Twisting my Favorites

The past few weeks have been emotionally funky, I'm not entirely sure why, there really isn't any reason for my mood to remain below the surface for prolonged periods of times. Perhaps one of these days I should try to find out why that happens and should seek try to fix it because it isn't pleasant. But today, while riding at the top of the emotional wave I decided to have some fun in the kitchen!

Last week I pushed myself to hit the farmers market closest to my house. It is a small one, and I got there late so a lot of the produce and fruits were already ripening, it was a hot day after all. Though two things caught my mind: Anaheim peppers, and summer squash.

I love chiles rellenos, it is my favorite food in the world, I grew up with them and it was always joyful when my mom made them. The way she made them though was battered and fried, which is great and extremely tasty. They were also filled with cheese and then the chiles are given a bath of red spicy sauce. It is a cheesy delicious thing.

Since it is summer though I wanted to do something fresher, and also lighter.

In Mexico there's another very popular way to do chiles rellenos that does not involve frying or covering in batter, the dish is called Chiles en Nogada, and pretty much they are stuffed chiles with ground beef and covered with a creamy sauce. And that's what I used for my inspiration, but I decided to use my summer squash, corn, as well as tofu.

I had also bought tomatillo from the farmers market, and I figured that the best way to flavor my tofu was to make a green sauce with tomatillo and jalapeño peppers and marinate my tofu with it. Then I'd stir fry some garlic and onions along with my marinated tofu and the squash with the intention to use it as the stuffing for my chiles. Once stuffed the chiles would be covered with the Nogada inspired white sauce.

And that is exactly what I did, and I must say I loved it. It is a somewhat twisted version of what is traditional, but I thought I was successful in producing a very delicious vegetarian dish that is based on my own roots while also taking into consideration the things that are grown by farmers around me here in California.

That is ultimately the approach I want to have for my cooking right now, make things that are in season around me and find a way to fit those ingredients into the dishes I grew up loving as a kid. Well, except for the margarita I accompanied my meal with, that is an exclusively adult love affair!

I really hope my mood stays up because there's a lot of yummy things I want to make soon, I think I see local fish in my future!

Stay tuned! And stay hungry!

The American Dream ( I )

Sometimes you spend too long looking at porn. Too long wanking off.

Sometimes you spend too long in the shower, day dreaming.

And sometimes you just have too many things to do, too many things to think through and about, and a sphere with a tail to animate that you didn't get to animate properly the week prior because you were having the time of your life.

And those times you can always follow, and live, The American Dream.

Well, I mean, cooking wise, don't go around killing natives, overthrowing governments in South America via your central intelligence agency, nor go around yelling at buses filled with children. Because that's just mean. Instead just cook a goddamn hot-dog. And eat some ice-cream.

Hot Morning

Some mornings I feel that my kitchen has horrible lighting. But also I feel like I can't fully wake up. And I'm groggy and I'm whiny and unable to think straight, so I look forward to something to get me excited, and happy and going.

So, today I made myself some chilaquiles for breakfast! Yay!

Ideally, of course, a nice husband, boyfriend, or fuck buddy would be the one making them for you. But, the truth is that chances are that you are the better cook and it is probably a better idea for you to make them yourself.

I love chilaquiles, they are easy to make, delicious, hot, and crunchy. You can throw an egg to one side and beans to the other, and you are in heaven, Mexican heaven. Your morning just gets better, brighter, and more exciting. And this before you even taste them, just by smelling them your day betters.

That's until you get the shits.

The only thing I'm not too excited about is that by making a dish like this you realize how much oil goes into frying the tortillas, and you panic and you already don't want to eat them. Same way you don't want to eat bacon when you remember that pigs are as smart as dogs and all around awesome and social animals. But just like the first sight of bacon removes the remorse and the mental images of a beautiful intelligent animal suffering, the cautionary fear of developing heart disease disappears the moment you see golden crispy tortillas.

I love the food I grew up with. Notice how there's no cheddar cheese anywhere? Leave it out some days, you'll be able to taste greatness. If you can though, find some queso fresco and crumble it all over everything on that plate, sadly I was out of it.

With a Pestle in Hand!

A few weeks ago I got my very own, and very first, pestle and mortar, nothing fancy, nothing great, but something!

Since then I've been extremely excited about the possibilities, about all foods that I now I can make! Of course, it'd be easier to buy a food processor and make them with that but that also costs a lot more money money that I rather spend on drugs, porn, and video games.

I must admit that even if I had one I'd probably still occasional choose to attack food with my pestle, smashing things and crushing things makes you feel quite great in the end. As long as they are digital or not sentient or alive, of course.

So, I decided to try and make a dish that I quite love because it is so fresh and so tasty, and in theory so easy to make. In practice it turns out it was true, not hard at all to make! As usual, and because I like to pretend there's more hours in the day than I actually have to spare, I made everything from scratch. I had quite a lot of fun doing it too, from roasting the sesame seeds to make the fresh tahini, to smashing everything together into a creamy heavenly food, it was neat.

The end result I think could have use more smashing and crushing, as well as more garlic, but, it was passable and exactly what I was craving today and I am now incredibly happy. At some time though I'd love to learn how to make my own pita bread from scratch.

But, next thing I do should be to take a nap!

Dreams of Mochi

Many years ago I had mochi for the first time and I fell in love. It was squishy, sweet, yummy, strange. Love at first bite.

A few weeks ago I came across a video online that showed an older lady and an older man beating the shit out of rice, the video was about making mochi. Immediately I got excited, "This can be done by my mortal hands!" I thought, and a few days later I went to the local Japanese market and bought what I needed: mochigome, sweet rice flour, adzuki beans, etc.

Today, a few weeks after I got all that, I finally got around making my mochi. It was a complete and utter failure. After about an hour of beating the rice the way you would a demon haunting you at night, the rice just didn't have the right consistency. So I gave up, threw it on the counter on top of some flour, and hoped it would magically fix itself. It didn't.

After emptying half my box of rice flour on my dough in hopes I would be able to wrap it around anything I wanted, I accepted defeat. My mochi ended up being incredibly floury, and kind of bitter.

Thankfully my anko was very tasty, so the end result was edible and to a degree enjoyable. But next time I know what I need to do to end up with some quite amazing mochi.

I had some leftover mochi dough at the end and I remembered that one of the videos I saw earlier had a picture of deep fried mochi wrapped in nori. So I cut some of my overly floury mochi into squares and did what humanity has always done when they want to be happy, threw it in a pot of boiling oil.

This was the highlight of my culinary adventure, fried mochi wrapped in nori. So good, incredibly so!

I'm already hungry, what should I make next? Stay tuned, and find out!