Aji de Gallina de Rocoto

We recently posted a recipe for Aji de Gallina, a wonderful Peruvian chicken recipe which makes use of the aji amarillo pepper. In that post, however, we also said that the dish is wonderfully suited to showcasing different pepper flavors by simply using a different pepper in place of the aji amarillo. So just a few days ago, we tried it with a pepper we had not used in this dish before - the rocoto pepper.

You may remember that we first made use the rocoto pepper, which is also South American, in a Secret Ingredient Improv post, in which I used it to make a mango salsa. It's quite a hot pepper, actually, significantly hotter than the aji amarillo (which already doesn't mess around), so this version of aji de gallina was a bit overzealous. We used less of the rocoto here than we did of aji amarillo in our usual recipe, but it was still very spicy, and in the future, I would use less still. To maintain the color, however, one could add a touch of tomato paste or paprika (not too much, or either may dominate the flavor). Annatto would also work.

Despite it's excessive heat, I think the rocoto is a tasty pepper. It's sweet, and has a slight, pleasant bitterness like a citrus zest, but you'll really only notice that for a few seconds before the heat kicks in. Then it's hot, very hot. I think my initial use of this pepper in a mango salsa was a more appropriate dish for the rocoto, for though it's tasty, it's too hot to be the star of a dish.

Bulghur-Spinach Casserole

Bulghur is a type of parboiled durum wheat popular in the Mediterranean, the Middle East and India, which can be reconstituted for consumption by soaking or cooking in water. There are a number of uses for bulghur, including tabbouleh, kibbeh, various pilafs, and even as a sweet cereal with sugar and milk. In future posts, we will talk more about some of those more conventional uses for bulghur, but right now, we would like to post a recipe for a vegetarian casserole that really highlights the nuttiness and earthiness of bulghur, and may serve as a good introduction to this grain for someone who hasn't had much experience with Middle Eastern cuisine.

Bulghur can be found in most Turkish, Lebanese, or Middle Eastern markets, and may show up in some gourmet supermarkets alongside other fashionable grains like quinoa and cracked rye. It's usually available in the US marked by a number between 1 and 4, indicating the fineness of the grind, with 1 being extra fine, and 4 being extra coarse. When buying bulghur, pay attention to the grind coarseness, as it will affect the cooking time, as well as the mouthfeel of the finished product.

Aji de Gallina

One of our favorite meals is this simple Peruvian chicken dish, Aji de Gallina, which we first learned about from a cookbook my mom lent to us (and which we still have - sorry) filled with recipes contributed by UN diplomats. We've since had it, done a few different ways, at restaurants, and have found several recipes for it elsewhere. However, the way we make it is still quite similar (but not identical) to that first recipe we found in The Cookbook of the United Nations (Barbara Kraus, 1970).

This is a simple recipe with only a few ingredients, which yields a peculiarly textured bread sauce flavored by a particular Peruvian pepper called the aji amarillo, or simply in English, the yellow pepper. This pepper might be hard to find, depending on where you live - in Houston, jars of the pepper or a paste made from it are readily available at any Fiesta supermarket. Otherwise, you should try searching for a Latin supermarket, preferably catering to Central or South Americans. Gourmet markets might carry it, though I've personally never seen it at either Whole Foods or World Market. On the other hand, you could just skip all that torquing around town to find this stuff, and just try Amazon.

Why just ONE?

Diet Pepsi is labelled, and has been marketed, as no-calorie since its introduction in 1964. Originally, it was sweetened by saccharin, but the formula was changed in the 1980s to use aspartame in order to avoid the metallic aftertaste often associated with saccharin. Aspartame is still the principal sweetener of Diet Pepsi, though now supplemented by acesulfame potassium. If you pick up a can of Diet Pepsi, and look at the nutritional information on the back, it will read zero calories, due to its total lack of sugar, in contrast to ordinary Pepsi, which is usually sweetened by corn syrup (or cane sugar, depending on the region). Of course, the lack of calories is the selling point for any diet soda like Diet Pepsi, and for a diet beverage, you really can't beat that - zero calories, I mean. There's nowhere else to go, no further reduction in food energy that can be made. Pepsi completely removed the sugar, and wouldn't you know it, the result was a no-calorie drink. Problem solved. Diet achieved.

But in 1998, Pepsi launched a new diet soda under the style of Pepsi ONE (rather obnoxiously spelled with all caps so that it's impossible to type the name without looking like a jackass). Pepsi ONE, which is, of course, still sold today, and quite popular, is an artificially sweetened version of Pepsi's flagship cola, much like Diet Pepsi. I often have wondered why it exists - the launch of another, parallel diet cola brand in the Pepsi pantheon seems intuitively counterproductive for Pepsi. Wouldn't they simply compete with one another? Is there a difference, and what is it? Just what is the deal with Pepsi ONE?

Secret Ingredient Improv IV: A Caribbean trip

It is Friday again which means I get to go shopping for ingredients and watch how Ian "transforms" them into dinner. I don't like shopping alone. I also don't like spending a lot of time in the supermarket either. Ian does. Ian in the supermarket is like a lady in a shoe shop. He has to pick up every bottle, jar or can and consider buying it, especially if he cannot read the labels. I, on the other hand, only go shopping with a list in my hand. I can't just casually walk into a supermarket and buy a jar of Branston pickle. I'm like the guy who needs a new pair of jeans so he walks in the first store and buys a pair of jeans and drives back home. Done.

I have a lot of difficulty putting four ingredients together for our improv cooking nights. I don't want to make it too easy, I don't want to make it too hard and most importantly I want to have a nice dinner. For me the improv cooking is not about weird ingredients. It is about experience. It is about forcing Ian to cook with something he has little experience with. For me it is all about learning and knowing the ingredients and once in a week having the courage to think out of the box and create a new thing.

A long time ago, Ian bought this jar of rocoto peppers which we ended up never using. So that automatically goes on the list. I hate it when we buy things and don't use them. I got an email from a blog reader, Kendall, who had mango on his list and we have actually never cooked with mango before, we only eat it as a fruit so I thought that will be interesting. I also get some chicken tights because I wanted chicken and not fish sticks for dinner. And finally I get some plantains. I think I just crave fried plantains.

So these are my four ingredients for Ian:

Rocoto peppers
Mango
Chicken thighs
Plantains

Secret Ingredient Improv III: A Man Named Gorton

After my rather lackluster performance last week, it was Mariam's turn this week to cook for Secret Ingredient Improv, and my turn to shop. It's tempting, when purchasing the secret ingredients, to be mean. It's tempting to buy crazy things that are impossible to cook together - cheez whiz and caramel apples, for instance. It's tempting to pick these things up from the supermarket shelves and laugh, laugh like a maniac thinking about how she could possibly make dinner from just four different kinds of non-dairy milk, or Reese's pieces and whitefish caviar. Yes, the shopping is fun.

But I also remember, of course, that whatever I buy for her to cook with, I will be eating for dinner. This is the restraint. This keeps Secret Ingredient Improv interesting, but sane. It must be possible, in some strange way, perhaps, but still possible, for the ingredients I get to be combined into something resembling a decent meal. Last time Mariam cooked, in our first Secret Ingredient Improv, I thought I did a good job getting her interesting ingredients that didn't look like they went together, and I think she did a good job proving that intuition wrong.

The hardest part, for me, when shopping, has been the selection of an interesting and unorthodox protein for the meal. One doesn't just want to buy chicken thighs - there are simply too many "standard" things to do in that case. We have too much familiarity with that ingredient - it's no longer much of a challenge. Of course, last week I thought initially that Mariam was being kind to me by giving me beef, but the challenge came from the way the beef had been pre-prepped into thin strips. This week, I thought about that - about how the preparation of an otherwise ordinary ingredient might make it interesting or difficult to work with.

So this week, I got her:
Frozen fish sticks
Branston pickle
Kale
Green acorn squash

Ratatouille

Since the first time I watched the movie Ratatouille, I always wanted to make the dish but not in the traditional way, in the way it was made in the movie by Remy, the rat. Ratatouille is a French provincial stewed vegetable dish traditionally made from tomatoes, onions, garlic, eggplants, zucchinis, bell peppers and herbs like basil and marjoram. I recommend this dish to every vegetarian and to meat lovers as well. If you have not seen the movie Ratatouille, I recommend watching the cooking scenes here.

I learn from Wikipedia (of course) that Remy's take on the traditional Ratatouille was the work of Chef Thomas Keller and later became known as confit byaldi.