C. sapidus
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Posts posted by C. sapidus
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Typical breakfast concoction: Roast a Poblano chile and slice into strips. Dice and sauté ginger, garlic, and chiles. Stir in chile jam, Poblano strips, cilantro, and cumin. Add eggs, mixed with half-and-half, black pepper, and fish sauce. Finish with feta cheese.
When making breakfast concoctions I always assume that somewhere in the world, some grandmother is rolling over in her grave.
Tasted good, though
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Been a while since I posted here, so it is amazing to see so many familiar names! Good to see plenty of new names, too.
Anyway, work interfered with cooking for a few years so I decided to retire. 😉
But enough history. I finally found a local source for good Mexican-style chorizo, so tonight’s dinner was zucchini, mushroom, and chorizo tacos with a chipotle-tomato sauce.
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6 hours ago, weedy said:
Tell us about that chutney.
How'd you make it?
Thanks for asking! Recipe is from My Bombay Kitchen by Niloufer Ichaporia King.
1/2 cup grated coconut (fresh or frozen)
1 cup cilantro leaves and stems
1/4 teaspoon cumin seeds, pounded
12 fresh mint leaves (I use more)
3 green chiles (I use serrano)
2 cloves garlic
1 tsp (or more) salt
juice of 1/2 lime (or more - I probably used 2)
1 1/2 tsp sugar (or to balance with the lime)
Whomp everything up in a blender, and then adjust sweet / sour / salty to taste. Fantastic stuff - wonderful in raita, among other things.
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Indian meal for houseguests. This was my leftover plate for breakfast. Clockwise from front right:
Pork vindaloo
Parsi green chutney
Cucumber raita
Butternut squash with curry leaves
Green chicken korma
Onion kachumbar
Turmeric rice in the middle
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Sirloin is good. If I am feeling flush strip steak is particularly nice.
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Sookha keema, braised potatoes with garlic and bay leaves, and leftover Indian rice made by a friend from Mumbai. Guess I'm on a ground meat kick lately.
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Vietnamese caramel pork with green beans and basil. Jasmine rice.
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Mrs. C was out of town last week, and younger son's GF is vegetarian with cheese, so I reverted to the sort of simple, mostly-veggie food I often cooked in my bachelor days.
Hongos al vapor, modified. Dry-fried portabella mushrooms, sauteed with white onion, roasted Anaheim chiles, and garlic, and then finished with cilantro and crumbled feta.
Calabacitas al mojo de ajo: Fry sliced garlic in olive oil and butter and remove. Cube zucchini and toss with salt in a colander. Dry and saute the zucchini, and finish with black pepper, Mexican oregano, and lime juice.
Arroz blanco with pinto beans: Pilaf-style with white onion, garlic, and soy sauce in water subbed for chicken broth.
Everything topped with cilantro and crumbled feta after the picture. Oops.
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Omelet with roasted Poblano chile, asparagus, garlic, and Feta cheese.
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6 hours ago, Thanks for the Crepes said:
According to this article, rasam can be a hard thing to pin down. What kind do you like?
It is offered with one dish, the rasam vada app, that I could find on the menu of my local South Indian vegetarian restaurant, Udipi Cafe. They serve their dosa with sambar and coconut chutney. I like this place a lot, and apparently others do too, because it has been here for many years. It does offer Mysore masala dosa and many other types of dosa as well. They serve heavenly idlys here.
My mistake - I was thinking of sambar rather than rasam with masala dosa. Good catch, and thanks for linking that article. Sambars that I have had are usually thin, spicy, and tart, more a go-with than a star in their own right. My baseline is the one at Siddhartha, a long-closed south Indian restaurant in downtown Silver Spring. That is also where I discovered masala dosa and palak paneer.
I think I made sambar once, but it was not a big hit with the family. Fortunately they liked most other Indian foods that I made.
The other day I tried an Indian restaurant near work, and it was truly some of the worst Indian food I have ever had. Everything was completely bland, palak paneer tasted like cream of spinach, and butter chicken tasted like boiled chicken in Campbell's cream of tomato soup.
On topic, Mrs. C made a nice vegetarian pasta with chipotle and black beans for dinner last night, served with pickled cabbage.
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23 hours ago, sartoric said:
Masala dosa (yet again) with a fresh tomato chutney, coconut chutney, veggie saagu, lime pickle and steamed basmati.
Sartoric, masala dosa is one of my favorite things on earth, especially with rasam (spicy soup). Even better is Mysore masala dosa, with a spicy red coating inside the dosa. Have you ever tried that?
Elder son and girlfriend visited so we and younger son spent a lazy Sunday shooting the breeze, solving world problems, and cooking tinga Poblana and arroz verde. Well I cooked while they solved world problems.
Tinga Poblana started with pork butt simmered until tender in chicken stock with bay leaves and thyme. Gosh that made the house smell good. After cooling the pork was broken up into bite-sized pieces and sauteed with onion and garlic, cooked down with chopped tomatoes and chipotles in adobo, simmered with the strained pork broth, and served with sliced avocado and feta cheese.
Arroz verde was cooked pilaf-style, with spinach, parsley, and cilantro blended with chicken stock, and topped with Poblano chiles, roasted, peeled and chopped.
I would have taken a picture of the leftovers but when younger son returned from the airport with Mrs. C in tow, she was famished and younger son decided to have a second dinner . . .
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On 3/14/2017 at 11:13 AM, suzilightning said:
Add some sautéed potatoes and you have eggy potatoes.......ie a semi-frittata.
Oh yes, potatoes would have been good
On 3/14/2017 at 11:23 AM, liuzhou said:I'd happily eat that. Had to look up Cholula though. What I know about Mexican food could be written on a perforation of a postage stamp.
Here Mexican basics are becoming readily available in standard grocery stores. Suits me just fine.
On 3/14/2017 at 11:23 AM, Anna N said:It does look a bit iffy to be kind but it was quite good. I took out from the freezer one of the cheese waffles I made a day or so ago, reheated it and dotted it with the last of the Cambozola. Back under the broiler for a few seconds to soften the cheese and breakfast was served.
For some reason iffy-looking food is often the best. I try to avoid burdening this thread with my usual egg - tomato - dried chile breakasts because, no matter how delicious, they look quite regrettable.
Is that regrettable-looking food thread still alive? That was one of the funniest things I have ever read.
Edit: Found it!
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Another clean-out-the-fridge breakfast. Materials at hand: half a bag of spinach, a container of mushrooms, two Poblano chiles, Serrano chiles, unlabeled sausage, partly-used cilantro, feta cheese, and eggs. Also had onions and garlic around.
Roasted and peeled the Poblano chiles. Cubed and fried the sausage, and then poured off most of the drippings. Dry-fried mushrooms in the wok until they were done squeaking, and then sauteed with some of the sausage drippings. Sauteed onions, Serrano chiles, and garlic, and then cooked down the spinach. Added in Poblanos, mushrooms, and sausage, feta, and cilantro, and then scrambled in the eggs. A little Cholula for flavor.
A satisfying breakfast, leaving lots more room in the fridge. Somehow the phrase "hive-mind" kept popping into my head.
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David, your tacos look delightful, and roasted Poblano crema sounds brilliant.
Welcome home meal for Mrs. C - Baked garlic chicken and arroz verde (Mexican green rice, pilaf-style, with chicken stock and blended Poblano chiles, cilantro, flat-leaf parsley, spinach, garlic, and white onion). This is what it looked like for breakfast . . .
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Warm red cabbage salad with bacon, feta, sauteed shallots, and sherry vinegar
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Scrambled eggs with sausage, chipotle in adobo, and garlic. Leftover coconut milk subbed for cream. Morning paper to go with.
Made a dent in the remaining leftovers, so I might have to get groceries this weekend. Well, I lived off the fridge for a week, but eventually one runs out of essentials like garlic and chiles.
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Shrimp and fettucine with ancho - bourbon - cream sauce. Soak ancho chiles in hot water and blend with rice vinegar, garlic cloves, and Mexican oregano. Saute shrimp in butter until partly cooked, add bourbon, and light. Stir ("with caution") until flames die down, and then remove shrimp. Reduce sauce, add half-and-half and chile sauce, and simmer. Add shrimp, simmer until done, season to taste, and then toss with pasta.
The recipe was supposed to use tequila and lots of cream. I prefer tonight's semi-improvised version. Ancho chile flavor was front and center (as it should be), bourbon added a nice note, and the limited volume of half and half in the fridge enriched the sauce without muting flavors.
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5 hours ago, scubadoo97 said:
My quest for flavor combinations starts as soon as I look in the fridge and freezer and ask myself "what can I do with all this......"? Usually there is one item in the fridge that must be cooked soon which is the focal point. In Bruce's example above it would have most likely been the spinach for me. And by the way the spinach looks fantastic!
Thanks! It was remarkably tasty for remarkably little effort. Although, to be fair, leftover yogurt was the focal point more than frozen spinach. Fresh spinach, yup, that would have driven the train.
6 hours ago, Smithy said:This looks gorgeous. I wish I could think of flavor combinations like this when I'm at a loss for dinner and my darling is advocating Polish Sausage and potato salad. Thanks for the inspiration, C!
Thank you, Smithy. Um, Polish sausage and potato salad sounds pretty good to me. I have potato salad on the brain because I recently enjoyed hauntingly good potato salad at a bagel place.
For what it is worth, reasoning behind the meal was as follows:
1. We buy frozen shrimp whenever it goes on sale, so we usually have shrimp in the freezer.
2. I like shrimp more than a certain beloved family member who happens to be out of town.
3. I am lazy and avoiding a trip to the grocery store.
4. I knew we had leftover yogurt, ginger, chiles, canned tomatoes, and a cabinet full of Indian spices.
5. I found a recipe that I had not tried before, from a cookbook I trust, that matched precisely the stuff that was cluttering up the fridge . . .
Frozen spinach pizza tonight, jazzed up with garlic, Mexican oregano, black pepper, and cayenne. I need to get more feta cheese - feta and spinach are made for each other.
Anyway, thanks again for the kind comments!
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Mrs. C is out of town so I am cooking again.
Cochin coconut shrimp with tomatoes: With coconut milk, yogurt, ginger, chiles, garlic, onion, grated coconut, coriander, and garam masala. The shrimp were poached in the flavorful sauce and turned out very tender.
Turmeric rice: Pilaf-style with whole cloves and green cardamom, cinnamon stick, garlic, and bay leaves.
"Express" bhaji: Steam-in-bag spinach quickly stir-fried with ginger coins and red chiles
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Made one of my all-time favorite beakfasts: huevos al albanil (bricklayer's eggs), a variation on Diana Kennedy's recipe. Soak dried pasilla chiles and blend with onion, garlic, and chipotles in adobo. Fry the sauce and then stir in eggs. Serve on warm flour tortillas topped with feta cheese, with fried plantains on the side.
I spared you all the picture, because it always looks like something that came out the wrong end of a dog with an upset stomach.
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19 minutes ago, kayb said:
I dearly love ripe plantains; tostones, not so much. When I was in Miami for a conference, I found a little Cuban place about a block from the hotel and ate there three times a day. They knew me after the first day, and knew to bring me maduros, plus whatever else they wanted me to try. It's where I learned to love vaca frita.
Yes, I found tostones, as our boys would say, not my favorite. Same goes for mofongo. I kept trying it when we were in Puerto Rico, but apparently I am not a fan of starchy plantains in whatever guise.
Vaca frita sounds like rope vieja (in other words, good).
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13 minutes ago, Anna N said:
I have neither eaten nor cooked plantains. I must remedy that one of these days. Yours looks very tasty.
Thank you, Anna. Plantains are interesting. Hard and starchy when green, still starchy when yellow, but wonderfully sweet when black and soft. That's how I like them, and you can bring out the sweet by caramelizing them in a hot frying pan.
We used to have a local Latino market that would give away over-ripe plantains for free, or at least at a discount. I would have charged more!
Over-ripe plantains are also lovely cubed, fried, mixed into pilaf-style rice, and topped with a salty crumbling cheese. I look forward to your plantain remedy!
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On 2/18/2017 at 9:49 AM, Anna N said:
. . . Had an irresistible urge to play with knives this morning and this seemed the safest way to satisfy that urge.
Thanks for the laugh!
We had some nice, black, mushy plantains so . . . my favorite breakfast / dessert: platanos fried in butter and olive oil. Salt and sour cream to go with. Mrs. C's amaryllis in the background.
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Breakfast 2023
in Cooking
Posted · Edited by C. sapidus
Forgot peanut sauce! (log)
Leftover surprise - egg with braised broccoli (with garlic and anchovies), steelhead, feta, peanut sauce, fish sauce, and sauteed ginger. A classic "tastes better than it looks" breakfast. 😆
Edit: Perhaps this belongs in the "Gallery of Regrettable Foods" (clicky).