My Kitchen Monday: Persimmon Salsa

So last week was my first week using the Fresh 20 recipes. I started out on Monday using parsnips. Unfortunately I found out that I do not like parsnips, but that was one of the points of why I wanted to try the Fresh 20 was to try new things. Another side item that we tried was the Persimmon Salsa. I have never tried persimmon before so it was a little bit challenging knowing what makes a good persimmon. The salsa was actually quite good except by the 2nd day after making it the fruit was pretty mushy so I would suggest only making enough for the day or the next but after that it is done! Persimmon is a mild, sweet fruit and I think I would be willing to make the salsa again, but it is hard to beat a good mango salsa (the persimmon salsa can be substituted with orange slices.)
The salsa had persimmons, roasted aneheim chiles, onion, lime, salt, and cilantro.
We also were able to try a new posole recipe that was good and stuffed cabbage with a chunky tomato sauce that I tweaked to make my own which was REALLY good!
Overall, I am really liking this fresh 20 schedule of meals, it makes cooking more fun!

My Kitchen Monday: Marinated Top Sirloin

Finally!!! Thanks to my friend Jenny's marinade recipe and the nice guy at my butcher shop for taking a little extra time to tenderize my sirloin steak, I've finally met my goal of making a tender, medium cooked steak. I could hardly wait for my husband to come home and try it. He asked "Where did you get it?" (As if i bought it from a store), what?!?! LOL! I looked at him and said "No! I made it myself!!!" I think he was a little surprised because recently my steak attempts have not been this tender, I usually don't cut it into thin slices, and the flavor was different since I marinaded it. Both of us were amazed how tender it was even after rewarming for leftovers. So I think I've figured out 4 important rules to do to get a good steak:

1. Tenderize your meat! They used a handheld tool that I think I should get for my kitchen because it looks so easy and quick to tenderize your beef, especially since I don't buy my meat every time from that market. You can find a similar tool that they used here.

2. Marinade your meat for at least 20 min if not longer

3. Don't over cook the meat (I seared mine first then put it in the oven to finish) checking it often. 

4. I read that it makes your meat more tender if you cut it against the grain, so I tried that too!

 

My Kitchen Monday:Pot roast with potatoes and dill

So I know it is not Monday but I didn't get a chance to add my post yesterday. I had the day off for Veteran's Day and decided to make something nice for dinner since I had more time during the day to prepare it. I spent the whole day cleaning house, washing dishes, washing/folding/putting away laundry, and preparing dinner. I've been wanting to make a pot roast for sometime and finally yesterday I made it!
I found a recipe in a book I bought a while ago and decided to try it. By the picture it looked yummy! I bought all my ingredients and added an extra hour to my baking time since it didn't seem to be as tender as I wanted after 3 hours of baking went by. I am assuming it is because I had the butcher take off the slab of fat on both sides. He weighed the brisket before and told me it was over 3lbs and I told him to give me a pound and a half but with not so much fat...he ended up taking ALL of the fat off and that same piece of meat measured 1.8 lbs. I was amazed how much that fat weighed! I know that fat gives lots of flavor but my husband likes to eat healthy so I try to make meals as healthy as I can and in doing so I try to buy lean meats.
Unfortunately, because I was not that specific on how much of the fat to leave on the meat it was not very tender. The sauce was tasty and the veggies were great but the meat was not like a roast where the meat just falls of and melts in your mouth. So, again I was disappointed with my cooking beef...maybe I just need to stay away from it and always buy beef when we go out for dinner? But, I'm not willing to give up completely. Next round I am leaving more fat and we'll see what happens!  In the end another sucess out of making the roast was that I got to use one of my new Mexican dishes that my husband bought me last May, which is great because it was the first time in using that particular dish.  Maybe I'll have to take a pot roast lesson from my mom when I am back home ;)
4-5 White round potatoes, washed and cut into large chunks
2 1/2 Tbl flour
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1 1/2 lb rolled brisket
2Tbl vegetable oil
1 onion, finely chopped
2 celery stalked, diced
2 carrots, peeled and diced
1 tsp dill seed
1 tsp dried thyme
1 1/2 c red wine
1 cup beef stock
2 Tbl chopped fresh dill to serve

Next post will be featuring my birthday weekend which includes a nice dinner with my hubby, a surprise party, and a 9 mile walk across the new bridge! Pictures to come.

My kitchen Monday: Winter butternut squash soup

I almost didn't make it!  I only have a few minutes left of this Monday, its been kind of crazy with the extra time for my commute and having a few friends over for an accountability prayer time at my place. The weather has been chilly here lately so I decided that for this week's post I would make a butternut squash soup. I added chicken broth, thyme, cumin, onion and garlic to some purée. It turned out just as I had hoped, can't wait to eat it for lunch tomorrow! Oh, and BART is now going back in service tomorrow on a temporary labor agreement but I think I am going to still try to use the bus in the morning...but at least there will be less traffic! It's getting pretty late and it's time for bed so Goodnight!!!

Random weekend highlights and My Kitchen Monday: Agua de Jamica

This weekend was again fairly relaxing. Nothing too interesting happening here on the west coast. We had lunch with some friends to say farewell to a couple from church who are moving to Chile to be missionaries. They will be missed!

My husband had to work on Saturday for a few hours to finalize some things before the quarter end on Monday morning. Inside I was kinda bummed since the weekends are the times that we get to spend more time together but it reminded me how blessed I am to have a hard-working, motivated,  and determined husband. I am very thankful!

While my husband was working I finally decided to make hibiscus "water" from my recipe book, "Pati's Mexican Table." I have had the dried flowers for weeks and just couldn't find the time to make the concentrate. It really only takes about 20 minutes to make but I finally found extra time to make it! You can find the recipe here. Definitely give this recipe a try!

My Kitchen Monday: Simple Hummus

Hope you all had a restful weekend. My husband and I pretty much did nothing all Saturday, I should have been cleaning my house but it was nice to just relax. It was raining quite a bit so it seemed like a good day to just vedge out on the couch.

For this week's My Kitchen Monday I made a plain Hummus dip. I bought some hummus from my local market that was really good made with eggplant, garbanzo beans and other yummy spices. The dip has a super strong flavor but it is amazing! I thought I would try to first make a simple hummus with some garbanzo beans that have been in my pantry for quite a while.

I first brined a bag of garbanzo beans overnight.  I then boiled the beans until they were soft. The temperature of your stove must be on medium heat because if the heat is too high the beans will break open. After the beans are soft, I used my blender to blend the beans until they were smooth. Squeeze of half a lemon, a garlic clove, about a tsp of cumin, and a bit of olive oil into the beans and mix well...I am not sure of the measurements exactly, I just did it by taste. Just for a FYI: I learned from my book called "The Science of Good Cooking" (by the same authors from the TV show America's Test Kitchen), that brining the beans before boiling them helps keep the whole bean intact rather than the skin breaking or the bean exploding so it is always a good idea to add salt to your soaking water.  Overall I think it was a pretty good but I think next time I will try something a bit more exotic in flavor so it is not as plain.

My Kitchen Monday: Pumpkin Pancakes

It is Monday again which means it's time to post a new recipe! I should be posting something Mexican since today is their Independence Day! I think it's common to have pozole, tamales, chile nogadas, or chile relleno? I have made pozole from a Pati's Mexican Table recipe in the past but I didn't think about making it until this morning. Instead I made a nice brunch on Saturday morning to help get us ready for fall. I like making a nice breakfast for us on Saturday mornings because it is the only day I don't have to wake up early and rush around to get ready for work or church. I made Pumpkin Pancakes! I was really excited to make these pancakes but I was a little disappointed with the recipe (I got the recipe here). The taste of the pancakes were amazing, but it was difficult to not have the middle uncooked because of the pumpkin puree. They also were not very fluffy and I like a fluffy pancake. I did not make the maple whipped cream, I just served them with syrup and pecans.  I halved the recipe and still had too many left over, I think I ended up making 13 mini pancakes! I think I am going to keep trying to find a good, fluffy, pumpkin pancake recipe for this upcoming fall season, but overall the flavor of the pancakes were very good.

My Kitchen Monday: Kohlrouladen

For this week's My Kitchen Monday I chose to make something from my German heritage. I made a recipe from my mom's kitchen. My mom used to make this often as I grew up, it is her rendition of a German dish called Kohlrouladen which as I read from google are cabbage rolls. My mom makes cabbage with meatballs and puts it over mashed potatoes - Which seems  easier to make than rolling meat and other ingredients up in cabbage leaves. So how do you make this yummy dish do you ask? Well... First you make meatballs and fry them until cooked, you can do this with ground beef, salt, pepper, egg, and breadcrumbs. I did not have breadcrumbs so I made it the Mexican way that I learned from Pati's Mexican Cooking and made it with my short grain brown rice- set aside. Then you cut thin slices of cabbage and cook them in a frying pan  with a little bit of oil or spray oil, bay leaf, a few allspice, and chicken broth. Cook until almost tender, then add the meatballs and let simmer to soak up the flavors and the cabbage is fully cooked. As you make the cabbage and meatballs, prepare potatoes to be mashed and add your favorite ingredients. I usually just add a little bit of butter, salt, pepper, milk, and garlic powder but I know my mom usually adds some dill and maybe a few other spices...and you are done! Serve the cabbage on the potatoes.

My Kitchen Monday: Bruschetta

Next weekend we are going to a friend's birthday BBQ on the beach. I decided I would try out the side I was going to bring to the party to make sure it tastes good. I am bringing bruschetta and since I've never made it before I thought I should do a test run. I found a recipe online from The Pioneer Woman. It went over well at my house, the only thing I would add is some sort of cheese, maybe a thin slice of mozzarella. I also did not use as much butter for the bread to make it a bit more healthy, 8 Tbl seemed like a lot to me! You can find the recipe here: http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2012/01/bruschetta/

My Kitchen Monday:Lentil Dal Soup

After missing my Mexican Food Mondays here and there, I've decided to share new recipes that I use in my kitchen during the week. Usually those times where I have missed a post I did try a new recipe but I was not able to post because it was not Mexican food. It was a New Year's resolution for me to become a better cook and make a new recipe each week. The problem is I do not make a new Mexican Recipe each week so my "Mexican Food Monday" posts are just not working for my cooking schedule!

My husband and I have really been spoiled trying a lot of new tasty food varieties from all over the world and so I try to bring in some of those yummy food finds in my own kitchen...or something similar. I am not looking to make this blog into a food blog, but this "new recipe per week" has really helped me with my cooking skills. I enjoy making a nice dinner for my husband and trying new foods but I think I am a better baker than I am a cook. I really struggle with making meat not overcooked so as I work on this goal I am going to share my cooking experiences by posting one new recipe that I've tried on Mondays.

So for my first post of "My Kitchen Monday" was inspired by a soup that we had at an Indian food restaurant. As I understand Lentil Dal Soup is a common soup made in India. I never remember having lentils as a child but I decided to try making a simple lentil soup after I got married and found that I like lentils. I searched on the internet for an Indian Lentil Soup and while it may be a common soup in India I saw that many people make it differently which effects the flavor of the soup. This soup didn't taste like the one in the restaurant but is still a recipe I would repeat. You can check out this recipe here.

Mexican Food Monday: Tres Leches cake

For today's Mexican Food Monday I made a traditional Mexican cake called Pastel de Tres Leches. It is made with an egg based cake where you beat the egg whites and yokes separately and then add them carefully together including flour and vanilla. The sauce is where the cake got it's name "three milks cake" because it has evaporated, sweetened condensed and whole milk ( I used skim because that is what I had available). You poke holes in the baked, cooled cake and add the sauce mixture and the cake literally sucks the milks up like a sponge. Then you let it sit for at least 2 hours. This is like the Tiramisu of Italy for Mexico.

I've only had this cake 2 times in my life. Once in college at a Spanish language department party and once after I got married at a Mexican Festival in Lincoln. The first try I really didn't like it. It just seemed like soggy cake but I had it again later and the cake seemed so moist and delicious. This cake did have a bit of a soggy texture which is normal but it still was very good and held a cake form.  It wasn't too soggy but it did lack a bit of soft cake texture that I like in a cake, but usually homemade cakes are not as moist as bought boxed cakes because they usually don't have as much fat. I told my husband that Pati has never let me down and I was right. This cake did turn out well and it was yummy. I really did enjoy adding fruit to the top which was optional in the recipe. All I had was blueberries but I think some raspberries or strawberries would have made it really good also!
I was extremely pleased when my husband took a bite and said "Mmm this is really good!" because I was really worried it wasn't going to turn out that great. I didn't think my egg whites got as stiff after beating them for longer than it said in the recipe. I kept beating them with my hand mixer but no change to the texture! I decided after about 15 min of extra beating after adding the sugar that my soft peaks were just going to have to do...and this made me decide I really need a Kitchen Aide mixer!!! It really put a smile to my face because those eggs really made my arm tired haha! I would definitely make this cake again and I think my next desert to try making is flan, I bought 2 molds because I know my husband like flan so hopefully I will have a chance to make it soon...maybe for our anniversary this week???
 

 

I again used my Patis Mexican Table cookbook for the recipe but you can also find the recipe on her blog. You can find it here: http://www.patismexicantable.com/2010/02/tres_leches_cake/
The only thing I see that is a bit different is that in her cookbook it says to set the oven at 350 degrees rather than 360 as in her blog.

Mexican Food Monday: Mango Salsa

For today's Mexican Food Monday I made grilled chicken with mango salsa. I didn't use a recipe this time, I just eyeballed it. My husband and I eat a lot of chicken breast so I am always looking for something to spice it up. Here is what I put in the salsa but you are welcome to add more or less of any of the ingredients, some people even put cucumber in a mango salsa:

2 diced Manila Mangos (small yellow mangos) or any type of mango

3 diced Roma Tomatoes

1/2 finely chopped onion (I've used red onion in the past but I used yellow onion today)

3/4 minced jalapeño pepper (if you like extra spicy add 1 full pepper)

1 squeezed lime

chopped cilantro

salt and pepper to taste

Our Top Two Guilty Pleasures

My husband and I have always had a special place in our tummies for ice cream. For us "there is always room for ice cream!" We try to eat healthy throughout the week but one thing we just can't get off of our weekly diet is ice cream, frozen yogurt, or gelato. It is kinda our thing. We ate ice cream the first time we were out together site seeing when I studied in Mexico, we had it every time we saw each other during our long distance relationship, and we were even eating ice cream when Antonio purposed! We like to try new places and compare, we have become ice cream experts. We definitely have some reeaallllly good places around here! Recently as I mentioned in a previous post I found a new flavor of ice cream at our market.  It's kind of expensive for a small pint but it's still less than us going to get ice cream at an ice cream shop. So here is our new guilty pleasure "lemon cookie!!!"

Our other guilty pleasure was found once me moved to this apartment. My husband loves gummies. These gummies are locally made, I believe, and are organic and vegetarian...which is kinda weird to think about for a candy but that's what it says :) They are pretty yummy and we usually end up buying some at least once a week. 

Anyone else have a guilty pleasure?

Mexican Food Monday

Last Monday I missed my Mexican Food Monday. I was back home for a short trip to celebrate my mom's 50th birthday and wasn't able to make something new. Everyone that I tell that I went to celebrate my mom's birthday are amazed how young my mom is! I guess most people in this area that are my age have parents already in their 60s? I was so happy to be home to celebrate the 4th and 5th of July with family and see some extended family (Uncle, Aunt and Cousins) that I haven't seen for probably about 3 years. I will post some pictures in the next few days of my quick trip but first I am going to share with you the recipe for my Mexican Food Monday. This week I made chipotle mint meatballs. I really want to use my chipotles once I open a new can so I decided to make a few things that use chipotles in the recipe to not waste anything. I didn't follow this recipe to a T but I think it still came out pretty good. These meatballs are in a tomato based broth and you add mint, garlic, salt, pepper, egg and rice with ground chicken or turkey meat. I used ground beef because that is what I had and I added bits of onion to the balls which wasn't in the recipe. I also used brown short grain rice because that is what we eat in my house. I think this needs some sort of side or maybe could be poured on top of a bed of rice or pasta to make it a full meal. The flavor was good and the mint was an interesting combination twist.
I am not sure how Mexican it is to have mint in the meatballs...I'd have to do more research to see how they are usually prepared but I think the overall concept of a tomato broth with meatballs are common for a mexican meatball recipe.
http://www.patismexicantable.com/2009/09/dreaming_of_julios_albondigas/

My local market

I am absolutely in love with my local market that is located just across the street from my apartment. I am very lucky to have a fresh local produce, fish, cheese, and a butcher meat market super close, all within 1 min walking distance. But it amazes me each time I walk into my produce market how much variety they have and how fresh things are all the time. There are so many different types and colors of fruits and vegetables that I didn't even know existed. There are rows of different potatoes, mushrooms, squash, peppers, apples, berries, peaches, pears, tomatoes, green and PURPLE asparagus, melons, lettuce, fresh herbs etc, etc, etc....You can find organic or non-organic and locally farmed or imported. They also carry a lot of specialty items such as sauces, jellies, grains, cooking oils (have you ever heard of using hazelnut oil?), breads, and locally farmed eggs and dairy products.  This is also the market that helped us find Three Twins, Lemon Cookie Ice cream, which has become our new favorite!
 I don't know what we would do if we lived farther away from this market while still living in the bay area because I think I am pretty attached to my market haha!...as you can probably tell because I am writing a whole blog post just on this market! 

It's hard to show what it really looks like inside and the variety that they have but here are a few of the rows of produce.

Mexican Food Monday!

Here we are again at Mexican Food Monday. I can believe it's Monday already, I enjoy my weekend's too much that I'm always sad to find that we are back to another full week of work. We will get to the food in a moment...

Today I have some bad and also exciting news. To start with the exciting, I had an interview at a bilingual private school today. I think it went fairly well but I always think back of all the answers I should have worded differently or how I should have thought of more questions for me to practice in my head. It never fails, I always practice a few common questions but they always seem to choose ones I haven't thought too much about and I get nervous and blank out. So I am really hoping this job is in God's plan, that I impressed my interviewers enough for them to offer the job, and I that I can move out of the position I am at right now. The bad news is that my source of transportation, BART, is on strike and will probably cause me some trouble throughout the week. Look up BART strike if you want to see what's going on around here. CRAZY!

Yesterday afternoon I was walking to meet up with my husband to watch him play soccer and found a Mexican market across the street. I started to think about what I should make for today and stumbled upon these dried flowers to make the very common drink that I love "Agua de Jamaica." I love Jamaica flavor so I thought I should try this week making it. I am going to again use the recipe from Pati's Mexican Table. We'll see how I like the recipe because I haven't actually made the drink yet. http://www.patismexicantable.com/2011/05/jamaica_water/Oh and by the way I finally got Pati's cookbook in the mail so more recipes I hope from her :)

We actually had her creamy shrimp again tonight and chipotle mashed sweet potatoes for dinner! I am glad so far my Mexican Mondays have worked out, except as I mentioned before we were going to try Rockfish last week and that was not a good choice...I won't probably buy rockfish again, Too Fishy! But, that was not Pati's fault, this was just an experiment to try to like fish so I can make seafood dishes for my seafood loving hubby.

Hope you guys have a great week ahead! I am visiting back home for a short visit the end of this week to celebrate my Mom's birthday. As a bonus it will be July 4th and I get to see some family that I haven't seen for 3 years. I'm also pretty excited to spend a few days with my immediate family who I miss. I'm just sad my husband couldn't take time off to go with me. :(

Mexican food Monday

If you know me well you know that I am not a huge fan on seafood. I didn't eat fish very often growing up. I never liked the fishy taste or the "spongy" texture of almost all seafood I tried. After moving to somewhere where fish and seafood is fresh, everyone told me that the reason I probably didn't like fish was because the fish I tried wasn't fresh and that is why I didn't like it.

We went to a friends house last weekend and had grilled shrimp. I didn't want to be rude and say that i don't like seafood so i ate it. I actually liked the taste! It still was a little bit spongy but the taste was good so that I could forget about the strange texture. I decided to make it for for us on our own. I found a recipe for shrimp and decided to use it for my new recipe of the week. I also bought "Rockfish" which is supposed to be like tilapia but since they didn't have tilapia they recommended Rockfish. It's supposed to be a less fishy tasting fish and takes on the flavor of what you're cooking it with.

This is before you add cream, when you set flame to the tequila

My new recipe is again from Pati's Mexican Table. I just bought her cookbook so hopefully the recipes in the book are as good as her blog recipes. I tried the tequila, chipotle cream shrimp. I didn't have the Mexican cream so I used Cowgirl Creamery creme fraiche which was recommended online if you didn't have mexican Rio Grande crema. I know next time I will try to buy the shrimp deveined and the shells to be already removed because it takes quite a while for an inexperienced shrimp eater to remove. It was quite a job! I had my husband stand by as I lit the flame to take the alcohol away from the tequila. I was afraid that I would light the house on fire... Or my eyebrows!!!! But no accidents happened, thank goodness haha! Overall we both again liked the recipe and I like that I am learning to use my can of chipotle peppers in adobo sauce since I would buy a can for making Tinga and then it would just sit forever in the fridge. I have found some other recipes using it so those recipes are to come in the future :)(http://www.patismexicantable.com/2012/10/tequila_mexican_cre/)

Mexican food Monday

I've been wanting to learn how to make more Mexican food, not only for my husband but also to learn more about the cuisine and to spice up my regular meals up a bit during the week. I tend to make a lot of the same meals with an occasional new recipe but I don't try new dishes weekly. I would like to have a goal to make something new once a week. So I decided to start this week with "Pumpkin and Ancho Chile Mole"
 (http://www.patismexicantable.com/2011/10/pumpkin_and_ancho_chile_mole/) and to have an appetizer of pumpkin flower quesadillas (http://www.mexicoinmykitchen.com/2012/06/squash-blossoms-quesadillasquesadillas.html) I only changed a few things from each recipe. In the chicken recipe  I didn't have dried ancho chile in the market I went to but they did have ancho chile powder. I used 3T per chile in recipe then I sprinkle maybe about 1/2 tsp more later on. We both really enjoyed this meal so I think this recipe will be repeated again in the future. It makes quite a bit of sauce for just the 2 of us so we will have sauce for a few days to but on our chicken for lunch or dinner. The other change was I didn't make my own tortillas as they do on the website and I did not have Oaxaca cheese as the recipe asks for. I asked my husband if they tasted like they should and he said that they were pretty good but they didn't have the true flavor of what they usually taste like because I used a different cheese. (I used mozzarella cheese because that is what I already had in my fridge.) Overall, I think last night's meal was a success, and you get a glimpse of one of the plates my husband bought me in Mexico.

End product!



Chile powder used rather than dried chile

a few blossoms

inside of the quesadilla

Dinner at El Mansour

For Antonio's dance team instructors birthday a bunch of us met up at this Moroccan restaurant in the city. It was such a neat place, the food was great, and there was entertainment who wasn't that bad of a dancer :) if you have ever seen the movie "Barefoot in the Park" with Jane Fonda and Robert Redford it for some reason reminded me when they go to that restaurant with that belly dancer and they eat crazy food. Anyways I think it was classier than that restaurant but I still felt like it was similar! The decor was really neat, there was like a huge sheet that hung that had a lamp that brought the middle up and there was little round chairs and benches around little tables that had all different designs. The servers pour warm water over a big basin over your hands because the meal had now utensils so we are with our hands. It was great! So here are a few pictures of the restaurant and of our dancer.

Eating with Friends and Cooking with Sara

Mauricio, Antonio and Julio

Making Chile Relleno