Hella Mozzarella

We apologize for the unannounced hiatus from food blogging last week.  Tony and I went on a little backpacking excursion, during which we ate naught but freeze-dried lasagna packets and drank naught but bitter instant coffee.  It was a foodie's worst nightmare and so we shall not speak of it, but instead get right to this week's meal, which is one that I can truly get behind.  First off, our recipe of choice is mainly cheese.  There are some veggies and spices thrown in for good measure, but it's mostly cheese.  If I didn't mention it in my food philosophy: CHEESE!  'Nuff said.  Furthermore, this week we introduce something that has been sorely lacking from our cooking adventures, namely, dessert.  Again, I may have failed to mention my love for all things sugary in my food philosophy, but let's just say that sometimes I eat "real" food simply so that I can feel justified in eating a big ol' plate of carrot cake, ice cream, or anything drenched in chocolate.  I'm still not sure exactly how that logic works, but in any case, I LOVE desserts and am quite fond on baking.  So all in all, this is a meal I got very excited about.

I don't eat a lot of bread or cheese, for paranoid health reasons, not because I don't love them.  I do love them, but more than bread, though less than cheese, I LOVE eggplant (to clarify, the hierarchy of love looks like this bread<eggplant<cheese).  Though eggplant seizes the throne whenever it's prepared with basil and black bean sauce at Thai restaurants.  I know what you're thinking, or what you will be thinking after I suggest you were thinking about it: how can you LOVE eggplant?  I love it because it's a selfless, yet bold fruit (yes, it's a fruit, don't get me started).  It cooks down to a texture that can only be described as mushy, yet it somehow makes mushy a positive by absorbing whatever flavors it comes into contact with and adding it's own sweet earthiness.  So I was excited by the recipe planned for this week.

Behold:  The Tuscan Eggplant Parmigiana.  It's canned tomatoes, basil, oregano, eggplant, mozzarella, and parmesan all put into a big pot.  That's it.  I'd actually made this recipe once before after stumbling upon it on some food blog or other, so I knew that it was super delicious, but this time Tony and I decided to do it a little differently by breading the eggplant with egg and flour (is it still called breading if you don't use bread crumbs?) before frying them.  In hindsight, I feel like the breading actually stopped the eggplant from absorbing some of the great flavors in the pot (basil, garlic, oregano, CHEESE) because I remember the dish being a tad more flavorful the first time around.  So anyway, my advice would be to follow the instructions (I mean, who do we think we are anyway messing with a recipe?) and make sure that your pan is very hot when you fry the eggplant so's it doesn't soak up tooo much of the oil, even though it's gonna be oily no matter what (yum).

Topping the loooooong list of "seemingly simple cooking techniques that I always screw up" is frying.  I usually bake my eggplant parmigiana in order to take a cowardly stance against frying, but eggplant is just so good with a little breading that Karen and I decided to go for it.  I used some egg and flour instead of going the extra bread crumb mile.  Everything was going well, my little eggplant slices were sweated (sweating refers to salting the eggplant cutlets and letting them sit, allowing the bitter juices to seep out), egged and floured and smiling waiting to be popped into the oven for a nice warm sauna of yumminess to finish a veritable full spa treatment.  Instead they found themselves plunged into a half inch of under-heated oil in a mishapen skillet where they slowly absorbed oil and occasionally found patches area hot enough to fry in.  Sorry, eggplant buddies.  Don't get me wrong, it turned out pretty good, but eggplant can be a fickle fruit, so don't you dare cross it.

Tony Note: I see a disappointed face in each oil soaked cutlet.

While Tony's spirit was being crushed by eggplant and a misshapen skillet (that's my bad, probably time to invest in some quality cookware) I had the incredibly easy job of opening a can, chopping some basil and garlic, shredding some cheese, and putting stuff in a pot.

Karen Note: I see a food surface that needs to be covered in CHEESE!


Because my job was so easy, I also whipped up some rosemary bread à la Macaroni Grill.

It was okay.  I mean, it was bread and it had rosemary and it was covered in butter (awesome), but for my money there is no better at-home bread recipe than No Knead Bread.  So I think next time I'll just add some rosemary to that bad boy and call it a day . . . or two days since it take about 20 hours to rise and get all bread-like.

As you can see, we couldn't wait the 10 seconds it takes to get a picture to devour the bread.  So although this meal may not look that appetizing (sorry for the stained table cloth) it was pretty awesome, really easy, and very filling.


Oh, but it's not over!  The food part was so simple that we decided to invest our extra time in some strawberry shortcake, one of my favorite desserts.  Karen and I got into a spat over this dish as we are wont to do.  Though less heated than past squabbles, "Bake Vs. Fry", "Mince Vs. Chop" or "More Chocolate Vs. No, Karen, we can't fit anymore chocolate in this," the question of "Biscuit Vs. Angel food cake" was nonetheless contentious.  I swear by a Martha Stewart recipe that involves buttery, crumbly biscuits as the proper strawberry vessels, but I've never tried angel food cake.  Karen, having tried my recipe, swore that the lighter and more pious option was better.  I was skeptical, but excited to put this to the test.  Unfortunately, angel food cake required a level of precision and technique that we didn't feel comfortable with, so we settled on Hot Milk Sponge Cake.  This would prove a poor decision, something the less than appetizing title should have warned us of.


While I still maintain that angel food cake is the ONLY way to do strawberry shortcake, I'm ashamed to say that I took one look at the complicated, finicky instructions in my BH&G Cookbook ("Make sure your utensils are clean.  The smallest amount of oil or fat on beaters or a mixing bowl will compromise the volume of the beaten egg whites."  WHAAA?) and I just plain chickened out.  One day I hope to conquer the more delicate baking techniques such as adding sugar "when soft peaks form," but for now I just wanted cake, so I went with a recipe that I'd used previously for tiramisu.


Karen gets right to work fudging things up by mixing the ingredients in the wrong order.  I hate to think what hellish beast would have emerged from that oven if we had gone with the angel food cake recipe.

While Karen handled measuring, mixing and any task that might involve higher level thinking, I cut up strawberries and poured sugar all over them.  And I done it real well.  Promise.  

QUIZ: Which plate was prepared by a person with enough patience and forethought to consider what the photo would look like and which was prepared by a thumbless monkey? 

Trick question, I do TOO have thumbs.  I was just excited.

A final word of wisdom: not a single dessert doesn't benefit from a pinch of salt.  It brings out the flavor, and when you decide to make Hot Milk Sponge Cake, you need to coax out every bit of flavor you can.  

Okay, you know that cake was totally delicious when it was covered in sugary strawberry syrup and homemade whipped cream.  Just because it tasted a little hot and kinda milky and spongey . . . well, just shut up.

This meal had its flaws, indeed.  Just like babies, they don't always turn out quite right.  As always, though, Karen and I had tons of fun and despite the abundance of cheese and adding salt to the dessert, this meal was much better for you than what we could have gotten at Macaroni Grill.  I heard the water alone contains half your daily calories!

Kickin' It with Brisket

All right, so barbecue is intimidating, right?  Every Food Network show I have ever seen on the subject has led me to believe that “real” barbecue takes exactly 92.64 hours of closely monitored cooking in a handmade smoker sanctified by the King of Barbecue himself, a man that I imagine weighs 900 pounds and has a Fu Manchu mustache so glorious it would make you weep.  Well, I don’t know if what we made this week would be considered “real” barbecue, but it was smothered in barbecue sauce, it was delicious, and we did it in under three hours.

I too fear the culinary Goliath that is BBQ.  For one, my hipster mustache doesn't grant me the BBQ expertise that the more substantial Fu Manchu bestows upon its owners.  For two, red meat throws up all kinds of health and sustainability red flags in my brain.  On this occasion I held my tongue, knowing that such concerns would invite disdainful glares from my sister and perhaps even a righteous wedgie.  Besides, I can rationalize enjoying BBQ at restaurants, so figured I could apply the same logic to a special Sunday supper, even though Karen's apartment lacks the rusted license plates and taxidermied gators that would have completed the ambiance.  

Continuing with the theme from last week of "Meals I Would Never Usually Make," I have no idea why we chose to cook a giant slab of red meat.  I don't usually cook meat because 1) It's expensive and 2) It's ooshy.  It's all full of blood and fat and tendons and bones and, just, no.  Until it's cooked of course and then it is all kinds of awesome, which is exactly why I left the meat handling to my brother.  But before we get to that, I must give props again to my BH&G Cookbook.  Once we decided on barbecue, we flipped through its hollowed pages and found an Oven-Barbecued Beef Brisket with homemade barbecue sauce that sounded just scrumptious.  This decision led us to the grocery store, specifically the meat section, where we stood silently perusing the shelves for a good four minutes before Tony turned to me and asked, "What's a brisket?"  Goooooood question.  

As it turns out, this is a brisket:

Luckily, my cookbook also contains a meat map, showing you the precise location of cuts of beef on the cow.  Although, you really don't want to know which part brisket comes from . . . Ha, just kidding.  It's the armpit.

The store had two differently priced cuts of armpit beef.  We took pause, wondering why the brisket we chose was a full dollar per pound cheaper than all the others.  I pointed out, as a possible reason, the thick layer of fat completely covering one side, like icing on a meat cake.  No problem, I assured Karen (and myself), not realizing that I would be tasked with scraping the icing off this particular meat cake.  Karen played the gender card on me, putting me in charge of the defatting.  I enjoy working with raw animal flesh no more than she does, and I'm pretty freaked out by spiders, so the gender card can suck it.  Alas, sharpest possible pairing knife in hand, I set about my depraved task.  Luckily, Karen was chopping onion next to me so that any inquiry about my tears could easily be dismissed.  Harder to explain was why I spent the night weeping in the bath tub.  

While Tony was sawing off gobs of fat . . .

I was mixing up a delicious and tendon-free sauce in which to roast the brisket.  I don't know copyright laws (nor do I care, so don't tell me) but I'm assuming that I shouldn't copy and post a full recipe from a published cookbook.  I will say, however, that this sauce contains water, onion, Worcestershire sauce, vinegar, chili powder (I used chipotle powder, uh duh), beef bouillon, red pepper, and garlic.  This was literally the best picture of me mixing sauce.  There were worse ones . . . 

Moving on.  At this point all you gotta do is pour the sauce over the brisket, cover it with foil, and bake at 325°F for three hours, turning once.  We baked ours for a little over two hours since it was a wee bit smaller than the 3-pounder the recipe called for and we also (and I did not realize this until re-reading the recipe just now) failed to turn once!  Even though our brisket turned out succulent and flavorful, I can't imagine the heights of succulence and flavorfulness it may have reached if only my brother and I payed closer attention to recipes.  Such is the trade-off when drinking several glasses of red wine while cooking, which is totally worth a few mistakes, so whatever.

Dern it!  We didn't flip once?!  Curse those glasses of red devil's spit!  Speaking of devil's spit, we made a BBQ sauce worthy of just such a kitschy name, though it wasn't spicy, so perhaps "Marmot Spit" would be more appropriate . . . though I don't see how.  I just know it should have the word "spit" in it.  Anyway, I regard BBQ sauce with as much, if not more, trepidation as the meat.  I'm very particular.  Thus, I was skeptical that the BH&G Cookbook could impress me, but it provided us with a nice sauce made of onion, garlic, apple juice, tomato paste, vinegar, brown sugar, molasses, paprika, horseradish, Worcestershire, sauce, salt and pepper.  I also added some spicy mustard because I felt it was missing a little something.  [NOTE: I do not condone the use of yellow mustard, but I admit to the merit of the fancier mustards as long as they don't do that little poop thing on my finger when I pop the top.]  

With sauce simmering, Karen and I engaged in a very drunken-sounding argument over proper pronunciation of "Worcestershire" (Work-ester-sheeer!) and then turned our focus to side dishes.  

One of my favorite dishes to make, ever, and this may sound weird, is cauliflower and . . . well, that's it.  If you take a head of cauliflower, chop it up, drizzle it in olive oil, spread it out on a pan, and roast it at about 400°F (depending on your oven) for about 20 minutes, and sprinkle with some salt and pepper then you got yourself a tasty treat.  You can do the same thing with brussels sprouts and it rocks!  Don't ever let any brussels sprouts-haters tell you any different.

Simple and vegetable-based was the theme for the side dishes.  I was afraid my stomach would find the red meat an unfamiliar trespasser and thus, had to send it in with some old regulars.  Like cabbage.  Mmmm mmmm.  Nobody don't like cabbage.  I dressed red cabbage, shredded carrot and thinly sliced red onion (for lack of green) in cider vinegar, rice wine vinegar, sugar, garlic, mustard (fancy kind), red pepper flakes, salt and pepper.  It turned out surprisingly good.  

I also invited sweet potato fries to join the adventure.  They were the frozen kind that you pop in the oven, so they don't require much explanation.  Though Karen did give them a dousing of truffle salt.  That reminds me, stop everything you are doing, mortgage your house, sell your family, and spend ALL YOUR F%*ING MONEY on truffle salt.  NOW!  

The veggies proved effective guides for the red meat and everything went together nicely.  It wasn't restaurant BBQ, but it was a great success, especially for a first attempt.  I'm glad Karen and I tried it.  I urge you to try new things in the kitchen; take risks, maybe fail, maybe not, but have fun!  Even if your mustache doesn't extend majestically around your mouth and down to your chin. You can Fu Man DO it!

Our Food Philosophies

Welcome to the Green siblings' food/cooking/arguing about food and cooking blog.  For our first entry, before we get into our weekly meal, my brother and I thought that we'd lay out our thoughts on food, a little Food Philosophy, if you will, so you know why we wanted to write about food in the first place.  Please enjoy the following longwinded food related essays.  (Also, from here on out, I will be writing in a cool dusty blue and the Brony (brother/Tony) will be writing in "bright motha' effin' red," as he put it.)


Sister Karen's Food Philosophy:


I love eating.  There are a number of factors that dictate my food philosophy, which I will get to momentarily, but the overarching theme is that I just love food and I love eating food.   When you think down the list of activities you are required to do on a daily basis (brushing your teeth, showering, talking to people, evacuating your bowels) can you think of a single mandatory activity that is even half as much fun as eating?  Well, I can’t.  Food is delicious and the fact that I should, nay MUST, eat food every single day is just icing on the cake.  Food makes any activity better, whether it be a social gathering, curling up on the couch to watch a movie, or taking a long car ride (Twizzlers, anyone?).  Fortunately, my love of eating has parlayed nicely into a growing love for cooking.  

Aside from my intense love of all things edible, I must attribute my interest in cooking to two things: first, my mother and second, Bulgaria.  I must thank my mother who, despite always having a full time job with two kids and a husband who did little to no cooking (sorry, dad), managed to cook balanced meals for her family, and did so the majority of the time.  Cooking was the rule in our house, not the exception.  Frozen, packaged, processed, and fast foods of course made the occasional appearance at our table, but they were largely a treat or novelty, to the extent that when I would have dinner at a friend’s house and discover that they ate boxed mac and cheese or Hot Pockets most nights, I was somewhat appalled.  So thank you, mom, for giving me an appreciation of real food and an early sense of superiority over those who succumbed to the greasy allure of our faux food nation.  That said, I love boxed mac and cheese and Hot Pockets.  More on that later.  

Now, to thank Bulgaria.  My love of cooking really got a kick start a few years ago when I decided to sign up for the Peace Corps and was sent to a teeny tiny village in Eastern Europe with no fast food places, one village restaurant that served french fries and meatballs, and very few packaged meals (Bulgaria has their share of chips, candy bars, and snack foods, but very few meal options akin to American frozen TV dinners).  Not only was I forced to make things from scratch, but I had to start at the basics.  Most meals would consist of rice or lentils, onion and garlic, and whatever vegetables were in season at the moment.  Most families grew their own fruits and vegetables and raised live stock and the whole experience left me with a better sense of where food comes from and what constitutes real food. 

But have I mentioned that I love boxed mac and cheese and Hot Pockets?  Yes, I am aware of the growing foodie movement.  I’ve done my due diligence on the local, organic, micro-biotic, vegan food movements, etc.  I’ve read Fast Food Nation and The Omnivore’s Dilemma.  I’ve seen Food Inc. and taken much of the information to heart.  I know that I should eat real food and avoid trans fats and crazy chemicals and that I shouldn’t support giant corrupt companies that mistreat their workers, harm the environment, and make questionable and unhealthy “food.”  For the most part, I try to make conscientious decisions.  That said, sometimes I just want a box of Cheez-Its and an entire bag of mini-Reese's cups for dinner and I am perfectly okay with that.  I’m afraid that I’m a bit too impulsive and prone to bouts of ravenous hunger and/or pure boredom eating to stick to my food principles too strictly.  Plus I just like things that taste good, unlike my brother who seems to have had a trans fat detector implanted in his brain and an inhuman tolerance for salad.  I’m just not that diligent.

Anyway, the last factor I will discuss at this time that shapes my relationship to food (I’m sure there are sooo many more, but all this writing has made me hungry so I’ll wrap it up) is that I am pretty much broke all the time.  I would like to think that I have a sophisticated palate and can appreciate the finer things in life, but my current profession as a part time science teacher limits my food choices quite a bit.  So, no caviar and gold-flecked desserts for me.  A lot of my meal choices come down to me grumbling like an old lady in the grocery store (“Eh, can you believe the price of apples these days?  What am I, a Rockefeller?”) and then grabbing whatever has the lowest cost per unit.  

Being broke may actually work in my favor however, because I am also easily overwhelmed by choice.  One of my biggest food dilemmas is that when I sit down to plan a dinner and ask myself, “What sounds good?” more often than not I come back with the answer, “Everything.  Literally, everything.”  If it weren’t for being limited by money and laziness, I might very easily spiral into a fever of indecision each night which would begin with me searching methodically through every food blog and cook book I’ve ever come across and end in me curled up on the kitchen floor, spatula in hand, smacking away hallucinatory images of beef fajitas and thai stir fry.  “I want all of you!  AAALL of you!  Oh, why do you tempt me?!” I would cry.  But luckily, I am limited by my budget and what is available to me at my local grocery stores.  I rarely go out of my way to pick up hard to find ingredients.  Why drive yourself crazy, right?

All right, so that is where I stand food-wise.  If you share any of those interests or dilemmas then I hope you will enjoy the wacky adventures* of myself and my brother as we attempt to feed ourselves on a weekly basis.

*Disclaimer: Most wacky cooking adventures on this blog may not be considered “wacky” nor an “adventure,” but have been dramatized to appear as such.  Just go with it.


Brother Tony's Food Philosophy:


Food is complicated.  I have a love/hate relationship with it.  It wasn’t always this way.  There was a time when my food groups consisted of candy, Burger King, and whatever mom was making for dinner that night.  Any food I hadn’t been exposed to in the first few years of my life, especially foods that seemed exotic, healthy, or smelled like they had mustard in them, I wouldn’t give a chance.  Food was so easy.  For me, at least.  My mother, on the other hand didn’t appreciate my subtle supervisory role in the kitchen.  “What’s that?  You puttin’ that on the chicken?  It’s not mustard, is it?  Hmmm, smells exotic.”  She deemed me a “picky eater,” a phrase that mothers regard with the same dismay as “sickly” or “lupus-filled.”  I preferred to think of myself as opinionated and it was my opinion that I had already discovered all the good foods in the world and that other people had very very stupid taste buds.  I also didn’t need to taste food to know that it was terrible.  I went off instinct, a practice, I now realize, must have pissed my mom off something righteous.

I coasted through eighteen years of my life in ignorant bliss, never worrying what stuffing tasted like.  Yes, that is how backwards I was.  Stuffing!  Butter and bread and butter and chicken broth and butter was deemed too much of a risk to my taste buds. I never wondered what tofu tasted like (I was shocked to discover the answer was “nothing”).  I had never had Thai or Indian cuisine and I was sure Sushi was a fabrication of Hollywood.  Then, within a matter of months, coinciding with my freshman year of college, I experienced a renaissance in my relationship with food.  I was forced into a meal plan at school, and after a few weeks of overcooked spaghetti in “cream sauce.”  I was desperate enough to venture into the world of cooking.

Concurrently, my girlfriend at the time began exposing me to all manner of food I wasn’t accustomed to.  When I first gave in and tried “that green swampy muck that probably tastes like gutter water” I nearly wept.  Guacamole was amazing!  Thus began my love affair with avocados.  I hadn’t found all the good foods.  In fact, I had missed most of them.  I had been wrong.  So so wrong.  From there, my palette exploded.  I wanted to try everything.  Except anything that had yellow mustard in any way associated with it.  After all, a man must have a code.

I was high on the possibility of food.  I even began to enjoy cooking to the point that I considered a career in the culinary arts.  But my love of food was soon perverted by fear.  The political side of food crept up on me, as did the vague claims of scientists and self-prescribed food aficionados.  I had read Fast Food Nation a year earlier and that laid the groundwork of paranoia that would be my undoing.  I became obsessed with buying only foods that were organic, non-GMO, sustainable, grass-fed, omega 3 rich, trans fat free, preservative free, free range, etc., etc., until the only thing I could eat was kale.  One day, as I attempted to chew through undercooked organic kale enchiladas, I realized I had sapped all the fun out of food.  It struck me with the clarity that can only be brought on by messing up an enchilada.  It’s damn hard to screw up tortilla+cheese+sauce.  I decided to stop worrying so much.  I adopted the mantra of one of my favorite books, Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food: eat food. not too much. mostly plants.  The first time through, I had missed the book’s intention of making food enjoyable again and had focused on the problems with the food industry and health concerns.

I’ve managed to mellow out a bit and I’m learning to enjoy food again, though I’ll be damned if I’m going to eat a non-organic peach and allow those cancerous pesticides to wreak their demonic havoc on MY BODY!  Ok, I have a ways to go.  On the positive side, my trek through the bleak world of food facts was born of a real passion and interest in food and I’ve come out with an appreciation for companies and organizations that genuinely care about the effect of food on the planet, the economy, and the health of humans.

I haven’t, however, recovered my love for cooking, as classes and work have made it merely a necessary evil.  I’m resigned to the fact that I can’t make food that is restaurant quality, though I have disproved that many times.  I’ve given up on making hummus altogether.  I simply cannot replicate the taste of the store bought stuff.  My sister has pointed out that perhaps my standards are too high.

That’s why I’m excited to spend Sundays cooking with my sister.  I get to relax and take my time.  We level each other out.  I’m impatient and get hungry two or three times over just waiting for the oven to preheat.  She’s more patient and enjoys building up a fierce hunger to pair with a meal.  I’m more concerned with health factors such as additives and chemicals, and Karen is more concerned with figuring out how she can fit more cheese into a recipe.  “Think I can just inject cheese right into this?” I oft hear her call as she stands over a dish holding her cheese syringe.  She’s all about taste, something I need to rediscover in cooking.  I’m learning to enjoy cooking again, not loving it again, but that will take time.  I’ve been burned in the past.

So here’s my food philosophy in a nut shell: Everything in moderation except taste.  And avocado.  Tons of that.   And yellow mustard.  None of that.    

The Shrimpventure Begins

This week I had shrimp on the brain.  Don't ask me how it got there (P.S. "Shrimp of the Brain" sounds like a terrifying early 19th century medical diagnosis, like the kind that would get you all kinds of lobotomized).  Anyway, I do not usually think about shrimp.  It's not something I ever crave.  I mean, if it happens to be tossed into a stir fry, then all the better, but I never consider shrimp for the focus of a meal.  Well, the shrimp council must be doing a bang-up job with its subliminal messaging campaign (not a real thing . . . I think) because I was craving shrimp all week long.  More specifically, I was craving shrimp tacos, because everything is better in taco form, no? 


I almost always err on the side of seafood tacos, due to my gut instinct that seafood is inherently better for you than land-based taco fillings.  So I was shocked and appalled when my sister claimed she had only ever had bland fish tacos.  "What are you an idiot?" I thought, which really wouldn't explain her experiences, but I was angry, damn it!

Because she had only eaten seafood tacos the stupid way, I was determined that our shrimp tacos be amazing.  I knew it was all about the toppings because really, you can only get so much flavor into shrimp before you must wrap them in bacon (turns out I was wrong in this assumption, as the chipotle powder Karen covered them in is amazing).  The plan was to top our shrimp with the following:

Cabbage
Cilantro
Avocado
Mango salsa
Mysterious cream sauce I made up

CAVEAT: Due to the combination of an extremely empty stomach and an extremely strong margarita just prior to cooking, my recollection of the process is both splotchy and tainted with the belief that everything I did was amazing.  At one point, I seem to remember throwing all the ingredients in the air and chopping them so that they landed in picturesque taco form on our plates.  Then Karen told me to "stop throwing sh*t all over the kitchen."  Hater.       

After looking at a couple shrimp recipes, I decided to go with the one that directed you to coat the shrimp in olive oil and chipotle powder and fry for about two minutes on each side.  I love it when things are so easy.  Although I've recently discovered the magic that is chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, I was unaware of this so-called chipotle "powder," but let me tell you that it is amazing.  Tony claims that he'd bought chipotle powder before but it was very finely ground and not as tasty, so if you're gonna get it make sure it's sort of coarsely ground and possibly in a clear bag with a yellow label . . . I do not remember the name or any other details.  In fact, the bag may have appeared in front of me at the grocery store through an enchanted spice rack which vanished into the mist shortly after I reached for the chipotle powder.  In any case, it's so smokey and flavorful that not only did it make our shrimp delicious, but I've been using it in every recipe that calls for chili in any form.  So, chipotle powder.  Get on that.

Next it was time for the mango salsa of which Brony previously spoke.  I saw a few recipes online, but decided to defer to my Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook.  I appreciate that this is a no-frills, back-to-basics cookbook.  It's sort of my touchstone in a world where an online search for "salsa recipe" will retrieve five-hundred-eleventy billion different recipes and surely cause your brain to short circuit.  With a good cookbook you can master the basics and then get crazy with your own variations.  And what do ya know, they had a recipe for mango salsa.  It's your basic mango, onion, jalapeno, vinegar recipe, and it definitely did the trick.


Meanwhile, Tony was doing this:

Karen had mixed up the mango salsa and it was mingling in the fridge, the rice was simmering, doing its sacred and secret rice thing, so I set to work on the beans.  Without a recipe to guide me, using only my wits, culinary acumen, and a new best friend, inebriation, I promptly freaked out and started questioning everything I did.  Garlic?  Should I add garlic?  What about cumin?  Cayenne?  Should I add beans?  Oh yeah, duh.  Ok, I'll be the first to admit that, despite making the right choice every step of the way, my beans turned out bland.


Yeah,  they weren't great.  But then, my rice turned out soggy.  Those dishes shall henceforth be shunned and ultimately forgotten.  Let's move on to tastier territory . . . 


I took it upon myself to concoct a cream sauce, something my sister hadn't even considered (I did, however, suggest covering everything in cheese, but we couldn't afford it).  A good cream sauce is absolutely necessary for a good fish taco.  Even a mediocre cream sauce will do.  And that's exactly what I set my sights on.  I lucked out and found some mayonnaise in the fridge which I diluted with a little plain yogurt, lime juice, salt and cumin.  Bingo!  Perfectly mediocre.  I prepared the rest of the toppings and was just about to greedily shovel it all into my gullet before Karen reminded me that we had to take photos.  

Rice and beans aside, this is one of the best meals we've ever made.  I'm not so good at using fancy culinary words, but them tacos were kick ass.  Each filling had great strong flavors, but none overpowered the others and the cabbage gave it just the right amount of crunch.  All in all, these tacos are pretty simple, as long as you're prepared to do a lot of chopping and don't leave off any of the toppings because they all need and love each other . . . just like a family.   Awwwww.

And remember that you don't necessarily need a strong classic margarita to go with your Mexican dish, but you want one, ok!? So, back off!