Category Archives: Home Cookin’

A Passover Dare

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(Originally posted on April 20, 2019, in better times.)

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Previously on ethnojunkie.com, I did a springtime post that included a story about someone who dared me to come up with an ethnic fusion Passover menu. I wrote:

Well, far be it from me to dodge a culinary challenge! So although obviously inauthentic, but certainly fun and yummy, here’s to a Sazón Pesach!

Picante Gefilte Pescado
Masa Ball Posole
Brisket Mole
Poblano Potato Kugel
Maple Chipotle Carrot Tzimmes
Guacamole spiked with Horseradish
Charoset with Pepitas and Tamarindo

And, of course, the ever popular Manischewitz Sangria!

It was all in good fun, of course, but it got me thinking about actually creating a Jewish-Mexican fusion recipe. It isn’t strictly Kosher for Passover, but I thought the concept was worth a try. So here is my latest crack at cross cultural cooking: Masa Brei!

Now you might know that Matzo Brei (literally “fried matzo”) is a truly tasty dish consisting of matzos broken into pieces that are soaked briefly in warm milk (some folks use water), drained, soaked in beaten eggs until soft, then fried in copious quantities of butter. Typically served with sour cream and applesauce, it’s heimische cooking, Jewish soul food, at its finest and it’s easy to do.

So I thought it might be worth a try to swap out the matzos for tostadas, the milk for horchata, the sour cream for crema, and the applesauce for homemade pineapple-jalapeño salsa. A sprinkle of tajín, a scatter of chopped cilantro – and it actually worked!

Happy Passover!
!חג פסח שמח
 
 

Masoor Malka Dal and Fried Basa

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👨‍🍳 Cooking in the Time of COVID 👨‍🍳

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Another one of those improvised, sort-of-ethnic (in this case Indian), rainy day, I-don’t-feel-like-writing-so-I’ll-spend-the-day-cooking time sinks.

Sometimes folks inquire about what goes into these concoctions; I seldom measure anything except when I’m developing a recipe or baking but I did try to write down all the ingredients this time for anyone who might be curious.

Oversimplified and if memory serves, here’s how the masoor dal (red lentils) started out: I sautéed puréed onion, ginger, green chili and garlic in coconut oil and set that aside.

The next step involved toasting mustard seed, cumin seed, ground cumin, coriander, ground dried chilies, cinnamon, cardamom, garam masala, amchur (ground dried green mango) and turmeric. I tempered them in ghee – that’s a tadka – and when my kitchen smelled like an Indian restaurant, I combined it with the aromatics, cooked it a bit, added the dal, and stirred in chicken broth and tomato paste. They simmered together until the dal was tender; at that point I introduced a little yogurt to the mixture and it was ready.

Or something like that.

The fish component consisted of floured (that had been kicked up with some of those spices) pieces of basa, pan fried, and placed over a bed of the dal. Homemade parathas on the side.


Spotlight on the aforementioned parathas.

Of course, the problem with a day that I spend cooking because I don’t feel like writing is that I ultimately have to write about the day that I spent cooking.

Hoist by my own petard. 😑

 
 
Stay safe, be well, and eat whatever it takes. ❤️
 
 

Guacamolcajete (Not)

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👨‍🍳 Cooking in the Time of COVID 👨‍🍳

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Since I mentioned using a molcajete in my last post, here’s a bit more information as promised. The molcajete is Mexico’s version of a mortar and pestle; both pieces, the porcine basin and the grinding tool (the tejolote) are crafted from volcanic rock. You apply the tejolote to the ingredients (spices or vegetables) with a pressing and twisting action which results in a texture that’s considerably different from what you’d get with a spice grinder or a food processor; that method in turn affects the flavor.


And you’ve no doubt witnessed it being pressed into service (no pun intended) when preparing and serving guacamole and the like in Mexican restaurants. I use mine primarily for its unique grinding capability and less frequently for presentation – after all, it’s not called a guacamolcajete – but sometimes this three-legged stone piggie likes to dress for the occasion.


“Ready for my closeup E.J.” (She’s something of a diva: she’s the prettiest I’ve ever seen – and she knows it.)
 
 
Stay safe, be well, and eat whatever it takes. ❤️
 
 

Taco Tuesday (Not)

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👨‍🍳 Cooking in the Time of COVID 👨‍🍳

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Do you get pandemically induced food cravings too or am I alone in this? For no apparent reason I was jonesing for fish tacos and it wasn’t even the officially sanctioned el martes. Besides, it gave me an excuse to break out the comal and make salsa cruda.

Here’s what I did to scratch the itch. There’s nothing auténtico about these, but they were a cinch to prepare. You can use any neutral white filet like tilapia or basa because there’s so much going on in this application that any richly flavorful fish would get lost in the sauce. Literally. I tend to think of tilapia and other entry-level fish as an artist’s canvas: it’s essentially an uninteresting blank medium waiting to be turned into a masterpiece. Or in this case, dinner.

Season (or even marinate) the fish, then bake, grill, or pan sear in a skillet (that’s what I did: easier cleanup), cut into chunks and carefully place them into the taco shell or tortilla of your choice, along with avocado, shredded lettuce (or not), shredded or crumbled cheese (or not), crema (or not), and let the salsa do the heavy flavor lifting.


The salsa cruda started by charring white onion, tomatillos, tomato, and jalapeño on a comal – shown here mid-blister. Previously, I had used it to quickly toast some dried ancho and chipotle chilies then let them soak until rehydrated. When all the chilies are ready, remove any excess seeds and lose the juice from the tomato (it’ll make more). I chopped it all by hand because a blender or food processor creates a thin salsa which is fine but I prefer some crunch. (A molcajete works well too – see my upcoming post about guacamole, another craving inspired by this dish.) I included chopped cilantro, garlic, lime juice, olive oil, salt, and a pinch of cumin and Mexican oregano.


The finished product.

Itch scratched. Except for the aforementioned guacamole. Stay tuned.
 
 
Stay safe, be well, and eat whatever it takes. ❤️
 
 

German Chocolate Cookies

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👨‍🍳 Cooking in the Time of COVID 👨‍🍳

It is my understanding that there are four rules which require strict adherence while living through a pandemic: mask wearing, hand washing, social distancing, and baking.

Now, I have been known to practice the fine art of creating over-the-top cookie porn during the Christmas season (check it out here), but that happens when I’m baking for others and not just myself. Those confections are far too labor intensive to fill the role of a mere absent minded, mood brightening carbobomb with a cup of coffee when the spirit beckons – or when the cats get out of control, for that matter.

Therefore, in compliance with the current mandate, I set out to find a recipe on the interwebs that would satisfy two rules: prep time measured in minutes rather than days, and since it was snowing and I wasn’t about to trudge through waist-high drifts to get to the supermarket, one that only called for ingredients I had on hand – which in this case included oatmeal, chocolate, pecans and coconut (in addition to the universal flour, sugar, eggs, etc. one would anticipate as the conventional anchors of a cookie recipe).

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And behold – German Chocolate Cookies.

Evaluation from the measuring-cup-half-empty POV: German Chocolate Cake is a delicious invention but these cookies did not live up to the promise of their name. They were quick to prepare, didn’t involve a trek over the tundra to get to the supermarket, and were therefore pandemically approved, but I won’t link to the recipe I found because, although they were okay, I suspect you can do better. Then again, given my initial constraints, what did I expect?

Evaluation from the measuring-cup-half-full POV: I saved a fortune because one can go broke buying decent cookies from the organic bodega across the street.
 
 
Stay safe, be well, and eat whatever it takes. ❤️
 
 

Thai Green Curry

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👨‍🍳 Cooking in the Time of COVID 👨‍🍳

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Spotted some basa at the supermarket yesterday and since that type of catfish is native to Southeast Asia, I thought I’d do something Thai with it, perhaps a green curry. Now, there are two ways to make a Thai curry: the right way (read, “labor-intensive”) or the best I can muster during pandemic times (read, “intensely lazy”).

When I cleave to an orthodox strategy, my recipe calls for grating fresh galangal and ginger, chopping lemongrass, garlic, shallots and cilantro, plus Thai bird chilies, makrut lime leaves, lime juice, fish sauce, palm sugar, coconut milk and then some. But lately, I don’t have the energy to even read that recipe let alone make the stuff, hence “intensely lazy” would be the order of the day.

At the market, I remembered that I had some Thai green curry paste in the freezer, so I bought the basa along with an eggplant, a can of baby corn and coconut milk and hoped for the best.

Returning to my kitchen, I heated up the coconut milk and the curry paste. But hoping for the best did not make it so. I considered what components I already had that would fix it – because it definitely needed fixing. The spice level needed to be kicked up and there was a jar of Thai Chili Paste with Holy Basil on the shelf so I added some of that, it needed to be more herbaceous so I added some cilantro and Blasphemous Basil that I had on hand, it needed salty pungency so I added fish sauce and then it needed sweetness so I added palm sugar and then it needed acid so I added lime juice. There was a jar of Thai pickled green peppercorns in the fridge from the last time (when I did it right) and a few mushrooms, so I tossed those in along with the fish and the veggies.

I tasted it. Not bad. Not bad at all.

And as I review what I’ve just written, I recognize that I had actually been halfway along the road to doing it the right way, but since my decisively committed strategy was “intensely lazy” I stopped where I stopped: far be it from me to flout a previously endorsed plan.

Moral: There’s something to be said for quitting while you’re ahead.
 
 
Stay safe, be well, and eat whatever it takes. ❤️
 
 

50 Ways to Love Your Liver

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👨‍🍳 Cooking in the Time of COVID 👨‍🍳

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There must be 50 ways, I thought, so I set about searching for some unusual ones. Easier sung than done though.

I confess to being a lifelong liver lover, but I do know folks who are liver leavers, some tracing the trauma back to a childhood experience with a Chaplinesque dinner of shoe leather liver, so I’m always on the lookout for more palatable variations. I wrote about South African Chicken Livers Peri Peri a while ago (one of my favorite treatments for liver) and now I’ve unearthed this Persian dish called Jaghoor Baghoor. You might see it as Jaghul Baghul or any number of alternate spellings where double o’s and single u’s get swapped and l’s and r’s freely do-si-do. And there are as many unique tweaks for it as there are spellings.

A traditional dish from Zanjan province in northwestern Iran, it calls for lamb liver, onions, optional mushrooms, and fried potatoes – fairly prosaic, right? But what attracted me was the unlikely combination of three (and only three) flavor additions that make it distinct: tomato paste, pomegranate syrup (one of those aforementioned unique tweaks), and more turmeric than I’d ever think to use in a single dish.

The overall effect is not one of sweetness; rather it has background notes of umami from the tomato paste, tart fruitiness from the pomegranate, and earthiness from the turmeric.

Most of the recipes I found for the dish (and there really aren’t many) call for lamb liver but they all say that beef or calf liver can be used. Due to COVID, however, I couldn’t get my hands on any of those, so I had to make do with chicken liver. What can I say? During a pandemic, bloggers can’t be choosers.

Of course, while I was making it, I kept hearing in my head:

You just get out the pan, Dan
Toss in the veg, Reg
Then you throw in the meat, Clete
And crank up the heat

Just fry up a spud, Bud
You don’t need to make rice, Bryce
Now the dish is complete, Pete
And you’re in for a treat.

 
 
(With sincere apologies to Paul Simon.)
 
 
Stay safe, be well, and eat whatever it takes. ❤️
 
 

Fish & Chips

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I haven’t made beer battered codfish in a long while, and since my local supermarket had both essential ingredients (well, they always have beer but cod is less common there), and the fish appeared to be on sale (I wouldn’t know: like I said, they don’t usually have it), I thought I’d give it another go.

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Everything was fair game for the deep fryer that day, so (clockwise from the left) those are scallions (not bad), fries (chips, call ’em what you will), onion rings (a complete afterthought because I had too much batter left over) and the codfish. Homebrew tartar sauce at the center because I use it so infrequently that it doesn’t pay to buy a bottle since it won’t keep forever and I end up tossing it. (Mine’s better anyway. 😉)


Close up of crispy flakiness – or is that flaky crispness?


Considering they were unplanned, the onion rings turned out surprisingly well.

The perfectly sliced, bright yellow, juicy fresh lemon wedges may still be on the kitchen counter.

Will I never learn? 😑
 
 
Stay safe, be well, and eat whatever it takes. ❤️
 
 

Leftover Gravy, Swiss Steak, and a Flashback

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This is not a TV Dinner. Nor does it play one on TV; that would be too meta. (Ceci n’est pas une pipe, either.) Rather, it is a refrigerator magnet measuring 4" x 3" that I bought because it struck a responsive chord in my retro heart, a dissonant chord that reminded me of my culinarily deprived childhood during which my mother’s oblivious ineptness in the kitchen relegated us to a daily sentence of Swanson’s TV Dinners and Morton’s Chicken Pot Pies. (Curious? Read “How I Got Into Cooking” if you dare.)


In any event, this all started because I had been staring at my refrigerator pondering how I should repurpose the gravy from the pernil I had recently made (see post) and since that magnet was in my direct line of sight, an itching, quirky thought of reproducing the nostalgic Swiss Steak dinner rushed into my head. So I set out to replicate the dish in all of its 60s splendor, but in a rendition, courtesy of the aforementioned gravy, that would actually taste better than either the refrigerator magnet or its original subject.

Good thing I couldn’t remember what that thing in the middle was supposed to be or I might have taken a crack at that too. It’s possible that the good folks at Swanson never really identified it as anything beyond a “yummy dessert treat topped with a sweet red maraschino cherry!” or words to that effect. My taste memories of it draw a blank. Can’t imagine why.

Happily, and ghoulish flashbacks notwithstanding, the end result, appropriately presented here, was infinitely better than the ur-dinner.

But I still couldn’t resist throwing the canonical frozen pat of butter onto the mashed potatoes.
 
 
Stay safe, be well, and eat whatever it takes. ❤️
 
 

Pernil

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👨‍🍳 Cooking in the Time of COVID 👨‍🍳

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Saying that pernil is basically a pork roast is like saying that Christmas is basically a holiday. I mean, it’s true as far as it goes if reductionist understatement is your thing, but I’m confident that if you’re familiar with pernil, you understand why I find it irresistible. And apropos of that analogy, in parts of Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Cuba and elsewhere in Latin America, Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without it; fortunately, it’s a year-round treat. Each region champions its own slightly different spin on the recipe. Having experimented with many variations over many years, I’ve developed my own take on it as well; I can’t lay claim to any degree of authenticity, but I can proudly state that it is delicious.

I’ve found a multitude of recipes online set off by stunning photos more tantalizing than any I could ever capture, but I can’t help but be a little circumspect about some of them. For example, one suggested working in the garlic and rubbing in the spices just before cooking; my interpretation (like so many others) marinates the pork in the fridge for about 48 hours. That may have been the same recipe whose snapshot included a kitchen knife presumably responsible for those freshly carved picture-perfectly smooth slices. Again, I’m no expert, but I’ve never seen it served like that. You don’t carve pernil. You pull it apart with tongs or forks but never cut it into elegant slices. And I suspect that that was also the recipe that called for roasting it at 350° for three hours. Three hours? No wonder they had to use a carving knife! After three hours, pernil is cooked, but it isn’t done. What you see here came from a pork shoulder that spent fully 8½ hours in an oven that limboed as low as it could go (what’s the opposite of 11?) until the final minutes when I cranked up the heat to crisp the skin. (Mmmmm….chicharrónes!)


I serve it with arroz con gandules (the time-honored accompaniment of rice and pigeon peas) and maduros (fried ultra-ripe plantains: if a potato and a banana had a love child…well, you get the idea). Tostones are traditional, but I can never get enough maduros.

I’m pleased with my ultimate combination of herbs and spices that collaborate with all the garlic that goes into the marinade – cumin, oregano, Goya Sazón with culantro y achiote, and also with cilantro y tomate, adobo, black pepper, paprika, fresh cilantro, plus a little chipotle in adobo (totally inauthentic) and naranja agria (bitter/sour orange juice) for the all-important acid component, olive oil, and lots more. As a matter of fact, that marinade, after cooking, transmogrifies into the most amazing gravy. But since I’ve never seen gravy served with pernil, I always reserve it: waste not, etc.

If you’re curious about how I repurposed it this time, stay tuned for the next post!
 
 
Stay safe, be well, and eat whatever it takes. ❤️