Older Bolder Life

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the Older Bolder Life Friday Feast: Mango Salsa Number 1

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I’ve shared in a number of posts over the past couple of years that we’re big fans of salsas of all sorts around our camp.

Salsas (for the most part) are quick and easy additions to any meal, most often combining likely (and perhaps a few unlikely) ingredients to create unique explosions of flavor to spice what might otherwise be tame proteins or vegetables.

Here’s a great example – a few weeks back at my lovely wife’s urging I drug a recipe out of mothballs that we’d not enjoyed in a while – a sesame seed and parmesan crusted tuna steak. We used to serve this delight with a sauce based on chipotle chiles in adobo and apricot jam, and it was stunningly good.

For better or for worse that sauce has fallen from our lexicon since going Primal, and I was digging around for a great fruit-based salsa to serve with the tuna.

There are hundreds (perhaps even millions) of nifty fruit salsa recipes floating around out there in the ether, and as there happened to be some nice-looking mangos at the grocery that day, I reached for this salsa recipe shared by Chef Libby in Austin a few years back.

Around our table we whole-heartedly agree that a dusting of ancho chile powder (the floral notes really fit well) and even a whisper of cumin really play well with mango salsa, though Libby’s perhaps not so secret weapon is the additional of a teaspoon or two of a good habanero-based hot sauce, preferably one of the Central American brands. The hot sauce adds just a touch of genuine heat to the game without overwhelming the fruit and other vegetal flavors.

This one is best eaten the day it’s made, but if we ever have any left over my lovely wife argues it’s better the second or third day.

2 ripe mangos, diced
1/2-1 medium red or orange bell pepper, chopped
½ cup chopped red onion
2-4 tbsp chopped cilantro leaves and tender stems 1 jalapeño, seeded and minced
1 large lime, juiced
1/2 tsp good salt (to taste)
1-2 tsp of a good tropical habanero based hot sauce
1/2 tsp ancho chili powder (optional)
1/4 tsp ground cumin (optional)

Combine the diced/chopped mangos, red bell pepper, onion, cilantro, and jalapeño in a medium bowl.

Sprinkle on the salt, chile powder, and cumin if using, then squeeze the lime juice over as well as the habanero sauce if using.

Stir gentle, taste, and adjust the seasoning to suit.

Enjoy.

the Older Bolder Life Friday Feast: General Tso’s Chicken

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We had an interesting food planning issue arise a few weeks back; friends popped in to spend an afternoon on very short notice. They were travelling through, wanted to stop and chat for a bit, with that “chat” burning through an entire afternoon and then creeping into early evening.

The husband of the couple visiting tried to make the case that we should order out Chinese, something made nigh on impossible given our location “out in the sticks” on the edge of the sprawling DFW metro.

After a bit of hemming and hawing, I convinced the crowd to let me stir up a batch of this General Tso’s Chicken at home, sacrificing a little on our strictest Primal framework by using potato starch as a crisping agent for the chicken, and a bit of sugar in the sauce. [Sometimes when entertaining such compromises end up being made to suit guest’s more conventional palates, though I’ve found over the years that with a bit of common sense and moderation applied, these comprises aren’t problematic at all in the bigger picture of things.]

Using potato starch as a crisping agent for the chicken works remarkably well, as well as the more classic cornstarch used in Chinese cooking for years, at least IMHO, and the flavors imparted by the garlic, ginger, Shaoxing wine, and Chinkiang vinegar are amazingly good, allowing you to cook toe-to-toe with very good take-out food you might have enjoyed in the past.

Besides the great taste and wonderful presentation this recipe affords, another real plus is the easy prep and quick final cook when you’ve got everything lined up and ready.

Tipping our hat to our non-Primal / non-Paleo guests I cooked up a batch of conventional rice to go along with the delicious sauce produced, and a big tub of steamed broccoli florets. Hot damn, this one’s really good.

1.5 pounds boneless skinless thighs, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 T + 1 t avocado or other mild tasting oil
1 large egg, beaten
1 scant t good salt
1/2 to 3/4 cup (scant) potato starch

2/3 cup chicken stock
1/4 cup Shaoxing wine or dry sherry
1/4 cup Chinkiang vinegar
1/4 cup tamari or soy sauce
6 T sugar
2 T cornstarch

4-5 T avocado or mild, healthy oil of choice
6 garlic cloves, minced
1 and 1/2 T minced fresh ginger
7-8 Chinese chili peppers

Prep the chicken, place in a small bowl with the oil and salt; set aside for 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, whisk the sauce ingredients together in a small bowl, set aside. Meanwhile, mince the garlic and ginger.

When ready to cook, preheat a heavy, large skillet over medium-high heat. While the skillet is heating, stir the beaten egg into the chicken mixture, then stir in the cornstarch until it’s evenly coating the chicken.

Heat the oil in the preheated pan until just smoking, then add the chicken all at once in a single layer (separate if needed with tongs or a fork). Cook for 3 minutes or so until the bottom is golden, then turn and cook another 3 minutes or so. Remove the pan from the heat for 3 minutes.

Now place your skillet back over medium heat and add the chilies, ginger, and garlic to the oil remaining in the pan; cook for 1-2 minutes. Now add the stirred sauce to the skillet; stir now again as it cooks and thickens.

When the sauce has sufficiently thickened, add the chicken, stirring well to coat everything with the sauce. Remove from the heat and serve RIGHT NOW!

Enjoy.

the Older Bolder Life Friday Feast: Carrot and Peanut Salad

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I’ve shared in a number of posts over the years that my family has fairly deep roots in the South, mostly Texas, and my wife and I have been profoundly influenced by the fascinating amalgam that is the ever-evolving Texas food scene these days.

That said, we still both have family recipes we remember from our childhoods, recipes passed down through several generations, and that have stood the test of time and continue to grace the table now and again.

One of those very recipes is this venerable Carrot and Peanut Salad, an almost absurdly simple combination of textures and flavors that just work together, and it’s simple enough a child can put this one together in under ten minutes without a recipe.

As always, the quality of your ingredients make the dish; you’ll want fresh, crispy, organic carrots for this dish, along with roasted peanuts (watch those roasting oils), and a fresh batch of avocado oil mayo. Now and then I’ll use half avocado oil mayo and half sour cream or Greek yogurt just to mix things up a bit (they both add a bit of tartness to the salad as you’d expect).

After washing and prepping the carrots all you need to do is grab your trusty box grater and grate away (high brow folks from the Northeast may call that shredding) until you have enough for your meal – I usually prep 4-5 large carrots for a recipe.

Start with a generous half cup of peanuts (you can always add more) and mix in your avocado oil mayo (or sour cream or yogurt) to your desired level and you’re ready to head to the table.

As with all recipes consider this the most basic framework to start from; this recipe is delicious (and visually interesting) with multicolored carrots, finely chopped jalapeños or other peppers, and with a variety of other nuts – our favorite “other nut” for this one is toasted pepitas…

Enjoy, and never let anyone argue otherwise – complex recipes aren’t always better.

Cheers.

the Older Bolder Life Friday Feast: Grilled Rosemary Lamb Chops

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Like many of you, when thinking about the Easter table we often think of lamb or ham as the centerpiece protein; this year my lovely wife called for a Greek inspired meal featuring a perennial favorite – Grilled Rosemary Lamb Chops.

Last Easter’s Merguez Sausages were damned tasty, and I personally think this Ancho Leg of Lamb hung the moon, but lamb chops won the day this year.

Lamb chops are easy to source, quick to grill, and as always provide incredibly flavorful meat right off the bone. My only real complaint about them over the years has been that given that most lamb chops are cut fairly thick, sometimes there’s a bit more char outside after grilling given the time needed to make sure the deepest meat is a perfect medium rare.

This year I decided to sous vide the chops (130, 90 minutes) after rubbing with a bit of olive oil and a fresh cut garlic clove, with the chops then loaded into BPA-free bags with several sprigs of fresh rosemary.

A Quick Sidebar on Sous Vide and Texture…

As an aside, while we still use the sous vide method around our camp with some regularity, I am as I’m sure you are aware of a growing backlash against sous vide (nothing to do with the somewhat tired BPA discussion), but instead focusing on texture.

There are a number of talented chefs and home cooks who continue to report that they find proteins that spend time in a sous vide bath, while often cooked to perfection from a temperature / doneness perspective have a different texture than say thick-cut, bone-in ribeye cooked using a reverse sear technique. (Interesting my son Jake and I have had a very similar discussion a couple of different times this winter, and both find we’re leaning to the texture of the reverse sear method).

The other texture issue with sous vide has to do with pre-salting proteins before they’re placed in the water bath; some folks feel that doing so can make some proteins taste “rubbery and hammy”; there’s been a fair amount written on the subject, and we don’t salt red meats pre-sous vide, particularly if they’re going to be held for hours or a day or two before grilling, but still lightly salt chicken breasts for cold chicken salad (for example) before their time in the bath.

You make the call…

Back to Our Grilled Rosemary Lamb Chops

All the chops needed then was a quick turn on the grill to caramelize the surfaces and we were good to go, with this delightful Greek Salad, a recipe of homemade tzatziki, and crumbled feta on board.

These chops are delicious cold as well or heated gently prior to serving; cook a big batch when these come up in rotation.

Enjoy.

the Older Bolder Life Friday Feast: Quick Kung Pao Shrimp

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For the past several weeks we’ve been on somewhat of a stir fry kick; like many of you now and again we get stuck on a particular cuisine or preparation method and ride that horse for a few weeks just to change up the routine and menu.

My wife in particular has been craving some of the traditional Americanized Chinese food that we’ve eaten over the years; recently she’s been pestering me to craft a dish akin to a wonderful Kung Pao Shrimp we used to eat at a now defunct eatery in Salt Lake City back in the day.

It was spicy but not too hot, incredibly well balanced with the classic Chinkiang vinegar flavor followed by a just a hint of sweetness, and packed with tasty cashews and tender shrimp.

After a bit of trial and error, and digging around a bit, we’ve settled on this recipe using an incredibly easy homemade Kung Pao sauce (you can as always control the quality of your ingredients and cut back on the typical sugar/sweetener load), though a commercially prepared sauce could work in a pinch (read those ingredients!). By the way, I’ll post the recipe for the Kung Pao sauce down the road a few weeks from now…

With a minimum of prep, you can have this dish ready for the table in about twenty minutes, along with a big pile of steamed broccoli florets just like you’d receive in a classic restaurant setting.

As tempting as it is to throw in several handfuls of other vegetables, every time I’ve done that we (my wife especially) feel that the overall flavor impact of the dish is diminished by too many competing flavors. And it’s great over a spoonful of garlic cauliflower rice….

1 pound shrimp, prepped (peeled and deveined)
1 T Shaoxing wine
1 T cornstarch
1 tsp avocado oil
¼ t good salt

1 T avocado oil
6 green onions, white and green parts, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 bell pepper, ¾-inch dice
1/3 cup (perhaps a T or two more) homemade Kung Pao sauce
1/3 cup roasted cashews or peanuts

Combine the prepped shrimp, Shaoxing wine, cornstarch, and the salt; set aside for 10 minutes. Prep the vegetables and set aside.

Heat the oil in a large flat skillet until just smoking; add the shrimp in a single layer and cook for thirty seconds undisturbed, then stir occasionally for the next three minutes or so until the shrimp are just opaque.

Add the green onions and bell pepper, stirring to combine and heat the vegetables thoroughly. Now add the Kung Pao sauce, stirring to coat everything in the pan evenly.

Add the cashews (or peanuts), stir to distribute evenly, the remove from the heat and serve immediately.

Enjoy.

the Older Bolder Life Friday Feast: The Versatile Okra Crisp

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A little over a year and half ago I shared that I spent several months helping a group of compadres open a little Cajun restaurant nearby; it was an eye-opening experience for me to work in the kitchen “behind the restaurant curtain”.

Of course this was back in the pre-COVID days, which for restaurants seems an eternity ago (as it does for all of us), and clearly life in the restaurant biz was very very different then.

One of my responsibilities back in the day was preparation of huge batches of gumbo, up to forty (yep, I said 40!) gallons at a time in a huge floor-mounted steam kettle. The restaurant then was being directed by a very talented, Louisiana born and bred, young chef who had adapted recipes from his family back home to production in a commercial kitchen setting.

I have to admit his gumbo recipe is one of the very best I’ve ever tasted (sorry Mama – pronounced maw-maw, his really is better…), and it’s become one of our absolute favorite cold-weather soups (or stews if you want to argue that point) in our rotation.

One of the tricks that this particular chef taught me was that precooking okra before adding to the gumbo effectively de-slimed it and enhanced it’s earthy, vegetal flavors. We did it in the restaurant by flash frying for no more than 4 minutes in a commercial fryer; yes it was done in terrible oils (canola or soybean pending what was available, it’s just part of the restaurant game and begs another discussion on a different day). Nonetheless, it was so tasty I’d have to stand over the 20 pounds or so we’d do in a batch to keep my kitchen mates from grabbing handfuls to snack from.

The prep was easy – just head the okra, trimming off the stem end, and slice into 1/3 to 1/2-inch pieces and go to it.

Chatting up the recipe one day with my friend Chef Libby in Austin, she recommended a trial of baking the sliced okra at home in a medium oven after adding a splash of a healthy neutral oil (we think avocado works best here, olive oil can impart more flavor that you’d think) and a grind of good salt and pepper.

We’d actually already started doing that before Libby and I talked about it; it’s a piece of cake to spread the prepped okra pieces out on a piece of parchment, and then throw in the over for 45-50 minutes (with a turn somewhere in the middle).

The okra comes out perfect for topping gumbo, though my lovely wife likes this prep so much we do it as a side dish now and again, top salads with it, and even as a healthy snack out of hand.

Enjoy.

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.