Friday Food: An Ambitious Beginning

Friday 

Short version: Chiles Rellenos, pinto beans

Long version: Starting right off with a bang here.

Chiles Rellenos--which is just Spanish for stuffed chiles--are a very traditional dish in New Mexico. I had never made them, or even eaten them, but then I bought a five-gallon bucket of roasted green chiles from a truck on the side of the road in the city.

I announced to A. that no way would I make rellenos with them. The recipes I saw for rellenos involved three things I pretty much always avoid in recipes: separating eggs, whipping egg whites, and deep-fat frying.

However.

As I was standing there skinning the chiles before pureeing them for the freezer, I thought how almost no one has access to the chiles necessary to make authentic Chiles Rellenos. And here I was with dozens of them. So I decided I had to try it at least once.

It was indeed a real pain. I mostly followed this recipe, except instead of shredding the cheese, I just cut it into sticks. I figured it would stay put better that way. Also, I had brought Poppy to the playground to play with her friend this very morning, and was talking to the friend's mom, who is very much a native New Mexican, for generations back. I asked her if she had any tips for me, and she said to make sure to season the batter with salt and garlic powder.

Good tip. I did. And the recipe worked just as it was supposed to.

Looks kinda like corn dogs. Does not taste like corn dogs.

I actually had queso fresco--a non-melting fresh cheese--to put on top of them, and that was all we topped them with. They were delicious, albeit very spicy.

Will I ever make them again? Probably. But not anytime soon.

Saturday

Short version: Pork, leftover rice, sauerkraut, popsicles

Long version: I had bought a whole pork loin at the store, which I cut up into both steaks and chunks. For this meal, I fried a bag of the chunks in the fat rendered from a pork butt awhile ago, plus paprika, garlic powder, and salt. I added cold butter at the end to make it kind of saucy.

I was going to make a salad, but apparently I left the bag with the lettuce in it at the store on Tuesday. Boo. So we had sauerkraut instead.

The popsicles were the leftovers from the smoothie I had made for lunch--strawberries, blueberries, apricot jam, and yogurt. I added extra jam and heavy cream before freezing them, and they were quite good.

Sunday

Short version: Meatballs, homemade pasta, fried bread, frozen peas, calabacitas, strawberry/rhubarb cobbler with ice cream or whipped cream

Long version: This meal got way more involved than it needed to, but it's kind of fun to go over the top sometimes, especially in garden season. It all started with the fact that I had enough basil to make pesto, as well as two bags of roasted tomato sauce from last year's garden still in the freezer.

I decided to make the pasta myself per one son's request. I don't have a pasta machine, so I made pretty thick noodles, kind of like pappardelle, I guess? I don't know. I just rolled it until I was tired of rolling and then cut it with my pizza cutter.

Of course I had a helper for the cutting part.

Pasta worms.

I should have rolled it out more, but again, I got tired.

I was planning on pesto for the pasta, and I had made some pesto earlier in the day. But then when I went to get the Parmesan out to grate it for the pasta, I could not find the piece of Parmesan I could have sworn I had. I took everything out of the refrigerator and it just wasn't there. And plain pesto without Parmesan? Nope.

So instead, I used the tomato sauce left around the meatballs, some of the pesto, and cream to make a sauce for the pasta. It was very good, even if it wasn't what I had planned.

The calabacita was the first one to come out of the garden this year. I just sauteed it in olive oil with garlic (also from the garden, yay!). For those who are new here or who have forgotten, calabacitas are a local kind of summer squash that can be used interchangeably with zucchini.

We had a guest with us for dinner, and not everyone is wild about calabacitas, so I made the peas to have a more widely accepted vegetable. And I made the fried bread--thick slices of bread fried in olive oil and butter, with a little bit of garlic powder--because I was afraid there wouldn't be enough pasta.

We have two rhubarb plants that have staged a good comeback here in late summer, so we're able to have a few more rhubarb desserts before the frost. This one was just sweetened frozen strawberries and rhubarb with slightly sweetened drop biscuits on top. I baked the fruit by itself first to get rid of the excess juices, but I baked it too long for the biscuit topping, which absorbs a lot of liquid. So it was a little too dry.

Nothing that can't be fixed by mounds of whipped cream, however.

With the pasta, fried bread, and the biscuit topping on the cobbler, this ended up being a very carb-y meal.

Monday

Short version: Leftovers

Long version: Chiles Rellenos, beans, spaghetti and meatballs, pork, rice, peas, calabacitas, and even cobbler, all apportioned out by me according to hunger level and preference.

Tuesday

Short version: Boneless pork steaks with milk gravy, rice, cucumbers with ranch, ice cream

Long version: Some of the steaks I had cut from that pork loin, fried, and then I made a gravy with shallots, milk, and cornstarch. Gravy helps a lot with boneless pork that tends to get sort of dry.

Gravy definitely doesn't make anything more photogenic, however.

The cucumbers were just chunks of Armenian cucumbers mixed with the rest of some ranch dip I had in the refrigerator.

And ice cream because we have had a sore throat in this house moving from one family member to the other for over a week. Ice cream is good for sore throats. Also for general morale boosting.

Wednesday

Short version: Chicken soup, bean and cheese quesadillas, more ice cream

Long version: I had made this soup the day before with my handy frozen chicken stock and meat. It was pretty basic, with just carrots, potatoes, and the leftover peas. I also added a little cream to it. 

To go along with it, I made quesadillas with either flour or corn tortillas, cheese, and beans. I was back at work this day, so it was nice to have an easy option for dinner.

Thursday

Short version: Pork fried rice

Long version: I had a few pork steaks left that I hadn't cooked. I diced those and used them to make fried rice with leftover rice, already-cooked onion from the freezer, frozen peas, eggs, garlic powder, soy sauce, and vinegar.

Refrigerator check:

We're all about the Daisy dairy around here.

Okay, your turn! What'd you eat this week?