Cowboy Caviar

Perhaps that picture looks unappetizing to you? I assure you, Cowboy Caviar esta mui bueno. This is my grandma's recipe and I've brought it to several pot luck functions. It's pretty cheap to make and kind of impressive. You can also add to and take away whatever you want since you don't have to cook anything.

Behold:
1 can corn, drained
1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
1 avocado, chopped
2-3 roma tomatoes, chopped
green onion, chopped, 3 Tish
cilantro, chopped 2 tish
2 T. Red wine vinegar
hot sauce, about 2 t.
salt
pepper
garlic, 2 cloves minced
2-3 T olive oil

Combine the olive oil, vinegar, hot sauce, salt, pepper, and garlic in a large bowl. Stir. Add avocado and toss to coat. Add everything else. When I do this in tupperware, I put the lid on once everything is in and just turn it upside down a few times to coat without massacring the avocado.

Taste it and see if it needs more salt or hot sauce. I usually end up adding more of both.

Enjoy with those mini-scoopy tortilla chips.

Haman's Ears

Hamentaschen are the traditional cookie eaten at Purim, the best religious holiday ever for the following reasons:

1. It honors a woman, Esther.
2. You make a lot of noise.
3. You eat these cookies.
4. You dress up.
5. You are required to get drunk.

We hosted a Purim party and I think it was at least 50 percent motivated by the fact that we'd get to make cookies for it. I looked online for recipes and a standard complaint about Hamentaschen is that they are too dry. I also noticed that many of the recipes didn't have any butter in the dough. Cookies without butter being too dry? IMPOSSIBLE.

So I got this recipe from Gale Gand, who I was unfamiliar with but who hosts a show called "Sweet Treats" or something. This recipe has an apricot filling, but the filling for Hamentaschen is traditionally: 1) Poppy or 2) Prune. First, both Poppy and Prune seemed a little gross to me and second this apricot concoction in the recipe was a little too involved. So we improvised an Frankie and I used raspberry jam, apricot preserves and semi-sweet chocolate chips for the filling, all of which were very successful and delicious.

Other notes:
1) These are supposed to be triangular, so just think about triangle pockets when you're pinching the cookie into shape. Making little flats circular dough into triangles was totally blowing my mind.

2) The orange zest was VERY prominent in the cookie. It was good, but I would maybe use less next time.

Recipe for dough as follows:

2 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup cold unsalted butter
2/3 cup sugar
1 egg
1 egg white
1/2 orange, zest grated
Combine the flour, baking powder and salt in a food processor. Add the butter and pulse. In a small bowl, mix together the sugar, egg, egg white, and orange zest. Add it to the processor and pulse to mix, being careful not to over mix. Divide into 2 disks and chill 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Roll out the dough on a floured work surface to 1/4-inch thick. Cut out 2 1/2 to 3-inch disks. (You can re-roll the scrapes to make more disks.) Place a disk of dough down and place 1 teaspoon of filling in the center. Pinch the disk in 3 places to form a triangular shape with the filling still showing in the center. They will look like 3 cornered hats. Place 2 inches apart on baking sheets. Continue until all the disks are made.

Bake for 12 to 14 minutes.

Ultimate Meatloaf

So, maybe a year ago I was at my parents house for the weekend. I woke up Sunday morning just starving for breakfast. Rather than get out of bed, I turned on TV and the Food Network was on. Tyler Florence, better known as the host of Food 911, was just coming on and he started making meatloaf. Rather than getting up to get myself some food I watched Tyler make meatloaf, and ever since I've been craving that meatloaf. Now, about a year later, I finally made that meatloaf.

This recipe has two great things about it:

1. The milk soaked white bread gives the meatloaf a really creamy texture. I know that a lot of people know this trick for meatballs or meatloaf, but back home, when my mom made meatloaf, she never used this trick.

2. Ketchup and Worschester sauce. I use at least one of these ingredients in almost everything that I make. Tyler knew all about it. That's what caught my eye about this recipe.

This recipe has two parts: The Sweet Relish and the Meatloaf. Start out with the relish, then add some of it to the meatloaf and save the rest to serve with the meatloaf.

Tomato Relish:

Extra-virgin olive oil
1 onion, finely diced
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 bay leaves
2 red bell peppers, cored, seeded, and finely diced
2 tomatoes, halved, seeded, and finely diced
1/4 cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
1 (12-ounce) bottle ketchup
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Meatloaf:

3 slices white bread, crusts removed, torn into chunks by hand
1/4 cup whole milk
1 1/2 pounds ground beef
1 pound ground pork
2 eggs
Leaves from 2 fresh thyme sprigs
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Coat a skillet with a 2-count of oil and place over medium heat. Saute the onion, garlic, and bay leaves for a few minutes to create a base flavor. Throw in the red peppers and cook them for a couple of minutes to soften. Now add the tomatoes; adding them at this point lets them hold their shape and prevents them from disintegrating. Stir in the parsley, ketchup, and Worcestershire; season with salt and pepper. Simmer the relish for 5 minutes to pull all the flavors together. Remove it from the heat; you should have about 4 cups of relish.

Place the torn white bread in a bowl and add the milk to just barely cover, swish the bread around in the milk and let it sit while you get the rest of the ingredients for the meat loaf together.

This is where you get your hands dirty! In a large mixing bowl, combine the ground beef and pork with 1 1/2 cups of the tomato relish, the eggs, and thyme; season with salt and pepper. Squeeze the excess milk from the bread and add the soaked bread to the meat mixture. To test, fry a small "hamburger" patty of the meatloaf until cooked; the patty should hold together but still have a soft consistency. Taste the patty for seasoning.

Lightly oil a cookie sheet. Transfer the meat mixture to the center of the cookie sheet and form into a log about 9 inches long and about 4 inches wide. Coat the top of the meatloaf with another 1/2 cup of the tomato relish.

Bake the meatloaf for 1 to 1 1/2 hours until the bacon is crisp and the meatloaf is firm. Remove the meatloaf from the oven and let it cool a bit before slicing. Serve with the remaining tomato relish on the side.

Tyler also used bacon that he put on top of the meatloaf, but I'm not all about that so I didn't do it. Additionally, you don't have to use beef and pork. You can also substitute ground veal, lamb, chicken or turkey for one or both of those. For me, the supermarket didn't have any ground pork, so I used beef and veal. In retrospect, I probably should have used turkey.

I've been eating this meatloaf for days. It makes great leftovers, especially on a sandwich.