brucesw

Hmmmm. The Chilean restaurant here had a dessert called Torta de Mil Hojas or 1000 Layers Cake. I never saw it or tried it since I have to avoid sweets but perhaps it would be the same in Argentina or a similar name?

I am really enjoying this. I so want to go to Chile someday. Is that congrio frito on the plate? We had a Chilean restaurant here for a while that served that and I loved it. Also the pebre, the addictive little rolls, choclo, and amazing variety of empanadas ranging from a the size of a child's fist to almost as big as a football. I'm looking forward to the pictures from Argentina.

Mutton Stew from Kerala Kitchen. I wound up here when my first choice for lunch was unexpectedly closed. It's a caterer that sells OTC by the pound whatever they're cooking. I got the last of this dish, less than half a pound, with maybe 1 oz of meat, but it was good and I'd have it again.

Although I wind up bringing home leftovers pretty often I seldom do take-out per se. When I do it's for convenience - no time to cook or don't want to deal with the restaurant experience - and the most frequent pick-up meal would be a platillo from a carniceria. I turn to that for comfort food also.

They are not that hard to find here, mostly of the piled-high, NY deli style. I thought I had had a couple of the Omaha style but I don't recall them being greasy or crispy as Jaymes describes so I guess not. NY deli style - Kenny & Ziggy's NY Deli, Katz's (run by the son of the man who had the Austin place, neither any relation to the NY institution), Kahn's in the Village. Kahn's was my first experience and my standard for years until Mike Kahn retired and sold the place. No one made sandwiches like Mike Kahn. I partially observed the technique which involved the assembled sandwich, possibly minus the top bread, passing through one of those conveyor belt ovens (top and bottom heat?) to heat the ingredients through and melt the cheese; the top piece of bread passed through separately. Without toasting, the sandwich would not hold up to the ingredients. NY Style but more modest proportions: Spec's Liquor Whse Deli downtown. Much more modest proportions that I thought was Omaha-style - Doyle's, NY Coffee Shop. The former I liked, the latter I was, and always am, very unimpressed by. Pierogi - the chains Jason's Deli and Murphy's Deli both have reubens on their menus. Any of those there? I've been to Jason's once. Can't remember for sure but I think I had the muffaletta. Obviously wasn't very impressive. Never been to Murphy's.

A couple of recent lunches. Chengdu Style Pot Roasted Prawns at Mala Sichuan Bistro in Chinatown. This came with a soup that was identified by the owner as Sauerkraut soup (on a lunch special). Gulf shrimp and Texas blue crab on ciabatta with house-made green goddess dressing at Local Foods, a new sandwich shop in the Village serving a small menu of sandwiches, sides and soups emphasizing local ingredients. My sides were Tuscan kale with golden raisins and toasted pine nuts and white bean, bacon, grape tomato and dill.

I like this SpaghettiWestern. It's like my feeling about beans and chili, quite apart from any competition rules about beans in chili, I prefer beans separately, and not on the side but at another meal. I share your distaste for kidney beans but you might try the Camellia beans from Lousiana, the red beans used in red beans and rice. I was surprised to learn they are kidney beans but they are quite different than any I've had otherwise. If the Cajun influence has crept over to CTex from here in the SE portion of the state, you may be able to find them at that Fiesta on I-35 in Austin. Other red beans you might try would be rojos pequenos from Central America and red silk beans from El Salvador. I've had good luck with beans from the bean dispensers/bins at Whole Foods. Just recently made a Texas version of Feijoada with some black turtle beans from there that was very good. It's a way to sample beans without having to pay shipping costs or buy more than you want for a sample. I'm pretty sure I've seen Flor de Mayo and Peruano there. I also second the Florida Speckled recommendation. Never liked limas till I tried those. You should also consider fava beans.

I guess what you get on a Mexican hot dog can vary by vendor and maybe what part of the country they're from, just like here. I haven't had many but I had one a couple of months ago from a truck called El Rey del Churros outside a grocery in a Hispanic neighborhood on the east side. A salchicha, typically a plump, skinless, bright red, fine ground sausage (as in wiener), steamed or boiled, on a standard hot dog bun. This one had ketchup, mayonnaise and mustard plus chopped tomatoes and onions. The others I've had have been a bit more elaborate. Here's what Wiki says about the Sonoran hot dog: The Sonoran hot dog, found in Tucson, Metro Phoenix, and in neighboring Sonora, Mexico, is a hot dog grilled in a processor or on a griddle, wrapped in Mesquite-smoked bacon, topped with freshly chopped tomatoes, onions, shredded yellow or cotijo cheese, tomatillo salsa or red chili sauce, pinto beans, mayonnaise, ketchup and/or mustard, and served on bread and often with a fresh-roasted chili. It originated in Hermosillo, the capital of Sonora. I've had a couple of these at brick-and-mortar places here and really liked them. I've also had one with grilled onions and avocado slices on a bacon-wrapped, grilled salchicha stuffed w/cheese. I think this was supposed to be Monterrey style. The pollo asado units tend to be larger vehicles - school buses or larger trailers - I guess maybe because the grill takes up a lot of space?

Three food trucks in a town of 1800? Is there a lot of pass-thru traffic or lots of other small towns adjoining? Around here (SE Texas) probably the most common mobile vendor in a small town would be a barbecue trailer, followed by taco trucks/trailers which I'm seeing more of. The bbq place would probably be temporary, like weekends only, maybe just a smoker on a trailer that is lifted off onto the ground when they set up for business or a shack on a trailer or smoker mounted on a trailer with a roof over it. You might encounter one of these on the highway, miles from any town, too. The further south you get in the state the more likely you'll see some sort of vendor of Mexican food by the roadside or in a small town. One of the best I ever stopped at was a pollo asado wagon and it was some of the best I'd ever had, too. A real find I thought, but the next time I was through, months later, it was gone; there were three taco trucks/trailers in the town, then, but none open for business. That's a town of about 2500. Pollo Asado (think charcoal chicken if you're not familiar with it) is very popular here - half or whole chicken with charro beans, rice, tortillas, roasted onion and jalapeno peppers, lime wedges and salsas. $6/7 medio, $11/12 entero. They'll usually offer ribs, fajitas and salchicha, too, with a platter of all three meats going for $16/17. I've never tried one of those so I don't know what all you get with the meats. One thing I've noticed in smaller suburbs around Houston (much larger towns than 1800, though) is the taco trucks almost always have perros calientes - hot dogs. Very seldom see that on taco trucks in Houston proper.

All this week I have been wondering if my head was going to explode from all I was trying to take in. Between your blog and the continuing reports of Percyn from India, it has been a 'must-read' week on eG and I thank you (both). I think I would love Ecuador just for the variety of bananas and potatoes but obviously there is much more. Sadly, I do not know of any restaurant or grocery store offering anything from Ecuador here so I don't know if I'm going to be able to try much of this for myself.

To the best of my memory I have only had karahi dishes at restaurants identifying as Pakistani or at least Northern Indian-Pakistani but mostly I go to Indian restaurants when I want vegetarian and Pakistani restaurants when I want meat dishes. That's nothing but a peculiarity due to how I first got into both cuisines, Pakistani first. I have seen the karahi utensils on sale at Indian grocery stores, however. Googling pulls up a number of indications that it is a Pakistani term but there are some that refer to it as Indian. I also googled for recipes for Karahi Gosht and came up with numerous recipes. Some do mention adding water to the pot to stew the meat until tender, others make no mention of water. Thanks for bringing this up, though. I'm going to get some goat and make some karahi gosht this week if I can.

Funny you should mention the nopales (lol). I had shopped the week before and picked up everything for the recipe, then got delayed in making it. I had gone to one of the Fiesta's with a booth in the produce section with someone trimming the nopales and slicing and packaging them but I had always avoided buying one of the bags because I didn't think I could get through it before it went bad - they're 2# I think. I went ahead and bought one but when I went to get it out to complete the dish, I thought the ones left at that point were too far gone. I don't know - I doubt they would have killed me but I think they would have looked pretty pathetic on the plate. Maybe I could have rinsed them well and been okay but I didn't try. I've gone back to buying the paddles. So I reached for some calabacita and it too was a little gamey. It's a problem, living and cooking alone, using up fresh produce before it goes off. So I added some vegetales to the plain rice and - well, you know. Hey! I like both rice and tortillas. Re: the deshebrada. I recently had a version very much like this at a new carniceria that was much better than mine. Looking back over the recipe I think I made a mistake I never caught before. I was paring the recipe down since I didn't have 3 lbs of skirt. I see now I used only 2 guajillos and should have used 2 ozs. Uh oh. My bad. I used roma tomatoes, stove-top 'broiled' on a plancha, actually. The other issue was texture. The version I am fond of is shredded beef in broth, with bits and pieces of the tomatoes, onions, even peppers, I think, apparent. I get it as part of a platillo; it would have to be drained to be used in tacos or burritos. This was shredded beef heated up in a pureed sauce. I prefer the brothy variety. So which is it supposed to be? Yes, I tried watering down the gravy and liked it better. Will try it again.

Apparently I hit some sort of limit on how long a post can be?? and iced broth, at Jang Guem Tofu and BBQ House. I loved the chewy buckwheat noodles and the very spicy sauce. I've only been to this place once before but it's threatening to become a favorite. One day I made Carne Deshebrada. I've made this before, just winging it, trying to recreate what I've had from a neighborhood carniceria, but this time I decided to use a recipe I found online. I had several meals out of this but I wasn't that thrilled with it.

Here's some lunches from last week. I was developing cabin fever from avoiding going out in the heat for the past several weeks so when we finally got a little break I took advantage of it. I went to Sammy's Wild Game Grill, a new place, and had the bbq pulled wild boar sandwich with fried onion strips, cheese, cilantro slaw and pickles on a pretzel roll from Slow Dough Bread Co. I wouldn't order cheese with bbq but it was listed on the menu so I though they knew best. I was dismayed to see it just appeared to be a store-bought slice of American but it did do a good job of keeping the onion strips from getting soggy. This was a very juicy sandwich, and very good. I'll be going back to try the game burgers and sausage dogs. Then one day I was off to Chinatown. Banchan and more banchan Cold Buckwheat noodles in spicy sauce

Thanks - that sounds very interesting. One of my favorite breads with breakfast is semita de anis so this sounds like something I would like. I'll be on the lookout for these. I see it is also used for fish dishes and one of our restos, Tampico Seafood Cucina, has some steamed fish dishes but doesn't say what they use. I'll have to look into that. Your dishes look good.

That's an interesting site; I hadn't looked at that since it was launched, assuming it was just another bumbling bureaucratic effort to straighten out somewhat confusing guidelines, but it appears they may have come up with some real improvement. When I first started counting calories to lose weight 4 and a half years ago, the government guidelines made use of the terms serving and portion but they were not interchangeable terms. I think many people didn't understand that, leading to confusing discussions. A 'Serving' was a 'standardized reference size,' such as 1/2 cup of vegetables or 1 oz of cheese or 3 oz. of meat. The term portion was 'how much you eat.' If you ate a cup of green beans for dinner that was a portion to you but 2 servings according to the guidelines. If you only ate a half-cup of mashed potatoes that was a portion to you but only one serving of vegetables toward the recommended daily amount (what was it - 6 or 7 servings of vegetables per day?). To make matters even more confusing, manufacturers were not required to use the government's standards on nutrition labels, so one cereal manufacturer might claim a serving of cereal was 3/4 C while another brand of the same cereal might list it as a full cup or even a cup and a quarter. I always thought the government got the two terms reversed but a cursory look at the new site it seems they've dropped those two terms and are just using standardized references such as 1 cup, one ounce, etc., and then giving guidelines for how many ounces/cups of the various foods, etc. per demographic group. I think that's an improvement.

Here's one source. 57 F is considerably warmer than a refrigerator, but read the whole article. One reason the olive oil in the fridge isn't degrading is it isn't being opened every day or several times a day. It's not clear to me that is significantly better than would be achieved by keeping the bulk of the oil in the pantry and decanting every few days or so whatever amount. I've never tried it for comparison's sake. Up until now, I've simply kept it in the pantry.

I hadn't thought of that - Thanks. The husks at the restaurant had blackened grill marks on the bottom so I assumed that's where it was cooked and went from there but couldn't see how to produce enough steam just from the moisture in the dampened husks, hence the covered skillet (and a little extra water added to the pan - trial and error).

Kim Shook - looks good to me. Panaderia Canadiense - as usual, your stuff looks incredible. EatNopales - I've had many parts of the pig - oreja, buche, cueritos, skin - but never pata. Looks interesting. I fixed a multi-national breakfast for lunch yesterday. A month or so ago I went to a Salvadoran restaurant and had breakfast for lunch - Huevos en tusa - eggs steamed on corn husks. The place was understaffed that day and took forever to get out the food and badly overcooked the eggs - cooked on a grill, the husks were charred black on the bottom - but I was motivated to try it at home. I've since learned it's tricky to get the top of the egg cooked without overcooking the bottom but this is the latest effort. I just use a cast iron skillet with a lid. In place of the platano maduros and crema Salvadorena at the restaurant I had a Colombian manzano banana. The maduros would have been better but I didn't have a ripe plantain. Frijoles rojos de seda volteados - refried red silk beans (from a can). This seems to be the default beans at Salvadoran places. The restaurant served a firm, salty, Cotija type cheese but I had Mexican Queso Fresco I needed to use up. The tortilla is from a Mexican tortilleria near me; Salvadoran tortillas are typically smaller, thicker, hand made on the spot and of a coarser texture.

The Wikioracle holdeth forth. Canola is made from a cultivar of rapeseed. A difference is the amount of eruric acid, a know toxin; it's higher in rapeseed oil. The article doesn't speak to English or European terminology or processing, however.

I love smoked sprats in a can; probably my # 1 choice in canned meats right now. I don't much care for canned tuna anymore although it hasn't been that long that I always had it on hand - just got tired of it, I guess. Occasionally if it's on sale I'll buy some Dolores brand Atun con chipotle or a la Mexicana or con vegetales. They can make nice, ready snacks out of the can. Goya makes a similar line, I think. I loved Underwood Deviled Ham as a kid - on white bread with Hellmann's, maybe even adding some dill pickles. But I tried it a few years back and couldn't even finish one can. It did make me wonder about making my own. Isn't deviled ham just a variety of potted meat? A number of years ago while visiting Virginia frequently for genealogical research I picked up a jar of deviled Smithfield Ham somewhere - maybe at a gift shop at the Richmond airport. Appealed to my snob side and is what inspired me to try Underwood again. One canned meat I wish I could have tried: in the course of research I came across newspaper ads in the 1920s for Gebhardt's potted chili meat in individual serving sized cans. I could imagine finding one of those in your lunch box together with some saltines and feeling fat and happy that day.

Lovely pictures and a fascinating and informative blog this week. I was particularly glad to come across the discussion of jocoque. I had come across a recipe on MexConnect some time ago calling for it that I wanted to try but have never found it in local mercados, carnicerias, etc. I am looking forward to the rest of the week.

I checked out Radical Eats Comida Vegetariana this week. These folks have been dispensing their vegan tamales at the various farmer's markets sponsored by Urban Harvest but I've never tried them. Now they've taken over a run down taqueria on the near north side and set up shop. The spinach enchilada was good but the real winner was this mushroom enchilada smothered in a cashew gravy. It's a 70 minute round trip but I think I want to try everything on the menu. I caught up with the Good Dog Food Truck at The Menil today. Houston is not hot dog country and it's hard to find any dogs that aren't just offered as kid-acceptable fare or some over-wrought 'gourmet' dogs at trendy watering holes but these guys do some real good dogs. They used a Texas made, natural beef (with a little pork) wiener with a natural casing, all home-made toppings so they claim, and a locally baked New England style split-top bun (Slow Dough Bread Company) that is practically worth the price of the dog itself. My favorite has become the Ol' Zapata - chopped tomatoes and crisp bacon, caramelized onions, cheese, jalapeno relish and a touch of home-made ketchup to add a note of sweetness offsetting the heat of the relish. I usually don't want ketchup on a dog but this works. I tried the Sloppy Slaw dog this time - apple slaw, home-made mayo, swiss cheese, and celery salt. Apparently I got a little sunlight filtering through the trees that washed out the apples but this is thinly sliced apples and rather too large pieces. The individual components were all okay (I've had slaw dogs before with creamy cole slaw) but this didn't work for me. I needed something in there to offset the sweetness of the apples and creaminess of the mayo.

One of the reasons is that there is the rule that the chili must be cooked entirely on-site, in the open and "from scratch." Chili powders (but not "chili mixes") are allowed. This would generally militate against any complicated contributing preparation such as a homemade stock, because the stock would have to be produced on-site entirely from scratch. Bringing a container of homemade stock from home is against the rules. Similarly, it may simply be too much work to start with dry chilies, hydrate them, and then run them through a food mill all on-site to obtain a high quality chili paste in the amounts required for a competition such as this. This seems like a rule that probably has some weird effects. For example, clearly you can use a pre-made stock so long as someone else has made it commercially, because canned stock and bouillon cubes are considered "ingredients." And while you would not be allowed to make a chili paste at home, you could probably bring a commercial ancho chili paste and use that. I'm not quite sure why they would use garlic powder and onion powder, except that I would point out that these have a distinctive flavor that is actually what you really want to use in certain dishes and styles of cuisine. I think you probably make the best point with respect to things like toasting cumin seeds. Except, how are they going to grind them on-site? Isn't there also an appointed start time and a definitive cut-off time when your offering has to be in to the judging tent? You can't just light your fires 6 hours ahead of time to make your stock. I've never participated or even been to one of these events but what you say here, and the observations by Clark D, exactly jibe with what I've read and what I've been told by an acquaintance who does compete, though he says he goes for the camaraderie and has never won. He also says he learns things from other cooks, some of whom are quite accomplished, and not just how to open the spice packs from Pendery's. I agree also with the observation that the recipes published are probably for mass consumption and may not exactly reflect what was actually done. In line with that several winners have gone on to issue 'chili kits' with all the necessary ingredients - Wick Fowler, Carroll Shelby, Cindy Reed Williams(Cin Chili - the only person to ever win CASI twice, I think).

I stopped off at Marini's Original Empanada House for lunch, the grand-daddy of our Argentine empanada houses. It's been several years since I've been in and they've added quite a lot to the menu but I went with some of my long-time favorites. The Gaucho is a pretty traditional one I think - ground beef, onions, hard-boiled egg and olives. The Demichelli may just be their own creation - avocado, tomato, onions, bell peppers, garlic, cheese and mushrooms. The lunch special included a cup of beef noodle soup - macaroni, potatoes, ground beef - and a mini-dessert empanada which I was told would be 'chocolate cake' but I didn't find anything very cakey inside, just melted chocolate. There's a lot of competition now for Argentine empanadas but this place still has the biggest variety and the most interesting fillings.