he found the pictures!

A couple years ago when I was visiting my sister and some friends in LA, I went to an awesome Mexican restaurant for a late night drunken after the art show dinner and this awesome stuffed poblano pepper covered with some kind of creamy walnut sauce...

When I told the story to Recipe Guy, he immediately knew I was talking about Chiles en Nogada and showed me how to make it. 

Then I got home and somehow managed to lose the picutes I took of the process.

Of course Recipe Guy has now shown me how to do a search by file type that looks everywhere on my computer. (really, it's a small laptop, things shouldn't be hard to find in it)

This post is dedicated to Recipe Guy. He's fucking awesome.

Chiles en Nogada

It looks fancy as all hell, but it's actually pretty easy. It can take a bit of pre-planning if you want to do it old school, but if you make a couple compromises, you could easily do this in about 45 minutes. If you want to impress someone, this is the way to do it.

The Chiles:

• 8 poblano chiles

We were planning on feeding 6, but it's best to do a couple extra in case you mess one up, and because someone always wants seconds.

The Filling (aka Picadillo):

• 1 lb ground pork
• 1 lb ground beef
• 1 onion
• 1 peach
• 2 apples
• 1/2 c currants (or raisins if you prefer, but if you do, you're weird)
• 1/2 c chopped dates
• 4 cloves garlic
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp black pepper
• 1/2 tsp allspice
• 1/2 tsp oregano
• 1/2 tsp thyme
• salt

The Sauce:

• 1 c walnuts (plus milk to cover them)
• 4 oz cream cheese
• salt
• 2 c Mexican crema (this is the same as french creme fraiche)

or

• 1 c sour cream
• 1 c milk

To Make it Look Almost as Awesome as Recipe Guy is:

• 1 pomegranate
• cilantro

Old School Steps:

If you want the fast version skip forward to "What you gotta do."

If you want to go all the way and make your own Mexican crema (aka creme fraiche) heat 2 c of heavy whipping cream in the microwave to between 90 and 100 degree F.

Add 2 tbsp buttermilk.

Shake.

Cover and leave on the counter (yes the counter) for 24 hours. You might want to warn your cohabitants what you're doing. People have a tendency to refidgerate dairy products that they find on the counter.

Basically, you're culturing and souring milk here. Which is why you could also use a sour cream and milk combo as a time saving, planning-schmanning alternative.

The next old school thing you can do is roast the walnuts in a 350 degree oven for 10 minutes and then rub their skins off.

Tell me how it goes if you do because there's no way in hell I have the patience to remove skin from walnuts. They come shelled and that's good enough for me.

Since we were planning ahead with the crema, we also planned ahead with the nuts. You can soak the walnuts in milk overnight if you want to, but it's not necessary. If you do though, I totally recommend using the nutty milk in a savoury bread pudding. Best one I ever made was with the walnut milk.

Now that we've got the shortcuts out of the way, we can start cooking.

What you gotta do:

Grill the chiles over a medium high flame until the skin is blistering and blackening.

Dump them into a plastic bag and let them steam for a few minutes.

If you chop the onion, apples, peach, dates, and garlic while they steam, they'll be just cool enough to handle.

After steaming in a bag for a while, the skins will slide right off the chiles.

You'll probably have a few stubborn strips that hang on for dear life. You're free to beat them to death, or let them live, depending on what you have patience for (one guess at how much patience I had for them). Once you've got them all done, just set them aside while you make the filling.

The filling should take no more than 20 minutes if you chopped the fruits and veggies while the chiles were steaming.

In a large pan brown the beef and pork with the onion, and then add the spices

and then add the fruits.

Recipe Guy is fond of his mortar and pestle, and will grind whole spices into powder whenever he gets the chance. I know you're just going to use the pre-ground stuff and that's fine.

Cover the filling, turn the heat down to low, and you're done with it. It will probably need a stir from time to time, but really, that's all it is.

While it hangs out in the pan you can make the sauce.

Spoon the walnuts out of the milk and into the food processor. If yours haven't been soaking, just dump them in.

Add the cream cheese and the crema (or sour cream and milk) and the salt. This really needs salt or it comes off as kinda dessert-y. If you're using sour cream and milk, warm them to room temperature in the microwave, or take them out of the fridge before you start cooking. This sauce doesn't get cooked, but it shouldn't be cold either.

Turn on the food processor.

I find it's impossible to get this perfectly smooth, but once it looks about like this

I'm willing to call it done.

So, there you go. All of your components are ready to go. Well, except the garnish. You need to bust some arils out of the pomegranate.

Do this underwater in a large bowl and the arils will sink while the rest of the pomegranate floats. It also helps prevent pomegranate juice from getting everywhere.

Okay, now we're ready to go.

See, it's really not that bad when you think about it. Each of the components is pretty simple, and doesn't take too long to prepare. I mean, browning the meat probably took more time than everything else combined. If you're really into the planning thing, you could even roast the chiles the day before. They keep quite well in the fridge and will warm them to room temp on the counter while you do everything else.

To stuff the chiles, cut a slit down the side and remove the seeds.

(It goes a little faster if you remove all the seeds and then stuff all the chiles)

Let the chile rest in your palm and the slit will fall open.

Spoon in picadillo until it's nice and stuffed. Then, set it cut side down on a plate.

Don't worry if a few crumbs fall out. You're going to be covering this with sauce anyway. Even torn chiles can make it to the dinner table looking fancy if they're covered with enough sauce.

Spoon the sauce over the poblano

until it has a lovely white blanket covering it.

and then sprinkle with pomegranate arils and cilantro leaves.

Holy hell do they look impressive when they're done.

And if you work it right, you can do this all in less than an hour. If you preplan and do a few things the day before, you could probably even make this on a weeknight. But really, this is way too impressive to waste on a Wednesday.

What simple thing impresses you?

Snickerdoodles - The Old Reliable of Cookies

Well, since Seeley decided to take a break from cookies the last few weeks, I thought it would be a good time for me to make some.  I’m not doing anything crazy, though.  Like with the chocolate chip cookies I made last, I’ll be going traditional.  If it ain’t broke and all that… right?  Besides, who doesn’t love snickerdoodles?  Anything named with the words snicker and doodle has to be good.  To make it even better, they’re quick and easy to make. 

Here’s what you’ll need:

• ½ cup butter
• ¾ cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 1 ½ cups flour
• ½ teaspoon baking soda
• ½ teaspoon baking powder
• ¼ teaspoon salt

And to roll them in:

• ¼ cup sugar
• ½ teaspoon cinnamon
• ¼ teaspoon nutmeg

Cookies come together pretty quickly, so go ahead and preheat your oven to 350°.  As always with cookies, everything needs to be room temperature.  Drop your softened butter into a mixing bowl along with ¾ cup sugar. 

Mix those until they are light and fluffy, then add the egg and vanilla.

Scrape everything down and mix until thoroughly incorporated.

You can mix the dry ingredients in a separate bowl, but I was being lazy, so I just added the flour and sprinkled the soda, powder, and salt on top.  Mix until it all comes together.  The dough should be soft, but not really sticky. 

Now for what makes a snickerdoodle, a snickerdoodle.  In a small bowl, put ¼ cup sugar, ½ teaspoon cinnamon (make sure it’s fresh.  It should be really fragrant), and ¼ teaspoon fresh grated nutmeg.  What?  Nutmeg?  Snickerdoodles don’t have nutmeg.  Well, they do when I make them.  It adds a little extra spice that perks them up just a bit. 

Stir or shake those together until you have a nice even mixture.  Now, prepare your assembly line.  Dough, spoon, cinnamon mixture, and parchment lined cookie sheet. 

As you’ve probably noticed by now, there is a much different backdrop in my pictures these days.  My move has been mentioned briefly, but I haven’t said much else.  Now is probably a perfect time for me to say how much I love my new kitchen.  I went from a big, but old kitchen with nowhere to put anything, to all of my gadgets and toys having practically a whole room to themselves. 

Except my Kitchenaid, which is used often enough that it gets to live in the main part of the kitchen.  We all win. 

Anyway, I could go on for hours about all the things I love in there, but I don’t want to bore you, so we’ll return to your regularly scheduled program.  Back to cookies.  Scoop a rounded tablespoon of dough and drop it into your sugar mixture.  Roll/toss your balls around until they are completely coated. 

Place them onto the prepared sheet pan, leaving plenty of space between them.  Apparently I forgot to take a picture of that part, probably because I was anxious to get them into the oven so I could eat them.  That being said, bake them for 10 – 12 minutes.  They’ll be just starting to brown round the edges. 

Allow them to cool on the pan for a minute or two and then move them to a rack.  Although, one of them will likely find its way into your mouth along the way.  Crispy edges, chewy in the middle, sweet and spicy, they are irresistible. 

What is your favorite part of your kitchen?