Kitchen Hack

Cold Weather Recipes: Making the House Smell Goooooood

Minnesota, after having thought it was Seattle for the week leading up to and including Christmas (30's-40's and raining) remembered it was Minnesota and cooled off dramatically. When the weather gets cold I, not being a winter sports guy, hibernate. "Cold" is a relative term. For me, up here in the great North, that's somewhere around 20 degrees. That's the temperature at which I start wishing I had an arctic survival suit.  For my friends in Arizona and SoCal...like 65 degrees.

I like to cook things that are relatively low effort, have long cooking times, and make the whole house smell good. To that end, I have two things for you...Pasta Milanese (with Mudrica) and Mulled Apple Cider. 

Tomate Frito with Yucatán Spiced Chicken

The real thing worth paying attention to here is the sauce, Tomate Frito. It has noting to do with the abomination that is the Frito. Frito, in Spanish, means fried. So when you're eating those chips, you're eating Fried. Which likely makes it the most accurately titled processed food product ever. 'Cause whatever it is, is very much Fried, but there ain't much in the way of actual food in it. 

A classic Tomate Frito is a really versatile thing. Cook it down alot and it's a great sauce for fish, pork or chicken. I use it on omlettes, fried eggs, bacon. Cook it down just a little, add a touch of lime juice, and it's a crazy good salsa. We're going Yucatán-style with this, which means there's gonna be some Habanero going on, but that doesn't mean you gotta be punished by heat. I'll take you through how to get the piquancy of the habanero while controlling the heat to your liking. I've tried a number of versions of this in a quest to make it all chef-y. I've tried some of my own invention and tried out a passel of recipes I've found online. The Yucatecan culture is ancient. It's been doing this for a long time. Not surprisingly, then, the simplest, hardly any ingredients version of the sauce is, hands down, the best. For the simplest, most straight forward version of this sauce, I'd go with the version from Rick Bayless.

In this recipe, I'm putting it on chicken, but we'll also cover how to alter the cooking and ingredients just a little so it functions as a standalone salsa.