Restaurant Style Salsa

Ever since finding this recipe ratio on the internet, it has been my go-to quick salsa for chips, nachos, tacos, and potlucks. It is so easy to prepare (with a food processor) that I have canned fewer jars of salsa this year; only a half batch of hatch chile salsa. But, this recipe doesn't require hatch chiles at all. I usually use one bunch of cilantro, leafy green parts only; and this is significantly more volume than the half cup the recipe calls for. If you want the cilantro to be finer, roughly chop with a knife before adding to the food processor. 

TheFoodening Blog - Restaurant Style Salsa

Ingredients

Two 14.5 oz cans of roasted diced tomatoes w/ green chiles
1-2 garlic cloves, minced
2 green jalapenos, halved and seeds removed
1/4 tsp organic granulated sugar
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 c fresh cilantro, finely chopped
1/2 lime, juiced

Directions

Pulse together in a the bowl of a food processor with the sharp/serrated blade: all the ingredients.

Refrigerate for an hour before serving to let the flavors mingle together.

Hatch Chile Salsa, Batch #1

This is the second time making it and first time actually committing the ratio to paper.. err digital cookbook journal. The first time was last year and it was delicious. This batch is really the second batch of tomato salsa for this summer.

A note about roasting fresh peppers. I started with 2 lbs fresh hatch chile peppers; but after processing them by roasting, peeling, removing the stem and discarding the seeds, I had 14.25 oz left. And, this is fine.

A common substitution for Hatch chiles is Anaheim,
and after roasting these Hatch chiles I really can't tell the difference.

This summer I've made 3 batches of salsa so far with different ingredient ratios. Batches #1 and #3 are essentially the same; the red chile pepper got swapped with Anaheim chiles in #3.

Batch #1, main heat ingredients - jalapenos (8), red chile pepper (1)
Batch #2, main heat ingredients - hatch chiles (2 lbs)
Batch #3, main heat ingredients - jalapenos (8), Anaheim chiles (5)

TheFoodening Blog - Hatch Chile Salsa

Batch #2 Ingredients

5 lb red tomatoes, roasted and peeled
1 head garlic cloves, roasted, peeled, chopped
4 tbsp fresh lime juice
2 lb (14.25 oz) prepared hatch chile peppers, roasted, peeled, seeded
1/2 bunch of fresh cilantro, stems removed and chopped
1 tbsp kosher salt

Directions

1. In a large stockpot, bring tomatoes, garlic, chile peppers, lime juice, and salt to a boil; then simmer over medium heat to reduce the water content. You want salsa that can stay on a chip, not fall off like a soupy mess.

I let the water boil off for roughly 1.5 hrs; then got bored and used a mesh strainer to get more of the solids out into the jar.

2. Turn off heat and stir in cilantro. 

3. Fill sterilized glass jars and process in a hot water bath for 20 minutes.

Makes 5 pints.

No Knead Pizza Dough

This dough recipe comes from Jim Lahey's book My Pizza. It wasn't until the second ball of dough that I decided to take some pics and write up this recipe post. I am also still lacking basic materials to make pizza; but I have some great workarounds. No pizza stone? No problem. Use the reverse side of a heavy baking sheet as your "stone" surface. It won't take the open flame of the broiler, but that's okay because we're not using the broiler either. Pizza dough is extremely cheap and easy to make.

This batch makes 4 pizzas; each dough ball can be shaped into a 10" round.

No Knead Pizza Dough & a simple pizza

Ingredients

500 grams (by weight) all purpose flour
1/4 tsp active dry yeast
2 tsp fine sea salt
1 1/2 c filtered water

Directions

In a large bowl, whisk together flour, salt, and yeast. Add 1 1/2 cups of water and stir to combine. Cover with a plate and set the bowl in a warm place in the kitchen.

18 hours later....

Dump dough out onto a floured surface. Shape into a large boule and divide into four equal portions. With each ball, flatten the ball with the palm of your hand, then fold each side to the center, one fold at a time. Gather the pleats at the bottom and gently roll into a ball shape. Dump each folded ball into a sealable plastic bag and store in the refrigerator for up to 3 days.

For each pizza, start by putting one of the dough balls onto a floured surface. Use your knuckles to gently stretch out the dough into a 6" to 8". I have not been able to make a circle and the farthest I got was 10" by 8" rectangle.

Top with basic pizza sauce so that the sauce is within 3/4" of the edge of the dough. Add whatever ingredients you want on top.

Tomato Pie

After topping with basic pizza sauce, add fresh oregano leaves. Bake for 15 minutes at 400 F.

Margarita Pizza

2-4 oz fresh mozzarella, divided into blobs and scattered evenly on top of the dough
5 fresh basil leaves, to put on the pizza after it comes out of the oven
(optional) 1/4 c fresh Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, grated

Bake for 15 minutes at 400 F.

At 20 minutes (too long!), the mozz turns from melted to marshmallow burned (dark, crusty golden brown). But, the pizza crust has a crispy texture.

Salsa

Making salsa is neither hard nor time consuming, but having all the necessary ingredients on hand is the troublesome part. There is certainly some spice to it. And, in early autumn, all of these ingredients are in season. The recipe ratio comes from Harold Shifflett's YouTube video.

Makes 10 pints

Lots of salsa for the winter

Ingredients

10 pounds fresh tomatoes, any variety
8 tomatillos
8 jalapenos
4 red chilis
2 green bell peppers
1 bunch fresh cilantro
2 heads of garlic, cloves removed
4 tbsp lime or lemon juice
4 tbsp kosher salt or sea salt (this tastes salty to me, maybe next time start with 3 tbsp)

Directions

1. Prepare ingredients for the food prep:

Wash and core tomatoes. Slice into wedges and set aside.
Wash and de-stem hot peppers (red chilis and jalapenos). Set aside.
Wash and core the bell pepper. Discard seeds. Roughly chop.
Discard the outer hull of the tomatillos. Wash fruit and set aside.
Peel outer layer then roughly chop the onion(s).
Wash cilantro bunch, remove brown leaves and stems. Roughly chop and set aside.
Peel and trim hard end from garlic cloves. Set aside.

2. Work in batches. Toss everything except the salt and lemon juice into a food prep or blender and puree until no big chunks remain.

3. Pour puree into a large stockpot, add 1 tbsp of salt at a time, add lemon or lime juice. Boil for 1.5 hours or until the salsa reaches a proper consistency (not too watery, not too chunky).

4. Process in a hot water canning bath for 10 minutes.

Gazpacho (Chilled Tomato-based Vegetable Soup)

It seems that every time I make a soup for an event it is of a vegetarian flavor. The soup for tomorrow's Soup Sunday event (a fundraiser for a local religious organization) is gazpacho. The recipe ratio comes from Alton Brown's Good Eats show. The only ingredient I am missing is the ground cumin. In my last couple of moves between Portland and Seattle, I'm not sure where most of my spices ended up. It is likely that I tossed the ones that were several years old or it is simply misfiled in a box somewhere. You know you have too many spices when they reside in multiple storage boxes and in the kitchen cupboards. Onto the recipe...

Gazpacho is a raw soup made of vegetables and its main ingredients are tomatoes, water and garlic. At least those main ingredients are in this batch. I doubled most of AB's ingredient quantities and didn't substitute the cumin with anything. I also added pineapple chunks to this (and drank the juice it came in 'cause I was thirsty). I also omitted the onions because I hate onions. Hopefully the soup will taste fine in the morning after the flavors have mingled together.

Ingredients

1 1/2 lbs ripe tomatoes, peeled, seeded and diced
Two 14 oz cans organic diced tomatoes
2 large red bell peppers, diced
2 large cucumbers, peeled, seeded and diced
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 medium jalapeno, seeded and diced
1/4 c EVOO
2 small limes, juiced
2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
2 tsp rice wine vinegar
1 tsp sea salt
1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper

Directions

Combine all ingredients into a large bowl. Mix well. Remove 1 1/2 c of the diced ingredients and puree for 15 seconds in a food processor. Return to soup and stir in. Chill for at least an hour or overnight before serving.

Notes

AB's recipe calls for tomato juice. I didn't have any so I used the juice from the canned tomatoes and pressed the tomatoes in the can until no more juice came out. Between the fresh and canned tomatoes I think it was almost two cups of liquid. The leftover canned tomatoes were added to the puree.

Roasted Fennel and Tomato

One bulb is not enough for more than one person and the while some of the more thinly cut slices were charred instead of caramelizing, it still tasted pretty decent for a side dish. It is sad to see that our state considers this plant to be a noxious weed and prefers to use herbicide to eradicate common fennel than to allow people to harvest it for free. Seriously, all public lands management would need to do is post an alert saying that there's a free vegetable that people can harvest and it would all be picked; of course that would also encourage visitors to pick all the other native plants that managed land and state parks have.

Ingredients

One (or more) fennel bulbs, washed and cored
2 garlic cloves, minced
3 tbsp olive oil + more if needed, for roasting
handful of whole grape or cherry tomatoes
1 tsp kosher salt
1 tsp organic sugar
1 tbsp lemon juice

Directions

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.

1. Slice fennel bulb(s) in half and take out the core. Thinly slice the bulb as you would celery or any root vegetable.

2. Toss fennel with garlic, salt, sugar, lemon juice, tomatoes, and olive oil.

3. Arrange fennel in a glass baking dish (I used a 9" x 13") and bake for 30 minutes. Check the oven after 15 minutes and stir the vegetables around.

4. Remove from heat and serve on a plate, as a condiment or side dish for another entree.

Pizza Margherita

No pizza stones were harmed in the making of these pizzas. But, the real reason is that I don't actually own a pizza stone. And while the notion of using the reverse side of my cast iron pan had crossed my mind, I ended up using a heavy baking sheet with parchment paper and a medium-ground cornmeal between the paper and the dough. I've read that one can get an extra crispy crust this way by letting the pizza bake on the middle rack in the oven, directly on the rack itself, for the last 2-3 minutes. Alas, I'm too lazy for that.

These recipes have been adapted from one of Emeril's episodes on pizza with minor tweaks. Number one, I wasn't about to crack open a bottle of cab just to put a few tablespoons of it into the sauce; I used the next best thing on the counter...shaoxing rice wine (Chinese red rice wine). If you are able to ingest onions, they go into oil at the same time as the garlic. As far as whatever differences there are between EVOO and regular olive oil, I really have no idea, but since it all costs the same, my pantry is stocked with EVOO. Also, a lot of my recipes call for sea salt. For pizza you can use just about any type of salt, including kosher salt.

Margherita pizza implies only three toppings that represent the Italian flag are used: tomato sauce (red), fresh basil (green), and fresh mozzarella cheese (white). You'll want to procure some fresh mozzarella cheese for this and slice it into thin rounds. They are just going to melt into blobs on top of the pizza, so whatever shape you do cut them into, that is what they are more or less going to melt into.

If you are going to use a pizza stone, it is important that you let the stone heat up in the oven so that your dough cooks evenly.

1/4 c. medium-ground cornmeal (optional)
up to 8 oz of fresh mozzarella cheese

Basic Tomato Sauce

One (14.5 oz) can of diced tomatoes, no salt added
1/2 c. water (use it in the can to rinse out the tomato particulates)
2-3 tbsp red wine (or xiaoxing red rice wine)
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 tbsp minced garlic (roughly 3-4 medium cloves)
up to 1 tbsp dried oregano (or fresh if you have it)
6 fresh basil leaves, coarsely chopped
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
1 small red onion, finely diced (optional)

Sauce directions

1. In a medium pot, heat oil until it spreads along the bottom of the pot easily. Add the garlic (and onion) and stir until the onion is soft and translucent and the garlic hasn't burned or turned golden brown. The idea is to flavor the oil, I think.

2. Add the tomatoes, basil leaves, wine, oregano, salt and pepper, and water. Bring it to a boil and then simmer for 20-25 minutes.

3. Let the sauce cool before putting it on the pizza dough.

Pizza Dough

This dough uses all-purpose flour which creates a much chewier crust than say, using a high gluten flour. You could also buy gluten to add to the all purpose flour, but that's an extra step and who really wants to run to Whole Foods for just one ingredient. Also, a 4-oz jar of Red Star active dry yeast lasts a lot longer than the packets when kept in the refrigerator.

Ingredients

3 1/2 to 4 c. all-purpose unbleached flour 
1 1/2 c. water, 110 degrees F
2 tbsp EVOO, plus 2 tsp for greasing a large bowl
1 envelope instant dry yeast -or- 2 1/4 tsp active dry yeast (if you have the jar stuff)
1 tsp organic granulated sugar
1 tsp sea salt

Dough directions

1. Combine flour, sugar, yeast, olive oil, and salt in the bowl of a stand mixer or in the bread receptacle of a bread machine. While the mixer is running, gradually add the water and mix until the dough comes together. Knead by hand (or if you're lazy, in the standmixer) until the dough is smooth and elastic.

2. Grease a large bowl with the remaining 2 tsp of olive oil, form the dough into a ball, and add it to the bowl. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap (or use another equal sized bowl on top, using binder clips to keep the edges of the two bowls together). Let the dough rest in a warm area (roughly 80-85 degrees F) and let it double in size for an hour.

This might be tough to do during the winter. But wait, there is a workaround. Place the covered bowl into the oven on the middle rack. Fill an 8x8 or 9x13 baking pan with boiling water. Put the baking pan on the floor of the oven and close the door. This'll create a warm environment for the dough.

3. Depending on how large a pizza you have baking space to make will determine how many pieces you cut this blob of dough into. I cut it into fourths, so each piece makes about an 8" pizza. You can cut it in half and make two 14" pizzas. After cutting the dough into sections, turn each section as you are about to make it into a pizza, onto a lightly floured surface. Knead it a bit then cover and let the dough rest for 10 minutes.

4. Roll out the dough into a shape that resembles something circular.

Putting It All Together

Preheat oven to 500 degrees F.

1. Take our rolled out pizza dough and spread some of the cooled tomato sauce on it. Be sure to have at least a half inch to an inch gap betwee the edge of the pizza and the sauce. Otherwise, the sauce spills out over the side of the pizza and makes a rather burnt mess.

2. Add thin slices of mozzarella and sprinkle with fresh basil leaves. You could add more dried oregano, but that is totally up to you, since it is already in the sauce. For the first pizza I had the basil on top of the cheese; the second pizza had the cheese on top of the basil. It makes no difference.

3. Bake on the center rack for 8-10 minutes, until the edges are lightly golden brown and the cheese has melted.

The pizza is supposed to cool on a rack, but my first pizza never made it that far. *nom nom nom*

View pics.

Slow roasted roma tomatoes

I'm liking this slow roasting technique a lot. The flavor that comes out from the vegetables is very much like what you'd get at a restaurant so I can see why these foods can command such a menu price.

A 13" x 9" roasting pan doesn't seem like it'd be enough for the tomatoes that are about to be roasted. Most of the romas I halved and put in cut-side-up in the pan. A few of the romas were sliced lengthwise then eighthed, and the rest were cut into slices.

To this, I poured a bit of olive oil on top of the tomatoes then added fresh thyme leaves and garlic cloves.

Preheat oven to 225 degrees F. Bake for 3 hours.

These are intended for sandwiches, for a salad, or eaten as is.

Pesto-Tomato Clams

Clams are my favorite seafood and I rarely hesitate to order it off the menu when they're in season. If I were to be responsible for wiping out a species, it'd be the clam. They're so tasty!!

Pesto:
2 large garlic cloves, crushed
2 oz. Parmigiano-Romano cheese, coarsely grated
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. pepper
3 c. loosely packed basil leaves
1/2 c. virgin olive oil

Food processor: all pesto ingredients, with oil last to blend.

Clams:
2 lbs. littleneck clams
1 c. dry white wine (or 1/2 c. broth and 1/4 c. rice wine)
3 garlic cloves minced
1/4 tsp. crushed red pepper
2-3 red tomatoes, diced
1 c. pesto

1. Bring wine, garlic, and crushed red pepper to boil. Add clams.
2. Cook until clams open. Transfer clams only to 4 large bowls.
3. Stir tomatoes and pesto in pan and bring to a simmer.
4. Ladle pesto broth over clams and serve.