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Wednesday, September 19
THE ULTIMATE CUBA LIBRE
by
Lloydville
on Wed 19 Sep 2007 03:03 AM PDT
The cuba libre,
rum and Coke, always seemed like a pop cocktail to me. I guess I
associated it with early drinking in college, when it was the only
mixed drink anyone knew how to make and seemed like a painless way
to ingest a lot of alcohol.
But that was before I tried Ernest Hemingway's recipe for a cuba libre,
which is something else again. The key to this recipe is getting
hold of a Mexican Coke, which is still made with sugar, as it was in
Hemingway's day. You want to taste the rum and its parent
cane sugar all at once. (If you can't find Mexican Coke, forget I ever mentioned the cuba libre -- corn syrup has no place in it.)
Squeeze half a lime into a cocktail glass. Pour in a jigger of
Bacardi white rum, add the remains of the squeezed lime and plenty of
ice and pour the Coke over it.
The result is not too sweet and not too sour and it has an exhilarating
freshness. After a couple of these you'll be imagining
you're on a tropical beach somewhere . . . and after a few more you'll
be
convinced you really are on a tropical beach somewhere.
At that point, just relax and listen to the sounds of the surf and the wind rustling the palm fronds.
Wednesday, September 5
CARNE ASADA TACOS
by
Lloydville
on Wed 05 Sep 2007 11:27 AM PDT
The
next time you feel like fixing yourself a hamburger, try a carne asada
taco instead, which is sort of the equivalent of a hamburger south of the border,
fast, ubiquitous and comforting.
Here's how to make the ultimate carne asada taco, courtesy of Rick Bayless' indispensable Mexican Everyday:
Get yourself some skirt steak, a 7-ounce can of chipotle chiles in
adobo sauce, a few medium white onions, some flour or corn tortillas
and some olive oil. (A bottle of hot sauce is optional.)
Put the chipotle chiles and their sauce into a blender and purée
them Remove the fat and white membranes from the meat and then
brush the chipotle purée over both sides of it. Let this sit for
a while. (You will have lots of the purée left, but it will keep
for weeks in the fridge.)
Eventually . . . turn your oven on at its lowest setting. Cut up
an onion into quarter-inch thick slices. Heat two tablespoons of
the oil in a skillet over medium to high heat and sauté the onions
until they're lightly browned but still crunchy. (Takes about
five minutes.) Transfer them to an oven-safe container, leaving
as much of the oil in the skillet as possible, and place the container
in the oven. Return the skillet to the burner at the same heat
setting, add another tablespoon of oil and cook the chipotle-smeared
steak until it's well done.
Cut up the steak into thin slices,
mix it with the onions from the oven, salt it to taste, add some hot
sauce if you want (the chipotle sauce is fairly spicy to begin with)
and roll it all up in a tortilla. Eat it with a cold beer or a
Mexican Coca-Cola (which is still made with real sugar and can be found
at many of the smaller Latin markets in the U. S.)
This is just about as easy to make as a hamburger with grilled onions
and way more interesting -- Mexican food at its most basic and most
delicious.
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