Image Map

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

January Dinner Party

This past weekend I had my first Southwest Dinner Party. I told you guys I was going to be cooking out of The New Southwest Cookbook, which is a collection of recipes from fancy restaurants in the Southwest. It was a total success! All the recipes had amazing flavor and were delicious! Here’s the recap:

Appetizer: Carnitas Napoleon with Green Chile- Tomatillo Sauce (p. 55)



These were my favorite. The presentation was really fun. They were basically stacks of fried corn tortilla squares with roasted pork (marinated for a day in a dry rub, roasted 3 hours in onion, orange and Dr. Pepper and then shredded), drizzled with a tomatillo sauce (homemade), sprinkled with cotija cheese (a hard, tangy, feta-ish cheese) and a side of home-made Terra Cotta Salsa. Yes, all of that, just for the appetizer…

Soup: Black Bean Soup with Lime Sour Cream (p.77)



This got rave reviews! Black beans were soaked overnight, then simmered with onions, ham hocks and delicious spices for hours, then blended to a not-too-smooth consistency. Topped with a lime sour cream, chopped green onions and baked tortilla strips ( I will fry them next time so they will be a bit more crisp). The flavor was great- really, really tasty- and not super heavy for a black bean soup!

Dinner: New York Strip Steaks with Chipotle Recado (p. 142)
and Spiced Artichokes with Backbone Sauce (p. 197)



These steaks were amazing! Every bite was a little bit of heaven. They sat for 48 hours in a “recado”, which is basically a marinade. This one was a super thick wet paste with all the dry ingredients of a mole (pumpkin seeds, pecans, chipotle pepper, cinnamon, ancho chile, raisins- and about 12 other ingredients) pureed together. The flavor this created was (again…) amazing!

The artichokes were fun. I had never cooked whole artichokes before and that is basically why I am doing this challenge- to try new things, techniques and ingredients. It is not the best season for artichokes- they were a little skimpy on the meat- but we had fun teaching our neighbor, Mike how to eat them! Oh, and the Backbone Sauce (which is named that because it is from Hell’s Backbone Grill in Boulder, Utah) was really tasty too- great depth of flavor with a zip of heat hiding at the end.


Dessert: Flourless Chocolate Cake (p. 223)



I was a little nervous about this one, because it involved whipping egg whites and folding them into a sugar/butter/bittersweet chocolate mixture. Would it deflate the eggs? Eeeek! I thought at first that they were (the whites went in the havy mixture in small batches) but by the end it was a light fluffy batter. This is not a pretty dessert- it comes out looking squashed and slightly sunken, but it was amazingly light (“mousse-like” as Andrew described it) but with really dense chocolate flavor. Yum!

We are super excited about February!

Sunday, January 16, 2011

Spicy Creamed Corn

I wanted to try to give a Southwestern kick to another Southern classic: creamed corn. Now typically, traditional creamed corn is just fresh corn, cut off the cob and heated up with butter and creates a sauce with its own fresh juices. Fabulous! It in no way resembles the creamed corn in a can. I tried it 2 ways: 1) with fresh jalapenos and cream and 2) with green chilies and cream cheese. Andrew and I had trouble deciding which was better, so we invited our fabulous neighbors, Mike and Siah, over to help us decide. The decision was split evenly- option #1 was decided to be more authentic with the fresh jalapenos and lighter sauce but option #2 was really creamy and had a great flavor. So I decided to give you guys both recipes depending on what your preference is. And I would love to hear what you think!



Jalapeno Creamed Corn
6 ears corn
4 Tbsp. butter
2 jalapenos
½ cup cream
¼ cup green onions
1 tsp Paula’s House Seasoning

Cut corn off ears into a skillet; add all other ingredients and simmer 20 minutes.


Creamed Corn with Green Chilies

4 ears corn
4 oz. cream cheese
7 oz. canned green chilis
¼ cup chopped green onions
2 Tbsp. butter
1 tsp. Paula’s House Seasoning

Cut corn off ears into a skillet; add all other ingredients and simmer 20 minutes.


*Note- Paula's House Seasoning is just 2 parts salt, 1 part pepper and 1 part gralic powder- it is a super easy way to season things!*

Thursday, January 6, 2011

New Goals, New Recipes!

New Year, new goals, right? I have been thinking about New Years resolutions the past few days, as I am sure most of you have. I have set several for myself personally, but what would I do for the blog and for my cooking? Last year I cooked through an entire Paula Deen cookbook- Paula Deen Celebrates! which was a lot of fun. Paula Deen is pretty much my hero! However, because I am from the South, that kind of food was not very challenging. It is what I grew up with and I already had a fairly good knowledge about those ingredients, recipes and techniques. I wanted to challenge myself a bit more this year. And because my blog is about “bringing the South to the Southwest” I thought I would do some Southwestern food. I want to learn about the ingredient, recipes and techniques indigenous to the area that I live in now.

Luckily, I got an amazing cookbook when Andrew and I went to Sedona, AZ for our first anniversary. It is called The New Southwest Cookbook. It is a collection of recipes from restaurants in the Southwest- Sedona, Scottsdale, Santa Fe, Tucson, Taos, St. George- restaurants from Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah. Sadly, no Nevada. These are super gourmet, restaurant quality recipes, so they will challenge me- new techniques, new ingredients (rattlesnake, prickly pear, cactus leaves or achiote paste, anyone?) There are amazing and delicious recipes like garlic-sautéed lobster medallions with corn blinis and ancho crème fraiche, stuffed chicken mole, roasted garlic flan with pumpkin salsa and peach, chile and basil tart.



It would be a little crazy to take on the whole book, so here is what I am going to do- each month I am going to have a dinner party. I am going to make an appetizer, soup, entrée, side and dessert. It will be a lot of fun- what I loved about the Paula challenge was having an excuse to have people over so often. But it will also challenge my cooking skills. Stay tuned for my first tries later this month! And let me know- what are your New Years cooking resolutions?