REFRIED BEANS

1c dry beans: black, red, pinto, or white

water to cover

ground up dried red chilies

DO NOT ADD SALT. Bring to a big boil, then cover & simmer until tender. How long does this take? Depends on the type of beans. Black beans seem to cook the quickest. After they are cooked, let them sit in the water for an hour or so. Or you can cook them one night, put them in the fridge and prepare the dish the following morning or at night.

Remove beans and place in a bowl. Boil down the bean stock until it is thick. You add this to the beans for flavor.

1/2 a yellow onion chopped

1 garlic clove minced

2 serrano chilies chopped

1T ground up dried red chilies

peanut oil

vinegar

Mexican Hot Sauce

Salt

Oregano

Heat up the peanut oil and saute the onions, garlic, serrano chilies, dried chilie powder, splash in some vinegar and Mexican Hot Sauce. Saute until softened.

Put the beans, reduced bean stock, sauteed mixture, salt to taste, and oregano to taste in a food processor. Blend slow at first, then faster towards the end. You will notice how the flavor changes the longer you process, so you might want to wait until the end before you add too much salt or oregano.

Perfect for a bean/meatball burrito, spread some bean mixture on tortilla, crush up 2 or 3 meatballs, roll it up and heat for about 45 seconds in a microwave. Then you can open it up and put on some chopped onions, salsa and/or Mexican Hot Sauce.

CHICKEN CHILI

1 Tomatillo

Chicken Stock

4T Boneless/Skinless Chicken, chopped

2T chopped onion

1 Serrano, chopped fine

1 garlic clove, minced

Peanut Oil

.5C Chicken Stock

2T Refried Beans

Take the husk off the tomatillo, wash tomatillo in warm water to get off the sticky residue.

Boil the tomatillo in the chicken stock until it is soft but does not burst open. Take out tomatillo with a slotted spoon, let cool, then chop it up.

Saute chicken, onion, serrano & garlic in peanut oil till softened.

Add tomatillo, chicken stock, bring to a boil, add refried beans and cook on low until it is reduced by half.

You can add some oregano and Mexican hot sauce or salt before it has been reduced.

WHOLE-WHEAT TORTILLAS

1c hot water

1t salt

1T ground up dried red chilies

1T oil

whole wheat flour

whole wheat flour

Add salt & chilies to water, let it stand until it has cooled. Add oil.

Add whole wheat flour, keep adding until it isn't sticking too much to the spoon.

Keep adding white flour until it is nice and smooth and no longer sticky.

Kneed it for 5 minutes.

Let it rest in a plastic bag for 30 minutes.

Heat up a cast iron pan on the stove, roll the flour into a log and chop off a 1" hunk, and roll it out on a board covered with white flour to the size of the cast iron pan. Roll it out as thin and evenly as you can.

Place the tortilla in the hot cast iron pan. It may start to bubble after a couple of minutes, take a peek and make sure it doesn't burn. There can be some charred spots though, flip it over and grill the other side.

Place in a plastic bag and close it. This is important. If you just lay the grilled tortilla on the plate it will dry out and turn into a crispy cracker and you will not be able to fill it and roll it up. In the plastic bag it will stay soft like a store-bought tortilla.

Vietnamese Meatball Sandwich/Banh Mi/Sub/Grinder/

Five Spice Fruit Salad

I find eating an apple or a banana or an orange dull, a fruit salad a day keeps the boredom away.

1 Fuji Apple, chopped

1 Banana, sliced lengthwise & chopped

1 Orange, peeled, seperated into sections, then each section sliced into 4 pieces

4T Raw Peanuts, roasted 15 minutes in a non-preheated 450 oven, then quickly cooled and flavored in 1t soy sauce. It will sizzle & steam, keep stirring till soy evaporates.

Let cool off and dry before adding to salad.

Lemon Juice

5-Spice Powder

Put the apple, banana and orange in a bowl, add a pinch or two of the 5-spice powder, then a couple squirts of the lemon juice or to taste, the lemon juice gives it a nice tangy taste and keeps the fruit from darkening.

After you have mixed the flavors together add the cooled off roasted soy sauce peanuts.

Other fruits that you could try: grapes, kiwi, strawberries, mango, melon, pears, pineapple (if you use the canned pineapple in its own juice you would leave out the lemon juice).

Chinese Bacon

A Dish A Day - CHITPOTLE TACO

Poverty is the mother of all my culinary creativity.

It always starts out like this. I am about to buy a burger or some Chinese take-out. Around $5.00. Then I start thinking about all the delicious things I could cook for $5.00. And lots of it too. Five dollars is 20 chicken thighs; five pounds of lean ground pork; 2 pounds of ground beef.

On the first day of 2007, the five dollars turned into:

CHITPOTLE BEEF BURRITO FILLING!

1 garlic clove minced

one-half a medium yellow onion chopped

3 jalapeno chilies, chopped

peanut oil

1.5 lb ground beef, not too greasy

saute the garlic, onion, jalapenos in oil till wilted. Add the ground beef and cook till the ground beef is cooked and it is sizzling. If you use a cast iron pan it is quick. If you use a master-chef all clad it takes forever!

remove the ground beef mixture and put it in a sieve to drain off all the fat.

1 cup minced cabbage

peanut oil

chipotle (small can)

tomatillo (big one) boiled in chicken oil

1pc tofu, squeezed & chopped

LIQUID SMOKE
'
salt
pepper
soy sauce
fish sauce
vinegar