Blogs : Food and Cooking

For Perfect Enchiladas, Treat Your Tortillas Right

Briefly frying tortillas in oil before rolling them is key to making great enchiladas, say Chowhounds. The oil brings out the corn flavor of the tortillas and keeps them from absorbing too much sauce and becoming mushy, improving the enchiladas’ texture. As an alternative to frying in a quantity of oil, you can brush the tortillas with oil and toast them on each side in a skillet, or heat them on a baking sheet in the oven.

Hone your technique by making CHOW’s Cheesy Enchiladas or Crispy Turkey Enchiladas

Board Link: Corn tortillas…soften in oil or not?

Posted by Caitlin McGrath | 1 comment
Tagged with: home cooking, food and cooking, tortillas, enchiladas

How to Cook Boneless Turkey Breast

Boneless, skinless turkey breast is so lean it dries out unless you cook it carefully. Instead of cooking it whole, you can slice it into cutlets to sauté; cut it into strips and cook quickly for fajitas, salads, or sandwiches; or grind it with apple, onion, and seasonings to make sausage patties.

Marinating overnight adds flavor and helps keep the turkey moist. Kater makes a marinade of juice, lime zest, olive oil, tequila, garlic, cilantro, red onion, chipotle chile, cumin, salt, pepper, and the juice of an orange, then grills the breast. valerie mixes 1/2 cup each warmed honey and low-sodium soy sauce with some ginger and garlic, pours that over the turkey to marinate overnight, then roasts at 375°F for about 45 minutes.

Boneless turkey breasts are also good butterflied, stuffed, and rolled; you can drape it with bacon to keep it moist and then bake or braise. The meat’s also a good candidate for the slow cooker, or you can go to the other extreme by making Spicy Turkey Jerky.

Board Link: help please. what to do with a boneless skinless turkey breast

Posted by Caitlin McGrath | 0 comments
Tagged with: home cooking, food and cooking, turkey, turkey breasts, boneless

Where to Buy Boxed Booze

finlero has a great suggestion for teetotaling cooks who buy red wine for cooking yet watch it go bad before the bottle’s used up. Try boxed wine instead, which finlero says keeps for over a month once opened, without being refrigerated. But not just any old swill will do, and finlero’s favorite liquor store no longer carries the three-liter boxes of Vignerons de Caractère Côtes du Rhône he used to love.

Naturally, hounds know just where to find finlero’s cherished tipple: Cambridge Wine & Spirits, which Parsnipity says has a wide variety of boxed booze including boxes of Pinot Evil that are reportedly decent, despite the cutesy name, hated by yumyum: “Ugh. Pinot Evil. I avoid wines with animals on the labels or punny names. This one is painful. But if it’s good I guess I can check it out.”

erwocky also recommends the Banrock Station boxed Shiraz, which is “quite drinkable and enjoyable, with lots of fruit.” Plus it’s an unbelievable bargain at $18 to $20 for three liters. The Shiraz is available at Supreme Liquor in Central Square in Cambridge.

Cambridge Wine & Spirits [Cambridge]
202 Alewife Brook Parkway, Cambridge
617-864-7171

Supreme Liquor [Cambridge]
600 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
617-661-8629

Board Link: ISO *good* boxed red wine in Boston

Posted by Joyce Slaton | 2 comments
Tagged with: boston area, food and cooking, red wine, boxed, wine boxes, cambridge wine & spirits, cambridge wine and spirits, supreme liquor

Fresh Bamboo Shoots

Canned bamboo shoots are pleasant enough—mild in flavor, with great texture. They often have a distinctive aroma and taste “of metal,” says KiltedCook.

Fresh bamboo shoots, which are about to come into season, are a whole different experience. The taste of fresh bamboo shoots is sweeter and more savory than the canned kind, and the texture is softer and far less fibrous, says bulavinaka. “If you know of places that have a grove of larger diameter bamboo (like timber bamboo), you can harvest the shoots after they’ve just emerged from the ground,” says bulavinaka. “You’ll need to dig down a bit around the emerging shoot and you’ll end up with a specimen that is anywhere from 6 inches to a foot or a foot and a half long.” KiltedCook cuts them from the ground by hand from the neighbor’s grove; they’re “fabulous in taste and aroma.” currymouth is lucky enough to get them from the local Asian supermarket.

Samuelinthekitchen enjoys the particular smell of bamboo shoot salad. “Every time it comes to the table it smells exactly like perfectly spiced bamboo furniture, which I think is just fun,” he says.

Board Link: Bamboo shoots?

Posted by Sarah Perry | 0 comments
Tagged with: general topics, food and cooking, bamboo shoots, fresh, canned

The Joy of Goat

Don’t be afraid to eat goat. Goat meat gets enthusiastic recommendations from Chowhounds. “Goat’s darker, richer, stronger. It’s wonderful,” says tatamagouche. “It is to lamb what duck is to chicken. I love all four, though, don’t get me wrong.”

Goat meat is relatively inexpensive, but almost never factory-farmed, says danieljdwyer, who adds that it is “closer in flavor to beef than lamb is, and healthier than both. It’s got more flavor than and is not as tough as bison. Probably my favorite red meat.”

While not common in mainstream American cuisine, goat is a full-flavored star in cuisines worldwide: Afro-Caribbean, Arab, Indo-Iranian, Mexican, Korean, and Chinese, to name a few. But it’s not just about the toothsome meat. The marrow from the goat is especially good, says JungMann and it’s “beyond delicious,” agrees kayEx. The leg bones are the ones with the marrow, says kayEx. If you want to try them, you’ll have to ask your butcher to cut some up for you, though, because goat marrow bones aren’t found in supermarket meat cases very often.

Board Link: Do you eat goat?

Posted by Sarah Perry | 1 comment
Tagged with: general topics, food and cooking, goat, goat meat, marrow, kid