Red Sauce Salsa

Yet another recipe from The Homesick Texan Cookbook. Super easy and super tasty. This recipe uses canned crushed tomatoes which are fine everyday salsa. Great in breakfast tacos, with chips, over eggs, or whatever. I buzz up some of this about every two weeks. It lasts around a week, but it does become more "garlic-y" over time. I've cut the original recipe from two cloves to one. I imagine one could use garlic powder in a pinch. The only fresh ingredients you need are an onion, lemon, garlic and cilantro. Keep the other ingredients on hand and you can make a batch anytime.

Ingredients

• 1 medium onion, peeled and quartered
• 1 clove of garlic peeled and halved
• 1 tablespoon chili powder
• 1/2 tablespoon cumin
• 1/2 cup cilantro (some stems are okay, but mostly leaves)
• 1/4 to 1/2 or more pickled jalapeños (you can add a little of the pickling liquid if you want)
• 2 tablespoons lemon or lime juice
• 1 28-ounce can of crushed tomatoes (Hunt's are good)
• Salt to taste

Directions

Add the ingredients in the order listed above to a blender. Blend until pretty smooth but not liquifed. Sample and salt to taste stirring in the salt. Transfer to containers and refrigerate. Stays good for a little over a week. Makes 3 1/2 to 4 cups. 

Tonic Syrup

Homemade tonic syrup is pretty easy once you have the ingredients and equipment. The syrup is used w/ gin, club soda, and limes to make a truly great gin and tonic. Once again, Kevin Liu provided the recipe for this from which I have deviated little. He credits Jeffrey Morgenthaler, so we stand on shoulders of giants with this recipe.

This yields about  cups of syrup; enough for 16 cocktails.

Ingredients

• 40 g cut Cinchona Bark (Peruvian bark; this linked purchase contains 435 g)
• 1.5 cups water
• 220 g granulated sugar
• 6.8 g Citric Acid (about 0.5 tsp). 

Directions

1. Boil the  water on the stove in a pot. Once boiling, add the Cinchona bark and off the heat. Cover and let steep for 20 minutes. 
2. Strain the bark liquid mixture through mesh strainer.  You can re-strain it through a coffee filter or a jury-rigged AeroPress. I've always used the AeroPress setup so cannot comment on the regular coffee filter. Might come out a bit cloudier, but will still taste great I'm sure. 
3. After filtering, add the sugar and citric acid and place everything into a sealed container (like Tupperware).  Shake until everything is dissolved. Pour into a stoppered bottle or one with a screw cap. 

To make a gin and tonic...

To a highball glass, add 2 oz gin, 1 oz syrup, and 3 ounces of carbonated water. I sometimes drop the tonic syrup to 3/4 oz.  Add ice, stir. Garnish with lime wedge or two. 

In this particular bottling I added some dried lavender during the steeping process. It added a bit of lavender flavor. It also made the color much more red than the usual orange I get. 

Carbonating at Home

I like making my own tonic syrup for gin and tonics, but found keeping fresh carbonated water on hand a pain. I already had a CO2 tank with a regulator for a keg I keep in the basement fridge. I read about a special "cap" you can purchase and a quick-connect hose for the CO2 source.

I hooked everything up and used some speny plastic soda bottles I'd been saving. Filled the bottles with water up to about 6 inches from the top. Chilled them and put them in freezer for a while to get the water as cold as possible. Water temp and CO2 solubility are inversely proportional if I recall correctly.

Followed directions adding CO2 at about 40 psi and shaking like crazy. Product delivered. Removed special cap and put original cap on the bottle and left in fridge.

I'm planning to make my own ginger beer and carbonate it using this setup (Morgenthaler has a recipe for ginger beer). Or just make ginger syrup and adding carbonated water. Kevin Liu has a suggestion to add tincture of cayenne to substitute a longer lasting component of ginger that degrades quickly. 

Anyway, this works well and discounting the labor, comes out pretty cheap for carbonated water. 

Thanks to Kevin for improved technique. He posted on Serious Eats and has excellent suggestions. 

Dry Aged Steak (In a Bag)

This turned out great and I will be repeating the process.

1. Purchased Dry Steak Bags from http://www.drybagsteak.com/. Cost (with shipping was about $30 for three bags and "little strips for sealing in Foodsaver". Shipping was high at this site, but they arrived VERY quickly.  
2. Purchased 11.3 pound NY strip loin from Costco. Cost was 6.89/lb so total was about $78.
3. Followed Dry Bag Steak directions to the letter. They have pretty great videos on their site if you can hear the voice over above the "background" music. My corner seals separated the "outer" portion of the bag partially. I did a double seal that did not cut off the corner and am satisfied I have a good seal and vacuum. 
4. Placed on rack fat cap up (required) in rimmed baking sheet (just in case it leaked). 
5. I'm waiting three weeks.

Three weeks later...

Everything turned out as expected. The steaks were dense, flavorful, and tender. The final weight after trimming was around 7 pounds. I probably could have trimmed less, but was playing it safe. Final cost was about $12.50/lb for dry aged steak (including the cost of the bag) Next time I will probably go four weeks.

Fabulous Fish Tacos

These make a great alternative for Taco Tuesday. Even if  you have it.... on a Friday!! Seriously, they are simple and tasty with minimal cleanup.

Music
Chantal Chamberland La Mer

Fish Tacos 
Yields four tacos which can serve two people with a side

• 4 pieces from a box of Trident Beer Batter Cod (try to use longish pieces)
  I used to use the Trident Panko Breaded Cod, but it is no longer available. 
• Kraft Chipotle mayo
• Sriracha  sauce (optional)
• Red cabbage, thinly sliced
• 4 flour tortillas (or corn for variety)
• Cilantro, roughly chopped
• Lime wedges and maybe some radish slices for garnish

1. Prepare cod pieces according to box directions flipping at the midway point. 
2. While fish is cooking, slice the cabbage and mix with enough chipotle mayo to thoroughly coat and enough Sriracha sauce to spice it up as you like.
3. During last one minute or so of baking time place tortillas on second rack in the oven. Remove when you remove the fish or leave in if not thoroughly heated. If you have a gas grill, you can carefully heat them over the flame one at a time.
4. Assemble tacos: Place one piece of fish on each tortilla. Spoon some dressed cabbage on top of the fish. Sprinkle on on some cilantro and a squeeze of lime. Add a bit more of the mayo if you like.
   Be careful, the fish will be very hot. 
5. You can dress up with some mango salsa in place of the slaw for variety.
6. Bon Appétit!

Fish Taco Confidential

My mother, about whom I cannot say enough wonderful things, taught me how to make these. For this and so much more I have a cargo ship loaded with gratitude requiring a deep-water port. 

Black Negroni

Being playful with cocktail recipes yields sometimes fabulous and sometimes disastrous results. Fortunately, Kevin Liu's slight variation on the Negroni falls into the former category. Substituting an amaro for sweet vermouth makes sense if you like your drinks intensely flavorful and complex Add a few dashes of bitters and you've got yourself something special.  I happened to have a bottle of Averna and a bottle of Ramazotti amaros on hand so I made one with each. Both excellent in their own way. The Ramazotti had something like a hint of peppermint.

Recipe is easy.
1 oz gin
1 oz Campari
1 oz Averna amaro (or amaro of your choice).
1 dashes Angustora bitters
2 dashes orange bitters (Kevin used Regan's; I liked Angustora's orange bitters a titch more)

Stir on ice and strain into cocktail glass.
Garnish with orange peel after expressing the oil from the peel into the drink.

That is a horrible example of cutting out a letter in the orange peel for garnish. I've done much better, but wanted to share my failure. There's a business idea... Small cookie cutters to punch out a letter from citrus peel for cocktail. In the world of bespoke-ness you can't get much more bespoken. Sell each for a small fortune on Cocktail Kingdom. 

Migas

Possibly the best breakfast dish ever. Spend some time in Austin, TX and you will  have these for breakfast. Go to Trudy's. You will like them. Migas was my usual weekend dish with breakfast tacos filling in the weekdays if I was lucky. I've got several recipes for Migas. This one is quick and easy.
Music for preparing Migas? Hmmm, I'd have to go with Buena Vista Social Club's Chan Chan.

Perry's Migas for Two

• 4 eggs
• 1 tbsp milk
• 1 tbsp margarine, or butter, or bacon grease, or combination
• 1/2 med to smallish onion, diced
• 2-3 tablespoons drained Rotel tomatoes with green chiles
• 2-3 handfulls of bagged tortilla chips, crushed in your hand when adding to skillet
• Some cheese: velveeta, mexican blend grated, or leftover chile con queso
• Serranos or Jalapeños finely diced
• Flour tortillas

Directions

1. Wrap 4 tortillas flat in foil and put into a oven set at about 250 degrees. 
2. Put two plates into the microwave so you can heat them later. If melting Velveeta, put the cheese and a little milk into a small bowl and put that on the plates. 
3. Sautè the onions in the margarine. While onions cook, beat eggs with milk. 
4. Once onions soften, add the drained Rotel tomatoes. Heat until most of the liquid has evaporated and tomatoes are heated through. 
5. Add the beaten eggs and crumble the tortilla chips onto the eggs. 
6. Cook as you would scrambled eggs. Lowered heat and moving eggs spatula to get the curd size you like. Turn on the microwave for about a minute watching cheese doesn't overflow if melting cheese. 
7. Plate the eggs, drizzle with the melted cheese or sprinkle with grated cheese. 
8. Sprinkle some diced serranos or jalapeños. Don't forget the tortillas in the oven. 

Freshly brewed coffee is a great beverage choice. 

Egg Confidential
I hated eggs my whole life growing up. Would not eat them no matter how they were prepared. When I got to University of Texas, a roommate suggested we go out for migas. I protested. He said there was hardly any egg in them and I should try them. I complied and am forever grateful to Jim Speedy for getting me to try these. I've since expanded my eggy horizons and like them scrambled with a few additions.