h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Tonight, I tried something I'd never done before. We had a couple of friends over for monster movies, and I made homemade tamales!

(For those of you unfamiliar with the tamal, here's a fairly comprehensive Wiki article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamale )

There's a little Mexican grocery between my bus stop and home, so I grabbed some dried corn husks- a huge pack of at least two dozen is just over a dollar, so if anyone wants to try these, I can easily send you some.

I put the husks in warm water to soak for a couple hours this afternoon while we went to the garden center to get me some more plants. Then, I prepared a batch of polenta, adding some ground cumin, chili powder and smoked paprika, in my rice cooker (about 30 minutes on the porridge setting).

Then, we plopped a bit of creamy polenta on each opened husk, stuck a bit of grated soy cheese (cheddar, jack and mozzarella flavor) on top and then covered with another little dollop of polenta. We folded the tighter edge of the hush in, rolled it around the polenta, and repeated till all the polenta was used up. Then we placed each tamal into the bamboo steamer (I have an 8" double-decker) in a skillet with about an inch of water, and steamed for about 15 minutes.

Yum! Went wonderfully with the last of the tomatoes from the farmers market, cut into wedges, and a pitcher of margaritas.

Cool! Sounds yummy indeed.

If I ever visit your home,- quite remote possibility- I would enter your kitchen as if it were a museum. The temple where the priestess PC performs her culinary arts.
I'm always impressed at the many and assorted meals you can do only with vegetables, and the instruments you have!

You are really creative

Margaritas... mmmmm I love it. I worked once in a Mexican restaurant and we ended the day with a few margaritas.

Aw, Mar. I'm not THAT good.

(But yes, the only drawback to meeting so may lovely people from all over the world is the not getting to visit and hang out part )

I'd more or less been told that polenta wouldn't work, but they turned out fine.

Ooh, sounds oh so yummy!

I went to a chilli festival today (I love growing and cooking with them) so naturally I've done a nice hot chillie (spelling?) for our evening meal tonight!

Sounds like you enjoy experimenting in the kitchen. Is polenta easy to do? I've not tried it before.

Ok, I've got one for you in a 'help help I'm being repressed'* sort of way.

The nearest restaurant to us that did Chimichangas was about a 45-60 minute drive away. It has now removed them from the menu and gone way more Spanish than Mexican.

I tend not to like kitchen (and otherwise, I suppose) gadgets that only do one thing - so we don't have a deep fat fryer and have no intention of getting one.

How, in your esteemable kitchen, would you do DIY chimichangas? Not in terms of filling or assembling, but in terms of finishing them off?

Last time I tried here at home I succeeded in melting a couple of (plastic - silly me) utensils and making borderline chimichangas by shallow frying them for a little bit on a pan.

They were sort of uneven and the whole melting of things was an unforeseen consequence - you may guess that I don't fry stuff much.

ismarah

*obviously the repression in because of the dratted restaurant amending their menu not to my liking. at least we checked the menu online before we went - we hadn't been there for a while.

I've melted plastic utensils before- recently.

Regarding polenta- it's not that hard, but it is generally time-consuming, and you pretty much need to watch and stir more or less constantly. I cheat and use my rice cooker, and don't need to watch or stir at all. But even on the stove, it's not as bad as you'd think. To get the firm texture, I just pour it out of the pan into a casserole or something and set in the fridge for an hour or so.

Deep frying is something I don't do very often, and I share the general dislike of gadgets which can't be used frequently or for multiple purposes (which is why I have no waffle iron). On those rare occasions when I've needed to fry in deeper oil than my skillets would hold, I've used my wok. Do you think that might work for you? You might have to do the chimichangas one at a time.

(I've had chimichangas, but it's hard to find anyplace that does them without meat. presumably bean, etc fillings wouldn't fry up as nicely?)

One of my favorite Mexican places altered its menu not to my liking, too. They've removed a bunch of lovely authentic entrees from the menu and added all sorts of Tex-Mex stuff, like fajitas. We used to go there every other week- now we haven't been in ages.

Actually, my favourite chimichanga filling is mushrooms and cheese. Other veg is just fine in there, like sweet potato or regular potato. I always cook everything to a mush before it's ready go in whatever pancakes I'm putting it into.

My current favourite filling for tacos is really really simple - mince in bbq sauce (i use pork these days, organic and lean. but i'm sure you can make it with soy too, I just haven't tried it). I use bbq sauce in a bottle (cattleman's, if you know it) so the whole thing takes like 10 minutes to make.

Not at all authentic, but is really nice and minimal. I serve that with some grated cheese, creme fraiche and loose leaf lettuce. mmmmmmmm.

When you fry things in your wok, what do you use as your fishing things out utensil? And what do you do with the oil? what kind of oil do you use? how long for?

there's this DIVine mexican restaurant where we stay in FL. looks like sh!t but the food is authentic and it's just great. where we are in the UK there's like a blank area 100miles in all directions from where we are with no mexican restaurants. I've gotten very good at making our own...apart from chimichangas

ismarah

I will admit - I do have a breville - sandwich toaster. I love the things. Everything else in my kitchen multi-tasks.

I even tend to cook with only one pan or pot, whole meals if I can. It's a bit studenty sometimes.

We had a great one on Friday when I'd been writing my first paper and got kind of carried away with the whole thing so it was like 21.30 by the time I stopped and started thinking about food.

DT had scrambled eggs on toast and I had tortellini pasta with ketchup and cheese. (Ketchup was more of a tomato sauce than ketchup, to be fair).

And school doesn't even start till Wednesday.... yikes.

I've only ever fried stuff in the wok using canola (rapeseed, I think?) oil. For fishing things out, I use a pair of long metal tongs. I have some long narrow ones with the open-type tong ends, and also a pair of those all metal ones with the scallop-y looking ends.

The used oil... I know lots of people save theirs to re-use later, but I'm paranoid about smoke/ flash points. So I normally pour it into something to let it harden and then throw it in the garbage, unfortunately. It's a good thing I don't fry with that much oil very often, once every few years, if that.

Oh, and I nearly always cook in one pot, unless I'm having pasta, or sometimes I cook rice or udon/somen noodles first. I've been known to soak the noodles and then just stir-fry them with the veg, and I also often throw all the veg and seasonings into the rice cooker when making rice.

Never used a sandwich toaster, but neither can I recall ever having had a toasted sandwich. I don't care much for toasted bread. I like grilled cheese (with soy cheese nowadays), but that's done in a skillet and I don't make the bread crunchy at all. Can't stand crunchy bread- I like it doughy and chewy. When I get baguettes I have to keep them in the fridge to soften them up enough to make them palatable.

Best bring your own bread to Germany, then

Well, I don't eat heaps of bread. So if I avoid sandwiches I might be OK... when it comes to sliced bread I'm happy to dig the insides out and leave the crusts for someone else.

Though it's also quite possible that the sheer thrill of visiting Germany might be enough to distract me and override the crust aversion tendencies.

As a child, I would *only* eat the crusts Still prefer them. We'd make a good team

We can share!

K likes to float crusts in soups, chili, etc. I've never been a fan of doing that, but it's growing on me.

No, they can't go *soggy*!

Awww, you guys are bringing back memories here. Pasta with cheese and ketchup - back to my student days and being on a budget, and then toasted sarnies???? Love them! Cheese ham and baked beans for the filling - crispy on the outside, soggy in the middle!

Ooh, I'm hungry now

Luckily we just ate. Tried something else I'd never made before- seitan stroganoff. Yum. Diced onion and minced garlic, carmelized. A couple handful sliced white button mushrooms, cooked down till soft. a good-sized chuck of seitan (I'm guessing 1/2 lb), sliced thinly. 12 oz vegan "sour cream". A couple Tbsps tamari, a dash of veggie W sauce, freshly ground salt and pepper, and a dash of Hungarian paprika for color. Served over wide whole wheat pasta noodles. I'd meant to throw in a couple handfuls of frozen peas, but someone had eaten them all already...

It's WAY too hot out for this kind of meal, but what the hell. K has had a craving for stroganoff for ages and I aim to please.

Of course, we've also watched six episodes from Doctor Who series 2, so I've done little else today besides cook that and eat it. I did vacuum, though!

"... override crust aversion tendencies."

Hahahahaha. That's such a funny phrase! OCAT!