Nopales in Chipotle Sauce

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We were off to Cabo del San Jose last week for a quick getaway. We stayed at a wonderful all-inclusive resort, sipped a lot of Pina Colada and stuffed ourselves silly. A week of poolside sun and delicious Mexican food later, neither of us wanted the vacation to end. So we re-created a small piece of Mexico at home with this nopales dish.

Nopales is a type of edible catcus. It's certainly something that I've never worked with. This recipe also calls for tomatillos, another ingredient that I've never used before. Thankfully, living in California gives me access to ingredients that may be hard to find elsewhere. I'm a novice when it comes to Mexican food, so I found and followed this recipe.

Even though I don't have an original recipe to share, here are a couple of things that I learned from preparing this meal:

Cleaning nopales is thorny business. I remove the spines and the nodes by running the flat side of my knife along the pod from different directions, sort of like scaling a fish. Nopales can be slimy, so the pods have to be rinsed frequently during the cleaning process. Finally, the edges are also removed. Clean nopales are then cut into 1/4 inch slices.

To roast tomatillos, first, remove the husks and clean the fruit. Then, place the tomatillos in an oven-proof skillet. I use my trusty cast iron skillet. Broil tomatillos for about 7 to 10 minutes until the skin turns slightly brown. Remove and allow them to cool.

To round off the meal, we wrap nopales in flour tortillas and add some vegetarian refried beans, salsa and rice. The nopales are crunchy, slightly bitter and tart from the tomatillo chipotle sauce. The chipotle adobe sauce adds smoky spice to the dish. Overall, this meal is a wonderful end to our Mexican vacation.

Prince's Pesto Pasta Salad

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It's the dog days of summer. For us, that usually means all the fans are circulating hot and humid air around, Tangerine passed out in the corner, baseball is on the tube, and we're not cooking. I can't even stand in the kitchen, let alone turn on the oven. So we end up eating salads a lot more than I'd like. But after attending East Bay's least vegetarian friendly barbecue on Saturday (vegetables = portabella mushrooms wrapped in bacon), I can't wait to have this salad.

• 1/2 cup of pine nuts, lightly toasted
• 2 cups of basil leaves, lightly packed
• 4 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, divided, plus more if needed
  
• 4 cloves of garlic, peeled
• 1 pound of pasta (I used fusilli)
  
• 3 Roma tomatoes, cubed (or 1 1/2 cups of grape or cherry tomatoes)
• 1 bag of mixed greens
• grated Pecorino cheese (optional)
  
• salt and pepper to taste

Place peeled garlic cloves into 2 tablespoon of hot olive oil and lightly fry over low heat until just golden brown. Remove from heat and allow oil to cool. Meanwhile, bring a big pot of water to boil and cook pasta until just al dente. Drain pasta in a colander and rinse with cold water. Return pasta into the emptied pot. Any water on the pasta will evaporate from the residual heat of the pot.

Using a food processer, puree basil leaves, garlic cloves, garlic oil, and pine nuts. Drizzling in the remaining olive oil and process until the mixture has a paste-like consistency. Add salt and pepper to taste. Toss together mixed greens, tomatoes, pasta and pesto. Adjust seasoning if necessary. Add grated Pecorino cheese if desired.

This is different from a traditional pesto sauce because roasted garlic is used instead of raw garlic. If you like raw garlic, by all means use it. I tend to like the milder and nutty flavor of roasted garlic. Also, cheese is not incorporated into the pesto, making this a vegan optional dish. Finally, this pesto pasta salad is named in honor of the home run derby champion this year, Prince Fielder. It was well publicized when he became a vegetarian in 2008 and one of his favorite vegetarian dishes is pesto salad. In my opinion, it's a dish worthy of a home run king.

Indian Mixed Grill

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We have been bitten by the grilling bug ever since we bought a tiny grill and found an outdoor space for grilling. Eager to improve upon the lemon garlic marinate from last time, we bought a jar of Indian tandoori sauce at the local farmer's market and used it to marinate a rainbow of vegetables - cherry tomato, seitan, onion, red bell pepper, firm tofu, zucchini, eggplant, mushroom, and potato. Everything was delicious, except the potato. We didn't cook it far enough so that it could finish cooking on the grill at the same time as the other vegetables. So it turned out a little raw in the center. Live and learn, right? The best surprise from the experience was how good seitan tastes when grilled. It gets crunchy and crispy from the grilling, which makes it taste even more hearty.


We took home couple of skewers left over and paired them with some naan and spiced brown basmati rice. I got the idea for the rice from our local Indian buffet joint, Passage to India. Yes, it is the very same one that we visit at least once a week. At Passage to India, they serve a big pot of basmati rice that is cooked with spices like Bay leaf, cinnamon stick, cardamom pod, whole cloves and star anise. The rice is fragrant and delicious even though not much else is added to it. The only problem is I have to constantly pick out spices from my rice and inevitably end up biting into a cardamom pod nevertheless. To fix this problem, I put those spices in a tea bag and cooked the tea bag with the rice. At the last minute, I stirred in some frozen peas. When the rice became ready, I fished out the tea bag. The rice was still fragrant and delicious and I didn't have to floss cloves out of my teeth later.