Ingredient List

• 4 Lemons
• 8 Limes
• Sugar, 2 cups
• Water, 7 1/2 cups

The main bulk of the work in this recipe is juicing your lime and lemons. Remember to bring them to room temperature before attempting this feat. You should wind up with around 1 cup of juice from the lemons and limes, if you favor one over the other you can easily replace one for the other, all the way up to entirety.

Before you begin juicing combine your water and sugar in an appropriately sized sauce-pan. Simmer/lightly boil the two together for approximately 5 minutes, you will left with a watery syrup.

Juice your citrus and place in a bowl, and await the syrup to finish simmering. Combine the two and mix thoroughly. Then proceed to distribute into individual serving containers, or one large one. Be wary of glass. Place the container(s) into the freezer and allow to freeze.

Do not stir at any point during the freezing process as this may mess up the distribution of the sugar (I really have no idea but the recipe I originally started from proclaimed this). You can serve this as hard ice or allow to thaw and present as a slushee like delight.

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Pico De Gallo

Ingredient List ~ $3

• 6 tomatoes
• White Onion, 1/3 of a
• Cilantro, handful
• 1 Garlic Clove
• 1 lime

I kinda cheated with this as we received free tomatoes from a friend through a CSA, so these were super fresh and super tasty. But the lesson to be learned is that when you are not blending/cooking ingredients it is extra important to have really fresh ingredients, it just makes the end product that much more enjoyable.

Start by dicing and seeding your tomatoes; note that it is alleged that tomato seeds make things bitter but I did not do a great job at seeding and did not notice any bitterness, maybe this concept comes from the hysteria that arrived in Europe with the first tomatoes, who knows. As far as the size of dice you are looking for it is really up to your personal chunky preference. Throw diced tomatoes into a bowl.

Next dice your onion, I generally like to dice them slightly smaller than my tomato size. Throw into same bowl with tomatoes. Peel and finely mince your garlic clove, add to the bowl. At this point I like to juice the lime over the bowl, remember that it is easier to juice a lime that is room temperature than one that has been sitting in your refrigerator. Stir all the ingredients together with a large spoon.

Finally take your handful of cilantro, de-stem it and roughly chop the remaining leaves. Place in bowl and stir once more. NEXT!

Avocado-Tomatillo

Ingredient List ~ $3

• 6 tomatillos
• 2 avocados
• 4 jalapenos
• 1 garlic clove
• 1 cup of water
• salt, coarse

If you’ve never eaten/cooked with tomatillos you are missing out. It has such a unique flavor that goes great with pretty much all meats and fishes, as well as grains and veggies. You can eat them raw, but for this recipe you are going to want to simmer them. I will also note that I used 4 avocados in the salsa picture above, and this recipe was successful with that ratio, which resulted in increased avocado-ness as well as a thicker viscosity, I just happen to prefer and recommend the lower ratio for increased tomatillo enjoyment.

First dehusk your tomatillos and halve them. Place into a pot with the 1 cup of water and simmer until they are soft. This should take about 10-12 minutes depending on the size of your tomatillos. Once soft you can place the entire contents of the pot into your blender or food processor.

Take your avocados and halve, and de-pit them, spoon the contents into the food processor. Roughly chop and seed your jalapenos, add to food processor. You can use milder or spicier chiles if you want. Also peel and roughly chop your garlic clove and add into your bowl. Add salt to your personal taste.

With all the ingredients waiting in your food processor/blender, fire that sucker up and let it pur for several moments until all the ingredients are well combined and your are left with a delightful green puree of salsa. NEXT!

Spciy Red

Ingredient List ~$3

• 27 oz can of spicy tomato sauce, El Pato *
• 4 Jalapenos
• Red Onion, 1/2 of a
• 3 garlic cloves
• 3 Roma Tomatoes
• salt

Let me begin by explaining that I have been trying to reverse engineer the spicy red salsa I get when I get burritos from Mexican fast food joints, mentally since I moved out here, and actively in the past several months. This recipe is a result of that journey that while does not get me to where I wanted to go, delivered me to something I enjoy greatly. The taste of this is very similar to Trader Joe’s especiale salsa, only fresher, cheaper and better. You’ll notice that the main ingredient is a canned sauce, and this too I am trying to reverse engineer to no avail as of yet. I have been told that Wal-Mart carries the El Pato brand but I imagine you may be able to find it in Mexican grocery stores/or maybe even a bodega in a smaller size(just look for the Mallard).

First roughly dice up all your ingredients and seed your chiles and tomatoes. Combine with the sauce into a blender. Run the blender for several moments until everything is well mixed and pureed. Add salt to taste. Bowl and serve. NEXT!

Mexican(?) Slaw

Ingredient List ~ $1

• Red Cabbage, 2 Cups
• Red Onion, 1/3 Cup
• Cilantro, handful.
• 1 Lime

I have no idea if this is an actual Mexican recipe, or if anyone Mexican as ever eaten these ingredients. It’s not hard to imagine that they have as this uses common ingredients of Mexican cuisine. I do now that it is delicious. I have always been a fan of red cabbage to top things off and this just amplifies the enjoyment I get from this delightful ingredient.

You are going to want to finely dice your cabbage and onion. The smaller you go the easier for this garnish to fill the cracks as future taco filling. Combine into a bowl, and juice lime over ingredients. Stir well into everything has been coated in the lime juice. Next add your cilantro that you have destemmed and roughly chopped. Stir a few times to distribute the cilantro and you will be ready to serve.

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Ingredient List ~ $7

• 2  lbs strawberries
• 3/4 cup of sugar
• 3/4 water
• 3 egg whites
• pinch of salt
• 2 cups heavy cream

Start by washing and hulling your strawberries, and crushing them in a large bowl, until you have a nice strawberry chunk and juice mixture. Next take your water and sugar and boil them together for approximately 5 minutes, you should be left with a cloudy hot syrup. While your syrup is boiling together take your 3 egg whites with a pinch of salt and beat until nice and stiff. You will also want to find time to whip your heavy cream until it resembles whipped cream(no sarcasm).

With the syrup done boiling pour into the egg whites while continuing to beat them. An electric mixer would help achieve the best results but I have done with a hand whisker and constructed a more than bearable end product. The recipe calls for you to end up with a thick and cool meringue but I have used it while it is still warm and somewhat separated.

Now fold in this meringue/syrup mixture into the bowl of crushed strawberries. And then further fold in your whipped cream. You should have nice sweet tasting pinkish white mix of deliciousness. Pour/ladle desired portions into desired serving vessels and freeze for about 4 hours.

Again I have also made this dish with peaches and both times they wowed my taste buds. So play around with different fruits that you enjoy and let me know.

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Ingredient List ~$4

• 1 1/2 tilapia fillets, approx. 1/2 lb
• 1/2 red onion, chopped
• 4 cloves of garlic, crushed and chopped
• 1/2 cup of potato (red), chopped
• 1/2 cup of carrot, chopped
• a few basil leaves, ripped
• salt, to taste
• pepper, to taste
• 1 egg
• 2 tbsp all-purpose flour
• vegetable and olive oil

I started by getting everything ready for cooking, chopping the veggies and thawing the fillets out. Begin cooking by pouring a little olive oil into a frying pan, and begin to saute the onion and garlic. After about a minute add the potato and carrot. You can season with the salt and pepper at this point. Add the basil in shortly before removing from the heat, everything should be getting a nice golden color to what color it was prior. Remove ingredients from pan and place in a blender with 1/2 tbsp olive oil and the egg. Blend the ingredients together, it is ok if there are some larger chunks of carrot, or potato left, but the majority of the mix should be indistinguishable from the originating ingredients. Place mixture into a bowl.

Dice up your tilapia fillet and throw into the frying pan with a little olive oil for moisture and flavor. As the tilapia warms up you should be able to take a wooden spoon or for, and mash it until it is the consistency of canned tuna. Be sure not to over cook the fish as it will be fried later on. Once all your fish is cooked, add to the bowl with the blended batter mixture.

Add in the flour and mix thoroughly. You now have your fish cake ‘batter’. To give it a little more consistency before frying I decided to chill it in the freezer for 5 minutes, though 8-10 probably would have been better, you could store them in a freezer for a later occasion just be sure to seal well. Once you have removed the fish cake batter from being chilled, get a pan of vegetable oil heating up. Use enough oil to cover about 1/2 of your hypothetical fish cake.

I pre-made the fish cakes using a 1/4 cup to portion and shape the cakes. With the aid of a spoon I placed one cake at time onto a spatula and into the hot oil. Use the first cake to gauge how quickly your oil will cook, I did about 90 seconds on each side. To flip I used the spoon again to slide the cake onto the spatula and flip. While the cakes were delicate to handle, they were not necessarily fragile. After they are done cooking, place on a paper towel to absorb excess oil. Serve as desired.

This recipe made 6 fish cakes. I served this over fettucine but it would also have tasted great on a salad, on its own, in a sandwich, or probably anywhere else you like food. Bottom line is, these are easy to make, and are much cheaper/better than restaurants and grocery store versions. While I used tilapia you could replace with a similar quantity of crab, shrimp, salmon, and maybe if you are really adventurous, some pork shoulder.

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Ingredient List ~ $3 (fruit was 66% of the cost)

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 3 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• tbsp sugar
• 1 1/4 cup milk
• 1 egg
• 2 tbsp butter, melted
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 12 oz frozen blueberries, unfrozen
• 1 1/2 tbsp sugar

Mix all but the last two ingredients in a large bowl. I like to put dry ingredients in first, and gradually incorporate the liquids(butter, milk, egg and vanilla) into the mix. Stir well into you have a nice smooth batter. The original recipe did not call for vanilla, but I’ve found that vanilla is in many ways the bacon of baked goods. And it definitely added some depth of flavor.

If your blueberries are unfrozen, simply place them in a saucepan with the sugar, and let them reduce. You can mash some of them against the sides to give more blueberry flavor to the sauce, or it will turn out very straight sugary tasting. Let them reduce.

When making pancakes I prefer using a small frying pan, large enough to hold a normal pancake with a little space to get a spatula/flipper under it. Make sure the pan is nice and hot and butter it. If you are using non-stick you should only have to butter in the beginning or not at all if you desire. I used a 1/3 cup to portion out the batter, making one at a time. You will know when to flip when the uncooked side has a decent amount of bubbles forming. If you do not have experience with bubble watching, you will by your third pancake. Cook both sides until golden brown, if you find the centers are not cooking thoroughly you can squeeze with a spatula after the first flip.

Serve warm, with your blueberry sauce. This recipe made 8 or 9 normal sized pancakes.

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Ingredient List ~ 5$

Crust

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 5 oz butter, unsalted (5/4 stick), room temperature
• 1/4 cup of water, iced (around 45 F)

Filling

• 4 Fuji apples
• 4 Granny Smith apples
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• tbsp butter
• 4 tbsp flour

Start by making your crust. Mix together the flour, sugar and salt, if you have a sifter you can use that, or just play around with your hands. I mixed and kneaded the ingredients together with the butter forming a somewhat lumpy mound with bits of loose flour also in the bowl. Next begin to incorporate your iced water, put half in to begin, and then add the remaining half when the first amount has been absorbed into the crust mixture. You should now have a nice lump of pie dough that feels nice and dense. Cover in cling wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

While your crust is getting nice and chilled you can create the filling. Peel your apples, and then core and slice them. If you don’t have a corer you can simply cut around the core, and do your best to make your slices similarly sized, approximately 1/4 inch thick. Mix together your flour,butter, sugars, and cinnamon in a large bowl. Once you have your apples all peeled and sliced throw them into the seasoning bowl and cover each thoroughly with it. You can let your apples marinate while you roll out your crust.

Heat your oven to 450 F.

Your crust should just about be ready when you have finished creating the filling. Remove from the refrigerator and slice about 1/3 of it off to be used for the covering, the remaining 2/3 will be used for the bottom of the pie. Dust your counter with flour and place the 2/3 lump onto the counter and cover with a sheet of wax paper. Roll out evenly, test the size with your pie pan, the pie dough should be approximately 2 inches wider than the pan(one inch on each side), depending on the depth of it. The dough should stick to the wax paper making it easy to peel off the counter, and place into the pan. Remove the wax paper and dust the counter again. Repeat the process with the remaining 1/3 of pie dough, sizing appropriately. Take your apples and place them onto the pie dough, spreading them evenly, and make sure to get the syrupy mixture from the bottom of the bowl in there as well.  Cover with the pie top.

Your pie should now resemble something like a pie. The remaining step is to pinch together the top and bottom portions of the pie, it helps to have a little moisture on your fingers, but it is not necessary. After pinching with your fingers, take a fork and work your way around the rim completing the top/bottom merger process. You can brush some milk, or if you are feeling particularly french melted butter onto the top of the crust. Also poke fork holes into the top portion.

Cook at 450 F for 15 minutes, and 350 F for 45 minutes. Place a pan under your pie to catch any drippings unless you are particularly fond of cleaning the bottom of your oven. Let cool as long as you dare to be patient. While this pie may look like your normal sized pie you may find yourself only making two slices and eating them both fairly rapidly.

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Shredded Pork

Ingredient List ~$5

• Pork Shoulder, about 2 lbs
• 32 oz chicken stock
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• chili powder
• garlic powder
• sea salt
• black pepper
• crushed red pepper

First you will want to season your shoulder. Cover each side thoroughly with all of the listed spices, patting them on. If you are particularly neurotic feel free to pat spices on the sides as well.  While you are seasoning the shoulder you can heat your oil in a large pot or saucepan(large enough to hold the shoulder and stock) . Get the oil nice and hot and then place the shoulder into the pan. Sear each side until they are browned, should not taking longer than 30 seconds per side. You can then add the stock, be careful not to pour the stock directly onto the shoulder as this will most likely wash away the spices off the meat.

Cook for about 2 1/2 hours, flipping every 40 minutes or so, until the meat gives way to a fork(enabling you to shred it). While you are waiting for it to cook, get on with your mole!

When done simply, shred the meat with a fork until small pieces/strands and pour some mole over it.

Mole Sauce

Ingredient List ~$2

• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1/2 onion, finely chopped
• 4 garlic cloves, crushed and chopped
• 2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
• 2 tsp dried cilantro
• 1 1/2 tbsp cumin
• 1 poblano chile, diced (use any kind of chile you want, just make sure it is fresh, not dried)
• 2 cups tomatoes, diced

I pretty much modded this whole recipe because I first wanted to expand it, as well incorporate fresh ingredients, instead of the canned stuff the recipe called for. It turned out really well, best mole I’ve ever had. After you have prepped all your ingredients, heat up your oil in a medium sized saucepan. Once hot add the garlic and onion, and cook until slightly brown.

Next combine in the cocoa, cumin, cilantro and the poblano and stir together until everything is a nice off brown color. Stir in your tomatoes next and bring the mixture to a boil. Simmer for 10 minutes, and remove from heat. Let it cool for a few minutes, and then throw into a food processor and create a smooth silky sauce. You can leave it chunky if you want, but the ingredients mix together more evenly after pureeing them together.

I had the mole both hot and chilled, and honestly liked the chilled mole over warm pork the best. Play around to see what you like the most.

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Ingredient List ~2$

• 135 g unsalted butter (a little more than one stick)
• 2 tbsp honey
• 3 eggs
• 110 g superfine sugar
• 15 g light brown sugar
• 135 g self raising flour (you can make your own ‘self raising’ by mixing flour, salt and baking soda

Try not to eat all these fine ingredients before cooking. It was a hard feat.

Place your butter and honey together in a saucepan and bring to a simmer, until it has a golden brown hue. While the honey butter mixture is cooling whisk together the eggs, and two sugars. You want the eggs to triple in volume and the whole mixture to be a little stiff. If you have never done this before just keep mixing the eggs, by hand or electric mixer, until it looks foamy and is able to stand on its on, to an extent.

Next fold the flour and butter honey into the egg mixture, until thoroughly combined. Cover and refrigerate for about 2 hours.

Before the 2 hours are up preheat your oven to 375F. Butter your madeline moulds in preparation for the mixture. I used a tbsp to portion out the madelines into the separate molds. I made 24 out of these ingredients(2 batches of 12). Cook the madelines for about 12 minutes until golden brown and firm to the touch. Beware over cooking these as the bottoms got fairly dark fairly quickly, so that by the end of 12 minutes the first batch was a little burnt. I cooked the next batch for less time, but I probably would have been better off placing a pan beneath the madeline tray so the bottoms did not heat so fast. I’ll update the next time I make these.

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Ingredient List ~ $5

• 250 ml water
• 100 g unsalted butter, diced
• 140 g bread flour
• 2 tsp superfine sugar
• 5 eggs
• Vanilla Ice Cream
• 250 g Chocolate, broken into chunks
• 350 ml water
• 60 g superfine sugar

Begin by placing your butter and the 250 ml of water into a saucepan, using low to medium heat bring to a boil, the butter should be finishing melting/dissolving when the water reaches boiling. I did not do anything fancy and was able to achieve this but it could have just been beginner’s luck. Once you hit this point remove from heat and quickly add the flour, sugar and a pinch of salt. Mix with a wooden spoon until your compound is no longer sticking to the sides of the pan; note that you may have to reheat briefly to achieve this. Let it stand for 5 minutes.

While you are waiting pre-heat your oven to 425 F. You can then add one egg at a time your doughish mixture until it looks thick and shiny. Then throw the mixture into a piping bag/decorating bag or pretty much anything you can squeeze a mixture out of in fairly uniform fashion. You will need a parchment paper lined baking sheet to pipe your mixture onto. Create discs with about .5 inch diameter and place sheet into the oven.

Cook until golden brown, about 18-20 minutes, and cool.

Depending on when you plan to serve these you can begin boiling the chocolate, 350 ml water and 60 g sugar as the profiteroles are cooling. Using low medium heat bring the cholate mixture to to a boil, stir occasionaly through this process, it is now ready to serve. You may want to create a smooth chocolate sauce by straining the mixture prior to serving. Leaving in the chocolate chunks will not affect the taste, just the appearance and texture (but it is still chocolate so therefore, awesome). Prior to serving also make a horizontal incision to your profiteroles and stuff with ice cream, I went with vanilla but you can pretty much put anything sweet and creamy inside and it will taste amazing. Pour chocolate over stuffed profiteroles, die and go to mouth heaven.

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Ingredient List ~ $1

• 500 g bread flour
• 130 g Mother
• 320 ml water
• 10 g sea salt

It might help to have an electric mixer as the original recipe called for about 20 minutes combined of mixing, see as I do not have one I mixed by hand and kneaded the ingredients together. Combine your water, flour and Mother together, Then incorporate your salt. You may have to dust with additional flour so that the dough clears the bowl cleanly. After mixing everything up shape into a dough ball, cover with a cloth and refrigerate for an hour.

Take out of the fridge and reshape the dough, leave out at room temperature, still clothed for about 2 hours.

You can now separate the dough, unless you want to make one massive loaf, I created two loaves from the one. You can also shape the dough into your desired figure. I created a elliptical one and a round one. The round one definitely turned out more airy and more evenly cooked. Once you have shaped them leave them to prove and double for about 3-4 hours.

Heat your oven up to 450 F prior to the proving period ending. Also prepare an ovenproof pot of water (I used a glass pie plate), this will create a crispier crust on your breads. I have read that baker’s ovens have automated misting systems in them, glass pie plate is a close second to that technology. Prior to inserting your dough into the oven slice up the top, this is something of your personal baking signature, you can make a cross, square, star of david or a recreation of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon album art if you are really adventurous, really whatever floats your boat. Cook for 25 minutes with the water in there. Remove water and cook for 5 more minutes. You should be able to hear a hollow noise when you knock on the bottom of your loaf, this denotes being done.

Eat Well!