Supper Club for 6/22: Taco Taco Taco!

Happy Solstice, most excellent of people!  Down on Coney Island they're celebrating it with the Mermaid Parade.  Over in Fremont they're celebrating by wearing paint and not much else while they ride their bikes through Seattle.  And not to be outdone, we are following the ancient pagan ritual of MAKING TACOS.  Yes, just like in the deleted scene from "The Wicker Man".  We're hardcore like that.

THE BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEanS!!!

This is Brian chronicling our experience cooking in the bright, sweet sunlight.  Deb and I arrive and leap into action--Alex has finished roasting a poblano pepper and places it in a big bowl that I immediately cover with plastic.  Exhausting!  Time to retreat to the laptop.  Meanwhile Deb is cubing watermelon.

This is the smile she gets whenever she's given a big sharp knife.  I find it's best not to think about it too much.

Tonight is inspired by The Grange in Providence, a place apparently more full of hipsters than an 'American Idol' casting call is full of delusions and broken dreams, but (unlike American Idol) full of fantastic vegetarian entrees.

(Was that too little too late?  Is one more potential sponsor gone?)

WE LOVE YOU AND YOUR HIPSTERS

Jim is chopping tomatoes, preparatory to making salsa.  Those watermelon cubes?  We're pickling them!

In the blender are chickpeas and flour and other special ingredients, the filling for our BBQ tacos.

  On the stove are charring tomatoes which will be processed into a vinaigrette and then chilled

, and the BBQ sauce (Alex suspects there's too much cinnamon in it, so we add some Liquid Smoke flavoring)

.  Deb is beginning to make coleslaw!

Were you wondering where we've been the last few weeks?  No?  Just pretend you were, it'll make things easier.   While Deb and I were on the west coast making an epic road trip from Denver (high altitude!) through desert and windy canyons to Seattle (low altitude!), Alex and Jim were having adventures across New England (medium altitude!).  They did the Cliff Walk down in Newport, broke into Salve Regina to use the bathroom, and went to Wolf Hollow to meet wolves and learn about them!

Sorry, wrong wolves

Sadly, they were unable to roll around in shed wolf fur and get their scent and freak out all the local dogs when they got back to Boston, but we all need goals that are a tiny bit out of reach so we can keep on striving.   They also went to Art in a Barn, a fundraiser for an eco-preserve, (Art ON the Barn was a lot trickier, due to the steep roofs),

Sorry, wrong Art Barn

 experienced tasty tasty seafood (clam chowder and clamcakes), and got into CraftBoston's December show.  That last one might just be Jim, though it's possible Alex is going to have a performance art booth where rich people pay him to talk about neuroscience.

We talk about how this is the time of year when, if you have a good New England work ethic, we should be focusing on putting food away for the winter.  Do any of us HAVE a good New England work ethic?   ....................in some ways yes, but when it comes to canning and preserving, apparently not so much.  And I'm okay with that.

We test Deb's pablano ranch dressing; she is dubious about the afterburn, while Alex and Jim approve.  I give cautious approval but notice as I type this, four minutes later, that there's STILL some heat on the roof of my mouth.  Interesting!

Such an innocent-looking dressing...

...to cause this much dubiousness

The vinaigrette is made.  We're going to prepare the avocado for frying (!!!), prepping the slaw, and tell Paula Deen stories BECAUSE HOW CAN ANYONE RESIST ZOMG.  Wow, folks.

Speaking of white, unhealthy things that have a very public fall and cause a great deal of uproar and dismay,the mayo slips off the table, and Deb gets about 1/4 pound of it on her foot.  But at least it was wintertime so she was wearing heavy boots instead of sandalsOH WAIT

In lieu of a picture of the blob (which was pretty grody), we provide you with a picture of Deb's reaction to it

"We still have to grill the watermelon," Alex says, "so I'll make the watermelon marinade."  File THAT one under 'sentences you won't hear on "Duck Dynasty" '.  The marinade involves olive oil and honey! 

Meanwhile we test Jim's dressing for the coleslaw, and like it but agree it needs more salt and/or pepper.

It has now been 30 minutes since food last fell on Deb's foot.  We mark this event with a little shower of pepper.

Alex takes me aside and explains the extra-special dessert plans: dessert tacos!  With fried and mushed plaintains and a chocolate sauce made with condensed milk blended with dark chocolate and a little cinnamon and some powdered sugar!

<3 !!

The watermelon is being grilled and the avocado fried by Alex (Deb, btw, has been responsible for the breading of the avocados, and has excelled).   Deb is asked to prep some lettuce, and also snags some arugula for our side salad--the watermelon recipe apparently called for "petite greens", and arugula fills the bill.  For of course there's a side salad.  Jim is about to grate some monterey jack.  For of course we need shredded cheese, its taco night!

Jim and Alex team up to tear the gluten into tiny little bits and toss the bits into two frying pans.  Epic! 

Deb feels she hasn't made enough salad.  But she points out the recipe calls for "PETITE greens", not "grosse greens" or "greens du grande".  So that's fine.

These Petite Greens would have made the meal more interesting, amiright?

It's almost time to start the tortilla warming!  We're moving into endgame!  With the corn tortillas, the most important thing is the spreading of the refried beans, apparently.
GRADING

Avocado Tacos:

BRIAN  B+.  Texturally, the squishiness of both the refried beans AND the avocado was a wee bit much.  More crunch...maybe more breading?
ALEX:  A!  The thing was fucking good, man.  The textures were really lovely, the creme was soo good; I wish it was a little bit hotter when we ate it, but it was great.
JIM: A+!  I thought even though it would have been nice if it was hotter, it was amazing.
DEB:  I wasn't a fan of that one. I would give that a B...all I tasted was cold corn tortilla.  Maybe if I'd heated it.

BBQ Seitan Tacos:

BRIAN  A+.  This might have been the best taco I've ever had.  (Since I've had maybe 20 in my life, and most of them were from Taco Bell...but still.  STILL.)
ALEX: A.  That thing was so good.  Maybe even A+.  The fake meat thing that we made was a *major* win--that was some of the best fake meat I've ever had.  (The recipe was for 'crispy seitan bacon', adapted and covered in sauce by us).
JIM: A++!  That was the best taco I've ever had. Maybe because we made almost everything ourselves?
DEB: A!  Those tastes went together really well; it was extremely satisfying.  We need to spread this recipe far and wide, cuz people need to know this shit.

Grilled Watermelon Salad:

BRIAN  C.  It challenged me. I'm not a fan of cherry tomatoes, and I don't think I was ready for hot watermelon chunks with salad dressing.  I'm sorry, everybody.
ALEX: I give it a B.  There were things about it that I liked, but it didn't come together that well for me.  There was a lot going on in it, and it was hard to get the right blend of flavors.
JIM:  B+!  When I got the right forkful of watermelon, tomato, pickled watermelon and charred tomato vinaigrette it was delicious.  I don't know that it really needed the tomatoes; they just added volume.
DEB: I give it a B or B-.  The watermelon parts were really great, the tomato parts weren't bad.

Chocolate Plantain Dessert Tacos:

DEB: A!  What do I have to say about it?  I'd eat it all the time, if it weren't deep-fried.  Sad. :(
JIM: A-.  The only thing missing was some sort of crema.  Whipped cream?  Raspberry coulis?
ALEX:  A!  I kept tasting the chocolate as I was making it, and I was nervous that it wouldn't end up complimenting the plaintains and I wouldn't be able to spice it enough, and those concerns were completely unfounded.
BRIAN:  A-...I'm pretty neutral on plantains, so they just got in the way of my enjoyment of the chocolate taco.  Which was awesome.

We're on (Season 4 Disc 4) of True Blood, "Spellbound" and "Let's Get Out of Here".  Elements of note about these episodes:  creative use of a wolf pelt's tail to cover up someone's genitals,

NO, SERIOUSLY

 and another moment of genitalia blurring that *must* have been CGI.  Oh, and also a 'secret meeting' between two people that, within three or four hours, got talked about more and drew more passersby than Woodstock. 

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

Normally this is where I'd meander to a stop, folks, but this time I actually have recipes.  ALL the recipes!  But like a game of telephone, these were written down on scraps of paper which were then photographed and THEN transcribed, so...be careful, is all I'm saying.

 Just to make sure everyone's keeping track, we review: corn tortilla + refried beans + fried breaded avocado = Taco 1.   Flour tortilla + bbq sauce + coleslaw + homemade seitan = Taco 2.  And flour tortilla + chocolate ganache + fried plantains = Taco 3.  Grilled watermelon + pickled watermelon + grilled tomatoes + Pizo de Gallo = our salad.

COLESLAW
Whisk 3/4 cup mayo, 1/4 cup sour cream, 1T vinegar, lemon juice from 1/2 lemon, a little mustard, sugar, and some evoo.   Add to bag of slaw.  (In other words, chop up cabbage and other solids until you feel you have a decent amount, then add this dressing).

BBQ SEITAN
Put 1/2 cup chickpeas, 1/4 cup gluten, 1/4 cup bread crumbs, 2T nutritional yeast, 2T maple syrup, 1T (?) sundried tomatoes and 1 big garlic clove in a food processor.  Process until one big ball of dough.  Break up into little bite-sized chunks. Sautee; eventually add BBQ sauce.

BBQ SAUCE
1/3 cup ketchup, 1/3 cup tomato sauce, 3T brown sugar, 3T red wine vinegar, 1tsp butter, 1tsp "bacon" bits, a pinch of cinnamon, "Tony's to taste".  Mix, simmer on low heat until gently bubbling, add to the aforementioned Seitan.

GRILLED WATERMELON
1) Make the marinade by combining 1/2 cup evoo, 1/6th cup vinegar, 1/2 T honey and a pinch of salt.
2) Cube red watermelon and grill to mark sides.
3) Chop cherry tomatoes in half.  Dress with marinade.
4)  Add tomatoes, watermelon, some greens and pickles.  Spread charred tomato on the plate.

PICKLED WATERMELON
1) Boil 1 cup water, 1 cup (? word looks like "cheap") vinegar, 1/2 cup sugar, 1T salt.
2) Halve the watermelon.  Save the red part for grilling.  Cut the white part into strips and boil until translucent and soft.

GRILLED TOMATOES
1) Cover 2 tomatoes in salt and Evoo.
2) Cook on hot grill until "charred and soft".
3) Put 1/2 cup vinegar, 1 cup evoo, 2T honey and 1 shallot in blender with tomatoes.
4) Salt to taste and cool in fridge.

FRIED AVOCADO
1) Slice avocado into 8 pieces
2) Salt avocado
3) Prepare three bowls: 1/2 cup flour, 2 beaten eggs, 1 cup panko.
4) Dredge slices in flour, shaking off excess
5) Coat with egg
6) Press into panko
7) Fry at 350 for ~3 minutes

POBLANO RANCH DRESSING  (a dipping sauce for either of the savory tacos)
Grill chile on grill until skin is blackened.
Put in a bowl and cover with plastic wrap for 15 minutes.
Seed the chile and then chop.
Whisk into 1/2 cup buttermilk, 1/4 cup sour cream and 2T fresh lemon juice.  Add 2 chopped scallions.  Add salt and pepper to taste.

PIZO DE GALLO
Seed four tomatoes, roughly chop.
Roughly chop 1 small onion, 1/2 cup cilantro, and 1 jalapeno.
Pulse in food processor with 1T fresh lime juice.
Add salt and refrigerate.

DESSERT TACO
Mix cinnamon and cayenne and melted chocolate and sweetened condensed milk. Amounts?  We dunno, just eyeball it!
Dredge chopped plantains in flour, then beaten egg, then coconut milk, and fry.
Spread chocolate sauce on a flour tortilla, add plantains, combine into a makeshift taco.  Sprinkle powdered sugar all over the top of it because why not!

Happy Solstice Weekend, everyone!  We'll see you when the days grow shorter.

Flash! Bam! Alacazam! Orange on EVERYTHING!

Hello, beloved readers! Alex had a moment of bliss this week involving a strong desire for perfect abs, a stringent diet and the most delightful orange of his life, so his theme for our Supper Club tonight is something along the lines of PUT  ORANGE ON EVERYTHING!

(There are a lot of songs out there that feature oranges, by the way. I know because I just spent an hour looking for a good one that would lend its lyrics to our title. Jim suggested "Orange is the color of my true love's hair..." but as far as I can tell orange is exactly NOT the color of that songwriter's true love's hair and he made quite a big point of it. So the search continues. There are lots of sad orange songs out there: soldier songs, agent orange, bitter oranges...that Bon Iver song is my favorite of the milieu, but it seems a bit sad for a cooking post celebrating the gorgeous flavor of a perfect orange. Also, with lyrics like "you can gaze out the window get mad and get madder," my cooking club buddies will start assuming I have unresolved issues I need to discuss and geez... awkward. There are quite a few ambient/trance orange songs out there, too, but there all spacy and slow and crap. Hmm, well, I'll keep listening to songs while I'm writing this post. )

Prepping 

The guys are busy zesting oranges and preparing asparagus. Tonight's menu includes Tofu Marinated in Orange Sauce. The marinade is made out of ...you guessed it...orange juice, soy sauce, lemon juice and red wine vinegar. The tofu is going to get fried and put on a bed of asparagus and covered with another orange sauce.

Bri has already finished a simple crust for the Orange Bars (Alex's reinterpretation of Lemon Bars.) The crust smells delicious. I ask what's it in, and Alex says dryly, "Flour and fat." Um, yum?

(Sheesh, you wouldn't think you could make a song with a title like Sweet Orange Sunshine into a dirge, but they did... )

The particularly weird thing we're making tonight is Orange Crackers. Alex found a general Bittman recipe for crackers (1 cup flour, 1/2 tsp salt, 2 tbsp sesame oil, 1/2 c orange pulp. Roll it out, sprinkle with sesame seeds and hot sesame oil. )


This is how we got the pulp.

Once we mixed the dry ingredients in, then rolled it out and baked it, the crackers looked like this:

Funky looking, but tasty.

Jim is dazed from slaving away for the last few days in front of a pottery wheel. He was admitted into CraftBoston and now he's ramping up production to have enough pottery to sell there. (You can find examples of his work here.)


Cooking Club Pun Battle: Brian and Jim are trading puns about oranges.

Brian: Alex had an epithany.
Jim: I pled the pith

As Jim makes the crackers, Alex tells us that he's only recently been able to eat oranges. It's one of those flavors like coffee that he despised before, but can now mysteriously tolerate. Some sort of bodily chemical change? A brain alteration? Metamorphosis?

Meanwhile, Alex is frying tofu and Brian is putting together the Orange Salad Dressing. The dressing included: silken tofu, orange, balsamic vinegar, salt, lemon juice and olive oil, and as you can see from the reviews below, I loved it.

I think I've found the musical theme for this cooking blog. It's a surprising song, perfectly conveying the surprising tastes we experienced tonight. Listen to 30 seconds of this at least. I like how they yell: This is it! This is it. I.T. it!  I want to get that on a t-shirt and wear it to work (where I do IT stuff).

Tonight's TV entertainment includes one episode of True Blood (Season 4) and one episode of Lost Girl (Season 1). The latter is because we got tired of the plot of the former. Between you and me, I'm not sure if we're going to make it to True Blood Season 7. Not if I have anything to say about it...

 Rilke said: 
... *..In order for a Thing to speak to you, you must regard it for a certain time as the only one that exists, as the one and only phenomenon which your laborious and exclusive love is now placed at the center of the universe, and which, in that incomparable place, is on that day attended by angels.

And that's how we feel about oranges tonight!  It also happens to be related to what Jim has on his t-shirt.Can you guess why?

Our Orange Salad included arugula, tomatoes, cucumbers, cashews, orange slices, avocado slices. Sadly, no picture of it seems to exist.


Tofu with Orange Sauce:
Jim: A- little more hot sauce would improve things. It was a tiny bit too sweet
Deb: A I loved it and it amazing in the salad. Delicious.
Bri: A-. The goal of being citrusy was achieved, but it would be nice if there wan another flavor note. Alex: A. Thought the sauce was so citrusy and flavorful. The tofu texture could have been a little bit better.

Orange Crackers: 
Brian: A+ Perfect. If you put a plate of crackers in front of me and told me that was all I get, I would eat all them and be happy.
Jim: Taste an A+, Texture gets a B-. Overall, it was an A. Texture-wise it was a little off, not crispy.
Alex: A- I liked the taste. I enjoyed eating it. The texture could have been better, but I REALLY liked it. It was a splendid delivery vehicle for the sauce.
Deb: A. There was nothing wrong with these crackers.

Asparagus: it was the same roasted asparagus that we always eat, but IT WAS SO GOOD WITH THE SAUCE. The crunchy tips of the spears were an extra bonus.

Orange Salad: 
Deb: A. I loved that salad! OMG, it was the best salad ever. I want to recreate it immediately.
Jim: A-. It needed more tartness or sharpness. The dressing was good by itself, but the oranges with the dressing was a little too sweet for me. Every dish tonight was delicious, but they were all a little sweet. Alex: A-. I love oranges and avocado together. It's such a lovely combination. Some elements didn't work together, and there are other things that could go into it that would make it more exciting, so there's room for improvement.
Brian: B-, Meh, a salad is a salad.

Orange Bars: 
Bri: C+ The crust was horrible. It was less a crust than a crumble. The filling still didn't feel solid. Maybe it needed a couple of hours in the fridge. It had the consistency of jello. I never had to eat a lemon bar with a spoon before, but this came close.
Alex: B+ While the crust did not stick together well, I found the flavor very nice and ...maybe I'm biased, I haven't been eating very many sweets lately...I loved this thing. But I agree with Brian that it was a very problematic arrangement. The top didn't settle enough. We should retroactively call them Orange Tart Squares. Or Citrus Tarts, since they have lemon in them.
Jim: C. I get a weird aftertaste. 
Deb: B I liked it a lot, but it needs to be tarter, but maybe I am just trying to turn in to a lemon bar in my mind.