Odd Ingredient du Jour: Naranja Agria

With lunch ("multigrain pilaf" from Trader Joe's), I had some of this, mixed with sugar and soda water to make a tasty beverage. It's an unusual ingredient, but one I find pretty useful, so I thought I'd discuss it here.

It's mock bitter orange juice, bitter orange being an integral ingredient in many Latin American recipes. I first heard of it trying to make Rick Bayless' jicama salad in "Authentic Mexican", but it's also common in meat marinades. Real bitter orange juice comes from Seville oranges, which produce extremely sour citrus flavor (apparently it's reminiscent of grapefruit) and are generally unavailable in the U.S. Bayless suggests using a mixture of lime and grapefruit juice, in addition to orange zest, as a substitute rather than bottled mix. I did that the first time I made the jicama salad, but it was expensive and a huge hassle. Next time, I bought this huge bottle of mock bitter orange instead. It contains orange juice, Seville orange oil, grapefruit juice, and a variety of preservatives. And it's huge. I don't make nearly enough Mexican food to use up this bottle in a timely manner, so I started experimenting with it. It works well in homemade vinaigrettes, but my favorite use is cocktails and mocktails. It's extremely bitter, but flavorful and a little floral. I haven't tried making tinto de veranos* with it yet, but I bet with enough added sugar it could function as a stand-in for the orange Fanta.

(*Tinto de veranos are the best drink ever. But the Wikipedia page is kind of wrong. I lived in Spain for a summer, traveling and drinking widely, and always saw them made with orange Fanta, never with lemon soda. And definitely never with Sprite)

Making a Map

This week, I had more cooking ideas floating around in my head than usual. I blame Ideas in Food.

Ordinarily, I shop for groceries for a specific dinner. Pretty much every day, if I'm going out of my way to cook a halfway decent dinner. Yes, this is pathological. I've even been known to visit three grocery stores for hard-to-find ingredients, though that's somewhat rarer. I like to grocery shop, just as much as some people loathe it (hi, mom). Regardless of how busy my life is, I like to preserve the illusion that I'm a Parisian who simply must visit individual purveyors every day.

But this week, I decided to be different. To facilitate my crazy ideas, and to see if it results in decreased food waste, decreased expenses, or more general happiness. Out of curiosity.

First, I brainstormed all the crazy ideas floating around in my head into a nice little map of related ideas. And then went shopping. My loose plan, if you can't tell from the pretty colored pencil ravings above, was to make fesenjan one night, Rick Bayless' tomatillo sauce another, a veggie risotto a third, maybe some lentil burgers a fourth, then make a few minor dishes, and make some things to stockpile for later (ie, stock).

My initial experience was pretty awful. I found it stressful to have to keep so many required ingredients straight at the grocery store (even though I had a list. What can I say, I'm a little ditzy). Plus, one of my grocery store neuroses is that I refuse to use a cart. They're cumbersome and ridiculous, and I'd rather develop wire-shaped bruises from a handbasket (yes, this has happened before...and may have happened today) than be chained to a ridiculous cart and hemmed in by slack-jawed and slovenly shoppers, carts piled high with frozen dinners. I still had to visit two grocery stores, but was faced with the additional obstacle of volume. I found myself fantasizing about those handcarts middle-aged European ladies schlep to the market, but somehow managed to get everything upstairs in one go.

The food, however, has been ok so far. Tonight, I made foccacia from Ideas in Food. The texture was gorgeous, the flavor pretty good. Next time I'd try using the pizza stone so as to not slightly burn the whole mess.

To go with it, I used up some cannelini beans that have been tormenting me from the pantry for months. I simmered them in some chicken stock and wine until tender, then smushed in the food processor with some olive oil and salt.

Then the main dish, the scariest tofu you've seen in awhile. Except I forgot to upload an image. You're lucky I forgot. It looked pretty awful. Basically, I made a batch of Rick Bayless' quick tomatillo sauce, then casseroled it with tofu cubes and chopped gordita tortilla chunks, all covered in cheddar and parmesan. It miraculously ended up tasting pretty good, though the dish was really intended to be my passive-aggressive protest against the megapacks of tofu Jon keeps buying at Costco. We have two more packs to go through before they expire in a week. Somebody help me.

Yucatecan Salmon at Home

For dinner, I had some coho salmon, with fava beans, plantains, tomatoes, and a glass of shiraz.

The salmon was interesting. I took a mild risk by dousing it in one of the Yucatecan spice rubs("recados yucatecos") I've been obsessed with lately. They're quick to make, and pack a huge punch of warm spice flavor.

This particular one, adapted from Rick Bayless, contains garlic, cumin, coriander, cloves, cinnamon, oregano, black pepper, and achiote, aka annatto, all ground with apple cider vinegar and flour to form a paste. I added some olive oil to make a better rub for fish, and rubbed away.

The rub worked really well- I went kind of light with it, figuring the flavors would be a bit heavy for the salmon. It paired nicely with the wine, a rather heavy Australian shiraz that had an ABV higher than I'd normally go for. I figured the label art went with my Mexican theme at least:

The wine was awful by itself, though slightly better slightly chilled. Paired with food, it was average. It was described as "heavy fruit" by the Trader Joe's wine assistant; I knew at the store it wouldn't be a wine that appealed to my somewhat spare, minimalist, subtle, low ABV self, but somehow we ended up with it anyway. Oh well. Like I said, cute label.

The favas and plantains were nice- the favas (actually a fava/garbanzo mix), were canned, from our local Middle Eastern grocery, and a little salty. The plantains, from our local Mexican grocery's freezer case (Goya ftw), were a little sweet. So it all balanced. Maybe they would have been better with a little crema.

The grape tomatoes were tasty- I've recently discovered they're awesome roasted in the oven with some olive oil and salt. Pretty much every veggie is. Maybe that's why I love veggies so much lately.

Mi Ranchito en St. Louis

For dinner, I had mole ranchero from Mi Ranchito, with some chips and salsa.

No me gusta. This was our second visit to the little ranch, and I recalled not liking it last time, but I couldn't remember why. Instead of ordering something else, I ordered the same thing I'd gotten last time. Oops. To be fair, I really can't resist mole, and the rest of their menu looked boring. Except for their taco plates, which DID look delicious, but I refuse to order on principle- almost $11 for three little tacos and no sides is not cool.

On the good side, their salsa is pretty nice- it has a bit of a garlic-onion glow that wakes me up without off-flavors or sourness. Also on the good side is that their website is somewhat in Spanish. I have a mostly worthless degree in Latin American Studies, so things like that make me happy...

But the mole? So sad. It's not the worst I've ever had (that would be grainy, oily mole sauce from the grocery store), and I think it's homemade, but it's too sweet, really thin, and not very complex. Oddly, it also has that cornstarch shine I associate with Chinese sauces, though does not taste of cornstarch (thank god).

Even worse, they have a bad habit of never asking about tortillas. I strongly prefer corn, and they always bring flour ones. I just forget to request corn, but it's a little annoying they never ask. As flour tortillas go, they weren't bad.

The big cooking project I've put off for far too long is making a mole from scratch. I have Rick Bayless' recipes for it, but the thirty or so different spices and chiles each kind call for have scared me a little. It looks about as involved as Indian from scratch (which I have done, and which is rightfully delicious). I'll hopefully have a lot of spare time in the next few weeks, so maybe I'll try making a mole and post about it. Maybe it will give me a new respect for homemade moles, crappy or not.