Curry Perch (man can't live on sausage alone)

One reason I don't post sausage and chorizo recipes more often is because I do cook and eat other things.

I like to prepare Chinese dishes, in particular. And since I've been in Florida, and exposed to Jamaican food, I've attempted to mimic Jamaican-style cooking.

No sausage here today. No chorizo, either.

This is the end result of an experiment that turned out really well. I'll call it Curry Perch.

I started with a ripe plantain, chopped it in sections and grilled it in vegetable oil and butter.

Curry perch with spinach rice and a Guiness

On a separate fire, I have long grain white rice cooking. The rice is seasoned with a cilantro seasoning cube, one chopped chipotle pepper and mixed in is some spinach.

Once the plantain is cooked, I add a 3/4 cup of coconut milk and shake in enough curry to give the liquid a strong ochre color. Bring this to a boil and stir. Or stir as you bring this to a boil. Something like that.

Add some hot salsa. How much depends on your tolerance for pepper heat. I put in two spoonfuls of my hot salsa.

Grilled ripe plantain in oil and butter

plantain and perch in curry sauce

I took six perch fillets and dropped them in the boiling sauce as it was being reduced. I used the stirring spoon to break the fillets down into bite-size pieces, then I turned the heat off.

I didn't want to leave the perch cooking in the pan for more than a few minutes. It doesn't take much to cook fish. If you look it in too long, it's either going get rubbery or it's going to disintegrate.

There's not much else to say about this. Easy to cook. The curry perch was ready when the rice was ready. And all the taste profiles balanced out nice. Curry, spicy, coconut milky. My only complaint might be the plantain was just a tad too sweet; it's always a little tricky deciding when to cook a plantain.

The rice came out wonderful. Twenty minutes of simmering and presto! It had a nice smokey cilantro/chipotle flavor to it.

Rice with spinach, chipotle, seasoned with cilantro salt

I probably should have gone with a white wine, but I was in the mood for a Guinness. Had not had one in ages. What can I say?

Buen provecho!

Mesquite: the best of all things hardwood smoked

In Texas, mesquite is our hickory. It is the sweetest of all woods for smoking meats.
There are so many sausages to choose from in a Texas supermarket. You won't see these sights in a Florida grocery:

The sausage aisle covers a good 15 yards of floor space in the meat section at an HEB market.

Most of the brands come from sausage makers in Texas. The out of state brands fill maybe a third of the open coolers.
 

But there's more.

Take a walk across the floor.

The chorizos are located separately.

Apco, Garcia, Hill County Fare, San Luis, and others are packed in floor to ceiling.

Back to mesquite!

When I cook with a mesquite smoked sausage, I try to keep things simple. I want to use fewer ingredients. Less salt, less or no black pepper. I may even skip the onions altogether.

Mesquite smokes sausage is a meat I can eat straight. It doesn't need any help.

I picked out the store brand: HEB Mesquite Premium Smoked Sausage.

Normally, I would offer a link, but I couldn't find one. This is a fine product, but HEB has so many store brands, they don't bother to list them all individually.

This first dish is a simple dinner. I slow-grilled a split mesquite-smoked sausage link and paired with with some baked beans topped with a thick slice of grilled onion.

The bread is multi-grain toast with whole cooked cranberry. No butter. No salt. No dessert.

It looks pretty! Don't it?

Buen provecho!

Say it isn't Chorty so!

I opened the fridge the other day and I found myself down to my last link of Chorty chorizo.

Frown! Well, I knew this day was coming. I only brought one package of APCO's Chorty from San Antonio over the Christmas holidays.

I wanted refried beans with my breakfast, but I didn't have any. I did however have the remains of some red and pinto bean soup. It had settled, so I poured out some water and chopped some cabbage and chilaca pepper. I know! (No cabbage in refried beans!)

Listen, (shaking the knife at my conscience), you make yours without cabbage. I like my greens.

Once we get past the orthodoxy of proper refried beans, here's what happened. Pat of butter goes in the pan and stir in some watery beans and chopped cabbage. Add a little salt and ground black pepper.

On a separate skillet, I'm cooking Chorty on low heat, adding butter and stirring in eggs with a little bit of chopped onion.

I bring out my sacred supply of homemade chili petin and Asian pepper salsa and dribble a little on top of the Chorty and eggs AFTER I transfer it to the plate.

Meanwhile, the water has been evaporating from the beans and I'm getting it to the proper pasty consistency of refried beans (with cabbage!).

Heat up tortillas while the other items are cooking. So, other than the coffee brewing, you've got three fires going. And this is the result:

There's a little garnishing going on here. I had some fresh chopped tomato on the side and a crumbly Mexican cheese (cotija) sprinkled over the beans.

Buen provecho!

Zatarain's is a friend of sausage

One of my fave rice brands is Zatarain's. New Orleans is practically next door to Texas.

In fact, Houston is kind of 'Big Brother' to New Orleans. There's been commercial and familial interaction between the two cities for generations. And they love to share food.

When Hurricane Katrina tore into New Orleans, the cities of Houston and San Antonio played major roles as refugee centers. For one season, the New Orleans Saints played half their football games in San Antonio's Alamodome.

We like their Cajun dishes. And they like our Mexican and Tex-Mex dishes. And looking for a Zatarain's rice box on the grocery shelf is as natural as looking for a favorite brand of tortillas.

I wanted to take some Opa's Jalapeno Smoked Sausage, chop it with some vegetables and pair it with some Zatarain's dirty rice. I chopped broccoli and added some frozen peas and carrots.

In one pot, I cooked up the dirty rice. And in a skillet, I had the sausage bits cooking on low heat. I made a simple sauce with water, vegetable oil, corn starch, salt and basil. Then I tossed into the skillet the veggies.

Once the veggies go in, let it cook for another five minutes or so. I don't like to cook so long that the broccoli gets mushy.

The box instructions suggest 25 minutes for the dirty rice, but I've had luck with 20 minutes. I guess it depends on how hot the pot is simmering and how soft you want the rice.

Spoon out the proportion of rice you want and heap the sausage and veggies over it. I served this dish with a merlot wine.

Zatarain's dirty rice with sausage, veggies

More recently, I made a similar dish with Zatarain's Jambalaya rice. I cooked Opa's German sausage in a pan with some slices of pork loin.

What I had on the cutting board was a sweet potato and cabbage, both were chopped and throw into the jambalaya rice pot. The sweet potato and cabbage is stirred in and it cooks fine. I didn't have to add more water than what was suggested on the box instructions (2 1/2 cups).

It really turned out great. Of course, my version ended up with a spicy dose of my homemade hot sauce, but the seasonings in the Zatarain's jambalaya are great; it doesn't need anything else.

I know! Jambalaya is supposed to have shrimp and okra. Maybe next time!

Buen provecho.

Sausage & chorizo & beer & spicy veggies, and? And?

Okay, I'll stop there. This is simpler than it looks. I chopped a sausage from my dwindling supply of Texas sausages (it has since been replenished!). And I added a Mexican chorizo. Both into the skillet.

In a pot with a little water, I have some chopped veggies cooking. These include a poblano pepper, cabbage, broccoli and potato (or yucca). Add salt and pepper.

If your swift with a knife, you'll get this done quicker than it would take to order a pizza at your corner pizzeria.

I heated a few tortillas because I suck at giving up the carbs. But, hey, one thing about corn tortillas, they don't pad on the pounds the way flour does. And they're just as filling.

Grab your beverage of choice and refuel.

Buen provecho!

Breakfast time with chilaca

Chilaca pepper is a long green pepper. It's longer than a longhot and not as hot. It is spicy, but more like one of the milder poblanos.

Here is one next to an egg for scale. I have no idea if you can get chilacas in Florida. I haven't seen them. I brought this one back from Texas.

This is going to be a very colorful, spicy breakfast dish. And it's going to have something similar to a pancake for the starchy food element; this is in place of tortillas or potatoes.

Call it a corn crepe if you like (I haven't given it a name), but I'm going with a bread that is half biscuit flour and half corn meal. Add a teaspoon of baking powder or else the corn meal will keep your bread from rising and it will curl at the edges (you'll end up with something like polenta - I'm not a fan). The ratio is half flour to half corn meal, the aforementioned baking power, an amount of milk equal to the flour and corn meal combined. For my meal, that comes to a half cup flour and corn meal to a half cup milk.

I added one egg to this batter and stirred. Spread real butter on a hot grill and pour the batter and cook.

Now back to the main event. Apco Chorizo Especial, a bonafide 'Made in San Antonio, Texas' product. The mascot is 'Chorty Chorizo' (Get it? It's Tex-Mex slang). The chorizo links are shorter than a standard chorizo link.

This is made by San Antonio Packing Company on South Laredo Street. This is the same neighborhood where Kiolbassa brand sausages are located. Laredo Street has for generations been home to slaughter houses and meat packing operations. This is because this is where the cattle from South Texas ranches made their last stop at the now defunct Union Pacific Stockyards.

I took two links of Apco chorizo (because Chorty is short) and grilled them with slivers chilaca pepper.

Mmm! You've got to admit, that looks pretty.

Meanwhile our flour/corn cakes are cooking. They should come out thin and light and we'll spread them on the bottom of the dish. We have a "corncake" (how's that for a name?) foundation for what comes next.

Crack an egg and stir it into the chorizo and chilaca pepper. Don't overcook. Get it off the heat while it's still moist and pour it on top of the "corncakes."

Remember that hot sauce I made awhile back? Well, I'm sprinkling two spoonfuls of that on top. Since you don't have my homemade hot sauce (or maybe your made your own?), try Cholula. And, yes, you can find Cholula in Florida. Cholula is okay, but I'm not a big fan of bottled hot sauces and here's why - vinegar.

Vinegar is used as a preservative, but it's not there for the taste. I think vinegar detracts from taste. That is why in Mexican cafés the little cup of fresh salsa is such a mainstay. A hot sauce made fresh (sans vinegar) is tastier and healthier for you.

The colors! Somewhere under this pile, there's some "corncake."

I had this with  Café Bustelo, to which I added ground cinnamon (I just sprinkle it into the coffee grounds in the filter cup) and cream.

Buen provecho!

Kleenex soup

Now these are Christmas colors!

Last week of 2010, I was back in San Antonio, and I took a walk in the garden. It was time to harvest the Asian peppers; those pinky finger length red chilis. And we have three three chili petin bushes. I cleaned them out.

The red Asian peppers are fairly hot, but the chili petins (those small red beads) are serious business. Idea rather munch on three Asian peppers than put one of those little red beads in my mouth.

Chili petin grows wild in Texas. You don't have to go to a nursery. If they don't pop up in your yard on their own, you can always take a couple chili petin peppers from a neighbor and just toss them in your soil.

I packed them in my suitcase along with about 10 brands of Texas sausage (all necessary provisions in the far southeast of the USA) so I could make my own hot sauce. I boiled the Asian peppers with the chili petin, a few cloves of chopped garlic, one chopped onion and two large chopped tomatoes. As it cooks, add salt and  a little vegetable oil.

What I end up with is concentrated. I wouldn't serve it up on anything this way. Most of it went into a plastic storage container and straight to the freezer. I kept about a half cup out and ran it through the blender. Then I diluted it with a half cup of water and I now have a cup of hot sauce that is quite spicy but it won't kill me.

Now that we have the heat, it's time for Kleenex soup. I'll explain the name later.

One of the sausage brands I came back with was Opa's Jalapeño Smoked Sausage. Opa's comes from the German town of Fredericksburg in the Texas Hill Country. You can find it in most supermarkets in Central and South Texas.

I chopped the sausage and  grilled it on a skillet with low heat while I warmed up a pot of red beans soup. The sausage goes into a soup bowl with the red bean soup and I poured in two spoonfuls of that homemade hot sauce. On top, I sprinkled fresh chopped onion and a little crumbled queso costeno.

That's a white, salty cheese.




Now, let's eat!

During the winter, I'm more prone to chow into a spicy soup. It's hot. Mmm, very hot! I've had Vietnamese soups this spicy, but I don't come across very many American soups with this much kick. 

Opa's Jalapeno Smoked Sausage from Fredericksburg, Tx

As I work my way to the bottom of the bowl, the hot sauce starts to clear out my sinuses. If I had anything in my head that was bothering me, it's on its way out now.

Having a tissue or two would come in handy. So by the time I'm done with it, I'm grateful for the Kleenex box.

Kleenex Soup!

Buen provecho.