Eggxactly the cliche title I was hoping for

Well. The two weeks are up. And I still have a lot to post. I think for now I will talk about eggs.

Last Wednesday I went to the farmer's market here in Austin at the Triangle, a little development on North Lamar and Guadalupe, in the same plaza as beloved Mandolas. I was looking for Milagro eggs specifically, but was tempted by a lot of other produce too, mostly okra and zucchini. In the end I didn't get any, fearing I wouldn't use it fast enough. It wouldn't be the first time I had a fridgeful of rotting okra.

But I did get my eggs, from this guy:

I had brought my own container to put them in, just a cardboard egg container from last time I bought some. But the guy, whom I shall call Mr. Milagro, has his own system. You pay twenty-five cents deposit to get one of his plastic egg things, and then trade it in for reuse every time you come back for new eggs. Total cost, $4.25 for a dozen eggs.

(PS, it is a nice departure from magazine-land writing for me to post this without Mr. Milagro's real name. I could probably look it up, but I think I just won't bother. So deliciously lazy!) (PPS, I just tried to find a website for Milagro and can't, anyone know?)

I have to say, I would have paid more! Totally unprompted, Mr. Milagro told me all about how he has several kinds of hens (I forget how many...) and they all lay eggs in slightly different colors and shapes. Casual inspection revealed most to be different shades of brown, with one that was kind of light-blueish. The hens eat an assortment of ten different whole grains, plus veggie scraps (but no onion or garlic).

(photo no longer sideways thanks to Rohan!)

At home, I saw the eggs were all slightly different sizes, and some had much harder shells than others. Honestly I can't comment whether or not they tasted different than my usual almost-as-expensive organic eggs, because I used them in this really condiment- and flavor-heavy preparation (shocking for me, I know!).


(this image no longer sideways thanks to ME!)

This was the "final dinner" of my no-packaging project. It was kind of a melange of leftovers. Tortillas made with dough left over from last time I made them (for fish tacos), homemade salsa (from same tacos) mixed with some leftover roasted hatch chiles (from tomatillo sauce and tortilla Espanola), strained yogurt (not homemade...), homemade refried beans, and a kind of home-fry hash brown thing. I realize none of these above-referenced meals and ingredients have been blogged yet. All will be, in bite-sized portions so as not to bore and overwhelm.

But what else can I say about about the eggs for now? Oh, well I did use three for banana bread, and have a few more left. I'll fry one up for a real taste-test and let you know how it is. But I am really happy that I have found a source for them that is truly local, from someone who cares about his chickens and feeds them well, and that generates no waste from packaging.

Tomatillo salsa with hatch

A couple of posts ago I said I would give the recipe (by which I mean "guidelines," because it's not an exact science with me) for the tomatillo salsa I used on my tortilla/egg/cheese thing. I roasted some hatch chiles the other night for something else and thought the pics made sense here too.

This time of year in Texas we have hatch chiles from Hatch, New Mexico. So that is what I've been using, but at other times of the year, I use poblanos. Poblanos are the real workhorse chile in my life--mostly mild but sometimes spicy, especially up near the stem. They are generally available even in the crappiest of grocery stores, and are pretty cheap. But this time of year, in the southwest, it's hatch all the way.

Here are the hatchies fresh. They are usually all green but you can see a few starting to blush.
There are "hot" and "mild" hatch chiles...but as with all chiles, it's a gamble. The mild can be completely heat-free, or they can be pretty spicy. The hot are generally medium to medium-hot, but some of them will unexpectedly make your teeth bleed. So I buy three mild and three hot, and then combine.

First thing to do is roast. You do this right on an open flame, either a gas stove or a grill. You want nearly the whole surface to be charred but not coal-black and not ashy. Just deep brown and blistered. But if it goes too dark that's really ok too. Believe me I've screwed up many and it's fine.


Yeah, my stove is kind of dirty.

These are about 1/4 done. Keep turning till the whole surface is blistered, put them in a bowl and cover them. Let them sit for like half an hour. If you do this first, you can chop other things while you wait.

Next, remove them from the bowl. They will be all limp and soggy. Chop the stem and very top off. Stand over the sink and kind of split them open lengthwise, and rub off all the charred skin and simultaneously remove the seeds. Do not give in to the temptation to run them under water to speed things up. I have been told this washes away the essential smoky flavor. Just get rid of as much char as you can (there will be some left) and as many seeds as you can. Put on cutting board and dice. Put in a bowl together and mix up so the hots and milds are fully mingling. For this recipe you only need about half of this. Save the other half for something else.

Now we do the tomatillos. These are widely available here, and I used to buy them all the time in the northeast too (and my CSA farm grew them). In the store, they look like this.

At home, pull off the papery husk, wash them (they are kind of sticky, that's ok) and cut out the hard bit around the core. Then finely chop, or, as I tried, grate them.

It worked pretty well, but then you end up with this leftover skin. The skin is tasty so I diced it and used it too. This is also a good trick for tomatoes, especially when you don't want their skin (like in sauce).

Now that you know your ingredients and methods, here is the recipe. I am 100% making this up as I go along. I've made this a million times and never really keep track of any quantities. Insert "about" in front of every ingredient listed and adjust to your tastes. (This is what I love about this blog--so different from my regular job editing recipes and measuring tablespoons of olive oil, etc.)

Tomatillo Salsa (Salsa Verde) a la Jes
Yields: about 4 cups

olive oil or other cooking oil if you object to the taste of olive
1/2 onion, diced
a few cloves garlic, minced
1 pound fresh tomatillos, diced or grated
3 hatch chiles, hot, mild or a mix, or 2 to 3 poblanos, roasted and diced
1 lime
1 bunch cilantro
Salt

Heat up some olive oil. Just a couple tablespoons. Add the onion and garlic and cook until softened, about 5 minutes.
Add the tomatillo and cook about 10 minutes. Mixture will start to really meld together.
Add the chiles. Simmer it all together for awhile...Don't overdo it or it will start to dry out. Probably no more than half an hour.
At some point, add a squeeze of lime juice and season with salt.
Turn off the heat and stir in cilantro. This is really up to you how much you use. I would use nearly a whole bunch. You can use either just the leaves, if you are patient enough to pull them all off, or just chop up the leafy top with a bit of stem. If you don't love cilantro, use considerably less.
Let it sit off the heat for awhile. At least 20 minutes or so.
Depending on your preference, you might want to blend it up in a food processor or blender. But I like it chunky.
Serve as a topping for enchiladas, burritos, eggs, or chill and use as dip.

Learning to love flour tortillas as much as I love corn

Last night I decided to make a kind of huevos rancheros thing for us: tortillas topped with egg, salsa, and cheese. I had all the stuff to make it except tomatillos, which Scott picked up for me at Randall's (overpriced grocery store where they keep potatoes in the refrigerated section, which is just so wrong). If you are not familiar with tomatillos, they are like smallish green tomatoes. They are a lot firmer than tomatoes and less juicy, and have a kind of papery husk over them. They taste like a cross between a tomato and a crabapple. If you have ever had salsa verde/any kind of green salsa, you have had them.

First thing, make tortillas. I found what appeared to be a really easy recipe here, courtesy of a blogger called "Homesick Texan." This recipe is for flour tortillas, even though I LOVE and could eat by the truckload, corn tortillas. I never knew how great they were till I moved to Austin. I never knew what a pain in the ass they were to make until I went to the fabulous La Villa Bonita cooking school in Mexico. There is absolutely no way I will ever make corn tortillas at home--you have to get the right kind of dried corn, soak it with a chunk of lime (the rock), cook them on low heat for hours, and then either pound them by hand in a molcajete/mortar and pestle, or, as most people do nowadays, take your bucket of corn to the town mill (usually there is more than one) where (when I did it) two ladies pour the corn into a huge piece of machinery that grinds it into dough. One of them pours, the other one catches. Then you take the dough home and make the tortillas, which is another paragraph's worth of explanation. Not happening.

But these flour tortillas looked good too. When I told my friend Clare I wanted to make tortillas she said "Oh my sister made them recently and they were great, let me email you her recipe." And it was the same recipe from the same blog I was already planning to use. Encouraging!

The dough: Flour, baking powder, tiny bit of oil, salt, warm milk. Kneaded it for two minutes, let it sit for 20. Divided it into eight balls, let them sit for ten minutes under a damp dishtowel. Here they are, looking cute next to my tomatillo sauce.

Then you roll out each one to tortilla thinness. The first one I made was thicker and I used it for another purpose (which will be revealed in another posting), but here is about how thin I rolled the rest. You can kind of see my rolling pin in the corner. I HIGHLY recommend this kind of rolling pin--it's basically just a thin wooden dowel, as opposed to the thick kind of rolling pin with the detached swiveling handles. I find I can better feel what I'm doing with this much simpler tool.

When rolled, the tortilla goes on a hot unoiled skillet for about 20 seconds, then is flipped, and maybe flipped again depending on how it looks. Here it is bubbling up before its flip.

And that's it. I found that I needed to periodically brush off the skillet, as stray flour got left behind and started burning. It would probably be smart to brush/wipe your tortilla of any lingering flour before putting it on the pan

Pictures of the finished tortilla later with finished dinner...They were absolutely perfect, tender and "toothsome" as we annoying food writers say--just like the recipe claims they will be, and so easy to make. Today I made Scott's sandwich on them (wraps).

Next up: cheese.