Everything is totally right about this dinner. It is quick and made of all whole and active ingredients, organic and local. And the flavors are beyond. Beyond.

Pictured above is Taco Night deluxe with a fresh pupusa rather than a simple fresh tortilla. The process was inspired by a Rick Bayless recipe, which at first seemed overwhelmingly complicated, but he has a knack for doing this to what are really simple foods. (And he could use about four times as many paragraph breaks in his descriptions. Just a note. )

The trick to these, for me, is to keep them thick. I use parchment paper and a heavy pot as I don’t have a tortilla maker. It works fine.

I start with fresh masa dough from the farmer’s market. 1 pound of dough for $3. That is a lot of amazing toothy tortillas, it goes a long way. I mix in just a spoonful of lard into the dough.

(Yup, lard. My vegetarian mother cringes. Freshly rendered, also from the farmer’s market. Good whole fats also go a long way and the flavor is mild and it really helps them to get crisp. Read more about this maligned whole fat here. This can certainly be omitted though and they cook just fine. )

At this point you have a perfectly good simple tortilla you can flip off your hand into a hot dry skillet, but the taco night deluxe called for a little extra.

(I don’t have a picture of that middle step, but don’t try to peel the tortilla off at the stage pictured, slide one hand under the paper, flip the whole thing on your other hand and peel the paper off. Then you just flip your hand over above the hot skillet and let go.)

For pupusa, the black beans are spooned onto the pressed dough while it still rests on the parchment paper. Then using the paper to help it fold without sticking to your hand fold the sides into the middle and carefully pull off the paper. Then do the same to the top and bottom. You end up with a masa bean dumpling. With the paper still folded over gently press the dumpling into a thick disk.

This then goes into the pan. I decided to fry them just a bit with additional olive oil. Deluxe remember?

The great thing about this process is that one side cooks in the time it takes to make the next one, then the first is done by the time it is time to put in a new one. So it goes quick.

Toppings can very but the toothy tortilla and rich meat (lots of cumin and chili powder cooked into it) is matched with heaps and heaps of fresh raw slaw. Use any kind of cabbage and other herbs or veggies. Carrots, cilantro or parsley, green onion, lime, are all good. Dress with just salt and pepper, olive oil, and vinegar. We top with creme fraiche (just like sour cream) to get in something active and cultured to help digest the mess.

I thought I had a photo of another taco night with the chicken from making stock (see freezer pictures in post below) but apparently that was eaten too fast to capture. The tortillas on these were topped with this extraordinary sauce sikil p’ak (purchased from the same booth as the masa). Now that was also deluxe.

Taco night has been a weekly affair since the first of the year, all I can say is 2009 thus far has been very good in our kitchen.

                          

There are a lot of discussions about this out there about this.

Apparently when Alice Waters said to skim off scum she also meant mold? I think being specific about something so out of the ordinary in cooking would have been helpful.

The germaphobe in me said to throw away the batch. Such a waste. Apparently it’s just like cheese and the rest was fine.  I really should have used the weight to keep the cabbage “anaerobic” under to brine to prevent this, but it is totally normal. A little research really goes a long way. I will try this again soon and not be so quick to give up.

                          

My first check up on my jar of not so briny cabbage (prepared using the Farmer John’s recipe) found a sweet and salty sort of dry mixture that tasted nice, but clearly wasn’t fermenting.

Since it seemed like it needed a boost to really get going, I decided to go more with the Alice Waters’ version and add some “brine” and cover it with a towel.

So I let it go like this for a few more days. Well…get ready scientists out there, we have some exciting results ahead…

MOLD!

Alice instructed to “remove any scum that may appear on the surface of the brine” and then taste. Well…I can’t imagine that this is what she meant, so I’m just letting this one go. This is terribly sad. I don’t know if this happened because it wasn’t sealed or because I omitted the part (still using the influence of the Farmer John version) with the weight on the cabbage keeping it below the brine.

We’re really disappointed, but hope to repeat the process being a little more careful. If anyone has any specifics tips, or have used either recipes referenced, pleased feel free to share your thoughts.

                          

Sauerkraut:

Two of my favorite cookbooks, the Art of Simple Food (Waters) and Farmer John’s Cookbook; The Real dirt on Vegetables, have recipes for homemade sauerkraut, and both tout the health and taste benefits of fermenting cabbage and other vegetables.

(note: both books are excellent resources for a variety of veggie-specific recipes. Very helpful with things that are in season with which you are not so familiar and ways to branch out in techniques, like braising, gratins, unexpected baked-good ingredients etc…I personally really appreciate this format)

The process for fermentation was a little different in each book. I leaned more towards the Farmer John method as it was framed as very traditional and involved pounding, which sounded fun. Waters’ process was simple enough, more about “working the cabbage with your fingers” than pounding and then adding extra “brine” if the working with the fingers didn’t produce enough liquid.

Well, Farmer John didn’t say anything about the amount of liquid, just to pound until you got some. Waters says to add a salt water mixture if there isn’t enough brine to cover the cabbage and even to make sure the cabbage stays submerged by weighting it down with something (a rock or whatever).

So, in the spirit of experimenting. I decided to go only by Farmer John and just see what happened. I started with less cabbage than called for, but sort of thoughtlessly added about as much salt and caraway seeds. So we’ll see. I’ll check on it in a few days and report with the taste. After this batch is eaten or composted, depending on the result I will try Water’s version.

Cabbage cut fine
and fermented in a brine
Made of its own juice, with salt.

(So it seems a little dry, but since the recipe doesn’t specify I am trying it out without my own changes- I will check back in)

Wait! There is more cabbage ahead!

Braised Savoy Cabbage:

From The Art of Simple Food this cabbage dish is sort of perfect; savory, crunch,and open to variations- my favorite. I decided to go with one of her listed variations that browns wedges of cabbage in olive oil. Then add garlic, a bay leave, thyme, salt and pepper. Having just picked up some beautiful fennel at the market yesterday I wanted to try out using the stalks/leaves- so I chopped up one stalk and threw that in too.

Immediately the kitchen filled with an earthy sweet fragrance- I was sort of taken aback actually by how delicious it smelled so quickly. Some glugs of wine go in and it cooks for a little while. Then stock is added (or water, but I prefer stock, and at 4 bucks a box it’s cheaper to just boil a whole chicken).

The cabbage needs another 15 minutes to get tender. In the meantime I pan fried two chicken sausages. I can’t pan fry without ending up throwing in a de-glazing liquid of some kind (usually white wine) and finishing whatever was frying with a quick pan sauce. All sorts of brown bits stuck from the sausage. Waters suggests putting some red wine vinegar over the cabbage when done. Instead I put the vinegar into the sausage pan (after the sausages were done and on their plates. Scraping up the good stuff and hearing that perfect hissing sizzling of the pan sauce, I poured it all over the dished out cabbage. Boy, it really turned out well. The whole process was maybe a half hour.

My fiance had the wherewithal to put some mustard on the table and that was it. Some leftover bread with a little butter served well to soak up the remaining liquid on the plate- too good to let it go to waste.

Indicative of how fast this was to prepare, there are no pictures of the process…and I could barely take a photo fast enough to catch the final product before devoured.