Riconsito!

You want good, real, and cheap Mexican food on the eastside? Look no further than Taqueria El Reconsito!

I love this place so much that I convinced the person interviewing me at Microsoft that we should go there for my lunchtime interview.

Why do I like it so much? It is hard go get good Mexican food in the Redmond/Bellevue area, but this one place may just make up for it. Tasty and properly made dishes are here, like medudo, posole, birria (they just have great soups in general), enchiladas, quesadillas…and my favorite…Tacos! The real tacos, in two little soft tortillas, with grilled meats and cilantro, for about a dollar a taco.

This is me waiting for my tacos to arrive, my limes, radishes, and green salsa eager to be used. To help mitigate the pain of waiting, I recommend the horchata. Yes, they have great horchata and other aguas frescas, such a tamarindo, mango, and piña. With endless refills!

And here they are, the moment of truth:

Served with grilled onions and jalapeño, you squeeze your lime on the tacos, pour on your salsa, put radishes on the meat, and add a sprinkling of salt. Then dig in.

Amazing.

Chicken with Peanut Sauce

Memo bought prepared peanut sauce a long time ago, and I decided it was time to use it for some phony Thai chicken. First I cut up the chicken and marinated it in a combination of soy sauce, a little canola oil, fresh garlic, ground coriander, and cumin.

Then I tasted the peanut sauce and decided it wasn't that good. So I doctored it up by adding a secret ingredient and cooking it. Okay, the secret ingredient was dark brown sugar.

I cooked the marinated chicken in the oven on a rimmed pan so the chicken would sit in the marinade. Then at the end I covered the chicken with the peanut sauce and put it on broil. It was sticky and good!

Salmon Cakes and XBOX d00d!

I decided I wanted to dedicate a whole day off to making and eating salmon cakes, and pwning n00bs on Xbox Live yo!
The basic recipe I used was: with every can of salmon, you use one egg and about two slices worth of bread crumbs. I also chopped up some celery, onions, garlic, dill, parsley, spicy mustard, and seasoned to taste.

I have fond memories of this meal, beacause mama used to make it for me almost every birthday.

The only thing I would change from my version, is to make the cakes a little thinner, and cook them a little hotter. Since I like mine crispy!

oh yeeeeeeeessssss! (see video below for elaboration)

And the verdict is in!

Glass bottled PEPSI is better!
than what?
figure it out!

here are some blurry pictures from the deliberating process. They are a little blurry because SOMEONE (I'm not saying who, but they may or may not be pictured below), doesn't like to be photographed and I had to take these pictures before they noticed what was going on.

Is there pee in my soup?!

Not PEE soup! it's Pea Soup! Split Pea Soup to be specific!

Soooooo, I made my first attempt at split pea soup since it's cold and peter wanted something with ham... so I put some split peas, carrots, potatoes, dill, parsley, garlic, onions, salt salt salt, and pepper pepper pepper.

so all was going well.. at the beginning as seen here...
And here you can see how pretty the peas look when wet... ooooohhh... ahhhh.....

and here is the finished product (pictured with ham)... I prefer my portion without ham...

I did have a problem with my potatoes, however. They sort of kind of dissolved and turned my soup into a starchy mass. Not unlike mashed potatoes. It was only much later that Paris told me I was supposed to add the potatoes at the very end, so that they don't dissolved and turn your soup into starch. THANKS PARIS! (and in case you couldn't tell I was being sarcastic!)

Chávez Mexican Cooking: Pico de Gallo salsa

I have been asked to post how I make salsa, so here is the process. I would like to apologize for the lack of precision, I don't have measurements for most of these types of dishes.

To make a fresh salsa you will need:

Ripe tomatoes
Jalapeños
Cilantro
Onions
Garlic
Lime
Mexican Oregano
Cumin
Salt

Chop up the tomatoes to be as fine or as chunky as you like. Mince the jalapeños (you can remove or keep the seeds depending on how hot you want it. Leaving all the seeds will make it very hot) and add them to the tomatoes. Chop the onions, and mince the garlic and add to the mixture.

Wash the cilantro completely, and remove the leaves from the stems. Chop the leaves and add to the mixture. I usually like a lot of cilantro, I try to make it look 50% green and 50% red. As with all the ingredients in this dish, adjust to your personal preference.

Squeeze lime juice in the salsa, and add some cumin, mexican oregano (be careful with these, they can overpower the flavor), and the salt. Mix up, and see if it tastes good! You can eat this with almost anything.

I did not take this photo, but it looks pretty good, no?

The Food in my Life

Coconut fish @ Pambiche, a cuban restaurant that Tara and I showed to Paris back in summer.

Dedicated to Felicia.

James' lobster and mushroom ravioli @ Urban Farmer that was way better than my overcooked slider.

Also, for James' birthday the other night we tried out Nuestra Cocina for the first time. Very good Mexican fine dining, with a woman who's sole job is to press an order of fresh tortillas for every customer when they come in. My favorite dish there was lamb braised in banana leaf. My pics taken there were atrocious, so I am not bothering you with them, but their website shows how beautiful the dishes are.

dinner

Arroz y Frijoles a la felicia

Spice babies

I bought three little plants today at the market in union square. they were only $6 all together! what a steal huh? I got a basil, Rosemary, and Oregano. Now I just need to sit back and wait for them to grow so that I can put them in my tummy... yeeeaasss....

soda and disasters

I've been sick, it's been cold, so the obvious choice is chicken soup! I put chicken, carrots, celery, pasilla pepers, onions, garlic, and rice. I made two tiny mistakes.

1st mistake: I always put too much rice. The rice expands so much my soup ends up being more of a porridge and less of a soup.

The 2nd mistake was when I accidentally grabbed the cloves instead of the black pepper (they are both in square tins). Needless to say, cloves are perhaps the one spice that doesn't go well in chicken soup. It was edible and now that I've watered it down it's not as noticable, but peter has to keep tellling me next time I should try nutmeg. He's a modern day Billy Crystal that one.

Well that highlight of the meal ended up being the glass bottle of coke peter bought to see if it tasted better than canned coke. And indeed it did! It was crisper, less sickenly sweet, and came in a cool bottle!! what a day it was. Stay tuned to see if glass bottled pepsi is better than canned pepsi... riveting...

I like to bake!

Moni's birthday was yesterday, so we wanted to make some dessert. We've been wanting to make some new foods. I love the feeling of this time of year, and of course, the delicious comfort food that comes with the changing of the seasons. What a better way to start off than with peaches, peaches and peaches!!! Oh yeah, and almonds!



Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups flour
1 1/4 cups almonds sliced for crust, and also 1/2 cup for topping
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar, plus 1 tbs for topping
1 1/2 sticks of butter, softened
6 cups frozen peaches, thawed and drained
1/2 cup peach jam
1/2 teaspoon lemon zest
1 teaspoon lemon juice
13x9 inch pan, tin foil liner, greased
375 degree oven

Crust: Mix all the dry ingredients, then add the butter and cut into mixture ala pie crust (pea sized chucks). Save about a 1/2 cup of the mixture for the topping, and press the rest evenly into the bottom of the pan. Bake until golden. About 15 min.

Cut peaches into small chunks, mix with jam. Cook in high heat skillet until thickened. Off heat stir in lemon zest and juice and a pinch of salt. Spread peach mixture over crust.

Strussel topping: Mix the reserved topping and 1 tbs brown sugar. Pinch into pea-sized chunks. Spread over peaches. To finish spread remaining sliced almonds over the strussel!

Bake it for 20 mins or til golden and awesome!!!



Ohhh la la...We made our own whip cream and added frozen blueberries, very delicious additions!! Yum Yum in our tummies!

Sourdough bread starter: day 5

Everyday I am supposed to remove half of my starter and add 60 grams of bread flour and 60 grams of water to feed my starter. And everyday it is supposed to expand 2 or 3 times in volume. Well it started out great, but these last 2 days it refuses to rise...A few sad bubbles is all I get.

I think I am going to throw it out and start again. Please have a momemt of silence for the loss of so many yeasty lives.

Making a sourdough bread starter: Day 2

Day 2 of my sourdough, there is not supposed to be any change, so I figured I would mention some of the interesting things I have been reading about bread.

Imagine in the old days, before fridges, and instant packaged yeast, how people got their bread to rise. They would use a starter, much like I am trying to grow right now for my sourdough. I think it is interesting, because it is almost like livestock. People would painstakingly grow a yeast culture until it was healthy, then tear off a bit to make their bread rise, and let the starter continue to grow for next time. Like any animal it needs to be fed; you could give your neighbor some of your starter so they could grow their own, famous businesses would guard their strain as a trade secret, you could have different strains for different type of bread... Instant yeast is great, but there is something nice about this idea.

Astute readers may have noticed that my sourdough starter does not actually contain any yeast. That is because I am trying to cultivate wild yeast, which is a different type than what is normally in packaged yeast, and wild yeast is found of most ground grains, particularly rye. that is why I used organic rye flour, because I wanted all these natural "contaminants" that are normally found in rye flour. Compared to a teaspoon of packaged yeast, there is very little wild yeast to be found, and it needs to be coddled, which is why everything needed to be sterile and unchlorinated water had to be used.

Also this wild yeast does not eat sugar, unlike packaged yeast. This is why Lactobacillus can live with it, eating the sugar, and producing lactic acid, which makes it sour. I could be mistaken but I think Lactobacillus is a bacteria that already lives in the human body, it is not dangerous to us at all, but the books I have warned that if the starter gets streaks of color, than it is contaminated with some other bacteria, and needs to be thrown out.

Once again I referenced the books: The Bread Baker's Apprentice, and The Bread Bible as well as various places online. I have found a new interest.

Making a sourdough bread starter: Day 1

Lately I have been reading up on bread making, and some of the processes are quite fascinating. When I was younger I used to make some simple bread quite often, but reading up on these other techniques made me want to try my hand at making sourdough bread. To start I need to cultivate a colony of yeast and certain bacteria, and to let it grow for about a week. This colony dough will then constitute 15 to 40 percent of the final bread dough, depending on how sour you wish to make it.

To start you need very very clean equipment, so you don't contaminate with undesired bacteria. I ran all my tools under boiling water to sterilize them. You could perform surgery with these bowls and spoons.

To start you take:

1 cup or 120 grams or Organic Rye flour

1/2 cup or 120 grams of unchlorinated water

Mix these together until you have a thick dough, and place this dough in a container and seal the top tightly with plastic wrap. I used a quart canning jar:

Place this jar in a cool place (about 65 degrees) for 48 hours. I will update as this develops!

To learn about this process I referenced the books: The Bread Baker's Apprentice, and The Bread Bible and it is from the latter that I am taking these steps.

Wish me luck!

Noël: Waffle Window

I have been very into waffles as of late. I usually make them Sunday mornings, and enjoy trying unusual waffle recipes/combinations. The last waffle recipe I played with used yeast and required a day to rise.
However, today was James' first Saturday morning off in a million years, so I insisted we go to the waffle window. It's around the corner of the Bread and Ink Café on Hawthorne and it kicks butt. Their waffles have a great eggy texture, not too crispy nor thin. I always get the same one: the 3 Bs. It has bacon, brie and basil with a little touch of apricot jam. It pretty much rocks my world. Here's a pic of me acting like I've never seen it before.

"My word, I do believe we have never met before."

James always gets the "3 Bs" too (I insist he get his own because I don't share this thing very well) and he gets a sweet one as well. This time he got a pear and nutella wiffle waffle that looked very pretty.

Waffles inducing gang signs.

The sweet ones are a little much for me. They're really very good, just too much. I am really into the savory ones. And! When we were leaving, I saw some dude with a waffle covered in ham and a coarsely grated thick cheese, so next time I think I will venture away from the bacon and try that one.
Also, side note: did you know waffles are distant long lost relatives to the communion wafer? Supposedly, early communion wafers were baked in irons and had the same characteristic honeycomb pattern that waffles still have today. Heavy stuff.