Weekend morning plate

Left over corn dough quickly pressed into service. !

  
Picked some greens from the hydroponic unit topped with egg, hot sauce and shallots.

Friday Night food Fare

From a recent Friday night

maybe what you would get in a pub

Home brew beer, fresh salsa, cheese and hand rolled corn chips.

TGIF

 

Pork Rillettes

A basic pork slow cooked recipe , adapted from Good Housekeeping Illustarted Cookbook. I did this in a slow cooker crock pot with a pork roast bone in , added seasonings and a small amount of water.

Salt and pepper,  hot pepper etc. for seasonings.

Let cook for several hours, till meat can be pulled from the bone. 

At the end of cooking remove cover and let most of the liquid evaporate.

Pack in a container and refrigerate with some of the juices

Similar to pulled pork with the consistency of a spread.

  
The pork, without cutting it from the bone, cut so the seasonings penetrate the meat.

You could let the meat stand for a few hours but I cooked it right away.

  
In the crock pot…

  
Some of the seasonings utilized.

Using the pork rillette , can be used as a spread on a cracker, toast, crusty bread, or…….

  
I keep several small portions of corn dough in the fridge, when you need corn chips, roll one or two out and cook in or on and cast iron pan or griddle.

Layer the chip with a overripe chopped tomatoe, spoon on some of the pork, top with a fresh diced salsa. Supper’s done !

Breakfast wraps

Basically and scrambled egg in a wrap

Onion, sausage and left over potato sauteed,

drop in a couple of eggs and some seasonings and herbs

Scramble it up and place in a wrap with grated cheese.

Wrap, return to broiler, I like it crispy, garnish with ricotta and fresh fruit.

Lamb wraps

Some shredded lamb, sauteed veggies, leeks etc. served with leaf spinach rolled in a wrap.

Just a few pics.

chili and chips

Another session working with masa, a 2 cup mixture, this time added a bit of vegetable oil in addition to the masa, water and salt. The mixture yielded 8 large tortillas that were rolled between two sheets of plastic wrap.

To cook the chips (tortillas), a cast iron griddle was set on the top rack in the oven under the broiler. With the broiler running the tortilla chips were broiled till dry and various shades of gold. The surface of the grille and the tops of the tortillas were sprayed slightly with a bakers non stick cooking oil. Flip as necessary.

The red chili beans were made by starting with sauteed onions, garlic and celery in some reserved bacon fat. Hot small dried red peppers were added ,chopped, (from a take out Chinese dish that were not wanted) and added before the kidney beans and a can of diced tomatoes. Simmer the ingredients in a covered skillet adding seasonings such as cilantro, seeds, ground cardamon, ground cumin etc to taste. Let cool slightly and break up the chips to use as scoops. Scoop up the beans on a chip and add your choice of shredded cheese.

Served with beverages.

Breakfast baked tortilla

Out in the garden, tomatoes! What, another post about tomatoes ! You bet ,when tomatoes are as far as you back door, you either process them, and/or eat them! So start bt making sort of a salsa.

Add some herbs and spices
Dill
Mustard seed
Fennel seed
Cumin seed
Coriander seed
Pinch of Cumin, red pepper,curry powder

Add whtever else you want, white onion, green pepper…

Reserve some of the salsa for garnish.

In a large skillet layer on the bottom, some bacon…

Add the salsa…

Into a hot oven to bake, till he bacon is rendered and almost completely cooked and the salsa at a good but not too mushy consistency.

Pull the pan from the oven , carefully break in some eggs and return to the oven..

Bake until almost set, enough so they can be moved by spatula…

Onto a flour tortilla, carefully without breaking the yolk…

Add a slice of cheese..

Carefully fold up the tortilla, the tortilla should be slightly moist for easy folding, sprinkle with water if necessary.

Back into a hot oven for baking till crispy…

Plate them up… Garnish with sour cream, reserved salsa…a smattering of hot pepper flakes, a splash of hot sauce if you dare…

Don’t forget a cup of coffee, fresh ground fair trade organic mexican hits the spot with this dish…

Ahhhh… It going to be a good day with a start like this !

tortilla dinner

Thanks to the girls for cooking dinner for fajitas.

   

We (Renee and I) were outside working on the cars/trucks.

My palette

   

Chicken and beef fajitas with fresh guacamole.

The feast preceding Canasta, we (either Renee/Justine and I) vs.  Kaila and Diane , won 2 of 3 games !!!!!!   YEA!

Multi Grain Tortilla

Bread wise today something for breakfast that’s light and fast, no rising times involved. Like a flour tortilla.

Gathered up the grains for a flour tortilla, on hand, some white all purpose flour, corn masa, wheat flour and corn meal.

So about 1 and 1/4 cups white flour in the bowl, with what’s left in the bag of masa probably about 1/8 cup, now you see where this is going.

Add about a handful or less whole wheat pastry flour and a slight amount of corm meal for crunch. Mix together in the kitchen aid with the whip.

Drop in some shortening less than a tablespoon, just enough to give it some fat content. Incorporate it in with the whip like your making a pie crust.

Pour small amounts of water, oh, switch to the paddle on the mixer, and water the multi grain crumble till it clings together, I like mine a bit on the moist side.

Divide into 8 balls. Prepare the rolling surface with corn meal and with the marble roller, roll the balls out into thin into circular shapes. 

These came out to

be roughly 8 inches or so.   

At this point they came be refrigerated, frozen, or in this case I grilled 2 slightly for stuffing.

By the way my tortilla press is out of service, the wooden hinge broke when applying pressure to make a tortilla, so It’s back to the basement hacker lab for revision 2.01

See Multi Grain Cheese and Veggie Tortilla

Multi Grain Cheese and Veggie Tortilla

You don’t really need a recipe for this but I wanted to post something and take some pictures using a mini tripod on the camera.

Use some Multi Grain Tortillas, I cooked some slightly in a large skillet, both sides. Now raid the fridge for some ingredients, this morning just veggies, I decided to skip the meat.

( I didn’t have the camera set for close ups)

It ends up chopped, red and green bell peppers, tomatoes, onion, garlic, American cheese. Since this is kind of bland for my taste, and I’m skipping the hot pepper by the way, garnish with herbs and seeds I utilized fresh sage, since I have an abundance, fresh oregano, some cumin seed and dried dill and celery seed.

Like I said zip it up as you wish with the ingredients. Salt and pepper is a given. roll it up !   (just an excuse to get my fat paws into the picture! must be the camera lens that make them look like that! :-))

 

 

Heat up the skillet to medium high and back off on the flame. In goes the tortillas and use another skillet to cover making sort of a stove top oven to bake the roll ups. About 10 minutes or so. (roll them over about 1/2 way through).

Go back to the fridge for some garnish, They really need some dipping sauce or other, I was fortunate to have some sour cream, just a dollop and a sprig of fresh parsley clipped from the countertop garden.

Coffee is the selected beverage pairing today, Since I roasted some Mexican organic last night and made some simple sugar syrup to sweeten the cup along with a spot of milk , that was the inspiration to go for something light after I drank the first cup.

Now that I’ve blogged them and eaten two, it feels like an appetizer, but unfortunately I have other things to do to keep my mind off of food, but then i have other meals to prepare later so I won’t have too cook during the week nights.