I’m a huge fan of Mexican food and while Fajitas are more Tex-Mex they are still yummy. The Lone Star is a local restaurant that is known for their Fajitas, and for me the shells really stand out. It turns out you can make as good (or arguably better) tortilla shells at home.

I tried several recipes until I came across this one. In all honesty they don’t vary that much, this is very basic cooking. With my thanks to the original authors, I’ll replicate it here with my notes:

3 cups unbleached flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp.  salt
4-6 Tbsp. vegetable shortening or lard
1 1/4 cups warm water (from the tap)

This should make a dozen tortillas, I often double the recipe and have loads of leftovers for the next day. In the batch I did for the photos I substituted one cup of the flour for whole wheat flour. I prefer just using unbleached flour, but this is a good way to make it a bit healthier. If you’re looking to replicate the Lone Star, make sure you go heavy on the shortening and skip the whole wheat flour.

Mix the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Cut in the shortening. Once this mixture is well mixed, add the water all at once.

I mix it by hand and consider that one of the secrets to getting this to work well. Overworking the dough mixture will result in them being hard to roll and tougher when you eat them. Initially it should be really sticky, as you work (knead) the dough it will blend more and the stick should mostly go away. Give the dough 10mins or so to rest.

Now’s a good time to put a large frying pan on the stove, you want it to be really hot. Make your 12 balls of dough.

I use a large rolling pin and work directly on our counter tops. You shouldn’t need any additional flour to keep things from sticking, but don’t be afraid to use a little if you’re having trouble. Remember that rolling is a lot like kneading, so you want to avoid over-rolling it but these dough balls need to be smashed paper flat. I find that a little bit of counter stick helps me roll it out. My pattern is roll in one direction, pick it up and flip + rotate 90 degrees and roll the other way. Don’t worry about them being perfectly round, just make sure they are really thin.

It does take a bit of getting used to, but you should be able to roll and cook at the same time. Nearly continuous as it’ll take you almost as much time to roll as it does cook.

If your tortillas are thin enough, and the pan is hot enough – you’ll be rewarded with bubbles forming in the tortilla after a brief time in the pan. That’s when you want to flip it.

The last photo is a nearly done tortilla. They will be a bit dry and stiff coming out of the pan, we have a tortilla warmer that I stick them into and once they sit covered for a little they get nice and soft. Any covered container will work for this.

It takes some practice to get the pan heat right. I often start with it too cold (I haven’t let it heat up properly) and end with it almost too hot (smoking). The recipe is very forgiving, I often have the kids help and even with that chaos things work. If you’re having trouble getting it to go right, try some brand new flour. I’ve used old flour and bread products in general never seem to work with old flour.

Liquid honey tends to crystallize after a period of time, often much less time than  you will be able to consume all of it. The process for fixing this is quite simple:

1. Find a container that the honey jar will fit into
2. Put the honey jar in the container
3. Fill the container with boiling water
4. Wait
5. Repeat until you’ve got completely liquid honey

I tend to wait about 10 minutes before repeating the cycle. It usually takes 2 or 3 cycles for me to render the entire honey jar liquid again.  If you stop before its done, it will much more quickly re-crystallize (days vs. weeks).  Sometimes I turn my jar upside-down to get full coverage.  Paper labels probably won’t make it past the first round of this (this explains why my jar is naked).

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Read the rest of How To: Reliquify Honey (9 words)

You can make a lot more than just stew in a crock-pot. Here are a few of my non-stew favorites:

• Spaghetti Sauce
• Beef Vindaloo
• Clam Chowder
• Pulled Pork
• Chili Con Carne

With a 6-quart pot, we can usually make enough to cover dinner plus either another whole dinner for another night or a couple of lunches.  Generally most of the recipes taste better the longer you cook them, and if I’ve been thinking far enough ahead I cook on low for 2x the time (so 4hrs becomes 8hrs).

Let me also recommend a great recipe book: Canada’s Best Slow Cooker Recipes ISBN 0-7788-0024-5.  Generally you can pretty easily convert many normal recipes for use in the slow cooker, just cut the liquid by half (or more) – a little experimenting is all it takes to have dinner ready and waiting with almost no effort.

Read on if you want the recipes for my list of favorites above.

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Read the rest of Slow Cooker (327 words)

Since I’m avoiding instant noodles at home, my noodle consumption there is either spaghetti or kraft dinner with Alison.  Occasionally at work we’ll run out to Thai Express and pick up some noodles – I predictably get Pad Sew with beef.  I kept saying I needed to find a good Pad Sew recipe and start making it at home.

I finally got around to doing a search and locating a good looking recipe, then it was a trip to the local Asian grocery store to find some of the ingredients I needed.  While the recipe looks pretty complex, it turns out to be fairly straight forward – and the resulting dish is awesome.

Here is a replication of the recipe from the original source along with my comments.

Pad Sew (aka: Pad See Ew)
serves 2

300g flat rice noodle (rice stick)
1 egg
250g Chinese broccoli (or similar, I used bok choy)
2 cloves garlic, sliced
3 tbsp cooking oil (used roughly in 3rds during cooking)
1 tbsp thick (sweet) soy sauce (look for soy sauce with palm sugar)
dash of fish sauce
1 tbsp rice vinegar

Meat & Marinade
225g pork loin, cut thin & bite sized
1/2 tbsp fish sauce
1 tbsp oyster sauce
splash (dark) sesame oil

Prepare the meat & marinate, and let it sit for 15 to 30mins.  Chop up the vegetable (Chinese broccoli) into bite sized chunks, you may want to separate the stems from the leaves to allow you to cook the stems slightly longer.  Prepare the garlic.  Heat up some water, then soak the noodles until they are just soft.  Drain the noodles.

Heat up your wok, we’ll be cooking on high the whole time.  Have your sauces and ingredients ready, this goes pretty fast.

With a little oil, stir fry the vegetable with a dash of fish sauce.  You may want to start with the stems, then toss in the leafs.  When it all looks a bit wilted, dump the wok out into a bowl.

Now its time for Noodles.  Use a generous amount of oil, toss the drained noodles into the hot wok and stir the noodles to coat them in oil.  Add 1 tbsp thick soy and a dash of fish sauce.  Mix the sauce into the noodles to give them nice colour, add some more oil if things start to stick badly.  Spread the noodles in a thin layer over the wok and let them cook a bit.  Dump the wok out into the same bowl as the vegetables.

Some oil, garlic and meat go into the hot wok.  Stir fry the meat.  Once its browned nicely, spread the meat away from the hot part of the wok and crack the egg into that spot.  Scramble the egg and mix the meat in.  Once the meat and egg are cooked, dump the bowl with the noodles and vegetables back in.  Add the rice vinegar and stir things together.Time to eat.

Comments:

The fish sauce, oyster sauce and rice vinegar all play arole in making it authentic tasting, but I think the thick soy is the magic ingredient.  The type of noodle will make or break this dish – the second time I made it the local grocery store only had a thinner rice noodle which just didn’t have the same impact.  I’ve also used beef instead of pork and it was a nice substitution.

You’ll want to cook this in small batches – otherwise the wok won’t be hot enough to cook the ingredients as they should be.  The original points out some options for making this a vegetarian dish if you are so inclined.