Adventures in Food
Culture + Food
Middle Eastern breakfast burritos
May 16th
Breakfast burritos are a dinnertime staple around my house. I forage in the fridge for whatever leftovers I have, throw it in with scrambled eggs and wrap it in a heated flour tortilla and you have dinner. Sauteed veggies? Throw ‘em in for veggie burritos. Leftover pork? Chop it up, throw it in then top the scrambled eggs with salsa for Mexican breakfast burritos. Mozzarella + diced tomatoes + fresh basil (if you have it) and you’ve got Italian breakfast burritos. Yeah, I wasn’t kidding when I said we have this a lot. Easy peasy.
On Friday night I even packed our breakfast burritos to go since we were running late to see The Avengers. Yes, I carted our burritos into the theater with us so we could eat while we watched the previews. I had thought of just giving in and buying fast food on the way but I took 5 minutes and made Mexican burritos instead. So I had burritos on the brain while watching the Hulk smash through Cleveland. Yes, it’s Cleveland, not New York, getting pummeled during the movie. I’m so proud. After defeating Loki and his minions (yeah, no spoilers there we all figured the Avengers would prevail, right?), Iron Man mutters that he wants shawarma. I love that shawarma got a big screen mention. The Middle Eastern shish kabob deserves the A-list star treatment.
The next day my husband and I did a little what we like to call culinary spelunking in Cleveland and stumbled upon the Assad Bakery, which had shawarma and fresh pitas for sale. Fresh pitas are nothing like the cardboard kind you find at a regular grocery store. They’re soft and pliable and come in different sizes. They’re meant to be rolled. I was inspired: what about a Middle Eastern breakfast burrito complete with a slathering of hummus? I went for Trader Joe’s smoky red pepper chipotle hummus and paired with scrambled eggs for this Middle Eastern breakfast burrito.
Recipe rundown: Prepare scrambled eggs. Spread about 2 tablespoons hummus over the pita. Place about 1/3-1/2 cup cooked eggs in a center line on the pita then roll up starting with one end. If you can’t find decent pitas around, go ahead and buy the pocket variety and just place the hummus and eggs into the pocket (don’t try to roll ‘em). Or, you could use flour tortillas for even more cross-cultural food fusion.
Kids’ reaction: Rave reviews all around. My two youngest requested their burritos sans hummus but then when I couldn’t finish mine they both offered to eat it.
By the time I went for a shot my daughter was almost done!
A taste of Mexico
May 4th
Street fair in Tepotzlan
In celebration of Cinco de Mayo, I wanted to share some pictures from our family’s visit to Mexico City and the surrounding area. We took our trip a couple years ago but my kids still talk about their experiences there–from watching the famed voladores dancers fly through the air outside the National Anthropology & History Museum in Mexico City to eating a milenesa tortas in Chapultepec Park to stumbling into a street fair in a town on the side of a mountain and so much more.
To capture a little bit of Mexican culture at your dinner table, here are a few of my favorite authentic dishes you might want to try this weekend:
Taking a breather after hiking up a pyramid in Cholula
Danza de los Voladores--the flying dancers of Veracruz
Sampling Mexican ice cream, nieves, in Tepotzlan
Eating a caramel filled churro in Puebla
Enfrijoladas (refried bean enchiladas) in Cholula
How to toast tortillas
May 2nd
Please don’t eat hard taco shells. Soft, toasted corn tortillas are so much better. They’re cheaper. And they’re more authentic.
For some of you toasting corn tortillas might seem fairly basic, but for others you might still be clipping coupons for the hard shells. Put the scissors down.
Here’s what to do instead:
Look for white corn tortillas in the refrigerated section of your neighborhood store, or try to find a more local brand at a Mexican grocers. The brands at the store don’t tend to be as fresh or pliable, but they’re still an improvement over the hard shells.
If you have a gas grill you can go ahead and light the burner–or burners to medium heat (I use all four at once). Then place the white corn tortillas right on the grate. For those with electric ranges, it’s a bit harder to get the tortillas toasted; use a heavy-bottomed skillet that’s heated to medium-high heat.
The tortillas will begin to puff slightly as they bake, flip after about 1 minute then toast on the other side.
Last step, and this is important for flexible tortillas, place them in a tortilla warmer or a kitchen towel.
Often, when I’m serving tacos I’ll place the warmer in the middle of the table and then put a variety of fixings on each person’s plate.
More ideas for Cinco de Mayo:
Your turn–are you already a toasted corn tortilla fan?
Shrimp tacos
May 1st
Use lime shrimp for tacos or tostadas
Yesterday I explained how to make your own corn tortillas at home, well today I wanted to give you an idea for a tasty, fast filling: lime-spiked shrimp.
The shrimp filling takes all of 15 minutes to make (an extra 15 if I need to thaw the raw shrimp and remove the tails). Here’s how I do it:
- Heat 1/2 tablespoon canola or grape seed oil in wok or heavy bottomed skillet to medium-high heat.
- Add 20-30 medium-sized raw shrimp to the hot oil. Sprinkle with 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin and garlic powder; you can even add 1/4 cayenne if you want more of a kick.
- Cook until the shrimp are just beginning to turn pink (about 2 minutes) and squeeze all of the juice of a fresh lime during the final minute of cooking. Add salt to taste.
- Serve in toasted, corn tortillas with fresh salsa or as a topping for tostadas.
Homemade tortillas in 5 steps
Apr 30th
Your kids will love making tortillas
Cinco de Mayo is Saturday! I’m counting down the days until this American celebration of all things Mexican by posting ideas and recipes every day.
Today’s post is all about homemade tortillas. These are so easy and perfect for kids who want to help out in the kitchen.
These pictures will guide you through making tortillas. Easy peasy!
Step 1:
Mix water and PAN (white corn flour, NOT Masa which makes for harder tortillas) according to package directions.
Step 2:
Make dough into 1-inch balls and place at the center of your tortilla press that has been covered with plastic wrap on both sides (cutting boards will work too, but it’s a little harder to get the tortillas as thin).
Step 3:
Press the tortilla ball until thin.
Optional step: Use a large biscuit cutter to make the tortillas uniform in size.
Step 4:
Bake the tortillas on a preheated cast iron or other heavy-bottomed skillet.
If you've never purchase PAN, here's what to look for at the store.
Step 5:
Keep the cooked tortillas in a tortilla warmer or a clean kitchen towel until you’ve worked your way through all of the dough.
Here's what my $10 tortilla press looks like.
Looking for more specific directions? No worries, check out my detailed post about making homemade tortillas at Wandering Educators.
Having fun making tortillas
Kids’ reactions:
“Mom, we should have made more.” That says it all.
Thai coconut soup
Apr 17th
Two months. It took nearly two months for The Sriracha Cookbook by Randy Clemens to work its way through the library system and into my waiting hands. Not familiar with Sriracha? Also called “rooster sauce,” this addictive, spicy Asian sauce perks up any dish. For me, Sriracha sauce has an instant heat that hits in the back of the throat, but goes away quickly. Really. I don’t like it straight, but mixed into dishes it adds that layer of interest that only chiles can.
I tried out Clemens’ Thai Chicken-Coconut Soup recipe. I found it was easy to put together but next time I’d definitely make some adjustments. Here are my notes:
- The mixture of chicken and fish sauce didn’t seem to fit. I’d use shrimp in the recipe instead.
- I didn’t buy the extra, pricier ingredients like lemon grass and kaffir leaves. Maybe one of these days, but the substitutes work well and the soup tasted nearly as good as the coconut soup from our favorite Thai restaurant.
- I didn’t want to bother with mincing the ginger so instead I put it on a skewer and let it simmer with the soup while it cooked then just threw it out before serving.
Ginger flavor, no mincing
- Looking at the fat content of regular coconut milk, I opted for the lite version.
- Clemens calls for a whopping 1/3 cup Sriracha in the soup. I like things hot, but my thought is it’s much easier to ADD more heat than to try to take it out so I used a couple teaspoons.
Recipe
Prep & cook time: 20-30 minutes
Servings: 4-6
Ingredients
3 cups chicken stock
2 tablespoons fish sauce
1 stalk lemongrass, white part only (optional)
1 (2-inch) knob galangal (or ginger)
3 kaffir lime leaves or 1 tablespoon finely minced lime zest
1 (14-ounce) can coconut milk
1/3 cup Sriracha (uh, I used about 2 teaspoons)
1/2 pound skinless, boneless chicken cut into 1-inch cubes (I used leftover cooked chicken)
Juice of 1 lime
Salt and pepper to taste
Fresh cilantro sprigs
Directions
- In a medium-sized pot add the chicken broth, fish sauce, lemongrass (if using), ginger and lime zest and bring to a boil.
- Turn the heat down and simmer for 10 minutes. (Clemens points out you can strain out the galangal, lemongrass and lime leaves at this point but since I wasn’t using them, I didn’t have to.)
- Add the coconut milk, chicken and Sriracha and return the soup to a boil for 4 to 6 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through. Again, I used leftover chicken.
- Remove the soup from the heat and stir in the fresh lemon juice. Serve garnished with cilantro.
Soup's on!
Kids’ reactions: Okay, I wasn’t expecting rave reviews from the kiddos on this one. I thought the soup was excellent–soothing, spicy. The teen thought the soup was good but pointed out that shrimp would work better than the chicken. Agreed. My two younger kids thought it was on the spicy side and asked for extra servings of rice instead of seconds of soup. If only you could eat soup with chopsticks I think they would have given it more of a chance.
Buckwheat crepes
Apr 13th
My teen had one request for her birthday–breakfast in bed. And she wanted crepes. Mr. Squid usually handles crepe duty around our house. See he can flip the crepes in the air and have them land right back in the pan. Mine tend to land on the counter, when they don’t fly off to the floor.
But I’d been wanting to try a new buckwheat flour crepe recipe. At the Cleveland’s West Side Market one of the most popular booths is Crepes De Luxe, which touts their “authentic, Parisian style” crepes. (If you go, just ask someone to point out where “the crepe place is” then look for a long line.) I find that buckwheat crepes are thicker, bigger and heartier than your all-purpose flour variety. I like it. Usually buckwheat crepes are reserved for the savory fare. And you can use this recipe for a savory meal, I’ve melted fontina and roasted asparagus in these crepes for dinner. But this time it was all about something sweet for a special breakfast.
Notes:
I don’t use a crepe pan, I just bake ‘em in my regular, non-stick 9″ saute pan.
Recipe
Prep time: 20 minutes
Cleveland's Crepes De Luxe
Servings: about 15 crepes in a 9″ pan
Ingredients
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1/3 cup water
2/3 cup flour
2/3 cup buckwheat flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled
2 teaspoons sugar (optional)
1 teaspoon lemon zest (optional)
Directions
- Combine all ingredients in a blender, puree until smooth. I didn’t use sugar, but you could if you want these a little sweeter. (I was saving some for dinner and I don’t like too-sweet desserts anyway.)
- Refrigerate the batter for 30 minutes to an hour.
- In a 9″ saute pan or crepe pan melt 1 teaspoon butter to medium-high heat.
- Pour about 1/4 cup of the batter into the pan and swirl until it stretches out over the pan. Cook until the edges begin to pull away from the sides of the pan, about 60 seconds then carefully flip. I no longer try to toss mine in the air, but rely on a large spatula.
- Cook for 45 seconds on the other side then transfer to a plate. Repeat with the rest of the batter, placing pieces of waxed paper between the crepes so they don’t stick.
To serve:
For a sweet crepe I keep it simple: I cut up strawberries and let them sit in a sprinkling in sugar and fresh lemon juice while I was preparing the crepes. On the plate I swirled Hershey’s chocolate syrup just for decoration then slathered Nutella on the still-warm crepes. I also tucked strawberry slices inside before rolling them up, placing them on the plate and garnishing them with another strawberry and a sprinkling of powdered sugar, just cuz.
Basic chile salsa recipe
Apr 11th
Have you ever tried making salsa from scratch? I’m not talking about pico de gallo, the chopped up tomato-onion-cilantro combo that sometimes gets mistaken for salsa. Nope, I’m thinking of Mexican salsa that comes in endless varieties and has as its base dried chiles.
Making salsa is actually easy–promise!–and doesn’t take much time. I had fun whipping up a batch yesterday with my teen and her friends. It took all of 20 minutes. We probably could have made it faster but we were chatting and sampling as we went.
Here are the basics:
- You can find dried chiles usually in the produce section or in the Mexican food aisle of your grocery store.
- My suggestion would be to start with larger chiles, like Ancho (my fav) or Mulato. They’re easier to seed than the smaller (but still tasty) Arbol chiles. Guajillo is right in between, but for newbies Ancho is also milder.
- You’ll need to remove the seeds from the chiles before pan roasting them.
- Plan on tweaking the salsa to suit your tastes: If you want to add some tomatoes to the mix, canned or fresh, by all means, go for it. If you want it sweeter, a little honey; more tart, a little vinegar. You get the idea. (I added sundried tomatoes to this batch.)
- I triple the recipe below and then save the extras in cleaned out raspberry jam jars.
My salsa recipe turns out differently every time, so I’m passing along a tweaked version of Rick Bayless‘ Toasty Arbol or Guajillo Chile Salsa from his excellent cookbook Mexican Everyday.
Recipe
Prep time: 20 minutes
Servings: About 1 cup
Ingredients
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
3 dried Ancho chiles
3 garlic cloves, peeled
4 medium tomatillos (or Roma tomatoes), cut in half
Directions
- Remove the stems and seeds from the Ancho chiles. How? I use kitchen shears to cut around the stem and then shake the seeds onto a paper towel, then discard.
- Bring the oil to medium-high heat in a heavy bottomed skillet.
- Add the chiles and watch carefully until they begin to soften, then remove (about 1 minute). Submerge the chiles into a bowl of hot water and let them sit while you’re preparing the rest of the ingredients.
- Wipe the oil out of the pan and add the garlic and tomatillos (or tomatoes), cut side down. Cook for about 2-3 minutes then place the tomatillos and garlic in a blender.
- Drain the water from the chiles and add them to the blender.
- Pour in 1/2 cup water and puree until smooth. Continue adding in water until the salsa reaches your desired consistency. I like to make it a little runnier since it will thicken a bit as it cools.
- Now for the tweaks: I usually add salt, a teaspoon or two of red cider vinegar and a pinch of sugar or a drizzle of honey.
- Serve with tacos, chips, or tostadas.
Basket cookies & bunny bread
Apr 6th
Anybody want a cookie?
For Easter I wanted to pass along a couple ideas I came up with while roaming through our neighborhood Italian shop, Alesci’s. Over the holidays, the bakery puts out their version of pupa cu l’ova, or basket cookies, a traditional Italian Easter treat. The idea behind the cookies is to bake an egg tucked into a cookie dough “basket.” Roaming online recipes, I found various ways to do this–sometimes the egg was hard-boiled, other times it wasn’t. Sometimes the egg was already dyed, others went sans color.
The sizable basket cookies at Alesci’s are made with a stiff biscotti dough that’s thickly glazed with powdered sugar and then tossed with multi-colored sprinkles. From what I could tell (and I’d have to happily research this by eating more), the cookies are baked, glazed, and then while still warm the hard-boiled egg is pressed into the cookie. Some recipes call for baking the cookies with the egg inside. My thought is if you want to try this at home, you could make a regular sugar cookie dough spiked with a little bit of anise. I’m going to have to try that for next year.
Don't eat the egg in the middle--it's just for decoration!
But what I did make with my kiddos is some bunny bread. We used pizza dough to create our edible bunnies. I rolled out the dough and then had the kids use a biscuit cutter for the bunny heads and simply cut the ears out with a kitchen knife. For the eyes we used black beans, but olives would work well too. We experimented with the nose and teeth. An overturned mushroom stood in for teeth on a couple of our bunnies. My daughter made a pepperoni smile for another. We did make one big bunny by stretching the dough out into a circle but in the end my teen noted it looked more like a pig than a bunny. Ah well, I wanted some sort of Easter treat for my kids that didn’t involve sugar and this one turned out tasty–and fun. Happy holidays everyone!
The floppy eared bunny
This one looks more like a pig, huh?
Bye bye bunny!
A world of chili sauces
Feb 25th
On a dare my teen once drank a glass of Cholula, a vinegary Mexican hot sauce that’s spicer than Tabasco. She was used to dousing her food with the hot stuff anyway so it didn’t seem like a big deal to have a drink. She downed the Cholula in a few gulps, reached for a glass of water and then downed that too. I should probably mention that my middle child was the one who suggested the dare. And me? Well, I just sat back and watched the whole thing unfold.
This is NOT the way I’d suggest introducing your kids to hot sauce. My advice is to go gently. One dab at a time. Mix a little into stews or sauces to give them a bit of a kick. Add a drop or two to sandwiches. Why hot sauces? To put it simply, they give food an added dimension of flavor. They wake up your taste buds. Turn up the heat in your food by trying out one of these sauces:
Cholula sauce: This bright, deep orange-red Mexican sauce is thin and vinegary. Use it in place of Tabasco sauce on sandwiches or mix it into guacamole to turn the heat up just a bit.
Valentina sauce: Another Mexican hot sauce. But this one is slightly thicker and spicier than Cholula. I noticed a chef at Caffe Lola in Niagara Falls mix it into marinara and I’ve been doing the same ever since. The heat isn’t overpowering just enough to give you a tickle in your throat.
Chili Garlic Sauce: You can see the red peppers seeds right in this pungent sauce that combines heat and garlic. This Vietnamese sauce works well in Asian dishes. But you might also mix it with mayo to use it either as a dip for chips or a sandwich spread.
Sriracha sauce: The standard variety available in the U.S. has a building heat that envelops the middle of your tongue–and stays there. Mr. Squid is a huge Sriracha fan and sneaks it in whenever he gets a chance. The consistency is almost like ketchup and you can use it as you would ketchup. Just remember that it packs a kick. Use it in Italian, Asian, Indian, Mexican … well, you get the idea. This is one versatile hot sauce.
Frank’s RedHot sauce: I had to add one all-American favorite. This sauce is synonymous with the place where it was created: Buffalo. It’s a must if you’re making wings and it’s a perfect match with bleu cheese. I like to dabble it on salads that have creamy dressings too.
Your turn: What’s your go-to hot sauce–or do you prefer to go without the heat?
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