12 December 2005

Got the recipe for Lemon-Cornmeal Blueberry Pancakes out of Cooks Illustrated 1998(?). M was uncertain about pancakes over french toast until I read the title of the recipe. I used pre-cooked masarepa, which soaked up a buttload of liquid and required me to triple the milk in the recipe, but the basic idea was still sound. Really great with real maple syrup, although using normal frozen blueberries as opposed to frozen wild blueberries was probably a mistake. They're too big to get really incorporated into the pancake. Soooo good, though. Gonna try again one day this weekend with real cornmeal and no blueberries.

05 December 2005

So the sopa de albondigas finally happened over the weekend. I made the meatballs with the typical meatloaf mix: beef, veal, and pork in equal portions, eggs and raw rice, with some thyme and salt and pepper and that's it. I seared the meatballs in the pot, deglazed the pan, added stewed tomatoes and water and some soaked white hominy and let it go. The rice softened after about an hours' cooking, but then the hominy came up like a monster and sucked all the liquid out of the dish. My soups are usually closer to stews anyway, but this had very little liquid about it. Mostly starchy. Well, live and learn. I separated the meatballs out and will have them and some of the hominy for dinner tonight with some black beans.

Changes I'd make: maybe risotto rice for the meatball filler, and making my own mix in the food processor, with some chipotle pepper and grated onion, no hominy.