Light Tex-Mex

I believe this whole meal started with a crisp, fresh head of green cabbage. We only have one more pick-up in our fall/winter CSA subscription, and I’m trying to make good and interesting use of these vegetables. I remembered a jalapeno corn slaw from Robb Walsh and David Garrido’s Nuevo Tex-Mex, and that inspired another look through that fantastic, little book. This book includes everything from drinks to desserts, and it never disappoints. There are salsas, sauces, enchiladas, huevos, tacos, appetizers, rice variations, and sweets. To make a light meal with the slaw as a side, I was thinking of roasted salmon with a spicy sauce and maybe some simple but flavorful rice. I’ll post more about the slaw later, and today I’ll show the Ancho-Tomatillo Sauce and Mexican Mint Marigold Rice that I chose.

I realize the sauce looks mole-like, and I just prepared a mole a couple of weeks ago, but it’s different, it really is. First, this is much less involved. Onion, garlic, tomatillos, anchos, guajillos, and serranos are sautéed together with some broth and lemon juice. Once the dried chiles are somewhat reconstituted, all is pureed with cilantro and strained. The sauce is then re-heated in olive oil and seasoned to taste. I usually skip straining, but I’m glad I did it here. The sauce became velvety smooth, and the last re-heating with oil step made it even more so. The complex spice and sweetness and the layers of mole flavor are not part of this sauce. Instead, this sauce is more of a punch of piquant chile heat, rounded earthy chile flavor, with slight tangy undertones. The resulting dish was all about the sauce with the roasted coho salmon serving merely as a delivery system for it. A lighter fish would have disappeared all together, but the salmon performed adequately.

The spicy sauce required a quiet, calming companion like rice, and the Mexican mint marigold variation was lovely here. Mex. mint marigold, tagetes lucida, is an herb that grows easily here in Texas with an anise scent and flavor. Tarragon doesn’t fare so well in our heat and humidity, so it makes a very good substitution. It’s a low-maintenance, compact, perennial and produces little, yellow flowers in the fall. Its slender leaves are easily pulled from its stems, and a tablespoon of chopped leaves were added to the finished rice. First, onion, garlic, and chopped serrano were sautéed with the rice before water and butter were added. That adds a lot of flavor and a near nuttiness, and sautéing the rice in oil prevents the grains from sticking together once cooked. Tossing in the chopped herb added a subtle bit of freshness and barely there anise.

In the end, I got what just I wanted: big flavor, some serious spicy heat, an interesting rice dish, and cool, refreshing, crunchy slaw, all in a light meal.

Braised Carrots with Carrot-top Sauce

Happy in the Kitchen by Michel Richard has been a delight to read and to explore. The gorgeous, exciting food is fun to read about, and it’s interesting to learn the techniques that made it all possible. Richard’s approach to food is to consider variations beyond classic preparations. With each ingredient, he explores what new and different things it can do or become. For him there is always something to discover, and that’s what inspires him as a chef. The most interesting thing about this book is that despite the jaw-dropping look of the food, the preparations are all pretty simple. That was his intent: to present these new and different ideas that are not difficult to make.

So, with some incredibly fresh and beautiful red carrots from Hands of the Earth Farm, I set about creating Richard’s braised carrots with carrot-top sauce. I know, it’s a plate of carrots. But, wait. It’s a plate of perfectly tender, braised carrots with a mind-blowingly delicious sauce and a simply dressed salad. This is a must-try dish for the carrot-top sauce alone. The preparation began with chopped onion sauteed with butter. Then coriander, orange juice, and salt were added along with the carrots. That combination simmered for a few minutes. Chicken broth was to be added but I had none and used water instead. Water worked fine. After adding the water, the simmering continued for another 15 minutes. Meanwhile, the leaves were removed from the carrot stems, and then they were blanched, shocked, and squeezed dry. When the carrots reached a state of desired doneness, the remaining sauce was added to the blanched carrot leaves. Those were pureed with additional butter. Seasoning was adjusted. A quick salad was to be made of mache, but I used chopped baby spinach and arugula instead. The chopped spinach and arugula were tossed with red wine vinegar and olive oil.

The bunch of carrots scene was achieved with the leaf-like salad situated at the top of the plate with the whole carrots below which were sprinkled with dried orange zest. The sauce was spooned alongside the carrots. One minor concern was that my sauce wasn’t quite as bright green as that in the book, but it was so good I didn’t worry about the color for long. I served this as a shared first course, so all the carrots were positioned together on one plate.

The carrots’ orange juice-braised sweetness was balanced by the acidity of the vinaigretted salad. The butter-rich sauce with the savory onion and bright carrot leaf flavors was an unbelievably nice component. After seeing this dish in the book, I knew there would be visual appeal, but I had no idea how flavorful it would be. As soon as we tried it, the cuteness and wit of the dish became completely secondary to taste and textures and just plain deliciousness. It was intriguing enough to try and so enjoyable it’ll definitely be made again. Every item presented in the book looks like a similar win-win situation, and I’ll be trying more of them soon.

Roasted Squash Salad

The planning, shopping, and cooking for Christmas ended with splendid indulging and leftovers for a few days. Indulging continued on through New Year’s week, but I was no longer cooking. While visiting family, I got to sit back, relax, and catch up on magazine reading. Is there anything better than not setting an alarm for several days, getting to sit and read without even needing to glance at a clock from time to time, and knowing someone else is making dinner today? Well, that last one is nice once in a while. I spotted this roasted squash salad in the December issue of Bon Appetit which I lazily read right after finishing Saveur and just before picking up Eating Well. Rough week. The combination of flavors sounded great, and it looked like a meal in itself.

The peeled butternut squash was thinly sliced and roasted with a glaze of balsamic vinegar and a scant bit of brown sugar. The remaining ingredients were simply arranged on the plate. The one change I made was using pears instead of apples. Endive spears were fanned about, pear slices were interspersed, the roasted squash was mounded nearby, and dried cranberries and blue cheese crumbles were spilled atop it all. The plated salad received a drizzling of balsamic and lemon vinaigrette.

It was simple and lovely, and tasted as good as I knew it would when I sat idly reading about it a few days ago. What culinary challenges and delights will 2009 hold? Which filed-away recipes will finally be attempted this year? What classics will I ruin beyond all recognition? I have no idea. I really want to make a sourdough starter. I want to make tamales in my own banana leaves. I want to make ice cream too. And, I have a stack of new books waiting to inspire all sorts of new dishes.