Peanut Soup

Ingredients:
1 cup raw shelled peanuts
1 1/2 lb soup bones
1/2 cup fine chopped onions
1 small turnip (shredded)
one stalk fine chopped celery
1/4 cup fine chopped parsley
2 or 3 large carrots peeled and cut into 2 or 3″ sticks
1/2 teaspoon cumin
2 cloves minced garlic
Salt and pepper, to taste
Two potatoes peeled and quartered
2/3 to 1 cup rice

Put the peanuts in a small pot with water that covers them. Let them boil for 2 minutes, then cool off a little but not too cool because you squeeze the peeling off them and if it’s too cold it’s harder.

Put the mix in a blender with enough water to cover the peanuts, or “maybe a little more”. Liquefy the peanuts and set aside.Put about 3 quarts of water in a large pot. “make sure at least 1/2 of the pot is empty”. Bring the water to a boil.

Add one and one half pound of soup bones, preferably bones with a good amount of meat (you can cut the meat off when it’s done and serve the soup with meat).

Boil the meat for 10 minutes, then add onions, turnip, celery, parsley, carrots, cumin, garlic, salt and pepper and the liquefied peanuts. Be on top of this because this soup wants to boil over. Do not cover. Stir often.

Cook for maybe 20 minutes.

Add potatoes and rice. The amount of rice you add will determine how thick the soup ends up. The exact thickness is a bit of an art.

Cook for 15-20 minutes until the rice is done.

Torrejas (tor RAY has)

Ingredients:
2 cups rice (“leftover rice doesn’t work”)
1 large carrot, shredded
5 or 6 green onions
1/2 cup shredded cheese (any good melting cheese. We use cheddar)
1 egg
Salt and pepper, to taste
1-1 1/2 teaspoon crushed oregano
Flour, as needed.

Cook rice and set aside. In a bowl beat one egg and add 2/3 cup of water.

Add salt and pepper and flour until the mixture is slightly thicker than waffle batter (pretty thick). Set aside

Mix the veggies and cheese into the rice while the rice is still fairly hot. Then mix the batter with the rice concoction. The batter/rice/veggie mix should be very thick and sticky.

Heat oil in a pan 1/4 inch deep.

Spoon the torreja batter into the oil using a tablespoon or soup spoon and smash it down a little. Brown them on both sides. Maggie makes them about 3 inches in diameter. They will look like thick cookies. You can cook them crispy or chewy. I prefer chewy. Maggie puts them on their side in a cake pan with paper towels in the bottom when they’re done…You’ll have a bunch.

We eat them with fresh cooked beets and put salsa on them. Maggie also eats them with baked potato.

Variations:

Instead of rice you can use the same amount of quinoa OR one head of chopped leaf type lettuce. if you use lettuce you will have to add a bit more flour when you mix because the lettuce has water in it. Lettuce torrejas are my fave but we usually eat rice because it’s a lot of work and the work is multiplied when you make different types for the same meal.

Around Vancouver in 52 Restaurants > Americas > Mexico

I hadn’t seen Raul in a while, or cooked anything delicious, so we got together and he showed me how to make a couple of his favorite Mexican dishes, sopa azteca and chili rellenos. Yum! They’re delicious, so I wanted to publish them for you.

To make the chili rellenos, wash the poblano peppers (as many as you want to serve…probably 2 medium-sized peppers per person) and cut a little “window” in them, for stuffing. Pull out all the seeds, so they’re clean inside and then make some rice – about 1 cup per 4 peppers, depending on the size. It’s possible to add ground beef as well but we made a vegetarian version. Preheat the oven to 350.

In the meantime, start making the soup by dicing a medium onion and 5 or 6 cloves of garlic and sauteing them until the onions are translucent.  Purée 10 medium size tomatoes, adding a small can of salsa and then the onion and garlic mix. When it’s a consistent texture, transfer the whole lot to a stock pot.  Add 1/2 L of chicken stock, 1/2 tsp of chili powder (we used chipotle), a dash of cumin, a dash of sage and some salt to taste. Bring to a boil, then simmer for 15-20 minutes (or keep warm until the chili rellenos are done).

When the rice is ready, scoop as much as possible into each pepper and top with some salsa verde and Mexican cheese. Pop them in the oven for about 45 minutes until the peppers are soft and tender.

Garnish the soup with some fresh avocado pieces, crushed tortilla chips and some shredded/crumbled cheese. And make sure to serve with plenty of Negra Modelos and tequila of course.

Salud!

What’s Robbie Burns day without haggis? If you can’t have haggis, you at least need whisky. I’m a traditionalist, so I like to do both if I can and I wrote about the whisky yesterday. Robbie Burns Day is January 25th, and it’s a strange sort of holiday – the birthday of the national poet – that is celebrated primarily by (surprise!) eating haggis and drinking whisky.

Haggis is a traditional Scotch dish that is made froma sheep’s heart, liver and lungs, ground up and stuffed into the lining of a sheep’s stomach with oatmeal and spices. If people know what haggis is, they tend to think it’s disgusting and so I’ve had to come to its defense several times this week, but I love it. You can do a lot better with a Costco hotdog if you’re looking for something in the disgusting department. It’s been a couple of years since I’ve had haggis, so when Ben told me he had bought a good one at Jackson Meats (2214 West 4th Ave.) I went straight out to get my own.

They have two types; traditional Scotch haggis and one made in-house from their own recipe with more flavour and spices. I got the Jackson variant and served it with “neeps and tatties” and a couple of glasses of Talisker.

This is the recipe I used for neeps and tatties, from Chow.com, although my grandmother would argue that you must use turnips.

1. Peel and cut rutabaga and potatoes into two inch pieces and put into separate saucepans. Cover with water. Add 1 teaspoon salt to each pan. Cook until tender, remove from heat and drain. Leave in pan. Rutabaga will take about 30 minutes, and potatoes will take less time (about 5 minutes less). Both are done when they are not firm when you jab them with a fork.
2. Heat the milk. Mash the drained potatoes in the pan. Add all the hot milk and mash potatoes some more (adding the milk before the butter makes the potatoes smoother). Add 2 tablespoons butter. Mash some more. Taste and add more salt if necessary. Mash drained rutabaga in the pot in which they were cooked. Add 2 tablespoons butter and mash some more.
3. Combine mashed rutabaga and potatoes; add pepper, and nutmeg. Mash some more. Taste and add more salt if necessary. If you wish, garnish with chopped parsley.

If you want to get ceremonious, you can always recite Burn’s Address to a Haggis before you eat.