes were quite soft.  Jen blended it smoothish with an immersion blender. 

Reallyreally good. 

[mattscardfile]

Eggplant with Black Vinegar and Stuff

Choppt them all up fairly large:

2 ylo onions 4 red peppers 2 fat eggplants a head of garlic 2 fat tomatoes. 

Morternpessld a few Sichuan peppercorns. 

In the big cast-iron skillet in a lot of olive oil sautéed the onions & peppers good & soft.  I meant to fry my chiles along with, but I forgot and had to put them in later. 

Added sherry and let it boil away. 

Turnd the fire down and added in everything else:

the eggplant garlic tomatoes (the trooth is I forgot to put these in til after it was in the oven for 20′ or so) Sichuan peppercorns 4 chiles Japonase lots of black vinegar some soy sauce a lot of fish oil a spoonful of 5 spice (which was way too much) a couple spoonfuls of hoisin sauce. 

Put the skillet in a 250° oven for 6 hours or so, stirring evry 20–30′, til it got real goopy. 

[mattscardfile]

Peach Salsa

2 ylo peaches, ripe for eating 2 serranos, guts removed 4 garlic cloves, dry fried til black outside & mushy inside Half a white onion, also dry fried just for a minute til glistening Drop of olive oil Juice of a quarter lime, well squeezed Bunch of big-grained sea salt

…Blended in the blender with just enuf water to get it going.  Now I leave it in the cooler and see how it tastes tomorrow. 

[mattscardfile]

My Next Salsa

Peach.  Here’s my idea: peaches, raw; garlic, pan roasted; serranos, raw, smashed up; white onion, maybe raw, maybe cooked just a little bit; salt of course; lime.  In the blender.  

[mattscardfile]

Collard Greens with Chipotle-Honey Sauce

The day before:

Dry fried 8 cloves of garlic, in their peels, in a small cast-iron skillet atop a high flame, until they had a lotta black spots on the outside.  In a blender, blended the now pasty meat of those garlic cloves; half a cup of honey; half a cup of balsamic vinegar; the end of a can of chipotles in adobo, which amounted to two chiles and a bunch of the juice; a handful of salt; a good sprinkle of comino molido; and a dollop of olive oil.  Put it into a jar and left it in the fridge overnite. 

Cut 1 sweet onion into like quarter-inch rings, removing the peel.  Sat them in a cast-iron skillet with a lot of flavorless cooking oil over a high flame until they were brown, almost black.  Flipped them over and did the same thing.  Let them cool, dabbed some grease off and sliced them up.  Put them into a jar and left them in the fridge overnite. 

The next day:

Washt and slicet 4 bunches of collard greens.  Put them into a large bowl, sprinkled with a lot of salt, doused with white vinegar, covered with cold water and let soak for 30 minutes.  Smashed and choppt up, fine, 8 cloves of garlic (that’s 16 garlic cloves all day, like ⅔ of a head).  Slicet up 4 strips of thick-cut bacon.  In my big Allclad pot I renderd the bacon a little bit then fried the greens (drained) and garlic in it.  After the collards got dark green and the garlic got good smelly I added a small spoonful of smoked sweet paprika, a small spoonful of pasilla chile powder, about half of the honey-vinegar-chipotle dressing I made the previous day, all of the onions I fried the previous day, and a little pour of mirin.  Let it boil on medium heat until the greens were real done. 

I strongly approve. 

[mattscardfile]

Chipotle Salsa

Took ten real nice roma tomatoes, quarterd and cored, and roasted the heck out of them in my big cast-iron skillet.  When they were disintegrated and sticky and smelled amazing, I deglazed the pan with tequila blanco, scooped it all into a large stainless-steel bowl, and salted.  Choppt up one white onion and soaked it in balsamic vinegar, tequila and sea salt.  In my smaller cast-iron skillet I roasted a half a head of garlic, cloves separated and left in their peels, til they were quite black.  Popped those into a smaller bowl, and left evrything to cool while I rode the train downtown with my family and played in a fountain.  Came back.  The house smelled unbelievable.  Peeld the garlic, drained the onions thru a colander, and added them both to the tomatoes.  Then I added the end of a can of chipotles, which amounted to about 2 and a half peppers and a bunch of the goop they’re packed in.  Ground it all up in the food processor adding a little water til it was a texture I liked, not quite smooth with a few bits of onion still discernible.  Then heated up a generous amount of oil in the big cast-iron (you’re supposed to use lard, probly becuz you can get that shit Really hot, and of course for its flavor; but I don’t keep no lard around ’cuz the hydrogenated stuff I wouldnt touch with a 39-and-a-half-foot pole and the fresh stuff is kind of expensive & hard to find and anyway I worry about not using it all up before it gets rancid) and pourd the contents of the food processor into it.  Fried 5 or 7 minutes until the color kind of changed, tasted it, fainted cuz it was so good, forced Jen to taste it, let it cool, tasted it some more, and poured it into jars.  Then tasted it some more. 

[mattscardfile]

Here’s the plan.  (I’ll let you know how it goes….) 

can o chipotles couplea tomatoes (roma preferred) a head or so garlic 1 white onion lard or other fat balsamic vin tequila

heat up cast iron skillet chop onion put it in a bowl dump balsamic vin & tequila on it cover with water let soak chop tomatoes into a few pieces each remove the paper from the garlic and separate the cloves but leave then in their peels roast the tomatoes & garlic in the cast iron skill until they're pretty black drain the onions put the tomatoes, garlic (without the peel), onions into the food processor with 1 chipotle chile and a punch of salt process a little and taste if you want it more spicy, add another pepper and process again heat up fat in the Allclad pot, almost to the point of smoking fry the salsa until the color deepens

[mattscardfile]

Excellent-looking salsa primer

[mattscardfile]

Meatless Open-a-can Chili with Red Beans & Hominy

Big heavy pot oil 1 ylo onion 2 poblano peppers about a head of garlic salt & pepper

2 cans of small red beans 2 cans of ro★tel 1 large can of white hominy

1 pak of Sazón Goya

1 chipotle pepper in adobo sauce, all smashed up

Healthy sprinkles of:

comino molido achiote molido pasilla molido

Cooked awhile, added the juice of half a lime

Finisht with:

green onion cilantro more lime sour cream. 

[mattscardfile]

Pickled Red Onion

The salsa bar is an essential part of a good taco stand, at least in my part of the world. Practices vary from place to place but here in Denver the typical taquería protocol is to order from the counter then take your naked tacos, with or without onions & cilantro, over to the salsa bar where you may find many wonderful things to dress them with, such as…several kinds of red, green and orange sauces; radishes; cucumbers; limes of course; jalapeños, pickled or fried; perhaps even a cabbage salsa if you’re lucky. Evry salsa bar is unique, and many of the city's taquerías pride themselves on their salsa bars. The local weekly's annual Best of Denver even has a category for best salsa bar.

Denver is not the only place that's got salsa bars, but they are a signifier of Denver-ness.

My most favorite delicacy to find on a salsa bar tho is those obscene pink pickled onions. (I also like the pickled jalapeños & carrots.) I've been making them at home a lot, with a recipe I got from my mother. Here is her recipe word-for-word, followed by the way I do it: 

Pickled Red Onions

1 pound firm red onions, thinly sliced

1 quart boiling water

1 c. white vinegar

1 c. cold water

1 T. sugar

several pinches salt

2 bay leaves

10 peppercorns, lightly crushed

2 or 3 marjoram or thyme branches, or a few pinches dried

Separate the onions into rounds and put them in a colander. Pour the boiling water over them, then put them into a bowl with the rest of the ingredients. Cover and keep refrigerated. The color will begin to infuse in about 20 minutes.

If you want a crisper pickle, you can omit the boiling water step, but it will take several hours for the color to infuse.

I boil 1 qt. water, slice 1 red onion, and pour the water over as instructed above. I take a 32-oz pickle jar, put some oregano, black peppercorns crushed with the side of a knife, red chili flakes, bay, salt, and 1 Tbs sugar in the bottom. Add 1c water, 1c white vin and shake it up. Stuff in the onions and pop it into the cooler. Can be used almost right away and prefrubly within the first few days. After a while they get even pinker and lose their bite.

Rock on.

[mattscardfile]

Jen made this and it was incredible.  I reproduces the method heeyre:

(She subbed rosemary for the parsley.) 

Ingredients

1 crusty loaf, preferably sourdough or Vienna

¾ cup shredded Mozzarella cheese (or other melting cheese)

Garlic Butter

100g /3.5oz / 7 tbsp unsalted butter, softened

2 large garlic cloves, minced

¾ tsp salt

1 tbsp fresh parsley, finely chopped

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F.

Combine butter, garlic and salt in a heatproof bowl and melt in the microwave. Stir through parsley.

Cut the bread on a diagonal into 2cm/1" diamonds but do not cut all the way through the bread (just like you would cut a french stick for garlic bread).

Use your fingers or a knife to pry open each crack and drizzle in a teaspoon of butter and stuff in a pinch of cheese. This might sound like a bit of an effort, but I promise you it is worth it! You don't need to be super neat, it's nice to have some of the butter drizzled over the crust.

Wrap with foil and bake for 15minutes until the cheese has mostly melted, then unwrap and bake for 5 minutes more to make the bread nice and crusty.

Serve immediately.

Notes

To make ahead, after wrapping with foil, wrap with cling wrap as well. Store in fridge overnight or freeze to store for longer. To cook, thaw then follow recipe instructions to bake.

The denser the bread, the better the pieces will hold together when pulled off.

Use already baked bread, not uncooked bread dough.

[mattscardfile]

Chicken Tinga II

I bought 3 chicken legs and 3 chicken breasts, with their skins and bones.  Put the crockpot on hi and put all the chicken in the bottom with a splash of broth.  The broth made it kind of soupy and maybe I could of given it a miss.  Apparently I forgot that I'd come to the same conclusion last time. 

A white onion choppt medium, a few bay leaves, oregano, 2 poblano peppers choppt medium, and a small head of garlic choppt up, all fried in 3 strips of thick-cut bacon, choppt kind of small, in my large Allclad pan.  A capful of vodka, a capful of cider vinegar. 

Into the crockpot on top of the chicken went:

The contents of that pan

2 small (12oz) cans of crusht fire-roasted tomatoes

Comino molido

A cinnamon stick, broken in half, which I maybe shouldnt have broken in half, cuz it made it harder to get all the pieces out

Like 3 and a half spoonfuls of puréed chipotles in adobo. 

Altogether the chicken cooked on hi between an hour and an hour and a half.  Cooked lo another about 3 and a half hours I think, stirring evry 1ce in a wile, until the meat easily fell apart under a fork.  Removed the chicken pieces, shredded, and discarded skin & bones.  Put the shredded meat back into the crockpot and let it sit in the sauce for a while, pot turnd off. 

Mm, girl. 

Ate on tostadas with a bottom layer of refritos plus pickled red onion, cotija cheese and of course cilantro. 

[mattscardfile]

I have made a thousand pots of charro beans and I seem to do it differently evry time but I never write down what I do.  So, in the pursuit of a better pot of beans, here is

Charro Beans I

1 lb anasazi beans (from Adobe Milling of Dove Creek, Colorado), sorted, washt, soakd ~8hours.  Draind, washt again, cookt hi in crockpot 1hour.  5 slices of thick-cut bacon sliced widthwise into maybe quarter-inch strips.  Fried a little in the big Allclad pan.  One and a half white onions, choppt big, fried in that.  Oregano (plenty), 3 smallish bay leaves.  One and a half smallish heads of garlic.  24 oz tallboy of Miller High Life.  Let that boil down.  2 whole chipotle peppers, crusht with a fork; 2 cans of Ro★tel. 

Cooked beans lo in crockpot ~3 more hours.  Added the contents of the pan + 4 chopped up tomatillos + a healthy sprinkle of comino molido.  Cookd lo for another bout 4½ hours then added 2 bunches of cilantro, choppt, and the juice of 3 limes. 

[mattscardfile]

Big cast iron skillet.  Lots of olive oil.  Sautéed a red onion, 3 green peppers (all chopt big) and a head of garlic.  Salt.  A bunch of mirin.  Let it cook like halfway down.  2 eggplants cut into like 3/4″ cubes.  More salt, pepper.  A little red pepper.  A litte more olive oil and a little more mirin (probably excessive).  Cookt a bit.  Two large tomatoes, chopped big, and then the whole skillet into the oven at 225° for 3 or 4 hours, stirring about evry 30min.  Mazing.