My Crave: Salsa Fresca and Chips Con Chile and Limon

Lately I've been craving some snacks and dishes from my childhood and for me that means easy, quick, fresh Mexican creations.  While my ability to form memories was barely forming while my family lived and traveled throughout Mexico, the recipes my mother collected became a cornerstone of family meals and quick snacks throughout my lifetime.

The only fair thing to do when one is having a craving is do one's very best to pass the crave along.  To  that end, I'm going to share a couple of my favorite, quick, recipes with you.  Please forgive the lack of pictures but lately I've realized that my desire to have beautiful pictures on my blog posts conflicts directly with my inability to capture decent pictures while I'm chopping, stirring, and being fabulous in the kitchen.

The first snack I am going to share is insanely easy and really not a recipe at all, but that doesn't mean that your mind won't be blown by its perfect friendship of crunch, smokey spice, and tangy tartness.  Are you ready....

1.  Get some plain potato chips, you're favorite kind, but those really crunchy ones are GREAT and stand up well.  I'll admit, I don't really keep chips in my house so when I'm craving this I'll take whatever kind of plain potato chips I can get.  

2.  Cut a wedge of lime and squeeze it over the chips (now you see why those really thick super crunchy ones work so well).

3.  Flip the top on some chili powder and sprinkle liberally over the chips.

4.  Devour

Try this with popcorn too or take a trip to a Mexican grocery store and find a fun seasoning that has already united in holy and tasty matrimony the tangy and the zippy.  Look for anything that says something like "salsa con limon" or "chile con limon" or even... you'll love this "fruit seasoning" yes, this combo is amazing on fruit too!  Is that cray cray or what?  I usually use the brand Tajin but go with your heart. 

You're less likely to have this combo on hand but Citric Acid (vitamin C) and Chili powder can be thrown together in whatever proportions float your raft to keep on hand for cravings. 

Ok, let's move from crunch and spice to spice and lusciousness.  My mom's salsa fresca or pico de gallo is one of those things that seems to be at every family gathering, impromptu or formal.  It usually lasts about 5-10 minutes and is best enjoyed with some really great tortilla chips or any dang thing you want.  I realize I am apologizing a lot today but I don't have specific measurements for you, it would be against the spirit of the dish.  You throw this together out of a desperate attempt to keep your greedy family away from the carne while it finishes roasting.  You know how garlicy, oniony, or spicy you like your food.  Go ahead and boldly create. I'll give you guidelines to make about 3 cups of salsa.

Diced Tomatoes- This is your primary ingredient, what you  should have the most of.  Everything else works to make these better.  I can get about 2-3 cups of salsa if I have a couple pints of cherry or 4-5 roma or 3-4 large beefsteaks.

1 chopped medium or 1/2 large white onion.  If you don't like onions... I'd say get over it, but as an alternative to you changing your lifetime held onion prejudices you can try using dehydrated onions (not my favorite course of action) or grating about half the amount of onions called for.  You will get the necessary flavor components without getting a big bite of onion.

1/2-1 jalapeno minced as small as you can get them.  Go ahead and drag out that fancy food chopper thing you bought at the last in home appliance party.  You'll need it again for the....

2-4 cloves garlic minced.  I like garlic.  I don't understand that it's possible to have too much.  If you aren't using your food chopper try this method:

         

Roughly chop your garlic with a large chef's knife (buck up camper, YouTube some videos on knife handling and PUT DOWN THE PARING KNIFE).  Pour some (preferably) kosher salt over your little mound of garlic and chop some more.  Let it get messy while you teeter totter the knife back and forth through the garlic. Lay your knife flat and while putting pressure on the blade of the knife press and drag the garlic to turn it into a paste.      

This video might help. In fact, you could have just ignored this whole paragraph and watched the video, but I guess it's too late for that. 

Fresh Cilantro roughly chopped.  Bundle that bunch of cilantro up into a tight little ball and chop away.

Juice of 1/2-1 lime.  A lemon will do in a pinch.

Salt and Pepper to taste

Throw all of that into a bowl and TRY with all of your might to let that refrigerate, and I only say refrigerate because it will be out of site and therefore less of a temptation, for at least 30 minutes. 

Once you taste the magic of this recipe don't feel like it's sacrilege to play with the ingredients.  Throw some cucumbers or black beans or avocado in there.

You might not catch the crave that I have for these childhood food memories but with these two recipes/methods you have some tools that you can twist up and use in as many different ways as you can think of.  Throw that lime and chili powder on some popcorn, you won't regret it.

Love and Deliciousness to all!  

G&W Bavarian Style Sausage Company

Groupon has become a sort of addiction for Gene (my beau) and I. To say that the money savings isn't a motivating factor would be a lie, but it also encourages us to try new places and trying new places is a bit of a hobby for me. After all, what would I write about otherwise.

One of the Groupons that we purchased a while ago was for G&W Bavarian Sausage Company. I had a faint recollection of my mom going on and on about this little sausage shop in The Hill neighborhood of St. Louis and thought maybe this was the place. Indeed it was the very same shop, although, more accurately its in the Tower Grove neighborhood. G&W isn't a restaurant or deli counter but more of a butcher shop, a rather busy butcher shop, known, of course for their sausage. As a matter of fact their motto is "You can't beat our meat". Let me just give you a minute to get all the naughty jokes out of your system..... ready? A bit more? OK, one more moment.

Alright moving on. The first impression you have of this place is that its relatively small with an odd parking situation. Basically you park where you can find space across the side street the shop is located on. The second thing that hits you is the large 3D one horned bull head that greets you above the door. Let's go ahead and say these people claim to be great at sausage, not iconography. Gene and I made our decision to visit G&W on a Saturday when an errand of his took us into the general area. This errand also happened to require us to take his Un-air-conditioned truck. Needless to say, I was HOT and in a hurry to get inside so I didn't take much time to ponder the one horned bull.

There is a little bakery in my home town, maybe you have heard of it, Kruta. It has a reputation of being particularly crowded on Saturday's. You take a number as you enter then chat with the locals, peruse the cases filled with creamy, crumbly confections, and pray you haven't gotten there too late to get your favorite pastry. On any given Saturday the counter is ten deep all the way down its 15 foot counter. Entering G&W is like entering that bakery but with twice as many people and half the space. WHOA! I took a number, 92. They were serving 77. Not bad, several people behind the counter, should move quickly. 5 minutes later, "serving 77". Huh? Then I noticed the sign "Please be patient and take a number, we're worth the wait". OK, I can deal with this. They take their time with each customer and I have to respect that.

Then I noticed something else you never see at the little home town bakery, or well, ANYWHERE. I saw people walking around with cans of Busch Beer. Check my watch, slightly after noon. Are people anticipating the wait and bringing in their own beer? Then I heard it "Need a Beer?" Need a what? Folks behind the counters were handing out cold beers to the customers waiting. I began to think that perhaps people intentionally came here when it was busy just so they would get a free beer. You could tell some of the patrons were regulars as they would slide behind the counter to grab their beer and chat with the staff.

This would be a great time to mention that one of the staff members is a guy with a heavy German/Austrian/Bavarian? accent whose wife worked their for years until she passed away. He just shows up on Saturdays to help out. Did we all get sucked into a vortex and end up in a fantasized Brighten Beach... where's Jonathan Silverman? The rest of the staff is made up of several hurried, cheerful men and women, girls, and a cute little college aged boy I swear I knew from somewhere. They scurry back and forth grabbing sausages (OK another moment), wrapping and ringing up orders, and ducking into the back where large sausage making mechanisms are visible. Busy Bee's every one of them.

The store itself is lined with cases of their famous sausage, lunch meats, raw cuts of various parts of animals, including liver. The tops of the cases are arranged with gift packs, a basket with what used to be Gus' pretzels, samples of their beef sticks, butcher paper, and scales. The shelves directly opposite house various German centric candies and pantry items. The customers are a mix of trendy women who desire to be in the know of the quaint little neighborhood places (hi mom), old German women shopping for "tin" liver (that's 'thin' for those who need translating), and hot sweaty people who came in for the free beer or the Groupon.

Gene and I both maxed out and surpassed the value of our Groupon loading up on specialty sausages and brats. I should say he loaded up on brats while I loaded up on specialty sausage: Chorizo, polish, hot links, Hungarian, andouille, salsiccia, and on and on. We exited with our crisp white butcher paper bundles and hurried to the nearest Walgreen's to buy ice. Remember the HOT day and the no air conditioning? We weren't taking any chances with our new prizes!

So, now you want to know how it tastes. Does it live up to the hype? Were they, indeed, worth the wait? While we haven't had an opportunity to try all of the variety we purchased we've cooked up a couple different types. The first we tried was the salsiccia. This is an Italian sausage that is typically a pork sausage and spiced according to the region of Italy they call home. This particular salsiccia was of the southern variety and spiced primarily with fennel. We used them to cook up some sausage and peppers on hoagie rolls. I abandoned my hoagie roll and peppers to fill my belly with the comforting, fennel-ly, juiciness of the salsiccia. I expected it to be spicier or sweeter but it had a real savory quality to it and it didn't loose any of its moisture in the cooking process. This might be a good place to mention that most of their meats are fully cooked before selling which take a bit of the paranoia out of the prep process for me. We also sampled the Hungarian brat in a red pepper penne dish. Their Hungarian brats are spiced with paprika and garlic. It was a satisfying, meaty, juicy treat.

Both Gene and I thought the taste of the sausage was indeed worth the wait, the trip, the purchase of a bag of ice and a new cooler, the heat, the crowd. But given all of that, the quality and taste of the sausage really feel like the icing on the cake here. I would never consider placing an order for shipping, which they do offer by the way, because half the worth is the store itself. The people, the process, the location, the history, its all part of the package, encased in a tiny off the main road store with a one horned bull on the front.

Devour your passion

There are some of us whose lives are consumed with the Food Network, Bon Appetite Magazine, rooms full of coookbooks, and who plan entire days around a trip to a favorite grocery store. In recent years this trend has boomed. The word for people like us is "foodie". Its such an innocent little word but what does it mean?

To me, it has nothing to do with ability or education. We could break this down by simply saying that we are food geeks. You know what a geek is right? That guy at work with absolutely no social skills but is intimately knowledgeable with the fictional story time line of Star Trek. Or that dude on the History Channel who can't even put on a bow tie straight or comb his hair for a nationally televised documentary, who gets absolutely giddy when when given the opportunity to share his knowledge on the Spanish Inquisition. Then there are the unwashed, pale masses, equipped with camel backs so as not to be bothered to leave the gaming table to get a drink of water, who only see daylight to spend hours upon hours playing with tiny figurines they have painstakingly, and with the detailed precision of a NASA shuttle, created.

Yep, if you are a foodie you, my friend, are among these social anomalies. The idea of finding black garlic gives you a tummy churning feeling akin to the first blush of love. The opportunity to dine at a restaurant that Bobby Flay or Emeril once walked past has you knocking poor tourists to the ground in order to get your name on the reservation book. The perfectly poached egg is a virtual Poncho Via quest for you. Who has the best pizza, steak, perfectly al dente pasta, french fries (do they double fry them, do they use duck fat, grey sea salt?). Where can I get my taste buds on some Beluga caviar - not in the U.S. anymore thanks to its source being considered an endangered species, see -- who else would know that?!?!?

Does your bucket list have things on it like being a judge on Iron Chef America, meeting Alton Brown, or grilling with Bobby Flay? How many different kinds of salt, honey, vinegar, olive oils, do you have in your pantry? Do you know what Quinoa is? Do YOU? If you do you are either a foodie or have a gluten intolerance. Did you chose to debut your version of one of Julia Child's most famous dishes for YOUR birthday for 20 of your closest friends?

I am here to tell you that you are not alone. I am here with you as are thousands of others. It is time to embrace your foodie status, neigh your FOOD GEEK status. Be not shameful of your collection of cookbooks that threatens the support beams of your home. Stand tall and proud with your "Kiss the Cook" apron and grasp your le creuset Dutch oven (its good bicep exercise after all)! Fly high your flour sack towel flag. We are loud and proud. We are here and hungry!

How to use Restaurant.com

As social media and shrinking economic security send more and more of us in search of ways to save money a growing use of online discount program is a useful tool. Many of you have turned to Restaurant.com so that you can continue to enjoy an occasional evening out without breaking the bank. Its also a great, low risk way to try new places. I hope to help those of you new to Restaurant.com in on the few little tips and tricks that will help you make the most of this service.

First a basic run down on how this sight works. Free sign up includes the ability to purchase discounted gift certificates to the many area restaurants made available on the sight. That seems pretty straight forward but there is a bit of a catch, but there are lots of ways around the red tape.

They also offer a dinner of the month club that you can purchase. If you choose to purchase this you will receive an email once a month that you can redeem for a $25 gift certificate to one of the available restaurants. Now... how to take advantage of this service.

Now, what's the catch? I will use a typical $25 gift certificate as an example. You will usually pay about $10 for a $25 certificate. It could be higher or lower but that is the average. With that certificate there are many restrictions and conditions. The most common is that you are required to spend a minimum of at least $10 over that gift certificate amount, more if the value of the certificate is greater. There are also often restrictions on when you can use the certificate and what menu items you can use it for.

Don't fret I am here to help.

First: Sign Up. When you sign up you will receive emails letting you know when new restaurants are added and, even better, when they are having a sale. They usually have at least one 80% off sale a month. That means the $10 you would have spent on that $25 certificate mentioned above now only costs you $2. If we do the math you just went from paying a minimum of $20 (not including tax and tip) for a $35 meal to paying $12 for that same meal. I would advise you to ONLY purchase restaurant.com certificates when they have the 80% off sale. They have them often enough that you won't miss out, I promise.

Secondly: Pay very close attention to the restrictions about when you can use your certificates WHEN you make your purchase. Most of the restrictions involve not being able to use them on Friday or Saturday or restrict you to dinner hours. Paying attention to this when you make your purchase can save you an embarrassing moment when the waitress lets you know that your romantic evening is going to cost you twice as much as you thought.

Third: Make sure you tip on the original amount of the meal. Most of the certificates have a restriction that 18% gratuity will automatically be added to your bill on the original purchase price of the meal but I've found that the server often forgets this step. Your server didn't do any less work just because you saved a bit of moolah. Don't cheat them.

Fourth: Check out the menu's of the restaurants and reviews if possible before buying the certificate. This will help you determine how far that certificate will get you and if the place is worth the effort.

Fifth: If you like the restaurant, tell your friends. These places make themselves available on this sight to get the word out about their business. They are hoping that the reduced risk of trying their place for the first time helps get you over that hump of the unfamiliar. These are also, usually, locally owned businesses who don't have a massive nationwide campaign advertising for them. If they do good encourage others to go and go back.

Lastly: Try using the certificate when dining with a friend willing to pay the amount required over the certificate value. You have brought about $25 to the table and they pay about $15 bucks out of pocket if they cover the tip too. I give you this advice but I have yet to take it myself. Usually the amount above the certificate value is split down the middle.

I think that is about it. Please let me know if I left anything out or if you have any questions.

To Die For

Many of my friends consider me a foody but hey, we live in the midwest, in the suburbs, with 2.5 children and 1.5 pets. Suffice it to say, culinary standards are not set high. I am more of a foodie wanna be. I wanna be the expert on all things food. I wanna be able to know what really good food is compared to the best that I can get in my own area. I wanna experience tastes from around the country, around the world. Alas, I am constrained by geography, budget, and pets. A girl can dream and when I dream, when I think of the foods that I will spend the balance of my life in pursuit of, my mind wanders to several gastronomic fairy tales. In other words my food bucket list, the foods I want to eat before I die! Here I present the first food on that list.

Its ironic, I think, that one of the most costly and luxurious foods in the world is a fungus that is rooted out of the ground by a pig. I suppose the caveat is that its a French pig, digging in French dirt, after French fungus and, as we all know, if its French its got epicurean cred. That goes for pigs too. The dirty delight that claims this fame is the truffle. How magical must a mushroom be to have a chocolate confection named for it? That question is what my taste buds long to answer.

So what's the big deal? The supply and demand firestorm that causes the proud truffle to top $3000 a pound has a lot to do with the fact that 18th-century French gastronome Brillat-Savarin called them "diamonds of the kitchen" and that chefs the world wide agree with him. Add to that their slow growth, scarcity, resistance to domestication, and the fact that you have to have a special pig to dig them out of the ground that shares their color and nearly their texture.

How does one enjoy a truffle? This is a question that is poorly answered by the truffle deprived, such as myself, but I've seen enough Iron Chef battles to ferret out a worthy answer. While our afore-mentioned Brillant-Savant claims that truffles should be eaten as a meal unto themselves, most master chef's shave them atop a dish to add a rich, earthy, meatiness to anything from eggs to potatoes to a burger. Speaking of burgers, my own best chance of sampling this spongy morsel is at Burger Bar where you can have them served upon a Kobe beef burger (Kobe, a bucket list food for another day).

This delight won't cost me the hundreds that an ounce of mushroom would cost me on the good eats black market, but for now its still just out of reach of my dining out budget. When or if that day comes you can be sure that I will share my experiences with you, here, in our gathering place of yummy thoughts. Until then, if your own budget is limitless (and I mean literally limitless) then you may have the priviledge to agree with our Savant friend when he claims "Let no one ever confess that he dined where truffles were not. However good any entree may be, it seems bad unless enriched by truffles." Oh to live THAT kind of life!

My thoughts on Starbucks

Like many red blooded American's I frequent food chains on a fairly regular basis, more regularly than I care to admit quite frankly. This allucution paints me as somewhat of a hypocrite. I hold a soapbox passion for the position of patronizing locally and family owned eateries and businesses in general, but lets face it, sometimes we just want the convience of what's right down the road. While Starbucks is "just down the road" from my house, its also just darned good!

As much as I would like to critisize the huge coffee chain for charging the equivilent of your child's college book fee's for a cup of coffee, or having so many stores that directions to get there involve saying its across the street from the "other Starbucks", or for so misconstruing the simplicity of small, medium, and large to such a degree that its the most comlpex part of placing your order (Venti-latin for 20), all of these things are so outshined by the fact that its just a darned good coffee shop.

Starbucks has been known to make quality of service and flavor one of its highest priorities. This concept is a difficult one to put into practice when consistency usually means sacrificing flavor, and quality for sameness (let's face it those Mcwhatevers don't really taste like anything). Its quite a feat for a chain as large as Starbucks to maintain both a consistent and really good product, not to mention superior service. To these ends Starbucks has made some pretty radical moves such as shutting down its stores nationwide for an entire afternoon to reintroduce its baristas and staff to what quality tastes like, and for impossing regulations on how many beverages a barista can prepare at a time. Limiting their menu to focus on the liquid consumables also plays a hand in assuring they don't get off the tasty coffee track. While they do offer a limite amount of baked goods they have these prepared out of house and only served in the store, allowing someone who makes a good cup of coffee to concentrate on making a good cup of coffee.

Have we talked about their quality of service? I could focus this entire opinion piece on that alone. I have never entered a starbucks stand alone store and been disapointed in my service. More times than not my expectations are exceeded. The staff are always cheerful and helpful. I belong to a book club that meets regularly in our local Starbucks. Many of the women aren't coffee drinkers and approach the counter with an almost lost in the wood's feeling about what to order. The barista is not only patient but 100% of the time was able to guide my friends to a drink that they enjoyed throughroughly. In addition to this they seem to genuinly love their job. I am told this is as a result of the company providing a good working environment and more benefits than other similar establishments. I would rather start my morning getting caffeine from a friendly Starbucks barista at twice the price of my ill mannered McCounterpart.

There are a lot of other reasons to love a Starbucks. I would encourage you to get your next cup of coffee there but lets face it, you probably already will. In some cases its more than conveince that gets your business and this is one of those cases. So instead, I will encourage you to do the same thing that Starbucks does around the holidays and that is pay for the car behind you. Don't worry about the cost, it will come back to you in frothy, caffinated goodness someday.

Ooops!

In all of my culinary endeavors, both lofty and mundane, I have never ruined dinner so badly that 'pizza had to be ordered'. I have overcooked, undercooked, over salted, under peppered, turned to mush, and nails, but in every case the food was eaten for all of those children in 3rd world countries who are starving. I have broken my streak.

How you ask? How have I managed to ruin such a sterling reputation? Well, I tell you it was nothing short of a gastronomic breakthrough, a scientific breakthrough, a feat against nature and aquatic life. I made Fish Jell-O! Yes, you read correctly. I am not talking an aspic, that jelly like block filled with various meats, fishes or vegetables. I am talking fish that actually became loose Jell-O. Maybe fish jelly would be more accurate. If I am going to be completely accurate I would have to say, pan fried, dover sole...jelly.

Fish can be tricky, I know, so I planned to not be too terribly hard on myself it if fell apart, or became a tad tough or rubbery, or even if I undercooked it and had to throw it back on the fire. I did not anticipate what it became. I had the most beautiful dinner planned. I got the wild caught dover sole, already frozen, at Trader Joe's. It was a fish I hadn't prepared before and I was in the mood for a fishy adventure (insert Nemo jokes here). I would lightly flour the fish and pan fry for a couple of minutes on each side, per the suggestion on the package. Then I would deglaze the pan with lemon juice and throw in some arugula and heirloom cherry tomatoes, a little more butter, to create a kind of beurre blanc sauce/wilted arugula salad to top the fish. I would serve it with a harvest grains blend (fancy rice), and pan fried green beans with crispy garlic. Sounds delicious doesn't it...

Everything was prepped. My mise en place had been in place just waiting for Gene to get home from his haircut. The harvest grains blend was almost finished cooking... and so in the pan went the fish. At first is was going great. When it came time to turn I faced some opposition but I was prepared for falling apart fish and it was sort of still intact. Then it just appeared to never cook all the way through. I left it on longer hoping that it would eventually get its stuff together. It cooked for a really long time on really high heat. When I tested the done-ness, not only was it NOT firm, or flaky it was.... yes, jello-y. It stayed jello-y. I cut off small pieces and pretty much cooked them to death... jello-y. jello-y, jello-y, jello-y.

Gene desperately searched his freezer for a suitable protein substitute, not even pretending that it was remotely edible (although he did actually taste it... shiver). Finally I just admitted that I was not emotionally prepared to attempt cooking anything else. We opted for chicken 12 way. That is Gene and his roomates code for Chinese buffet. It wasn't even a good Chinese buffet, not even in comparison to other Chinese buffets. It was just barely more edible than the Fish Jell-O. The funny thing is that I couldn't bring myself to eat anything fish related on the buffet and Gene ate pretty much only fish.

So, the lesson we have learned today kids is this: Dangit the only thing I can think of is that Chinese buffet isn't really a good alternative to a ruined dinner. I would suggest the traditional pizza. Oh, I guess I might say that if you are going to ruin dinner, at least do it up big, and ruin it for a guy as great as Gene. He will buy your dinner.