Ode to Chipotle

We love spicy food in our house.  High on the list is anything featuring chipotles.  But I have a bad habit of buying chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, using 1-2 for a recipe, and then letting the rest languish in my refrigerator until I wind up throwing them out weeks later.  It's not as if I don't enjoy chipotles, or don't have 10+ recipes that feature them, or don't plan out all my dinners a month in advance (true story).  I just keep forgetting about it.  With a new house purchase on the very imminent horizon, I made a resolution to be more consciously thrifty with my grocery store spending.  That means not purchasing superfluous ingredients that are just for garnish, wasting as little food as possible, and stacking up recipes with similar specialty ingredients.  


Today was the last in a series of recipes that use chipotles - this week has featured Roasted Sweet Potato Salad and Chipotle Mashed Sweet Potatoes (also making the most of sweet potatoes.  see what I did there?) but I also considered a few of our favorites - especially Honey Chipotle Barbecue Chicken Sandwiches or Spicy Poblano Burgers with Chipotle Crema.  


I've had this recipe on my to-make list for a while but this was the perfect opportunity to go for it.  This was featured both in the New York Times several years ago and on Simply Recipes, one of my favorite recipe blogs.  


The verdict: very, very tasty with a good heat level.  We served this over my favorite baked brown rice and I hope to enjoy the leftovers tomorrow.

Chipotle Meatballs

(originally by Rick Bayless, adapted from Simply Recipes)

3 slices bacon, chopped

4 garlic cloves, minced
2 eggs
1/2 cup breadcrumbs 
1 tsp salt

2 tsp ground oregano

1 tsp chipotle powder

1 lb ground beef
1/4 - 1/2 lb ground _____ 
(I used lamb, but pork would work too)
1 cup chopped onion
2 chipotle peppers, chopped 
1 tsp adobo sauce
28 oz can crushed tomatoes
1/2 cup chicken broth


Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  In a food processor, combine bacon and 3 garlic cloves and pulse until chopped. Add eggs, breadcrumbs, salt, oregano, and chipotle powder and pulse to combine.  Add ground meats and pulse just enough to combine.  Form meat into 16 balls and place in greased baking dish.  Bake until lightly browned, about fifteen minutes.  While meatballs bake, saute onions over medium heat until just browned.  Add garlic and saute one minute.  Add chopped peppers, crushed tomatoes, and chicken broth and bring to a boil.  Simmer until meatballs are done cooking or until sauce is acceptably thick.  

A Good (Bad) Excuse to Buy New Curry Powder

It had been a while since we did at-home Indian (I find it difficult to get motivated to cook Indian food as long as Sitar continues to offer the special combination for two), but when this month's Cooking Light featured a lentils and lamb recipe, I added it to my list.  The recipe calls for red curry powder, which of course the aforementioned lackluster Kroger did not stock.  They did, however, have hot Madras curry powder which I decided was a worthy substitute.  This recipe also features a whole jalapeno (seeds, ribs, and all) which I figured would put it right in our spiciness wheelhouse.    


After doing some further research: it appears that Kroger is probably off the hook.  Penzeys (also known as the spice mecca) does not sell anything labeled "red curry powder," so who could expect Kroger to?  (I will say that McCormick's - which Kroger stocks - DOES make a red curry powder but its ingredient list is a little vague. ) It seems that red curry powder includes actual powdered chiles (not the same as chilI powder) and additional cayenne pepper.   

The verdict:  flavors were excellent and nicely balanced, but this just did not have enough heat for me.  I am not sure how an entire (large!) jalapeno and generous addition of cayenne turned out so mild.   If I make this again, I will probably just sub in some red curry paste (suggested by some other reviewers on the CL site).

Indian-Spiced Lentils and Lamb

(from Cooking Light October 2011)

Meatless Monday: Roasted Sweet Potato Salad

After too many fancy multi-course meals out in the last four days, we were (as usual) in the mood for something healthier by the time Monday rolled around.  I decided to try out one of Mark Bittman's recipes from his "Less Meat, More Flavor" series in October's Cooking Light.   

Unfortunately, the Green Hills Kroger managed to run out of both fresh AND frozen cranberries, so I had to resort to using dried cranberries reconstituted in warm water.   The fresh cranberries were supposed to be cooked until they burst and thickened the sauce, so I solved that problem the same way I solve many of my kitchen problems: enter my good friend, Immersion Blender.  

Even with the substitution, this was still a very tasty (and relatively quick) recipe.  We ate it with rice pilaf as a dinner entree, but I will also be adding this to my holiday rotation as a side - the end product is very festive with its red cranberries and green cilantro.  Highly recommend.

Roasted Sweet Potato Salad with Cranberry-Chipotle Dressing

(adapted from Mark Bittman, Cooking Light October 2011)

1/3 cup dried cranberries

1 1/4 lbs sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 2" pieces

Olive oil

Salt and pepper

1 tsp honey

1 chipotle chile in adobo sauce, finely chopped

2 tbsp chopped cilantro leaves

Place cranberries in bowl and cover with hot water; let soak for 20-30 minutes and drain.

Preheat oven to 450.  Toss sweet potatoes with 1 tbsp olive oil and salt and pepper to taste.  Roast at 450 for 30 minutes, turning after 15 minutes.

Place 1 tbsp olive oil, honey, and chipotle chile in small saucepan.  Add drained cranberries and 2-3 tbsp warm water.   Bring to boil over medium-low heat and simmer for 5 minutes.   Puree with immersion blender to desired consistency.  Combine potatoes, cranberry mixture, and cilantro in large bowl and serve warm.  Makes 2 entree servings or 4 side servings.   

Meatless Monday: Quick Vegetarian Chili

It's let's-try-to-pare-down-our-food-budget week at Theohaus, which means that I'm trying to stack recipes with overlapping ingredients to cut down on our food waste.  Since I can never manage to use a whole can of chipotles at once, that means we have several Mexican/Southwestern-inspired recipes coming up, so that I can look forward to some Chipotle Meatballs from Rick Bayless (via Elise at Simply Recipes.)


Now that the temperature has dropped a little, it's chili weather.  This is the only vegetarian chili I have ever made more than once.  It's quick (~30 minutes), filling, quite tasty, and reheats well.  It also sneaks in a fair bit of vegetables and healthy grains to undo the Chuy's damage from last night.   I usually make this when I have guacamole lying around (especially if it's THIS guacamole, which is worth making your whole house smell irreversibly of garlic for a week).


From Cooking Light:


Quick Vegetarian Chili

2 tsp canola oil
1 cup chopped onion
1 cup chopped red bell pepper (or orange or yellow)
2 tsp chili powder
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp dried oregano
3-4 garlic cloves, minced
4.5 oz chopped green chiles
2/3 cup quick-cooking barley
1/4 cup water
15 oz black beans, drained
14.5 oz diced tomatoes, undrained
1 cup chicken or vegetable broth


Heat the oil in a Dutch oven over medium-high heat.  Add onion and bell pepper and saute for 3 minutes.  Add chili powder through green chiles and cook for 1 minute.  Stir in remaining ingredients and bring to a boil.  Cover, reduce heat, and simmer for 20 minutes.  Serve with sour cream and tortilla chips.

Confession:

The primary reason I have been so bad about posting is not that I haven't been cooking.  I'll admit, while we were getting our house ready to go on the market, I was not cooking nearly as often as I usually do.  But the real reason for my unblogginess was this: 

I take terrible food pictures.  

It's probably reasonable to blame maybe  20-30% of this on my camera, which is your basic point and shoot.  But I'd wager at least 70% of the fault is my own camera ignorance.  Yes, I could take a class or maybe even an online tutorial.  But I'd rather be eating.


So I made a decision: I"ll continue to post what I'm cooking (and eating), but please excuse me if I use photos from other sources most of the time.

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With that out of the way:

Patrick has been telling me for almost ten years that I don't know what good Tex-Mex food tastes like.  The one time I was in Texas I was underwhelmed by the place he took me (he swears they were having an off day).  So when Chuy's came to Nashville last year, I was not signing up to wait in an hour-plus line for Tex-Mex, no matter how good the creamy jalapeno dip might be.  


Now that there's a midtown location and Sunday evening mass gets out at 6:00 though ... Chuy's is right there, and let's face it: we've gone to all the other walkable restaurants after mass at least five times.  So tonight I caved.    And the verdict?  Not bad.   There were some parts that were pretty good.  We started with the queso - because who can say no to hot cheese and meat that you can spoon onto a chip?  Our waiter was eager to recommend a secret menu item: a steak enchilada with boom-boom sauce in combo with one of their chile rellenos.   The enchilada was pretty good; although the steak was not super flavorful, the boom boom was tasty.  The relleno on the other hand?  Awesome.  That was one spicy poblano, with really tender chicken inside and a smoky ranchero sauce outside.  That will definitely be a repeater.    


And the creamy jalapeno dip?  I'm not going to lie, I poured it all over everything on the plate.   But what I would really like to do is take a bowl of that over to Outback and pour it all over some bacon cheese fries.