Tacos Con Carne

Tomorrow is Cinco De Mayo, and I will be (hopefully) recovering from a weekend of high pressure ops. That said, perhaps a little bit of Mexico can creep onto my plate .. I am thinking Tacos… But not just any tacos, soft tacos with strips of steak, grilled peppers, onions, fresh cheese, a tangy dipping sauce, perhaps guacamole and some form of lettuce salad on the side.

A taco is a traditional Mexican dish composed of a corn or wheat tortilla folded or rolled around a filling. A taco can be made with a variety of fillings, including beef, pork, chicken, seafood, vegetables and cheese, allowing for great versatility and variety. A taco is generally eaten without utensils and is often accompanied by garnishes such as salsa, avocado or guacamole, cilantro, tomatoes, minced meat, onions and lettuce.

These come in many varieties:

The Hard Taco
Beginning from the early part of the twentieth century, various styles of tacos have become popular in the United States and Canada. The style that has become most common is the hard-shell, U-shaped version. Such tacos are crisp-fried corn tortillas filled with seasoned ground beef, cheese, lettuce, and sometimes tomato, onion, salsa, sour cream, and avocado or guacamole.

The Soft Taco
Traditionally, soft-shelled tacos referred to corn tortillas that were cooked to a softer state than a hard taco – usually by grilling or steaming. More recently the term has come to include flour tortilla based tacos mostly from large manufacturers and restaurant chains. In this context, soft tacos are tacos made with wheat flour tortillas and filled with the same ingredients as a hard taco.

The Double Decker
Comprised of a hard taco wrapped in a similarly sized flour tortilla with a layer of re-fried beans or guacamole between the layers

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Con Queso Dip

As the annual Badwolf revel approaches, I must place my RogueChef’s hat on and consider the menu for the event.

As always, I will do a fresh salsa, and a Guacamole, but want something a bit more. Perhaps Queso, but not the average run of the mill melted processed cheese melted and mixed with pickled jalapeno rings.

And while processed cheese is just “Oil Field Trash”, in its melted state it is good stuff, the stuff of my youth. But when you are serving queso, people hope for something more sophisticated. Some recipes are called queso compuesto, or “queso and other good things”—good things could be a scoop of beans or fajita meat also added to the dip. Perhaps some really good chorizo, browned off, crumpled and mixed in.

While I have eaten MANY bowls of cheese spread and jalapenos poured over tortilla chips, I really have a urge to make a real Chili con Queso with real peppers and real cheese, and have it taste as good or better than the rectangular brick of cheese food.

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Slow Cooker – Brisket Chili

It seems to have decided to become late fall at last, windy, rainy, cool / cold. In short, glorious weather for pneumonia, which really is just not my cup of tea.

All that and the current crop of high intensity engagements have left me dry, drained, and damaged, it is time to fight back with things to build the blood, fill the gut, and add a fire to the eye, lead to the pencil and a purpose to the step ..

From way back in my youth, these are the days my mother made chili, or Texas Red, no mushrooms, no tofu, absolutely nothing fancy, just beef, stock, Legumes, Allium, Solanaceaes, and capsicums, and perhaps some cumin, oregano, salt, pepper and other trace element style spices. (Alliums are the onion family, onion, garlic, etc, Legumes are beans, Solanaceae are nightshades – tomatoes to be specific, and capsicums are peppers.)

To quote a description:

Texas red if it walks the thin line just this side of indigestibility: damning the mouth that eats it and defying the stomach to digest it, the ingredients are hardly willing to lie in the same pot together.

If one looks at all the legends of how chili was discovered, there is one thing in common…. ABJECT POVERTY, so the meat involved is not going to be the best, but since it will be close to the horn or the hoof, I am sure it will have flavor beyond compare, and collagen beyond believe. (And this is a good thing….)

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Meatless Monday – Chili Sin Carne

As the Festival of Sukkot arrives, and I have been exchanging greetings with various friends who celebrate this, in one of these exchanges I was asked for a post on “Veggie Chili”.

Now a bit of research shows …

Vegetarian chili (also known as chili sin carne, chili without meat, chili non carne, and chili sans carne) acquired wide popularity in the U.S. during the 1960s and 1970s with the rise of vegetarianism. It is also popular with those on a diet restricting the use of red meat. To make the chili vegetarian, the cook leaves out the meat or replaces it with a meat analogue, such as textured vegetable protein or tofu, or a starchy vegetable, such as potatoes. These chilis nearly always include beans. Variants may contain corn, squash, mushrooms, or beets.

I am lucky in the fact, that chili refers to a soup, stew, or curry, containing, Guess What…. Chilies!..

But there is a problem, providing taste, texture, and aroma from a purely vegetable basis, but these are not insurmountable…

Lets take the basics of chili…

Now a vegetarian chili does gains very little from a long simmer, the long cooking time is to help less-than-prime pieces of meat break down and tenderize, the only advantage to cooking for more that enough time to soften the beans is to get the spices to blend and mellow, as well as have come of the beans break down and provide starch to thicken the gravy.

So how do I make vegetarian chili, it all depends on the vegetarian… Seriously, some vegetarians will not consume milk fat, (aka vegan), so using butter to add fat will not work and other methods (margarine, corn oil solids, etc) must be used.
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Fajitas

As spoken Prior:

And as we all know, bright, shiny, sharp things really catch my eye. While speaking to a cutlery salesman, I was asked, “Are you a chef?, Is Bad Wolf your restaurant?”. My reply was something to the order of, “I only play a chef on the internet, and my restaurant is only open 6-10 days a year”. As the discussion progressed and I sliced and diced through most of the demo veggies on the board, it was revealed that I ran a food blog, and was hosting a large BBQ in the near future. The offer was, take this slicer, use it, If you like it, blog about it, if you don’t like it send it back.

I was already impressed with the edge and handling, and considering the purchase of a chef’s knife, so I accepted the offer, and stated that I WOULD run the knife through it’s paces.

The knife is a keeper, and I’ll be acquiring a few more items from the company. After the preparations for two posts and one meal I feel safe to use the name Gunter Wilhelm. And for those who know me, I DO NOT use brands lightly. (But look for the knife in many upcoming posts)

One of the true tastes for fajitas is the use of less than prime meat, in this case a brisket, cut wafa-thin, across the grain as only a very sharp good quality knife can, cooked hot and fast, to sear and cook, but not so much as to toughen the meat.

A Classic, Steak Fajitas, with Pico de gallo, Guacamole, saute’d peppers and onions. Served with Tortillas, Tortilla chips, salsa and a good cervesa. This is a meal to be shared.

Notes / Comments on Fajitas ….
Texas (my home state) would love to be able to lay claim to having originated fajitas, but (regrettably) the ownership goes to the south-of-the-border vaqueros who learned to make use of a tough cut of beef known as skirt steak. Before fajitas became popular throughout the US, skirt steak was a cheap cut scorned by all but the most dedicated beef eaters, since then the price of skirt steak has more than doubled.

Fajitas are a wonderful entree for an informal dinner party. There is something festive about them and their side dishes. Or perhaps it’s the margaritas and Mexican beer that so often go with this Tex-Mex treat. Whatever. Don’t settle for some watered-down, cable TV, chicken version of fajitas. Enjoy the experience make your own fajitas. Read the rest of this entry »

Pico de Gallo

Before all my good friends and sometimes adversaries, (especially the ones with certificates from CIA and Le Cordon Bleu Paris), thrash me for using a slicer to produce this dish, one must hear the story, and the reason.

This past weekend I visited a local Wine and Food Festival, expecting cooking demonstrations, fine food and to acquire a lot more knowledge of Wine, Cheeses, Charcuterie, and the pairing of those.

Needless to say I was, to quote an old friend, “Most Underwhelmed…”.

The bright spot was I walked by a booth for a cutlery company, and the gentleman there said, “Try my knife…”

And as we all know, bright, shiny, sharp things really catch my eye. In the discussion I was asked, “Are you a chef?, Is Bad Wolf your restaurant?”. My reply was something to the order of, “I only play a chef on the internet, and my restaurant is only open 6-10 days a year”. As the discussion progressed and I sliced and diced through most of the demo veggies on the board, it was revealed that I ran a food blog, and was hosting a large BBQ in the near future. The offer was, take this slicer, use it, If you like it, blog about it, if you don’t like it send it back.

I was already impressed with the edge and handling, and considering the purchase of a chef’s knife, so I accepted the offer, and stated that I WOULD run the knife through it’s paces.

Please NOTE: Prior to dicing the veggies for the Pico, I had broken down a brisket, (Posting for Beef Fajitia’s to come), wacked up several sets of peppers, onions, and chilies.

I saved the Pico production and specifically the tomatoes, (the most fragile of the lot), for last. Just to test the factory edge, I did NOT touch the steel. The tomatoes diced very finely, without mushing as they would be by a dulled blade. The onions, which can be very pungent when assaulted by a dull blade, sliced “wafa-thin”, with little or no tears. From this I was quite happy with the edge, and from the lack of cramps in my hand I am quite pleased with the handle. (Though I would NOT use a slicer for this work on regular basis, preferring a Santukou, or Nakiri, for dicing veggies.)

The knife is a keeper, and I’ll be acquiring a few more items from the company. After the preparations for two posts and one meal I feel safe to use the name Gunter Wilhelm. And for those who know me, I DO NOT use brands lightly. (But look for the knife in many upcoming posts)

And now back to our post..
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