I'm pretty sure most of us on here have seen Anthony Bourdain's television show, No Reservations. And if you haven't, you should check it out or download some episodes. Very entertaining and lots of interesting locales and food. But I also just picked up his book, Kitchen Confidential, a memoir/chef's letter to the public. Viewing the workings of restaurants from the back of the house. Which is easy for me to relate to, as mostly he bitches about horrible customers and people who should never own a restaurant. Sounds like my life. But the real center to the book is his growth as a chef, his realization that he really didn't know that much about food when he was just starting out. At times, the book can be very sweet and tragic. A great companion to No Reservations.

Food That You Step On

Potatoes are a staple in Peruvian and Bolivian food, and one dish, chuño, is particularly interesting. I watched a fascinating episode of Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern, where, in Bolivia, he visited a farm where they prepared this potato.

The process is strange- potatoes are left in cold mountain air, to freeze at night, thaw in daylight sun, freeze again, and so on. The end result is a naturally freeze dried potato, and can be white or black in appearance. Within the freezing process, the potatoes are trampled by bare feet, I believe in order to remove the skins to further aid the freezing process. Andrew Zimmern even had the opportunity to try his hand (or foot, haha) at trampling the potatoes, but was soon told he was smashing them too harshly as he did it with too little love, and was too overweight. What a bummer, eh?

The whole process dates back to before the Inca Empire, and, not surprisingly, the potatoes can then last for years. Now, you can even get chuñu in a can, although I have no idea if you could find it here in America.

Anyway, I was watching this show with my friend Erika, who is from Bolivia, when she then told me she actually had some chuño from when her father last visited. I was totally fascinated by the whole thing, and nibbled off some of the potatoes she had. They were extremely light, hard as clay rocks, and tasted like potato flour. Travis, her husband, claimed they (chuño) made one nasty dish, which of course made me desperate to try them in a prepared dish.


Well, tonight I got home and Erika had dropped some off some prepared chuño for me! Just what I'd been craving. :)

She had mentioned she usually makes a soup, but this was a sort of stir fried preparation, dark and crumbly, with a very inviting aroma. She had included a mild sort of pico, which I just spooned on top and dug into. The consistency and texture reminded me of a ground beef, mild and meaty, with a slight potato under taste. I'll have to ask her if she cooked it in an animal fat of some sort; there also appeared to be perhaps flecks of scrambled egg thrown in as well. The whole thing was delicious. I ate it so quickly that I couldn't take a pic, and James had only one bite, but now I am dying to have the chuño soup.

I have no idea why Travis doesn't care for the dish. It wasn't tripe-with-ginger and green-onion amazing (I'll eat three plates of that in one dim sum sitting, easy), but it was tasty, comforting and intriguing. I can imagine it makes a great breakfast base, and I just may have to go throw some potatoes out my back door and hope it freezes tonight.

Oh yeah...

Massive tuna sandwich for lunch. I was full for three days...

Put 'em on the glass

If I could, I would snort lines of peeps off a mirror.

Cream of Potato soup.

I love a good creamy potato soup. Papa used to take us to Elmer’s every Wednesday night, and the soup of the day for Wednesday would be cream of potato. But since we would go at the end of the day, it would have been cooking all day, and when I got my bowl, it was closer to delicious mashed potatoes than a soup. I loved it.

Anyway, I had some potatoes at home that were going to go bad soon, so I decided to make a hearty cream of potato soup with leeks. Sort of to usher in the cold weather.

First thing I did was peel some potatoes and cover them with water to cook them. I had some chicken broth in my freezer that I used to boil them, but water itself would be fine I am sure. I added some salt and a bay leaf to these boiling potatoes.

Then I washed and chopped the white part of 3 leeks, an onion, and some garlic and placed it in a different pot with some butter.

I cooked this in some butter on a decent heat until everything softened and looked tasty. By this time my potatoes were pretty much cooked as I had sliced them very thin. I added the potatoes and the liquid I cooked them in to the cooked leek/onion/garlic mixture.

I added cream, some dill (I have been trying to find out when to use this herb), salt and pepper, and a small amount of thyme. I let it simmer until it thickened up slightly.

I put it a bowl , topped it with chopped chives, Italian parsley, and some bacon that I fried up. Man it was good. Probably not so healthy, but worth every bite.

If I had to change something, maybe I would have left the skins on the potatoes, just to create an interesting texture contrast. But it was still great.

Flour Tortillas and Plastic Plates

I found this flour tortilla recipe awhile ago and the last couple of times I made it I really liked it. The tortillas always end up pretty thick and chewy. Plus, they are super simple and easy to make. So, without further ado, here it is.

Ingredients:
2 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
2 tsp vegetable oil
3/4 cup water or milk

Or, you can see the picture below if you are illiterate.

*not pictured, water and/or milk. Good luck figuring that out to those unable to read.

Now for the directions:

1. Mix ingredients together in bowl! I use my hands, less dishes that way. It should be somewhat sticky. Kneed the dough until the stickiness goes away. About 2 minutes.

2. Cover and let the dough sit for 15 min. Then divide up the dough into as many balls as you like depending on what size you want your tortillas. Then cover and let them sit for 20 min. (I'm not sure why it needs to sit since it doesn't rise, but it really does make it better)

3. 4. Roll out the dough pretty much as thin as you can get it. When you roll it out it's very stretchy and resilient so you don't have to be very gentle. They fluff up ablot when they cook too so no matter what you do they will end up being thick and chewy.

5. 6. Finally, set it in a pan on lowish heat with no oil or anything. Once you see it start to bubble you can flip it. Set the hot tortillas in a folded towel or whatever you like.

* Instruction pictures are numbered in wingdings font.

And finally, you can eat them! they stay pretty good wrapped up in the fridge too. Just warm them up again.

Here is the final project, pictured with paris's salsa! Notice that the tortilla is partially eaten because I couldn't wait. Oh yeeeaaassss.

* plate is a plastic miffy childrens plate with seperate sections to keep your food from mixing together. Like this one! Moni and Rachel gave it to me for christmas since I like using baby utensils.

The food in my life

Dedicated to Felicia.

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!