Estómago lleno...corazón contento.

I have no idea why I left in the first place.

Okay, truthfully beginning to work has kicked my ass. Made a ton of life changes. Packers won the Super Bowl. I got married. And I’ve lost a bit of weight which I likely all just put back on during last weekend, which was my honeymoon in Vegas. I ate like a fucking pig and I’m going back to eating a bit better and well, I’d love to write a whole hell of a lot more too.

Good news! I may have promised my mom’s famous arroz con pollo recipe, and I still have the pictures from when I made it. They won’t be pretty, but the lighting in my kitchen rarely is and I’ve yet to master this “take pictures while cooking” thing. Maybe once I get the hang of it a bit more I will get there.

For now though, here’s a post I meant to make 5 months ago!

Mi mama’s arroz con pollo.

I’ve likely eaten this way too much. One of the things you’ll get from growing up in a Cuban household is you’ll get snobby about really simple dishes. Pan con mantequilla (bread w/ butter, literally) is not REAL pan con mantequilla unless it uses CUBAN bread. Likewise for Cuban sandwiches and these asshole pretentious hipster sandwich shops in the PacNW that do stupid shit like add jalapeño and chipotle and all sorts of decidedly UN-CUBAN CRAP. Pork, ham, pickles, mustard, swiss cheese and MAYBE a dab of butter on each piece of bread and that’s it.

Anyways, one of the staples that also gets messed up is arroz con pollo, literally translated to chicken with rice, which has its roots in both Creole and Spanish cooking. In fact, the addition of saffron (or as my mom requested I use but couldn’t find, azafran which I think is fake saffron) makes it quite similar to a chicken paella. This is a really good dish for stuff like potlucks, and I did in fact make this very dish for the second potluck I ever participated in at my work and it was a pretty big hit. What’s more, you could feed several people with this for a couple days or myself and Ruthe for about a week, maybe more. Impressive dish. Let’s get started. I’ll let my mom dictate things here, and the recipe after the break.

1 taza d arroz of course  [1 cup of rice]

 un pollo  [a chicken! preferably legs/thighs]

una cucharada o dos de bijol para dar colorcito al arroz [a spoonful or two of bijol, found in the hispanic part of a store. Not necessary, but good for color]

una cebolla [1 onion]

bastante ajo!! [A LOT OF GARLIC!!]

3 o 4 pimientos morrones ( aji rojo) en curtido (trades joes lo tiene en curtido roasted red peppers buenisismos) [Erm, exactly how it sounds like, except “en curtido” I believe means in brine. I used their Piquillo Red Peppers at TJ’s and it was excellent for this dish] 

una cucharadita d oregano [1 tsp of dried oregano]

y otra de comino [1 tsp of cumin]

3 o4 hojitas de laurel [3 or 4 bay leaves]

2 cucharadas d aceite oliva o regular [2 tablespoons of olive oil, extra virgin or not, doesn’t matter]

media cerveza [half a can of beer, say maybe 8-10oz. I poured in the whole can above because it’s kind of small and I really like the flavor the beer brings to this. I’d use a lighter version like a lager or cheap domestic.]

6 cucharadas salsa ragu [6 tablespoons of tomato sauce aka “salsa Ragu” as in the brand. Any ol’ marinara sauce works here]dos cucharaditas de catshup [2 tablespoons of ketchup, I assume for concentrated tomato flavor. You could probably use tomato paste here as well if you’re ketchup-averse like me but I just happened to have ketchup in the house because SOME PARTICULAR PEOPLE CAN’T BE WITHOUT IT]

un limon y chicken broth [1 lemon and some chicken broth.. unspecified amount]

Get your ingredients ready, like chopping this all up.

ok en una cazuelita  pon el pollo ya limpio con sal, jugo d limoncito,aceitecebolla ajo oregano comino dos hojitas de laurel y si tienes azafran mejor todavia..ponlo a sofreir un poco pero que no se ponga oscura la cebolla ni el ajo

She says, put in a pot the chicken already rinsed with salt, some lemon juice, oil, onion, garlic, oregano, cumin, two bay leaves, and if you have saffron even better. As you can see I sort of ignored part of it because I sauteed the onion and garlic first, since my pot was cold and I was using the sizzling of the aromatics to tell when I could throw the rest in. I feel odd about cooking raw chicken with everything else uncooked into a cold pot, so this was just a weird thing of mine. Here it is once the onion and garlic sizzled up a bit:



Told ya I’d do it. By the way, I’m doing this in my UNNECESSARILY HUGE stockpot. 12 quarts. So lighting and whatnot is less than optimal, but whaddayagunnado. Moving on.

then ponle la salsa ragu y el catsup s 
le echas 1 lata de chicken broth y un poco de agua y lo tapas y lo pones a cocinar en candela bajitapor lo menos 25 minutos..

Throw in the tomato sauce, ketchup, and then a can of chicken broth (NONONO I used a cup of my homemade stock thankyouverymuch) a little bit of water, then cover and cook on medium-low heat for about 25 minutes. Again, this was part of the reason I wanted to throw the chicken in a bit earlier with the aromatics. 

cuando el pollito este cocinadofrie esto un rato then..en otra cazuelita aparte lavas el arroz’

When the chicken is cooked well for a while, then in another pot rinse the rice. I don’t normally do this but for the sake of the recipe, I will. Take it from here, mami.

se lo echas al pollo con su salsa„ siguelo cocinando.. (nunca en high temperature..) medium high is better para que no se pegue el arrozmide bien que tenga por ejemplo si pones 3 latas de arroz then 4 de liquido del broth o agua alpolloy le pones el bijol..que se ponga amarillito el arrozlo pruebas que este con sabor entonces  lo tapas y ponle unos cuantos pedacitos de pimientos morrones ,revuelvelo then lo tapas y lo cocinas a fuego mediano por 15 minutos

Throw in the rice with the chicken (Zomg the name of teh recipe!111!), keep cooking it and never at high temperature, medium high is better but make sure the rice doesn’t stick. Measure out well 3 cups of rice to 4 of liquid from broth/water and then add bijol so that it turns out nice and yellow. Taste it and then add a couple pieces of pimientos morrones (aka roasted red peppers in the jar from TJ’s), stir it all together and cover on medium heat for about 15 minutes. And then..

cuando se este secando el arroz que el liquido esta desapareciendo le pones la mediacerveza lo revuelves siempre con un tenedor!!nunca con cuchara porque se emchumba mucho

When the rice has absorbed a lot of the liquid, add the beer and then stir, ALWAYS with a fork never a spoon. This is very, very good advice that I use for anything. Stirring rice right when it is cooked with a fork separates the grains nicely, a spoon mushes them together a bit much, which is what my mom is saying up there.

y asi lo pones bien bajito en los ultimos 5 o 6 minutos y listo!! bon apetit..

And then from there, put the burner again on low heat for the last 5-6 minutes and then done!


Yeah, that’s steamy. Again, remember this is a big pot. This is what it ended up looking like in a fairly large casserole dish.


The presentation is not meant to be elegant by any means. Again remember this is one of those comfort foods Cuban moms make for their families and it’s pretty cool because it’s very Spanish in its premise but very Cuban in how it uses inexpensive, simple, humble ingredients and execution for making all of it. It sounds like a very involved dish but in reality it takes just under an hour, most of which didn’t involve any actual stirring or anything. I definitely don’t think I’d make it on a weeknight but it’s a great Sunday dish because of how well it keeps for leftovers. My mom also suggests:

si quieres entonces para adornarlo le pones los pimientos morrones que quedaron uhmm unos platanitos maduros fritos perfect cuban cuisine de domingo!!

“You can adorn it with additional roasted red peppers leftover in the jar or add some fried plantains, perfect Cuban Sunday cuisine!”

Exactly what I was thinking. As for how I did, I think I could’ve used either much more chicken or a lot less rice. 
Oh and by the way, that area where the ingredients are in the first picture IS MY ENTIRE COUNTER I HAVE FOR PREP WORK. Yeah, sometimes I have to use the stove for chopping and prep. I think I could use another kitchen cart in the kitchen, or clear out some more room somehow there. I think this just means I’m well suited to work in a food cart if I want to.

I made a pot roast the other day. It wasn’t that good. I’m not sure if it was because it was in the slow cooker, or because the meat sucked, or because the ingredients (red wine, mirepoix, taters) were kind of boring, but I was trying to make something that I could save and make roast beef with, but when I pulled it out, it was waaaayy too tender and shredded easily like pulled pork. Except pulled beef. It was okay, served with a side of mashed potatoes and the veggies. 

On the bright side though, I took the idea of the green chile with scrambled eggs I made last week:

(there’s the roasted, peeled and about to be diced chiles)

and the beef leftovers I had

and added them into my scrambled eggs recipe, which I am and should definitely post someday. However, after I was prepping my carnitas (there’s Mexiquest III coming up later tonight) I needed to get through and prepare this quickly because, shit, it’s mid-afternoon and I haven’t even eaten breakfast yet. So no photo/recipe for that yet. But I warmed up a couple tortillas (Calidad brand) on my cast iron skillet, threw them down on a plate, spooned out the chile/scrambled eggs/beef mixture on a tortilla, added some salsa, and a spoonful of Crema Agria (Mexican sour cream, what of it) and came out with this:

 

I know, I totally missed out on the requisite cilantro. I pulled some out of the fridge and it was no good. Fuckin’ cilantro. No wonder it costs 39 cents; it goes bad in like 2-3 days. More reason for me to grow my own.

Either way, turned out well. I think I may have added a bit too much beef which ended up unbalancing the flavor a bit, but the fact that I added some Pueblo to it() helped bring back some seasoning and spice to it. Either way, it was a good use of leftovers and a nice brunch. Girlfriend and I ate three tacos each. The one pictured above was the last one. MEXIQUEST II: SUCCESS.

Seriously.

I haven’t been neglecting this blog on purpose, but honestly I just have had NO motivation WHATSOEVER to cook since I last posted my in n out burger. The only thing I tried cooking was another one the day afterward (lol) and a pot roast in the slow cooker which was really forgettable. To the point it wasn’t really worth mentioning.

Finally today I got the gumption to clean up the kitchen as much as I could before the heat in my non air-conditioned apartment (it’s 96 degrees out there!) would blind me. And for breakfast? Something I should make a hell of a lot more often.

One of the few good things about summer is the availability of good tomatoes out here. I know with the advent of importing vegetables from latin america we can have them year round but there’s an enormous difference between a 100-mile tomato (that is, one grown within 100 miles of your home) and one grown far, far away. 

Slicing up one of these bastards, throwing a couple slices of toast in the toaster oven and then frying up an egg over-easy and slapping it all together? Heaven.

My mom taught me how to fry an egg when I was first moving out, as if I had no idea how to cook. Yet she taught me something really, really valuable: steaming the fried egg. Let me explain. I have this tiny, crappy little aluminum pan which I first bought when I moved out to Portland (at a Walmart, no less!) and I use pretty much exclusively for eggs. Flipping omelets and fried eggs is not a problem with this bad boy. Anyways, I crack an egg in there after I sizzle up some butter (about 1/2 tbsp-1tbsp, depending on how frisky I’m feeling), salt it, and then (here’s my mom’s trick) a little spoonful of cold water, and throw on a lid that covers it. What this does is steam the yolk really nicely as the bottom fries up and the end result is way better somehow. Also while I like using bacon grease from time to time to fry eggs as a way of using it up after cooking bacon, I find it doesn’t the job as well as butter does for some reason. Maybe it’s the combination of cast iron skillet and electric stovetop (which I hate but can’t really do anything about) but it seems like smokes a hell of a lot lower for me than butter does and usually fucks it up. Not a fan. 

Flipping it is a bit of an art that takes some practice. If you’re like me, you got lucky on the first attempt, it over boosted your confidence and then you fucked it up over and over and over again until you finally got the technique down. Basically, you tilt the pan away from you and then snap it back towards you is the best way I can describe it. While I could do that easyass fried egg sando with just sunny side up, overeasy (even overhard) makes it so, so much better.

I’d also like to give a shoutout to Sterling Coffee Roasters (twitter here, a bit more informative than their website) whose iced coffee gave me the strength to both write this post and wash down my awesome mid-day breakfast. There’s a bit of a subtle chocolatey flavor in their coffee which makes this awful heat a bit more worthwhile. Now excuse me while I go douse myself in some more cold water.

To the left is my inspiration. 

Those of you who know me know that I’ve said In N Out is a bit overrated.. and I still do feel a bit that way. And yet when I was down in California I think I ate it on roughly 8 out of the 10 days I was down there. Why? It’s fresh, it’s cheap, and all except for two of their locations are open until 1am. Suffice to say local chain Burgerville will never win over my support so long as their food is way overpriced and they close early.

But In N Out? This is a chain that will not open any restaurants that isn’t within a day’s drive of their Baldwin Park, CA plant because they put that much value on freshness.

Now, I make a pretty damn good burger. I’ve tried many different iterations of it but I did want to see if I could replicate the beauty above. And I did, close. The only thing missing was the wrapper and much like the carne asada burritos I adore so much from local taco trucks, I realize the wrapper is very much necessary to avoid total burger collapse. 

Instead of using a chuck/sirloin mixture, I bought some bone-in shank at Winco for $2 a pound which was really fatty and figured it’d be better than chuck. It was really hard to grind and ended up getting a couple pieces of gristle in the burger which was sort of unpleasant, but overall it was really better. The spread in the recipe was a total win too, using some homemade relish (basically bread and butter pickles run through a food processor), mayo, ketchup, and a touch of sugar and vinegar. 

Check out the source link for the whole story behind it.

Source: How To Make An In-N-Out Burger, Animal Style.

I have a couple theories regarding food and Americans.

One is that it is impossible, even in a vegetarian household, to have never eaten at McDonald’s. You’ve at least had apple pie or you’ve had their french fries, but you’ve had it. Maybe you were peer pressured into it or you were broke and starving one day, but it’s happened. You’ve eaten McDonald’s.

The other is that no American hates Mexican food. Sure, for as much grief as we’ve given our neighbors to the south with immigrating here and employing them with fair wages and working conditions, we really, really enjoy the hell out of that food.

And yet, I’m not all that good at making it myself. I spend far, far much more money on it going out than I would for anything else because of this. 

Like so many foods that we take for granted these days, much of this food originates out of poverty. It’s easier to eat burritos because it’s a meal in a tortilla and you don’t need forks, plates or knives for it. It’s cheap to make tacos because they’re very simple. And to me, Mexican food takes cheap, delicious and simple-a couple of my favorite things when I have to get off my ass and work in the kitchen- and make them outstanding, much like Italian food. 

I know how to make some incredible carnitas, and I can make some pretty decent quesadillas as well. However, my burritos are usually pretty underwhelming (and blowout frequently) and I want to learn to make a real good carne asada.

Thankfully, my house was pretty bare up until Thursday night when I went to Winco and absolutely killed it. $100 worth of groceries, a big giant chunk of which was Mexican. Doesn’t hurt that it’s the one in Beaverton, which caters to a larger Hispanic market than most other places in Oregon.

Today I tried my first burrito and it didn’t come out too bad but I didn’t get the idea for making this blog until after I had already finished it. It was a green chile breakfast burrito, pretty simple just a roasted jalapeno (peeled, seeded and chopped) in some fluffy scrambled eggs with some shredded potato, crema mexicana and hot salsa. 

I’m not going to do a 30 meals in 30 days type thing, by the way, this is just something I’m going to try to do as much of as I can while supplies last. We’ll see.

I’ve had an online presence for a long time. Approximately since I was around seven years old, even. Of course I lied about how old I was then because who wants to talk to some kid, but ever since “Web 2.0” I’ve always talked about oh how I’m going to start a blog and do this, and do that but I never got around to it. I stuck to the bare minimums, facebook and twitter. Blogger seemed (and still does) really amateur, and while I’m going to eventually start my Wordpress (see what I mean here?) every time I start to go through the process of it all, I get really overwhelmed by how large a canvas I have to write on.

So, much like Goldilocks and the house she broke into and wrecked, I felt like tumblr was “just right.” And more appropriately that I could start writing about something I knew I had a lot of opinions, thoughts, pictures and passion about- food. While I have a Yelp account, that really only goes over some of my thoughts about local restaurants and such. And it’s not just a restaurant review site either, although that seems to be what it gets used for most. But what about the stuff I make? And my thoughts on a lot of things that are going on with food these days? 

That’s what this is for. And before anyone asks me (because every time I start with the food and cooking talk, this always comes up without fail), I don’t have any interest in becoming a line cook. I completely respect what they do and it’s because of that respect that I’m not going to waltz into the kitchen and think I can kick ass like they do. I’ve worked in food service already. I worked as a to-go server (who also had to work in the restaurant), I worked as a pizza boy (you name it, I did it from driving to prep to tossing), and I worked as a barista. I didn’t do any of those for over a couple years and a huge part of the reason why was burnout.

My style of cooking, I like to take my time in the kitchen and obsess over details and improvise, constantly. None of those things would fly in a real kitchen. You have to be methodical, you have to be okay with a repetitive task for hours on end, you have to be a good soldier and follow orders without question… None of those things would be something I’m suited for. 

But onto what you can expect from me here. You can expect a lot of opinions (I’ll try to keep my non-food stuff out) you can expect a lot of pictures (even though I just accidentally smashed my poor precious Evo and its 8.1MP camera and I’m waiting for it to be replaced in a week or two) and you can expect some good recipes. Hopefully you’ll like it, maybe you won’t. But this is something I’ve been meaning to do for a bit, and it’s about time I got started on it.