There is a great book that I have my eye on to add to my collection, called The Flavor Bible. It is basically a reference book for what flavors go well together, and what flavors are typical of certain cuisines. I imagine this would be very useful for those of us who like to throw things together using the leftovers in the fridge and cabinets – for example, you could look up ‘red peppers’ and get some good ideas of what to cook using up that jar of roasted peppers in the fridge.
To a certain extent, I do this already, but it’s based just on my limited experiences of eating and reading recipes. So there are some things I love to put together now – blue cheese and honey, for example, or toasted peanuts on anything with curry. Other times I have to really sit down and think, and even do some ‘research’ on Epicurious or my other cookbooks to see what one might cook with a certain ingredient. The Flavor Bible would be, I imagine, an endlessly helpful reference book for those types of situations in the kitchen.
An ingredient that inspired a couple good dishes at our house lately was chorizo sausage. And I have to say, despite not having The Flavor Bible around, we did a pretty good job of mixing up some yummy Spanish flavors with the chorizo! I have loved experimenting with chorizo ever since a few years ago when I was looking for a Spanish appetizer to go with a paella dish. (Fun tidbit: you can actually search International foods on Epicurious and look up, for example, all the Spanish recipes!) I found a wonderfully delectable although not too pretty-looking recipe for Bacon-wrapped Chorizo-stuffed Dates. These look like rather unappetizing little blobs but WOW do they taste good! That was the first time I experienced cooking with chorizo sausage and I learned a couple thingss: one, there are two types of chorizo you can buy: hardened cooked/smoked chorizo and soft uncooked ground chorizo. I prefer the uncooked ground stuff because I think it’s easier to work with and mold than the other. But I think the other is probably pretty great with cheese and crackers when you just slice it up. Two, I learned that chorizo had a distinct flavor from other sausages and IT IS GOOD! I can’t really describe it…but it does not have the herby earthiness of our typical American ground sausage. It’s orangier and tangier and it’s just great. So when our CSA offered chorizo sausage as an option one week, I took it.
So then we had to figure out what to do with it. I decided to make half of it into hamburgers and half of it into pizza. I figured a little bit of it (but certainly not the whole pound) might be a delicious flavor in ground beef burgers. And with a little chorizo in the burgers, it would be fun to come up with other Spanish-flavored toppings! So first, of course, on any burger you need some cheese. And of course the best Spanish cheese is Manchego. If you haven’t ever tried it – well, just try it. It’s a hard cheese with lots of flavor that’s easy to like. So we got some Manchego for our Spanish burgers. Then we needed the goopy topping – you know what I mean, the something oozy and sweet to bind the whole thing together? So I turned to a Skena Family Favorite: Balsamic Onion and Fig Compote.
Now, we first encountered this little taste of heaven in a salad in a restaurant in Georgia that is worthy of it’s own post, and it will have it, one of these days, when I make it next and get a picture of it. But for now, suffice to say that we make this little topping for a number of things and it always MAKES the dish. As originally encountered, this compote (for lack of a better word…it’s sort of like a jam, sort of like a sauce) was made from shallots sauteed in balsamic vinegar and then some kind of fig added. I’m not sure what the original recipe used for figs, but I like to use fig preserves. They are already prepared, very figgy and really sweet, and you’re looking for the sweetness to add to the onions or shallots. Although it’s not really a recipe, let me tell you how to make this, and if you are very brave and just TRY it, you’ll find it’s pretty hard to mess up. In fact, this last time I made it I scorched the onions and by the time I dumped in the fig jam, you couldn’t even tell!
Balsamic Onion and Fig Compote
1. Thinly slice approximately 2 medium onions or 5 large shallots (shallots have a lovely taste in this but if you don’t have them around, just use the onions). Saute in a drizzle of olive oil, sprinkled with salt, pepper and a couple pinches of sugar (which helps them caramelize), on medium high heat til golden brown and reduced. I don’t stir them too frequently at the beginning (every 5 minutes or so)…let them develop some color before tossing them around. As they get browner, you may want to lower the heat some, and stir more frequently (every minute or two). At that point, as things are speeding up, add a 2 second drizzle of balsamic vinegar. You want enough to keep the shallots/onions moist with it but not swimming in it. If you need still more moisture, add more olive oil.
2. Once your onions/shallots have turned a deep golden brown and seem on the verge of burning, remove from heat and add another quick drizzle of balsamic vinegar and about a 1/2 cup of fig preserves. You can usually find this with other jams in the grocery store. Stir it all around til the fig preserves melt into the onion/shallot mixture. Taste a little bit to see if you want more salt and pepper. If the consistency is too thick for you, add a splash of water to loosen it up.
So, with our flavorful jammy topping, we had our completed burger: Chorizo Burgers (2 lbs ground beef mixed with 1/2 pound of ground chorizo) with Manchego and Balsamic Fig Onion Compote. YUM.
Dish #2 used the same components on my favorite way to eat leftovers: pizza. Another easy Trader Joe’s pizza crust (this time the herb one, because it was all I had in the freezer), drizzled with my GOOD olive oil (the expensive one I keep for when you’ll really taste the flavor), covered with an 8-oz bag of Italian cheese blend from the grocery store and then our Spanish toppings. I cooked the remaining ½ lb of the chorizo sausage and drained it on paper towels. Then I scattered it over the top of the pizza, along with tiny bits of manchego, the Balsamic-Onion-Fig Compote, and some pitted olives. I thought the burgers were good but THIS was excellent!!! The manchego added great flavor, the olives a big zest, the fig-onion compote was perfect as always, and the chorizo was really delicious crisped up on top of the pizza. The combination of flavors was SO good…a little unexpected but perfectly right.
So our latest adventure in chorizo led to some fun Spanish flavors – whenever I get my hands on that book I can’t wait to see what they say are good combinations with chorizo, or the standard Spanish ingredients and spices. But this first try wasn’t bad. And I would recommend pizza as a great way to start experimenting with these mix-and-match combos…there’s not a lot that truly is BAD with cheese and bread, you know what I mean?? So next time you have a quirky ingredient or need to empty the fridge of a few things consider the lowly pizza and enjoy your leftovers in style! 🙂
Read Full Post »
