Older Bolder Life

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the Older Bolder Life Friday Feast: Carrot and Pepita Salad with Ginger Dressing

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Today’s Friday Feast recipe is going to be one that’s very much like the style of cooking I’m trying to do these days – damned tasty, colorful, a bit out of the ordinary, and a quick, straightforward prep.

My lovely wife has been clamoring for carrots as we’ve jumped from record cold to the sunny 70s here in North Texas in less than two weeks; she’s a big hummus fan and enjoys it immensely with crudite (carrots are pretty much always on the crudite platter around our camp).

That said, I’ve been digging around for new spins on carrots as the star of salads and fresh, uncooked side dishes of late, and this Carrot and Pepita Salad with an easy, Asian-inspired Ginger Dressing is a nifty one and probably the pick of the litter so to speak of all that we’ve tried lately.

I pulled this one together after reading several similar recipes, the one that looked the best on paper called for 5 to 6 ounces of fresh pea shoots along with the carrots, which for the life of me I’ve been unable to source (the pea shoots) this time of year and post the freeze of the century in Texas.

Digging around a bit for likely subs for pea shoots, which appear to be damned easy to grow at home by the way, the most commonly recommended were baby arugula, baby boc choy, or even baby spinach. We happened to have some baby arugula in the fridge, so that’s what you’ll see in the images today, though I’ll bet this is great with the pea shoots as well.

The recipe is ridiculously easy overall, and calls for a somewhat unusual step of dry toasting your pepitas in a skillet, removing from the heat, and then adding 4 tablespoons of tamari or soy to the hot pepitas and letting them soak as they cool.

Give this one a spin as spring rolls into your neighborhood, it’s a keeper.

1/4 cup pepitas
6 T tamari or soy sauce
4-5 medium carrots in matchsticks
5-6 ounces pea shoots, baby arugula, baby spinach, or baby boc choy
3-4 green onions, trimmed, sliced on an angle

Dressing
3/4-1” piece of fresh ginger, peeled, grated
2 T mirin
2 T toasted sesame oil
1 T rice vinegar
Good salt and fresh ground pepper to taste

Dry fry the pepitas until they begin to color (keep them moving so they don’t burn); remove from the heat, add 1/4 cup soy/tamari and set aside to cool.

Combine the dressing ingredients, whisking or shaking in a jar until well combined; hold in the fridge until you’re ready to dress the salad.

Combine the prepped carrots, pea shoots or sub of your choice, and the green onions in a small bowl, stir in the dressing, and top with the toasted pepitas.

Enjoy.

The Older Bolder Life Friday Feast: A Nifty Tip When Tempering Chocolate

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Like many of you I reached for an old favorite when Valentine’s Day rolled around a few weeks back – Chocolate Covered Strawberries.

What a delicious gift; they’re damned tasty, beautiful to look at, easy (in the big scheme of things) to do, and ridiculously more affordable – and fresher – than buying them commercially around the holiday. And though some might argue, you’ll get far better, more consistent results by tempering your chocolate before dipping every time.

After a bit of trial and error (more error initially), online research, and pestering my chef friends (thanks again Libby!), we’ve evolved to the following routine for a quick, easy temper of good chocolate for dipping, using a combination of the classic techniques and one newer trick at the end.

While some might suggest that you need to chop your chocolate down into tiny pieces, I’ve found that a fairly rough chop is all that is needed to get thing started. Most experts suggest that you need a critical mass of chocolate to really get a good temper, you’ll often see amounts mentioned anywhere from 12 ounces to a pound and half at minimum.

I started this batch using a pound and half total, with roughly 2/3’s of that dropped into a stainless bowl to place over simmering water on the stove. With your chocolate chopped fairly small, this first melt happens reasonably quickly. It’s important to note that you don’t want your chocolate to reach a temperature warmer than 125 F, some even suggest 115 is enough to consider the mass fully melted and ready for the next step in tempering.

As pictured above, the next step involves removing the molten chocolate form the heat, stirring in the remaining chopped (and unmelted) chocolate until fully melted, and letting your chocolate cool to 81 F. This process of adding unmelted chocolate serves to both cool the heated mass and “seed” the formation of well-aligned chocolate crystals that give solid chocolate its stability and sheen.

Once the seed chocolate you’ve added has fully melted and the molten chocolate has cooled to 81 F, it’s time to reheat the chocolate back to 90 F to complete the tempering process.

We’ve taken to using a water bath and immersion circulator to do that now, for three reasons. One, it’s damned precise – I can set the water bath up ahead of time and have it ready and spot on the mark temp-wise when it’s time to reheat the chocolate.

Second, this is easier than going back to the double boiler, and third, and probably most importantly, using the water bath makes it super-easy to take your time dipping or coating your fruit, as you can hold the chocolate at 90F (in theory) indefinitely so you don’t have to rush to dip / coat fruit (or whatever) before your chocolate cools and sets up.

As always, the tempering process produced silky smooth, beautiful dipped strawberries this time around. Tuck this one away for the next time you need tempered chocolate for a special occasion.

Enjoy.

the Older Bolder Life Friday Feast: Loaded Huevos Rancheros

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Over the past couple of weeks we’ve posted a couple of great standalone recipes: this Tex Mex Chorizo (or our Chorizo No. 2) and this Ranchero Tomato Salsa (or sauce, pending what your intentions are).

Both recipes are packed from top to bottom with plenty of spice and deep flavor, are accessible to we mere mortals cooking at home from the standpoint of both ingredient list and skills required, and just taste damned good.

Several weeks ago I’d have been lying big time if I denied intending to at some point in the near future post a Friday Feast featuring what we’ve come to call Loaded Huevos Rancheros.

Both my lovely wife and grew up under the bright skies of the Lone Star state, and spent a fair amount of our youth and young adulthood wandering around other parts of the Southwest, mostly New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado, with a bit of Arizona thrown in for good measure.

While there are profound differences among these regions in terms of food culture (and lots of other things), one commonality you’d find almost everywhere was some form of huevos rancheros on the breakfast menu, if not available all day in the “better” eateries.

Nodding to more recent history, in the Ranchero Tomato Sauce/Salsa post last week I shared a bit about events that prompted the ultimate version of the recipe I shared –

… 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…

The “loaded” huevos concept isn’t mine; I think we first saw it on a menu in a little Tex Mex eatery outside of Port Isabel (on the way to South Padre from Harlingen), though you can find similar offerings just about anywhere these days.

The principle is simple: load your basic huevos rancheros recipe up with some tasty protein like chorizo (though well-spiced ground beef works here as well), mushrooms, peppers you have on hand (we prefer diced poblanos), a bit of diced onion, and whatever else floats your boat that day, and layer it atop your tortillas (gluten free if you prefer, we still reach for Siete’s products first), a bed of lettuce, or even a pile of sautéed, crispy sweet potatoes.

If I remember right, the version we had down in far South Texas featured crispy potatoes pieces as well, with eggs cooked enough to almost set the yolk so it runs down and bathes everything nearby when you take that first bite.

My wife typically won’t eat these unless there’s a pile of freshly sliced avocado or a big scoop of guacamole on the plate, along with some grated or crumbed cheese, and a dusting of finely chopped cilantro.

It’s time to get creative and crank these out for breakfast, brunch, or dinner this weekend…

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.

New Coaching Slots Open Today

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To celebrate the 1st day of February we’ve decided to open up at least 2 new coaching slots (perhaps 3); we typically run full with a waiting list and an email went out this morning to those on the waiting list as well.

Here’s a description of coaching options, and as always, I’m happy to offer a free, no-cost, no-obligation call up to 30 minutes in length to answer any questions you might have and give us both a chance to see if an intensive program is the best fit for your needs.

By the way, if you’re coming over from ChiWulff.com, use the link here for your discount offer.

Cheers.

the Older Bolder Life Friday Feast: Chorizo Number 2 (or Tex Mex Chorizo)

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During these long, dark days of winter (some might argue that’s both a figurative as well as a literal descriptor) we’ve been experimenting a bit once again with making sausages of various types and flavors in the kitchen at home.

There are a host of reasons to do so, including absolute control of sausage ingredients (quality and flavors), economics, curiosity, it just being damned fun when you’re in the mood, among others.

In a quick aside, if you’re not grinding meat at home, consider picking up an inexpensive home grinder (the one imaged here ran us about $70 a couple of years ago); it won’t be powerful enough to process the three elk you and your buddies harvested this year, but for routine, lighter-end home use, these little guys are easy to store, set up, and clean.

To prove the point, when making this batch of chorizo, I ground a 12-lb boneless pork shoulder, including set up and cleaning, in less than 25 minutes (not counting about 75 minutes in the freezer to tighten up the meat before grinding).

We happen to like really well made and flavored chorizo now and again, and I’ve written about it before here on the blog (excerpt below) –

…Having spent many a year growing up (and schooling) here in the Lone Star state, we’ve been fans of good chorizo around our camp for some time, having fiddled with chorizo recipes off and on now for well over a decade.

Sourcing good chorizo can be a challenge in that many if not most of the commercially prepared and marketed versions (of bulk chorizo, not the cured Spanish version) are incredibly greasy and contain parts of critters that you’d never ponder eating if you really knew they had been tossed in the grinder…

…And like most comfort foods prepared with care and attention, using the freshest ingredients, this version of chorizo is very likely nothing like you’ve tasted before and much more akin to the artisanal sausages (think Bruce Adell’s) you’ve thrown on the grill.  Even better, this one is child’s play simple, and you can tinker with spices to make you and your clan happy…

Here’s another chorizo recipe that we’ve come to adopt as our main go to, given the depth of flavors that come from roasting actual dried chiles for the spice base; around our camp we call this one our Tex Mex Chorizo (or Chorizo Number 2). The chiles add an amazing depth of flavor, and we find the hints of cinnamon, allspice, and cloves add interest and bit of nuance that’s very, very tasty.

As with all sausages you craft at home, this one can be formed into patties, crumbled, or even stuff into casings; we usually freeze in smallish patties and crumble if needed (like for next weeks loaded huevos rancheros.

2 pounds ground pork
6-7 dried guajillo chiles, cleaned, seeded, and stemmed
5 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 medium onion, diced small
1/3 cup apple cider or red wine vinegar (try it with both)
1 tbsp salt
1-2 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp dried Mexican oregano
1 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp cayenne
1/4 tsp cinnamon, optional
1/4 tsp allspice, optional
1/4 tsp ground cloves, optional

To get started, toast the chiles in a hot, dry skillet until puffed and fragrant (won’t take long); add enough water to cover chiles and set aside for 30-40 minutes.

When softened, place the chiles, onion, garlic and vinegar in your trusty blender or food processor and blend until smooth; you may need to add either additional vinegar or some of the chile soaking liquid if too thick (think tomato sauce).

Now let’s make some chorizo; place the ground pork in a mixing bowl, add the chile paste and the rest of the ingredients. Mix well, and this is probably best done with your hands. The first time you make this chorizo, fry up a tablespoon or two in a skillet to check the spices and adjust to suit you.

Cook this anyway you please – fry it up loose for breakfast tacos, add in some goodies (poblanos and mushrooms in the image below for a loaded huevos rancheros), shape into patties for the stovetop or grill or even stuff into casings. This recipe freezes like a charm, though we’ve found it’s best to shape in to patties before freezing.

Enjoy.

the Older Bolder Life Friday Feast: Hasselback Chicken with Feta, Red Peppers, and Olives

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As we’ve moved into the New Year my wife and I had resolved to work harder to find a reasonably-priced source of pastured chicken; pasture raised chicken is a bit harder to find via our local farmers markets, and it’s often damned pricey when purchased via the biggest online purveyors.

We found a regional provider after digging around a bit (a full review is upcoming) and have of late been experimenting a bit with different ways to prepare chicken breasts, which as we call know, can be a bit dry and chewy if overcooked.

Don’t get me wrong, we love well-prepared chicken of all sorts, and have our favorite grilled chicken down to a perfected routine, and can get delectable results every time on the grill after a short sous vide par-cook.

That said, for most of us around the country, easy access to grilling outside doesn’t present itself often during the month of January, and I’ve been experimenting with a few new oven-roasted chicken recipes of late – including this Hasselback Chicken with Feta, Red Peppers, and Olives.

The “hasselback” trend is perhaps a bit long in the tooth these days, though I have to admit we still roast a fair amount of vegetables that way and still see it offered on menus here and there.

After playing around with some fairly classic roasted stuffed chicken breast recipes, Chef Libby in Austin recently mentioned that she’s been serving a Tex Mex version of today’s recipe (for another day here on the blog) for catering gigs in Austin, and the proverbial light bulb went off to try this one with feta, roasted red peppers, and good Kalamata olives.

The hasselback concept with chicken breasts allows you to add more flavorful stuffing “goodies” to each chicken breast and is a breeze to do – just don’t cut all the way through the breasts when you’re slicing each one.

These are great one their own, and we’ve served with a simple marinara-type sauce, tzatziki, and even a spicy Columbian guacamole at different times and it plays well every time. This recipe calls for roasting in the oven, though they’d be great on a Traeger type smoker or even grilled (over the low heat side of a two-zoned fire).

By the way, adding a couple of tablespoons of chopped roasted pine nuts to the feta mixture plays very well too.

6 boneless, skinless, free-range chicken breasts
3/4 cup crumbled full fat feta cheese
3/4 cup roasted red peppers, diced small
3/4 cup thinly sliced kalamata olives, divided
Good salt and pepper
1 tbsp good paprika
1/2 cup or more grated/shredded Mozzarella cheese
1/4 cup basil leaves, at least half in chiffonade

Fire the oven to 350, line a baking sheet with parchment.

Crumble the feta into a bowl, add the diced red peppers, and half the sliced olives; stir to combine and set aside.

Take each chicken breast and slice 6-8 slits across the breast (perpendicular to the long edge), roughly 3/4 of the way through the breast meat (don’t cut all the way through); your slices will be roughly 1/2-inch apart. Now stuff a bit of the feta mixture into each slit.

Place the stuffed chicken breasts on your baking sheet, generously season with good salt and freshly ground pepper, then dust with the paprika. Finally equally divide the shredded Mozzarella among the chicken breasts, sprinkling on top.

Bake the chicken for 20-22 minutes until firm and cooked through; you can optionally turn on the broiler for the final 2-3 minutes of the cook to brown the cheese further if you’d prefer.

Let rest for 2-3 minutes and serve hot, sprinkled with the remaining sliced olives and basil chiffonade.

Enjoy.

the Older Bolder Life Friday Feast: A Simple Chicken Adobo

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Some years back during our time in Salt Lake City, we befriended a couple from the Philippines. We met outside of the work world, though ironically they were (also) both physicians working in primary care at the time (we happened to meet through a service organization we all worked to support.)

He was the proverbial bull in the china shop – energetic, hard-charging, occasionally uttering thoughts out loud before thinking things through, and highly opinionated; she was shy, quick to smile, a peacemaker (perhaps often out of necessity given her spouse’s inclinations), and an utterly delightful person.

We became friends initially through a common interest in the organization that spawned our meeting, later through fly fishing and raising young families, but mainly through a shared love of great food.

They were fascinated by our bent toward spicy foods of the American Southwest and classic Tex Mex flavors, and we grew to love their Filipino classics, like this Simple Chicken Adobo.

They both described learning the dish watching mothers and grandmothers working in their kitchens while growing up. Interestingly this couple grew up in different regions of the Philippines, and as is typical of regional recipes that develop over time, they each had a slightly different version. Her family always added brown sugar, his didn’t; his added peppers (jalapeños or serranos), her’s didn’t.

Both learned the recipe using regional cane vinegars in the Philippines; you’ll see recipes for chicken adobo recommending any and all sorts of vinegars online these days, though it seems most call for cane vinegar or simple white vinegar. We’ve made it with all sorts of vinegars, most often reaching for cane vinegar, unseasoned rice vinegar, or plain-Jane white vinegar, though even apple cider vinegar works in a pinch.

A quick, important side point related to the preceding paragraphs: NEVER let anyone tell you how you should cook your food or that your recipe passed down through your family isn’t authentic in some way – you’re cooking to suit your palate and that of your family’s, not that of some pedantic ass online.

We’ve chosen over the years to incorporate both of their family spins on this recipe, and find that a bit of brown sugar and sliced peppers make this a better dish.

One final note, we whole-heartedly agree with those who argue that you should reduce the sauce here down to a glaze like consistency at the end; it’s amazingly tasty over the chicken and a garlic rice / garlic cauliflower rice…

Chicken thighs or drumsticks, 2 lb
Good salt and fresh ground pepper
1 T avocado oil

3/4 cup cane or white vinegar (see above)
3/4 cup soy sauce or tamari
6-8 garlic cloves, crushed
2 T brown sugar
1 T black peppercorns (or 1 t ground pepper)
2-3 bay leaves
1-2 jalapeños, thinly sliced

Season the chicken with salt and pepper to taste, then sauté in your favorite large skillet over medium-high heat for 2-3 minutes per side until browned (you’re not attempting to cook the chicken through now). Remove the chicken.

Now into the skillet goes the vinegar, soy sauce or tamari, crushed garlic, brown sugar, peppercorns, bay leaves, and half the jalapeños; stir to dissolve the sugar and bring to a low boil. Add the chicken back to the pan (skin side up if using skin-on), reduce the heat to maintain a simmer, cover, and cook for 30-40 minutes until the chicken is cooked through. You want your chicken tender but not falling apart; remember to turn the chicken once during this cooking interval.

Pull the chicken and turn up the heat to reduce the sauce to a glaze consistency (add a teaspoon of cornstarch dissolved in water if you want your sauce thicker), then add the chicken back.

Enjoy.