Pineapple and Ancho marinade and sauce

This marinade/sauce is part of my summer project - using dried chillies in all sorts of interesting ways. It is adapted from Milk Street's episode on Tcos al Pasteur. Adapted because their recipe uses ancho powder - and I was using whole anchos. The proportions are slightly different too - because I was doint it from memory. It came out really well - I would definitely do it again. And as a by product, any left over sauce can be added to other salsas to give some extra sweetness and earthiness.

Ingredients

4 Ancho chilis

3 Chipotle chilis in adobo with the sauce that clings to them

4 garlic cloves, peeled but left whole

3 tsp whole cumin seads, toasted and then ground

2T Dark brown sugar

2 1/2" thick pineapple rings, cored. If using canned then either use sweetened and omit the sugar or use water based

1/4 cup neutral oil.

Salt and pepper to taste

Method

Cut the tops off the anchos and deseed the peppers. Toast them over medium heat in a dry skiller until they become fragrant. Pressing them against tha bottom of the pan so that as much of the surface as possible gets the heat. Make sure you flip them over to get both sides done.

Remove  the peppers from the heat and add the whole cumin seads to toast them lightly too. Grind the anchos and cumin in a spice grinder (or use a pestle and mortar) until you have a fine powder. 

Put all the ingredients into a blender and pulse several times until you have a smooth paste.

Before use as a marinade, add a teaspoon of lime juice.

For use as a sauce, warm it through and add a tablespoon of limejuice and some chopped cilantro.

When in Texas Make Salsa

A very good friend invited me over to sample her loquats. I had no clue what they were, but figured that if they were food related, I would be up fo a challenge. So off I went to try them and pick some to take home. They are sweet little juicj fruits with a touch of bitterness at the back. Now I had them, what to do

I have clearly become acclimatised to Texas - my first thought was a salsa - perhaps to go on corn chips. After all we had some pasilla and ancho chili pepeppers lying around. They are both dries peppers, so needed to be toasted and then rehydrated. Some chipotle, cumin, garlic and the loquats and we might be onto something.

Ingredients

3 cups loquats seeded

3 pasilla chili peppers

1 ancho chili  pepper

2 cloves of garlic

1 t rice wine vinegar (and will add lime juice when serving)

2T neutral oil

1t toasted chili

salt

pepper

Method

Toast the dried chilis in a dry pan, alond with the cumin. When the chilis are fragrant take them out of the pan and cover with water to hydrate. Leave them standing. Meanwhile, grind the cumin, chop the garlic.

Put the garlic, loquats, vinegar, oil, salt and ppepper into a blender. Let the chilis stand in the water for about 15 minutes. Chop then finally and add to the blender along qith 1/4 cup of the water.

Blend on high speed for about 1 minute. You want a smooth texture. You may need to add a little more water.

Chill, spritz with lime huice and serve with tortilla chips.

FauxFu

Madame doesn't care much for Tofu. There are, however, some dishes that just wouldn't be right without it. Especially miso soup..

We were watching a cooking show and she idly said, what else could we use in this porl/miso soup - instead of the dreaded tofu. Well, we had some edd whites lying around, so I thought put them in icecibe trays and microwave them. So I did, and FauxFu was born.

She loved them.

Ingredients

Whites of 6 eggs (after you have used the yolks for something else)

Method 

Mix all the egg whites together until you have a uniform liquid. 1/2 fill each cavity in your ice cube tray with egg white microwave on high for 30 seconds or so - check after 20 seconds to make sure they are not getting cooked too quickly

Using the point of a paring knife, extract the cubes of egg white from the cavities. Use in place of  firm tofu in several recipes