Eat a Fleet a Fajitas!

With the dog days of summer winding down, we're trying to use the grill as much as we can before Fall really sets in.  We had a craving for some steak, so we decided to make some fajitas and grilled corn.  We wanted to mimic the flavors of carne asada, so we marinated our flank steak with beer, garlic, lime juice, cumin, cayenne pepper, jalapeno, chipotle in adobo, salt and pepper.

You can do this the day before and let it sit overnight, or if you forget (like us), just get your meat in the marinade asap, and prep everything else.  Our meat ended up marinating for about 90 minutes.  For veggies, we sliced up some bell peppers and onions, and just sauteed them on the stove with salt and pepper.

We also had a few poblano peppers from our share, so we drizzled some olive oil on them, sprinkled them with salt and pepper, and threw them on the grill to roast up.  We also thew a few ears of corn on the grill for our side dish.

We knew the steak would only take a few minutes on each side to cook to a nice medium rare, so we waited until the peppers and corn were just about done to throw the meat on the grill.

We thought of preparing the corn like we did on the 4th of July, with cayenne, lime and queso fresco, but I wasn't pleased with how the cheese didn't really stick to the corn (like in the Aaron Sanchez commercial).  So we modified the preparation and made it into a salad.  Just cut the kernels off the cob, and toss with a dash of cayenne, crumbled queso fresco, chopped cilantro, and a squeeze of lime juice.  You get all of the same flavors, but it's much easier to eat, and get all of the components in one bite.

While the meat was resting, I peeled the roasted poblanos and sliced them into strips.  I also sliced up some lime wedges and chopped some cilantro.  Our tortillas were warming in the oven too.  Then just build your fajitas, and dig in!

The meat was nice and juicy, and still had great flavor even though it didn't marinate very long.  You had a nice smokiness from it being on the grill, some heat from the poblanos, but sweetness from the onions and bell peppers.  It's a pretty quick and easy summertime meal that takes you south of the border.

Frisky [Agua] Fresca

With another watermelon in our share, we decided to do something a little different with it, and make a drink.  We wanted something refreshing, but not too sweet, so we settled on agua fresca.  This literally means "fresh water", and is a combination of fruit, water and sugar.  I found this simple recipe, and got to work.

I had half of a watermelon left from our compressed watermelon, which was the perfect amount for the two of us.  The easiest way to chop the watermelon was to cut off the rounded end, and then slice off the rind, as if you were supreming the watermelon.  Then you can easily slice it into cubes.  We got about 6 cups of cubed watermelon outta this guy

 I also chopped up a few sprigs of fresh mint, and let it infuse into the water while I prepared everything else.

Once all of your watermelon is cubed up, I put my immersion blender to work and pureed the whole bowl.  In a matter of minutes, the bowl of watermelon was liquified.

Next, we had to remove all of the pulp.  You'll need a fine mesh strainer or some cheesecloth.  We had a small mesh strainer, so this step took a while.  Make sure you squish the pulp down on the strainer to get all of that juice out.  You can discard the pulp.  What you'll be left with is a highly concentrated watermelon juice.

Then add in your lime juice, water, and mint, and you're ready to serve!  If you let it sit overnight, be sure to give it a good stir/shake before serving.  You'll see the water and watermelon juice separate.  To jazz ours up a bit, we filled our glasses about 3/4 of the way with agua fresca, and topped it off with some seltzer.  You could easily add liquor too.

It's a great summer drink.  Now, if only I had a hammock to lay in!

Hey--It's a Whole Lotta Jicama (and corn too)!

As promised, we're back with a quick run down on how to throw together the jicama slaw and grilled corn that accompanied our brisket for the 4th of July.  Both were really simple.

Let's start with the jicama.  If you're not familiar with it, it kind of resembles a root vegetable.  It's fairly starchy, but has the crispness of a radish, but is sweet, rather than spicy.  It's mostly common in Latin American cuisine.  In the grocery store, you'll typically find it near the onions.  Start by peeling it, and then slicing it into matchsticks.  We went with a medium sized bulb of jicama, and ended up with plenty of slaw for  the four of us.  So depending on how many people you're serving, you may want to go for a larger/smaller bulb.

Next, we chopped up some red cabbage.  I just pulled off the leaves of the cabbage, stacked them on top of each other, and got to slicing.  You'll want an equal ratio of jicama to cabbage.  You also want you cabbage strips to be about the same size as your jicama sticks, so you may need to cut your leaves in half, like I did, before slicing them into strips.

And for the red component of the slaw (could you tell we were going for a patriotic side dish?), we roasted a red bell pepper on the grill.  You'll want to throw it on the grill for about 15-20 minutes, until the skin is nice and charred, and the pepper has softened.  Pull it off the grill, and once it's cool enough to handle, you can peel the skin off.  Then just slice it into strips.

The dressing was equally as simple.  Just mix together some sour cream,
rice wine vinegar, mirin, lime juice, lime zest, cilantro, and chili powder.  I think we used about a 1/2 cup of sour cream for all those veggies.  Make sure when you mix up your dressing, you give it a taste before pouring it over your slaw.  The vinegar, mirin, and lime juice will help thin out your dressing too.  Then pour it over your slaw, and give it a good toss so all the veggies are evenly coated.  If you're like me, and you don't like your slaw swimming in dressing, gradually add your dressing to your veggies so you don't run the risk of over dressing them.

Onto the corn!  During the summer, I hate to use a lot of indoor appliances because they just heat up the kitchen.  So grilling corn outdoors is a great alternative to just steaming them on the stove.  It gives this grain a nice smoky flavor as well from browning the husks.  First, you'll need to remove the silk from each ear of corn, while leaving the husk in tact.  The best way to do this is to peel back the husk down to the base, 1 leaf at a time, until the ear of corn is exposed and you can remove all the silk.  Then you can just cover the ear back up with the husk and move onto the next ear.


In order to not burn the husks, you'll want to soak your corn in water, just like you would with wooden skewers if you were making kebabs.  This keeps the husks moist enough to not catch on fire.  When you're ready to grill them, make sure all the water has drained out of the corn, and then simply put them on the grill for about 15-20 minutes, rotating them frequently.

Once their done, and are cool enough to handle, you can remove the husks.  We then squeezed some fresh lime juice over each ear, sprinkled on some chili powder and cilantro, and topped each ear with some queso fresco.  This was our take on a traditional Mexican street food.

Both the jicama slaw and grilled corn were nice, light accompaniments to our delicious smoked brisket, and would be great for any backyard cookout this summer!

Welcome to the Jungle [Curry]

I'm pretty sure I won Justin over on just our 2nd date when we ended up at Little Serow for dinner.  If you're not familiar, it's a tiny, hole-in-the-wall place, behind an unmarked door, that was named one of Bon Appetit's 50 best new restaurants last year.  If you're lucky enough to get a seat, you're in for 5-7 courses of delicious northern and northeastern Thai food.  This isn't your typical coconut curry and pad Thai that you get in most Thai restaurants.  Instead, the flavors are tangy, and progress in heat.  The ingredient I was most surprised to find was dill.

It was only a matter of time before we attempted to recreate this cuisine at home.  We decided to make a jungle curry, native to northeastern Thailand.  Coconuts don't grow in that region, so this curry ends up looking more like a broth.

We started by prepping our veggies; some magda squash, globe squash, baby bok choy, and snap peas, green onion, all fresh from the share, along with some white onion, dill and cilantro.

 Then we fried up some shallots that would be used as a garnish.  Just slice them then, and drop them into some hot oil.  You don't have to bread them or anything.  Keep your eye on them though.  They fry up quick.

We heated our wok with some vegetable oil and tossed in a couple cloves of chopped garlic, a healthy squeeze of sriracha, and a couple chopped dried chiles.  Once they became fragrant, we tossed in the bok choy, and started to build the broth.  I didn't have any curry paste on hand, but I did have some amok curry powder from a past trip to Cambodia, so we tossed that in instead.  We also added a bit of brown sugar, some oyster sauce, and a bit of fish sauce.  Now, the smell of fish sauce is not appealing at all, but it adds a nice salty and tangy flavor to a lot of southeast Asian dishes.

From here, we started adding in the squashes, onions, snap peas, and some chicken broth to round out the broth.  As everything continued to simmer together, we added in our cubed chicken.  Within minutes, the We plated up the curry, garnished with the cilantro, dill, and fried shallots.

It was really, really good, and very different from typical Thai food such as peanut satay.  The squashes were especially yummy as they soaked up all the complex flavor from the curry, while the heat didn't overwhelm their nutty taste.  I have to say...it was a pretty close rendition to a dish we enjoyed at Little Serow last summer, and much quicker than waiting in line for a table.

Taco Night

It hard for us to resist the Korean tacos from Takorean.  The bulgogi steak, topped with crunchy, spicy kimchi, and wrapped in soft corn tortillas is a combination that's hard to pass up.  Since we've had a tub of homemade kimchi in the fridge, we thought we'd try our hand at making our own version on them.

We started with some top sirloin.  Justin cut it into strips, while I made the marinade.  I found this basic recipe online, and luckily I already had the ingredients on hand.

The marinade consisted of soy sauce, sesame oil, a little sugar, garlic, ginger, and toasted sesame seeds.  Once everything was whisked together, you simply add the meat, some green onions and some yellow onions to the bowl and massage it altogether.

We let the meat marinate in the fridge for a little while we made the cilantro lime crema.  I had about half a container of sour cream leftover from when we made chipotle sour cream, so we thought we'd make a nice little topper for our tacos.

We chopped up a bunch of cilantro that we had left over from a previous CSA, added the zest of 1 lime, and the juice of half.  Mix it all together, and you have a delicious crema!  I also chopped up a bunch of the kimchi so it'd be more the size of cole slaw, and easy to put into our tacos.

It was finally time to cook the meat and assemble our tacos!  The meat cooked up pretty quickly, and then it was time to fill our warm, soft tortillas!

Then came the kimchi, and cilantro lime crema.  We'd reserved some of the toasted sesame seeds and chopped cilantro to sprinkle on top of each taco.  And to really finish them off, they each got a drizzle of sriracha.

 

They turned out to be quite tasty, and a great way to use some of our kimchi.  To quote Justin, "They're my 2nd favorite half Asian thing."