Kitchen Anecdotes

photo by Brouhaha (Jonathan)

Well, for some reason I still can’t find the right balance between spices. At first I thought it was the extra glass of wine (o.k. this is a big factor), but maybe not. Thanks to my boyfriend, I am developing an obsession for spicy stuff. As beginners, my taste buds will react to something mild. You would then think I would be careful when cooking with spices. Not the case. I wanted to make a hot sauce for my boyfriend to dip the Tostitos. After all, I am a big fan of homemade stuff. Well I used the ingredients that they list on the nutrition labels, minus the preservatives and all that crap. Since I’ve heard some people say that jalapenos are not that spicy, I figured I would use most of the damn chile, plus the seeds just to add a little kick (because the spice is actually in the seeds). No sauce he tasted here in P.R. was ever hot enough; until that moment. Needless to say, I choked and cried. I couldn’t add enough milk to make it edible. Lesson learned. As far as jalapenos.

The other day, I was also in the mood for Mexican food and decided to make some tacos and Mexican rice. Well to me it translates into spicy rice. I don’t know if this has ever happened to anyone. But, I had the taste in my mind. Exactly the way I wanted it, as if I had tasted that before. Somehow the message didn’t translate well ’cause between the thought and the action, boy! was there a difference. I manage to once again kind of fix it, but I was mad as I could be. I had it in my mind, but couldn’t bring it to reality. I’ll try it again, though. As for my boyfriend, he is o.k. and we are expected to survive the heartburn just fine.

Not much to write today.  I fixed us a very simple salad and bread.  It never ceases to amaze me how messy the kitchen can get over something so simple.  As I am sure most of you know, the worst part of cooking is the cleaning. During the week, Our regular menu vary from simple salads, soups, to sandwiches. Even if I use only one burner, I manage to get stuff all over the stove.  I guess I don’t have to mention the extent of the mess when using flour.  Anyway, I just thought I had to mention that.   However tedious, I have to admit the cleaning part does help when I feel full.

Pasteles are a traditional dish prepared around Christmas in Puerto Rico, as well in other Latin American countries. Each country has a traditional recipe and method for making this dish. In Puerto Rico, our pasteles have as main ingredients root vegetables, especially green bananas. These vegetables are grated and mixed together to form a dough. The pasteles can be filled with pork (more traditional), and poultry. The process of making pasteles is a very lengthy one, and back pain inducing (in my opinion). My grandma made the best pasteles I’ve ever had. It is a shame that I never learned from her and to resort to a cooking book to learn.

My experience preparing these wonderful things was of course very pleasant. I started by preparing the poultry filling. I used approximately 5 lbs. of chicken. I prepared it as if stewing the meat and let it cook for 1 hr – 1½ hr. While the meat is cooking, I started peeling about 8-10 lbs. of vegetables. As I was reading the recipe, I must have been delusional and thought “all vegetables are like potatoes”. No, what we call yautia (taro root) is a vegetable very hard to peel and then it gets sticky, making the vegetable slip and then you’re peeling your hand (ouch!). Then you get to peel the green bananas and the plantain. Again, don’t be fooled. This is not like peeling a yellow Chiquita banana. You have to make slits around the banana and plantain, pry open the slits with the knife (very tricky, and of course skin abrasions will occur) and then peel it. You would think it is stuck with crazy glue. After peeling all the vegetables (the pumpkin is not so bad), you have to grate them. At this time, I must have had a lapse in stupidity because I obviated my food processor sitting in front of me and proceeded to grate all the root vegetables by hand with a hand grater, hmm. I filled an 11 gallon pot with the dough.

Now for the preparation, folding the pasteles is not as easy as it may seem. Some people say, “oh, is like wrapping a gift, no big deal”. It is a big deal for me. You should start by putting a parchment paper in front of you. Then, you pass the banana leaves, one at a time over the burner of an electric stove to buff them and place the banana leaf on top of the parchment paper. So far, so good. Then I spooned what may have been a lot of filling in the center of the banana leaf. At that point is when all hell breaks lose and things get out of control. You have to fold the thing into a rectangle and tie it with kitchen twines. There was dough coming out of every corner of that pastel. My back was killing and I made so much dough, I could not see the end of it.

The story has a happy ending though. I managed to get everything under control and made like over 40 pasteles in total. Needless to say, they were amorphous. Some were really long, others shorter, wider, well. The total preparation time was 8 bloody hours. As far as my boyfriend, he says he liked them, but I’m not sure. Of course, there were so many of them, he did eat them every time I served them. If after reading this, you are still interested in venturing with the pasteles, the following link provides step by step instructions and the recipe for pasteles.

photo credit: ImipolexG

As a lover of Italian cuisine, I decided to make ravioli from scratch. After all, my boyfriend bought me the basic pasta machine as a gift (I’ve discovered that constant harassment works with him). Besides, they make it look so easy on the TV that you just go, “yeah, I can do that”. Well, it wasn’t a complete disaster but damage assessments were necessary. I saw on a TV show that you can just put the dough ingredients on the food processor and away you go. I pulsed and pulsed and kinda got the dough. I kneaded and was ready for the machine… or was I?

My pasta machine is the classic manual metallic one. Cute, but user unfriendly. I started rolling the dough through the machine. Well, the handle kept coming off. Frustrating! Then I couldn’t get the dough to roll through the middle. Instead, it kept going towards the edges of the machine, causing it to jam. Undoubtedly, this also causes the handle to come off. I ended up using a rolling pin to finish the damn thing.

To add insults to injury, I made the filling too aqueous. This translated into a big mess. The kitchen already looked as if a snow storm had passed by from all the flour (because you have to keep adding flour and flour and more flour to prevent the dough from sticking). Now, the filling was escaping the amorphous ravioli. It was really hard to prevent this spill. It didn’t help that I do not own a pasta cutter, not to mention that all the pasta sheets were different in their lack of form.

Now, I have to admit this was really stupid on my behalf ’cause I knew I made a spinach sauce and insisted at all cost to use it as the filling. Although this event has reduced my lifespan, it seemed to amuse the hell out of my boyfriend. I will certainly try again.

An interesting lesson I’ve learned is that while alcohol goes well in cooking, it doesn’t work quite well while cooking.  White wine, vermouth, and red wine go great in the preparation of sauces and other dishes; beer is great with batters for onion rings and fries; coffee liquor and orange liquor go great in the preparation of desserts.  Drinking wine and/or beer, on the other hand is not such a good idea while you are cooking.  In addition to a fire hazard, a biological hazard may arise in the form of severe stomach cramps.  This manifestation can come as a result of swapping spices, extreme seasoning, underestimating a can of chipotle peppers in adobo sauce (damn!), etc.

I started this blog at the insistence of my boyfriend.  He discovered my passion for cooking early in our relationship and has always made fun of the fact that I insist to need every kitchen gadget there is.  Of course, being my financial advisor as well (or more like my conscience), I can’t even buy a miserable pasta wheel.  I never cease to devise methods to acquire these little items, though. 

 I am a hispanic female in my early thirties who for some odd reason really enjoys cooking.  I come from a rather small family (or I don’t know many family members).  All the women in the family hated cooking, from my mom, to aunts, you name it.  But my grandama, she loved it.  Either that or she was the best actress ever!  I do remember as an adolescent I was not crazy about her cooking.  Yes, I feel very guilty writing this, but this may have very well been the beginning of my cooking delight.  In all fairness, she loved feeding all of us and did so every day, from breakfast to lunch to dinner.   

 As a rare hispanic that I am, I never really liked local foods.  This of course, was the only thing my grandma made.  In order to skip the food every now and then, I would watch some cooking show and prepare whatever the host was making.  It is weird, but eventually my grandpa, my brother, my father, and even my grandma insisted I prepared enough for everybody.  Hum…  Oh well, and so it began.  I guess part of the pleasure you get from cooking comes when the people enjoy what you cooked.  I am glad that I inherited this love of cooking from my grandma, although now that I think about it the sewing talent would have been much more useful to me.  

I am not a professional chef by any means, but I like experimenting with recipes and different tastes.  All my recipes come from the foodnetwork chefs.  I always alter the recipes to fit my taste.  However, I will mention where I got the recipe since I have not concocted anything myself.  My favorite food, as with many people is Italian.  My boyfriend though, loooves spicy Mexican cuisine.  I do not have the taste buds for hot peppers, but I am getting there.  I kinda always related hemorroids with hot peppers.  I was wrong.   

 The purpose of this blog is to simply share my kitchen stories with people who may or may not relate to them.  You may get some ideas for cooking and you may provide me some ideas as well.  I want to restate, I am not a professional and the stories I will share will serve as evidence.  Anyway, in the manner that you can, enjoy.