Huevos Rancheros

I saw this recipe this morning on another (and much better) food blog and I knew right away that I had found tonight's dinner. This meal is super fast and on top of that is a combination of all the foods that Ben and I like to make on a regular basis anyway.

Huevos rancheros are a traditional Mexican breakfast dish, the basis of which is simply corn tortilla with fried egg on top. You can serve huevos rancheros with a variety of toppings; tonight we've made salsa fresca and black beans.

We started with taco-sized soft corn tortillas. Fry tortilla in a lightly oiled pan, flip when browned. Sprinkle a little bit of cheese over the tortilla.

When the cheese starts to melt, crack an egg onto the cheese-covered tortilla.

When the egg white starts to set, flip the tortilla.

Action shot!

Let the egg cook. Flip onto a plate and top as you please.

Toppings

Black beans we cooked the same way we do when we're making tacos. I put the beans on to simmer (although sometimes they were at a rolling boil because I wasn't paying attention) while we made the huevos rancheros; timing worked out pretty well.

Salsa fresca is delicious: fresh chopped vegetables with salt and lime juice--can't go wrong. Cut up:

2 large tomatoes
half a red onion (or white onion)
2 jalepeños

Add 2 tablespoons lime juice and 1 teaspoon salt


P.S. I hope that no one ever tells me that black beans are unhealthy because Ben and I go through at least 4 cans a week.

P.P.S. A shout out to the locals who have tried to get jalepeño peppers through the self-checkout at the County Market. Their system is super glitchy when it comes to hot peppers. We almost had to steal the ones we used in the salsa fresca.

Homemade Black Bean Salsa

This is going to be a short post, on account of how easy this salsa is to make and how unequivocally delicious it is. In short, it's essentially pico de gallo with blackbeans in the mix. We've made it twice in the past two weeks, and let me tell you, they were not small servings.

So here we are:

Dice the following:
-4 cups tomatoes (or 2 cups tomatoes + one can of diced tomatoes, drained)
-1 medium red onion
-1 poblano pepper or medium green bell pepper
-2 or more jalapenos (and other hot peppers if you're feeling spicy)

In a bowl mix these ingredients with:
-1 can rinsed black beans
-6 tablespoons lime juice
-1 full teaspoon salt

Let refrigerate for at least 45 minutes.
Add 1/2 cup diced cilantro just before serving.

What makes this salsa so good, and any pico, really, is the copious use of lime juice and salt. These two ingredients make everything stand out in a really fantastic way. Be sure to drain both the canned tomato if you use it and the rinsed beans thoroughly, because the salt will pull out the juices from the vegetables anyway, and you don't want this salsa to be soupy. Finally, do give the poblano pepper a try. It's not terribly spicy, and it adds a unique flavor that you won't get from just adding a green bell pepper.

This salsa takes only about 20 minutes' work, it's cheap, and it's absolutely amazing. Try it.

Replacing Ramen: Broad Wheat Noodles

Some time ago, we talked about my ramen habit. Almost immediately after writing that post, it occurred to me that there are other, better noodles in the world that are just as cheap. Naturally, I visited my local Asian grocery to have a look around. This post is the first in a series I'm going to call "Replacing Ramen: the quest to find a healthier, better tasting noodle!" In truth, I'm over doing it a little by calling it a "quest". This is the first noodle I've tried, and it's already miles ahead of ramen. It's too late now though; the words are already typed.

ANYWAY, this post is about Carolyn and me cooking up some "broad wheat noodles" with vegetables and spicy lemon sauce. I'm calling them "broad wheat noodles" because I can't find a better name. The package is littered with Asian characters and has only the enigmatic words "Oriential Style Noodle Pasta" in English. Now, before we get started on the recipe, a warning to everyone out there joining in on this quest for a better noodle: this recipe requires both boiling and frying of the noodles, which is nearly twice as much work as ramen.

So here's how it works:

Spicy lemon sauce:
(amounts for 2 large servings)
2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp lemon juice
1+ tsp chili garlic sauce

The cooking:
-Boil water, add noodles.
-Let them cook for 6-8 minutes on medium-high heat. For some reason, I have trouble pinning down "al dente" with these noodles.
-Remove from heat and rinse thoroughly in cool water until noodles are cool.
-Fry some vegetables. How much oil you use depends on the number of eaters, but keep in mind that the noodles are going to be added as well. 2 tbsp for 2 servings seems like enough.
-We used baby corn, carrots cut in sticks, and turnip greens(cut into strips, added a few minutes later than the rest)
-When vegetables are to your liking, add noodles
-Fry for a minute, then add sauce.
-Fry for another 3 minutes. Serve in magnificently large bowls like the one you see above.

So this is my new favorite dish. Lotta thoughts on this; I'll try to be brief but likely will fail. I feel like these noodles don't lend themselves as well to typical stirfry vegetables like broccoli and mushrooms. Baby corn and carrots are the perfect accompaniment. The turnip greens were something new for us too. The collard greens we tried a few days before turned out so well that we were feeling adventurous. The turnip greens were an excellent addition as well; they're a very hearty leaf that stands up well both to frying and to the bold flavors of the dish. Neither Carolyn nor I can think of other vegetables that would be better suited for these noodles.

This sauce, despite it's simplicity, is perfect, especially for these noodles. There are substitutions and other seasonings to try, as I've discussed in the ramen post, but I keep coming back to this simple combination.

In my opinion, these noodles really require the rinsing and frying process after they're cooked. They're a very starchy product. When you first put them in the water, you can see a cloud of starch off the noodles and go into the water, which means that they'd be awful as a soup. I suppose you could rinse them prior to cooking. I haven't tried it and won't. They're very brittle, so the process would be difficult. Besides, I'm perfectly happy with them as they are.

As I said above, al dente is hard to pinpoint on these noodles. I'm not sure why this is exactly. It seems like they're almost ready, almost ready, almost ready, too done. Even though it's difficult, it's very important that you get them just right, since they'll also be fried. If you over-cook them in the water, the frying is going to make them into glue. If you under-cook them, the frying will dry them out even further by drawing what water there is. That said, a little under done is better than a little overdone.

I seem to have save the only bad part for the end, which is a shame. I really love this dish, and I haven't eaten a single package of ramen since I bought these. Try it.

Simple Summer Supper

Corn is here! I don't know where it's coming from--the corn I see around here is hardly as high as an elephant's eye--but there's corn in my grocery store and I'm going to eat it. My only problem is, I don't really know what people eat with corn on the cob. As a result, we've just eaten a couple other food that, in my mind at least, seemed summery enough to hang out on a plate with corn.

Sautéed Collard Greens


1/2 bunch collard greens
2 Tablespoon olive oil
2 cloves garlic
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
salt to taste


Stem collard greens and cut into 1/2 inch strips. I rolled leaves length-wise to slice. 


Heat olive oil in skillet. Cook garlic until lightly browned. Add red pepper and collard greens. Cook until greens are dark green and just wilted; this will take only a couple minutes. Cooked collard greens still have a slight crunch.


Although Ben and I are big fans of spinach, I'm really glad we decided to branch out and try a different green leafy vegetable tonight. Collard greens are tougher and more substantial than cooked spinach. I think this heavier vegetable stands up well against spicy red pepper flakes. All-in-all, this is a simple, but special vegetable side dish that I will certainly make again (in fact, we ate the rest of our bunch of collard greens for lunch the next day).


Once corn on the cob and collard greens were on the plate, we realized that there was space left on our plates that needed to be filled. Enter cucumber sandwiches. Except I'm not really going to tell you about them. They were just OK; cucumber, cream cheese, yawns. Someday soon I'm going to put a little more effort into these and make something worth blogging about.

So Mini Pizzas

It took me a long time to convince Ben to try tortilla pizzas, so I thought I'd better make the most out of this opportunity. To that end, we've tried two kinds of sauce tonight: one completely new and one not so completely new.

The sauces:

Sauce #1 Cilantro-Pea Pesto

1/2 bunch of cilantro 
3/4 cup peas (roughly equal to the amount of cilantro added)
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 cup olive oil
salt and black pepper to taste

Blend ingredients (food processor would work better than a blender). We had to add water to get things moving in the blender, maybe 1/4 cup.

The cilantro is a nice amount of spice balanced by the sweetness of the peas. Ben and I really like this sauce and we think it could work in a lot of other foods. Ben tried it as salsa later in the night and commented that it would be pretty good with more salt. I'm going to use it as salad dressing tomorrow. Obviously it would also be good on pasta.

Sauce #2 Tomato Sauce With a Twist That Ben and Carolyn DO NOT RECOMMEND 

Ben did his usual pizza sauce but added cumin. I'm not sure why. I blame the heat. In his defense, he thought he was added only a small, subtle amount. As we found out, there is no such thing as a subtle amount of cumin. 

Eh. I think I liked this better than Ben did. I'm not sold on cumin for pizza, but I think we can make it work in another venue. Indian mock-pizza, anyone?

Our original plan for dinner was to make a regular old pizza, with regular old pizza dough, in the regular old oven. But, if you had spent any amount of time in my apartment today (forecasted high today was 90 degrees and I've only got a tiny, inefficient box A/C) you would understand why we were loath to turn on the oven. Instead, we made tortilla pizzas in a skillet on the stove. I won't write up a formalized recipe. Simply replace pizza dough with tortilla and go from there. I cooked at medium heat for at least 5 minutes, or until the bottom of the tortilla was slightly browned and the cheese was melted. I was careful to go light on the sauce and toppings so that the tortillas weren't overburdened.