Black Bean Salad

This absolutely delicious recipe comes from a good friend of ours and continues the Latin Amercan theme. Our friend lived in Chile for a number of years and this receipe comes to you, dear gentle readers, from her via there.

This is a great side dish to serve at a BBQ.

You will need:

½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon of orange zest
1 teaspoon of lime zest
60ml fresh orange juice
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
2 tablespoons white-wine vinegar
½ teaspoon ground cumin
1/8 teaspoon dried hot red pepper flakes
A splash or two of tabasco sauce
350g black beans, soak overnight, rinse, cook and drained, you can also use chickpeas or any type of bean
1 red bell pepper, finely diced
Big handful of fresh coriander sprigs, washed well, spun dry, and finely chopped
Big handful of parsley, finely chopped
300g of corn, ideally roasted on the bbq and kernals removed from cob

And then the hard part

Put all of the ingredients together in a bowl, toss well and leave in the fridge to rest and cool before serving.

Tres Leches Cake

After a good chili fest, there is nothing better than this traditional Tex-Mex cake as a dessert. It seems complicated, but it's not. You must try this at least once. Guaranteed to please. It also eases the after-effects of eating a lot of chili. Best made the day before, to allow everything to cool and gel.

Ingredients

Cake:

6 large eggs, separated 

225g granulated sugar 

459g all-purpose flour 

30 ml teaspoons baking powder 

125g milk 

15 ml pure vanilla extract 

Cream topping:

1  can evaporated milk 

1  can sweetened condensed milk 

125 ml heavy cream 

Icing: 

45 ml water 

200g granulated sugar 

3 large egg whites 

1 ripe mango, peeled, seed removed, and thinly sliced 

1 ripe pawpaw, peeled, seeds removed, and thinly sliced 

or instead of the fuit, chocolate shavings.

To make the cake: Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C. Lightly grease and flour a 9 by 13-inch baking dish and set aside. (22cm X 33 cm, or a 25 cm round one)

In the bowl of a mixer, beat the egg whites on low speed until soft peaks form. Add the sugar gradually with the mixer running and peak to stiff peaks. Add the egg yolks 1 at a time, beating well after the addition of each. 

Sift together the flour and baking powder and add to the egg mixture, alternating with the milk. (Do this quickly so the batter does not lose volume.) Add the vanilla. Bake until golden, 25 minutes, or so. 

To make the cream topping: In a blender, combine the evaporated milk, condensed milk, and heavy cream and blend on high speed. 

Remove the cake from the oven and while still warm, poke about 100 holes in the top with a skewer, pour the cream mixture over it. Let sit and cool to room temperature. Cover and refrigerate until well chilled, at least 4 hours or overnight. 

To make the icing: Once the cake is completely chilled, in a saucepan combine the water and sugar. Bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and stir to dissolve the sugar. Cook until the mixture reaches the soft ball stage,  to 115 degrees C. Remove from the heat. In a medium bowl, beat the egg whites to soft peaks. While beating, add the hot syrup in a stream. Beat until all the syrup has been added, the mixture cools, and a glossy icing forms. 

To assemble: Remove the cake from the refrigerator, best to leave it in in the baking dish, but you can take it if you want (just flip it onto a shallow plate, there will be a pool of liquid at the base, that's fine) and spread the icing evenly across the top. Arrange the chocolate shavings or mango and papaya slices over this and serve.  Can't say say this enough, try it once. If you don't you will have missed one of the better things around.

True Tex-Mex Chili.- The Great Chili Cook-off

The Gauntlet has been thrown. The weapons? Pots of chili at dawn.

To bean or not to bean? That is the question!      Sorry.

This chili contains no tomatoes, you could add beans, but not black beans, please. It is supposed to be the authentic border chili. Adapted from a family chuckwagon recipe given me by the Sanchez brothers from Houston, whose family had been cattle drovers and ranged from Texas to Canada. (Used to be called Cowboys.) The original recipe had no garlic either, and substitutes white hominy for the beans.

First, very important to note that the chilies which should be used to make this are not any of those commonly used in the orient. Most of the chiles are not very hot, but give a deep base to the dish. The heat is provided to taste by a few hotter types, like Jalapeño/Scotch bonnet/Habanero/Cayenne.

A word about the spelling. Chile is correct in Spanish. Chili is correct in English. 

Ingredients.

15 Guajillo chilies.

5 Puja Chilies

3 New Mexico Chilies

2 Chipotle Chilies

1 Habanero Chili or substitute 15 g ground cayenne. 

All the chilies above are dried.

About 300 g of each of the following:

Skirt steak, finely cubed, not minced

Chuck steak finely cubed.

Brisket, finely cubed.

5 large onions, diced

15 large cloves of garlic, chopped.

30 g whole cumin, toasted in a dry pan and then ground

15 g oregano (Mexican, if you can get it)

Black pepper straight from the grinder to taste.

Salt to taste.

75 g dark chocolate

Water as necessary.

Cornmeal or masa harina as necessary. 1 can of white hominy (optional)

or red or pinto beans.

If you can't get the chiles, then use 100g Gebhardt's chili powder, but only as a last resort. All the types aren't available everywhere. If using Gebhardt's, go directly to step 2. If not, skip step 2. It works OK with chile powder, but is not quite the same, true chile.

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1. Take your chilies and pull off the stem and shake out the seeds. If want a milder chili you can also remove the white veins. Make sure to get all the seeds. Once you have your deseeded chilies you need to boil water equivalent to the volume of chilies and the turn off the heat. 

Make sure that the pot has a lid or when you add the chilies you'll pepper-spray your kitchen with the spicy steam. Add the chilies, and put on the lid. Wait until the pot has cooled to the point where you can touch the sides with your hand. Then puree the whole lot until it's smooth. An immersion blender is good for this. This is your chile paste.

OR

2. Put 100g Gebhardt's in a dry pan, and heat slowly until very slightly toasted, careful not to burn it. Once the aroma comes up, you can take the pan of the heat. Blend this with 100 ml of beef stock or water. 

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Next you need to brown your meat. Do this in batches. Add a little salt, pepper and toasted, freshly ground cumin at this point. Don't overdo it you just want to make the meat suck in some flavor but not make it bitter and over spiced. Brown until, well, brown.

At the same time saute the ton of diced onions and garlic, being careful not to burn the garlic. If you're going for perfection you could immersion blend this after it's cooked and then add it to the meat. Now add your chili paste and more cumin and maybe black pepper. Taste it. It should be tasting nice but raw and not quite integrated. Add the choclate and mix it in. After it simmers for a while taste it again and correct the seasoning. Usually you will find that it either needs more garlic, heat (add powdered cayenne), cumin or black pepper and salt.

Your chili should have simmered a good while now. Time to add cornmeal or masa flour, add corn meal or  masa a few tablespoons at a time. Let it settle in for ten minutes and then reevaluate and add more if needed. Tip in the hominy or beans if you must.....

You're trying for Hormel consistency here. Too thick?  Add beer or chili water or stock. Too fatty? Add some vinegar. Done. If you don't add the beans directly to the chili, here is a recipe for the proper beans. To be served separately. Also serve grated cheddar and chopped onion in separate bowls.

Drunken Beans. (Frijoles Borrachos)

300 g dried pinto beans, picked over.for stones & debris.

500-600 ml pilsner beer 

1 large onion, roughly chopped

3 cloves garlic

Sofrito

2 green peppers, deseeded and roughly chopped.

1 small onion roughly chopped

4 cloves garlic roughly chopped

a large pinch of freshly ground cumin

a pinch of freshly ground oregano.

30 ml olive oil.

Salt to taste

Vinegar to taste.

Soak the beans overnight in water to cover. Drain and place in a 2-litre saucepan or pressure cooker. Puree the onion and 3 cloves garlic with the beer, and pour over the beans. Don't add salt at this point. Cook over low heat until the beans are soft (depending on how old the beans are the time will vary. Using a pressure-cooker, about 35 minutes, if not, maybe 1 hour. Keep the pot covered, stir regularly  

Saute the sofrito ingredients in the olive oil and add them to the beans, Now add the salt/vinegar to taste, stir, and simmer for 10 minutes more. The consistency should be slightly soupy. Ready.