Category — recipes

It’s so nice to be cooking again and to have a friend to cook for. Salmon cakes, steamed broccoli, and plain quick quinoa. Quick, easy, yummy.

Salmon cakes: one can wild pink salmon, one egg, little bit flour, little bit parsley, one stalk celery, leftover half onion, spring onion we were trying to finish, splash of sesame oil, sprinkle salt. Makes six.

I don’t know a ton about sustainable seafood, but I have it on good authority (clever fish scientist friends + monterey bay aquarium) that pink salmon’s an especially good choice. Not pricey either. 

Last week, I moved into a cozy little cottage in Hamtramck. Hamtramck is a city-island, independent-from, but completely surrounded by Detroit. I have room on the second floor near the front of the house. It’s 9-by-8 or 8-by-8-feet or so, maybe half the size of the room I lived in from last November until now, and it’s perfect.

My little Ikea futon takes up 2/3rds of the floor space.  Chocolately open-frame shelves match the dark wood doors and look lovely up against the burnt orange walls. Above the light switch, there’s a gilded Klimt-esque painting that my childhood best friend Lauren gifted me long ago; above the head of my bed, a round paper lantern with red  blossoms and black branches. The light and the bed are in perfect symmetry with the front window, which is dressed in a green-gold textured panel curtain my mom sewed as a gift for our old apartment in San Francisco. My yellow banana-tulip trashcan, picture-mobile, and bottle of Grand-Dad Whiskey round out my nest.

I’d like to install some sort of wall-mounted two-shelf-system nestled between my bed and the wall, so I can stand and work on my laptop in the mornings and enjoy that early light, or plop on a stool to dash off a letter or write in my journal before bedtime. Perhaps next to that, near the door, a system of twine and clothespins and tacks to hang pictures, letters, relics from the week: a shrine to the ordinary inspiration of everyday life. Underneath, beside the white checkerboard heating grate, might be a small space to sit and meditate on the black barley-husk cushion from my retreat in Millersburg, Ohio (on the same trip, where I had the best meal of this year).  And somewhere, mirrors, positioned, of course, for good feng shui. In the meantime, my poppy-stenciled corkboard is patiently propped up against that wall, waiting for its side of the room to be realized.

Being in this room feels nice already, like being hugged.

Being in the whole house is nice especially because of my roommates, Siri and Marcia. We had our first weekly family dinner tonight. Barley and Kimchi-freezer-soup and RSA-animate videos. So great.

Basic recipe: Mince and fry garlic in a touch of olive oil. Toss in 1/500th of our overabundant chili powder stash and fry until Siri coughs. Sprinkle in furikake because it’s there. Throw in frozen puck of wonton sauce from an old Neighborhood Noodle event. Meanwhile, in microwave, defrost gallon bag of frozen chicken stock made from thigh bones leftover from satay-making, frozen fishballs & fake crab from epic Chinese New Year party, and mysterious frozen bean curd.

Hack semifrozen stock into chunks, add to chili-sauce concoction, and patiently bring to boil. (While waiting, consider sipping some chamomile-anise tea). Cut up defrosted seafood & beancurd with kitchen scissors and add, then add 1/4 bag of leftover frozen spinach, 6 frozen pork-leek dumplings and Noodle dumplings that accompanied the sauce. Add 2 cups of homemade cabbage-carrot-daikon kimchi. Bring again to boil. Add fish sauce, sugar, and sesame oil to taste. Throw a tablespoon or so of cornstarch in a bowl, scoop out some broth, whisk it up with a fork, then slowly add back into the big pot to thicken. Bring to a boil again, then beat up a couple of eggs and drop in so they form swirly clouds. Serve atop barley.

Finish off with peaches, watermelon, good roomie musing on social change, and a good RSA-Animate classic.

A few weekends ago, I took a posse down to Florida market including coworkers from NSAC, visiting intern Kara from the Michael Fields Ag Institute (holla!), and friend Sara. We explored and laughed and made friends with taxidermed ruminants and then some folks followed me back home to cook up some traditional Cambodian fare.

We made Ban Chao (savory turmeric crepes) and papaya salad (recipe below) and vegetarian fresh rolls (aka goi cuon) with the quick kind of peanut sauce.

What a lovely way to spend an afternoon.

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By the end of Saturday night, everyone could speak for a full bottle of wine, plus a plastic bottle of unfiltered rice wine and a few delicious beers, the most wonderful of which was the Dogfish 120 minute IPA that made me feel like I was smack in the middle of a field of hops with my head thrown back, drinking in golden sunshine.

But it wasn’t just a night for booze.

There were friends. Lots of lovely friends.

We started at 6:30 and talked about food and wine and cutting up cows. We moved into music and farming and what makes ambition. Then into love and bike rides to Mt. Vernon. We contemplated climbing mountains. And around midnight, when most of the crew had left for the bars and their beds, the last comrades standing threw their hands in the air for an impromptu happy dance that lasted at least 5 songs.

The recipe for pajun is from the New York Times — I doubled it with no incident. For the flour, went with 1/2 tapioca and 1/2 all-purpose for a slightly chewier, bouncier pancake.

For veg, I used green beans and scallions, minced finely into little green polka dots. I made the pancakes in a small pan so they’d be easier to flip and they’d work as appetizers. I served them with okonomiyaki sauce: spicy, tangy, perfect with eggs.

The curry was standard panang from a can — in this case, the Mae Ploy brand, doctored with sugar, fish sauce, kaffir lime leaves, lime juice, chilis and basil.

The eggplant basil tofu was a variation on a staple basil _(insert protein here)_ dish that I often make when I can get my hands on quantities of delicious basil and feel like something quick. The basic recipe follows below — the amounts are pretty flexible and up to your particular tastebuds.

Playing hostess…

Marcie and new roomie Chris with rice and rice-cakes from H-mart.

It snowed this weekend and it was beautiful. The white fluff piled up and up and up around our doorstep and in the street, disguising cars as white lambs, peaceful and chill.

We were warned that people in Washington couldn’t hack it on the roads in the snow, but still, we were determined to make the trek out to Falls Church, VA to the Korean superstore for provisions.

I was craving chili and strange smelling greens and products made of rice and tapioca. I wanted to rest my palm on the spikes of a durian and gape at a tank of geoducks and wrinkle my nose at the dried fungus. I wanted to stare at bewilderment at the choices of nori and buy bottles of soy sauce: light and dark and maybe some variations in between.

We were fairly warned, but still, the two hour trip (in fairer weather, 20 minutes or so) was long and I got cranky, but tried not to be because DC has been so beautiful so far that I didn’t want to ruin it over some ice and silly drivers.

And in the end it was worth it because H-mart had everything I wanted and banana flowers.

That’s them on the right up above. And they had all kinds of greens like the funny long Thai “parsley” and the shiny lemony leaves that look like they come from a tree, but are soft, and all kinds of basil and mint.

And, yes! Back there, in the plastic wrapping, there’s fresh turmeric and galangal and other hard-to-find, but totally awesome items.

Which means that I can go back there soon and get everything I need to make NOAM BAN CHOP, also known as Cambodian’s national dish — noodley goodness atop banana flower, cukes, topped with a fragrant, fishy, lemongrass, galangal, coconutty goodness and finished off with beansprouts and all kinds of fresh greens.

H-mart also had a fantastic selection of prepared foods, including crunchy, spicy pickled Daikon with sesame seeds that is so ridiculously yummy and refreshing that I could live off that and rice and a wee bit of egg for days straight.

That’s new roomie Chris on the left, eating one of the fresh rice cakes from H-mart — the kind that don’t taste like cardboard, but more like sweet, crunchy, light melty yumminess. According to this Washington Post review, the rice cakes are made by Suk Pyo Choi and his wife, Hae Young out of rice, soybean, water and a little bit of artificial sweetener. I wonder if it would ruin the recipe to add some stevia instead? Perhaps I’ll suggest it to Mr. Choi next time I’m there.

Twas a good trip and when the snow melts again, I plan to take my bike out there for a little adventure. I wonder how a whole striped bass would look strapped over my back rack. Too great for words? Perhaps.
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I’ve never really liked pumpkin pie. Sacrilegious, I know. I prefer a yummy spiced persimmon cake or traditional Dutch Apple. But even I know that Thanksgiving just isn’t Thanksgiving without that creamy, cinnamonny, burnt orange treat to top off the feasting.

That’s why the news of Nestle’s canned pumpkin shortage is so very sad. Nestle apparently controls 85% of the pumpkin canning crop concentrated in 5,000 acres of pumpkin fields in Morton, Illinois. An already small harvest of Sweet Dickenson pumpkins has been pummeled by heavy rains, which have waterlogged the squash to the point that they’re no longer suitable for processing.

The impact won’t hit this year in most cases since many stores are stocked from last year’s harvest, but come Turkey Day 2010, we may be feeling the effects of this year.

I guess that’s one of the drawbacks of putting all your eggs in one basket (or in this case, pumpkins in one midwest town).

Anyway, if you’re one to think ahead, maybe this year is the year to start practicing your fresh pumpkin pie making skillz. It’s certainly more work than opening up a can of Libby’s, but it’s also a fun project.

A roundup of puree recipes around the web yields the following basic advice (pictures to follow shortly once I get ’round to picking up my own pie pumpkin):

1) Choose a small pumpkin and look for a sugar pumpkin rather than the decoration variety. Smaller pumpkins will likely have less water and will be less fibrous which will result in a smoother, more consistent finished product. You can also substitute hubbard, butternut, or acorn squash OR sweet potatoes especially if you’re making puree for a pie.

2) Chop your pumpkin in half or into four manageable pieces. Remove the seeds and fiber with a spoon. You can save the seeds for roasting or for planting your own pumpkins next year!

3) You can bake or steam the pumpkin. To steam, place pumpkin in a steaming basket with 2 inches of water and cook for approximately 30 minutes, or until the pumpkin is totally tender.  To bake, preheat your oven to 350 degrees, line a baking sheet with foil, and place your pumpkin pieces flesh-side down. Bake for about 60 minutes, or until the pumpkin can be scooped with a spoon.

4) Let cool, remove the skin and chop into pieces. Puree the pieces in a food processor or blender.

5) At this point, you’ll want to check out your product. Is it smooth? Stringy? Watery? For most recipes, you’ll want the puree to have the consistency of baby food. If your product is too watery, you can cook it down in a pan over medium-low heat with a little bit of butter or you can strain it through a cheesecloth for a few hours. If too stringy, try mashing through a sieve.

October’s come and gone, but I had to post this picture of me in the pumpkin patch at Tanaka Farms in Irvine. This is a two-part post, so if you have no patience and just came from the food, then click here to skip ahead to the recipe for pumpkin gnocchi.

I dragged Christina down to South County to get my farm fix. It was a wonderland of tiny adorable children and rows and rows and rows of perfect organic glowing orange pumpkins. Tanaka opens up a you-pick pumpkin patch every year and families flock from miles around (they’ve also got Strawberry tours in late spring and watermelon tours in the summertime).

Many kids already know the farm because it hosts field trips during the week and also sponsors an awesome CSA program that doubles as a fundraiser for local schools, business, and churches. It’s brilliant. Tanaka packs and delivers the boxes to the schools, but the schools handle all the subscriptions and collections. Subscribers pay $25 per week. The farm pockets $20 per box, and the PTA gets to keep $5. They’ve got a great list of participating schools and examples of what goes into their boxes on their website.

We were a little late in the game, just a week or so before Halloween, but there were still plenty of gems to be had. The pumpkins were already cut and the vines had died back, so there was minimal pricking and poking as we selected our prizes.

Yes, that is an LA Fitness tent you see in that third picture. Not so good for the ambiance. Would you like a spin class with that kabocha squash? Oh, the subtle joys of Orange County!

Afterwards, Mr. Pumpkin sat on my counter for a couple of weeks. I meant to carve him, but he was on the small side and I was on the lazy side so it just never got done. Afterwards, though, I was grateful because I got to turn Mr. Pumpkin into not one, but two delicious dishes for the Good Food Potluck: Pumpkin & White Bean Chili (a la April McGreger of Grist) and pumpkin gnocchi, inspired by the beautiful and talented Jaden of Steamy Kitchen.

The gnocchi was a huge hit. Soon after the party, my mum got an email from a family friend asking for the recipe for “those yummy little nugget things.” Score!

That’s me, serving up the gnocchi. Funny faces behind belong to my “Uncle” Chuck (left) and Dad (right).

That’s what it looks like when it’s in the frying pan — aren’t they a pretty golden color? For some really gorgeous photos of this recipe, check out Steamy Kitchen.

Pumpkin Patch Gnocchi

Adapted from Pan-fried Pumpkin Gnocchi from Steamy Kitchen
Serves 6-8

I made a couple of changes to the recipe, in particular, adding the steps to cook down the fresh pumpkin. Ideally, you’d use a sweet pumpkin or squash, but ornamental Mr. Pumpkin actually did just fine. You’ll only need part of the pumpkin, so you can save the rest of the raw pumpkin for a curry or chili, or cook it all down in the next step so you’ll have pumpkin puree for pie or ravioli. Be sure to keep a light hand when mixing, or your yummy little nuggets will turn into yucky little chewies. This means in the mixing step, just turn over the dough a few times until combined, then stop!

1 cup skim milk ricotta
1/4 medium sized pumpkin, about 1 1/2 pounds, or 1 cup pumpkin puree
1 cup freshly grated parmegiano reggiano, plus more for serving
2 eggs
2 teaspoons lemon zest
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 3/4 cups all purpose flour, sifted and more for dusting
5 tablespoons butter, and possibly more for frying
2 tablespoons olive oil
4 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
10 fresh sage leaves

Preheat oven to 300F

1. If you’re dealing with a whole pumpkin, carefully cut it in half, then in quarters. Scrape out the insides with a spoon, saving the seeds for roasting later! You’ll use about 1/4 of a medium pumpkin or 1 1/2 lbs. Cut this piece into 4 chunks, leaving the skin on.

2. Put the chunks in a steaming basket in a pot and add 2 inches of water. Steam for about 20 minutes on medium heat until the pumpkin is tender and begins to be transluscent. Drain the water and let cool for 5-10 minutes. Peel the skin from the pumpkin and chop into 1-inch cubes.

3. At this point, if you have a ricer, you can rice the pumpkin for an even more fluffy gnocchi. I only had a blender, so I put the cubes in my blender until the lumps were gone.

4. Add two tablespoons of butter to a large saucepan on medium-low heat. Add pumpkin puree to the pan and cook for about 10 minutes, until the pumpkin has reduced by about half and the color has deepened to a golden brown.

5. Combine ricotta, pumpkin, parmagiano, yolk, zest and salt in large bowl. Mix well. Sprinkle half of the flour on the mixture, gently turn with spatula a few times to incorporate. Dump mixture on clean, lightly floured countertop or you can still do this in the bowl. Sprinkle remaining flour on top of the mixture. Gently knead with your fingertips, just bringing together the mixture until flour is incorporated through. This only should take a minute or two. Any longer and you will be over-kneading.

6. Dust a clean, dry surface with a generous sprinkling of flour. Divide dough into 2 parts. Working with one part, press into a rectangle 1/2-inch thick. With a pastry cutter, or sharp knife, cut the rectangle into strips 1/2-inch wide, then cut each strip into “nuggets” about 3/4” long. At this point, you can do fancy things to the gnocchi like rolling them on a gnocchi board, but I think they’re pretty cute as is.

7. Heat a large frying pan or saute pan with 1 tablespoon of the butter and 1 tablespoon of olive oil. When hot, add a few gnocchi – enough to cover surface but not touch each other. Fry on medium heat for 1-2 minutes, turn and fry for another 1-2 minutes. Remove gnocchi, place on large baking sheet to put into oven to keep warm. Repeat with rest of gnocchi, add butter and oil to the pan as necessary.

8. When all gnocchi is finished, discard butter/oil in pan and clean pan with paper towel. Heat pan on medium heat and when hot, add the remaining 2 tablespoons butter and the remaining tablespoon of olive oil. When hot, add the fresh sage. Let the sage brown and sizzle (but not burn) for a couple of minutes until very fragrant. Remove the sage and discard. To the pan, add the balsamic vinegar and whisk. Let simmer on low for 1 minute and pour over the gnocchi.

Other delicious sweet and savory things to do with pumpkin:

Last Sunday, I came back from a visit to the Bullocks’ Homestead on Orcas Island in the afternoon, tired, dirty, ridiculously happy, and ready to collapse in a heap on my little blue sofa with some iced tea and The Taste of Place, which I had started on the ferry. But then Lucy came and roused me and told me she had been invited over to Rob’s to pick figs.

Rob is a fellow farmer, known for his pasture-raised meats which he sells at the farmer’s market along with his buddy Guard Sundstrom. Their Meat Wagon is always busy with folks looking for fresh, local, humanely-raised ridiculously tasty meat. Both Rob and Guard are members of the Island Grown Farmer’s Cooperative which is a group of farmers who banded together to design and launch a mobile slaughtering unit that allows for local processing of beef, lambs, and pigs. This unit was the first of its kind in the US and since then groups of farmers’ around the country have come to these folks for help replicating the model in their own communities.

But Rob isn’t just a lamb man, he’s a true farmer and, dare-I-say, homesteader.

In addition to his animals, Rob takes care of a lovely orchard, and a garden on an adjacent property. He started out 30 years ago in a little trailer; he built a lovely yurt, then a beautiful home where his older son now lives with his wife and children.

When Lucy and I arrived at Rob’s place, the two big dogs ran out to greet us, barking madly. No one was home so we poked about behind the house, amidst the chickens and the trees, looking for the fig tree. Being city-folk we weren’t exactly sure what a fig tree looked like, so we stopped off at the walnuts and the pears and the apples before finally we sighted the little bush close by one of the mobile chicken coops.

Right as we started picking, Rob arrived, clean and spiffy from his granddaughter’s birthday party. We picked a basketful of ripe figs, then Rob offered us cling peaches from his trees.

We walked through the orchard, asking about the different pears and plums and apples — Asian pears, Bosc, Red Anjou, Santa Rosa plums and about the history of the place.

Rob told us of wheeling his pregnant wife to the car in a wheelbarrow back in the days before there was a proper driveway to the house. She vowed not to come back until he built a proper house. He built the yurt where he still lives today.

Then he showed us the house that he built back in the early 90s with help from his brothers, one an architect, the other a woodworker. It was a well-conceived house, and very beautiful; white adobe-style walls and huge windows facing out on the orchard and the pond. Inside, the exposed wood beams and gorgeous live-edge counter gave the house a cozy woodsy smell and a warm, friendly feeling. The wood came from trees felled and milled on the property and Rob described the process of forestry management — taking skinny, distressed trees from beside the thicker looking counterparts because their skinniness was indication of slow, dense growth.

Then we went up to the area where his younger son was just laying the foundation for his own home. We toured the sweet outdoor kitchen, composting toilet, and the wooden frame ready and waiting for the concrete truck which would arrive the next morning.

I was inspired, to say the least. My own dad and I have been talking about building a home together. I can’t think of very many things that would be more satisfying.

I ate most of my share of the figs fresh within a day or two — subtle, sweet soft flesh popped into my mouth whole. All that remained was a little pile of stems in the compost bucket below the sink. But then, the remaining fruits started to get a little soft. I didn’t want to eat them all at once, so I looked for a way to turn them into something else to savor.

I wanted to pair the figs with anise — one of our local bakeries makes an amazing yeasted Fig Anise Bread and I’m obsessed with the combination. It’s warm and crunchy and slightly spicy. But I wanted to make a breakfast bread, so I looked around for recipes with fresh figs and fell upon instruction for a Fig Tea Bread by Jenny Colvin of Jenny Bakes. It turned out that the tea in the recipe gave the bread a deep, smoky richness and lovely color and the seeds from the figs distributed through the bread gave a lovely crunch — something like poppy seeds in other breakfast breads. I reduced the other spices and the sugar, so the star anise flavor came to the fore, perfectly complimenting the soft sweetness of the figs.

Figs, raisins, tea, star anise and nutmeg make up the flavor body

I kept the fig chunks pretty big so they’d stay whole in the bread

The figs soak in the tea for just over 10 minutes, then part of the tea is reserved for the bread

Wet ingredients

After the dry ingredients are in, mix in the tea, figs and raisins

The finished loaf is dark brown and almost savory…

Black Tea, Star Anise, Fig Bread
Adapted from Jenny Colvin of Jenny Bakes

1 cup figs, stemmed and coarsely chopped
1 cup Irish Breakfast tea, brewed double strength
1 3/4 cup flour
1 cup golden raisins
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
4 sections star anise, ground
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar
½ cup olive oil
2 eggs

Gently combine figs and tea; let stand 10 min.

In a medium sized bowl, beat sugar, oil and eggs to mix. Sprinkle flour, spices, baking soda and salt on top and mix until just combined.

Drain tea from figs, reserving 1/4 cup of liquid. Gently stir in figs and ¼ cup tea; pour batter into well-greased loaf pan; bake at 350º F for 1 hour, or until toothpick comes out clean.

Cool in pan 10 min., then invert onto a rack. Keeps on the counter in plastic wrap for up to 1 week, or freeze slices in plastic baggies and thaw in the toaster or microwave.

Oven baked tomatoes: a dash of olive oil and 5-6 hrs at 200 degrees make sweet, crispy tomato chips out of juicy tomato slices, lovely in pasta and as a snack. Halve the tomatoes and cook at 150 for 12 hours for a sweet, chewier version yummy in salads, or in your panzanella.

Once upon a time, I was a kid who hated tomatoes. Tomato sauce was okay, ketchup was great. I even slowly came around to salsa, though for years I survived on dry chips (guac didn’t interest me till well into college). But that wet, slimy slice — that interloper between my hamburger and lettuce and bun, seemed tasteless, useless and generally insulting.

I don’t know when I came around, or the exact details of the conversion, but I’m quite I was spurred by my mother’s coaxing and a few superb Caprese salads.

If you’re lucky, you know the joy of a fresh, vine-ripened tomato. In case you don’t, it looks like this:

and tastes like this:

(actually that was remnants of powdered sugar and french toast, but you get the idea)

It’s become the poster-child of gardening advocates and “eat local” fanatics — it’s one of those things that really does taste better (taste at all? most tomatoes in the supermarket still seem mostly like soggy pink water) when you pick a ripe one direct from the garden.

We sold our first tomatoes back in July — the weekend a gaggle of friends came up to visit from San Francisco, and we took a bunch of the first Stupices for a picnic on the beach with a loaf of bread, some cheese, the last of the garlic scape pesto, leftover spicy scones from breakfast, and a bag of luscious cherries.

The tomatoes were exclaimed over, praised, and gobbled down; we expressed our regret at not bringing more. Then we went about our business hunting cockles in the low tide and headed home to use the rest of our tomato stash in a 4-pan paella masterpiece (only two of four shown below )

Since then, I’ve been continuing to enjoy the tomato harvest: on the grill, in salads, in pasta, and yes, though I never would have believed it had you told me as a child, sometimes bitten whole, like an apple, as a snack before dinner.

But one of my favorite dinners has been a simple panzanella, or simply said: hastily concocted bread and tomato salad.

Panzanella from forgotten ingredients, inspired by tomatoes

• One stale crusty loaf of rosemary hearth bread from the local bakery — at least 10 days old, abandoned on a lower shelf.
• Two beautiful red tomatoes with bright yellow crowns
• A forlorn chunk of sharp cheddar (or some very thin slices of Parmesan or hunks of fresh mozzarella would do)
• some browning sprigs of basil, rescued from the farmer’s market leftovers
  
• olive oil and balsamic vinegar
• a dash of salt

Careful of my fingers, I hacked the piece of bread apart, doused it in oil and threw it on a baking sheet in the oven which I set to heat to 400. In the meantime, I chopped up the tomatoes and cheese, tore up the basil and sprinkled them all with balsamic and salt. By the time the oven reached 375, the bread was browned and sizzling and crispy. I threw everything together and a delicious meal was born.

The next night, I repeated the dish with the remaining bread and added in some sweet dried tomatoes straight from the oven.

There’s something so happy and so sensual about tomatoes in late summer. Thank you Pablo Neruda for putting the words in my mouth.

A couple of years ago, Jaime and I went to Puerto Vallarta to visit his high school friend Naomi and her two incredibly cute and precocious little boys and to bask in the sun and eat delicious food. Rather than stay in town, on Naomi’s recommendation, we headed off by boat to a tiny little cove in a town called Yelapa.

For three endless days, we stayed in a casita at the beautiful Hotel Lagunita and spent our afternoons lazing under the pelapas on the beach, reading beach fiction, and practicing our broken Spanish with the overly aggresive local parrot. One evening, we headed up the hill behind the beach to explore the windy, narrow streets of the town, peering into backyards filled with banana trees and chickens, greeting old friends of Naomi’s, and ending up at dinner at the amazing Pollo Bollo. There we closed the night nursing warming bottles of beer and licking our fingers clean of the tangy sweet sauce that accompanied the succulent tender to the bone BBQ chicken that is their specialty. Another night, we wandered into the Yelapa Yacht Club, where the hopping local expat community jammed the night away to a mix of Tom Petty and world beats.

But some of my favorite memories of Yelapa were the mornings. The casitas at the hotel were open to the air and we woke up to the sound of the surf and the smell of the exposed wooden beams and salty air. We walked out the door down the flower-lined gravel paths out to the beach. Jaime and I were the only guests, and they had set up a lone table under a pelapa where we sat and ordered our breakfast. Strong Mexican coffee, juice, and delicious delicious food.

That was the first time I ever had chilaquiles — Jaime and I hadn’t ever heard of them before, and he ordered them as an experiment. They were served hot, with scrambled eggs and beans with a side of salsa, maybe some avocado, but definitely a stack of warm, fresh corn tortillas. They were so delcious that it didn’t seem at all weird to be putting cooked corn tortillas inside of more corn tortillas.

So when I looked in a corner of my kitchen the other day and saw a bag of stale tortilla chips, it got me thinking of that happy memory and the delicious mornings and how much I’m missing Jaime these days, and I had to try to recreate the moment. I’m the first to admit that food can be oh-so-comforting when you need something to cheer you up.

I’m quite sure they made their chilaquiles in Yelapa with stale tortillas, as is traditional, but this technique seemed to work just as well, and it probably takes even less time since you don’t need to fry the tortillas in oil before starting.

Chilaquiles like that morning in Yelapa
Serves 2-3

4 cups stale tortilla chips
1 tbsp olive oil

salsa
2 dried New Mexico Chiles (or dried California or Ancho Chiles for a more mild flavor)
1/2 cup fresh or canned tomatoes
1/2 medium onion
1 clove garlic
1/4 cup reserved chile soaking water
1/4 cup chicken broth (or substitute another 1/4 cup chile water)
1 jalapeno (optional for spice)

salt, to taste

optional toppings
– fried eggs
– avocado
– nopalitos (http://www.gourmetsleuth.com/nopalitos.htm)
– cotija cheese, queso fresco or feta in a pinch
– cilantro
– sour cream
– leftover chicken

Heat a dry cast iron skillet until hot but not smoking and toast jalapeno and dried chiles until lightly browned on all sides (3-5 min). In a small pot, bring 1.5 cups of water to boiling. Place dried chiles in boiling water and remove from heat. Allow chiles to sit for 10 minutes to reconstitute. Water should turn reddish-brown and chiles should become pliable.

Meanwhile, coarsely chop tomatoes, garlic, onion, and toasted jalapeno. When chiles are done soaking, add chiles, 1/4 cup of the soaking water, chopped vegetables, and chicken broth to blender. The chicken broth gives the dish an especially full flavor, but you can also substitute 1/4 cup extra chile water to make the recipe vegetarian.

Blend ingredients until completely smooth.

Heat 1 tbsp olive oil in a cast iron skillet. When hot (you can test to see if it’s ready by throwing on a drop of the salsa and seeing if it sizzles) add in salsa and fry for about 5 minutes, until the color deepens slightly and the consistency turns a little thicker.

Turn down the heat to medium and season sauce with salt. Add in stale tortilla chips and stir well to coat. Cook for at least 5 minutes — the sauce should soak completely through the tortilla chips. They should lose their toughness and turn moist, but not mushy.

Top chilaquiles with your choice of garnishes and serve with warm beans.