CARRY ON TEQUILA DAY!!

     National Tequila Day was July 24, 2012. If you have any leftover and feel like indulging again, we have selected a couple of recipes for a leftover tequila party this month! Both are from "The Tequila Cookbook" by Lynn Nusom. Permission to print granted by Golden West Publishers, 4113 N. Longview, Phoenix, AZ 85014.

     This book is a compilation of recipes using tequila, a distilled liquor made from one of 400 species of agave plant. There are many brands of tequila for sale in most liquor stores. There are also different colors of tequila. The white tequila is the most common and usually the least expensive. Gold tequila - called "especial" by some manufacturers is considered a premium tequila. The color is caused by aging the tequila in casks.

     If you travel into Mexico, try different brands of tequila that are not readily available in the United States and use your liquor allotment to bring some back, as it is much less expensive than it is here.

 

GRILLED YELLOWFISH TUNA 

1 Tbsp. ORANGE JUICE

2 Tbsp. OLIVE OIL

4 (6 oz.) YELLOWFIN TUNA STEAKS, 3/4 to 1 inch thick

     Mix together the orange juice and oil and brush over the tuna steaks. Grill the steaks on an indoor cooker or over hot coals for 8-to-10 minutes or until fish flakes easily when touched with a fork. Garnish with twisted orange slices and serve with Orange-Tequila Sauce.  Serves 4.

 ORANGE-TEQUILA SAUCE

1 cup MAYONNAISE

1/4 cup TEQUILA

1 tsp. grated ORANGE PEEL

1/4 cup ORANGE JUICE

1 tsp. RED CHILE FLAKES, such as PEQUIN

     Mix together mayonnaise, tequila, orange peel, orange juice and red chile flakes. Cover the sauce with plastic wrap and chill in refrigerator for one hour.

Let's Celebrate ARIZONA Independents Week 2012!!

 Independents Week is coming. Will you commit to shift 10% of your purchases to local? We challenge you to take advantage of the golden coupon and shop at a local business from July 1st to 7th.  How important is buying local?

...For every two jobs national retailers bring to a community, three jobs are lost as a result of local businesses closing down.

...When you shop locally owned businesses, your money is re-circulated over and over and creates up to 75% more tax revenue.

For a list of local businesses accepting the Golden Coupon - http://localfirstaz.com/independents-week/golden-coupon.php           Become a fan, join Local First Arizona and commit to buy local!

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Snacking State-by-State: Arizona I - El Burro Más Grande:  

 I have visited Arizona a few times, none of which was recently. My sister and her husband and their dog used to live in Phoenix, and my crazy uncle (we all have a crazy uncle) and his ex-wife still does. So I am not too unfamiliar with the distinctly Southwestern flavors of Arizona: Navajo and Hopi in the northeast (and Native American throughout), cattle rancher in the north, plus the heaviest doses of Mexican all over the whole of the state.

Snacking State-by-State: Arizona

Official Name: State of Arizona
State Nicknames: The Grand Canyon State; The Copper State
Admission to the US: February 14, 1912 (#48)
Capital: Phoenix (largest city)
Other Important Cities: Tucson (2nd largest), Mesa (3rd largest), Glendale (4th largest)
Region: West (Southwest); Mountain (US Census)
RAFT Nations: Chile Pepper, Pinyon Nut
Bordered by: Utah (north); New Mexico (east); Sonora (south); California, Nevada & Baja California (west); Colorado (northeast corner - Arizona is one of the Four Corners states)
Official State Foods and Edible Things: Arizona Trout (fish)
Some Famous & Typical Foods: chiles (mild in the south), tortillas (flour in the south), Navajo taco, beef, nopal cactus (both pad and fruit), burritos, chimichangas, menudo

The Mexican aspect of Arizona's cuisine is specifically tied to the cuisine of Sonora, the Mexican state right across the border. The two mirror each other very well. Note: I've also passed through Sonora state, on a major bus trip from Morelia (Michoacán) to Mexicali (Baja California) by way of Guadalajara (Jalisco), but that's a story for another day.

If you want to pin down Southwestern food, it is fairly easy. If you want to pin down what is specifically Arizonan, that is a bit more difficult. Kathi Long tries to do this in her cookbook on The Southwest from Williams-Sonoma, focusing on the most notable influences in Arizona cooking, from Mexico:

Arizona cooks have...looked to Mexico for inspiration. The southern part of the state borrowed from the cooking of Sonora, which lies directly across the border, a culinary alliance that reveals itself in large, thin flour tortillas, the use of nopal cactus, and a menu of mildly spiced dishes. Elsewhere in the state, residents traditionally dine on Mexican chimichangas..., menudo..., and giant burritos, as well as the more staid ranch fare introduced by early cattlemen and other settlers from the Midwest and East Coast. [Long, p. 12]

In the spirit of Arizona's Sonoran influences, I wanted to find a recipe that incorporated all three of these elements: nopal (that is, prickly pear) cactus, mild chiles and large, flour tortillas. They are out there, but I hadn't found them before I stumbled upon the massive compendium by Cheryl and Bill Jamison, The Border Cookbook: Authentic Home Cooking of the American Southwest and Northern Mexico (also on Google Books). In Arizona, burritos are standard fare - particulary massive ones. The Jamisons rightly call those burros, since a burrito is just a "little burro".

Among their many recipes for burros and burritos, one breakfast creation specifically piqued my interest: their machaca breakfast burro. Since it comes straight from Phoenix, it seemed like a good place to start.

The recipe: Machaca Breakfast Burro

As the Jamisons point out, machaca originally referred to beef or other meat.

Machaca originally referred to meat (usually beef) that was seasoned, dried for preservation, and later tenderized by pulverizing and cooking. The word comes from the verb machacar, meaning to pound or crush... Many people now use the term to describe any beef cooked well-done with seasonings and then shredded. [Alters Jamison et al., p. 75]

I don't buy a lot of meat these days, but I saw this as a great way to use up some frozen beef in my freezer. Before my former neighbor moved to Nova Scotia a few months ago he gave me some frozen beef he would've otherwise thrown out. Thawed it amounted to a pound and a half - perfect for a halved version of this recipe. This made the amount of money I put out for this recipe unusually light:

* beef (free!!! Thanks, Dale, if you ever read this)
* salt and pepper (have)
* bacon grease (if you have the bacon, it's not that difficult to make some on the spot)
* beef stock (had none, so I had to turn to the Maggi chicken bouillon in my pantry)
* onion (have)
* garlic (have)
* small Roma tomatoes (about $1 for two)
* mild green chiles (one poblano chile for about 50 cents)
* fresh lime juice (one lime for about the same)
* egg (this was optional - I wasn't planning to use one at the time but decided to add one later)
* burrito-size flour tortillas (the priciest item, about $3 for a package of eight)

This recipe was a bit more involved than many I do. First, you must briefly brown the beef in some of the bacon grease, then cook in a Dutch oven over low heat for over an hour with broth, onion & garlic. Wait for it to cool down a little, then break it up and - here's the part that I haven't done before - throw it in your food processor until shredded. You must do this in small batches lest it not shred everything.

Fry the beef a bit more until slightly drier and until some patches of beef look darker and more dessicated. Remove it, and cook the rest of the onion & garlic with the rest of the bacon grease, the reserved liquid from the Dutch oven, tomato, chile pepper (roasted and chopped) and lime juice. Add the beef and cook for about 25 minutes.

I never thought I would do this, but why the hell not?
I'm not making this for PETA after all...

The closeup hides the fact that I still need to clean my stove

25 minutes later... okay, so the stove isn't that bad...

Here is where I put the machaca mixture in the fridge, which the Jamisons say you can do at this point. I brought it out a day or so later and added an egg. Really, it added very little to the dish. I could neither taste it nor even see it at all. In retrospect, it was not necessary, and I wouldn't add it again. To be sure, the Jamisons day that part is optional.

The rest is ridiculously easy: just spoon the hot mixture into a large (Sonoran-style) flour tortilla and make yourself a burro. Eat it with salsa (my choice: a roasted tomato salsa from the Jamison's same book called salsa del norte).

Okay, mine really was more the size of a burrito, but still...

The thing about machaca-style beef: it isn't supposed to be soft and juicy, per se. Perhaps I did something wrong. I mean, it wasn't dripping and wet, but it was pleasantly soft and just a bit moist. Plus, the long, slow cooking with tomatoes and roasted poblano chile pepper, onions and garlic, bacon grease (yet another use!!!) and lime juice just blends together in the most beautiful way. I'm sorry if I'm starting to sound "foodie-ish". I really don't mean to. It was just a beautiful thing to eat. Even if you decide to turn that burro into the more diminutive burrito.

I have been subsisting off machaca burros and burritos since. I may even make a quesadilla if the mood strikes me, complete with thinkly sliced queso fresco, which is not easy to melt, let me tell you.

Sources:
Alters Jamison, Cheryl, and Bill Jamison. The Border Cookbook: Authentic Home Cooking of the American Southwest and Northern Mexico. The Harvard Common Press: Boston, 1995.

AZCentral.com. Nopales recipes. Posted date June 24, 2005.

Long, Kathi. The Southwest: New American Cooking. From the Williams-Sonoma "New American Cooking" series, Chuck Williams, general editor. Time-Life Books: San Francisco, 2001.

Some information also obtained from Wikipedia's "Arizona" page and the Food Timeline State Foods webpage link to "Arizona".

The Old West - Express train crosses the nation in 83 hours (June 4, 1876)

A mere 83 hours after leaving New York City, the Transcontinental Express train arrives in San Francisco.

That any human being could travel across the entire nation in less than four days was inconceivable to previous generations of Americans. During the early 19th century, when Thomas Jefferson first dreamed of an American nation stretching from "sea to shining sea," it took the president 10 days to travel the 225 miles from Monticello to Philadelphia via carriage. Even with frequent changing of horses, the 100-mile journey from New York to Philadelphia demanded two days hard travel in a light stagecoach. At such speeds, the coasts of the continent-wide American nation were months apart. How could such a vast country ever hope to remain united?

As early as 1802, Jefferson had some glimmer of an answer. "The introduction of so powerful an agent as steam," he predicted, "[to a carriage on wheels] will make a great change in the situation of man." Though Jefferson never saw a train in his lifetime, he had glimpsed the future with the idea. Within half a century, America would have more railroads than any other nation in the world. By 1869, the first transcontinental line linking the coasts was completed. Suddenly, a journey that had previously taken months using horses could be made in less than a week.

Five days after the transcontinental railroad was completed, daily passenger service over the rails began. The speed and comfort offered by rail travel was so astonishing that many Americans could scarcely believe it, and popular magazines wrote glowing accounts of the amazing journey. For the wealthy, a trip on the transcontinental railroad was a luxurious experience. First-class passengers rode in beautifully appointed cars with plush velvet seats that converted into snug sleeping berths. The finer amenities included steam heat, fresh linen daily, and gracious porters who catered to their every whim. For an extra $4 a day, the wealthy traveler could opt to take the weekly Pacific Hotel Express, which offered first-class dining on board. As one happy passenger wrote, "The rarest and richest of all my journeying through life is this three-thousand miles by rail."

The trip was a good deal less speedy and comfortable for passengers unwilling or unable to pay the premium fares. Whereas most of the first-class passengers traveled the transcontinental line for business or pleasure, the third-class occupants were often emigrants hoping to make a new start in the West. A third-class ticket could be purchased for only $40--less than half the price of the first-class fare. At this low rate, the traveler received no luxuries. Their cars, fitted with rows of narrow wooden benches, were congested, noisy, and uncomfortable. The railroad often attached the coach cars to freight cars that were constantly shunted aside to make way for the express trains. Consequently, the third-class traveler's journey west might take 10 or more days. Even under these trying conditions, few travelers complained. Even 10 days spent sitting on a hard bench seat was preferable to six months walking alongside a Conestoga wagon on the Oregon Trail.

Railroad promotions, however, naturally focused on the speedy express trains. The arrival of the Transcontinental Express train in San Francisco on this day in 1876 was widely celebrated in the newspapers and magazines of the day. With this new express service, a businessman could leave New York City on Monday morning, spend 83 hours in relaxing comfort, and arrive refreshed and ready for work in San Francisco by Thursday evening. The powerful agent of steam had effectively shrunk a vast nation to a manageable size.(Source:  The History Channel ,  Retrieved May 6, 2012)

Foods fit for Traveling:  Both recipes selected this month and shown below are foods-fit-for-traveling in the old west.

OVEN-DRIED BEEF JERKY

The recipe is from "Cowboy Cook Book"; permission to print granted by Golden West Publishers in Phoenix, AZ.  Cowboys often carried a supply of jerky to eat during the long nights of cattle tending. 

• 2 - 2½  lbs. boneless BEEF MARINADE
• 1 cup WATER
• 2 Tbsp. LIQUID SMOKE
• ¼ tsp. SALT
• ¼ tsp. BLACK PEPPER
• 1 tsp. GARLIC SALT
• 1 tsp. LEMON PEPPER

Trim fat from meat and cut into strips that are 6 inches long and ⅛-inch thick. Place strips in a glass casserole dish. In a bowl, combine marinade ingredients and stir well. Pour over beef. Cover and marinate overnight in refrigerator, stirring occasionally. Drain and dry meat thoroughly. Cover bottom rack of oven with aluminum foil . Arrange strips of meat close together on oven rack; do not overlap. Bake at 150°-175° for 10-12 hours. Beef is done when pieces feel dry, not crisp. Store in airtight containers.

  

Hard Tack Biscuits These biscuits, made without baking powder or baking soda, became as hard as rocks. The cowboys softened them in coffee, stew or just plain water to make them edible.

HARDTACK

The recipe below is from "Arizona Territory Cook Book"; permission to print granted by Golden West Publishers in Phoenix, AZ.

• 4 cups FLOUR
• 4 tsp.SALT
• WATER

Mix flour and salt together. Add just enough water to make a heavy dough that will not stick to the hands. Roll the dough until it is ½ inch thick. Cut into pieces about 3 inches square and then punch 16 holes in each piece with a nail. Turn pieces over and punch through again. Bake on ungreased light metal sheet in oven about 375 degrees for half an hour. Tack should be light brown on both sides.

Hardtack is broken fairly easily when fresh, but as it dries out it gets hard as fired brick.    

Happy Cinco De Mayo 2012!

The holiday of Cinco De Mayo, The 5th Of May, commemorates the victory of the Mexican militia over the French army at The Battle Of Puebla in 1862. It is primarily a regional holiday celebrated in the Mexican state capital city of Puebla and throughout the state of Puebla, with some limited recognition in other parts of Mexico, and especially in U.S. cities with a significant Mexican population. It is not, as many people think, Mexico's Independence Day, which is actually September 16.

Today's Celebration: For the most part, the holiday of Cinco de Mayo is more of a regional holiday in Mexico, celebrated most vigorously in the state of Puebla. There is some limited recognition of the holiday throughout the country with different levels of enthusiasm, but it's nothing like that found in Puebla. Celebrating Cinco de Mayo has become increasingly popular along the U.S.-Mexico border and in parts of the U.S. that have a high population of people with a Mexican heritage. In these areas the holiday is a celebration of Mexican culture, of food, music, beverage and customs unique to Mexico. 

Commercial interests in the United States and Mexico have also had a hand in promoting the holiday, with products and services focused on Mexican food, beverages and festivities, with music playing a more visible role as well. Several cities throughout the U.S. hold parades and concerts during the week following up to May 5th, so that Cinco de Mayo has become a bigger holiday north of the border than it is to the south, and being adopted into the holiday calendar of more and more people every year.  (Source: The Mexico Online website. Retrieved May 1, 2012, from http://www.mexonline.com/cinco-de-mayo.htm)



Foods to Help Celebrate: Cinco de Mayo falls on Saturday this year. Create these HOT sweets to serve your family & friends when celebrating! The recipes are from REAL NEW MEXICO CHILE by Sandy Szwarc. Permission to print granted by Golden West Publishers, Phoenix, AZ.

PEANUT COOKIES WITH RED CHILE CRACKLE
Peanutty & chocolatey cookies with a touch of heat in the red chile sugar coating. While they bake the red sugar cracks, creating an interesting and colorful coating. If you like your cookies chewy, wrap them airtight while they are slightly warm. For crispier versions, let them cool completely before serving. They freeze well, wrapped airtight, if you can resist eating them hot from the oven!

• 1 cup BUTTER
• 1 cup freshly ground PEANUT BUTTER
• 1 cup SUGAR
• 1 cup packed BROWN SUGAR
• 2 large EGGS
• 1 tsp. VANILLA
• 3 cups WHOLE-WHEAT PASTRY or ALL-PURPOSE FLOUR
• 1 Tbsp. BAKING SODA
• 1 cup dry-roasted, skinless, unsalted PEANUTS
• 1 cup SEMISWEET CHOCOLATE CHIPS
• 2 Tbsp. NEW MEXICO RED CHILE POWDER
• ¼ cup SUGAR
• ¼ cup CAYENNE

In a large bowl, beat with a mixer the butter, peanut butter and 1 cup each of white and brown sugar until creamy. Beat in the eggs and vanilla. Stir in the flour and soda until well combined. Stir in the peanuts and chocolate chips. Cover the bowl and place it in the refrigerator for one hour.

In a small bowl, stir together the chile powder, ¼ cup sugar and cayenne. Lightly grease cookie sheets.

Take heaping tablespoons of the dough and roll into balls. Roll each ball in the chile sugar and place on the cookie sheets, allowing 2 inches between the cookies. Bake at 350 degrees for about 12 minutes until they are lightly golden and just set. Leave on the cookie sheet one minute, then remove with a spatula to a wire rack to cool.

Yields about 5 dozen cookies.


ORANGE FIRE CHOCOLATE CLUSTERS
These are a cross between a cookie and a candy. The rich chocolate binds the granola-like base. The chile heat is sweetened by the perfume of the oranges . These scrumptious bites will keep for a week in the refrigerator.

• 2 cups SUGAR
• ½ cup MILK
• ½ cup COCOA POWDER
• ½ cup BUTTER
• 1 Tbsp. NEW MEXICO RED CHILE POWDER
• 1/8 tsp. CAYENNE
• 1 tsp. VANILLA
• 1-2/3 cups ROLLED OATS
• 3/4 cup RAISINS
• 3/4 cup dry-roasted, skinless, unsalted PEANUTS
• 1-½ Tbsp. ORANGE LIQUEUR
• 1 Tbsp. ORANGE CONCENTRATE

In a large heavy saucepan, stir together the sugar, milk, cocoa and butter. Cook over low heat, stirring frequently, until the butter has melted. Continue to gently simmer for about 3 minutes until the mixture is thick and smooth. Remove from heat and stir in the remaining ingredients. Cool a few minutes. Butter a cookie sheet and drop the slowly thickening mixture by heaping teaspoonful onto the sheet. Place in the refrigerator for 1 hour until the clusters have set. Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator.

Yields about 3 dozen clusters.