The Torta

07 Aug 2010 5 Comments

by scolgin in Eating Out, Markets & Stores, Pork, Recipes, World's Best Sandwiches

Do you live near a Vallarta Market? If you are in Southern California, you may be fortunate enough to have a Vallarta Market near you. It’s the Whole Foods of the Mexican community, minus the organic and the quinoa and the whole-paycheck part. The Vallarta Market is REALLY inexpensive, and has really great Mexican stuff. The prepared foods are fabulous (pick up the “Pork al Pastor” pre-marinated in the meat section, take it home and grill it up with some tortillas and their homemade salsa roja.)

Anyway, the best part of the Vallarta Market, in my humble opinion, is the Torta Cubana. You can only eat this sandwich once a year, or it will kill you. It takes two days to eat, and each time you eat it, it takes half a day to digest. But it is worth it — a bun piled with beans, fried egg, grilled ham, bacon and cheese. (And still, it’s better for you than one of those Carl’s Jr. things you see on TV.) Add some salsa and pickled jalapeños from the salsa bar in the area you go to sit and eat. And remember, eat half and take the rest home. For y’all unfortunate folks with no Vallarta Market nearby, here’s a recipe so you can make it at home:

Serves two for two days (or four):

Two kaiser rolls or other roundish, flattish bread (you could even get away with ciabatta)
two slices ham, grilled quickly in a hot pan
four pieces of cooked bacon
two eggs, fried
grated colby or cheddar
1/2 cup refried beans
1/2 small onion, chopped
1/4 cup chopped cilantro
mayonnaise
red salsa
pickled jalapeños

Slice the buns open, brush with mayonnaise, and grill in a hot pan until toasted. Add a little more mayo. Then build your torta — refried beans, topped with a fried egg, topped with a slice of ham and the bacon, topped with grated cheese and then chopped onion and cilantro. Put the top bun on. Now put a little vegetable oil (canola, sunflower, whatever) in a pan — just a little bit to create a light barrier. (This could be a good instance for one of those oil sprays I’ve seen.) Heat the pan and place the tortas in the pan to toast. Cover with a lid that is slightly smaller than the pan, so you can press the sandwiches down some. (You could use a panini grill instead if you’ve got one.) When the bottom seems lightly toasted, flip the sandwiches and grill the top. You want them a little toasty on top and bottom, and you want the cheese to begin to melt a little. Take the sandwiches off, remove the top and drizzle with some salsa and add some jalapeños, and put the top back on. Serve.

If you like to experiment, you can mix it up by trying different cheese, different meat (leftover cochinita pibil makes a great torta, as does shredded chicken).

Beverage suggestions: Cold Mexican beer, cold Mexican soda

Cochinita Pibil

07 Aug 2010 4 Comments

by scolgin in Pork, Recipes

Pork shoulder is the great unheralded cut of meat. And one of the least expensive in the market. Plus, it’s usually huge and you can feed a party. Cochinita Pibil is a specialty of the Yucatan in Mexico, where an entire pig is marinated in citrus juices and achiote paste, wrapped in banana leaves and cooked in an underground oven. You can do it in your own above-ground oven with part of a pig. The shoulder. You’ll need to find some achiote paste, which you can get at Mexican markets or google it online.

This dish should serve 6 – 8 people. Or serve it to fewer people and save leftovers for more tacos or to make tortas (see “World’s Best Sandwich” post).

1 pork shoulder, 3-5 lbs.
1/2 small brick of achiote paste (or about 3 tbsp)
juice of two oranges and three limes
salt & pepper
flour tortillas
red onion
habeñero peppers

So the day before you want to eat your meal, salt up the pork shoulder, and cut into big chunks. (If there’s a bone, the the bone chunk be one of the chunks.) Dissolve the achiote paste in a bowl with the juice of one orange and the three limes — this will require some serious mashing with either your fingers or the back of a spoon. Toss pork into the mixture and put in the fridge to marinate. You can also make the red onion salsa the day before — slice the onion thinly, toss with the juice from the other orange and put in a covered bowl in the fridge.

The morning of the Pibil, you’ll need some banana leaves. If you live in a warm place, you might be able to go pick some. If not, you can often get them frozen at a Mexican or Asian market. If you can’t figure out where to get them, you can use foil instead. About five hours before you wanna eat, turn the oven on to 250. Line an earthenware baking dish or some other cooking vessel with banana leaves, put the pork into the leaves, and wrap the hanging part of the leaves over the top so the pork is entirely covered. Cover top with foil. (If you don’t have leaves, just put the pork in the baking dish and cover with foil.) Let cook for 4 to 5 hours.

About 30 minutes before you’re ready to eat, turn the grill on. (If you don’t have a grill, heat a pan over medium-high heat.) Brush the tortillas with a little oil or lard, and grill quickly until they are hot and beginning to bubble. Place on a clean dishtowel and wrap them up to keep warm. Grill the habañeros until the skin begins to blacken and blister. Place your onion salsa in a nice looking bowl with a spoon. Bring the cochinita pibil to the table, set on a hot plate, and unwrap for all to see and ooh and ahh. Let each person scoop some pork into tortillas with a little onion salsa and maybe a pinch of habañero if they dare. (Note, this is the recently dethroned “hottest pepper in the world”. The new hottest pepper is some Indian pepper… but this is still pretty dang hot.)

Beverage suggestion: Cold Mexican beer, sangria, crisp white wine such as sauvignon blanc

Preaching to the Converted

07 Aug 2010 1 Comment

by scolgin in Pork, Starlets, Yoga Students & Quinoa (stories)

It was one of my proudest moments as a cook. The night I converted two vegetarians.

It was a warm summer evening at our home in West Los Angeles, a few years back. We were hosting some out of town guests — my dear friend Paul, who will eat anything, and an up-and-coming chick songwriter from the south who had just performed at a crunchy music festival up in Santa Barbara. Our other dear friend, Heather, was in attendance.

I was cooking a cochinita pibil — a pork specialty of the Yucatan in Mexico. (I’ve put a recipe in the Recipe section if you wanna cook it too.) Heather and the up-and-coming chick songwriter whose name escapes me were vegetarians and skinny yoga students. So I made them some quinoa. They were happily sipping their fruity white wines and talking asanas when the pork, which had been marinating in orange juice and achiote paste for a day and slow cooking for five hours, emerged from the oven. The scent was seductive. I paraded the earthenware dish of banana-leaf wrapped pork through the house to the table, where there were flour tortillas and red onion salsa awaiting it. One by one, the heads in the room rose up like predators catching a scent of their prey — primal looks on every face, including those of the vegetarians. “What… what is that??” the up-and-coming songwriter said almost guiltily, as if she already knew and felt remorse even being interested enough to ask. “Cochinita pibil,” I said. “Oh, and I’ve got some quinoa and steamed vegetables for you guys.”

We all sat, the carnivores spooning the fork-tender meat and its juices into tortillas with the salsa, and moaning with an almost sexual satisfaction with each bite. Heather was the first of the vegetarians to fold. “Well, I guess I could try a little taste of it,” she said and she shoved the quinoa aside and dug in. “Oh, you’re going to try it?” said the up-and-coming songwriter, “Well, I suppose a little bit wouldn’t hurt.” And soon they had joined the wordless chorus of mastication and lip-smacking. They ate more than any of the rest of us! It’s as if they were catching up for all those years they’d been trying to fill up on quinoa and tempeh.

Heather came to dinner last night with her brother and his family from Minnesota. “Y’all being from Minnesota, I trust we’re not going to have any vegetarian or wheat free kind of issues?” I said. They smiled and nodded. I told them the story of Heather’s conversion all those years before. And then I served a Tuscan-style grilled rib-eye on the bone. (See Recipes). Who do you suppose ate the most?

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