Food Post

Because it's been too long!

There were two winners this week, Rustic Tomato Sauce with Meat and finally a steak taco filling that measured up to taco truck offerings.

The meat sauce fits my cooking requirements perfectly- profoundly tasty & simple enough for a zoo animal to prepare. It hails from The New Best Recipe, which I highly recommend for general use.

The only ingredient I had to pick up was a couple of pounds of pork ribs, everything else was on hand- an onion, olive oil, salt and pepper, and a big 28oz can of diced tomatoes.

Heat the olive oil over medium high. Trim the ribs, brown on all sides & remove to a plate, pour off almost all of the resulting fat. Saute the minced onion until soft, scraping down the pan. Return ribs to pan, dump in tomato sauce & bring to a boil. Simmer gently for about an hour and a half, until the meat is falling off the bone.
Remove, cool a bit and shred by hand, discarding bones & fat. Return shredded meat to pan, simmer and adjust seasoning, serve over short pasta like penne or ziti.

So good!

The taco meat was a bit more involved- I got the recipe from the Cook's Illustrated site, so it's probably in one of their many cookbooks. You basically make a paste out of garlic, shallots, cilantro oil & cumin and marinade a flank steak (or skirt, which is what I had on hand) for an hour or so, reserving two tablespoons to make a sauce.
After marinading, you scrape off the paste and rub the meat with a mixture of pepper and sugar, then fry (or grill, but I didn't have the grill set up) for a few minutes per side.
Mix the reserved paste with 1tbs lime juice, slice the meat thin and drizzle with sauce, voila perfect taqueria tacos!

Also, we got our first delivery of organic veggies from Clark Valley Farm. We went in halvsies with Burl, and the haul was super. Looking forward to future bounty, and also seeking a good recipe for Bok Choy...