Huazontle

I have said more words in Nahuatl this week than ever before, and just to throw one more in the mix lets all say chocolate. Summertime brings exotic foods from all the lands, well this is NYC so there is really no specific season for exotica. So enters sorghum or huazontle as it is known in Mexico. It is surprisingly tasty and mild. I first trimmed them down to five inch pieces since these stalks were easily 18 to 24 inches long and then blanched them in boiling salted water and then shocked them with ice water to keep them green.

I then took a mexican cheese similar to mozzarella called queso oaxaca and placed it between the fronds and then tied them off with string.

I had whipped up some egg whites, using a hand mixer, because I dont have to use big fancy gadgets all the time, and I dipped the pieces in seasoned flour and then the egg whites and fried until brown. For the sauce I made a tomatoe couli with garlic, fresh tomatoes and dried red chiles that was ladled over the top.

These get picked up and eaten like corn on the cob. They were eaten so fast all I was able to remember to photograph was an empty plate with the stalk and a little sauce. I had plenty of left over egg whites so mini chocolate-caramel souffles were on the dessert menu.

Huitlacoche

Sometimes spelled cuitlacoche but pronounced - wheat la coach eh - is certainly an aquired taste that I have somehow aquired. I can remember seeing this stuff on the corn in the fields and thought it was by far the grossest thing that could have happened to my sweet ears of corn, now I wish I could find it. One little can like this will set you back more than five bucks, that is if you can find it. You can make different things with it but I like it simple in a quesadilla or dolloped on a cheese omelete, it isnt a weak flavor so consider this a warning.

Corn smut. It does sound so pornographic but how else to describe this inky, milky, gooey, ooze that is so darn tasty, plus I didnt make it up.


the perils of ageing is I never got the heads up on this.....




....There's bands on the sidewalk all over my hood.

figure it out

chicken cutlets and lamb chops.

Melange

Any time I get to speak french I jump at the opportunity, not that I speak french or anything but who doesnt like to say french words, so today it is a melange of unrelated things. First of those is nopalitos. Nopales are the leaves, if you could call them that, from the prickly pear cactus. People do different things with them but I simply slice them into strips and then flour egg and bread crumbs and fry. They are tasty and okra like.



Then it is more mushrooms, since I found mushroomlandia I have hit the mother lode of wine cap mushrooms, they are so much tastier than portobellas and they are wild, plus they will keep coming back up until October. These are not wine caps these are entylomas and they are poisonious but they look nice. The wine caps are below.




Then it was two dozen oysters on the half shell with lime, horseradish and hot sauce. Sweet, succulent and briney all the qualities of a good oyster.



Oh and cherries, tons of cherries. we did our own cold stone creamery by freezing a marble slab and then mixing custardy fresh made vanilla ice cream with pitted cherries. Who needs to go anywhere?

trickster

Sunflower

just lookin' things over the king of the village.

POPCORN

This has nutrional yeast sea salt and safflower oil. Its good.

Meat Abuse

Rubbed, marinated, spanked, slapped, taunted, bullied, seared and braised in beer and chile this meat was so tender it would fall off the bone if you yelled at it. I was testing new flavor combinations and cooking times and this came out perfect. I know you see me using chile all the time but I swear this was a little different. I also made some more ginger beer which should be ready in a day or two, I like to leave it longer than the suggested 24 hours because I think it improves.

chasing my theme song

Amazing, just press listen and then listen and scroll.

Bikes

Well we certainly tore it up today. The dude only learned two weeks ago. Sure we had years of training wheels but it never clicked until old friends from New Mexico visited and took it upon themselves to coast him and teach him, and they did it. I couldnt pull it off because he yelled at me too much and then I wanted to smack him so the learning environment was more conducsive to "guest teacher" . The bike and the teacher

Euell Gibbons

This man had the biggest effect and affect on me that a person could ever have, well besides Diana Vreeland. When I was a kid and I heard him say on TV "ever eat a pine tree, many parts are edible?" I was hooked. And yeah I have eaten the edible things from a pine tree. Needless to say more of Gibbons rubbed off on me than Vreeland. So what I have learned about mushrooms in this even number of decades is some you eat and most you look at.

Ceviche

Ceviche is a fish dish that has been cured with lime juice rather than cooking. The acid from the lime firms up the flesh and adds a tangy flavor. I added jalapeno pepper, cilantro, red onion, sea salt, fresh ground black pepper and tomato and ate it with warm corn tortillas.



These are two types. One is tilapia and prawns and the other is portuguese sardine in a tomato sauce, and both are excellent. We also went bike riding.



And we cant go 5 days without nachos. Well maybe we can go 5 days but still...

The Times

This article really sums up whats happening now. The same way MTV made everyone a music and fashion expert, I believe The Food Network has turned anyone who eats into some kind of gourmand and sadly underqualified as a gourmet. You hear it as you walk down the street you see it when you go to cheese shops or other specialty food places, these twenty somethings saying things like "I have been shopping here forever" and then making faux pas after faux pas. Whats even more funny is the fact that I have been going to these places for probably as long as this new foodie has been alive. Now dont get me wrong this is not a bitter post this is just the evolution of things, the same way the computer made everyone a graphic artist, now everyone is a foodie, and is proud to attach that title to themselves and their friends. The only thing that can come out of this is homogenization... lets see.

Done

Went out mushroom hunting again - it did rain and all- and found nothing save for a couple stragglers, but we did find other things....

Got some sweet berries. .. June berries and cherries to be exact.

Rehab all polished up. ...and another favorite

UPDATE

I made a reduction of orange juice and raspbery jam, smoothed it out with an immersion blender and used this to soak some shortcakes. I then piled on the Juneberries and topped the whole thing with whipped cream, sadly I only have the blurry shot from my phone as the camera shots were accidently deleted.

This Will Do For Now

I have been looking for a theme song and I just love this one for the time being. Its the simple acoustic version from her myspace page, thanks Amy.

Orange You Glad

Some days it just seems like the right thing to do is to eat sloppy food outside, especially since there is no way to avoid the heat and humidity. What made this even nicer is the shady garden we were in also protected us from the slight drizzle of rain - and its home to some Cardinals. Crab fest yesterday. Maryland Blue Crabs, fresh water shrimp and snow crab legs. The shrimp were big and sweet and lobster like, the blue crabs were succulent and the crab legs were just an extra layer of goodness.

We probably sat there for over two hours picking at the juicy meat while our fingers went raw and our tongues were tingling from the spicy crab boil.

This stuff is like pancakes and pasta to me, it seems like you get so full and then a little while later you just have to have a bit more.