davepolaschek

recipe

Made some enchilada sauce the other day, and my sweetie wanted to know what went into it, so here’s the #recipe before I forget.

Ingredients:

  • 1 qt tomatoes, fresh or frozen
  • 3-6 chiles, pulled off the ristra, stems & seeds removed
  • 2 tsp Better Than Bouillon roasted chicken flavor
  • 1 tsp onion powder
  • pinch salt
  • 1 tsp smoked paprika or ½ tsp liquid smoke

Directions:

  • Throw everything into a blender, and blend until smooth.
  • Put into a pan, and simmer until it’s reduced down to about a pint (by half)
  • Enjoy

Edited to add: Our rule for the chiles is “about one chile per medium-large tomato.” That seems to work out to four-five per quart, but we need to make sure we’re not missing seeds at that rate.

#sauce

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Challah bites

  • 1¼C warm water
  • 1T bread machine yeast
  • ¼-⅓ cup honey (between the two)
  • 2T olive oil
  • 3 egg yolks + 1 egg
  • 4C flour
  • ½T salt

Mix ingredients to a dough. Let rise once, punch down.

Preheat oven to 375F.

Rise again, punch down and shape into knots. Should get 18-24 knots from this batch. Put on a sheet pan covered with parchment or lightly oiled.

Wash with 1 egg and 1T honey, whisked together. Let bread rise for 15-30 additional minutes.

Bake for 15 min to internal temp of 190F. Move to cooling rack immediately after removing from oven.

#recipe

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Today was another windy day out. The temperature was warmer than yesterday, but the wind is still blowing around 20mph, which is just too windy to do anything outside, so I baked a batch of bread.

Buns, sitting on a cooling rack

They’re. 2:1:1 mix of Graham flour, bread flour, and corn flour, and we’re going to have lunch in a few minutes. I bet we have sandwiches!

#bread #recipe

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Banana, onion, chile & lime salsa, in a glass bowl, on a wooden table

Here’s the #recipe

  • 2 small bananas, cut into 1cm chunks
  • 1 bunch spring onions, chopped finely, including an inch or two of stalk, chopped more coarsely
  • 1 dried #NewMexico chile, pulled off the ristra, de-seeded and ground to coarse flakes, rehydrated in a tablespoon of water
  • 1 tablespoon lime juice
  • 1 tsp mild dry red chile powder – adjust to reach the heat level you like

Mix up in a bowl, and put on either tilapia tacos or eat straight up on chips.

Note that it doesn’t keep very well, not that that’s a huge problem.

#sauce

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loaf of homemade bread, sitting in a basket with a bread cloth

Made bread today. With the 30 degree drop in outside temperatures, it felt like a good day for comfort food.

The #recipe? Glad you asked!

  • 1C graham flour
  • 1C corn flour
  • 1C bread flour
  • heaping Tbsp bacon grease
  • heaping Tbsp dark honey
  • ½ Tbsp salt
  • 1 Tbsp instant yeast
  • 1½C warm water

Mix ingredients thoroughly and knead until the dough is glossy. Let proof until it has doubled in size.

Knock the dough down, shape the loaf, flouring the outside if it’s too sticky, set on a greased pan and let rise until doubled in size. Bake for 23 minutes in a 425F oven. Interior temp of the loaf should be 190F when it’s done.

Cool, slice, and enjoy!

#bread

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Two chicken enchiladas with sauce and cheese, resting on a glass plate, which is resting on an oak table.

Made some chicken enchiladas this evening. They came out pretty tasty. More Minnesota heat than New Mexico heat, which suits our palates just fine.

Enchiladas are a two part meal (three if you’re making your own tortillas, but I’m not that hardcore yet). Filling is meat or cheese or beans, which gets wrapped up in tortillas, and then covered in sauce and cheese.

The #recipe for the filling was just basic taco meat seasoning, with some sautéed chicken. We make our own, but the packets of taco seasoning from the grocery store are fine, too.

The sauce is something I’ve never made before, though I’ve done a lot of sauces. A couple chiles and some diced onions, sautéed until they were nice and tender (I should’ve had roasted chiles, since it’s that time of year, but I’m out); four tomatoes from the neighbor’s garden, chopped up pretty good; a teaspoon of garlic; and a cup of chicken broth. Put it all in a saucepan, cook for a while, then hit it with the stick blender to smooth it. It wasn’t thickening as quickly as I liked, so it got a heaping teaspoon of corn flour to encourage it. It was a more tomato-y sauce than you get at most places in New Mexico, and it had a little more heat than you see at places in Minnesota, so I figure I did ok.

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Made these to go with dinner tonight. I got the spice just about right, so I want to save the #recipe

Ingredients

  • 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
  • ¼ C finely chopped onion
  • 2 roasted green chiles or poblanos, seeded and diced
  • 2 cups diced zucchini
  • 2 cups diced summer squash
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • 2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro (optional)

Directions

  • Heat oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium heat.
  • Add onion; cook, stirring, until soft, about 4 minutes.
  • Add zucchini, summer squash, peppers, and salt; cover and cook, stirring once or twice, until tender, about 3-5 minutes.
  • Remove from the heat and stir in cilantro (if using).

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Three small loaves of poblano corn bread sitting on the cooling rack on a brown granite counter

Made some bread this morning. The #recipe was:

  • 2 C bread flour
  • 1 C corn flour, plus a couple tablespoons while shaping the loaves
  • ¼ C minced roasted poblano peppers, seeds removed (about 4 peppers)
  • 1 Tbs bacon fat
  • 1 Tbs dark wildflower honey
  • 1 Tbs bread machine yeast
  • ½ Tbs salt
  • 1½ C water

Throw it all into the stand mixer and mix it on low until it comes together as a dough, then increase the speed to medium and knead for 10 minutes.

Let proof in the mixing bowl until doubled in size. Turn out onto the (floured) counter and punch it down. Divide into three equal parts and roll into small loaves and place into three small greased loaf pans.

Let rise until the top is just spilling over the top of the loaf pans. Bake for 22 minutes in a 425F oven and turn out onto a cooling rack to cool.

Once cooled, enjoy!

This has (just) enough heat that you can tell there’s peppers in there, but the #bread still tasted great wrapping a ham and cheese sammich.

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We repeated the coconut tilapia tacos but with a canary melon salsa this evening. Didn’t quite give the salsa enough zing, so we had to add some store-bought salsa. Still a dang yummy meal. We’ll have them again, I bet.

Reminder to self, low-fat tortillas don’t hold together as well as the good ones with lard.

Edited to add: take three was with banana salsa which was maybe the best yet.

#recipe

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Made this #recipe the other night, and it was damned tasty. Worth capturing, I thought.

Tilapia and kiwi salsa taco with Spanish rice

Ingredients

  • 2-4 tilapia fillets
  • 1 can sweetened condensed coconut milk
  • 1 Tbsp Thai red chili paste
  • 2 Tbsp lime juice
  • 1 Tbsp chopped garlic
  • 1 tsp dried ground ginger
  • 4 drops orange extract

Kiwi Salsa Ingredients

Tilapia filet after broiling in the marinade

Directions

  • Make the salsa the night before and let it sit overnight in the fridge.
  • Marinate fish in other ingredients.
  • Broil fish in the marinade for about 13 minutes @ 400 in a shallow pan.
  • Turn fish over and broil another 7-9 minutes.
  • Optionally put some Spanish rice in taco shells and drizzle with the marinade.
  • Assemble tacos. Think “three-ingredient street tacos” and maybe throw in some shredded cabbage or carrots to go with the meat and salsa.

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