use real butter

I am approaching the end of chemo season, about to start radiation season. That’s part of the reason I haven’t been able to cook much lately. Too many appointments for X-rays, blood draws, port removal, consultations, etc. It’ll settle down eventually. Meanwhile, I’ve been trying to ready the patio furniture for the season of unrelenting sun and thunderstorms:

oil rejuvenates

Another unfortunate occurrence this time of year is the inevitable crashing of little hummingbirds into our vast expanse of windows. We’re in the midst of searching for decals to deter the crashes, but not soon enough to prevent one this morning. Luckily, the little dude was merely shocked and had not broken his neck like two others this past weekend.

a little male broad-tailed hummingbird

He took about an hour to regain his balance and strength, but it was delightful to watch him get feistier and twitchier until he buzzed away in a green blur.

chinese eggplant

I grew up eating what I called skinny eggplant. I wasn’t really familiar with those chubby eggplants until I left home because my mom used the Chinese or Japanese varieties to make fish-flavored eggplant - a fragrant and spicy stir-fry of ground pork and that lovely purple vegetable. It’s called fish-flavored (yu shian) eggplant even though there isn’t any trace of fish in the dish. It has to do with the combination of flavors to give it a fish flavor (but it doesn’t taste fishy to me…)

mise en place the main ingredients: eggplant, garlic, ginger, pork, green onions

If you’ve ever fried eggplant before, you know the stuff can absorb about ten times its weight in oil, leaving a saturated mess. My mom wilts the eggplant over a hot, dry pan first so it loses that spongy capacity for oil.

wilting the eggplant

Once the eggplant is sufficiently softened, I remove it from the pan. With the heat turned up to high, I brown the ground pork and then add the garlic, ginger, green onions, and hot bean paste. You can find a jar of spicy bean paste in any Asian market.

stir-fry the pork with other goodies

When the mix becomes fragrant, return the eggplant to the pan and sauté for a minute.

dump the eggplant back into the pan

Add the soy sauce, broth, sugar, vinegar, and sherry. Let this simmer a bit and then add the cornstarch and water to thicken the sauce.

a little cornstarch and water

This dish is great over steamed rice. You can make it as spicy or as not spicy as you like. Instead of hot bean paste, you can always use regular bean paste. Or you can make it spicier with the addition of chili garlic paste. If you like this, you might like fish-flavored pork, which is one of Jeremy’s favorites.

hot, spicy, and delish

Fish-Flavored Eggplant

1 lb. Chinese eggplant, cut into thick matchsticks
3 oz. ground pork
1 tbsp hot bean paste (found in Asian grocery stores)
1 stalk green onion, minced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tbsp ginger, minced
2 tbsp soy sauce
3/4 cup chicken broth
1/2 tbsp sugar
1/2 tbsp vinegar
1/2 tbsp cooking sherry
1/2 tbsp cornstarch
1 tbsp water

Heat frying pan over medium high heat. Add eggplant and toss until the pieces begin to wilt and soften. Remove from heat and set aside. Add oil to the pan and set on high heat. Stir fry the ground pork, then add garlic, ginger, green onions and bean paste. Stir in eggplant and add remaining ingredients except for the cornstarch and water. Stir-fry for a minute while mixing cornstarch and water together. Add the cornstarch mixture to the eggplant and let sauce thicken. Serve hot.

Christine had commented on the avocado mound that was sidling up next to the stacked enchiladas from a few days ago. Funny that, since I was planning to blog it! She’s an observant one.

My first true exposure to the beauty of avocados was the first time I lived in California. My pal, Melinda, had two giant avocado trees in her backyard and she always asked me to make the guacamole whenever they hosted parties for the club volleyball team. Then before we’d head home for the evening, she would grab me by the arm and foist a grocery bag full of avocados on me. “Take these!” she would insist. Gladly, Mel.

the goods: avocados, sweet onion, tomato, jalapeño, garlic, lemon, salt

In New York, I recounted how we used to roll avocados across Melinda’s backyard to see if her cat would be fooled enough to pounce on them. My lab mate looked at me incredulously and said, “Oh sure, roll $3 here, $3 there!” I realized how ridiculous it sounded, and it became more painfully clear when I started shopping for avocados in the Northeast.

pit the avocado - free the flesh

Back in California for a 3-year stint, I had my eye on different recipes and preparations. I took mental notes somehow knowing that we would eventually settle where you can’t rely on good guac anywhere you go. [Digression: I have a horrible habit of mutilating pronunciations for fun - so I call it something that sounds like Wack-a-Mole instead.]

make a garlic and salt paste

Because my better half eats the guacamole I make, I have modified it so that there aren’t chunky bits to offend his sensitivities. Jeremy has expanded his culinary horizons since the day we met to beyond what I thought was humanly possible, so I cannot complain (too much). His objections are mainly with the raw tomatoes, raw onions, garlic, and jalapeño being chunky. Basically everything but the salt, lemon, and avocado. Sheesh. But he admits that the flavors are important. This is why I mince the garlic and then sprinkle the salt on top and use the flat of my knife blade to pulverize it into a garlicky paste. I must admit that I find a honking huge chunk of raw garlic to be a little disconcerting in guacamole.

i mash the avocado with… my potato masher

add the rest of the vegetables that have been chopped to oblivion

I deseed the tomato because I don’t like the added moisture from the guts. Just chop it along the equator and squeeze/shake out the guts or run a spoon or finger through to remove it all. Then I cut it into a fine chop so you’d never know a tomato was in there save for the color in the guacamole. And when handling a jalapeño pepper, do yourself a favor and wear a glove because rubbing your eyes after handling one with bare hands is a miserable, miserable, wholly unhappy existence (ask me how it is I know).

add lemon juice to taste

Did I mention that Mel had lemon trees in her yard too? How convenient. It was like the guacamole yard because she usually grew her own tomatoes in her garden as well. This guacamole is definitely on the creamy side. If you like chunky, by all means - just don’t offer any to Jeremy. I know some folks like to add sour cream, but I just can’t. I love the freshness of the ingredients without any dairy (and I have this lactose intolerance problem too) and I feel that it’s already pretty spanking creamy since none of the ingredients measure more than a micron across…

planting the white corn tortilla chip on mount guacamole in the name of good eatin’

Guacamole

4 avocados, ripe
1 tomato, deseeded and minced fine
1 jalapeño, deseeded and minced fine
1/8 sweet onion, minced fine
1 clove garlic, peeled
1 lemon, juice of
salt to taste

Halve the avocados and remove the pits. Scoop out the flesh into a sturdy bowl. Mash the avocado to a consistency of your liking. Smash or mince the garlic clove and sprinkle the salt over the garlic. Turn the knife blade on its side and press the salt into the garlic forming a paste. Add the paste to the avocado. But the tomato along its equator and remove the seeds. Dice the tomato to a consistency o your preference. Add to the avocado. Deseed the jalapeño and mince the pepper. Add to avocado. Chop or mince the sweet onion and add to the avocado. Mix the ingredients together and then pour lemon juice to taste. Add more salt if needed. If not serving right away, wrap the guacamole in plastic wrap, pressing the wrap down to touch the surface of the dip so you minimize the amount of air between the two layers. Refrigerate.

looking from the other side
I lived in Southern California for a total of ten years. My friends in States With Real Winter used to send me hate email in January for posting pictures on my blog of things like barbecue parties on our patio with fat, juicy oranges dangling off of the verdant trees in the background. I love California winter. Winter in California is what I think summer should be. Of course, the moment March rolled around I wilted until November. But now I live where I get many good months of winter and the summers are tolerable (it can still get hot at 8500 feet). We mountain folk are smug little bastards. When I talk to Boulderites I refer to their town as “the flats” and I like to remind them that they don’t even know cold, snow, and especially wind. When I regard them from my home, I literally look down at them. Okay, but where the hell is this going?

Cindy posted about some beautiful baking she did this weekend, and it is indeed beautiful. Then I notice these flowers that adorn the cake and cupcakes and I’m thinking those are awfully pretty - I wonder where she got… And she writes that she traipsed outside to her yard and plucked these flowers and I’m imagining Bambi and friends gathered about and waving hi and little bluebirds singing while they do her hair. WTF? People think I’m joking when I say our growing season is on the order of a few weeks. California has two lettuce seasons. TWO. Let’s see here, if I go outside in my yard I find these:

d.e.d.: dead

I’m not putting that on a cake.

I do love winter, but the monotone colors of snow and dirt can get old around now and we still have 3 more months until mud season. Living ten minutes from a ski hill ain’t bad, except when you get a nice dump of powder and the winds are blowing it straight into bleeping Kansas. Days like that - days like today, I stay indoors and get my cardio burn going. I rowed and rode for 2 hours. Kaweah sleeps the entire time, until I do my ab work. Lying on the floor is an open invitation to play.

she attacks my abs with the giant plush ball

it’s never clear what she’s thinking after I chuck the ball across the room

a little spice in your life
There’s nothing quite like Mexican food with a kick for a wintry day. Seeing as we are in Colorado, you can’t find serious Mexican food anywhere. You have to go south to New Mexico to get it - or you can make it yourself. In my home state of Virginia, Mexican food was relegated to the likes of Chi Chi’s or Taco Hell Bell. [I still have a soft spot for Taco Bell… cheaper than dog food.] Living in So Cal exposed me to some excellent Mexican food, including a favorite dive in East LA where we ran the risk of being gun fodder in random drive-by shootings every time we ate there. It was so worth it. But the real education was living with Jeremy, a native son of New Mexico. Despite the fact that he’s a white boy, he has discerning tastes when it comes to New Mexican fare. He taught me to make enchiladas, stacked enchiladas.

just corn tortillas, meat, cheddar, enchilada sauce

I know, we have friggin’ orange cheese in the photo. When we grocery shop, it’s a search and destroy mission. I take the items that require assessment of freshness or banter with the butcher. Jeremy is assigned the items that couldn’t possibly get screwed up. In and out and nobody gets hurt, see? Except this time I just said, “cheddar”. I forgot to add, “organic and not friggin’ orange”. My bad. We sometimes make stacked chicken enchiladas with shredded chicken, but this time I wanted something with spank. I used shredded carne adovada. Pork rules.

top the the small puddle of sauce with a layer of corn tortillas

After the initial spoonful of sauce at the bottom of the baking dish, start stacking tortillas, meat, cheese, and drizzle sauce. Repeat about three or four more times. I like lots of layers, just like my cakes.

layer the shredded meat

drizzle sauce over the cheese layer

You should end with a layer of tortillas, some cheese, and enough sauce to cover them. The top layer tends to dry out during baking, so I typically bake it uncovered for half of the cook time and pop a lid or foil over it for the remaining half. If you try to serve this straight out of the oven, it tends to ooze into a pile that looks suspiciously like vomit. I like to let it set up for an hour or overnight and reheat the servings.

a hearty slice of stacked enchiladas

Enchiladas, Stacked - Not Rolled

12 corn tortillas
12 oz chicken or carne adovada, shredded
12 oz cheddar cheese, shredded
20 oz enchilada sauce

In an 8×8 baking dish, put two or three spoonfuls of enchilada sauce in the bottom and spread evenly. Layer with three overlapping tortillas. Sprinkle 1/3 of the chicken meat evenly on the corn tortillas. Sprinkle 1/4 of the shredded cheese. Spoon 1/4 of enchilada sauce. Repeat for two more layers. When you top with the last three tortillas, sprinkle remaining cheese and pour remaining sauce. Bake at 400 for 40 minutes. You may want to cover the dish for the last 20 minutes if the top starts to dry out.