Recipes & Cooking Notes
Recipes & Cooking Notes
To go with the tamales I made salsa de aguacate/avocado salsa. I was hoping the make the southwest green salsa I keep getting at restaurants, but it ended up more like an avocado sauce with some tang due to the tomatillos. It’s still good. update 20141215: I asked Reina how she makes her green salsa, […]
update 20141214: Made the tamales! They are quite tasty! First successful batch. Mostly followed the advice from the youtube video. You should definately watch the whole video before trying the first time. Tamales are a time consuming food, so a 30 min how-to video is worth it. Joepastry was a good start, but not the […]
20141212 chinese “Jin’s” style dumplings I posted before on how to make dumplings meat, but didn’t post proportions, wrappers, etc. I made it again recently, and I’d thought I write down what the measurements are: For approximately 30 dumplings 1 lb HEB brand ground pork (80:20) — no broth injected meat 1:60 ratio salt for […]
20141123 wonton noodle soup made wonton noodle soup loosely following this recipe: http://www.seriouseats.com/2014/04/chinese-noodles-101-how-to-make-wonton-noodle.html soaked mushrooms in cold tap water for a few hours. reserved soak water. rinsed, boiled for 10 min in sugar and cornstarch. that did cook it a bit, but I should have added some salt to the shittake mushrooms — they are […]
20141119 snickerdoodles made snickerdoodles following this recipe: a great recipe with good annotations about flour used, how to measure salt properly, etc. Another thing I found helpful was that the shape of the cookie dough as it’s placed on the baking sheet matters — a perfectly round ball will yield a perfectly round cookie. A […]
20141116 tried to make barbacoa following this recipe: Barbacoa YIELD: ABOUT 8-12 SERVINGS BARBACOA This barbacoa recipe is simple to make in your slow cooker, and makes the most tender, flavorful, delicious barbacoa beef. PREP: 10 MIN COOK: 4 HOURS 10 MIN TOTAL: 4 HOURS 20 MIN INGREDIENTS: 3 lbs chuck roast (fat trimmed), cut into 2-inch chunks 4 cloves […]
20141109 Tried to make tamales this past weekend. I think the filling turned out really well, but bread-and-butter of a tamale is the masa. And we had two failed attempt at it. Most of the info is based on joepastry: http://www.joepastry.com/2012/making-classic-tamales/ But the more experience I get, the less I trust joe pastry’s tamale instructions. […]
Made borracho beans based on an amalgam of recipes, probably mostly followed the first one below, then derived inspiration from these other ones: http://www.insockmonkeyslippers.com/borracho-beans-pinto-beans-in-broth http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/pinto_beans_with_bacon_and_jalapenos/ Borracho Beans with Shiner Bock Beer I soaked 1 lb sorted pinto beans overnight with 6 cups water. I then brought 8 cups of water to a boil, added the […]
THE SECRET TO SMOOTH DUMPLING MEAT! 20141029 It’s not cornstarch! It’s not even fat! (maybe…) It’s salt! See attached image for test dumpling at westwood! See below for science and references! A dumpling is basically a chinese sausage in a chinese wrapper! To make the meat smooth and not crumbly, take the meat, and mix […]
grilled chicken drumsticks Made grilled chicken following this recipe. The best chicken drumstick grilling advice I’ve seen. I forgot to take a picture, but they had lots of color, and were slightly burned. Big take away points for me: WASH AND PAT DRY FOR CRISPY SKIN cook at medium (medium low for me), make sure […]