Older Bolder Life

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Recipe: Sauces

the Older Bolder Life Friday Feast: Buffalo Sauce Number One

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Betraying my Texas Panhandle, more-or-less authentic redneck roots, I have to admit that now and again the folks eating around our campfire absolutely clamor for and eventually devour piles and piles of buffalo chicken off the grill.

Though we don’t tend to hang around with ‘em, I’m told there are lots of foodies out there that turn their collective noses up at such pedestrian food as buffalo chicken, perhaps in some way related to the sauce’s origins (read up on the history if you’re into that sort of thing – I am personally, but didn’t have the time this week to rehash the story in sufficient detail) in a humble northeastern bar.

And I will grant buffalo sauce critics one unfortunate reality – that fact being that many of the commercially prepared, pre-mixed buffalo sauces are filled with absolute crap ingredients (soybean or canola oils being probably the worst of the lot), many of which are added in to attempt to recreate the particular flavor of the original despite using an array of ingredients not even close to the original recipe.

Please note that the recipe following is one that we’ve using around our camp for years; it’s very close to the “original”, though I always reach for a good Louisiana-style hot sauce – we just like the flavor profile better, and a hint of Worcestershire and garlic powder to round out the flavors a bit.

And yea, it uses butter, real, glorious butter, and there’s nothing in the commercially prepared buffalo sauce game that tastes anywhere close to this good.

Chef Libby in Austin convinced us to add a bit of vinegar back in, as most Louisiana-styled hot sauces aren’t quite as vinegary as Frank’s (the sauce ostensibly used in the original), and she most often sweetens hers when cooking commercially in her catering business down in Austin.

Of course the classic use of a great buffalo sauce is basting chicken on the grill, though I’ve brushed this one everything from redfish to pork chops to shrimp to skirt steak with great results.

This is one of those recipes that makes you look like a genius with roughly 5 minutes of effort; you’ll never buy another bottle of commercial sauce again.

1/2 cup Louisiana-style hot sauce
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
1/2 to 1.5 tbsp vinegar, optional(1)
1/2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1/4 tsp garlic powder
Good salt to taste

Optional additions:
Up to a tsp of good paprika
Sweetener of choice (brown sugar or honey)(2)

Combine all ingredients in a medium sauce pan and heat over medium heat until the butter has melted and you’re able to easily whisk until smooth and well combined.

Heat to a gentle simmer (do NOT bring to full boil or the sauce will separate), remove from heat, and let cool.

I personally think it’s best the day it’s made, though this one will keep in the fridge for a couple of weeks (it’ll never last that long).

Notes:
1 Your call on the vinegar, try white, ACV, or even Chinese vinegars
2 We’ll sometimes add up to a tbsp of brown sugar or honey to sweeten things up a bit, but it’s not in the classic recipe.

Enjoy.

the Older Bolder Life Friday Feast: Ranchero Tomato Sauce (or Salsa) No. 1

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Today’s recipe came about in sort’ve a roundabout way and with input from a number of damned talented folks messing around in kitchens.

Two summers ago a friend came to me and asked me to help with menu planning an event he was hosting for his extended family around Father’s Day; as is typical for our North Texas neighborhood he was planning a big brisket and fixin’s barbecue one evening, but he also wanted to serve a brunch built around some of his Tex Mex favorites, including huevos rancheros.

My buddy was not only hell bent on serving a classic huevos rancheros, but he wanted it to match a particular dish he’d enjoyed on a hunting trip down in the Texas Rio Grande Valley in the months prior. He waxed poetically about a thick, tomatoey ranchero sauce, deeply flavored with dried peppers, and punctuated with a smokey, lingering heat that just had to be from chipotles.

My best advice was to call the little eatery he’d placed on this culinary pedestal to see if they’d share a recipe; he did, and lo and behold he reported the grandmother running the kitchen ran off a list from memory, though without the specific amounts of each ingredient, and she apparently said to use “some good spices” as well.

It pays to have a chef friend in the fold who likes to chat about recipes, so I called Chef Libby in Austin and worked backwards to construct a recipe that we both refined further over a few weeks. Libby was actually using something similar she’d sourced somewhere online (she couldn’t recall at the time) and we tried to incorporate both fresh, dried chiles and reached for saucy chipotles in adobo given how rich and flavorful that canned adobo sauce is.

The spice profile is pretty typical for ranchero-style sauces, though we’ve added a bit of paprika and a splash of tamari/coconut aminos/soy to deepen the umami notes.

The result is a thick, rich, deeply flavored sauce (some might argue this could even be called a salsa) that makes for the best huevos rancheros (next week’s recipe) that I’ve ever tasted, and plays very well with roasted meats – chicken and pork especially – and could very likely work even as an enchilada sauce, though to be honest we haven’t gone there. If I’m not careful, my wife will pull out her tortilla chips and eat through half a recipe anytime this is on the stove…

Note the recipe as written makes enough for 2 meals of huevos; halve the recipe if you want, though I’ve been making it up as written and freezing half for later.

1 medium onion, thinly sliced
6 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
2 large dried ancho chiles, seeded, thinly cut into strips (use scissors)
2 guajillo (or New Mexico) chiles, seeded, thinly cut into strips
1-2 tbsp avocado or olive oil
1 and 1/2 tsp dried Mexican oregano
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp paprika
2 cans (14-oz) fire roasted tomatoes
4-5 chipotle chiles in adobo
4-5 tbsp adobo sauce from chile can
1/2 cup fresh cilantro and tender stems, finely chopped
2 tbsp tamari, coconut aminos, or soy sauce
2 tbsp fresh lime juice
Good salt and fresh ground pepper to taste

Stem and seed the peppers, then cut into thin strips using scissors.

Heat a medium saucepan over medium-high heat without oil, then toast the chile strips until fragrant, watch carefully, given their small size it won’t take long. Remove and set aside.

Now add the oil, onion and garlic slices and sauté until softened and just starting to brown, then add the chile strips, oregano, cumin, and paprika. Stir and cook another 20-30 seconds, then add the tomatoes, chipotles, and adobo sauce. Bring to a simmer, then reduce the heat and keep it simmering gently for 15 minutes or so.

Now puree (coarsely) using an immersion blender (or standup blender if you prefer – remember hot liquids expand in the blender), then add the prepped cilantro, tamari/aminos/soy sauce, and lime juice. Stir the mixture well and add salt and fresh ground pepper to taste.

The sauce is ready for huevos rancheros or any other recipe you want to use it for, and keeps well sealed in the fridge for 7-10 days.

Enjoy.

Sauce Monday: Our House Pesto (with a Roasted Twist)

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At the risk of posting one of those recipes that just about every curious home cook already has in their repertoire, and probably a family favorite at that, I’ve had several requests of late for an easy, quick, damned tasty, and storable pesto recipe.

There are a ton of great pesto variations and recipes floating around out there, and we tend to lean on a fairly classic approach using really good ingredients – particularly the freshest basil you can get your hands on and a great parmesan cheese.

Several talented mentors in the kitchen, including our compadre Chef Libby in Austin, have taught us over the years that you can up your pesto game with a couple of simple roasting steps for the pine nuts and garlic.

Toasting (roasting) the pine nuts in particular brings out their umami flavors and we think adds a bit of tooth to the texture as well; you can either do in the oven or a pan on the stove (I do in the oven for 7-8 minutes at 300 to lower the risk of burning them, and typically just throw 3 garlic cloves in the pan as well to roast along with the pine nuts).

You certainly don’t have to do this, but you should try it at least once, and you’ll also find the roasted garlic is much more mellow and rounded after the gentle application of a bit of heat.

We usually scarf down a batch of pesto the day it’s made, but if you’re doing a bigger batch, you’ll preserve the basil’s bright green color longer in the fridge if you blanch the leaves for 15-20 seconds in simmering water followed by a dip in an ice-water bath immediately after. Drain well before blitzing, and your pesto will stay bright green in the fridge for days (though we always store ours with a thin layer of good olive oil on top too).

Friday I’m posting a great grilled chicken recipe featuring this pesto….

1 cup packed fresh basil leaves, see note above about optional blanching
1/4 cup fresh pine nuts, roasted
2-3 cloves garlic, roasted
1/3 cup grated fresh Parmesan cheese
1/3 cup good EVOO
1/2 to 1 tsp freshly squeezed lemon juice (or to taste)
1/2 tsp good salt (or to taste)
1/4-1/2 tsp fresh ground pepper (or to taste)

Roast the pine nuts and garlic if desired; see discussion above.

Blanch the fresh basil leaves if desired, see discussion above.

Combine the basil leaves, roasted garlic (minced if using raw, start with one clove), cheese, salt, pepper, lemon juice, and olive oil in your trusty food processor and pulse until the desired smoothness is achieved (we like our pesto with a bit of tooth or texture).

Store in the fridge with a thin layer of olive oil on top.

Enjoy.

the Older Bolder Life Friday Feast 7 August: New Mexico Green Chile Sauce

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Historians inform us that Kit Carson, rancher, soldier, fur trapper, guide, chili master, uttered these words on his death bed: “Wish I had time for one more bowl of chili.”

Of course I wasn’t there to hear those words spoken, but I’d bet just about anything that Kit was thinking about a big, steaming pot of “New Mexico Green” when he uttered those (in)famous words. Ask any chili-head about what the worlds “New Mexico Green” mean, and she or he will tell you stories of magical chiles which almost all seem to revolve around the Hatch Chile.

You’ve no doubt heard wine aficionados huff and puff about the terroir of fine wines, that special, sometimes almost ethereal uniqueness that combinations of plant genetics, geography, geology and climate (maybe even microclimates) produce in certain grapes.

You can be damn sure that same terroir principal applies to the magnificent green chile lovingly grown in New Mexico, and we’re talking most specifically the climate and terroir around Hatch in the southern part of the state, north of Las Cruces and El Paso.

Being profound chili heads around our camp, we’ve grown over a dozen chile varieties from seed even way up north in Montana, nursing them in basement heated and lighted grow racks, starting them in the middle of winter in early February and transplanting them with care in May. They were passably good, most of them, but still couldn’t/ can’t hold a candle to the bushel or two we ship over from New Mexico to roast and freeze every year, or the fresh Hatch chiles we can buy at our favorite markets starting about now in the late summer and early fall.

As a point of full disclosure, I’m not from New Mexico, though I was taught about and trained in New Mexico cuisine by a lovely woman over thirty-five years ago during my residency in Salt Lake City. She was the wife of a residency mate, born and raised in Santa Fe, and one of the most intuitive cooks in the kitchen I’ve ever personally watched work.

This is her recipe handed down from her mother and grandmother, and about as authentic as they come. Primal and paleo folks may bark about the 2 tablespoons of flour; we’ve tried and tried to make this work with gluten free flours, and it’s just not quite the same to our taste. (Sometimes you just have to use it, and we’ve long since stopped beating ourselves up for a tablespoon or two of flour to make a recipe work…)

Make a big batch and freeze some, it keeps for months, and it’s great to have some handy with the hankering for green chile strikes.

1 medium onion, chopped fine
3-4 garlic cloves, minced
2 tbsp avocado or olive oil
2 tbsp AP flour or your favorite gluten free sub
2 cups roasted NM green chile, stemmed, seeded, peeled, and chopped
2 cups chicken stock
1 tsp Mexican oregano
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp salt, or to taste
1/2 tsp fresh ground pepper

In a large, stainless sauce pan, heat the oil over medium-low heat; add the onion and garlic and sauté for 5-6 minutes until soft. Note that you’re not trying to brown or caramelize the onion, just soften, turn down the heat if it begins to brown.

Stir in the flour and black pepper, coating the onion-garlic mixture well and cooking for a minute or two. Now slowly whisk in 1 cup of the chicken stock, keeping it moving until the flour has dissolved and the mixture is smooth.

Add the prepped chiles, the rest of the stock, cumin, oregano, and salt, then bring to a low boil. Reduce to a simmer and reduce slowly, stirring now and again, until your sauce reaches the desired consistency.

Will keep in the fridge for 3 to 4 days if you don’t use it all up on the first run, and this sauce freezes like a charm, and is a treasure to have throughout the year.

Enjoy.

the Older Bolder Life Friday Feast: Roasted Green Chile (Enchilada) Sauce

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Several weeks ago I had the pleasure of being on a multi-person Skype call talking food with several friends and foodie professionals; most of us happen to be in Texas currently, most of us aren’t professionally trained chefs (though two, including friend Libby from Austin, were culinary school trained), and to the person all of us are immersed in some aspect of the food world more or less on a daily basis.

Somehow the topic of verde or green enchiladas came up, prompting a debate as to whether or not verde sauces (and you might even argue salsas) should include our tart friend – the tomatillo.

Opinions ranged widely as you might imagine, some invoking the hallowed “New Mexico Green” enchilada, which collective opinion insisted was built around the revered Hatch Chile (probably New Mexico’s finest export) and not the tomatillo, though many of our Texas-allied compadres insisted that “it’s just not a (insert colorful adjective of choice here) green enchilada if tomatillos aren’t in the (insert second colorful adjective of choice here) sauce”.

While those on the call parted amicably, a few days later I chatted with Libby about tweaking a verde enchilada sauce recipe to include hefty piles of roasted green chiles along with tomatillos – preferably roasted.

She didn’t have time to play around with recipe trials given her catering schedule that week, so I ventured off and started playing with several combinations of these great flavors we’d been arguing about days before. While it’s probably best to do over live fire on the grill, I started off by roasting onions, poblanos, and tomatillos in the oven after drizzling with a good olive oil, and then combining them with a more or less typical assortment of ingredients you see time and time again in most roasted green chile based sauces.

Hot damn, this ended up being a very tasty approach, and one that can be spiced up (more serranos or jalapeños) as desired, and left fairly thick or thinned out as needed. My wife insists it makes a damned fine salsa verde, and she’s pretty good at the salsa game.

Try this next time the verde enchilada siren calls your name; we’ve been using it as a salad dressing, topping for roasted proteins and vegetables, even as a dip for fresh, crunchy veg as well. It’s amazing over eggs or migas, and I find it delightful over a simple salad too.

I’ll also feature this roasted green chile (enchilada) sauce in an upcoming post covering a green chile chicken casserole I helped a buddy cobble together for a family gathering around the 4th, it was a huge hit…

1 small onion, trimmed and halved
1 poblano chile, trimmed and halved
5-6 tomatillos, husked and rinsed
1 tbsp (or more) olive or avocado oil
Kosher salt

4 4-ounce cans roasted green chiles (Hatch if possible)
4 garlic cloves, rough chop
2 serrano peppers, stemmed, seeded, rough chop
1/2 cup cilantro, leaves and tender stems
1/2 to one cup chicken or vegetable stock
1 tbsp fresh lime juice
1 and 1/2 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp kosher (or to taste)

Preheat your trusty oven to 400, and place the onion, poblano, and tomatillos on a rimmed baking sheet. Drizzle with the oil, dust with a sprinkle of salt, and throw in the oven for 30-40 minutes until the vegetables are soft and browned. Let cool for several minutes, rough chop, and throw in the blender, along with any juices that leaked from those beautifully roasted tomatillos.

Now add the next 8 ingredients, taking note that you should start with 1/2 cup of chicken stock, adding more as needed to reach the desired consistency. Puree until smooth, taste, and adjust for cumin and salt.

Note: Pending how thick or thin it is, you can either add more chicken stock or throw the sauce into a pan on the stove and reduce to the desired consistency.

As noted in the narrative above, this recipe was most recently used for a friend’s 4th of July party feed down here in Texas, though this makes an astoundingly tasty verde enchilada sauce as well.

Enjoy.

And by the way, it’s kinda hard to get really sexy images of salsa and sauces; the image below is looking right down the barrel of a blender loaded with this sauce in progress…

the Older Bolder Life Friday Feast: Gochujang Curry Peanut Sauce (Dip)

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I’ve shared before that we’re big fans of spicy peanut sauces, particularly when we’re grilling during the warmer months and have great leftover proteins in the fridge on most of these blisteringly hot summer days. To hammer that point home, and tempt your taste buds today, there’s an image below featuring this wonderful sauce over the Original Recipe Chicken from last Friday’s Feast.

Curry and peanut flavors tend to play really well together, and while you could certainly make your own curry sauce, given the number of ingredients and time required to make a really great curry sauce, we much more often than not reach for one of the tasty prepared curries available today (scan ingredients carefully).

Curry, peanut, and coconut flavors also play very well together, and on a whim a few months back, brand-spanking new tub of gochujang in hand, I stirred a couple of tablespoons of gochujang into the peanut sauce I was crafting to serve as a dip for crudite for a little party at the house.

Gochujang is, among other things, an umami flavor bomb, bringing all sorts of deep, almost at times fruity peppery notes to a dish, without being ferociously hot.

Oh you can certainly add more heat to this sauce, either with fresh peppers (try minced serranos or jalapeños), or using cayenne or other spicy ground red peppers, and you do want this sauce to be fairly spicy, given that the foods you’re pouring it over or dipping in it typically aren’t. We’ve even thrown a little chipotle powder in a batch or two, and love the smokey heat that chipotles bring to the table.

Finally, a friend who took this recipe home from the party above likes to add a teaspoon or more or cumin as well – it’s not a typical peanut sauce ingredient but is damned tasty too.

1 tbsp avocado or olive oil
1/3 cup prepared red curry paste (maybe more)
1-3 tbsp gochujang paste
1 can full-fat coconut milk (14.5 ounce)
1/2 cup + 2 tbsp creamy peanut butter
3 tbsp unseasoned rice vinegar
1 tbsp good fish sauce
1 tbsp honey (optional)
1 tsp ground cumin (optional)
Kosher salt to taste

Heat your oil of choice over medium heat in a medium-sized saucepan, and the prepared curry paste and at least 1 tbsp of gochujang, and cook, stirring pretty much consistently, until the paste darkens a bit, is very fragrant, and just begins to stick to the pan.

Quickly add the entire can of coconut milk, stirring to combine well, and bring to a simmer. Continue to whisk occasionally until the mixture has reduced by 10-15%; it’ll darken a bit as it cooks as well.

Remove from the heat and immediately whisk in the peanut butter, rice vinegar, fish sauce, and if you’re using them – the cumin, honey, and other spicy flavors (see above).

Let it cool a bit, then taste, and adjust seasons; we almost always add a bit more gochujang and/or cumin, even a little cayenne or chipotle powder occasionally.

Keep this one chilled in the fridge.

Enjoy.

The Older Bolder Life Friday Feast: Libby’s Chile Crisp

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We’re always on the lookout around our camp for interesting sauces, spice mixes, and flavorings of all shapes and sorts to add interest to the foods we enjoy.

It really helps to have a friend “in the industry” to politely pester now and again, especially one who’s as creative as our compadre Chef Libby down in Austin. For reasons that aren’t wholly clear to either one of us, our palates align pretty damn closely, as do our tastes in recreational pursuits, namely fly fishing and other diversions undertaken on or around the water.

Libby and I were chatting several months about sauces, and I mentioned that we were looking for something along the lines of a typically sweet (make that overly-sweet) Asian chile sauce when she asked if we’d ever tried her version of a chile crisp?

For the life of me I couldn’t remember her ever sharing the recipe, one that she’d sourced years ago from Bon Appetit and fiddled with to clean up the ingredients to align more with a Primally-influenced palate.

Libby’s Chile Crisp has become probably my personal favorite table condiment of all time, displacing the ever-so-durable Tex-Mex table salsa (some might even call that a pico), a condiment that’s become increasing essential and good on just about everything I can imagine being seared, roasted, or otherwise cooked on a grill, eggs of every sort, and even vegetables (roasted or grilled in particular).

This recipe produces a rich, red slather that’s at the same time spicy (the red pepper and ginger), crunchy (the toasted shallots and garlic), with a hint of Asian-inspired flavors (the star anise, tamari, and ginger), with a soothing, flavor-infused oil to tie it all together.

Eggs will never be the same again with chile crisp in the fridge – I just had it drizzled over three chilled boiled eggs (cut in half so the just set yolks could soak up the flavor) for lunch as I finished this post in fact.

The recipe easily doubles, and you’ll get a better crisp-ing effect if you use at least an 8-inch sauce pan to spread the shallots and garlic out in a thin layer (go bigger if doubling the recipe); just watch them and don’t push them too fast. Oh, and by the way, we like it with more red pepper flakes; this is the recipe Libby originally shared with us back in the day.

3/4 cup oil of choice (we use half olive oil, half avocado)
2 medium shallots, thinly sliced
1 head garlic, separated into cloves, thinly sliced
2-3 star anise pods
1 cinnamon stick
2 to 3-inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled, chopped fine
2-3 tbsp crushed red pepper flakes
2 tbsp coconut aminos or tamari
Optional: 1-2 tsp sugar of choice

Combine the oil(s), prepped shallots, garlic, star anise, and cinnamon stick in a saucepan at least 8-9 inches in diameter. Place over medium heat until simmering, then reduce the heat to keep it just simmering and swirl now and again for 20-30 minutes, until the shallots and garlic have crisped and browned.

Meanwhile combine the prepped ginger, red pepper flakes, tamari or coconut aminos, and the optional sugar in a medium bowl and set aside.

When the shallots and garlic have browned and are crispy, strain into the ginger-pepper bowl, and leave the shallots and garlic to cool in the strainer (makes them crispier). When cool, stir back into the infused oil.

Keep in the fridge between uses, and yes, the recipe doubles easily (you’ll want more…).

Enjoy.

the Older Bolder Life Friday Feast: Creole Mustard and Honey Yogurt Dressing

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Extra time at home of late has fostered digging deeper into my list of “damn, I should try and work out a recipe for that” list over the past few weeks.

My lovely wife is a huge fan of tzatziki, the wonderful Greek yogurt-based sauce / condiment packed with garlic, dill, and grated cucumber. Her enthusiasm for tzatziki has led us to explore of number of yogurt-based salad dressings over the past several months; there are several pretty damned good commercially-prepared options out there, many made with very acceptable ingredients for the most part, although they can be a bit pricey.

Being the inveterate tinkerer in the kitchen, the combination of looking for a new dipping sauce for these delicious Cast Iron Skillet Wings and working to jazz up our home salad routine led to some serious yogurt-based dressing and sauce experiments of late.

Using a Creole mustard (see if you can find Zatarains’s version) adds a depth of flavor and texture that’s hard to beat, and led to me experimenting with adding a few brown or yellow mustard seeds to the dressing as well. Yep, they’re a bit crunchy until they soften in the dressing (only a few hours needed) but add interest and flavor here.

As always, dressing recipes are simply a framework for you to start from, adjusting flavors to suit your (your family’s) palate, and you’ll want to try this one with varying amounts of honey.

This would probably be amazing with leftover Easter ham next week…

1/2 cup Greek yogurt
2-4 T honey
2 T prepared mustard
2 T Creole Mustard
1/2 t salt
Optional: 1 tsp of mustard seeds, see note below

Combine all ingredients in a small mix bowl and whisk together until homogenous and smooth. If using dry mustard seeds, which are great for additional texture, interest, and flavor, make sure to add at least an hour before serving so they hydrate and soften. Store covered in the fridge.

Enjoy.