Food Photo Round-Up #2

It's been too long since our last food photo round-up and I've got way too many pictures for one post, so I'm going to split this one up into two.

We'll start things off with some simple, but delicious bacon and eggs. A friend of ours now has three yard chickens, and we've been lucky enough to score some of their eggs from time to time. They look beautiful, and taste great.

Next up, a favorite snack of ours - memelitas. Sherry learned how to make them from our landlady in Oaxaca.



Continuing with the Mexican theme, here are some chicken chilaquiles with saucy black beans:



A new addition to our Mexican repertoire this year is Mole de Olla:



It is a delicious soup/stew (mine usually ends up more of a stew) with an earthy red chile base. I've been playing around with variations and I'll do up a recipe post soon.

Speaking of Mexican braised dishes, pork chile verde is a regular of ours:



We've been visiting Tijuana a lot recently, and one of the many things they do really well there is birria tacos. The ones we had at Tacos Fitos outside Mercado Hidalgo were fantastic. We haven't reached that level yet, but this version was very tasty:



While visiting an avocado grove in Temecula, we had some really nice salads. With that on the brain, we tried one of our own - avocado, beet and orange. The flavor combination was a bit aggressive, but it sure was pretty:



We need to make more Indian lentil (dal) dishes. This one was Toor Dal Uttar Pradesh Style, based on a recipe from Camellia Panjabi's 50 Great Curries of India:



Such rich flavor and vibrant colors.

We love a good hamburger. Recently, Sherry stacked one up so nicely that it reminded me of a burger advertisement with all of the layers nicely stacked. Pretty, but hard to get your mouth around...



We've had some ups and downs with ribs the past few years, but things were definitely on an up note this July 4th. Pork spare ribs - smokey and succulent:



I've been messing around with "modernist" techniques a bit lately - in particular, with cheese. This is a Mac and Cheese that uses Sodium Citrate to get a silky-smooth texture:



I haven't got it fully sorted out yet, but it is fun to play with. The sausage is decidedly un-"modernist" - a homemade Sicilian sausage, one of our favorite recipes from Rytek Kutas' Great Sausage Recipes and Meat Curing.

Speaking of meat curing, and returning full circle to bacon, this was our most recent batch:



We added a step to our normal process to dry cure it in the magic fridge for a week before smoking. The result was very, very good - a really intense, concentrated flavor and texture. I think it will become a standard practice for us.

Phew - that's it for the first part of the round-up. Stay tuned for the next half!

Grilled Sardines

We've been on the lookout for sardines ever since we had them a few years back at Sea Rocket Bistro. When fresh pacific sardines showed up at Catalina Offshore last week, we jumped at the chance to get some.



After gutting them (they had already been scaled), the prep was a simple marinade of garlic, lemon juice, parsley, salt, pepper, and just a drizzle of olive oil.

A wooden skewer through the mouth and down the center keeps them flat and makes them easier to eat.



A few minutes on the grill, and they are done:



To eat them, you grab the skewer and use a fork, starting just below the head, to peel away the meat from each side. If you do it right, the bones stay on your plate and you get a nice sardine filet.



Sardine filet not pictured above because it was in my belly.