He Cooks, She Cooks

My mom searched and searched through old food magazines while I searched and searched the internet for a corn and potato salad with crème fraiche dressing. We had made the recipe before so I couldn’t understand why it didn’t exist anywhere online. Finally my mom found it in our June 1995 copy of Gourmet.

Except crème fraiche wasn’t an ingredient.

We’ve both made this corn and potato salad with crème fraiche (or sour cream) several times, when all the while it was meant to have buttermilk instead. Well, our version is great and deserves to be known, too. Or you could make a few substitutions and call it your own.

You’ll want to take the credit. This is the potato salad that changes the minds of potato-salad-haters. The corn is sweet, the dressing is tangy…it’s so good, we served it New Year’s Eve on a bed of baby romaine next to lobster and filet mignon.

(Also, the 70+ degree days here have me thinking out of season and posting about things like corn and potato salad and ice cream topped with blueberries. Ah, winter in Los Angeles…)

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I wish I could tell you these tacos are delicious and leave it at that, but I should probably address the issue of lengua — tongue.

Watching hours of Anthony Bourdain and reading more about food convinced Michael and I that we ought to be less discriminating in our meat choices. We like to be informed carnivores, people who eat meat, well aware that it came from a live animal, instead of ignoring what a steak once was.

We realized, if we’re going to eat the spinal muscles (T-bone) and diaphragm (skirt steak) of cattle, we shouldn’t squirm over tongue just because someone couldn’t come up with a more marketable name for it.
So at a Mexican restaurant in LA, Michael ordered a huaruche de lengua. It was awesome. A month or so later we made tongue and oxtail stew. Friday it was tongue tacos after Michael got a tongue from Missouri Legacy Beef. (See Michael’s portrait of Mark and Susie here.)

For the tacos, the meat was cut so small and mixed with other ingredients, even Kat was OK with it (It was her first time trying beef tongue). Cooking tongue might be difficult for some because there’s no hiding the fact you’re cooking a giant tongue. But it didn’t really bother me, especially the second time around.

If you can get over the idea of eating tongue, it’s to your benefit. The meat is really tender and tasty. Plus it’s so cheap. Remember, it’s just another muscle of the animal. Nothing to be afraid of.

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Last week I picked up a pint of beautiful cherry tomatoes at The Root Cellar. I popped a whole one in my mouth and it was like candy (which is a wonder because I didn’t even like tomatoes really until I got to college). I was so happy to finally have a tasty tomato after months of winter. But the sun was shining that day in Columbia, and I decided to make a meal that would feel like my perennially warm home of Los Angeles: a light and fresh taco salad.

I love beans and cheese too, but this was not a day for those. This day was about the fresh tomatoes and greens I had picked up. I made a sweet and spicy corn salsa with the cherry tomatoes. Then, I filled the tacos with a chorizo and ground beef mixture, green peppers and red onions (cooked, but still tender), the salsa, sour cream and cilantro. I put the tacos on top of a bed of greens for presentation, then we went out to my front porch, and smashed the tacos and mixed the whole thing together to eat as a salad.

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Quinoa, in case you’re unfamiliar, is that trendy new grain that South Americans have been eating for thousands of years. I had it for the first time a few months ago. It’s is a little bitter on its own so I like it with lots of other flavors. 

For whatever reason, I feel the need to be spontaneous every time I make quinoa. I cook up a pot of it, then start sauteeing things. Once it was garlic, onions, zucchini and butternut squash. Another time it was tomato, corn and andouille sausage. This time I wanted something to go with salmon and chimmichurri (South American cilantro sauce). 

I originally wanted a cold side dish, but it was just after spring break and my produce wasn’t fresh tasting enough. I salvaged some slightly shriveled red and green peppers by roasting them with salt, pepper and olive oil. I sauteed some garlic with part of a jalapeno and habanero. I also added frozen corn, black beans, lime juice, lots of spices and cilantro to the quinoa, and decided to serve it warm with a dollop of plain yogurt since I didn’t have sour cream. It went nicely with the fish, but wasn’t great.

For the leftovers, I decided to make a dressing that would improve the dish if served cold. I came up with a cumin-lime vinaigrette with cilantro that was just what the quinoa needed, and would be good on some other salads too. Next time I’ll keep the dish cold from the get-go.

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