Tag: peppers

Categories
Soups The Book

87. Tortilla Soup with Crisp Tortillas and Avocado Relish p.95

The recipe

This soup was a revelation for me. A few days ago I mentioned that I was falling for dried chiles this year. This dish was phase one of the seduction. In this recipe a pretty standard soup base (stock water, onion, tomato, garlic, oregano, salt and pepper) is transfigured into one of the more delicious things I’ve ever tasted with the addition of two ancho chiles, and two guajillos. The soup becomes rich and thick when corn toritllas are fried crisp, and crumbled into the soup. This dish would be delicious if you stopped here, but it gets so much better with the addition of the avocado relish. This relish is a much better guacamole than The Book’s official guacamole recipe, and it compliments the soup perfectly. Everything that is deep sultry and comforting and warm in the soup is bright, clean, shining and crisp in the relish. The soup has a satisfyingly hearty texture, which is mirrored in the relish. A few fried tortilla strips added just before serving give a nice crunchy counterpoint.

The recipe suggests that you fry your own corn tortillas, but as the tortilla place in my neighborhood does this on site I just bought a bag of their fresh made tortilla strips, and saved myself the trouble.

This recipe came together easily, and was completely delicious. I thought the final presentation was very attractive, and the dish just made me happy. This soup absolutely earned its five mushroom rating.

Categories
The Book Vegetables

82. Whipped Chipotle Sweet Potatoes p.583

The recipe

Chipotles were the taste sensation of 2006 for me. In fact they were a taste sensation that took the fast food world by storm, from Doritos to Subway you could hardy avoid these often mispronounced smoked jalapeños in adobo sauce. Bobby Flay (restaurateur, Iron Chef, and lover of limelight) is generally cited as patient 0 in the spreading chile epidemic. I’m happy to say that I’ve been infected, and that the taste sensation of 2007 are some of Bobby’s other favourites, Anchos, Gualliros, and Pasillas. I’m still deeply fond of the chipotle, it’s unbelievable depth of flavour, and layers of smoke add a mysterious smouldering quality to any dish. As it turns out this is one of Bobby Flay’s own recipes.

It’s a very straightforward preparation, sweet potatoes are roasted in their skins, then scooped out and beaten together with chipotles, butter, and salt. The mixture is spread into a baking dish and baked for another 20 minutes. The flavours are spot on in this recipe, the sugar soaked earthiness of the sweet potatoes is a perfect compliment to the chipotles. Heat and sweet go together so very well, and these two ingredients bring out the best in each other. The recipe also resists the temptation to make things complex, there are only four ingredients here, and that simplicity is its greatest strength.

Texture unfortunately is a weakness of the dish. The sweet potatoes are whipped, but not whipped in the sense of light and airy, more dense, wet, heavy, and textureless. There’s nothing in here that would give it the structure necessary to become light. I suppose you could fold in stiffly beaten egg whites before the final baking, but I’d rather go the other direction. I wouldn’t whip them at all. This would be much better as smashed chipotle sweet potatoes. Leaving some nice chunks of firm but yielding sweet potato in there would be a major improvement.

I’ve made these a couple of times, and once I had problems with my potatoes splitting and drying out in the oven. Be careful to use undamaged potatoes, and to prick them well. If they split all is lost.

I really really liked the flavours of this dish, and it’s texture could easily be improved. It’s designed as a prepare ahead casserole that can be warmed up when the Thanksgiving hoards arrive. If you’re making it a la minute you can probably skip the final baking step. It gives the dish a crust, but that’s not necessarily a good thing. If you felt like it adding cheese before baking would turn this into a nice gratinée, and a substantial main course. This recipe is easy, cheap, and delicious. I never get tired of the sweet potato chipotle interplay, and its become a standby for me.

Categories
Hors D'Oeuvres & First Courses The Book

26. Guacamole p.9

No linked recipe this time, but this one is so simple I don’t mind retyping it.

4 ripe California avocados, halved, pitted, and peeled
1/2 cup finely chopped white onion
3-4 serrano chiles, minced including seeds
2 1/2 tablespoons fresh lime juice, or to taste
1 1/4 teaspoons kosher salt, or to taste

Combine ingredients in a bowl, mash with a fork until avocado is mashed but still somewhat chunky. Stir until blended.

This guacamole was absolutely minimalist, and not in a good way. No garlic, no cilantro, no tomatoes, no nothing. The avocado relish meant to accompany Tortilla Soup With Crisp Tortillas and Avocado Relish on page 96 is by far the superior guacamole (I’ll get to writing that up in a few months, I’m way way behind).

To be fair, the book does offer this version of the guacamole up as a base for several interesting variations: Guacamole with tomato, radish and cilantro guacamole, fall-winter fruit guacamole, and summer fruit guacamole. The radish and cilantro sounds particularly interesting. I’m adding radishes to the list of under appreciated vegetables, relegated to being picked around on crudité plates and otherwise ignored.

The central flaw with this recipe in all it’s variations is the omission of garlic. I don’t think I’ve ever had a guacamole without garlic, and I don’t think I care to ever again. I’m not sure if this this no garlic business is the traditional method and my readers in Oaxaca are exchanging sly glances about the stupid Canadian, but this is my stance and I’m sticking to it. Maybe if this was the first time I’d ever had guacamole I wouldn’t have missed the garlic, but theres no going back once you know the wonders of the avocado-lime-garlic trifecta.

Overall this was fine, but could have been so much more. The other variations may have worked out better than the base recipe, but as it was it was just dull.

N.B. I’ll do my best to push that nasty picture of the fajitas off the main page as quickly as possible. Sorry.

Categories
The Book Vegetables

14. Grilled Bell Peppers With Criolla Sauce p. 557

the recipe

I was a big fan of this easy versatile colourful salsa. I made this one in a rustic cabin on a friend’s island in the Laurentian’s. Grilling is the perfect cooking method up there and these peppers turned out really well. Blackening them on the grill brought out loads of smoky flavours, which worked well with the bite in the rest of the salsa.

My version had all kinds of bite. I’m not a great connoisseur of peppers, and we don’t always have a wide selection in Montreal. I couldn’t find Serrano’s so I went with some nice looking scotch bonnets without really knowing the difference. Turns out the difference is about 250,000 Scoville units. I pitched in about one and a half peppers, and it just about took our heads off. After the fire of the first few bites had passed the peppers made the whole dish glow.

I’m not sure what this would have been like with Serrano’s, but the Scotch Bonnets made it memorable. We tossed the leftovers in with a steak and potato hash the next morning which worked exceptionally well. The recipe doesn’t mention letting this sit before serving, but I think giving this at least an hour to come together would be a good plan. Texturally it was all a bit mushy, something to give it a bit of crunch would have been nice. Maybe leaving the onion’s in slightly larger segments would do the trick. I’d also think about substituting the (useless) parsley with some cilantro.