My Big Fat Low-Fat Burritos

The quandary: I wanted big and bold Mexican flavors but it was just too disgusting out to yearn for standard Mexican fare.

The solution:

I'll be honest, I've never cooked a burrito before. I've made quite a few quesadillas in my day and I make a mean chipotle chocolate chile, but I've never braved burritoville, as it were. I have made wraps, though, and that's pretty much all a burrito is. So, on to the components:

• Rice: I just used Trader Joe's microwaveable brown rice. It's moist and crunchy and ready from the nuke in just 3 min.
• Beans: I heated up some canned organic black beans and fat free canned organic refried beans (which I had to hydrate a little bit).
• Salad: Just shredded lettuce and diced tomatoes.
• Cheese: What's better than cheddar? Okay, pepper jack probably would have been fine...
• Beef: I had my last bag of frozen (humane) lean ground beef from last season's CSA to use up so I mixed about half a pound up with some grill seasoning, cumin, and cinnamon and browned it with some garlic in some olive oil in my cast iron. Once the meat started caramelizing, I stirred in a big ol' spoon of tomato paste and 2 chipotle peppers (canned in adobo). A little more cumin and cinnamon and then I took the heat down and let it all stew together for a bit.
  
• Toppings: Fat-free sour cream, guacamole, salsa, diced tomatoes, more cheddar, and a few slices of lime.
• Beverage: Corona. Lime.
  

Done and delicious. It was nice to control every single ingredient that went into a meal that I'm accustomed to ordering from the likes of Taco Bell and Chipotle, and it obviously tasted much better. It wasn't really the sort of burrito that you can eat with your hands, though--I got a bit greedy while stuffing it!

And for dessert...

Sweet Plantains
Slice 2 ripe plantains up on diagonals so they have more surface area than the usual disc cuts. Melt some butter in a cast iron and brown them on one side. Flip them and sprinkle some brown sugar and white sugar on, as well as a healthy dousing of real vanilla extract (off the heat if you have a gas stove). Make the plantains dance for you in the air as you toss them to coat with the vanilla caramelly mixture. Plate them with a lime wedge to cut through the sweetness a bit.

Boston, Day 1: Peanut-butter burgers?

I spent Friday and Saturday in Boston (and Cambridge) with E, K, and C. It was pretty much 36 hours worth of eating and drinking, with just a dash of sleep thrown in for good measure. Here's what we stuffed our stomachs with:

Darwin's
A cute little sandwich shop a few blocks from the mighty Charles. The place names its menu after the local streets (which I discovered shortly after lunch when we passed the intersection of the two sandwiches I was choosing between). I ended up going for the Gerry, a Reubenesque (come on, how good is that allusion!) sourdough treat with hot pastrami, melted swiss, cole slaw, and thousand island dressing. As someone who feels compelled to every last bit of food I order, I was glad to see the portion-size was reasonable. Enough to fill me up but not quite enough to make me rue the day I was born. I washed it all down with an organic all-natural Cream soda.

Burdick Chocolate
We stopped in here for some quick sweet treats. While I wasn't in love with the ultra-cute handmade chocolates themselves (I suppose I'm spoiled by NYC's Vosges with its exotic flavor combinations), the iced hot chocolate certainly earned a place on my top 5 chocolate beverages.

Boston Beer Works
shark, marinated in Beer Works® We came here to stuff ourselves with enough grub to keep our stomachs from pestering us during the show we were catching that night. We only ordered from the appetizer column but the portions were certainly entree-sized. I ordered the Maco Shark Skewers: Fresh Mako marinated in Raspbeery Ale, grilled with tomatoes, onions & served with jasmine rice & fruit salsa. The very fresh fruit salsa and grilled tomatoes were excellent, with the latter popping with flavor in the mouth, but I was torn on the shark itself. The pieces seemed to come from very different parts of the sharks, as some were juicy and tender (like swordfish at its best) and others were more cartilaginous and tough. For some reason, the marinade was a little vinegary for my taste, but when I let some of the rice absorb it, I got more of the berry and less of the vinegar. I also nibbled from E & K's obscenely large half-portion of nachos, with dips placed conventiently in side-dishes instead of slopped on top in a goey mess.

Bukowski Tavern
With a kitchen open very late and a spinnable beer wheel for the indecisive, Bukowski's made for the perfect post-show dinner. There was one item on the menu staring at me like a dare: the Peanut-Butter Burger. Just a simple burger with the usual trimmings, except the patty was covered in chunky peanut-butter. A-mazing! One of those so-wrong-it's-right dishes. And yes, I know, peanut-butter and beef are combined all the time in various Asian cuisines. But, as many beef satay skewers as I've downed in the past, I was still surprised and delighted by the improbable taste of medium-rare meat with the salty goodness of the peanut puree. The crunch of the peanuts also gave the dish a lot of textural pleasure. I washed it all down with an equally rich oatmeal stout. I'm eager to try this dish at home with some of our left over CSA ground beef, though I'd by lying if I said I wasn't tempted to try to squeeze some jam between those buns :)

That's it for day 1. Day 2, or "Rachel Ray saves the day!", will be posted in the next few days.

Not those sorts of pasties

I was looking for something to do with leftover ground beef and root vegetables, and started googling around. One of the first hits for "turnip and ground beef" was a recipe for a "pasties" Now I had never heard of such things and assumed that it was just a misspelling of "pastries". Nevertheless, I clicked through to the site, trying not to let my mind conjure up images of burlesque dancers rolling in ground beef.

Believe it or not, this was actually my first foray into baking (besides Duncan Hines mixes), so I was pretty nervous about making a dough of any sort. I also knew I didn't want 6 pasties so I tried to adjust the measures for a single pasty. I guess that would have been no problem at all if I actually did the math or measured with any semblance of accuracy. Further complicating the mix (pun definitely intended), I don't have a stand mixer or a rolling pin. Lots of improvisation.

As you can see from the inlaid picture, it turned out pretty well. What's that you say? That inlaid picture looks suspiciously professional? Okay: you got me, the pic is ripped from thepastyshack.com's website. Mine turned out well, though. Buttery beefy baked goodness. I wish the innards were a little moister, however. I couldn't figure out how to squeeze butter through the slits as the recipe suggests. I'm excited to revisit this and try messing around with flavors and spices a bit more.

Here's the original recipe, courtesy of http://www.hu.mtu.edu/vup/pasty/recipes.htm:

Original Pasty

• 3 c. flour
• 1 1/2 sticks butter (cold and cut into bits)
• 1 1/2 tsp. salt
• 6 tbsp. water
  

In a large bowl, combine flour, butter and salt. Blend ingredients until well combined and add water, one tablespoon at a time to form a dough. Toss mixture until it forms a ball. Kneed dough lightly against a smooth surface with heel of the hand to distribute fat evenly. Form into a ball, dust with flour, wrap in wax paper and chill for 30 minutes.

Filling

• 1 lb. round steak, coarsely ground
• 1 lb. boneless pork loin, coarsely ground
• 5 carrots, chopped
• 2 lg. onions, chopped
• 2 potatoes, peeled and chopped
• 1/2 c. rutabaga, chopped (can substitute turnip)
• 2 tsp. salt
• 1/2 tsp. pepper
  

Combine all ingredients in large bowl. Divide the dough into 6 pieces, and roll one of the pieces into a 10-inch round on a lightly floured surface. Put 1 1/2 cups of filling on half of the round. Moisten the edges and fold the unfilled half over the filling to enclose it. Pinch the edges together to seal them and crimp them decoratively with a fork. Transfer pasty to lightly buttered baking sheet and cut several slits in the top. Roll out and fill the remaining dough in the same manner. Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for 30 minutes. Put 1 tsp. butter through a slit in each pasty and continue baking for 30 minutes more. Remove from oven, cover with a damp tea towel, cool for 15 minutes.

Milwaukee Journal March 28, 1943 Welsh