Recipe Notes: Tacos Dorados

25 June 2018

Recipe from Cook's Illustrated, July 2018

Tacos dorados is a regular dinner item at our house. It means crispy tacos, i.e. tacos served using a crispy corn taco shell. It is usually a pretty simple affair. The taco shells are store bought. These are brought to the table with an array of taco fillings: ground beef (sometimes seasoned, sometimes not), shredded lettuce and cheese, avocado, tomatoes, roasted corn, sliced olives, sour cream, taco sauce, salsa, etc. Each person then builds a taco to suit their taste. In this Cook's Illustrated recipe the meat is seasoned and the taco shells are fried at home. I wanted to try some of what was in the recipe but not make it too complicated, after all we are cooking for just the two of us. Thus, I prepared tacos in our normal fashion but I prepared the ground beef filling using the recipe from the magazine.

Ground beef (90% lean, 13 oz) was mixed with water and baking soda; this raised its pH and prevented it from getting tough and rubbery when cooked. In a skillet with hot oil, one finely chopped onion was cooked to soften the onion. The seasonings were added to bloom their flavors: chili powder, paprika, cumin, and garlic powder. After a minute or so the ground beef was added and cooked until no pink remained. Soy sauce was added (in place of the tomato paste in the recipe) and the mixture transferred to a bowl where shredded cheese was stirred in. Including these steps it took about 50 minutes to prepare dinner. The meat mixture was sufficient for three meals.

The resulting tacos were okay. By itself the meat mixture was too spicy for our tastes, but served with the other fixin's it was acceptable. But is it worth the extra effort to prepare this spicy meat mixture? Especially when the taco is seasoned with prepared salsa or bottled taco sauce? My answer is no and we will stick with our simpler, quicker method of preparing tacos. Nonetheless it was worth doing once and who knows, perhaps some of what we learned will be adopted to become part of our standard preparation.

Recipe Notes: Chocolate Chewies

25 June 2018

Recipe from The Perfect Cookie, America's Test Kitchen, 2017, p. 63

When I saw this recipe in The Perfect Cookie it reminded me of Chocolate Chubbies, an excellent cookie that's something between a cookie and a brownie. While I have been rather methodical in working my way through the cookbook, I skipped ahead to try this recipe, inspired by the goodness of Chocolate Chubbies and hopes for an even better version.

There were several striking elements in the list of ingredients. There was a lot of sugar (2¼ cups confectioners' sugar), a lot of pecans (2 cups), very little flour (2 tablespoons), and very little fat (no butter and no egg yolks).  Creating the batter was straightforward. Dry ingredients (confectioners' sugar, cocoa, flour, salt) were mixed in a stand mixer. The wet ingredients were added one at a time: egg whites and vanilla. Finally, the pecans, which had been toasted and chopped, were added along with 1 ounce of grated bittersweet chocolate. These were baked, 15-18 minutes. I used a #60 disher which generated 33 cookies. Total time was 80 minutes.

My feelings about these cookies changed over time as I worked my way through the batch. (As with almost all cookies that I make, I freeze most of them, taking about a week's worth from the freezer once a week.) My first impression is they should have been called pecan cookies. Their flavor and texture were dominated by the nuts. Indeed, the batter was very thin and it was the pecans that held it together. The cookies were chewy, too, as advertised, but the chocolate flavor took a back seat to the pecans. The more I ate them, though, the more I grew to like them, to enjoy them for what they were rather than what I was expecting. Then towards the end of the batch my impression of them soured somewhat as I concluded they were too nutty for my taste. These were not much like chocolate chubbies where chocolate is the star, that is probably why I like them so much.

Recipe Notes: Grilled Chicken Thighs

22 July 2018

Recipe from Cook's Illustrated, July 2018

Last summer I tried a recipe for grilled chicken drumsticks that worked very well. This year, Cook's Illustrated featured a version of the recipe customized for chicken thighs. We probably eat thighs more often than any other part of the chicken and having an easy recipe for grilling chicken thighs would be a good thing to add to our repertoire.

The chicken is coated with a flavorful paste before it is grilled. The magazine included recipes for a mustard-tarragon paste and a gochujang (Korean red chili) paste; the web site had a Garam Masala paste. I chose the mustard-tarragon paste which is made by mixing together Dijon mustard, garlic, lemon zest, minced fresh tarragon, salt, water, and pepper. The bone-in chicken thighs were trimmed of excess fat and skin, then smeared with the mustard-tarragon paste, more on the flesh side than the skin side. It was refrigerated while the grill was heated and cleaned. The chicken was cooked on the cool side of the grill (only some of the burners were left on) to an internal temperature of 185°. Instead of the 40 minutes indicated by the recipe, this took 60-70 minutes on our grill.  The chicken was then moved to the hot side of the grill to brown the exterior. Total time was a little over 2 hours.

The chicken was tender and moist, though not juicy, and held up well as a leftover. It may have been a little overdone. I didn't have anything in my notes about the flavor from the paste so it must not have been a highlight for us. While this is a simple method for preparing grilled chicken, I think last year's recipe for drumsticks provided a better chicken. Thus when we have a hankering for grilled chicken, I think that is the recipe that we will be more likely to use. It was faster, the portion size was fine, and the meat was more evenly cooked.

Recipe Notes: Moroccan Lentil and Chickpea Soup

25 June 2018

Recipe from Cook's Illustrated, March 2018

Soup is an odd thing to make for summer. I was a little surprised to see it in the Spring edition ofCook's Illustrated. However, I really like homemade soup and I made another North African lentil soup recently that we enjoyed very much. So even though soup is more comforting in the cooler months, I made this soup for a summer meal. Many summer meals, as it turned out,  as the recipe makes a lot of soup.

I made a few changes to the recipe. I didn't have quite as much fresh cilantro as the recipe called for so I increased the amount of fresh parsley to compensate. I couldn't find brown lentils in the supermarket so I used green. Finally, I omitted the grated fresh ginger; several recipes with ginger that we tried recently were too spicy for our taste. Making the soup involves a fair amount of prep work, the ingredient list is pretty long but with nothing exotic. Once the prep work is done it all comes together quickly and easily. Diced onion and celery were cooked in oil. Minced garlic was added followed by the spices: coriander, paprika, cumin, cinnamon, and pepper flakes. This mixture was cooked for a minute to bloom the spices, then minced fresh cilantro and parsley were added. Chicken broth, water, chickpeas, and lentils were added and the mixture simmered for 20 minutes. Canned crushed tomatoes and orzo were stirred in to the soup. After a short period of simmering, chopped Swiss chard was added and cooked briefly. The soup was finished, off heat, with lemon juice, cilantro, and parsley. Total time to make the soup was just 90 minutes, much of which is hands off.

The verdict: another really good soup! It is very hearty from the lentils, chickpeas, and pasta. The spices provide warmth while the tomatoes add some acidity and fruity notes. The soup keeps very well and is just as good, if not better, as a leftover. It thickens and almost has the consistency of a stew. It was not spicy so it should be OK to include the grated ginger. As a bonus the soup is easily made vegan by substituting vegetable broth for the chicken broth. I look forward to making this soup again as a comforting Winter meal.