The Week that Was
Whew... after dire warnings of hurricane moisture raining down upon Albuquerque, we had a gorgeous day at the market last week. Not to knock all the rain we've been getting; my garden loves it, I love it, we need it. However, a nice mild day brought out hundreds of people to Robinson Park. Dale and his dachshunds know how to spend their Saturday mornings:


We made the most chocolate drops we've ever baked - and sold out by 9:30. We had some ribs left over but got lots of compliments from those who tried the Vietnamese treats, and we traded babybacks for some great bread and a pie. Hooray for the great group of vendors!

The Market to Come
We'll be wrapping up our tour of Southeast Asia on Saturday. I'll be tossing marinated all natural chicken and flatbread on the grill to make a Thai Chicken Wrap. The wrap will include peanut sauce, local cucumbers, local carrots, organic lettuce and scallions. Kei just bought a case of local peaches to make galettes:



And, by popular demand, we will have our Death by Chocolate Drops.

And Then?
In August we'll be starting our Italian menu. With local tomatoes and peppers popping, we'll be making some great savory fare. Plus we'll be back in a culinary region with a strong dessert baking legacy so expect our sweets to switch around.

Ciao!

Scrumptious Summer Ribs...Vietnamese Style!

Summer's heat is in full swing, and many grills are a-grillin' -- so we thought for this week, "let's put some ribs on the menu!" Nothing beats finger-lickin'-good ribs in the summer. But of course, in Good Nosh "savor the world" fashion, our ribs aren't just any ribs. Our all natural pork babybacks will be slow braised in a Vietnamese caramel sauce until tender then crisped up on the grill.

"Vietnamese caramel sauce?" -- I can hear you asking already! If you've never had a "kho" dish before that features this sauce, you'll be in for a great surprise. Both sweet and salty, the sauce is created by caramelizing sugar to a dark brown and adding fish sauce and other flavors. The result is a rich, dark red sauce that adds color and incredible smoky flavor to the ribs.

(I wish I had a photo to share with you, but when I served these recently to friends, they were gobbled up in no time flat. Two people who had spent many years in North Carolina -- home to some GREAT pork ribs! -- said they were to die for! Can't beat that...)

The ribs will be served with some wonderful jasmine rice, steamed on site, and a fresh cucumber and nectarine salad -- a great summer meal to enjoy at the market or to take home.

On the baked goods front, we'll be featuring a new tasty Vietnamese mango and macadamia nut cake, courtesy of Aly, and we'll continue with our coconut bites and death-by-chocolate drops. These two items start flying off our table as soon as we open our booth, so we promise to make more this week!

Our Southeast Asian theme continues one more week when we'll unveil a chicken wrap with peanut sauce. Thai, anyone?

Enjoy!

On To Southeast Asia

The Meal to Come
We are switching cuisines again, leaving the warm waters of the Caribbean for the warm waters of Southeast Asia. Early summer crops like cucumber, basil, cilantro, mint, salad greens, onions, and carrots are a natural fit for foods from countries like Vietnam and Thailand.

This Saturday, we'll be making Beef Satès with a Tamarind Dipping Sauce served with a Cucumber, Carrot, and Daikon Salad. We'll be using natural beef along with local onions, garlic, cilantro, mint, carrots and cukes (Amyo Farms, Macias Farm, Chispas Farm, and Erda Gardens).

To sate your sweet tooth, our pastries will be Mango Lime Tarts with Old Windmill Dairy goat cheese. We will reprise the crowd favorite Death by Chocolate Drop, this time adding a dusting of green tea for an Eastern flair. We'll also be serving our Coconut Drops, which are made with organic coconut.

The baked goods will use organic butter, local Nativo organic wheat, and Amio Farms eggs.

At the Market this Week - Salad Showdown!
The Downtown Growers Market holds a special event each month and this one is great if you're a fan of things like Iron Chef or secret basket cooking challenges. The market is hosting a cooking competition with local chefs. The event, dubbed The Salad Mixer, will take place from 9 am until 11 am. The chefs will create salads using market produce and their own secret ingredient. Throwing down for street cred and bragging rights are the culinary masters from:

• The Grove
• jennifer james 101
• Slate St. Café
• Artichoke Café
• Sunshine Café

It will also be a fun jump week for the kiddies. As usual, there will be live music. So come on down to cheer on your favorite chef, bounce around, dance to the music, sit in the shade, buy some great veggies, and visit the Good Nosh girls.

The Great Cubano Experiment
For those of you that tried our Cubanos, please leave a comment telling us what you thought. You can leave one here on the blog or on our Cubano thread at Duke City Fix. For the uninitiated, the Cubano is a pressed sandwich with ham, roast pork, Swiss cheese, and pickles. We did two weekends with Cubanos. I think we really hit our stride in week two. I swapped out the traditional mustard for a habanero, lime, scallion mayo and added some Chimayo red chile to the roasted pork. I also got a lot better at cooking those gooey, crispy devils (yes, it is more challenging to cook a perfect 'wich on a propane grill than a panini press or griddle). Judging from the 7am Cubano orders (!!), this sandwich seems to be well-loved in 'burque.

Apricot Aspirations...

It’s apricot season, as many of you know who are lucky enough to have your own trees laden with fruit. Walking to my childrens' school, I always pass a little apricot tree. There’s a part of me that sighs when I see its fruit spilled on the ground. Birds will feast, but I keep thinking I could be making a mean apricot crostata with them! These velvety golden fruit with a hint of blush, when ripe, have a delicate sweetness. But did you know that even those fruit that are still not quite mature will transform into intense flavor when baked?

The perfect complement for apricot is the earthy goodness of almond, and this week I’m experimenting with a frangipane (a kind of creamy almond filling) to smear on the bottom of my apricot tartlets.

I know that apricots are hardly Caribbean (they were actually first cultivated in China in 3000 BC – who knew?), but they will go fabulously well with the new cubano Aly is perfecting. We’re holding over our Caribbean theme this week, but veering away from the traditional. Aly is playing with a chile spiked cubano that sounds to-die-for! We just couldn’t let this week go by without paying homage to the little apricot before its season disappears…. Enjoy!

The Great Cubano Experiment

The Cubano sandwich... Trendy? Yes. Overplayed? Perhaps.

Still, we couldn't help taking a crack at this sandwich during our Caribbean menus. For neophytes, the Cubano is a sandwich with Cuban bread, ham, pork, pickles, cheese, mustard, and in some areas, salami, all pressed and heated in a plancha. Of course, chefs and restaurants have changed up the dressings, fillings, and the bread.

When we decided to do Cubanos, the main questions were "how traditional?" and "how do we perfect it?" This week we're going old school - using standard ingredients and flavors. As for the perfecting, we have gone through five hams, five cheeses, two mustards, three breads, two pickles, and four different ways to prepare the pork. While we didn't test the 1,200 possible combinations of those ingredients, we did make a lot of different combos. (Thanks to my friends for tolerating an evening of noshing on 1/12 of a Cubano over and over.) So here is the result:



We start with all natural pork roast, rubbed with spices (including ones from local faves Bueno Foods and Loma Vista). Later we marinate the meat in more Cuban spices, juice, and local onions and garlic. The next day, it's low and slow cooking until the meat is tender, tasty, and as moist as your Fourth of July watermelon.

We haven't forgotten the vegetarians and pork-avoiders. For you we have a Vege-Cubano. Instead of meat we have made an organic black bean filling that is flavored by sofrito and Cuban spices.

At the market we'll be layering the beans or pork and Black Forest Ham with Boar's Head Swiss cheese, pickles, and mustard. Sandwiched between fresh loaves from Lee's Bakery, the Cubanos will go on the grill for heating and pressing.

So come on down and tell us how we stack up against the other Cubanos in town! And take our poll at right to tell us how you really feel about these sandwiches.

As with last week, our Caribbean baked goods include Coconut Bites, Mojito Bar Cookies, and the market favorite Mango Plantain Tarts.



Aside from local sources mentioned above, we're also using mint and eggs from Amy O Farm, Nativo wheat, goat cheese from South Mountain Dairy and lots of organic ingredients.

Hello July

This post is a bit of a hodgepodge, a tossed salad of thoughts if you will....


Garden Daze
You know the old saying about corn? It's supposed to be "knee high by July." Well my corn isn't nearly that big - perhaps "shoe high by July." Starting a business caused a bit of planting gap between my healthy spring crops and summer's corn, beans, squash and melons.

If you are likewise *way* behind on summer crops, may I suggest a great seed source? Native Seeds/SEARCH carries heirloom crops from the southwestern US and northern Mexico. Many are traditional strains from New Mexico's Pueblos and northern towns. I've done beans, squash, peas, corn and melons.

By using sources like this you not only get unusual crops that are well suited for our climate, you also help to preserve the agricultural and culinary heritage of our area. I know that in my family, and many other long-of-tooth NM families, these foods have been lost through the generations.

Alternatively you could leave the produce to the pros at the Growers Markets. Notably, tomatoes and peppers are trickling in to be snatched up by eager market early birds.


Weekend Recap
We switched from French to Caribbean food this past weekend. Kei made some nice mango and plantain tarts, coconut bites, and - my favorite - mojito bar cookies.

I was on the grill cooking jerk chicken wraps that had coconut turmeric rice, cucumber, salad greens, sour cream and avocado spread, all nestled in our own roti wraps (photos courtesy Mikal Altomare).

Market goers embraced the menu with enthusiasm, leading to another sell-out day! (OK, we did get some wistful complaints about the French items.)

Chicken Chardonnay
While we still have leeks around, here is one of my favorite non-soup leek dishes. I don’t follow a recipe for this so the directions are… ahem… rather informal.

• 4 skinless, boneless chicken breasts
• Salt, pepper
• Flour
• 1 T Olive oil
• 1 T Butter
• 2 cloves garlic
• Bunch leeks
  
• Bottle of chardonnay (about a cup for the chicken, the rest for the drinking)
• Chicken stock (1 can or 1 ½ cups homemade)
• Dry pasta, enough for four servings (I especially like radiatore with this recipe)

Salt the water for pasta and put it on to boil in a large pot.

Rinse chicken and cut breasts into several large strips – or don’t if you’d rather have them whole. Dry meat, season with salt and pepper then lightly coat with flour. Add olive oil and butter to a large sauté pan and heat. When pan is hot enough to sizzle your bird, add the breast, patting off excess flour before adding to the pan. Don’t crowd them, you want them browned, not steamed. Work in batches if needed. Brown chicken on both sides and remove to a plate.

Prep your leek/s by lopping off the root, slicing them in half lengthwise and rinsing them well (pull apart leaves, there’s often soil in there). Shake off excess water and slice the leeks across (about ¼ inch slices). Mince your garlic. Add leeks and garlic to your sauté pan and cook until they soften. Deglaze the pan with about a cup of wine. Let the alcohol cook off for a minute or two. Add the chicken stock.

If you haven’t already added your pasta to your boiling water, add it now.

In a small cup, mix a few tablespoons of water with a tablespoon of flour to make a smooth slurry. Add this to your leeks and stir. Return your chicken to the pan, laying pieces on top of leeks. Cover the pan and simmer on low until your pasta is cooked.

Drain and plate paste. Spoon the leeks, chicken and sauce over pasta. Enjoy with a nice glass of Chardonnay.