In my last blog on eggs benedict at http://mearaquarter2independentreading.blogspot.com/2016/01/making-eggs-benedict-with-kenny-goliff.html,
I alluded to a huevos rancheros recipe in my book. Huevos rancheros is a Spanish
dish where fried eggs are paired with a spicy tomato sauce. Honestly, I’ve
never liked huevos rancheros before trying this recipe. That being said, the
recipe was still amazing. Unfortunately, it takes several hours to prepare and
make, so I am only willing to make it for special occasions when I have enough
time. As always, there were a few techniques in the recipe that were new to me
that I thought were very interesting.
The first interesting aspect of the recipe was how the sauce
itself was made. Overall, there were 4 basic steps to making the sauce. The
first step was to take four small cans of diced tomatoes and strain them to
separate the juice from the actual tomato. Then, letting the tomato sit, I took
the sauce, discarded some of it, kept a few cups, and added some spices to it.
While those spices dissolved, I put some onions, garlic, and other spices and
herbs into bowl, then mixed the leftover tomato into that. I took that new
mixture, put it in a casserole pan, baked it a few times, and then put the
original sauce from the tomatoes back in (Card 55). I thought this process was very interesting, as separating the sauce from the tomatoes only to put it back
together sounded kind of pointless. However, the reasoning behind it explained
exactly why it wasn’t.
According to Matthew Card, the maker of the recipe, “To
evoke the charred flavors in huevos rancheros, we roast vegetables in a hot
oven” (Card 54). If the sauce was left in with the tomatoes, leaving them soggy
and gross in the oven, they wouldn’t be properly roasted, creating the delicious
flavors huevos rancheros, when done right, has to offer. So, alternatively, the
moist (as opposed to soaked) diced tomatoes are roasted by themselves first,
then the sauce is added in later.
In this recipe, spices like chile powder, cilantro, and
garlic are used to form a very unique salsa-resembling flavor. What other kinds
of spices do you think would go well with a recipe like this?
These blogs are always so great Kenny! to answer your question I'm not much of a cilantro fan, so if it were me cooking I would have taken that out and put a different herb on it. This still looks tasty, although it does seem like a lot of instructions, so nice job keeping track of all that. I could definelty work on completing complex recipes like that!
ReplyDeleteI think that it was very interesting how you were supposed to separate the juice from the tomatoes and then putting it back together as you mentioned. As far as spices go I don't have a particular favorite, so I would suggest to try separating the dish into small sections and making small portions of which spice you might like.
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