Thursday, May 07, 2009

The cure for the common leftover

I've blogged about these unbelievably good enchiladas made with a homemade tomatillo verde sauce previously (thanks again Shauneen!) and when we found ourselves with pounds of leftover meats of various provenance after my b-day blow out last weekend (I'll get to that crazy night of food soon, I promise). One of the leftover beasts was about two pounds of grilled leg of lamb (click here for the best grilled lamb recipe I've come across). Normally I wouldn't think of doing lamb and a verde sauce. In my red-wine/sauce-with-red-meat mind the lamb would have overpowered the more subtly complex green sauce. Man, what the fuck was I thinking? The lamb was absolutely stellar with the roasted tomatillo sauce, much, much richer than the pork or chicken versions I've made. Especially luscious with some smoky heat provided by a few dollops of chipoltle sour cream pictured below (3/4 cup sour cream + finely chopped canned chipotles to taste) that I made the day before for the app below. Yet another food boundary expanded with delicious results!

We also had another birthday dinner to go to two nights after mine for our fabulously talented artist friend Amy, and we were asked to bring an appetizer. For some reason while I was sitting at work wondering what to make, and I have no idea where this disturbing food mashup came from, the words "taco sushi roll" kept going through my mind. I had no idea what they were, but in taking mental inventory of yet more leftover b-day meat (in this case some awesome smoked brisket provided by bro-in-law Dave) and other ingredients on hand at home, I thought "WTF? Lets give this a go!" The result:
And not so humbly just let me say they killed at the party, especially topped with a dab of the chipotle sour cream and thin slice of radish. You can use any meat, but what I did was take some corn tortillas I bought from my friend Enrique's Taqueria Uruapan across from the wine shack, flamed them lightly over the stove to soften them, and rolled then up with thinly sliced brisket, slivers of roasted piquillo peppers, avocado, and strips of julienned cotijo cheese and top with sour cream and a slice of radish. The plate was gone in about five minutes! I told a friend at the party that I wish I would have saved my stoner days until I learned how to cook, because satisfying the munchies would be so much more fun now!
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one year ago today @ E.D.T.: Grilled Swordfish with lime-soy marinade!

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