Recipe: Broiled Chipotle-Garlic Shrimp

Tacos, like summertime pasta sauces in my house, come in a wide variety of types based on whatever ingredients may be on hand. We're so used to making impromptu fresh tacos in my home that it's become an improvisational process.

Predictably, that improvisational process over time begins to bring some constants to light. These are ingredients and factors that seem to be present in all of our best taco recipes. So, in the interest of helping you to create better tacos at home, I thought it important to share them with you here.

It should go without saying when preparing food at home in general, but you have to start with the freshest, quality ingredients. Nothing will increase the quality and the flavor of not only tacos but all your home cooked food like fresh quality ingredients.

Nowhere in your taco will this be more apparent than in the salsa you use. DO NOT EVER use salsa from a jar. Salsa is easy-to-make and there is no substitute for fresh salsa - NONE. It's the same with guacamole. Make them both fresh and give them some fridge time to chill down a little bit. The crisp coolness of the fresh salsa and guacamole add a nice contrast to the cooked components.

This one will bum you out if you're pressed for time (understandable) or lazy (unforgivable) but: make fresh tortillas. All it takes is a bag of Maseca, a little water, a little salt, an inexpensive tortilla press and a few minutes on a griddle and your tacos are already going to be better than almost any restaurant, almost anywhere in the country. Fresh tortillas have a flavor that cannot be found in those funky things in plastic bags at the grocer. If you really can't or don't want to make your own, see if you can buy fresh ones from a local commercial tortilla maker. You'll be glad you did.

Finally, you're going to want to keep those tortillas hot and flexible and nothing in my experience seems to do that better than La Tortilla Oven. We get lots of free products at Chop Onions and Boil Water to try and review and I'm always honest. I bought La Tortilla Oven with my own money and used it for a long time before I ever reviewed it. It's the real deal. It keeps the tortillas HOT. Alternatively, you can heat them as you need them. We'll do that on occasion if we have the time.

The recipe below is the first of a few taco recipes I'll be posting on Chop Onions, Boil Water. You'll see that it calls for fresh salsa, fresh guacamole and "white sauce". Don't skip the white sauce. Sure, mayonnaise and plain yogurt might seem an odd mix, but it's one of those things that transcends the simplicity of it's ingredients. Lots of people who love Rubio's fish tacos swear by it and it sure has become a staple in our Mexican seafood preparations! It always surprises the people who try it. Muey bueno! Si?

SI!

You'll also notice I call for 2 to 4 cloves of garlic. If you're right in your mind about food, use 4. If you're British, use 2.

Broiled Chipotle Garlic-Shrimp Tacos

Prepare the following before you begin making the tacos:

White Sauce: Mix together a 1/2 cup of mayonnaise and 1/2 cup of plain yogurt. Refrigerate until use.

Fresh Tomato Salsa (click here for recipe)

Chunky-style Guacamole (click here for recipe)

Broiled Chipotle Garlic-Shrimp Tacos:

12 corn tortillas
1 7 oz. can of chipotles in adobo
1 lb. shrimp (peeled and deveined)
2-4 cloves of garlic (chopped fine)
1 Tbs of peanut oil
1/2 Tbs sweet butter
3 Tbs fresh cilantro (chopped)
1-2 tsp Fresh lime juice (to taste)
Quesa fresco or your favorite Mexican cheese blend.

Be a trooper and get yourself a tortilla press and some Maseca and make your own tortillas, or buy them and microwave them in a "La Tortilla Oven" to keep them warm.

Set your oven to broil.

Place a small sauce pan over medium-low heat and add the peanut oil. Add the sweet butter, when it fully melts add the garlic and continue cooking for a while until the garlic softens but does not brown. Be sure not to burn the garlic. Keep warm.

Empty the can of chipotles in adobo into a food processor or mixer and blend until it is a smooth paste.

Take the shrimp and coat it well with 2-3 tablespoons of the chipotle paste. If you need less or more that is fine. If you like it spicier, add as much as you like. You're the taco king here. When finished, thread the shrimp onto dual skewers (this makes for easy turning in the oven).

Place the shrimp skewers on an oiled broiling pan and broil, turning often until done.

Remove from the oven and slide the shrimp off the skewers and into a bowl. Coat and toss with the garlic and oil mixture, sprinkle with lime juice to taste and then garnish with the chopped cilantro.

Serve immediately with hot tortillas and the white sauce, salsa, guacamole and cheese available as toppings.

Don't forget the cold beer!

Cookbook Review: The Tex Mex Cookbook by Robb Walsh

I'm pretty lax when it comes to reviewing cookbooks on Chop Onions, Boil Water. I don't know why, it is surely easier than creating, tinkering, preparing, photographing and writing about new recipes. Even when I do get around to reviewing cookbooks I tend to be a little tardy. So tardy in fact, I think one of the most "recent" books I've reviewed here was out of print when I reviewed it. That doesn't change my opinion of it though, it was/is a great cookbook and I love and still use it (I could tell you what the title is and put a link here, but that gets me less click-throughs on my humble Google Adsense account and Chop Onions, Boil Water is, as of yet, a mostly non-paying endeavor. You'll find it easily enough if you look for it).

All that said, it should surprise no one that the cookbook I am about to review is six years old. I've been meaning to pick up The Tex-Mex Cookbook for some time since I first came across it. I've checked it out online, picked it up in the bookstore and gave it all the preliminary research I do with anything I buy, I've just been late in pulling the trigger on the purchase, well, until this past Sunday when I decided it was time to buy!

Before I offer you my review, let's see what the publisher has to say about The Tex-Mex Cookbook:

"Join Texas food writer Robb Walsh on a grand tour complete with larger-than-life characters, colorful yarns, rare archival photographs, and a savory assortment of crispy, crunchy Tex-Mex foods.

From the Mexican pioneers of the sixteenth century, who first brought horses and cattle to Texas, to the Spanish mission era when cumin and garlic were introduced, to the 1890s when the Chile Queens of San Antonio sold their peppery stews to gringos like O. Henry and Ambrose Bierce, and through the chili gravy, combination plates, crispy tacos, and frozen margaritas of the twentieth century, all the way to the nuevo fried oyster nachos and vegetarian chorizo of today, here is the history of Tex-Mex in more than 100 recipes and 150 photos.

Rolled, folded, and stacked enchiladas, old-fashioned puffy tacos, sizzling fajitas, truck-stop chili, frozen margaritas, Frito(TM) Pie, and much, much more, are all here in easy-to-follow recipes for home cooks.

The Tex-Mex Cookbook will delight chile heads, food history buffs, Mexican food fans, and anybody who has ever woken up in the middle of the night craving cheese enchiladas."

Dang, I wish I could write like that! I LOVE The Tex-Mex Cookbook for a number of reasons all of which I will tediously list below (in no particular order because that would take extra effort):


1.) Genre Defining: It clarifies exactly what Tex-Mex cuisine is. Walsh does this by delving into the history and cultures of the region and exploring how the food was influenced. He also cites literary instances in which Mexican authorities and authors draw culinary and cultural lines between Mexican cuisine and Tex-Mex cuisine (usually in derisive terms - Silly snobs!). All this is important because a lot of food that most people would consider their favorite "Mexican" dishes are in fact not Mexican at all but uniquely AMERICAN. This will no doubt irritate my foreign friends which always pleases me. Sorry guys but the Good 'Ol U$A has touched your lives yet again! Tee hee : )

2.) The Recipes: Considering that this is an historical overview AND a cookbook, there are still PLENTY of great recipes in here (over 100 genuine ones according to the cover!). Traditional ones, famous ones, standards and even a few new-fangled recipes to get your head into. You get yourself through most of the recipes in The Tex-Mex Cookbook and you're likely going to be your region's authority on the subject and pretty popular with your family and friends!

3.) Content, Design and Layout: I like the way The Tex-Mex Cookbook is designed and laid out. Which is saying something because there really aren't any photos of the food from the recipes which is usually a deal-killer for me. When perusing cookbooks I'm more often inclined to immediately put a cookbook down if it doesn't offer full color images of most of the recipes. The Tex-Mex Cookbook however, has been designed and laid out in such a way that the editorial content, the recipes and the ancillary information and photos kind of pull you along or spur your imagination regarding the information and recipes in question. In this aspect The Tex-Mex Cookbook succeeds (at least for me) where just about every other cookbook of this type has failed in the past.

4.) The History: As someone who has to try and write interesting things about food, I often find myself delving into the history of many of the foods I prepare. The info is usually interesting and Robb Walsh does a great job handling the history of the cuisine itself using a plethora of era-relative photographs and a matter-of-fact writing style that gets right to the point and brings the history to life. Exactly the opposite approach of what I am doing with this review.

5.) The Canary Islands: Walsh explains how immigrants from the Canary Islands may have been instrumental in the evolution of Tex-Mex food. Especially in the development of chili and it's cumin-rich wonderfulness.

6.) Fried Pork Skin: I like the photo of that guy deep frying an entire pork skin on page 124.

7.) Go Tamales!: At one time tamales were more popular and more prevalent than hot dogs and hamburgers - ON THE STREETS OF CHICAGO!

8.) The Frito Bandito: The real story of the scandal regarding the diminutive little gun-toting Mexican that topped my pencils when I was in grade school.

I could go on and on, but who's really going to read this? Hell, even if they start it, fewer still will finish the review to this point.

So, The Tex-Mex Cookbook by Robb Walsh? How do I rate it? Highly! I love it, it's great. It gets the Chop Onions, Boil Water seal of approval. If you are interested in Tex-Mex cuisine and "Mexican" food, this is at the very least your starting point. If you're creatively cuisine-errific, The Tex-Mex Cookbook may be the only book you may ever need on the subject. I love this book, buy it today, before it is out of print like the other one.

The Tex-Mex Cookbook by Robb Walsh (Softcover: 267 pages; Publisher: Broadway Books; ISBN: 9780767914888)

Recipe: Chicken and Corn Stew

I have eaten some pretty strange things in my life. From my dad's side of the family there was morcella (pig's blood sausage) and all manner of odd things from the ocean including lapas (pronounced "lah-pizsh") which are small limpet-like creatures that adhere to rocks and themselves all over the world. These my father taught me to eat raw, first pulling them off the rock and then digging the animal from its shell with my finger and eating it live and raw. He also taught me how to get and eat mussels, clams, razor clams, periwinkles and conchs. I'm not complaining, they are all pretty tasty, raw or otherwise. So thanks dad those are good, but no thanks for making me eat a dollop of Vick's Vapor Rub when I was 7. What the hell were you thinking? I was only 7 but I could clearly see "for external use only" on the damn jar!

From my mom's side of the family I learned to eat the strangest things. My mom's father was part Native American and grew up on a New England farm during the depression. He was a bar room-brawling, tough-as-nails maniac. In the course of his life out of necessity, he learned to eat anything and he was lucky enough to have married a woman who could cook it all very well.

When I was a child it didn't take me or my cousins long to figure out one thing: DO NOT ASK WHAT YOU ARE EATING UNLESS YOU REALLY WANT TO KNOW! Now your yuck level is directly related to the place you grew up and the means available to you. So for some of you, when I mention that rabbit stew and squirrel pies were staples, you're going to say yuck or yum. It depends on whether or not you were ever exposed to these two DELICIOUS dishes. So the hunters out there say, "what's the big deal?" The city folk say "Eeeeeeeeew!"

The stuff I ate at my grandparents ran the entire scale of the yuck factor. For instance one day I was presented with something that appeared to be turkey dinner. Except that the turkey was a deep reddish brown, kind of, but not exactly like beef. I had to know, so I had to ask. "Hey Pep, what is this?" "Go look in the oven" was his answer. I did, and what I saw looked like a red turkey with 4 drumsticks. Pep recognized the confusion on my face and replied "It's the raccoon your cousin Rocky shot yesterday." It was pretty good too as I remember it. Think of roast beef with a texture somewhere near turkey.

I ate a lot of things in that house. I can say with certainty that I DID eat: deer, goat, pig, sheep, rabbit, quail, duck, pheasant, and a host of other common acceptable food items. The more uncommon things that I know I ate there included: bear, woodchucks, squirrels, snapping turtle and raccoons. I THINK I ate possum and maybe muskrat there, but I am not sure. I'd LIKE to think I never ate skunk but again, I am not sure. Let me make one thing clear, it was all delicious. Both my grandmothers were incredible cooks (aren't everyone's?), and I wish I had some of their recipes.

You may be asking yourself what the relevancy to the recipe is? Just memories. This dish reminds me of the stuff my mom's mom used to make. Good, hearty, stick-to-your-ribs-I keep-my-family-healthy-old-school-Yankee-cooking. The perfect dish after a day of skiing or hunting, or shoveling the damn snow from the driveway for the 15th time in 4 days!

Recipe: Chicken & Corn Stew

3 lbs boneless chicken breast (cut into 1/2" chunks)
4 Tbs unsalted butter
1 Tbs olive oil
1-1/2 cup chopped onions
1-1/2 cup chopped carrots
1-1/2 cup chopped celery
2 lbs boiling potatoes (peeled and cut into 1/2" cubes)
1 clove of garlic (minced)
2 tsp fresh thyme (chopped)
2 Tbs flour
4 cups chicken broth (I use bouillon)
2-4 cups of water
2 cups super-sweet corn kernels
1 cup of heavy cream
4 green onions cut in 1/8" rings
3/4 to 1 cup of chopped cilantro
Salt and pepper to taste

Season chicken with salt and pepper.

Place butter and oil into a preheated pan set on a medium flame. Cook stirring lightly, until the foam from the butter disappears.

In small batches, brown the chicken well on all sides. Remove chicken to a waiting bowl as it browns, set aside and keep warm.

When all the chicken is removed, add onion, carrots and celery. Sauté until the onions are translucent.

Add the garlic and half the thyme. Continue to sauté stirring occasionally for a few minutes (be sure not to burn the garlic).

Add flour and stir in well, while cooking for 1 minute.

Pour in broth and water, being sure to blend or whisk it in well. Bring mixture to a boil.

Add the potatoes and return to boil. Cover, reduce heat and let simmer, stirring occasionally. Cook this way until the potatoes begin to get tender.

Add the sweet corn kernels, chicken (with any resulting juices) and cream, simmer uncovered until the stock begins to reduce.

Salt and pepper to taste, add the rest of the thyme, green onions and the cilantro.

Serve in deep bowls with a wedge of lime and biscuits on the side.

Recipe: New England Clam and Scallop Chowder

Annually there's a big clam chowder festival a short drive from my house in Newport, Rhode Island. For a stretch there I attended every year. It was a lot of fun and it was interesting to see how different restaurants and organizations approached making what they considered a good chowder. There were New England, Manhattan, Bahamian and Seafood styles as well as a few others including a pretty good quahog chili one year.

They offered different categories to compete in, and in the seafood chowder contest one restaurant reigned supreme and that happened to be the restaurant I hung around at and eventually met my wife at. They made a great chowder, no, they made a phenomenal chowder! It was so good and they won this contest so often that eventually they were politely asked to retire from competition to give other establishments a fair shot at the prize.

Ah, what a great restaurant and chowder, but things change. That is why I am going to offer you a short lesson here on economics. The restaurant of which I speak is doing rather poorly these days and I don't think it will be around for long. I'd like to explain why.
You see each restaurant has a geographical location that it serves. This means that on the average you can count on a certain number of people coming into it from a given distance. They call this your "customer base". If the restaurant is doing well and you decide that you want to open another one, you have to open the new one outside the territory of the first. Two good restaurants owned by one entity in one area don't double the custom base, they divide it. Now a restaurant that used to pull in $30,000 on a Friday night divides that lucrative customer base in half (more or less). So in effect you have doubled your cost but not your profits.

Worse yet, suppose you're not clever enough to catch on before the slump begins to show? What do you think you do? Well I guess you open a third and then a fourth restaurant in the same geographical area as the first popular one, because that is what they did. Guess what? The customer base that didn't double when you opened the second restaurant doesn't multiply again. So now you've divided your customer base by four! Your biggest competition becomes YOU and even the areas that don't overlap between the restaurants cannot generate enough new customers or income to cover that kind of expense! Never mind the other new restaurants that are opening around you that you don't own!

This is what happened to my beloved bar and restaurant. It wasn't long after all this that it took on the desperate feel and vibe of one of those places we've all been to: The "Doomed Eatery". They try anything, changing the menu, coupons, anything! They're cutting corners and missing details to save money but it's all moot, the slide has started and they're on their way out.

Some day soon, if a couple of friends can keep a promise, I am going to have that award winning seafood recipe and I'll put it in this cookbook for you. By then I think that restaurant will sadly be gone. That recipe could have saved it, if the owner had put his money and efforts into packing and marketing that seafood chowder to the masses out beyond his regular customer base. Instead they spent all that money and time to do nothing but compete against themselves.

Bummahs huh?

New England Clam & Scallop Chowder

24 ozs Clam juice
1 lb. of potatoes (Russet or Yukon Gold) cubed small
2 Tbs sweet butter
Pork fat back (piece about the size of a pack of gum)
2 cups of finely chopped onions
1-1/4 cups of celery (chopped fine)
2 cloves of garlic (chopped fine)
1 large bay leaf
1/4 cup of all-purpose flour
2.5 lbs of chopped local clams (strain from juice, save juice)
1 lb. bay scallops (strain from juice, save juice)
1-1/4 cups of Half and Half
1 tsp hot sauce
1/2 tsp Saffron threads (mince or crush into a powder after measuring)
Salt and pepper to taste

Add the clam juice and the potatoes to a large saucepan and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low, cover and simmer until potatoes are just tender. Remove from heat.

In a larger heavy pot, melt the butter and add the fat back and cook until the fat back begins to brown.

Add the onions, celery, garlic and the bay leaf and sauté until the vegetables begin to soften. Slowly add the flour, mixing thoroughly. Things will begin to thicken and paste up. Be careful not to let the flour burn.

Stirring quickly and constantly, slowly add the reserved clam and scallop juice to the vegetable and flour mixture. You're looking for a smooth mix.

Now, add the clam juice and potato mixture. Then add the clams and the scallops, the half and half, hot pepper sauce and the saffron. Simmer chowder for 10-20 minutes to blend flavor. Stir frequently, testing often to adjust seasoning with salt and pepper.

Serve hot with clam cake/fritters. Always better the second and third day.

Recipe: Pork Loin Marsala

As I was preparing this dish last night and transcribing the final version of the recipe, I came to a surprising realization: In my house, we go through a lot of alcohol just for cooking purposes.

For instance, this recipe calls for 3 cups of Marsala wine. That is quite a bit of wine (but worth it!), and we tend to keep two big bottles handy. We also keep big bottles of Port wine for a couple of pork recipes we cook frequently. Then of course there's Penne à la vodka which doesn't earn a name like that for nothing! In fact it's the ONLY reason we keep vodka in the house.

This list goes on and on. Bailey's Irish Cream for French toast, Chinese wine for Chinese sauces. Two kinds of sake for teriyaki and tonkatsu sauce. Cognac for steak diane, as well as regular and cherry brandies for a variety of flambés. Portuguese cachaca for Azorean chourico bombeiro and surely more that doesn't readily come to mind. That's just the specialty stuff. I couldn't even calculate how many bottles of white or red wine we go through a year for marinades, deglazing and sauce building!

I wonder what chefs did during prohibition?

This is a great recipe. For the best results you'll want to use fresh pork and pay careful attention to how you build your sauce. The objective is too create a nice silky sauce that clings to the pasta. If it seems watery, simmer on!

Pork Loin Marsala

4 Pork loin cutlets (cut 3/4 to 1" thick)
1/2 cup of flour plus 2 TBS
1/4 cup olive oil
3 TBS sweet butter
8 oz. Portobello mushrooms chopped coarse
3 cups Marsala wine
1 8 oz. can of tomato sauce
2 medium tomatoes diced (the redder, the riper, the better)
1 lb. dried pasta (your favorite)
Salt and pepper to taste.

Start the water for your choice of pasta. While you are preparing the pork cutlets and sauce, time your pasta to be ready just as your sauce is finishing.

Season the pork cutlets with salt and pepper, dredge/dust the cutlets heavily in flour and set aside.

In a large dutch oven set on medium-high to high heat add the olive oil and butter. When the butter melts sauté the mushrooms until they are half-cooked. Remove the mushrooms from the pan with a slotted spoon. Be sure to save the butter, oil and mushrooms behind in the pan. It's okay to add more olive oil if necessary.

Sear all the cutlets at once in the reserved oil and butter mix. Don't worry about browning them, you just want a good sear on both sides of all the cutlets to lock in the juices and keep the pork moist and tender.

Once the cutlets are seared, add two cups of the Marsala wine and tomato sauce to them (don't mix). Bring to a simmer and then lower the heat until the mix is barely bubbling. Cover the pan and braise the cutlets for 20 minutes. FOR OPTIMUM TENDERNESS, BE SURE THE MIX DOESN'T BREAK INTO A SIMMER! You'll have to readjust the heat a few minutes after you cover the pan. Do not lift the lid more than absolutely necessary.

After the 20 minutes is up carefully remove the cutlets and set them aside in a covered bowl to keep them warm.

Add the chopped tomatoes to the Marsala mix and raise the heat to cook down the tomatoes and thicken slightly. Stir frequently. Lower the heat if necessary.

Whisk the 2 TBS of flour into the remaining 1 cup of Marsala wine. Add that mix to the Marsala mix stirring constantly as the sauce thickens.

Once the sauce thickens, reintroduce the mushrooms to the mix. Stir well, letting the mushrooms reheat and cook a little (about 3 minutes).

Taste the sauce and adjust for seasoning.

Reintroduce the pork cutlets. Gently stir in to coat with sauce and warm (about 1 minute).

Plate pasta, top with a pork cutlet and a generous amount of the Marsala mix over the cutlet and pasta.

Recipe: It-Doesn't-Necessarily-Have-To-Be-Sunday, Sunday Gravy

There's no bones about it, I found my cooking passion by making my own Italian food at home. It's not a recent thing either. It started when I was a teenager when I would "dress up" jarred sauces (often with chourcio - NATURALLY!), and it continued right on into my very first "from scratch" dinner recipes and it still goes on today.

I may cook all kinds of authentic world food for my family these days, but there's no world food I feel more comfortable preparing than Italian. It's one of the world cuisines I'm quite comfortable improvising with. Give me anything, as long as you include a few basic Italian ingredients, and I'm going to feel safe cooking something good for you. My cook's confidence is in Italian and to a lesser degree, Thai and Native American cuisine.

Which makes it kind of weird that I didn't have a proper, personal "Sunday Gravy" recipe after all these years. Anyone familiar with Italian cooking or gangster films (real ones not that Hip-Hop nonsense) knows what Sunday Gravy is. For those of you who don't know, allow me to direct you to Italian cookbooks and gangster films to find out. I'm not in a typing mood today.

Anyway, I never found a Sunday Gravy recipe that I really liked all that much. Everyone who is Italian or knows Italians or who cooks Italian is always going to crow about their Sunday Gravy or their friend's Sunday Gravy or their mom's Sunday Gravy or their aunt's or grandmother's Sunday Gravy and how it is the best in the world.

Well, as with most food, they are all right of course. The food you like best is the best in the world - to you! So up until a few days ago, I never had a Sunday Gravy that I could crow to the world about being the best. Then I flipped through the September 2009 issue of Esquire Magazine and I got an inkling.

The picture is what captured my imagination. I saw the photo of all that rich, glistening sauce with all those chunks of meat and well, it got my attention. I sought out the recipe on the following page. There, courtesy of Peter McAndrews (hey! He married an Italian!) I found the recipe and some important words that convinced me to try the recipe. Words like "spare ribs", "bones" and "hours".

That recipe was the basis for my own recipe below. I've made enough significant changes to the original recipe to confidently call this one all mine. (I'm not in the habit of changing recipes just to call them my own. If that were true, you'd see Giada De Laurentiis's Rosemary Roast Pork with Port Wine and Fig sauce in here under a different name! Search recipe out folks because it is FLAWLESS and delicious!).

Anyway, I made changes to suit my taste and preference. The most notable, was starting the whole thing with a onion-hefty mirepoix. Yeah, that's a French word in a classic Italian recipe, but trust me it helps make one hell of a good sauce. I also changed the kinds and amounts of tomatoes, added more garlic and tomato paste, as well as the addition of a pork tenderloin and a little GOOD QUALITY balsamic vinegar. Finally, the fact that your chucking in the World's Best Meatballs doesn't hurt either!

Without further adieu allow me to introduce my NEW, old-family recipe for Sunday Gravy:

It-Doesn't-Necessarily-Have-To-Be-Sunday, Sunday Gravy

1/2 cup olive oil
3 lbs. country-style or southern-style spare ribs
3 lbs. sweet Italian sausage
2 lbs. World's Best Meatballs
1-2 lb. pork tenderloin
3 lbs. large beef bones
4 cups chopped onions
2 cups chopped carrots
2 cups chopped celery
10 cloves garlic chopped
3 6 oz. cans of tomato paste
3 28 oz. cans of whole tomatoes (lightly crush the tomatoes with your hands)
3 28 oz. cans of ground tomatoes
3 large bay leaves
1 TBS turbinado or light brown sugar
1 TBS GOOD QUALITY balsamic vinegar (the syrupy type)
Sea salt to taste

Take a LARGE stock pot. A large one. A BIG stock pot. I mean BIG, like a 14 quart stock pot. Pour in the 1/2 cup of olive oil and coat the bottom and the sides of that stock pot really well. Place the stock pot on medium high heat. When the oil comes up to temperature and is hot and shimmering (not smoking), brown and remove all your meat in this order: spare ribs, Italian sausage, meatballs and tenderloin. Place the browned meat in a covered pan or dish and set aside.

If you need more olive oil at this point feel free to add it. Let it come to temperature and then brown your beef bones on all sides.

When the beef bones are browned, add your onions, carrots and celery and continue to saute until tender and starting to brown slightly. If the oil begins to smoke, lower your heat. You want the onions, carrots and celery to sauté evenly.

Add the chopped garlic and sauté along with the bones, onions, carrots and garlic for about 2-3 minutes. Be sure not to burn the garlic or it will turn bitter!

Add the tomato paste and mix it in well so that it coats the mix and bones. Continue to sauté until the tomato paste darkens. Again, be careful not to burn the mix.

Add the hand crushed whole tomatoes with their juice, the ground tomatoes, the bay leaves, sugar and the balsamic vinegar. Stir all together until it is well blended. Bring it slowly to a lively simmer. Special note: When you are cooking a quantity of sauce like this, it is always wiser to bring it up to temperature SLOWLY to avoid burning the sauce in the bottom of the stock pot.

When the sauce reaches a lively simmer and is an even, slightly thick mix, add your spare ribs and pork tenderloin. Reduce to a medium simmer and allow to continue like this for one hour stirring occasionally.

At the end of the first hour, add the Italian sausage and allow to simmer for another hour. Always be sure the simmer is low to medium to avoid any burning. Stir occasionally.

At the end of the second hour, add the meatballs and continue simmering for another hour. Stir occasionally.

At the end of that hour, you will notice a layer of red oil forming at the top of the sauce. If you're health conscious you can skim off some of this with a ladle. It won't reduce the fat all that much, but it'll give you a false sense of responsibility that will get you past the guilt of eating all this pork and beef fat goodness.

Season with the sea salt to your preference. Stir sauce well.

Remove from heat. Remove all the meat and bones to a separate serving platter and serve the sauce over your favorite pasta perhaps with a sprinkle of your favorite cheese (as long as your favorites are parmesan-reggiano or pecorino romano).

This sauce kicks ass and is the World's Best Sunday Gravy - TO ME, FINALLY!

Coming Soon COBW 2.0

Hey folks, I know it has been a little while since I last posted a recipe or review. I just wanted to let everyone know that I've been busy working on Chop Onions, Boil Water Ver. 2.0

The new site is going to be a multichannel outlet for cooking world food at home. The basic blog will still be there as always and I'll add new recipes as I create or perfect them (my definition), but there will also be exciting new food areas, regional and specialty forums and channels and feeds from other great food resources out there.

I'm also want to offer folks the opportunity to register if they'd like to post their own recipes and create their own profiles within COBW. Maybe we can even start a little "World Food at Home" community.

So, I apologize for the delay of new posts, but promise that there is much more coming in the near future. Thank you for your interest and input and I look forward to trying some of your recipes in the future!

Recipe: Braised Chicken Breast Portuguese

Chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken. I love chicken and cook a ton of it. I've named this dish "Braised Chicken Breasts Portuguese" although I don't know if it is a traditional Portuguese recipe. It's simple enough and with the right ingredients so that you'd think it was traditional, but I've never come upon it in my travels nor at dinner in the homes of my Portuguese friends. It's a hearty and flavorful dish that is best laid out on a pile of rice with the extra gravy poured all over everything.

The real story is about the search for tenderness. In the "I-knew-even-less-then-than-I-know-now" days of cooking I used to try and try and try to cook chicken breasts that were tender and moist, usually with limited results. I even tried marinating the breasts in buttermilk because I had heard some chain restaurants do that to make up for the inadequacies of their chefs in the heat vs. timing departments. It didn't work.

Then I hit upon braising. A little dredging in flour, a quick fry in shallow oil to seal the breasts and then a slow and low simmer in your desired sauce. Et voila! You get chicken so moist and tender that you get a little suspicious as to whether there may be something abnormally wrong with it (at least I was).

Of course any method used to cook something can go too far and eventually dry it out or make it tough, but if you stick with the basics of braising you're going to get good results. While this recipe is Portuguese, you'll see the basic technique in there and I urge you to try your own variations with your favorite sauces and styles. In fact I also do a Mexican variation of this recipe using molé roja and it is equally tender and moist.

Only, my wife doesn't like molé which means I don't get to make it often. I'd like to, but I don't. Do you know why? Well it's because I'm a diplomat and a nice guy. I'm also flexible, easy going and generally tired of getting remarried.

For now.

: )


Braised Chicken Breast Portuguese

1-2 lbs boneless chicken breast
1-1/2 cups of all-purpose flour
1-2 cups of white wine
1 medium onion (chopped fine)
1 tomato (cubed)
Portuguese olive oil
1 clove of garlic (minced)
2-3 bay leaves
1 Tbs paprika
1 Tbs parsley (chopped)
Salt and pepper to taste

If the chicken breasts are attached split apart. Rinse in water and pat dry.

Place some of the Portuguese olive oil in a small high sided pan to a depth of about 1/4". Set on high heat.

When the oil comes up to frying temperature, dredge each chicken breast in flour and coat well. Fry the breasts in the oil until well browned on both sides. Remove and set aside.

In another large high sided pan add 2 Tbs Portuguese olive oil, set on medium-high heat. When oil begins to shimmer add the onion and sauté until the onions are translucent. Add the minced garlic, chopped tomatoes, bay leaves and paprika and continue stirring.

Add salt and pepper to taste.

When the tomatoes begin to soften, raise the heat to high and add the wine and bring to a high simmer.

Reduce the heat to low and add the chicken breasts. Cover and maintain a very LOW simmer for 30 minutes turning the chicken once (carefully so as not to remove the crust). The gravy should just about be simmering.

Remove lid, remove chicken breasts and set aside in a covered dish to keep warm.

Increase heat to a full simmer and reduce sauce, stirring frequently until thick. Add the parsley in the last several minutes. Serve dressed with sauce on steamed rice. Garnish with a little more parsley.


Braised Chicken Breast Portuguese, Chop Onions, Boil Water

Review: Rao's Cookbook

You are looking at the most important Italian Cookbook of the fourteen Italian cookbooks I think are important enough to keep on hand. For those of you who may be unfamiliar, Rao's is a New York City institution as far as Italian cuisine is concerned. Reservations are impossible, and a year long waiting list keeps its ten sacred tables full. Some patrons have standing reservations, they own their tables!

If you want to eat at Rao's put your reservation in EARLY. Sure, you can eat at their Las Vegas location, but quite frankly, that's not Rao's. If you want the genuine Rao's experience you can find it in one place: Rao's, 455 East 114th Street, East Harlem, New York 10029. You want to make reservations? Here's the number: (212) 722-6709, be sure to tell them Henry K sent you!

The cookbook is worth the the price for the meatball recipe alone. The marinara recipe is simple and perfect. There's also a recipe in there for a sauce with savoy cabbage that is surprising. There are lots of great recipes and I've tried many. You will as well.

What also makes this a great book is what's behind the recipes. Stories and photos from the restaurant's history and more importantly, a lot of background info on how Rao's prepares the foundations for their recipes. Broths, vinegared peppers, flavored oils, batters and more, with tips on preparing garlic and beans and other things for recipes throughout the book.

If I had one suggestion, I would say that I would have liked to see photographs of every recipe. Apart from that, if you're looking for a great Italian cookbook, or of you're looking for ONE Italian Cookbook, Rao's is my suggestion.

8 months, 2 weeks and 4 days until my reservation...

Review: Bufalo Chipotle Hot Sauce

I can always remember where I was in my life when I've tried some important foods. Chimichurri was in Oranjestadt, Aruba. Manapua was in Honolulu, Hawaii. Boeuf Wellington was in Providence, Rhode Island. Oh man, the charbroiled hot dogs they sell on the street in Ponta Delgada, Azores are something else! The list goes on and on, but you get the picture and you can probably relate

The first time I ever had Bufalo Chipotle Hot Sauce was in the Cancun Airport in the Yucatan as I was leaving Mexico after another great vacation in Playa del Carmen. I was walking around looking for a cold beer and I walked into a small hot sauce shop. The guy behind the counter asked me if I wanted to try any and I chose a serrano-based hot sauce and the Bufalo Chipotle Hot Sauce I bought a couple of bottles of the Bufalo Chipotle Hot Sauce on the spot and I've never looked back.

When I ran out of my initial purchase, I quickly found a new supplier and I've used the stuff religiously ever since. I guess you could call it my favorite hot sauce. It is thick, rich and the smokey chipotle flavor just makes anything you put on it a taste sensation. It's not one of those set-your-butt-ablaze hot sauces that all the low-browed chest pounders love to brag they use. It has just the right amount of heat to make it a food experience rather than a dare.

I've tried other chipotle flavored hot sauces just for comparison and they just don't match up. The others are always too watery, too vinegary, or too something that just falls short of the Bufalo brand. I'm sticking with this stuff.

Recipe-wise I use it on and in a number of foods. My favorite thing to put it on are my wife's cheese burgers (recipe forthcoming). Now, those burgers are among my favorite foods anyway, but when she shakes some Bufalo Chipotle Hot Sauce on them... BANG! I am into yum yum outer space!

Bufalo's homepage here.

Nutritional information here.

I rate this stuff 4 out of 4 stars.