Two Blogs in One

Gabe has been getting on me to blog on here, as I haven't posted anything yet!  So I'm a bit behind on my blogging.  I'm going to make this short and I apologize in advance as I am not a very good writer!  And sorry about the lack of photos, I attempted but our SD card for the camera is screwed up.

Last week Tuesday I made a "healthier" version of a loco moco.  For those of you who don't know what a loco moco is, it's a local dish that we eat in Hawai'i for either breakfast, lunch or dinner!  It's basically a bed of rice, with some sort of meat  served on the rice (normally hamburger patty, Portuguese sausage, or spam), then topped off with brown gravy AND an egg!  Some places will sprinkle shredded cheese and/or green onion on top of everything.  It sounds like a lot, it is a lot and it's damn delicious.  It's one of the typical comfort foods for locals in Hawai'i.

Instead of the typical white short grain calrose rice (white rice), I used brown rice. We buy 99% fat free ground turkey from Trader Joe's which I cut with a little ground beef for the meat patties. I've tried to just use the turkey, but it's way too lean for a meat patty and becomes very rubbery in texture. As far as the brown gravy, well I was subjected to use prepackaged powder gravy from McCormick's. Sue me, it was mid-week and I don't make homemade gravy! But I did use beef stock instead of water thinking it may add depth to the gravy!

I then assembled the loco moco: bowl, brown rice, turkey/hamburger patty, brown gravy, fresh egg (over easy for Gabe and I, scrambled for Carlan), green onion, and reduced fat shredded cheese.  Overall, it came out pretty good.  It would have tasted a lot better had I used homemade gravy, but you all know how that goes!

Last Wednesday night was Cinco De Mayo.  I felt obligated to cook something "Mexican".  I didn't want your typical tacos, burritos, or fajitas.  I was inspired by Rick Bayless and his show on PBS called Mexico One Plate at a Time.  Rick Bayless is a chef from Chicago who has three restaurants in the area, the most well known being Frontera grill.  If you go to the supermarket there is a Frontera salsa brand, that's Rick Bayless.

I ended cooking shrimp chile rellenos grilled in corn husks.  The concept was pretty simple so I thought I would be able to pull it off!  I soaked my corn husks for an hour or so before I did anything else. I threw my Anaheim chiles on the grill and they started to blacken and blister.  I took them off the grill and put them in a bowl and covered with a kitchen towel as the recipe indicated.  I improvised the shrimp and cheese stuffing for the chiles but kept the recipe's concept.  I used precooked shrimp that I thawed and did a rough chop on.  Oh and I grilled my red onion after I blackened my chiles.  I rough chopped the onion and threw it in with the shrimp.  As far as the cheese was concerned I ended up using a lite Mexican cheese blend from Trader Joe's.  I added some oregano, salt and pepper.  The recipe didn't call for either salt or pepper but I added it anyway and ended up adding too much salt! 

The chiles.  I had to peel my chiles.  It was a pain in the butt.  Why was it a pain in the butt?  Because I didn't blacken them enough on the grill.  It wasn't too bad, but it could have been a lot easier.  After peeling the chiles I rinsed them out and stuffed them with the shrimp and cheese filling.  I then attempted to wrap the chiles in the corn husks.  I say attempt because even though I got them wrapped, it wasn't pretty!  They weren't very uniform and some of the stuffing fell out of one chile!  It was my first time working with corn husks and it could have been worse!  On to the grill went the wrapped chiles and I cooked it for a few minutes until the cheese melted.  It was delicious despite the stuffing being a little over salted.  I would definitely make this again, plus it would give me practice working with corn husks!