Staples: A Pound (Give or Take a Few) of Pickled Padrons

I get a kick out of making pickles. The smell of brine and spices takes me back to college when, during a couple of summers, I worked as seasonal help at a pickle-packing plant during cucumber season when they fresh-packed pickles (as opposed to a long brine). I came home every day smelling like vinegar, dill, garlic and other spices. My mom frequently made me take off my work clothes in the garage and throw them directly into the washing machine before I came into the house. I was -ah- rather pungent smelling and often sticky.

I really love pickles, but it always took me a month after working there to be able to eat them again.

The worst job was sorting the cucumbers. They'd dump  bins of cucumbers onto several conveyor belts and workers, on either side of the belt would sort out any that weren't  the appropriate size or shape - depending on what they would be used for - and throw out the ucky looking cukes and any leaves or stems. The smell wasn't good, but I got used to it. The worst part was staring at a moving conveyor belt for hours at a stretch. When you looked up, you were a little dizzy and anything stationary you looked at appeared to be moving like the conveyor belt. Dumping glass (overturning boxes of glass jars at the start of the production belt to be filled with cucumbers, pickling spices and brine) wasn't bad once you got a rhythm going and adding the pickling spices wasn't too bad either.

This is exactly like the thumb guards I wore.
I think I might still have one, somewhere.

The second worst job after sorting was... Do you know why the first dill pickle's so hard to get out of the jar? Well, that's because one of our jobs was eight workers standing four to a side of a bin filled with cucumber, with the conveyor belt split to run along each side of the bin and after most of the cucumbers had been added to the jars by going through the "shaker" and the pickling spice added, we would shove in one or more cucumbers so that the jar was completely full and the cucumbers tight against the upper shoulders of the jar.

This was hard on the back and the thumbs. After I got used to it, I had thumbs of steel, but my back never acclimated. I also wore thumb guards under my gloves. As summer jobs went, it paid very well. I liked working swing because once the sun went down, the plant cooled off a little. The absolute best job was when you got to drive a fork lift. Whee!

Just a hair short of a pound.

I'm going out of town for a few days and had a surplus of Padrón peppers - Pimientos de Padrón - a generally mild chile used frequently as tapas - quickly and gently fried, then seasoned with salt. To round that out, I had about 8 really small sweet peppers. I knew that I wouldn't get to them before I left and I didn't want them to go to waste. Pickling most vegetables is dead easy and fast, especially if you're making a refrigerator pickle. If you want to make something shelf-stable, make sure you follow the rules regarding canning, else bad things may happen.

This was the last time my face got this close to the pan while cooking the brine.
Vinegar fumes can knock you sideways. Opening a window or turning on your kitchen fan helps,
once the liquid starts to come to a boil.

This brine will work with just about any peppers or other vegetables and the spicing can be adjusted to your own taste. You should let the jar sit in the refrigerator for a week before eating. I'm looking forward to eating these when I come back, in a salad, as a part of another garnish or just for snacking.


RECIPE: PICKLED PEPPERS

Chile Verde

Sometimes it's hard pretending that it's summer and I should cook summer meals when I look out the window in the evening and see fog blowing up my street, my visibility is limited to two blocks and the wind is howling.  Okay I know, "Wah, wah, wah!" </end bitch session> Welcome to summer in San Francisco. At least in my neighborhood.

Last week I made chile verde and appreciated the warmth. Actually, I made it twice. The first time (a small batch with chicken) it was wimpy with absolutely zero heat. I used four jalapenos and I might as well have left them out. Coincidentally, a few days after I made it, I saw this article on CookThink. Demand for chiles has resulted in prettier, shipping friendly, but milder jalapenos.

"To meet the demand, jalapeno breeding has promoted varieties that are flawlessly pretty, easy to ship and easier to grow in cooler climates. Jalapenos used to be grown mostly in the high deserts of New Mexico, Arizona, and Northern Chihuahua and Sonora, Mexico. Hot, dry climates promote the production of capsaicin, the chemical that makes a hot pepper hot. Now, some varieties can be grown in wetter, cooler climates that don’t create enough heat for a spicy chile pepper."

Furthermore, the author provides information on varieties to look for if you want hotter or milder chiles. When I'm cooking and using chiles, I'll taste each one to get a sense of its heat - I should have followed my own advice on my first batch. Chiles are hotter at the stem end than the tip so I usually go for the middle. The ribs, core and seeds of the chile is where the majority of the heat is so if you taste the flesh and it's kinda wimpy, just trim off the stem and use the rest of the chile.

When I cook with chiles, my goal is to find the balance between enough heat without losing the taste of the other ingredients and the dish, overall.

Online Chile Resources:
Cook's Thesaurus: Fresh Chiles and Dried Chiles
Wikipedia: Scoville Scale (common method for categorizing a chile's heat)

I'm declaring my love for tomatillos. There, I said it.

Tomatillos (unrelated to tomatoes) are a fruit, related to the Cape Gooseberry. Green tomatillos are more tart than the purple-ish varieties. Raw, the taste of a green tomatillo is reminiscent of a Granny Smith apple. Tomatillos can be used raw or cooked. To prepare, remove the paper husks and rinse them in warm water to remove (most of) the sticky stuff which can be somewhat bitter. You don't have to completely remove it, so don't fret if there still some on the surface of the tomatillo.

Out of the broiler.

Sauce ingredients ready for the blender.

After blending.

Recipe: Chile Verde

(Nearly) Last Minute Pozole Rojo Con Pollo

Back when I made these pan-seared chicken breasts, I saw the recipe on SFGATE for Nopalito's Posole Rojo. I made the adobo part of the dish and stuck it in the fridge thinking I'd use the leftover chicken for some posole on Cinco de Mayo. You can make this (nearly) at the last minute if you make the main components in advance: the meat, hominy and adobo can all be cooked in advance and refrigerated for a short period. If you do that, the bulk of the work you'll have to do is to assemble the posole components and prep the garnishes. This dish is wonderful.

Along came Thursday morning, May 5 - Cinco de Mayo and I hadn't cooked the hominy. No, not the canned hominy. I never understood why (generally) I didn't like dishes like posole, or others that included canned hominy -- and canned was the only hominy I knew about. I liked the corn-y taste and the texture but there was some off-flavor that I couldn't identify that ruined (for me) whatever dish it was in. One morning at the market, I stopped by Rancho Gordo's stand (I have a lot to say about beans and about Steve Sando and Rancho Gordo, but that will be another post) and there was a bag of dried hominy (White Corn Posole/Hominy). I thought that I couldn't hate it more than canned hominy so I took it home and stared at it for a while trying to figure out what I'd make.

Ultimately I used it in a bean dish (that I cannot quite reproduce as I cooked it, damn it, because it was delicious) that I adapted from Heidi Swanson (who adapted it from a Nopa recipe by Laurence Jossel). I combined Christmas limas, some chickpeas and the dried hominy from Rancho Gordo. I cooked the hominy in advance and when it was tender took one and ate it hoping that I would like it (it smells pretty freaking amazing while it's cooking)...

Yes, yes and YES! It tastes intensely corny and has a chewy-tender texture. This is good stuff. Also it's important to cook them until (as I refer to it) they 'bloom', kind of like the way that popcorn opens up. I was thrilled that I could love something I'd previously given up on. I'm pretty sure it was mostly the canned taste. If you have to use canned hominy, I recommend that you rinse and drain it very thoroughly. 

So, back to the last minute Cinco de Mayo posole and the hominy I hadn't cooked. It was a busy work day (I was working from home) and I didn't have any time to tend anything in the kitchen so I dumped them in the slow cooker with a lot of water and a thin-sliced medium onion, set it on high and went back to work checking on them every couple of hours. I don't know how long it took, but by 4:00 pm, I had beautiful hominy ready for my posole. At that point I had a little time and cooked-down the left-over hominy water and reduced it in a sauce pan on the stove - I used this as part of the liquid in the posole, but it's not necessary.

RECIPE: POSOLE ROJO CON POLLO