These tacos arrive with the warmer weather and fresh fruit!

This is a post from Karen.  While there are dishes I rely on often, I allow a lot of my menus to be dictated by what is fresh for that season.  This week fresh mango and papaya wandered into my kitchen, bringing with them the memory of yummy light fish tacos we had done the last time they came to visit. Fortunately, I had some fresh-frozen cod in my freezer.  I’ve used sole in the past, but have been wanting to find more ways to work cod into our menu.  In this preparation, working from frozen is nice because after just a little thaw I can slice them more easily into uniform pieces for more even cooking.
I like that this dish doesn’t take long and that the salsa and fish can be prepped a few hours ahead to come together quickly later.  The Peruvian Chile Lime seasoning from Savory Spice is used for both the fish and the salsa.  I also love adding some to my fresh guacamole.  If you don’t have access to that feel free to try your own spice blend!  New for me this time was the Cholula Green Pepper Hot Sauce, thanks to my son who added it to my cart the last time we were at the market.  I have to be careful how often he goes with me, he can be a very enthusiastic shopper, but if I think he is going overboard I just tell him he can have it if he can pay for it…The sauce has quite a kick, and I loved topping my taco with a few shakes from the bottle.  Since jalapeno heat can vary, the amount I put in can adjust as needed.  Today’s batch was pretty mild, I could have safely added a third.

What’s GOOD:  An easy sell to Powell and Vaughan!  Comes together quickly, but if REALLY short on time Salsa can be prepped ahead.  Can substitute other white fish. Could change out tortillas for lettuce cups if still working off those Pandemic Pounds….like I am…

What’s NOT: People who don’t like fish.  erase erase erase, just kidding.  It’s a winner in our house.

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Hi there, I’m Karen.  I have enjoyed being Carolyn’s daughter-in-law for almost 20 years now.  Both sides of our family enjoy getting in the kitchen.  I love the holidays as much for enjoying what everyone brings to the table as I do for how it can bring us all together.  My husband, Powell, and I have one son, Vaughan and you will likely see our Bernese Mountain Dog, Shelby from time to time. (Yes, I have to sweep the Shelby hair out of the kitchen before I start cooking!) As you have seen from Carolyn’s previous entries, we are doing what we can to encourage Vaughan’s confidence in the kitchen too!

In addition to enjoying the kitchen, I teach piano and enjoy reading, camping, fishing, gardening, volunteering on the school district foundation, and a number of winter sports.  I used to do Tae Kwon Do regularly until my body decided I would have some arthritis in my hip.  So….I’ve adjusted my sights.  But I do miss that one!

Customers never saw the lovely backside of this machine. It had to face the wall in Dad’s shop.

So, what is with the picture of the espresso maker?  When Powell and I were getting married, my Dad had just retired from running his coffee business of 13 years.  I was visiting my parents one day, standing in the garage with my dad, who had just asked what I would like for a wedding present.  I looked over at the professional copper espresso maker just sitting in his garage and said – If that is going to just sit in here, I’d love the Espresso Machine!”  My soon-to-be husband thought I was nuts…until a few years later when we had the opportunity to install it and get it back in action.  I can’t say it is practical but it comes with a lot of great memories from my Dad’s store and has helped us create even more as we gather with friends and family.

I look forward to sharing my kitchen exploits with you- recipes coming soon!

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The most succulent corned beef I’ve ever had. Bar none.

On St. Paddy’s Day (actually it was the day before – they were celebrating early), my son and his family invited me to their home for the day and evening. I’d been thinking about having a traditional corned beef dinner, but with being just me-myself-and-I, how could I eat up several pounds of corned beef? Yes, I could freeze some, but I don’t know about you, but I’m never quite so happy with leftovers once they’ve been frozen. So when they invited me, I jumped. A few days ago I shared the recipe for Colcannon that I made for the dinner.

Karen made this braised corned beef that was just off-the-charts. It was the most tasty and tender corned beef I’ve ever had. She bought 5 pounds of corned beef (larger than most grocery store cuts) and there were 4 of us for dinner, and maybe smaller portion leftovers for the 3 of them for another night. If you buy a smaller corned beef, it will still need the same number of hours of braising, you’ll just have less of it. As you no doubt know, corned beef shrinks a lot once cooked.

She’s been using this same recipe for several years, and she says it’s SO easy. She found the recipe at allrecipes.com. What’s different about it? Well, most recipes I’ve ever made, you simmer the beef for maybe 2-2 1/2 hours max. This recipe IS different. First Karen slathered both sides of the beef with HP sauce. You probably could use A-1, but HP is the British version. Once slathered, she browned it first on the stovetop in a little bit of vegetable oil, then put it into a big roasting pan on a rack, and covered the top with yellow onions and slivered garlic. Water was added to the pot and she covered the pot with foil to seal it really well. A note of caution: when browning the meat, wear an apron and also if possible put newspaper down on the floor, as the meat throws off a lot of spatter. Enough that their dog, Shelby, slipped in the grease and fell in it (I expect there was a bit of dog-licking-floor action going on after that). So, pay attention to that part.

The tight foil-sealed roasting pan then went into a 275°F oven for just about 6 hours. I put 5 hours on the photo, but it was actually 6 hours. And you do not want to pull it out to “check on it.” If you do, it loses all that head of steam that’s been slowly tenderizing the meat. So do NOT open the foil covered pan at all during that time. If you do, add about another hour of baking time.

Once out of the oven, Karen put it on a big cutting board (see picture at top). You can see all the HP sauce browned into the top (picture at left). Brisket contains a goodly amount of water, and plenty of fat, so you can see there was about a scant cup of liquid in the bottom of the pan. I was surprised at the addition of just one tablespoon of water – but Karen assured me the recipe is correct. She thinks the onions also provide some liquid.

What’s GOOD: oh my. So succulent and juicy. SOO very tender. The most tender corned beef I’ve ever had. This will be my new go-to recipe.

What’s NOT: only that you need to plan ahead as it requires 6 hours of baking time, plus the 25-30 minutes of browning first.

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You know Colcannon, right? An Irish dish, mashed potatoes with cabbage. This one also has green onions in it.

This recipe should have been posted BEFORE St. Patrick’s Day. Sorry about that . . . Maybe you can print it out and make it next year. Or anytime, really. I’d intended to add some cauliflower to it (to make it less carb-centric) but I forgot to take the cauliflower along with me to my son’s house the day we had this dinner.

I made enough to serve 6, so we’d have some leftovers, as I wanted to make a few potato patties that they could have with the remaining corned beef, and I could have with something. So easy to make big patties of mashed potatoes once you have them done.

I started out with about 4 pounds of potatoes, and the recipe called for 9T of butter. Yum. Plus a bit more to melt on the top when serving (sorry, forgot to take a picture of that). I had Savoy cabbage, and used 5 green onions. Plus a mixture of heavy cream and milk. I was surprised at the quantity of milk/cream (1 1/2 cups), and as I was adding it to the potatoes, I was thinking, really? This seems like too much. But it wasn’t. What it makes is really smooth, silky potatoes. I’ve made Colcannon before, many times, but I do believe this is the best I’ve ever tried. And I’ve never posted a recipe for it, as I kind of “winged it” whenever I’ve made it, and it wasn’t memorably. This one was.

Here’s a picture of the Colcannon on the plate:

You can’t really see much of the cabbage or green onions in this photo – that’s why I used the one I took when I was mixing it up – it’s more colorful. No question, this will be my go-to recipe for future iterations of Colcannon. If you make potato patties as leftovers, sprinkle a bit of flour on each flat side (to help them brown). The Colcannon is very “wet” so they didn’t brown very well, and it’s hard turning them over without messing up the golden crust. Flour would help with that.

What’s GOOD: how rich and creamy it is – good flavor from the cabbage and green onions, but likely it’s the butter and milk/cream that enhances it the most. Don’t even think about not adding all of it. Make potato patties with the leftovers – flour them and sauté them in some butter.

What’s NOT: nothing, whatsoever. Perfectly wonderful comfort food, and ideal with corned beef.

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Amazing. Absolutely amazing.

Listen up. You just gotta make this. I can’t praise this enough. If you like steak, this is your lucky day. The recipe was demonstrated on Milk Street, and Jim Hirsch, one of the producers, went to Argentina and his job, with the film crew, was to find out what makes Argentinian steak so special. Certainly steak is the signature dish of Argentina. They raise a LOT of beef cattle in the country. My granddaughter, Sabrina, spent 5 months in Argentina (not exactly a happy experience, I’m sorry to say, even though it was through her university college exchange program). But she told me she had steak similar to this when she was there.

Normally, in Argentina, steak is grilled outside, on a grill that has an adjustable grate level – in other words, you can lower it to be close to the coals, or way up high (more like 10-12 inches), away from the wood coals. Most restaurants make this steak with a 2-hour grilling. Can you imagine? Likely they do that to have a very precise control over the temperature.

Once the Milk Street crew returned to Boston, they began trying to recreate this steak (using American/different equipment) – and the chimichurri sauce. Speaking of the sauce, you may be familiar with green chimichurri sauce (that’s all I’d ever had prior to making this). This red sauce is a strange combination of things – 1/4 cup sweet paprika, 1/4 cup red pepper flakes (yes, really), and 1/4 cup dried oregano, and lastly 3/4 cup of neutral oil. Added later, garlic and balsamic vinegar. If you’ve ever watched Chris Kimball (he’s the guy who started Cook’s Illustrated, but was ousted some years ago and started Milk Street) you know that he does not like spicy heat. Not that he’s into bland food, but heat bothers his palate. So when they were making this in the test kitchen, when he was asked to add 1/4 CUP of red pepper flakes, he said oh-no, no, I won’t be able to eat this. The chef pleaded with him to follow the recipe and he might be surprised. And indeed he was, and so was I.

At left is the photo of the beautiful New York strip steak, 2” thick, with the rub on it (having rested in the frig for 24 hours), on a rack, before it went into the oven. One of these steaks will serve at least 2 people, maybe even 3 people.

There are a few steps to making this:

1. Make a rub of black pepper, freshly grated nutmeg (lots of it) and sugar. Put it on the 2” thick steak.

2. Place the steak on a rack, open, in the refrigerator, for 24 hours.

3. Put the steak in a 250°F oven for about 45 minutes. Remove it and let it rest for 30 minutes.

4. Make the sauce.

5. Grill the steak in a searing hot pan on the stove (or do this on your outdoor grill) to caramelize the two sides, then let it rest for 10 minutes. Get the rest of the meal ready.

6. Slice the steak across the grain, in 1/4” thick slices, plate it and drizzle the sauce on the ends and offer more sauce at the table.

The sauce takes no time, really, to make, but there are steps to making it also. In a skillet you combine the oil, paprika, red chili flakes and the oregano, and cook it over very low heat (never allowing it to boil) for 5-7 minutes. Then you add the garlic, and let it cool. Once cool, you add the balsamic vinegar and salt. The photo at right is before it even cooked – so you can see the ingredients.

When Chris Kimball tasted the sauce, he first barely touched his bite of steak with the oily part of the sauce, as he was not thinking he could eat it. He was surprised, and my friend Linda and I (when we made it) were also amazed that our mouths weren’t burning up. The guesswork is that the addition of 1/4 cup of balsamic vinegar somehow tempers the spicy, fiery heat of 1/4 cup of red pepper flakes.

The only thing I’ll say is that you need a meat thermometer for this recipe – I eat my steak medium-rare, and you remove the steak from the oven when it reaches 110°F (about 10-15 degrees below that magic medium-rare temp). I did that, but during the resting time, the temp went up nearly 10 degrees, and once I seared it, it went up even more. We got it out of the pan at about 128°F, which is a few degrees higher than I wanted. So watch it carefully.

What’s GOOD: I absolutely LOVE-LOVED this steak and the sauce. Definitely well enough to make it again. You do need to plan ahead 24 hours, and make sure you have a whole pod of nutmeg for each steak. You do not taste nutmeg in the rub when eating it. It’s uncanny there could be so much nutmeg on the rub and you wouldn’t taste it in the finished steak (although I was able to taste it when I ate the leftovers, cold). And the sauce – oh my goodness. So good. Very easy – make it the day ahead to save time if you’d like. It’s also uncanny there is so much red pepper in the sauce and I could eat it. I won’t say I ate copious quantities, but I certainly ate some with every bite, and went back for more.

What’s NOT: only that the steak is expensive (do buy a good one, though I did choose choice, not prime beef); however, one steak will feed 2 people, maybe 3. You do have to visit a butcher, as the steak must be 2” thick. I don’t know of any grocery store that has pre-cut 2” steaks. The nearly one pound steak cost me $29. The recipe is for feeding 4, so twice that amount. And you do need to plan ahead, as I mentioned, so the steak can sit in the frig for 24 hours.

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Think everything Caesar (garlic, garlic, anchovies, bread crumbs, cheese) and instead of salad, add them to Brussels sprouts.

I don’t remember whether I watched Cook’s Country on TV, or whether this recipe was in one of the magazines – either way, it’s a winner. But then, I love Brussels sprouts just about any way except straight boiled (which is the only way my mother ever made them).

First, make the Caesar-style dressing – lemon juice, mayo, Worcestershire, Dijon, ample garlic, anchovy (I used the tube), S&P and EVOO. I made that up a little ahead of time – actually, my friend Linda made the dressing as she was helping me in the kitchen the night I made this when we were out in Palm Desert. The Brussels were cleaned, trimmed and quartered, then were pan-seared. The panko bread crumbs were toasted in the same pan and then it was all tossed together with the dressing and the Parm on top. SO good.

If you make up the dressing ahead of time, this is an easy dish and quick as well. They also taste wonderful leftover, just so you know . . .

What’s GOOD: with loving Brussels sprouts like I do, everything was “right” about this dish. Easy, and over the top on taste. A keeper.

What’s NOT: not a thing. Great recipe.

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A combination that is positively made in heaven. Lasagna with a Southwest twist.

My good friend Linda, who lives about 50 miles south of me, (pictured at right) spent a few days with me out in Palm Desert. (We’ve been friends for about 30 years.) We agreed ahead of time that we’d maybe go out to lunch, and would cook dinner in. She cooked dinner one night, and I did it the following evening. This is what Linda made – and oh my goodness – is it ever good. There are a number of recipes here on this blog from my friend Linda, who is an excellent cook. If you do a search (search box top left on my home page) for “Linda,” all of her recipes should come up.

There’s the casserole before baking.

Since I try to reduce carbs, this was a super-treat for me. Lasagna in any form is a treat. But corn and poblano sounded so good. Linda said she was served this lasagna at the home of a friend, and she was SO enamored with it, she wouldn’t leave until the hostess gave her the recipe. Linda has made it many times since then, and has altered the original recipe a little bit.

The original recipe came from Marcela Valladolid (Food Network). In the comments many people increased the number of zucchini, onion, and increased the corn too. And increased the peppers. She did all of those things, and Linda also added just a little bit more to the corn and cream mixture too.

So what is it? It’s lasagna noodles layered with roasted poblano (pasilla) chiles, thinly sliced (and cooked) zucchini, a mixture of corn and cream, and plenty of grated Mozzarella cheese. Linda had made it the morning we went to Palm Desert. She took it in a Rachael Ray Lasagna Lugger, Marine Blue Stripe Casserole Carrier, 13X9. If you don’t own one of these, you should – they are just the best out there. I bought the carrier for her several years ago. I own one too, and it’s rated highly for keeping the temp of things (both hot or cold) better than most other carriers out there.

So I didn’t see all the work that went into making this (yes, it’s a lot), but then making any kind of lasagna is a labor of love, I think! It went into the oven and baked for about 50 minutes, then we turned on the broiler, and it took only a few minutes to get the top really golden brown.

Linda also made Mexican Chopped Salad, a Phillis Carey recipe (picture at right) I’ve had on my blog since 2007. I hadn’t made that salad in a long time, and it went so well with the Southwest style lasagna.

What’s GOOD: the unusual flavors for a lasagna. SO tasty. Different. Worth all the work, Linda says. I absolutely love the unique flavor of poblano/pasilla chiles, so this was a winner in my book!

What’s NOT: This recipe takes a lot of time to make and assemble, requires the use of lots of pots and dishes, plus it’s high fat with cream. The carb count on this is off the charts. You could try to cut this into 10 servings, but I assure you, hungry eaters will go back for a second portion if you do that.

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