Indoor Garden

The Arugula and Leeks we're growing in our kitchen.

salted shishito peppers

This weekend while walking through the Farmer's Market at the Ferry Building, we picked up various different vegetables (chard, basil, sweet peppers) and meats (charcuterie from Fatted Calf, prosciutto and pancetta) along with the arugula and leeks seedlings we bought and promptly brought home to plant. One of the veggies we picked up was a basket of shishito peppers. We cooked these up as an appetizer to hold us over before a small plates style dinner of sweet peppers stuffed with cream cheese, sauteed oyster mushrooms, green onions and garlic and prosciutto with basil and carrot wraps.

The shishito peppers were easy to make and super tasty as the peppers are sweet and rarely have any heat. To make them, I took a pan and heated some oil over high heat and once it was hot enough threw the peppers in.


You cook them for only a couple of minutes until they start to blacken in spots. Pull them off the heat into a paper towel lined bowl and sprinkle with a coarse salt. Serve on a plate.

Norma had the good idea, that instead of sprinkling salt on them, to stuff them, so we tried it out on a few of the peppers. We cut a small slit in them and put some salt inside the peppers and then cooked it the same way. It resulted in the sweet pepper absorbing the salt a tad bit more than having the salt sprinkled on did, allowing for the taste of the pepper to shine through a bit more than it does the traditional way. Either way was good though in case you don't want to take the time to stuff each pepper with salt.

After overcooking the first batch by leaving them on a low heat for too long, I tried it again over high heat and the result was much better as the peppers cooked yet retained their crunchiness instead of becoming a soggy mess.

sadly, that's the only pic I took this time through.

Chile de Arbol Salsa

Here's a salsa we made a couple of weeks ago, that while it shared the same base as the New Mexico Salsa, was quite different in taste. Substituting the Arbol chiles for the New Mexico ones, you essentially get a similar salsa only slightly different in taste.

• 2 tomatoes
• 6 tomatillos
• 1 white onion
• 2 garlic cloves

You pan toast the chiles, and then soak them for 30 minutes. You also roast the vegetables, but after doing so, combine them with water and boil them for 25.

Once their significantly boiled, combine the pot above with the chiles and blend.

Carne asada tacos with New Mexico Chile Salsa and Rice

For some reason I seem to get a craving for Mexican food on Sundays. So instead of heading to El Castillito or Tacqueria de Cancun, I instead opted to make my own.

First I started off with a marinade of the Skirt Steak I purchased. The marinade consisted of:

• 2 tablespoon white vinegar
• 2 1/2 tablespoons soy sauce
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 1 lime juiced
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 1/4 teaspoon paprika
• 2 tablespoons ground cumin
• 1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/4 teaspoon chili powder

After combining the ingredients, I soaked the steak in it for 1 1/2 hours. Dad, if you're reading this...this is the marinade you want to use.

For the salsa, I picked up some New Mexico chile pods, and pan roasted them in a skillet for about 15 minutes until they were warm, and close to being black in color. Afterwards, then placed them into a bowl of water to soak for close to 30 minutes.

I then took the following ingredients and placed it in the oven to roast:

• 2 tomatoes
• 6 tomatillos
• 1 white onion
• 2 garlic cloves
• 2 jalapenos

After roasting them at 450 degrees for 25 minutes, I then threw them into the food processor and blended til it was nicely pureed.

I then took the New Mexico Chile pods, and after cutting off the stems, threw them into the processor too...check out the deep red the salsa turned?

After 2 hours, I then cooked the steak until medium rare:


I chopped up some cilantro, onion and lime wedges to go on the tacos:


and was able to talk Norma into making her amazing Mexican Rice:


All told the salsa took about 1 hour, which after starting the marinade was perfect timing, as the salsa got finished as the meat was ready to cook. A total of about 2 hours is what this takes.

Norma's culinary prowess

On Friday, Norma and I invited some people over for dinner. While I made a spectacular Red Pepper sauce (which had an accident turn out good!) as well as the marinara for the main dish, Norma out-shined herself once again. The girl knows her way around a kitchen and can certainly create some amazing dishes that would rival the best of chefs.

For this past Friday's dinner, she decided to make a Mushroom Crepe Cake that was served with my Red Pepper Sauce, and Ratatouille served with a semi-soft Goat Cheese. Sadly there are no pictures of the final presentation, but here are two collages of images taken during the process.

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

This weekend I took a page from childhood and decided to bake some of my all time favorite cookies. The recipe is your pretty standard oatmeal cookie recipe, even though I tend to deviate and throw some cocoa powder and cinnamon in there for kicks.



Combine the following:

• 1 cup soft butter
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1 cup white sugar

Once batter is smooth, slowly mix in:

• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract.
  

In a separate bowl combine:

• 2 cups flour
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1 1/2 teaspoons cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
  

Slowly combine dry ingredients with wet ingredients. Once finished, stir in oats and chocolate chips. For this recipe I took 2 Hershey bars and diced them up small.

Take dough, cover it and chill it for an hour.

Grease cookie sheet, and place small balls of dough on sheet. Cook for 8 - 10 minutes at 375 degrees F.

Let sit for 5 minutes before removing from sheet.