Hatch Chile Apricot Jelly

I've got that canning and preserving bug again. I will never understand what compels me to spend most of the day chopping and boiling fruits and veggies to get a couple jars of preserves. I think it is reading too much Laura Ingalls Wilder books. Or maybe it is the almost magic process that allows such perishable and seasonal goods such as fresh Hatch chiles to be shelf stable and able to be given away as gifts.

After all, I couldn't do just one Hatch chile recipe for the season!

I debated on how I wanted to preserve the chiles. I could pickle them, made a jelly with their juices, or make a simple jam with just the chiles. After some thought, I decided. My family and friends enjoyed the Habanero Gold preserves so much, I decided to make a Hatch Chile edition. This one will be milder without the habanero, but I made sure to get a couple hot Hatches to throw in the mix!

The very cute ball jar in the pictures are courtesy of an anonymous family member, who returned the baskets from my mother's day preserves at my mother's doorstep with a four pack of them.

Nutella Fudgesicle

I have a confession: I have never had Nutella before this popsicle. I blame my mom, she would have never let us kids have a chocolate spread as "part of a nutritious breakfast." After all, Nutella is made by Ferrero, which makes Ferrero Rocher chocolates. So I am sure, to my mother, Nutella was tantamount to slathering melted hershey kisses over toast.

Actually, now that I've tasted Nutella, it is just like that, only better.

We know that Nutella is basically a tub of spreadable candy bars, so rather than the breakfast table, let's make dessert with it!

I've seen Nutella fudge pops lurking around the web, and I wanted to make one myself. Most of the recipes called for chocolate milk and use a higher ratio of milk to Nutella, but I wanted tons of Nutella in mine, and I wasn't about to hunt down chocolate hazelnut milk. I think the more concentrated amount of Nutella made the popsicles nice and creamy. Mr. Mochi and my brother raved about the texture, which was very smooth unlike most popsicles which are icier.

New Mexican Green Chile Enchilada

Hatch chiles are here! These New Mexican peppers, usually green, are actually the same as the Anaheim pepper found here in Southern California, but they are usually much hotter.  Hatch chiles are not actually a type of pepper, but simply named for being grown in the Hatch Valley, New Mexico. The hot days and cool nights make for a famously delicious group of chiles, but anyone in New Mexico will tell you that New Mexican peppers in general are special. Most commonly, these peppers are a couple different varieties of New Mexican green chile with names like "Big Jim," which is how farmers can sell Hatch chiles by grouping them "hot, medium, and mild." The hot ones are hotter than jalapenos! Here's a list of cultivars developed by New Mexico State University.

I had fun finding the rare red ones!

My dad's side of the family is from New Mexico, and I remember getting big batches of roasted chiles and pecans from the family. So when I saw that the chiles were arriving from New Mexico, I just had to jump on this! I wanted to make something classic New Mexican, so what better than some enchiladas with green chile sauce? Like in my dad's recipe for enchiladas, these puppies are stacked like pancakes, not rolled.

Alien tomatoes!

You can vary the heat of the enchilada by the type of New Mexican chili pepper used. I made them with the mild/medium variety and Mr. Mochi and I unanimously agreed that next time we would use the hotter ones. The cheese and the milk do a good job taming the green chile, so don't be afraid of heat. And while red peppers do pop up in bushels of peppers, I suggest using the green ones so that way the color goes with the tomatillos.

Speaking of which, this green chile sauce uses tomatillos like the Mexican chile verde, a fruit I had never used before. They are members of the nightshade family just like tomatoes, but they are actually a closer relative of the cape gooseberry, which also has a husk that covers the fruit. They are acidic and tart, and are pretty weird to me for whatever reason (husks!). You peel off the husk, wash off the sticky residue on the skin, and chop them up, no need to peel or seed them.

My City and Milk Toast

One memory from my childhood that sticks out is driving home from my grandparent's house. Since my parents both worked full time, my mother's parents took care of my brother and I during the day. We had to be around six or seven. On this particular drive, I don't remember what possessed us to do this, but we said,

"Look Dad! We're Asian!"

And we put our palms to our temples and pushed back to make our eyes extra squinty.

I don't know who was more shocked, my dad, whose children were doing rather inappropriate racially insensitive things; or us, when he told us that we actually were Asian, in part.

"Look at your grandma, she's 100% Asian American and her eyes don't look like that! Besides guys: your eyes are already almond-shaped, you inherited that from her. You eat mochi, dried squid and nori for after-school snacks, you're both Japanese American."

Talk about floored.

Biscuits and Bacon Gravy

I've made tons of sausage gravy (and eaten even more) but when Mr. Mochi came home with a steal: beautiful thick-cut bacon for 40 cents a pound, I knew I wanted to try bacon gravy. Bacon gravy is made the same way as sausage gravy, with a few quirks.

Now, this recipe is just made for serving over piping hot biscuits! Unfortunately, my oven decided to die on me, so I was not able to make any fresh biscuits. I don't know whats wrong, but the oven just won't heat up, and my biscuits just sat there as I fiddled for over an hour with the dial, turning it on and off and waiting 10, then 20 minutes to see if the oven would ever heat up. Hurray for cheap apartment living?

Putting aside my oven's betrayal, let's focus on those quirks. The bacon will take longer to cook than the sausage, because you want it nice and crisp to stand up to the gravy. It will also release quite a bit more fat, so you either have to use less bacon, or drain away some of the fat.  It is also less seasoned than sausage, so you will add more pepper, but less salt since the bacon is cured.

L.A. Street Dog

Downtown Los Angeles. A sprawling concrete and steel behemoth of a city that replaced the chaparral to become one of the biggest cities in the world.

Smog, sweat, hopes and dreams seem to settle in Los Angeles. Hope for a better life, dreams of making it big on the silver screen. While L.A. shines as a beacon of light for others with its glittery image, most locals know it as the place they toil and trudge day in and day out with the skyscrapers watching overhead.

I know Los Angeles as the place I went to college. Unlike USC, UCLA is in with the glitter. Bordered by Beverly Hills and Bel Air, UCLA resides in the hoity-toity Westwood area. Think Pinkberry and vegan cafes, posh shops and brand name shoes; a cab ride away from Rodeo Drive and Sunset Strip.

I always contrast that with going to my mother to the downtown districts. It is loud, dirty, and wonderful. The flower, fashion, fabric and jewelry districts are filled with people of all walks of life doing business, striking deals, and making friends. My mother would always bring presents for her favorite shopkeepers, who would always be glad to see her and haggle prices. She spent the most time in the fabric district and I loved running my hands along the rows of fabric bolts: silky satin, rough corduroy, and gauzy silk.

Walking down the gritty cracked pavement that still reflected the sun too bright despite the June gloom, I would always steal a peek at the street food. Catering to mostly Latinos, the fruit the carts peddled is always what tempted me the most as a child. The jewel colored spears of fruit seemed to sparkle; watermelon, papaya, and mango sang out to me. I wanted whatever they were sprinkling on the the fruit along with lime and eating with their fingers, the juices running down their fingers and faces. Little did I know it had cayenne pepper, and I probably wouldn't have cared for it too much as a child.

I like my Ghetto Dog without ketchup

Now that I go there as an adult, the fruits aren't as captivating to me as the most infamous L.A. street food, the Street Dog. Also known as Danger Dogs, L.A. Ghetto Dogs, or Dirty Dogs, you can smell them before you spy the cart. A heady mixture of fajitas and bacon wafts over the crowd of shoppers, leading you to a vendor's grill. Thick hot dogs are spirally wrapped in bacon, grilled to crispy juicy perfection, then topped with grilled onions and peppers and your choice of condiments that range from the typical ketchup/mustard to mayo and pico topped with a roasted jalapeno.

X Rated Mimosa Popsicles

Mr. Mochi tells me I have become popsicle obsessed. Well if you were in this apartment in Southern California, you would be too. Right now, deep into August, we've been having quite the heat wave. After the kero kero pops, I decided I wanted to make another set of boozy pops.

My grandmother always used to mix soda and orange juice into a fizzy drink for us as kids. Almost like a virgin mimosa, it is still one of my favorite drink combos. I decided to make a popsicle mimosa after looking in the fridge and wondering what I was going to do with an almost full bottle of sparkling wine. Mr. Mochi is a beer fan, and I can't drink the bottle fast enough before it goes flat.

And because I am a big fan of the "oh why the hell not," I threw in a couple layers of X Rated liqueur, which one of Mr. Mochi's friends left in our fridge. X Rated is blood orange juice with mango, and passion fruit mixed with vodka. It's quite girly looking with it's bright pink color, but apparently the men are very secure in their manhood, and its pretty damn tasty.

I didn't realize it was a hip or new liqueur until I googled it for this blog post. I am so clueless when it comes to the drinking scene.