Guacamole by Mortar & Pestle

Last weekend Dennis and I met my parents for dinner at this Mexican restaurant called El Dorado. My dad ordered some guacamole and the waitress actually wheeled out a cart and made it for us at the table. It was pretty awesome, and Dennis was very taken with it. I deduced it after he asked me to get us a mortar & pestle while I was at Marshalls this week. I have mad deduction skills!

I got us some stuff to make guacamole and so tonight we made it. I learned from the recipe that guacamole comes from two Aztec Nahuatl words - ahuacatl & molli, or "avocado sauce." Interesting stuff!

Ingredients
2 avocados
1/3 red onion
1-2 hot peppers (I used 1 jalapeno and 1 purple coffee pepper)
2 tbsp cilantro leaves, finely chopped
1 tbsp lime juice
1/2 tsp salt
Dash of pepper
1/2 tomato (about 1/4 cup)

This is pretty basic. Just put all of the ingredients in the bowl and mash them up! If you don't have a mortar & pestle then you can use a fork to smash up the avocado. My dad told me to watch the waitress cut up the avocado, which was great because she did it way more quickly and efficiently than I used to. Well, never again!

She sliced it in half, longways around the seed. Then to remove the seed, she just whacked it with the knife so it got stuck, then pulled it out with the knife.

Neato!

Once the seed was out, Dennis just scooped the avocado out with a spoon and dumped it into the mortar. Then he started pestling.

Action shot!

Close up

 Then we added all the other ingredients and pestled some more. Annnnd scene!

This guacamole was pretty awesome and very easy to make. One quick tip - the recipe said don't add the tomatoes until right before they are being served. I'm guessing the tomatoes go bad more quickly than the rest of the ingredients. We put half of the recipe in a tupperware in the fridge, then added the tomato to the rest and pestled that as well.

Here is the link to the original recipe.

Pineapple Salsa, with 1/3 ingredients homegrown!

Ok so it only has 6 ingredients, but whatever, just let me have this.

I already posted this recipe here but I just wanted to add a new post bragging about being able to add ingredients from my garden. The old recipe calls for serrano pepper, but I just used cayenne and purple Trinidad peppers because, does it really matter? I don't think so.

I went out to my garden and clipped 2 purple peppers and a ton of cilantro. I knew I was going to have to pick through it because some of the leaves looked a little... meh.

This is what I had to work with.

It wasn't that difficult to find some good usable leaves, but I saw some creepy crawlies in there so I had to wash them thoroughly.

This detailed process consisted of me stirring the leaves around in some water with my finger. Then I strained them and did it again several times. I'm sure I got them nice and clean...and if not, this salsa has more protein in it than I bargained for.

I washed and pitted the cayenne and purple peppers, but I only ended up using 2 cayenne and half of one purple pepper because it was soooo hot. I thought if I used more it might be unbearably hot, and if not, I can always add more later.

Here's my finished product.

I'll be eating it on top of some salmon tomorrow. Nomnomnom!

Chicken Ravioli with Sage Butter Sauce

For a special occasion this week, D & I decided to use the pasta machinery that D1 got for us... I posted pictures on my old blog but it is some tricky machinery so I will gladly repost!

So! Here's a little romance for ya - back in the ole 2009, D & I were in Rome, Italy for our 1 year anniversary. We went to a FANTASTIC restaurant and had amazing food... Dennis ordered the pumpkin ravioli and he was never the same again. He talks about it all the time. So we decided to try pumpkin ravioli.

At this point you might notice that the title of this post is chicken ravioli. Yea. The grocery store was OUT OF PUMPKIN! Not even real pumpkin, just canned pumpkin - that's all I wanted, and I was denied. So I had to improvise. I knew we had chicken at home, so I grabbed parmesan and sage for the sauce and then I peaced out.

I looked up some chicken filling recipes when I got home and found one that looked pretty easy with the ingredients I already had at home.

Ingredients

2 tablespoons butter

1 stalk celery, finely chopped

1 carrot, finely chopped

1 small onion, finely chopped

8 ounces boneless chicken breast, cubed

2 tablespoons Chianti

1 egg yolk

1/4 cup Parmesan cheese, grated

Salt and pepper

Sauté the celery, carrot, and onion in butter for about 3 minutes, the add the chicken and sauté for 3-4 more minutes, until the chicken starts to brown. Add the Chianti, cook for 2 more minutes, then remove from heat.

Put the whole chicken mixture into the food processor and pulse to chop. It should look kinda like chicken salad when it is done. Pour it into a bowl and add the egg yolk, cheese, salt and pepper. Then use the mixture to fill the ravioli.

We lay out the pasta in sheets and use cookie cutters to make a circle, then put a little lump of the mixture in the circle and fold it in half. Press the edges down to seal them, then cut the edges with a ravioli cutter.

The finished ravioli... one of MANY.

Once you have all of your raviolis, drop them in boiling water for 6-7 minutes. It takes a long time to make each individual ravioli but it's satisfying to eat them knowing how hard you worked, and it's also really rewarding to hear your guests tell you how awesome your meal is. 

Plate sans salad. Note the Boh.

Now for the Sage Butter Sauce.

Ingredients

4 tablespoons butter

8 sage leaves

1/2 lemon, juiced

1/4 cup grated parmesan

I'm going to post the directions exactly as posted because I kind of just tossed them all together and hoped for the best since I was in a huge rush. It was still really tasty!

Melt butter in a 12 to 14-inch saute pan and continue cooking until golden brown color ("noisette") appears in the thinnest liquid of the butter. Add sage leaves and remove from heat. Add lemon juice and set aside. Drain the pasta, but leaving some cooking water, and gently pour into saute pan and return to heat. Add the cheese, toss to coat and serve immediately.

The spread. Note the sage butter.

ENJOY!

Here are the links for the chicken filling recipe & the sage butter recipe.

Pineapple Salsa

Another fruity summer salsa - supposed to be a bit spicier due to the serrano pepper. 

Ingredients

2 cups diced fresh pineapple

1/2 cup chopped cilantro

1/4 cup finely chopped red onion

1 serrano pepper, stemmed, seeded and finely chopped

juice and zest of 1 lime

1/8 teaspoon sea salt

Now I love me some spicy peppers. If you do too, you might be interested in this website featuring a pepper scale. It tells you how hot different types of peppers are on a scale of 0-550,000. Jalapenos are at about 4,000 while the serrano peppers can be anywhere from 7,000 to 25,000. I wasn't sure how to pick a pepper (haha!) because some were orange and some were green, so I just got one of each and put them both in the salsa. I hoped it wouldn't be unbearably hot and I was right. It was just fine.

I didn't put any lime zest in because I don't have a zester and I really didn't feel like it would add anything more than the lime juice would. Also, I happen to have sea salt on my spice rack, but I wouldn't stress about not having any. Plain old salt would do just fine.

I altered the pineapple & onion amounts slightly because the package of pineapple I bought had more than 2 cups. It said 25 oz. I didn't feel like doing the math so I just used all of it and doubled the onion. It tasted great. I feel it is easy to manipulate the ingredients in salsa without ruining the end product. I'm sure you could add some mango or peach in there and it would still taste great.

Here's the recipe from WholeFoodsMarket.com.

Mango Avocado Tomato Salsa

Finally, the real reason behind the whole blog. The salsa. It came to us in a combination of ways.. there is a lovely restaurant in Salisbury, MD called Cactus Taverna that serves mango slices on top of their entrees and it really adds a great flavor to fish.

We decided that we wanted to try mango on our own fish. Dennis talked to my mom about mango/peach salsa and said he wanted to try to make some at home. So we planned on making the salsa to put on top of some tuna steaks that we got from Target. I know right? Target has a really great grocery section now, in case you didn't know.

Anywho, Dennis asked me to find a recipe for mango salsa, and this is the first one I found. The prep work is time consuming, but once you have finished you just toss all of the ingredients together and let them mellow.

Ingredients

1 mango - peeled, seeded and diced

1 avocado - peeled, pitted, and diced

4 medium tomatoes, diced

1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and minced

1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons fresh lime juice

1/4 cup chopped red onion

3 tablespoons olive oil

Combine the mango, avocado, tomatoes, jalapeno, cilantro, and garlic in a medium bowl. I have a slap-chop type device that I use to dice all of the ingredients. It seems to work well and it is a lot easier than cutting everything with a knife.

We bought 2 of everything so that we could try the recipe twice. The second batch was better because everything was a lot riper so I would recommend buying your ingredients a few days in advance.

We used jarred jalapenos & jarred minced garlic for the recipe but you could try to get them fresh. We just kind of eyeballed it as far as the amounts go, but it ended up being about 8-10 jalapeno slices and 2.5 teaspoons of minced garlic.

Stir in the salt, lime juice, red onion, and olive oil. Just FYI - one large lime will give you 2 tablespoons of juice, but if the limes are on the small side I would get 2. To blend the flavors, refrigerate for about 30 minutes before serving.

We grilled the tuna steaks and did some boil-in-a-bag white rice, then put a scoop of salsa on the plate. The meal was perfect.

This tastes amazing the day after you make it. We had it stored in a mixing bowl with a lid, but the lid isn't 100% airtight and when I opened the fridge the next morning, the amazing aroma hit me in the face like a 2x4. I was getting creamer for my coffee and I started wondering if salsa would be good for breakfast! I ate it later in the day with tortilla chips and it was excellent.

The second time we made the recipe, we doubled the mango and it was still amazing. I had salmon and Dennis had chicken, and they both went very well with the salsa.

Here is the original link from AllRecipes.com.