This is the continuation of a post I did last week on the challenge of Food Styling with the super talented Ajda Mehmet and maybe the result of a lot of testing, tasting and hard work... yes, sometimes testing and tasting recipes is hard work! Imagine eating the same thing 4 nights in a row just to make sure you tweak a little bit more of one single thing in the recipe.
A lot of the times what we do sounds very glamourous, but as many food bloggers would tell you, there's little or no glamour on working on planning a new recipe, shopping for ingredients and cooking a dish in your spear time, with only the promise of cold meal at the end and a good enough photograph. We do it for the love of the kitchen.
Nothing screams more my love for the kitchen like this recipe. The recipe is quite simple, the styling, not so much.... I recommend you first read my original post on Food Styling Challenge to learn how this post came about. Hope you enjoy the recipe, I leave you here with a picture of its main ingredient: the faboulsly delicous and unactractive looking Cuitlacoche.
Start by making the sauce. Heat the oil in a non stick pan at medium heat. Add the onion, garlic and chili and cook gently until the onion is translucent, about two minutes. Add the tomatoes and mix well. Cook for further 3 minutes or until the tomatoes are soft and start going into a sauce. Open the tin of cuitlacoche and pour it into a bowl. Mash all the bits using a fork before adding it to the sauce in the pan. Mix well and follow by adding the white wine. Lower the heat and let the wine absorb and the cuitlacoche sauce cook for further 2 minutes before removing it from the heat. Set aside covered to keep the heat.
If you are using tortilla chips for this dish, this is the time to get them done. Follow my recipe for home made tortilla chips here.
Heat a griddle pan until is very, very hot. Do not use any oil in it, we're going to use it dry. Season your fillet stakes with salt & pepper to taste and brush them with a little vegetable oil. When the griddle is super hot, place your stakes and cook them to your taste. This ones were cooked blue, so we cooked them in the hot griddle pan for about 1-2 minutes on each side to retain as much flavour and juices as possible, but if you prefer a medium to well, cook them for 5 minutes on each side on the hot griddle. It's a matter of taste. When the stake is cooked to your liking, take it out of the pan and put in on a plate to rest for about 5 minutes. Cover it with tinfoil to keep it warm.
While the fillet of stake rests, set the table. Get the sauce (check that it's still warm) and the freshly done corn tortilla chips and set them at the table. Gather all other serving ingredients in bowls and get ready. Slice the stakes as thinly as possible. You want plenty of little strips of yummy pink meat for people to enjoy. The rest is simple: spoon some cuitlacoche sauce on a tortilla chip, top with cream, coriander and chili and add a strip of beef. Eat to your heart content!
This is a delicious way to share a meal. Again, I need to thank the wonderful Ajda Mehmet for all her work on the day. Check her brand new blog and her tumblr page. Also my friend Kate for being there to taste stuff nobody else wants to and last but not least, my super talented niece Daili Perez for giving all her time to pictures while I cook... till next time.
