Mexican dinner

Prepared previously and frozen. Unmarked container looked like some kind of chili. (Chili for the soup-like mixture, chile for the plant or for the fruit of the plant. Nobody ever gets this right including myself sometimes and they're actually interchangable. So chili con carne, and habanero chile. If anybody tells you differently then punch them in the face, I mean, smile knowingly and turn away. ) It turns out to be the pork chili made here.

Also in the freezer in one of those convenient strip-seal freezer bags were a pile of small tamales with ice coating the corn husks. They look like they would be terrible but they're actually surprisingly delicious. I should market these things. The tamales are described here. My tamales always look a little bit Asian. 

The plate at top is using the pork chili in place of sauce. A red chile sauce intended for enchiladas but perfectly well serviceable for tamales can be reviewed here. It is a very common simple sauce that makes use of dried red chiles of the kind you see tied up in decorative chile ristras that are hung in cocinas y comedores, pórticos y patios, garajes y cenadors.  Okay, possibly not those last two. My red chiles are in little plastic bags. 

I grew that chile on my patio ↑. My friend is totally Brillo pads. Yesterday he made me understand that I didn't have to harvest my chiles all at once. I never thought of that. Now I can gauge if keeping them out there on the plant makes them less hot or what. 

I steamed white rice and made it yellow with turmeric. I have no idea what turmeric does besides turn things yellow. I used a paper kitchen towel cut to fit the lid as a gasket. The paper towel became soggy and stained yellow around the rim. When I lifted the lid, the paper towel had bulged into the curved shape of the lid as a yellow paper dome. It stayed that way. The turmeric stiffened it. The thing is, the outside of the pot and the stove would have been a boiled-over mess without it. 

I also whipped out a pile of refritos which are smashed beans that are not re-fried. It's a misnomer. I prepared these differently than anything I've ever heard of, and these refritos are as good if not better than anything I've ever had, and believe me, I've had my share of refritos in many restaurants in the E.E.U.U. and in Mexico. So there. I should patent this idea. I shall charge a sum to franchise the technique except for you cool guys here who may have it for free. The technique is a kitchen hack that shortens admirably an otherwise long and dragged out process. Plus you don't have to use any beans from a tin. Did you know that if you plant dry beans from a bag they will grow? They're like seeds or something. 

I take a measured amount of dry beans and process them to dust in an ordinary coffee bean mill. Now where will you ever see that except here? Nowhere! That's where. The powder is cooked in double the amount of liquid, any broth will do, along with seasoning and fat, in this case a teaspoon of lard. That's right, LARD. Manteca de cerdo. Muy authéntico. Nothing happens until the liquid boils and then it thickens rapidly. Today I used red beans. I would have preferred pinto beans or black beans but apparently I already ate them all, and if you think about it, that's a lot of beans para una persona normal.

Beef, potatoes and noodles

It's like an Alfredo except it has delicious seared steak chunks in it. 

Half the sirloin from yesterday is cut into cubes. Half the rice powder/wheat pasta dough from yesterday is rolled out and cut into fettucini size noodles. Fun! Half an onion is chopped rustically. One large mushroom, all that I had but half of what I wanted, is sliced.  So it's a proper half-meal then in'nit. 

Cream, milk, pasta water, grated Parmigiano Reggiano, grated nutmeg, salt, pepper. 

I ate half of it, where half is a good 80%.

My heart is filled right now with warmth and affection for all of humanity. 

For today is my birthday, a FACT! that I tend not to advertise except with you guys because I trust you will not make a bfd out it and embarrass me. After running around doing local errands and coming home to a nice quiet day unmolested, there came a timid knock upon my door. As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. Tis some visitor I muttered, or that UPS guy I deplore, so I answered it expecting a bird. Nobody there, but the doorway was filled with helium balloons tied to the door handle. The door swinging inward and the air current drew them inside and directly into my face. A computer printed page with the words to the song Happy Birthday was taped to the door, and a tiny flower bouquet was pinned by the door clamp (installed for notes and messages, cards, well wishes, notices of eviction, and such) tied with a ribbon and with a tiny handwritten note reading,

 "Bo, FELIZ Cumpleaños."

This would be from the building crew. They are the people around here who speak to me in Spanish. They come and go on their own schedule performing routine maintenance and I try to remember each time, if I am here,  to give them a box of my home tempered chocolates egipcio which they always accept. The balloons would be from the same source as the balloons that are replaced each day by building management to advertise leasing outside. The date would be known by the manager who has a son who was born on the same day as I so the association is upfront. [Incidentally, as to the manager, she is the same woman who is described online by Yelp reviewers at considerable length as impossibly overbearing inflexible and mean-spirited. My own experience with all these people is in distinct contradiction.] So I see how this was tacked together for a charming expression of goodwill. And is that the sweetest thing you heard of today?  No? Then, Shirley, your heart must be filled up with warmth and affection for all of humanity too. 

Maruchan Ramen, Japanese beef noodle soup

Another summer day goes by and another three meals are missed. Unless a glass of chocolate milk counts as a meal. It is 11:00 PM and I am finally becoming hungry enough to start scrounging around. 

Oh joy! Maruchan ramen. Beef even. 

These are the things we buy for 25¢, I think. Maybe $1.00. I don't know. Let's see what is.

Goody gumdrops, a flavor packet! I cannot wait to open it and see all its beefy goodness.

Hey wait, where are the beef chunks? It's powder! What ever could it be? I wet a finger and taste some. 

It tastes like beef bouillon with powder onion, powder soy things, MSG, it's very salty. Chemicals. Maybe I can help it with real beef since it doesn't have any.

I used only half this steak. This looks like a sirloin steak. I just recently learned that sirloin steak is not the same thing as New York steak. Apparently a New York steak is better. I think a New York steak is the long non-tenderloin portion of a T-Bone or Porterhouse steak. 

The thinly cut slices were put into a pot with hot olive oil on medium high. They browned nicely in less than a minute. They were removed to a plate leaving behind a little mess in the pot. We like that mess. We cook-types call it fond. We call it fond, I guess because we're fond of it. Makes sense to me. It is the result of non-enzamatic browning reaction between amino acid (think protein) and reducing sugars (think carbohydrate) which result in hundreds of flavor compounds that was first described by a French guy named Maillard. FACTS ! 

We'll leave the mess in the pot and persist with vegetables, since our flavor packet is bereft of vegetables. I scrounge around some more and find these. Here they are mise en place, which is an important thing to do because it means the cook won't be racing around like a poulet décapité looking for ingredients once the heat is on. 

Left to right: scallion, mushrooms, carrot, broccoli, careless jalapeño, fresh ginger, fresh garlic. Not too bad, eh?, for a scrounge session. 

The fond would probably work all by itself with water but even with hundreds of flavor compounds it's going to be fairly diluted, and since this Maruchan Ramen is Japanese we can go with our Asian soup flavor enhancements. I drag out the usual suspects, always reliable. 

Then I get the idea to include tamarind. If I didn't have tamarind then I'd consider Worcestershire sauce which is basically a tamarind sauce. It's a British/Indian thing. 

I taste the soup. It's delicious. Much better than the sample from the flavor packet. You know what? I'm just going to throw away that flavor packet. It's crap. 

Let's look at those noodles again. They're dry. They've already been cooked and dehydrated. They've been produced for convenience and for speed which is very odd since regular dry noodles are already convenient and speedy. How can pre-cooking and additional dehydration possibly help? I taste a piece of broken noodle. It's nothing at all. I conclude these squiggly noodles are the sickly anemic poor cousins to actual noodles. I'm telling you that I know from one tiny sample that these noodles are not right. Fuck it, I'm throwing away these stupid annoying noodles too. Lordy, even at 25¢ this product is a rip-off nutritional hoax. 

In an attempt to stay Asian about this, I take a handful of starchy rice and mill it in the coffee bean grinder, handy little thing. It's fun!

I break an egg and add a little water, all the rice powder, salt, and AP flour by the tablespoonful until a dough forms. The dough rests briefly.

So there ya go. Here's the enhanced Maruchan Ramen. 

The meat here is more than evident, it is actually something to chew on. The broth is delicious, well-rounded with no extraneous questionable chemicals that might hazard what remains of my delicate nervous system. The noodles are surprisingly sturdy toothsome tasty and filling. This is the best Maruchan Ramen I ever had! Hurray! I urge you to try this with your Ramen packages, you'll be amazed how those convenience packages can be improved with just a little help. 

Here is the ingredients list for Maruchan Ramen beef published on Food Facts. 

Guacamole

I've been invited to a birthday party tonight. I didn't ask if I could bring anything because I know the person hosting and to bring anything at all is tantamount to bringing coals into Newcastle. (Although oddly, the last time I visited I did bring a six-pack of Newcastle ale because that is what I would be having and it's the one thing the ever overly stocked bar would most likely be without. There is a strong preference over here for American beer.) Even so, without my asking, over the phone the host forthrightly instructed me to bring a bowl of guacamole with the accompanying platitude, "You make the best."

See? That's the problem with making the best guacamole that people ever tasted. You're called on to make it all the time. Like a singer with a hit song who would rather move on to new songs, or a comedian with a popular routine who would just as soon not repeat the old sets, or a prime time television actor associated with a catch phrase. You get the idea. I keep telling them that it's no secret at all and I do openly relate the techniques but I can actually see it all go into one ear and drain out the other as their mind wanders and their eyes glaze over. 

Just shut up and make it. 

I will now show you how to make the best guacamole on Earth. You'll be put off all other guacamoles permanently. Every other guacamole you taste hereafter will be gauged against this one and they will all be found wanting. FACT ! And this is the problem. After you produce this guacamole you will be stuck producing it for the remainder of your days. So we proceed with this caveat understood. 

Avocados are dull, oily, one-dimensional, and boring. They need a lot of help. So we will acidify them with tomato and further citrus-ify them with lime, provide them the kick of jalapeño heat, sting them with allium, season them all over, herb them right up. 

We will not stretch them with sour cream, we will not add cheese, what?, do you think we're insane? 

1) The quantity is irrelevant. Here is the main thing to know that is counterintuitive: 50% ripe avocado to 50% ripe tomato by approximate weight or mass. That seems like a lot of tomato, but it is not. Resist the urge to skimp on tomato. One avocado then one tomato, approximately equal by weight. Here, five ripe avocados, so five nice large ripe tomatoes. 

Or perhaps one ripe avocado and two Roma tomatoes. You have the idea.

2) The tomato is chopped finely and squeezed of its liquid. If you hate wasting all that tomato juice, then drink it. So now you have a pile of damp but not wet tomato bits approximately equal to the amount of avocado. See how I keep saying that? I know you'll be tempted to use more avocado than tomato so I'm drilling it in. We're going for the best on Earth here, not what you think would be an improvement to suit your own biases and impulses. This cannot be improved. Respect mah authoritah! 

Squeezing all that tomato takes a long time. Wears me out. 

Tomato juice pressed from tomatoes ↑. Bloody Mary from the tomato juice ↓.

3) Thinly slice a white onion. Stack the slices and bisect them. Cut along the stack as if the knife is the radius to the stacked onion half-rings. This technique gives you perfect size control. Reserve the pile of diced onions for last so that you can judge the amount of oniony-ness you intend to impart. If the onions are strong then of course use less. If the onions are sweet then go ahead and use more. 

Do not worry about wasting diced onions, the greater sin is over-onion-ifying your guacamole. At the end, when you drizzle the diced onion bits over the avocado / tomato mixture, determining as you go how much onion goes with your pile, be ready to stop and willing to discard the excess. I'm trying to say, do not feel compelled to add all the onion you diced in advance just because you diced it. The reason why onions are diced first but added last is because avocado tends to oxidize, and you don't want squished avocado sitting there while you dice onions. 

Note: crushed garlic is a very good additional option. That would give the mixture two alliums and bulge the flavor profile in that direction, but be careful if you do. The aim of garlic would be to enhance the allium depth, not to impart a distinctly identifiable raw garlic taste. Roasted garlic would be deep and sweet and more subtle. 

4) Precut fresh jalapeño and dice it finely, more finely than the tomato and more finely than the onion. This obviously is the heat component to your guacamole. The heat is more important than the fresh jalapeño. If you are fresh jalapeño averse, then tinned diced jalapeño works as well for heat although they're vinegary. If for some reason you are jalapeño-less then anything with heat will work; bottled red salsa, powdered cayenne, dry pepper flakes. Just get something hot into the guacamole. It is critical that the mixture has in it something that is hot. This gives the mixture BANG!, a kick. 

With all chiles, the flavor that is unique to each species is in the outer flesh and the capsaicin heat is in the inner membrane that holds the seeds. The seeds stripped of all membrane are completely without heat. All the dark green jalapeño can be added without fear of overheating the guacamole. The heat is controlled by controlling the membrane, separated here and stripped of all seeds. You never see this, do you? Usually people just chop them all up and throw them in. But we don't do that, oh no, we're different, we're using our mad skillz and steering precisely this guacamole toward perfection.

5) Cut open, de-pit, and scoop the avocado into a bowl. Squish the chunks with your hands through your fingers. It makes a huge mess of your hands. This is unavoidable. Do not process the avocado by machine to avoid squishing with your hands. Do not use a fork. Forget about smashing it with a molcajete. I'm telling you, clean your hands thoroughly or wear plastic gloves and then get in there with your hands and judge by feel how far to go with your squishing. The aim is to produce a mushy mixture that is still loaded with lumps. This can only be done by feel. I must insist on this. Here is where everybody else fails. They try to get out of squishing avocado through their fingers and the result is a guacamole with a homogenous texture. You do not want that. Squish and squish and squish until it's about 50% squished and 50% lumps, then use a spoon to scrape off your hands and fingers. Plus you wouldn't want to miss the fun of having a squishy mess.

Have you ever been shown how to de-pit an avocado? Fold a kitchen towel in one hand, in case you're a spaz, and nestle an avocado half that has a seed, seed-side up. With the other hand use a chef's knife to carefully but forcefully sharply whack the seed a good one. 

Twist the knife and the seed pops right out. Remove the seed from the knife by approaching the blade from the blunt side of the knife avoiding the dangerous side and apply pressure to the seed. Or for fun, aim the knife with the pit stuck on it pit forward toward the trash bin. Forcefully jerk the knife in the direction of the bin then abruptly stop in midair so that momentum flings the pit off the knife and into the bin. Or against the wall. Or at the pet cat's head. Or into the aquarium. The pit doesn't always go where you aim it on the first try. Maybe we had just stop playing around, this knife is sharp. 

Combined but pre-squished ↓. You can see that the ratio of tomato to avocado is ... what? 

50% - 50% ! 

This looks lumpy, ↓ insufficiently creamy, but there is still more mixing to do as ingredients are added and taste-tested so the mixture will become more creamy as we go along. 

6) Combine the tomato and avocado if you haven't already. Assess the amount you have there. Sprinkle onion into the pile using your God-given onion-judgement which is unique to each situation. Do the same with the jalapeño or whatever it is you are using to add heat to your mixture. I tend to go heavy on the heat factor because that is what I like and I know not everybody does and I am trying to discourage those heatophobes from ever asking me to bring guacamole. Is that mean? 

This is the amount of diced onion and diced jalapeño ↑ before adding it to the mixture. This is the surplus ↓ that was wasted. Yes, I know it can be wrapped and reserved for something later, but I'm busy over here right now and I cannot be arsed with insignificant details. See how the heat was controlled by reserving half the diced chile membrane? 

7) Squeeze lime over the mixture and stir it all in. This is where the mixture is acidified further with the distinct taste of citrus. You have to use your judgement again. Taste-test the mixture at this point while you squeeze lime in increments. I cannot say 1 lime per avocado because each lime is different. I cannot even say 1 tablespoon lime juice per avocado because I do not know how acid the tomatoes are that you began with. 

I've used lemon before, I've even used vinegar. Lime is the best. (Laura Bush uses lemon and brought down upon herself the full wrath of guacamole purists across the whole country.)

Once I went to a party where the hostess who I didn't know very well pulled me to the side for consultation. My girlfriend told her, if anyone, then I could fix her guacamole for her. I tasted it. It was awful. Too much lime by about 400%. How could anyone error so egregiously? Probably used lime juice in a bottle. The only way to fix it would be to discard half the guacamole and quadruple every other ingredient. Adding baking soda would react with the acid and neutralize the mixture but it would not rid the mixture of the excessive lime taste. Ha ha ha. Fail. 

For this mixture I added three lime halves. Taste-tested. Determined the mixture could use another lime half. So two whole limes. Another lime in this mixture would still be acceptable but a bit puckery. 

So there you have the basis of ordinary guacamole minus the salt and pepper to your own taste. The mixture is characterized by lumpy smoothness of dull avocado, punctuated with red tomato that is slightly acidic lending its tomatoey brightness, emboldened with the bite of onion, fired up with capsaicin heat of any sort, lovingly citrus-ified with lime. Salted. Peppered. This would be the pinnacle of guacamole that is known to restaurants across the land. And ah pity da foo who don't know anything better. 

Ours is more excellent than that.

So now for the little touches that push this over the top and right over the edge to take flight upward, as a hang glider is lifted by steady thermals, into the wondrous etherial wild blue rarified heights and broad unexplored guacamole horizons. <--- A bit of hyperbole there. It's actually well-known and thoroughly documented. 

* ground cumin

* ground coriander

* leaf cilantro

Cumin and coriander together are the flavors of Mexico in my mind. Open the jars and sniff them and know this for yourself. You'll be instantly transported to Mexico. Adding these two powders to your guacamole will Mexican-ify it utterly, in my view. You never see this out in the world at large. Why not? Why would you not think of adding typically Mexican spices to a Mexican dish? It all seems so obvious, and yet nobody does it. 

Cilantro is a fiercely aromatic herb. More aromatic even than most basils which aren't a bad substitute. It's the leafy portion of the same plant that produces coriander seed. Americans distinguish between the two forms with different names, but other English-speaking countries refer to both as coriander. It has been scientifically demonstrated that many people, a large percentage, cannot tolerate cilantro. Truly. One whiff of cilantro ruins the experience for these poor unfortunates. I don't care about them. This guacamole is not made to please everybody. If you cannot tolerate cilantro, then sorry, this is not for you. If you do not like capsaicin heat, then piss off. This guacamole is for guacamole lovers and everything else is substandard. 

And that is why I am tasked to make this so much. Frankly, I'm over it. When the subject came up on the phone in that moment I really hoped I was being asked to bring mango salsa which is A LOT brighter and tastier than guacamole, but nOOooooooOOOoo I'm dragged back to the old world of this green lumpy sludge, and that is the tribute paid to Excellence. 

Post script. 

Okay. I am back now from the party. The place was packed. Everybody was admirably well-behaved and gracious. The birthday person completely freaked out about the pop-up card I presented and went around showing it to everybody who then questioned me about it although I never saw it again after presenting it.

I am not exaggerating here, I told you a billion times I never do that, at least twenty people came up to me and said, "So you made the guacamole. I can't keep off of it. It's delicious. It's the best I've ever had." Then I would say, "Thank you very much for saying that, most kind of you, Tostitos Breath." They would cover their mouth self-consciously and any further discussion of guacamole was abruptly aborted. 

I'm not bragging, I'm complaining. See how this situation happens? The host told all these people that I agreed to bring the guacamole and now they're going to feel free to task me too. I directed them to this site but none of them even asked me for the name of this place so I know for certain they have no intention of learning for themselves. And this is what is going to happen to you.

Strangely, another whole day went by without eating anything at all except for the few taste-tests of this guacamole. There was nothing that caused this, it just happened that way. Even at the party where food was all around to graze. At leaving I asked the host to have the helpers there prepare a take-home package for me so that I wouldn't starve and they graciously complied so little sandwiches are what I'm having now early in the morning.