I didn’t know what to cook this week. I mean for anything, not just for this newsletter. Most weeks I set out with ideas – ideas born of what’s in the refrigerator, what’s in season, or what would just make me feel better in the middle of a two-week-long stint of sunless grey flurries. This week? Nothing. At one point, Kate called down from upstairs “What are you frying now?” as I worked through craving total garbage mid-week. I still didn’t have an idea of a cohesive menu, or an in-cohesive one, or really anything that wasn’t a variation on fried chicken covered in sauce.
Then Kate said something about chimichurri. I was only half listening, because on my best days I am a distractible lump of distracted distraction, and let’s face it, few days these days are our best days. But the mention of chimichurri finally gave me direction. Sure, that direction was sort of a non-specific South – in that this menu isn’t really an authentic representation of any South American cuisine, but a mishmash of flavors and techniques borrowed from a few – but a direction it was.
If you haven’t come across it, chimichurri is a ubiquitous condiment in Argentinian and Uruguayan cooking. Finely chopped herbs, vinegar, red pepper, and oil blended in endless combinations and ratios depending on the cook, the region and the purpose. Traditionally, it’s served with grilled meats – and, in fact, that’s how we’ll use it this week – but it’s also a flavor base, a guidebook for building the salty, sweet, sour, herbaceous flavors that are the backbone of southern South American cuisines.
I had originally planned to include a recipe for a crepe cake layered with dulce de leche in this week’s edition. You won’t find it here because, well, because it was a failure. First, there was a minor kitchen disaster in one attempt to make dulce de leche when my carefully stirred and reduced and minded milk mixture went from a lovely light caramel color to a boiling volcano of smoking charred dairy in the five seconds I turned away. I made a second – successful – batch using a shortcut that always leaves me afraid that I’m going to blow up my kitchen. Then there were the crepes. Rather than being tender layers of pastry, separating unctuous milk caramel, instead they turned into leathery … leathers. It tasted fine – but it seeped when you cut it, and in general, deserts shouldn’t require more chewing than a cheap diner steak. So that recipe isn’t here. I’m telling you this both to explain why there’s no desert this week, but also because it’s important to acknowledge that not everything goes perfectly every time – and that’s okay. We can start again. We can remake plans, or just have a bowl of cereal. Or two. Fruit loops, probably.
Anyway, I’m enjoying a leathery slice of strangely layered caramel sweet cake with my coffee this morning. And as grumpy as I was that it didn’t work out, next time I know what I will change.
Chicken Picadillo Empanadas
When I moved to Washington, DC in 2008, the city – or at least my group of itinerate 30-something professionals – was in the throes of a mini empanada fever. DC has a vibrant culture of Central American immigrants, and there were a number of empanada shops that were open VERY late. Which meant we had easy access to handheld take away food at god-knows-what-hour-of-the-I-have-to-be-back-at-work-in-four-hours-o’clock.
To be completely honest, there were plenty of times I would have preferred a mission style burrito, or a half-smoke (the late-night lines at Ben’s Chili Bowl are ALWAYS too long for me), but the empanadas grew on me.
This recipe is a simple dough, wrapped around a rootless picadillo. I say rootless because Picadillo is a dish that exists in multiple cultures and cuisines extending from the southwestern United States, through Mexico and Central America, to the far southern tip of South America. It’s often lightly sweet and salty, sometimes spicy mix of fruit, olives, meats, and sometimes nuts. This picadillo doesn’t belong to any firm tradition, but it makes a good, and quick, filling for empanadas.
2 cups AP Flour
6 tbsp unsalted butter
1 tsp salt
1 large egg
¼ cup cold water
1 tbsp white vinegar
2 boneless skinless chicken thighs
½ cup chicken stock
1 small onion
1 small green pepper or 2 chilis
1 medium tomato
1 tbsp olive oil
2 cloves garlic
¼ cup loosely packed green olives
¼ cup loosely packed raisins
1 tsp chopped cilantro leaves
Prepare the empanada dough:
Cut the cold butter into small cubes.
Add the flour, salt, and butter to the bowl of a food processor and pulse until the mixture looks like fine cornmeal.
Add the egg, water, and vinegar, and process until a dough has formed.
Remove from the food processer and knead just until smooth.
Cover, and allow to rest refrigerated for at least 30 minutes before rolling out.
Prepare the picadillo:
Peel, trim, and finely dice the onion.
Finely chop the tomato.
Dice the pepper.
Coarsely chop the olives.
Cut the chicken into very small (1/2 inch or smaller) pieces.
Add the oil to a frying or sauté pan over medium high heat.
Add the onion, tomatoes, peppers, and cilantro to the pan and cook until broken down.
Add the chicken, chicken stock, olives, and raisins.
Season with salt and pepper.
Bring to a simmer and cook until the liquid is completely absorbed.
Allow to cool completely before using.
To fill:
Preheat your oven to 375°F.
Roll out the dough to 1/8th inch thickness.
Using a large cutter, or a bowl as a template, cut into ~4 inch circles.
Moisten the edge of the dough circle with water.
Add 1 tbsp of filling to the center, and fold over to seal shut.
Starting with one end, fold the sealed edge over a little at a time to form a braid.
Whisk one egg and 1 tbsp water together to form an egg wash.
Brush the empanada generously with the egg wash.
Bake on a try lined with parchment or a silicone mat at 375°F until crisp and lightly browned, about 25 minutes.
Criolla Salad
Like picadillo, Criolla can mean a lot of different things, but the core idea is that of a salad or sauce (salsa) with onions as a base. That sounds like it might be harsh, especially since many recipes rely on copious amounts of pungent red onion. But while red onions can have an assertive scent and a rough edge when first sliced, anyone who’s accidentally burned them while cooking can tell you they’ve also got a lot of sugar in them. That means there’s a deep sweetness you can coax out, and since you know they’re deliciously crunchy, there’s great flavor hiding there. Latin American cooks, of course, figured this out years and years ago. This Criolla salad, like the picadillo above doesn’t owe its origin to any specific country, though it’s closer to Peruvian Salsa Criolla than some other dishes, but instead just nods at several of them. It’s a sweet, sour, salty, crunchy, and satisfying accompaniment to the richness of grilled meat and rich pastry and … well, it’s an onion salad and that’s kind of fun in its own right.
Serves 4
1 medium red onion
1 cup assorted cherry tomatoes
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp chopped cilantro or parsley leaves
1 tsp kosher salt
1 tsp red wine vinegar
½ tsp ground black pepper
Peel trim and slice the onion very thinly from end to end – discarding any green or soft parts in the center.
Quarter the cherry tomatoes.
Toss the onions and tomatoes with remaining ingredients and serve immediately.
Steak with Bacon Chimichurri
Steak. Good, fat marbled, salty, smoky, well charred steak. For me there’s something visceral about it. Simplicity and luxury in one. Here, we’ll pair ribeye – though feel free to swap in the cut of your choice, I just find a decent ribeye to be a good ratio of tender and chewy, fatty and lean that matches this preparation – with an herbaceous chimichurri that really balances the richness of the meat.
I’ve included a recipe for what, for lack of a better name, I just call dust. It’s my go-to steak seasoning these days. I mix some simple spices, chilis, salt, and powdered dried mushrooms to make a seasoning that has a bit of a kick and a lot of umami. It adds flavor and gives the steak a surface that helps to develop a really great sear. You can choose to omit it or to use a seasoning mixture of your own.
Serves 4
2 16oz boneless ribeye steaks
1 recipe bacon chimichurri (see below)
4 tsp Dust (see below)
Pat your steaks dry with a towel, and season with ~1 tsp of dust (recipe below) per side.
Place the steaks on a wire rack on a sheet pan and refrigerate uncovered for at least 2 and up to 4 hours. This will help dry out the surface and give you a good crust.
Preheat your oven to ~300°F
Preheat a cast iron pan over very high heat. You do not need to grease or oil the pan.
Open your windows. Yeah, it’s cold. It will get smoky.
Sear the fatty edge of the steak in the dry pan to render some fat.
Sear the steak on both sides in the rendered fat until very dark.
Check the internal temperature.
Transfer the pan to the oven and cook until the steak reaches your preferred doneness as measured by temperature:
Bleu: 115°F
Rare: 120°F
Medium Rare: 125°F
Medium: 130°F
Allow to rest 10 minutes in a warm place before slicing.
Serve topped with bacon chimichurri sauce (below) and crispy smashed potatoes.
Bacon Chimichurri
4 cloves garlic
1 tbsp red pepper flake
1 tbsp boiling water
1 tsp dried oregano
¼ cup loosely packed parsley leaves
½ cup loosely packed cilantro leaves and stems
1/3 cup olive oil
2 tbsp red wine vinegar
1 tsp kosher salt
1 tsp ground black pepper
2 pieces smokey bacon
Peel, trim, and finely mince the garlic.
Add the red pepper flake to a non-reactive bowl.
Add the boiling water to the red pepper and allow to sit for 5 minutes.
Add the vinegar, oregano, and minced garlic.
Allow to rest at least 10 minutes.
Finely mince the cilantro, and parsley.
Add the chopped herbs, oil, and salt and stir together.
Cut the bacon into small pieces, and fry until crisp. Drain well.
Finely chop the bacon. Extremely finely chop it. Destroy it. Make it into bacon powder.
Add the bacon immediately before serving.
Dust
2 dried shiitake mushrooms (or equivalent amounts of other dried mushrooms)
1 tbsp kosher salt
1 tsp whole black pepper corn
1 tsp smoked paprika
½ tsp red pepper flake
½ tsp granulated sugar
½ tsp dried thyme
1/8th tsp Chinese five spice powder
Break mushrooms into small pieces.
Add all ingredients to the well of an electric spice grinder, and process until reduced to a fine powder.
This can be stored tightly covered for several months.
Crispy Smashed Potatoes
These potatoes are the best of both worlds. Boiling them in heavily salted water gives them a creamy interior, smashing them and then frying them up in a pan gives them a crispy crunchy exterior. They’re everything and they’re one of my favorite ways to prepare potatoes. The textural contrast makes them a great pairing for steak or roasted meats, but in truth, I can almost eat them like tater tots – tasty crunchy creamy potato nuggets with some ketchup or sauce on the side and a frosty hopped beverage to match.
1 ½ lbs small (fingerling or marble, etc.) potatoes
2 cloves garlic
1 sprig thyme
1 tsp kosher salt plus more for salting cooking water
1-2 tbsp olive oil
Bring a pot of heavily salted water to a boil.
Boil the potatoes until tender as tested by inserting a fork into one.
Drain the potatoes and allow to cool.
Peel, trim, and mince the garlic.
Pick the leaves from the thyme.
Heat a pan over medium high heat.
Add the olive oil to the pan.
Smash the potatoes flat with the bottom of a pan, or a cutting board.
Fry until crisp, turning at least once.
Add the thyme and garlic and toss to distribute.
Serve immediately.