Chile omelet

This is a long photo essay for a very simple omelet. The idea arose from those chiles down there ↓. I have about 10 x this much shown on the plate. I opened two cans of these chiles for the tamales prepared previously where one can was surplus. It was a mistake and now I must live with it. Or I must waste the chiles, and if that is not a crime against humanity, it is at least a shame to food-conservation. The chiles appear to be of the mild New Mexican type. They are delicious but with virtually no capsaicin heat. Therefore the heat quotient of the omelet is enhanced by the addition of habanero flakes in an amount small enough so that they will not blast the face off the diner, that would be myself, as with a flame thrower. 

I have been making omelets for as long as I could hold a pan. I never order them out because the silly chefs can never do them as well as I can do myself. No brag, just FACT. They irritate me with their dalliance and their dawdling. If I was their head chef, I'd go all Gordon Ramsey on their asses, if you know what I mean, and I think you do. Anyway, I still do not know what to do with the rest of all those chiles. 

But I am hungry. And I am hungry for protein. So I will have it in two types, three, counting the omelet. 

Mixed meat patty ↑ formed earlier in bulk and frozen; beef, lamb, and pork, ground at home because there are laws forbidding such mixing of meats, intended to protect us, I suppose. Cooked gently and quickly in a frying pan.

Tofu soaking in a marinade ↓ I invented myself from a combination of my favorite things that I discovered go well together. I forgot to add garlic and ginger. No matter. It is delicious without it and it gives me something to look forward to later on. After marinading long enough to affect the tofu, a scant level teaspoon of corn starch was whisked into the liquid so that it would thicken as it heated.

Purdy, innit  ↑.

But I must get on now with preparing a mise en place for the omelet, for they happen quickly and eggs wait for no chef. Shut up, I'm pretending to be a chef over here. 

Asadero is a Oaxacan cheese. Oaxaca (Wa-ha-ka) is a state in Mexico. Asadero means 'roasting'. It is a meltable stretching cheese. It is more delicious than you might think. 

The tomato is for the tofu, to help it be more interesting. The meat patty is already interesting because it is made of three types of meat combined. Still, it gets some cheese and it benefits from the sauce. 

You will notice this plate to be inspired by the French, although their omelets are usually plain and not stuffed as we tend to do here, by Mexico, with their reliance on chiles, and by Japan, with its unique ingredients; sake, mirin, fermented anchovy fish sauce, shoyu, and tofu. 

Everything is ready. Observe: a master in his own mind at work. In my impetuous youth, I used to make omelets in mere seconds over high heat. I destroyed countless pans this way, or possibly three pans, and I considered that part of the deal with making omelets. I shook the pan violently to dislodge the curd and build it up toward the center. I put on quite a show, for I was nothing if not a showman. I am certain that whoever chanced to see me was impressed. 

But now I use low heat and treat the eggs gently and with kindness, as one would handle a baby chick, if that egg ever had a chance to get fertilized and develop into a chick. Oh no, now I'm getting sad again. Hold on. 

Back. 

So we have low heat. The egg begins to set around the edges. 

The egg curd is pushed toward the center and lifted so that liquid egg flows into the vacated areas. 

The process is repeated until liquid egg no longer flows. The pan can be removed from the heat entirely while the egg is still partially liquid. 

You can build it up quite high this way if you wanted to, then even fold it on top of itself for a stack of folds, if you care to be ridiculous about it, as I sometimes do just for fun. 

Okay, here is the thing. Do not attempt to fold the egg as you would a burrito. Unless, of course, you actually do have a tortilla under there, then by all means, carry on with your burrito. But an omelet can be started with a partial fold or a turn, and the whole pan tip out the omelet to complete the fold on the plate. 

Now, that ↑ is an expertly formed and turned out omelet that is stuffed to maximum in the American style. Try doing that and photographing it at the same time. I dare you. 

Chocolate, gift boxes

These are not things wot I made then ate, OK FINE!, I did eat two or three possibly ten of these little candies, rather they are things wot I made then give away. I give them to waiters, waitresses, hair stylists, building service people, delivery people, visitors, everybody. I leave them as tokens of appreciation for the hosts of parties I go to, along with wine or what have you. 

I recently ran out of these little boxes and that is intolerable because I am now somewhat known for them and it is somewhat expected of me to always have them. At least that is what I am imagining is expected. In truth it is possible that nobody gives a crap one way or the other. The reason I ran out is not for lack of chocolate, I have about twenty pounds of that, possibly more, but because making the little boxes is a pain in the butt. The boxes must be printed and that means coaxing one of the printers to cooperate. Then hand cutting the patterns, scoring them, folding and trimming  and gluing them. 

I learned over time that women like these tiny boxes and tend to save them, but men are generally indifferent. I've had boxes returned for refills.

The chocolate is excellent but I am not sure all that many people appreciate the difference between the Venezuelan single source and more easily assessable French blended at half the cost shown below. Generally, Americans grow up on milk chocolate so dark chocolate is sometimes regarded as too intense for them, like diluted coffee is to espresso, or white bread is to wheat, or American lagers are to ordinary regular beer found anywhere else on Earth throughout time that isn't watery swill. But I digress.  And all of that is changing right before my eyes. I am actually surprised how many real chocolate elitists there are out there, and that fills my heart with glee.

These are the tiny ankh pull tabs. The pattern is Egyptian hieroglyphics. When one thinks of chocolate the first association one makes is Egypt, no? Chocolate being a New World thing would have been unknown to ancient Egyptians and chocolate candy would have melted, of course. Egyptians did have carob. There is even a word for it:

It's called nḏm. The ḏ part denotes a dj sound. The little picture is a carob seed pod. We pretend the word sounds like nedjem. It is an ideogram for types of tree and for sweet. 

Anyway, the pull tabs are ankhs as everybody knows means life. Even though one almost never sees in ancient art an ankh all by itself like this, it is usually combined with a 'djed' and a 'was,' often all piled up on each other into one sign meaning 'life, stability, dominion,' kind of like Spock saying , "live long and prosper," and may your back be kept straight.

Couverture chocolate. It is what we chocolatier-types buy in bulk for the production of candy. 

Usually couverture is marketed in the form of discs but this brand is not. It is very inconvenient to have to chop it up because the pieces go flying across the room. It is the reason why I had no idea how good this chocolate is compared with the others. 

Why temper? Chocolate is tempered to strengthen the candy and to stabilize it molecularly. It provides the final product with an attractive sheen and a snap when it is broken.

What is tempering? Tempering is organizing molecules by the use of temperature. Exactly like steel, and I mean EXACTLY like steel, except different. Chocolate is a complex amalgam of molecules including various forms of a fat. It seems odd to read, say, "the melting point of chocolate is 84℉ - 87℉. Ha. That kills me. See? That is not a point, that is a range. A precise temperature is a point. In fact, each precise temperature point is actually a set of more precise points. You know, like body temperature stated as a fraction of a temperature point, 98.6℉.  Everything you ever read about chocolate states a range as a point. The reason why temperature points of chocolate are always stated as a range is because the various constituent molecules all have their own point. 

Perhaps an analogy would be useful. Consider the molecules of chocolate fat to be a bunch of chairs being handled by convention caterers. Raising the temperature a mere 10˚above body temperature enervates the chair handlers and causes them to relax and spread out. Then lowering the temperature a mere 10˚ below body temperature excites the chair handlers into activity of stacking the chairs for storage. But there are Eames chairs, Saarinen chairs, Mies Van der Rohe chairs, Adirondack chairs, folding chairs, wooden chairs, and metal chairs. They do not stack perfectly and the storage closet is a mess even though the chair handlers did their best to stack them, just as crystals form in line one upon another as the crystal formation progresses. So then the temperature is raised again to relax the frenetic organizing, but not as much as the first time and some of the mis-stacked chairs fall out of line and become available for improved positioning as the temperature drops again naturally without mechanical effort of tempering. 

This analogy isn't working out very well.  Come to think about it, chocolate crystalizing is nothing at all like stacking chairs. Forget about chairs.

This tempering machine can melt the chocolate first, then take the chocolate directly to the precise temperature deemed perfect to stabilize any type of chocolate, white, milk, or dark. It can go straight to the temperature to the tenth of a degree. But I do not trust it. I use the go up to melt, then go down beyond the target temperature, then come back up to target temperature, which oddly, the manufacturer calls the 'two temperature method.'  

The instructions printed directly onto the machine do not make clear that the machine is melting the chocolate first and not counting that in the number of steps. It also says to put the chocolate behind the barrier. The barrier is at a diagonal so it is not clear which side is behind. When it says to drop in the seed, is it dropped in the empty side to smear the bowl or dropped in the full chocolate side to become immersed and then pulled back out a dripping mess? It's another of those things like 'husked' VS 'unhusked' that has me completely stopped and confounded. 

Have you noticed how butter holds its shape at room temperature even though it is very soft? A few more degrees and it becomes liquid. Butter is simply chilled, not tempered, because its fat is a single molecule type. Chilled, its molecules are organized into a stable crystalline structure. The soft phase between solid and liquid is important to bakers. It can be in the shape of a stick of butter or it can be whipped to a light creamy foam with sugar.  Chocolate behaves similarly. Tempered chocolate will hold its shape right to the point of near liquid. A mere touch causes it to collapse. 

Untempered chocolate tends to bloom while still solid, that is, its fat molecules migrate disorganized to the surface, still useable and still good, but  leaving an unpleasant mouth-feel. And that is why good tempering is important to candy makers. 

The temperature is taken to 108℉, then down to 85℉, then back up to 94℉.  Chocolate liquifies at just below body temperature. That's why it feels so amazing in your mouth as it disorganizes from solid to soft to liquid.  You will notice the final working temperature of chocolate is below the melting point, not above it. How can this be? Well, hardened chocolate is not like frozen water. Water is more like a single type of molecule, and as already noted, chocolate is more complex than that. If  that explanation is difficult to accept then try this: because I said so.  

At 85℉ the machine signals the operator to drop a piece of "seed" chocolate into the cleared half of the bowl. Basically, this shows or it suggests to the melted portion how to organize its crystals. Otherwise it would organize into a bunch of poorly stacked chairs. Oh wait, we're not talking about chairs anymore.  

This machine works as a hair-dryer blowing directly onto a bowl, and that should give you an idea how you might temper without a machine and without using water baths.  First heat is blown on the bowl to gently raise the temperature, then unheated air is blown onto the bowl to lower the temperature, then the heat is turned on again. It's virtue is the precision in monitoring the temperature of the melted chocolate.  It is very reliable. 

This same thing can be done more quickly using hot and cold water baths. I have used water baths many times, but it is more difficult to monitor the temperature while stirring. The insta-read thermometer I use must be held in one hand while stirring with the other and water must not get into the chocolate or it will seize. Plus the result is less certain. 

To my distress, I've had portions of my water bath tempered chocolate come out of temper during storage and then the whole packaged batch then needed to be checked before it was presented which meant unwrapping each little candy to check for bloom. 

I find the marble method too big a mess for myself. Eventually, the entire kitchen becomes covered with chocolate smears, not just the marble, the bench scrapper, the bowl and the spoons, but every towel and table and appliance too. I am such a klutz. Plus, it takes a feel for how the chocolate is behaving by its viscosity that I have not developed. 

I made these silicone molds ↓ because I couldn't find what I wanted and I looked at thousands of chocolate molds. Now someone does make hieroglyphic candy molds and sells them on eBay, and they're good looking molds too, but they are too large for my purpose and I already made these years before those appeared. Plus, it's like one mold for one glyph and not one mold for a set of glyphs like ordinary chocolate molds. It would take forever to crank out a batch like this. 

Here's how I made these molds. I poured a sheet of plaster about 1/2 inch thick, drew the glyphs, then carved away the background using dental tools. Then I made a reverse mold, one for each glyph, using food-safe silicone. Then I poured new plaster into each mold to produce a set of positive glyphs.  

I poured plaster into regular chocolate mint molds, square and round. Then I glued the plaster glyphs onto the plaster square and round mint shapes. I produced sets of eight for each glyph. 

Then I fashioned frames for the sets using plastic edging I bought in lengths at Home Depot. Cut the lengths and hot-glued them together into rectangular frames. Arranged the sets of mint-glyphs inside the frames and poured liquid food-grade silicone over the positive molds to create a reverse silicone mold for sets of glyphs. Each mold contains eight negatives of any given glyph. 

I had no idea what I was doing. It was all an experiment. I produced two full sets (of sets) of negative silicone molds, the first set using a slow drying silicone, and the second set using a faster drying silicone. The first set (yellow) is quite ugly and lumpy and poorly executed, the second full set (orange) is better but not perfect. I have been using both full sets ever since and the whole time I still think I could do a lot better were I to do it again. But now I am burned out on the whole business so I just stick with what I have and live with it. 

This chocolate tempering works better in cold weather because I can put the trays holding the molds outside on the patio instead of clearing space in the refrigerator. This is the fun part. One teaspoon of melted tempered chocolate goes into each depression in a mold. 

These are the paper wrappers for the candy ↓. There is a thin paper between each foil. So each paper is double. They are difficult to separate. I have a boat-load of these packages. Enough to last a few years. 

The candy is wrapped in batches so that the chocolate does not have time to drop out of temper, I mean rise out of temper. The rest is still outside keeping cold. As they are finished they're transferred to the refrigerator in a bowl and then boxed. The boxes are returned to the refrigerator and from there distributed as the need arises. 

Eggs in a nest in a tree

Poached eggs that is, in a nest of sweet onion and sweet bell pepper and rough-textured spaghetti, and a tree of Black Forest ham.  What can I say? The lad in me is still very alive and will not be shut up, so things like this happen. The leaves on the tree are basil, the nest is loosely held together with Asiago. 

The tree was almost a bacon tree, but the bacon is packaged and frozen and the sandwich ham was right there, so this is a sandwich ham tree. I'm lazy that way. 

Now here is the thing: the regulating adult in me allowed a splash of sake, which is a very strange ingredient indeed, but I tell you what, although it might be horrible on its own, especially the first sip, sake changes everything it touches in small amount. As you know, a dressing = oil + acid, so in those terms this nest is dressed with olive oil and butter, the pan that the vegetables were heated was steamed up at the end with water and sake leaving behind a trace of dressing, and it is a dressing that you would not imagine were your culinarily wandering not perverse. You are probably thinking, "Ho! wine and sake is alkaline, not acid," and that is right, and that is the reason why this thought is perverse. When regular wine oxidises it does turn acidic, and the sweeter the sake to begin with, the less alkaline it is. Chemistries! It is an odd pH thing happening that tends to linger on the tongue. At least I think that is the thing that is lingering, I could be wrong. At any rate, this sake idea is a win. On your next run to the bottle shop pick up some sake, even an inexpensive one, and it will alter your culinary experience permanently. It is convenient too, because once opened it can stay there on the countertop without deterioration until it is finally all used. Presently I am only on my second bottle, but already I have determined to never be without it. (Marsala is the second like substance not to be without, but that is best kept refrigerated.) 

At serving, the egg yolks broken open over the lightly dressed nest produces a kind of a sauce akin to carbonara. On the other hand, it also results in an unsightly mess on the plate, but then doesn't everything? 

To poach, the eggs were broken into a ramekin one at a time and gently tipped into barely simmering water that contained a generous dose of cider vinegar and salt. It is interesting and a little bit funny to watch the egg albumen start to spread throughout the water and then tighten up back into a compact mass surrounding the yolk. It is like the egg is recoiling in horror, "eeew, get me out of here, I hate this water."  Still, the albumen is a bit of a mess. The egg can be lifted out of the water, concentrating on preserving an unbroken yolk, with a slotted spoon or with a  large regular spoon, as these were lifted. Then trimmed around the edge of the spoon with an ordinary dinning knife. The eggs can be carried to a receiving bowl with warm water to halt the cooking process but still kept at temperature until serving. This is handy thing to know if you intend to prepare a large number of poached eggs in advance. Win the admiration of your peers by producing twenty plates of eggs Hollandaise all at once! Now you might be thinking that dripping wet eggs sounds unappetizing, but there is no problem with that even if you were to serve them on toast. 

I was going for a different cheese, but reaching into the cheese drawer, my fingertips touched this one first, and I thought, "Eh, what the heck." 

Tamales

Tamales can be anything; beef, chicken, pork, lamb, ostrich, iguana, howler monkey, prairie dog. Okay, maybe not so much those last four. All the tamales I made previously were chicken, and these initially were going to be chicken too but I changed that idea when I opened the freezer and saw a gigantic pork roast sitting there on the bottom, all forlorn and neglected. I thought the roast had a bone in it, and I wish it did have one because that could have contributed mightily to the flavor of the broth. Alas, no bone. It must have been one of those fancy-pants up town roasts. Whatever, it worked. 

My largest pot is too small so the meat was seared in two batches. This is half. 

Water is added plus a bunch of Mexican type spices. Mexican oregano, whole cumin seed, whole coriander seed, whole black peppercorn, bay leaf, sea salt. I held back with the intention of tasting later and supplementing if necessary but additions were not necessary. See? Now that there is what you call maturity! I no longer go dumping everything I think will work until at last I succeed in totally overdoing it. 

These are all old chiles I had in a box. The red ones are marked "hot" but they are so old I suspect some of their intensity is lost to the atmosphere. There are five different types, all with different flavors and heat intensities. They were not tortured in a skillet as usual to activate their oils but rather just dumped into the water to cook with the pork for hours, along with an onion, quartered, and three large cloves of garlic, smashed to activate its sulfides. I also added a small bag of sun-dried tomatoes. Seeds rattling around everywhere. That explains why there are so many chiles around here, there are seeds all over the place. I can't get rid of them all. I think Mexican people just give up and leave a lot of the seed in there. It's making me neurotic. 

The pork is cooked in seasoned water with chiles for hours. The liquid is allowed to cool with the pork still in it. If the pork is removed while still hot, it tends to dry out. So it cools in the liquid and is then pulled apart. This exposes more surface area, and the fibers act as mop that absorbs more liquid than it could otherwise hold. 

The liquid is processed separately into a smooth sauce. The sauce is taste-tested to see if it needs correction. It was different than I expected, and I did expect to adjust with more chiles in powder and flake forms, but I decided I did like the flavor a lot. It is mild and sweet and with lovely and appealing expanded chile dimensions, but virtually no heat. It would appeal to anybody, I think, even children. I do not understand where this chile sweetness comes from. I did not add any sweetener. 

Processed liquid is added back to the pork, as much as it will take. I want the tamales to be moist.

It is unusual to roll tamales with strips of chiles, but that is what I am doing with this batch. I could have just as easily bought a can of diced chiles and added them directly to the pulled pork, but I wanted each tamale to have a strip of chile as a surprise. These are mild. 

Masa harina is same thing that corn tortillas are made of. It is corn meal treated with an alkali. This treatment that the corn undergoes with slacked lime (the chemical, not the fruit) loosens the outer husk of the corn and softens the interior making niacin available along with contributing calcium. Masa harina is a fine powder that readily re-mixes with water or any other liquid, here, some of the pork sauce, and water, along with butter because I didn't have any lard. Yes, LARD. I would have used it if I had any, and I thought I did. I was unwilling to go back to the store just to get lard, but it is an authentic ingredient. Can you imagine -- butter substituting for lard? 

I saw Bobby Flay make these, or something like them, on Iron Chefs, using regular corn meal. At that moment I thought, "Oh, no. That's 100% wrong." The judge, Jeffrey Steingarten, bless him, picked up on it too and questioned Flay incredulously. Flay bullshitted his way through the questioning like a badass know-it-all, "Yeah, they use some kind of mix, but sometimes I like to use regular corn meal for its flavor." but it was clear he did not fully appreciate the joy and superiority of Masa harina and its contribution to Latin cuisine, much less its nutritional value compared to ordinary corn meal. Further, the process of treating grain with alkali is called nixtamalization, thus tamal, so wrapping a corn husk around a filling smothered in  corn meal does not make a tamal without the nixtamalization. It would be simply polentization, or more prosaically, gritsifcation.  Man, something is wrong with this spellcheck thing, it's suddenly putting red lines under everything. 

This masa (dough) is pink because the pork sauce added to it is red.

Corn husks can be found at any grocery store here in the West and the Southwest. If you cannot find them, you can probably use banana leaves, but it will not be the same, and that's a shame. Some pages online say to soak the husks overnight. That is probably a good idea. I soaked mine for a few hours. They are always a little stiff. They are also irregular. Some work better for wrapping than others. 

Hahaha, concha ↑ means shell.

There is nothing worse than a tamale that's all masa. Wet masa in this application equates to a wet tortilla. You wouldn't serve a tablespoon of filling on three corn tortillas, so the same idea applies with tamales. A very thin layer is applied to the wet husk.

Surprise! Chile. Now, who wouldn't be filled with glee and wonder to find a chile tucked inside their tamale? Nobody, that's who. 

Most tamale cooks fold their tamales and leave one end open. I must admit that is an attractive idea. But I will be freezing most of these so they must be closed. At least I think they must be closed. So mine get tied with a strip of husk. Very Asian looking, don't you think?

Check 'em out, Checkemouters -- a veritable wall of tamales.

Steamed for twenty minutes in two batches. My pot is too small to hold them all.