No strings attached - I cooked without a recipe.
I want to be a good cook. Someday, maybe, I would like to be come a chef. Until then, I can only guess as to what it takes to be either a good cook or a chef. One thing that sticks in my mind as a requisite element of "chefdom" is to understand food and cooking to the extent that you don't always need a recipe. That is, I want to know what I want and understand food enough to get me there without a recipe (at least sometimes). Until now, however, I hadn't ever really taken off the recipe training wheels.
What did I cook? Round steak tacos with roasted corn salsa.
How did this happen? We had corn. Old corn. Corn that we meant to eat a week or two ago. It had to be eaten. What else? Beef. Lots of beef in the freezer and another 1/2 or 1/3 cow headed my way in just five months.
Saturday, I stopped by the store. I went in for cilantro. I left with cilantro, a pasilla pepper, a jalepeno pepper and a few tomatillos. My goal was a corn salsa in two bowls. One hot (with jalepeno) and one mild (with pasilla). The tomatillos were to give a bit of sweetness and tartness to the salsa. I started by soaking the corn. It was old enough that the kernels were starting to deflate, so I soaked it for about half an hour before grilling. I fired up the grill and grilled the corn between 300 and 350 degrees until it seemed done, turning frequently. I had already cut the steak into strips and marinated them in a store-bought carne asada marinade. While the corn was cooking, I roasted the peppers and put them in separate bags, so I could peel the outside layer of skin off. I diced up about a half a sweet yellow onion, a few tablespoons of cilantro and two tomatillos. When the peppers were done, I peeled them and cut them up (removing the ribs and seeds for the pasilla but putting some seeds back into the jalepeno version). I added cumin seed, a tablespoon or so of lime juice and four ears of roasted corn. This is the batch with pasilla pepper.
I grilled the steak, I like to do as much as I can on the grill after mid-April, and warmed up some tortillas. There was extra corn, so we all had a cob on the side as well. Here is the jalepeno version:
The result? Amy said she loved it. I thought it was pretty good. I don't know if my opinion counts, because I was not a big corn salsa fan before this meal. Some things worked quite well. The pasilla batch was mild and the jalepeno batch was spicy. That was good. The texture was good and it went well with the steak. Next time I will add more lime (or lemon) juice and perhaps a tiny bit of sugar to make it stand out. In any case, the flavor was good and it was a pretty healthy meal.
I will call it a success.
What did I cook? Round steak tacos with roasted corn salsa.
How did this happen? We had corn. Old corn. Corn that we meant to eat a week or two ago. It had to be eaten. What else? Beef. Lots of beef in the freezer and another 1/2 or 1/3 cow headed my way in just five months.
Saturday, I stopped by the store. I went in for cilantro. I left with cilantro, a pasilla pepper, a jalepeno pepper and a few tomatillos. My goal was a corn salsa in two bowls. One hot (with jalepeno) and one mild (with pasilla). The tomatillos were to give a bit of sweetness and tartness to the salsa. I started by soaking the corn. It was old enough that the kernels were starting to deflate, so I soaked it for about half an hour before grilling. I fired up the grill and grilled the corn between 300 and 350 degrees until it seemed done, turning frequently. I had already cut the steak into strips and marinated them in a store-bought carne asada marinade. While the corn was cooking, I roasted the peppers and put them in separate bags, so I could peel the outside layer of skin off. I diced up about a half a sweet yellow onion, a few tablespoons of cilantro and two tomatillos. When the peppers were done, I peeled them and cut them up (removing the ribs and seeds for the pasilla but putting some seeds back into the jalepeno version). I added cumin seed, a tablespoon or so of lime juice and four ears of roasted corn. This is the batch with pasilla pepper.
I grilled the steak, I like to do as much as I can on the grill after mid-April, and warmed up some tortillas. There was extra corn, so we all had a cob on the side as well. Here is the jalepeno version:
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