I had just got in some different chile powders and wanted to play with them.  Chile Colorado has always been one of my favorites and it seemed well suited to one of my favorite cooking appliances:  the slow cooker or crock pot.  I’d never made Chile Colorado before so I did some research.  It would appear the best Chile Colorado recipes use no tomatoes, but I wanted to use a lot in mine – so Chile Coloradical was born! (more…)

I wanted to make a sauce that was very flavorful but low in fat, calories and carbs to go with grilled salmon.  I created this one using lime, chipotle chili powder and tequila as the main flavors.  It’s both tart and spicy with a fair amount of heat.  I wanted it to be kind of thick but didn’t want to use a starch (like cornstarch) to thicken it and I also wanted the flavor of the tequila but not the alcohol.  Reducing the sauce solved both problems.  Although I used this for salmon, you could use it on almost anything like grilled chicken or pork chops.  (Probably wouldn’t go so well with beef.) (more…)

This my recipe for beef sukiyaki.  I make it in the crock pot.  Most sukiyaki is made very quickly on the stove top or at the table, but this version came about because I tried a stove top version but used cross rib steak for the beef and it was just too tough.  To salvage the leftovers I put the whole thing into the crock pot and let it simmer all day.  The beef was very tender and now I just make it this way.  You can certainly make this recipe on the stove top, just substitute very tender beef and simmer everything in the broth for about 30 minutes. (more…)

I was at a party and along with the usual carrot, celery and jicama sticks there were these interesting looking purple/red sticks.  Some of the party-goers thought they were simply dyed jicama, but they were immediately identifiable to me as raw beet sticks.  They had a really interesting flavor, and they didn’t bleed when you held them.  Some people though they had seen them at Trader Joe’s but I decided to try and make my own. (more…)