The story behind "... en la Cocina" (in the Kitchen) blog

Those of you that know me, know that I can find my way around the kitchen, and that I'm not a half bad as cook, baker, and general foodie. I do enjoy preparing meals for others, but I do not enjoy doing it just for myself, and I hate the cleanup duties.

More than 7 years ago I started a spin-off blog called "...en la Cocina" to document all the recipes I've gathered and created through the years. Some of the gathered recipes come from recipes given to me by family and friends dating back to when I first started to cook as a little kid.

My dad was a great cook and I think I must have inherited this gene. It certainly didn't come from my mother. All her recipes were well done, overcooked, or over boiled mush, typical of the mid-west farmers back in the day. Corn on the cob had to boil forever (15 minutes +) for her to consider it "done." It wasn't until I was an adult that I discovered how wonderful corn on the cob can be if it is done right. I like mine a little crisp, and I particularly like the grassy taste you get when it's cooked with the husk on. Today, I use the microwave, I peel back the first layer of corn husk, remove all the other leaves and all the silk, pull the first layer back up, put it in a covered microwave safe dish with ¼ cup of water and nuke it on high for 4 minutes, adding extra time for additional ears of corn.

Wow, did I get off on a tangent there, or what? Sorry, back to "... en la Cocina," and my dad.

Dad's ship was sunk in the South Pacific during WWII, and he lost his job as a radio operator. The survivors were sent back to San Diego, and reassigned to other ships. Some were assigned new duties. Dad became a Navy Cook. He told me he learned to cook "on the job" and experimented with different ingredients. He admits, sometimes the food was barely edible, but over time he figured out how to combine flavors to get the best results. Growing up I remember more than one meal he had prepared getting dumped in the garbage. If he didn't like it, he didn't serve it. He was the master of experimentation in the kitchen, and I don't think my mother ever knew how many failed meal attempts went into the trash. But, I can assure you, his successes far outnumber the failures. I've always thought his simple scrambled eggs were the best I have ever eaten. His recipe for sourdough garlic cheese toast is second to none. Just give me this toast, with a small side of spaghetti, and I'm a happy camper. Thank you Dad, for teaching me to not be afraid of complicated recipes and strange new ingredients. Because of him, I am a decent cook today, and I think my family appreciates my culinary heritage.

My recipe blog has become an easy place for me to store our favorite recipes. I frequently look up a recipe in the blog and then setup my laptop, or iPhone, in the kitchen, to have access to the ingredients and directions. I used to print the recipes out, but that was such a waste of paper and obviously not very "green."

With all the social media out there, I've started sharing my recipes on Pinterest and on my Facebook page. It has been fun to watch the tracking tools to see where all the visitors to "... en la Cocina" are coming from. I've come to the conclusion there are a lot of home sick Ticos (Costa Ricans) around the world and they are all looking for the comfort foods from their homeland. Many of these visitors find me through search engines, like Google, and they come from all around the globe: U.S.A., Canada, England, Ireland, Gemany, China, Japan, Africa, and on and on. They are usually searching for the recipes for "Olla de Carne" (Costa Rican beef stew), "Bizcocho" (toasted cornmeal rings that taste similar to Fritos), and "Platano" (plantains) fixed anyway you can imagine. I also get a number of visitors looking for ways to make something from scratch. They usually can't find something that comes prepackaged in the States. For instance, this week I had a visitor from Costa Rica looking for a Graham Cracker Pie Crust. Another person from Malaysia found me by looking for Red Enchilada Sauce. At other times, I've had folks looking for Bisquick Mix, Miracle Whip, and even Lawry's Seasoned Salt.

Every time we get a craving for something from our homeland, I search for mock recipes to make it from scratch and then figure out what I can use for a substitute when a key ingredient can't be found here in Costa Rica. To date, I have 172 recipes posted in my blog, and the number will continue to continue to grow as I discover new and interesting recipes. Maybe you'll find a new favorite recipe "... en la Cocina."

!Buen Provecho!

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Texas Chili Fuego among the Chili Cook-Off winners

What a great time we had this past weekend! We competed in the 7th Annual Atenas Charity Chili Cook-Off with our good friends Mikey and Joni. We didn't come in 1st, but there is always room for improvement and we can compete again next year.

We are very proud of our participation in this worthwhile event. All of the proceeds go to our next door neighbor, Hogar de Vida (Home of Life.) There are 35 children, age's birth to 10 years old living on the campus founded by Tim and Dena Stromstad back in 1995. These children come from, abandoned, orphaned or abusive situations. Hogar de Vida cares for them in a loving and stable environment, meeting their needs in everything from nutrition, clothing, education, trustworthy authority figures and spiritual guidance.

The Chili Cook-Off was so much fun! In addition to the chili tasting, there was lots of food and beverages for sale, music, dancing, face painting and swimming for the kids. Our team, Texas Chili Fuego, took 2nd place for Showmandhip and 5th place for our wonderful chili. We made a true Texas style chili, with smoked brisket and NO beans, and I made our chili powder from scratch.

The results of this annual fundraiser haven't been announced yet, but rumor has it that it will exceed last year's $20K.
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A Birthday Party and Fathers Day Celebration

It has been 11 years since John's Birthday happened to sync up with Fathers Day, the 3rd Sunday of June. Yesterday was the day, so we decided we needed to celebrate Texas style and invite some expat friends to join us for barbequed brisket, celebrate all the dads in the group and wish John a "Happy Birthday".

We found we couldn't just go down to the local Carneceria Macho (butcher) and buy a brisket. Macho didn't have a clue where the brisket cut comes from, so I found a beef chart on the internet with a layout of all the U.S. beef cuts. It has diagrams and arrows pointing to the section of the steer's body from which the cut is taken. Macho placed our order last weekend and called us on Friday to come up to the carneceria and show them how we needed the brisket trimmed. We bought two full size briskets and John when about the task of smoking them.

Each brisket takes about 24 hours at 190°F to be properly smoked and cooked. John managed to pack some Mesquite wood chips into our shipping container when we moved here in 2011. This was just what we needed to give the brisket that special Texas flavor. He started one brisket on Friday and then cooked the second one Saturday. By around 10 AM yesterday, the briskets were both fork tender perfection.

Earlier in the week, I experimented with pinto beans, trying to come up with the perfect Ranch style bean recipe. We used to buy the beans in a can back in Texas, but I managed to successfully create a delicious recipe. Let me tell you, these beans were even better than what we used buy in a can.

We always have large quantities of John's Texas BBQ Sauce on hand, so it was just a question of pulling together a few extra ingredients to make this party happen. I sliced up some onions and Jalapeño peppers for garnishing, then made two batches of Corny Jalapeño Skillet Corn Bread.

For dessert, I made a carrot cake and we bought some designer ice cream from "La Cosa Rica" that is just around the corner from our house.

Party time was set for 3 PM in our Rancho. Friends brought a few extra goodies to add to the meal and a great time was had by all.

For many of us, it had been a long time since we had indulged on a barbecue feast like this and as one of our party goers said, "Brisket was fabulous! For a moment, I almost missed Texas." Now that Macho has a copy of the beef chart, we won't wait so long to try doing this again.

Yum!
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Culinary delights from our stone oven

What a treat we been enjoying this week. John brined a fresh ham and cooked it in our wood fired stone oven. The ham is just delicious and we've been fixing it every way you can think of... sliced hot, cold, in sandwiches, fried, etc. If you want the recipe and the full story click on this link:

How to brine and cook a fresh ham...
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From kitchen disaster to chef's masterpiece

We have a wonderful sweet pepper sold here in the farmers markets (ferias) of Costa Rica. At the moment there is an abundant harvest going on and the price has dropped to less than a dollar a pound.  Depending on size, that could be anywhere from 12 to 20 peppers. They are similar to a bell pepper, 4 or 5 inches long, and they taper down to a point from the stem. They are sold green, red & green, and red (when fully ripe). I love to use them in many of my recipes.

Yesterday found me with way too many peppers to consume in a week so I roasted a bunch, de-seeded and peeled them to pack in olive oil. Peppers packed in oil will keep for weeks in the fridge and their roasted sweetness makes the ideal substitute for pimentos and canned diced green chilies.

Since I had all these roasted peppers ready to store, I came up with the "brilliant" idea to make pimento cheese sandwiches for lunch. I can't remember the last time we had that for lunch. Anyway, I digress...

Searching the fridge for cheese I found we had some cheeses from the ECAG (the UTC (national technical university) has a local college campus for The Central American School for Animal Husbandry). We like most of their cheeses and try to buy local whenever we can. This time I found we had some of their wonderful Gouda and a finely grated salty cheese that looked to be cheddar and whatever else they decided to throw in the mix that day. I also found we had some grated cheese from the national dairy that is sold for pizza topping, containing a mix of mild cheddar, mozzarella and another white cheese similar to a Monterrey Jack.

I'm no slouch around the kitchen and that looked like a pretty good start to a pimento cheese spread if you ask me. I started with about a cup of the ECAG grated cheese, then I added the other two cheeses in equal amounts, half a tub of cream cheese, half a cup of mayonnaise, a little grated onion and garlic, a half cup of diced roasted red peppers and lots of fresh ground black pepper. Sounds yummy, right?  IT WAS AWFUL!!! It was so salty from the ECAG grated cheese, it was unpalatable. I started adding more and more of the other cheese I had on hand and it improved just enough to be able to choke down a sandwich.

After lunch I stored the disaster (now a large bowl full) in the fridge, wondering if anything at all could be done to salvage it. You know, kinda along the lines of making lemonade out of lemons.

Fast forward to today.... "John, what do you want for lunch?"

"Oh, I don't know.... got any of that cheese spread left?"

"Yes, but it's way too salty to do anything with it."

"Why don't you boil some pasta and then mix the spread into it?  It might be O.K. that way, just don't salt the pasta when you cook it."

What a genius! So glad I married the smart guy. This got the wheels turning and I came up with way to salvage what would have found it's way to the garbage.

I cooked some Penne pasta until just slightly al dente, then I folded in my salty pimento cheese spread and add some freshly chopped basil leaves. I buttered a casserole dish, layered in my new version of a "mac 'n cheese", poured about a half a cup of milk over it, topped it with some grated mozzarella and baked it for 30 minutes. Wow! It is now an over-the-top, grown-up "mac 'n cheese" masterpiece.  I am so saving this recipe!

Guess what's for dinner!
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179: Baking bread in our stone oven

I finally got a sourdough starter I can work with, but the first loaf we baked in the range oven turned out way too dense for our liking. So, we let the starter mature for several days and today we decided the starter was ready for a real test.

John fired up the stone oven to well over 500°F. and we baked the first loaf you see here. This is a definite improvement and the flavor is right on the mark... San Francisco aroma and taste all the way! We've still need to get used to baking this way and find the optimum temperature for our stone oven to give us the very best baked bread results.

Now it's time to go slice some of this bread and load it up with the sliced brisket John grilled today. Needless to say, we'll be topping the sandwich with some of his wonderful Texas Barbeque Sauce, pickles, onions and jalapeño peppers. Yum!!
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162: Fire in the hole!

Our wood fired pizza/bread is done! John did an amazing job on it. The core is refractory stone mounted on a two-inch refractory fiber board set on top of a four-inch concrete block base. The core was then wrapped in a three-inch ceramic fiber blanket with a wire mesh casing to hold it in place. John then encased everything with a one-inch layer of refractory concrete. The idea behind this is to get the oven to hold extreme temperatures inside, yet be cool to the touch on the outside. Success!

Yesterday morning we fired the oven up and let it go all day while we went to the beach. When we got back, some 6½ hours later, the inside temperature was over 350°F. and the outside wall was cool to the touch.

John stoked the fire up again in the evening and bought it all the way up to 510°Celsius, or 950°Farenheit!!! The outside temperature was 100°F or less. You can definitely lay you hand on the side of the oven and not worry about getting burned.

Today, just in time for my birthday, we are going to give it the real test and actually bake pizza. This will require a wood fire be brought up to temperature in the oven to heat it up. Then the coals will be pushed to one side, or removed for baking.

Time to go make the pizza dough and sauce. Yum!!



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119: Texas BBQ Sauce in Costa Rica... Wow!!

We are planning a fiesta to celebrate our new Rancho and we've been trying to plan our menu. One of the things we have both been craving is good old Texas barbecue with some of John famous Texas BBQ Sauce. We talked about trying to make it with some of the local ingredients, but decided it will be next to impossible to replicate the taste with what's available.

So, the other day we needed to go to the local membership warehouse called PriceSmart (think Sam's Club or Costco) to pick up some bulk items and low and behold, if John didn't spot Kraft Original Barbecue Sauce (the actual base for his Texas BBQ Sauce) sitting on a shelf. Of course we grabbed two extra large bottles, thinking we just might be able to do this if we can fine a few other ingredients.

Today, we needed to get our old 1994 Isuzu Rodeo's (Suzie) annual vehicle inspection. While we were out, we decided to pick up a few essentials for the fiesta next week. So, on the off chance we could actually find Colgin's Liquid Hickory Smoke, another key ingredient for the BBQ sauce, we went to the AutoMercado in Alajuela. The AutoMercado is a high-end grocery store that stocks lots of imported goodies. Unbelievably, there, camping out on one of the shelves, sat both Colgin's Liquid Hickory Smoke and Mesquite Smoke. We were really amazed at the price. In the states Colgin's sells for $1.80 and the AutoMercado carries it for only $2.65. Considering that a batch of John's famous Texas BBQ sauce will last us months, this is really a bargain and we don't mind paying the extra for the imported goods.

If you'd like the recipe for John's Texas BBQ Sauce click on the link.
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Day 51: Major milestone.. we're cooking with gas!

If you've been following our posts for the past 7 weeks, you'll remember we've had to become very creative with a microwave oven, a 2-burner hotplate and an electric skillet, doing double duty as an oven. All this changed this evening.

Our sea container arrived about 10 days ago with the new gas range we purchased several months ago from Lowes. Since Costa Rica does not have natural gas, they gave us the kit to convert the burners to LP (liquid propane). Last week we found the local LP distributor and bought our gas cylinder and John started the task to change out all the natural gas orifices to LP orifices. He quickly discovered the kit we had been given did not have a single one of the ones we needed. So he call Frigidaire in the States and they confirmed we had been given the wrong convesion kit. They told him the sizes he would need and recommended we call their distributor in San Jose to come do the work for us.

We setup an appointment for Monday and when we called to confirm, the distributor informed us it would be Wednesday instead. In the meantime, we contacted a local guy to come run a gas line from our new propane tank, located outside, through the back wall into our kitchen/living room. He came around lunchtime on Tuesday, figured out what kind of connection we needed and then came back in the evening to get us hooked up.

Now all we needed was to get the actual burners converted to LP. The Frigidaire rep finally got here around 5:15 PM this evening and in 30 minutes we were cooking with gas!

I immediately moved the 2-burner hotplate and electric skillet off the counter and into the storage closet. Now, we have just about doubled our counter space and I'm ready to get back into some serious home cooking. One of the first things I want to do is re-activate my sourdough starter so we can have some really good homemade bread in a week, or so. Tomorrow, I'm going to start a big pot of spaghetti sauce and stock the freezer with quick meals.

Love my creature comforts.... Life is Good!
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Day 44: Found my cooking tools & the Rancho construction is well underway.

We have finally finished going through all the boxes on the porch. We pulled the stuff out we have to have now and re-consolidated the boxes for storage until the house is built. I know, don't say it, we should have done a better job of packing so we had all the "must have now" stuff boxed together. Easy for you to say, but you had to have been there when we were packing. It was a zoo, and at the end things were just being thrown into a box, any box. I was so happy to finally see some of my favorite kitchen tools find their way out of a box today and into the casita's tiny kitchen.

John found my pressure cooker! So, I just made a pot of fresh black beans for dinner tonight, without soaking them, in less than an hour.

I also made one of our favorite rice dishes using one of the several cans of "Ro~Tel" John slipped into boxes as packing filler. Way to go John! I Love You!!!

Tomorrow, for breakfast, we can have fresh fruit smoothies with my favorite blender. Yea, life is good and we are starting to organized.



I found the place to get propane for my new gas range yesterday. So, today we took the empty propane cylinder for the grill into town to have it filled and ordered a larger tank for the stove. It is a two-day turnaround to fill a tank. Tropigas first picks up the cylinder from the local agent and takes it to their main filling station. The next day it's filled and re-loaded back onto the truck. Then, sometime the following day, Tropigas returns the full cylinder to the agent and we go back to town to pick it up.

The construction crew showed up for work this morning, in the rain, at 6:45 AM. They have been hard at it all day, excavating for the foundation footings. They work, rain or shine, and only knock off if there is thunder and lightening, or the rain is so heavy they have zero visibility. It's now 5:30 PM, and the crew just finished today's work. Long day!

We have some of the building material stored in the driveway and more will be delivered as needed. Last week we put down a deposit on some really beautiful ceramic floor tile we found right here in Atenas. We still need to do some more shopping to pick out sinks, plumbing fixtures and tile for the counters and bathroom. Oooh.... shopping trip, one of my favorite things!



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