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Recipe: carne adovada

I didn’t always like to make food from scratch, you know. I was perfectly happy living in So Cal and paying for truly excellent food over 15 years ago. It was authentic, delicious, and cheap. When I moved away from So Cal to go to graduate school, I moved away from great ethnic food. So I began learning to make it myself. By the time we returned to So Cal, I viewed food differently than before. I tasted everything we ate with a running mental analysis of the flavors, the ingredients, the preparation, and how I could make it at home. At some point, I had crossed the barrier that always led me to believe a dish was out of my reach. No longer!

Now that we’ve moved to a small mountain town, I’m stuck craving those fantastic ethnic foods again. But now, I am eager to try making them at home, and perfecting them.

When my in-laws lived in New Mexico, we used to visit and drop by El Modelo for amazing New Mexican fare. One of my favorites was their carne adovada. I mean, how can I not love pork – I’m Chinese and I grew up in the South, so there is a double whammy right there!

Recipe: red beans and rice

I’m not sure how authentic this recipe is or not, but I love making a big batch. It heats up wonderfully for lunch or dinner (or brekkie – yeah, I do that sometimes). Despite how much I love to cook, there are times when it’s so nice to reach into the fridge and spoon some food from a tupperware onto a plate and nuke it up just like that. Jeremy and I are both fans of leftovers because it’s economical and delicious. Jeremy likes his red beans and rice as is (are?) and I like mine with some extra Tabasco… I mean a lot of extra Tabasco.

kitchen tutorial: chicken coconut soup (thom kha kai)
Another favorite Thai recipe from last night is Thom Kha Kai. I usually make this with shitake mushrooms, but had the notion to grab a can of straw mushrooms at the Asian market to use instead.

**Jump for more butter**