Foodgeek Blog

I’ve started making dinner for my brother, sister-in-law, niece, and myself on Monday nights.  I’ve tried to vary the menu up from week to week, and last Monday my brother gave me an easy opportunity to continue to do so.  We were sitting, eating a fairly rockin’ pork roast I had made, even if I say so myself, and he said, “Next Sunday I’m going to give you four random ingredients, like they do on Chopped.”

I was thrilled, as this was what I’d been trying to get them to do all along.  It’s fun for me, because I’m an improviser, and it works out because I don’t do great with giving them ingredient lists far enough in advance for the shopping to be convenient for them.  Anyway, Sunday night I got my ingredients:

• Tomatillos
• Duck sauce
• Rice pudding
• Cinnamon pita chips

I crushed the pita chips, seasoned them with cumin, garlic powder, and black pepper, and used them to make a crusted chicken breast dish.  It came out pretty well, although if I make it again I’ll use a food processor to crush the chips rather than a meat mallet.  The large chunks didn’t stick extremely well. I’ll also use less cumin, and move the oven rack upward a notch halfway through the baking to get a crunchier crust.

I made some garlic mashed potatoes.  No magic there, other than simmering the garlic in the milk and butter before adding it to the taters.

I used the rice pudding to make some drop biscuits.  I found a basic drop biscuit recipe and used a combination of the pudding and milk to make the batter.  They were ok, but if I make them again I’ll add some sugar.  I left it out because the pudding itself was sweet, but the biscuits came out a little salty tasting.

I had been going to use the duck sauce and tomatillos to make a sort of tapenade for the mashed potatoes.  I chopped the tomatillos and simmered them in the duck sauce, and found it to be a little too tart.  Once I added brown sugar, though, it swung to the other end of the flavor spectrum and became too sweet for the potatoes.  Instead I used it as a glaze for some carrots I cooked in the microwave.

All in all, I’d say it came out pretty well.

S (S S S) A (A A A) L (L L L) S (S S S) A (A A A)

Anybody? No? Oh well.

Men Without Hats jokes not withstanding, I thought I’d write for a moment about salsa.

I tend to preface things with “I’m not expert on ___________________, but…” In fact, I think I prefaced this entire blog that way in my first entry. I said something like “I’m not a professional chef, but I love food, and…”

Let me be clear: If I’m not much of an expert on food in general, and I’m not, then I’m downright green when it comes to salsa. (I’m sure there’s a pepper joke in there somewhere. Moving on…) I’ve never even made an entire salsa myself. I’ve helped make salsa. I consider myself adept at chopping vegetables and other sous-chefy things, but I feel like if I made a salsa from scratch with no recipe, it would be a jumbled mess of flavors and textures.

I spent Memorial Day weekend with some close friends of mine, and it all culminated in their Memorial Day-related cookout and hoo-ha shindig, for which I had the pleasure of helping them prepare. So, you know, cookout. Brats, burgers, etc. And summery foods. Pasta salad, fruit salads, and of course, salsa.

We made three salsas, all of which were exceptional. The first was a mild pureed tomato onion and cilantro salsa. We also made a very hot, very chunky tomato, onion, garlic, assorted hot pepper, and cilantro salsa. Finally, there was a mango, onion, jicama, and (you guessed it) cilantro salsa.

I’m not big on mangoes. I don’t hate them or anything, but I’ve never been a big fan. That said, the mango salsa was fantastic. Best use of a mango I’ve ever seen. Also, if you’ve never made anything with jicama, you should definitely check it out. It’s a root vegetable, it looks sort of like an onion-shaped potato, it has the texture of an apple, and a sweet vegetable-y flavor. (“Vegetable flavor” is not very descriptive, but jicama has very little flavor of its own. It’s great for adding texture, though. It’s crisp, almost like a water chestnut.)

As for the things I do know about salsa: Most would say that it’s better to make your salsas a day or so in advance, to give the flavors a chance to intermingle and get all friendly with each other. I’m not sure I agree. There’s something very nice about a freshly mixed salsa that still has a relatively diverse arsenal of flavors. As long as the salsa is reasonably well-planned, and the flavors make sense together, I don’t think there’s a need to let it rest overnight. Just go to town on that bad boy. Dip the chips right into the food processor if the urge strikes.

The other cool thing about that is that you can have your cake —er, salsa, and eat it too. If there’s any left it will have rested, and the flavors intermingled, when you pull it out of the fridge the next morning. Maybe to put in an omlette. Mmmmm.

Also: It’s absolutely essential to be careful when handling hot peppers. They’re small, but they pack a punch. For goodness’ sake, don’t touch your face right after chopping up that habaňero. It’s dangerous. You can do real damage to your eyes and skin. Use gloves if you have them, and wash your hands either way.

I’m definitely putting “salsa recipe” on my list of experiments to try this summer. Right up there with spaghetti sauce and cultivating morel mushrooms in captivity. The outlook on that last one is dubious. As a friend of mine (and fellow mushroom enthusiast) pointed out, smarter men than us have tried and failed.