Adventures in cooking:
Adventures in cooking:
Having been distracted, have just accumulated experiments until now. These include:
1. Chicken pipian verde (or mole verde, or mole pipian, etc.)
2. Scallop chowder
3. Peach salsa chicken
Item 1: Flavor-wise, this worked out great. I used the smoked poblano salsa verde I had made this summer as a base, since it is essentially the same as the base for this mole, and added a minimum of other herbs and the toasted pepitas. The texture thing was a struggle, however. It turns out it is a bit challenging to turn toasted pepitas (hulled pumpkin seeds) into a creamy paste. Had I had a mortar and pestle, I would have resorted to that. Alas. Therefore, somewhat crunchy and, of course, the sauce eventually broke because the fat from the pumpkin seeds was not evenly distributed. Will have to study the pulverization aspects and try this again, sometime, as it is my second favorite Mexican mole.
Item 2: It's a typical chowdah. I used a spanish onion, softened and sauteed for a while, celery, also sauteed a bit, a large russet potato, cubed, half a pound of corn niblets, half a pound of tiny bay scallops, a tablespoon of flour, 3 cups of chicken broth, 2-3 cups of milk, 2 bay leaves, some marjoram, some thyme, some ground black pepper, some tabasco, some fish sauce, some worcestershire sauce. Yes, those last two are a direct result of your influence, Serious Eats people. I narrowly decided soy sauce would be too salty. Worked really well. Would use more scallops - full lb next time. Because I like scallops.
Item 3: Used peach salsa I made fresh over the summer along with some celery and braised some chicken breasts low and slow. Comes out all soft and sweet spicy. Serve over grain of choice to catch all the tasty juiciness. Have done before and would do it again.
Having been distracted, have just accumulated experiments until now. These include:
1. Chicken pipian verde (or mole verde, or mole pipian, etc.)
2. Scallop chowder
3. Peach salsa chicken
Item 1: Flavor-wise, this worked out great. I used the smoked poblano salsa verde I had made this summer as a base, since it is essentially the same as the base for this mole, and added a minimum of other herbs and the toasted pepitas. The texture thing was a struggle, however. It turns out it is a bit challenging to turn toasted pepitas (hulled pumpkin seeds) into a creamy paste. Had I had a mortar and pestle, I would have resorted to that. Alas. Therefore, somewhat crunchy and, of course, the sauce eventually broke because the fat from the pumpkin seeds was not evenly distributed. Will have to study the pulverization aspects and try this again, sometime, as it is my second favorite Mexican mole.
Item 2: It's a typical chowdah. I used a spanish onion, softened and sauteed for a while, celery, also sauteed a bit, a large russet potato, cubed, half a pound of corn niblets, half a pound of tiny bay scallops, a tablespoon of flour, 3 cups of chicken broth, 2-3 cups of milk, 2 bay leaves, some marjoram, some thyme, some ground black pepper, some tabasco, some fish sauce, some worcestershire sauce. Yes, those last two are a direct result of your influence, Serious Eats people. I narrowly decided soy sauce would be too salty. Worked really well. Would use more scallops - full lb next time. Because I like scallops.
Item 3: Used peach salsa I made fresh over the summer along with some celery and braised some chicken breasts low and slow. Comes out all soft and sweet spicy. Serve over grain of choice to catch all the tasty juiciness. Have done before and would do it again.
Oh yummy! I need to get into some mole making. I don't think I've had a really competent one yet. The scallop chowder sounds intriguing!
ReplyDeleteI need to know more about the chowder thing too. Except for the celery, because I'm usually :/ about celery.
ReplyDelete(And I need samples of the other two faxed to me, stat.)
ReplyDeleteThe celery in these is a flavoring thing, so you could treat it like a bouquet garni and put it in in a big cheesecloth bag and then remove it before eating. If it's even the taste of it, though, you'd have to leave it out.
ReplyDelete