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solipsistnationEvenings, lately, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
stophittinyrslf and I have been swapping off entertaining the baby and cooking.
This was fine early on, when I'd cook my usual standards-- burritos, fake meat things wrapped in muffin dough from tubes at the grocery store and baked (this evolved from pigs in blankets and became more elaborate as I got tired of just plain ol' snausages in bread), and potato soup.
Later on, though, we got bored of my basics and started poking around for more interesting things for me to cook. The first step was for me to figure out what goes into the taco spices you get in packets at the store and start messing with that. I came up with a pretty decent mix of chipotle peppers, cumin, coriander, allspice and oregano ground up together and used on various forms of TVP. Eventually, though, this too got boring (basically, I got it right a couple of times and decided I was an expert.) and I started poking around for mole recipes I could turn vegan so the girl and I could both eat it. (The baby is a little young for solid food, let alone spicy Mexican fare.)
I found a couple, in some ofstophittinyrslf's vegan cookbooks, and while they came out pretty well they were a little unsatisfying, and they seemed, well, inauthentic. Because I am, of course, all about the authenticity.
Sometime around Thanksgiving, when my parents were visiting, I asked if they had any of Rick Bayless' cookbooks that they weren't using any more. I didn't think much about this until Christmas, when they gave Nikki a stack of his and Diane Kennedy's Mexican cookbooks.
When we got back home after vacation, the cooking began.
The first thing I made was an adaptation of Rick Bayless' fish enchiladas, with marinated tofu and tempeh instead of fish. The sauce was roasted tomatillos and peppers, pureed. It was so so simple, just a ratio of about 1 pound of tomatillos to 2 ounces of peppers, roasted in the oven until they were blackened and squishy, and dropped into the blender along with any juices that might have leaked out onto the cookie sheet. Puree until smooth, and then cook the protein in a little of the sauce until it's soft and delicious. Drop the cooked protein into a tortilla, fold over and top with more of the sauce. Not difficult at all, and HOLY CRAP delicious.
The cookbook we have is Rick Bayless' Mexican Kitchen. It starts off with a bunch of what he calls "Essential sauces," a selection of different types of salsas and cooked sauces and so on. It would be worth it just for these, and as somebody who has so far been a fairly unadventurous cook, it has opened up a bunch of possibilities for things that I could actually make without having to be, you know, a candidate for Top Chef.
Today we went to a Mexican market and picked up some dried peppers and more tomatillos (which are delicious raw-- kind of like apples). I made a salsa with more roasted tomatillos and peppers that went into a bowl of guacamole and tacos made with dried pasilla peppers. You take the peppers and toast them quickly on a hot, ungreased griddle until they smoke (it takes about 5 seconds), then soak them until they're soft (about 30 minutes) and then drop them and some roasted garlic and some other stuff into a blender and puree. Force that through a strainer and you get a thick peppery paste. You can then take that and do some serious cooking...
Overall, while there's more work involved in some of these recipes, some of them are incredibly easy to make. Sometime in the next week, I'm going to make a big batch of the pasilla paste and freeze it for future cooking, since it would be a great replacement for dry taco spices, or any number of other things. These are fun to cook and pretty easy to get to come out well. I'm having fun with it...
stophittinyrslf and I have been swapping off entertaining the baby and cooking. This was fine early on, when I'd cook my usual standards-- burritos, fake meat things wrapped in muffin dough from tubes at the grocery store and baked (this evolved from pigs in blankets and became more elaborate as I got tired of just plain ol' snausages in bread), and potato soup.
Later on, though, we got bored of my basics and started poking around for more interesting things for me to cook. The first step was for me to figure out what goes into the taco spices you get in packets at the store and start messing with that. I came up with a pretty decent mix of chipotle peppers, cumin, coriander, allspice and oregano ground up together and used on various forms of TVP. Eventually, though, this too got boring (basically, I got it right a couple of times and decided I was an expert.) and I started poking around for mole recipes I could turn vegan so the girl and I could both eat it. (The baby is a little young for solid food, let alone spicy Mexican fare.)
I found a couple, in some of
stophittinyrslf's vegan cookbooks, and while they came out pretty well they were a little unsatisfying, and they seemed, well, inauthentic. Because I am, of course, all about the authenticity.Sometime around Thanksgiving, when my parents were visiting, I asked if they had any of Rick Bayless' cookbooks that they weren't using any more. I didn't think much about this until Christmas, when they gave Nikki a stack of his and Diane Kennedy's Mexican cookbooks.
When we got back home after vacation, the cooking began.
The first thing I made was an adaptation of Rick Bayless' fish enchiladas, with marinated tofu and tempeh instead of fish. The sauce was roasted tomatillos and peppers, pureed. It was so so simple, just a ratio of about 1 pound of tomatillos to 2 ounces of peppers, roasted in the oven until they were blackened and squishy, and dropped into the blender along with any juices that might have leaked out onto the cookie sheet. Puree until smooth, and then cook the protein in a little of the sauce until it's soft and delicious. Drop the cooked protein into a tortilla, fold over and top with more of the sauce. Not difficult at all, and HOLY CRAP delicious.
The cookbook we have is Rick Bayless' Mexican Kitchen. It starts off with a bunch of what he calls "Essential sauces," a selection of different types of salsas and cooked sauces and so on. It would be worth it just for these, and as somebody who has so far been a fairly unadventurous cook, it has opened up a bunch of possibilities for things that I could actually make without having to be, you know, a candidate for Top Chef.
Today we went to a Mexican market and picked up some dried peppers and more tomatillos (which are delicious raw-- kind of like apples). I made a salsa with more roasted tomatillos and peppers that went into a bowl of guacamole and tacos made with dried pasilla peppers. You take the peppers and toast them quickly on a hot, ungreased griddle until they smoke (it takes about 5 seconds), then soak them until they're soft (about 30 minutes) and then drop them and some roasted garlic and some other stuff into a blender and puree. Force that through a strainer and you get a thick peppery paste. You can then take that and do some serious cooking...
Overall, while there's more work involved in some of these recipes, some of them are incredibly easy to make. Sometime in the next week, I'm going to make a big batch of the pasilla paste and freeze it for future cooking, since it would be a great replacement for dry taco spices, or any number of other things. These are fun to cook and pretty easy to get to come out well. I'm having fun with it...