George Town - Hutton Lane Roti Bakar

We'd been passing this roti bakar ("grilled bread") spot for days now, and they always seemed to be doing a good business.

On our last morning before flying out, we finally stopped in for breakfast.

We each got roti bakar with half-boiled eggs and a teh tarik.

One we got with the addition of cheese (which they blowtorched to melt).

Roti bakar definitely falls into the "simple, but great" category.

We also got a roti canai to share, and I'm glad we did because it was very good and the accompanying dal with sambal was terrific.

A lovely way to spend our last morning in George Town!

Baja Cheese - A Visit to La Cava de Marcelo

We spent the day last Saturday on an expedition down to Baja with Queso Diego. Our destination was La Cava de Marcelo, a small dairy farm and cheese making operation located about 45 minutes east of Ensenada on the road to San Felipe.

As is often the case in Mexico, the trip down was a bit of an adventure with some bumps (some figurative, some literal) along the way, but we eventually found ourselves in a lovely setting - glass of wine in hand.

We took a tour of the operation, complete with the requisite calf-petting station:



a visit to the cheese-making area:



and, of course, some tasting - ricotta (good) and butter (great!) on smoky grilled bread:



The cheese cave is set down into the basement of one of the buildings:



The cave also doubles as a tasting area where we tried the pressed cheeses - plain and three flavors - basil, black pepper, and rosemary. We also tried the same basic cheese, but aged 6 months, 1 year, and 2 years.



There is also a restaurant on premises where we enjoyed a very nice dinner from their interesting and varied menu.



We picked up a round of their cracked pepper-flavored cheese to take home with us:



Cheers to Queso Diego for organizing the trip!

Ten recipes of ours that you should make right now

This blog is almost six (!!) years old now, and we've posted quite a few recipes along the way. Here are ten of our favorites.

Go make them right now!


Lamb Rogan Josh


While Chicken Pathia is the most popular of our reverse-engineered Indian takeaway recipes, Lamb Rogan Josh is probably the one we like the best.


Pancetta Tesa


Making your own Pancetta is super easy, and doesn't require any special equipment. The rolled version is a bit more involved, but still quite manageable. Using pretty much the same technique and then smoking it afterward will get you your own Homemade Bacon.


Taco Shop Hot Sauce


We use this hot sauce almost every day - particularly at breakfast. You should, too. The green stuff is pretty darn good as well.


Cream Cheese


Cream cheese is one of the easiest cheeses you can make. Infinitely better than the store-bought stuff.


Zesty Dill Pickles


We haven't bought a jar since we started making these simple refrigerator pickles. Our version is modeled after the taste of Vlasic Zesty Dills - twangy and spicy.


Smoked Almonds


Smoked almonds are quite possibly the perfect snack food. Once you start eating them it is very, very difficult to stop.


Chile-Lime Chicken


The salty earthiness of the soy-based marinade for this chicken works so well with the acidity and chile heat from the dipping sauce.


Fish with Spicy Lentils


"Spicy" here refers to complex, intense flavors, rather than heat. It is impossible to adequately describe how delicious the lentil base for this dish is.


Cochinita Pibil


Cochinita Pibil is pork with a complexly flavored achiote marinade, cooked in banana leaves. Pure Yucatán flavor.


Chori-Migas


We first had chori-migas on a trip to Austin, and they've been a breakfast favorite ever since.

So, there you go - ten of our favorite recipes. Go make them right now!

Birrieria El Rincón del Oso in Mercado Hidalgo, Tijuana

We went down to Tijuana last Sunday to revisit Mercado Hidalgo and have lunch at Birrieria El Rincón del Oso ("The Bear's Corner").



As you might expect from its name, this place specializes in birria - more specifically, birria de chivo (stewed goat). The Sunday menu is more limited than what they offer during the week, but fortunately they were serving up the dishes we were after.

We had birria three different ways. First, the most traditional - a bowl of birria. They ask you what bits of the goat you want - we went with surtida (a mix of everything):



The meat was soft and succulent, and the broth was rich with a complex mixture of flavors. It came with a big stack of warm corn tortillas for dipping and rolling your own tacos.

The place is famous for their birria gorditas, so naturally we had to try one:



The masa shell was nicely puffy and crispy from frying. The birria meat inside was good, but a bit subdued. Spooning in a bit of broth from our bowl of birria livened it up considerably.

We also got a birria quesadilla - pretty much the same as the gordita, but cooked on the flattop instead of being fried:



The place had a warm and friendly feel - some tables filled with families on a Sunday outing, another occupied by a police officer downing a massive plate of food. Our waiter was very nice, and even though his rapid speech challenged my rudimentary Spanish we managed to interact without too much trouble.

We will definitely be back.

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!

A Day Trip to Tijuana's Mercado Hidalgo

A couple of Sundays ago, we had some friends visiting and we decided to take them down to Tijuana for the day. Within minutes of walking across the border, we had grabbed a cab and arrived at Mercado Hidalgo, Tijuana's central market.

Here is a map of the market's location - as you can see, it is not far from the border crossing:


View Mercado Hidalgo in a larger map

Taking up a whole city block, the market vendors are arranged around the edge, with the center being a large parking lot.

There was plenty of fruit on offer:



as well as sweets:



and of course, lots of chiles:



and mole pastes:



There was even a little cooking store:



and a few vendors selling Mexican cheese varieties:



Quite a few places had this purple corn for sale. I'd never seen it before, and don't know what it is typically used in:



There was a glass case that contained the largest amount of chicharrón I'd ever seen in one place:



Next to it was this interesting mass that was labelled "Chicharrón Prensado":



This was the first time I've encountered "pressed" chicharrón and I'm definitely curious to learn more about it.

We didn't do much real shopping on this trip - only buying some piloncillo (sugar cone) and tamarind - but the vendors and other shoppers were friendly and relaxed. It made for a very nice day trip.