The Daring Cooks March Challenge: Papas Rellenas
Kathlyn of Bake Like a Ninja was our Daring Cooks’ March 2011 hostess. Kathlyn challenges us to make two classic Peruvian dishes: Ceviche de Pescado from “Peruvian Cooking – Basic Recipes” by Annik Franco Barreau. And Papas Rellenas adapted from a home recipe by Kathlyn’s Spanish teacher, Mayra.
Ingredients
For the Dough
2 lb potatoes
1 egg
For the Filling
2 tablespoon olive oil
½ lb ground beef
6 black olives, pitted and chopped
3 hard boiled large eggs, chopped
1 small onion, finely diced
½ cup raisins, soaked in 1 cup boiling water for 10 minutes, then minced
1 finely diced aji pepper
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon ground cumin
½ teaspoon sweet paprika
¼ cup white wine
Salt and pepper to taste
For the Final Preparation
1 large egg, beaten
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup bread crumbs
Oil for frying
Procedure
For the Dough
Peel, slice the potatoes and boil them until they pierce easily with a fork. Remove them from the water and cool. Once the potatoes have cooled, force them through a potato ricer. Add egg, salt and pepper and knead thoroughly to ensure that ingredients are well combined and uniformly distributed.
For the Filling
Gently brown onion and garlic in oil. Add the chili pepper and sauté for a couple more minutes. Add ground beef and brown. Add raisins, cumin and paprika and cook briefly. Deglaze the pan with white wine. Add olives and cook for a few moments longer. Add hard boiled eggs and fold in off heat.
For the Final Preparation
Use three small bowls to prepare the papas. Put flour in the first one, the beaten egg on the second one and bread crumbs in the third. Flour your hands and scoop up 1/6 of the total dough to make a round pancake with your hands. Make a slight indentation in the middle for the filling. Spoon a generous amount of filling into the center and then roll the potato closed, forming a smooth, round casing around the filling. Repeat with all the dough.
Heat oil in a pan. Dip each papa in the three bowls to coat: first roll in flour, then dip in egg, then roll in bread crumbs. Fry the papas (in batches if necessary) about 2-3 minutes until golden brown. Flip once in the middle of frying to brown both sides.
Drain on paper towel. Serve immediately
Daring Cooks’ Challenge: Enchiladas
Our hosts this month, Barbara of Barbara Bakes and Bunnee of Anna-Food have chosen a delicious Stacked Green Chile & Grilled Chicken Enchilada recipe in celebration of Cinco de Mayo! The recipe, featuring a homemade enchilada sauce was found on Fine Cooking and written by Robb Walsh.
At home we decided to turn this weekend into a mexican culinary experience so in addition to the enchiladas, we made fajitas, guacamole, pico de gallo and frozen strawberry margaritas. You can find the recipes for guacamole and margaritas here. Below are the recipes for enchiladas (including grilled chicken and green chile sauce), pico de gallo and homemade nachos.
Grilled Chicken
2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
Juice of one lemon
1/2 chopped onion
1 cup olive oil
Salt, pepper
Instructions
In a large bowl, place the chicken breasts with all the ingredients listed above. Cover with film and marinate overnight in the fridge. Remove from maceration liquid and grill in the oven at 300 ºC (572 F) until golden brown, about 10 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool. Once cooled, shred it with your hands.
Green Chile Sauce
8 medium Poblano Chiles (canned)
5 medium Tomatillos (canned)
4 cups chicken broth
2 teaspoons yellow onion
1 teaspoon dried oregano
Salt and Pepper, to taste
2 tbsp. Cornstarch (dissolved in 2 tbsp. water)
Instructions
I had trouble finding fresh tomatillos and chiles poblanos, so I bought them canned. The chiles come already grilled an pealed and the tomatillos come boiled and soft. They make a great substitute for the fresh stuff and yield a great sauce.
Remove the seeds from the poblano chiles and chop coarsley. Heat a sauce pan and place tomatillos. Burst them with a spoon and let simmer over medium heat for a couple minutes. Remove from pan, puree with an immersion blender and return to pan. Add poblano chiles, chicken broth, minced onion, oregano, salt and pepper.
Bring to a boil over high heat and then reduce the heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Add the cornstarch-water mixture and stir well. Simmer, stirring occasionally, until the sauce is thickened and reduced. Adjust seasonings and reserve.
Enchiladas
170 g (6 oz.) grated Monterey Jack
Green Chile Sauce
12 corn tortillas
Grilled chicken
Instructions
Reserve 1/4 cup sauce and mix the rest with the shredded chicken. Fry the tortillas in very hot oil, until lightly golden but still tender. Drain on paper towels.
In a baking dish, ladle a thin layer of sauce. Lay one tortilla and add the mixture of chicken and sauce until the tortilla is covered. Sprinkle some grated cheese, top with another tortilla and repeat procedure. The top tortilla should be covered just with salsa and a generous amount of cheese.
Bake in the oven at 300 ºC (572 F) until the cheese melts and golds. Let rest for 5 minutes and serve.
Pico de Gallo
3 tbsp. chopped fresh cilantro
Juice of one lemon
1 small onion
2 tomatoes
Instructions
Finely dice the tomatoes and onion. Add lemon juice and chopped cilantro. Mix well and store in the fridge. Serve cold with nachos.
Homemade Nachos
1/2 cup olive oil
Corn tortillas
Instructions
Heat the olive oil over high heat. Add the tortillas cut in quarters and fry until golden brown. Drain on paper towels and reserve.
Pil-Pil Cod
Bacalao al pil-pil is a traditional recipe from the Basque Country or País Vasco, which is a region in the north of Spain. Bacalao is Spanish for cod and pil-pil is the name of the sauce you serve the cod with. In Spain it is common to find salt cod (which is salted and dried cod) as opposed to fresh one. For the fish to be suitable to eat, it needs to be prepared a couple of days in advance to eliminate all the salt in the flesh.
To eliminate the salt, rinse the cod fillets with cold running water. Then place the cod in a container big enough to form a single layer of fish (don't stack the pieces one on top of the other). Cover the fish with water and place in the refrigerator for at about 36 hours, changing the water every eight hours. Once unsalted and ready to use, remove cod from water and dry with the help of paper towels. When the fish is ready, it's time to prepare the sauce.
Ingredients
Red Chilli Pepper, cut in rings
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Garlic, thinly sliced
Instructions
As you can see, there are no measurements on the ingredients, because they depend on the amount of cod you are going to cook. Use one clove of garlic and two or three rings of chilly (you can add more if you enjoy hot food) per cod fillet. The amount of oil should be enough to cover 3/4 of the height of your fish when placed in a saucepan.
Place oil in a wide and low saucepan and heat it over low heat. Add the thinly sliced garlic to the oil and let it simmer. This should be done slowly so that the garlic golds evenly. When the slices just start to brown, add small rings of chilly to the oil. Let it fry until golden brown. Remove garlic and chilly from the sauce pan and reserve.
Add the cod fillets skin-side-up. The oil should be hot enough to form bubbles around the fish pieces but not so hot as to splatter violently.
It should be more a cooking over low heat than a frying process. Keep the fish a couple minutes with its skin up and then turn it and cook for a couple more minutes. You will notice that the skin releases a whitish substance, which is the gelatin that will thicken the sauce. The gelatin will form bubbles and sink to the bottom of the pan.
Remove the fish from the oil and reserve on a plate. Cover to maintain heat. Remove oil from heat and let cool. When lukewarm, start stirring the sauce (at this point it will be oil with bubbles of gelatin at the bottom) with a fine sieve or a slotted spoon, in a circular motion. Start working on a small area on the edge of the pan and don't move to the next area until the sauce is ready.
You will notice the white bubbles on the bottom of the pan will emulsify with the oil, creating a mayonnaise-like sauce. Keep working all around the pan until all of the oil is emulsified. The sauce must be under 80 ºC (176 F) or it will never emulsify, no matter how much time you spend stirring it.
Check the temperature of the fish. If it is too cold, reheat it in the oven for a couple of minutes, making sure it never surpasses the 80 ºC limit. You can reheat the sauce too, taking into account the same consideration. You can also add the fish to the sauce and heat them at the same time. To serve, place sauce on the bottom of a plate, put a cod fillet on top and decorate with a slice of garlic and chilli.
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