Right? When it gets cold out hot Comfort Food is where it's at, I love that stuff.

Border cooking today inspired by the El Paso Chile Company Texas Border Cookbook
Brisket Salpicon (shredded beef salad) accompanied by Fire Roasted Long Green Chiles Stuffed with Guacomole

Guacamole Recipe (trying a new twist with a dollop of Miracle Whip)
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Roughly chopped cilantro
2 fresh jalapeno chiles with stems/seeds removed, finely chopped
2 fresh serrano chiles with stems/seeds removed, finely chopped
1 tsp kosher salt
3-4 ripe avocados
1/2-1 cup diced sweet or red onion
3-4 ripe plum tomatoes, diced
1/4 cup Miracle Whip

Use blender, food processor, or molcajete to blend up the jalapenos, serranos, cilantro, and salt
Mash the avocados in a bowl or molcajete
Mix in Miracle Whip
Mix in blended mixture of cilantro, chile peppers, and salt
Mix in diced onions and tomatoes

Fire Roasted Long Green Chiles Stuffed with Guacamole
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6-8 long green chiles
2 tbsp red wine vinegar
1 tsp dijon mustard
Pinch salt
1/3 cup olive oil
Guacomole (above)

Roast the chile peppers, steam in a paper bag or covered bowl. Peel the blackened char off
Make a lengthwise slice in each chile and remove stem and seeds
Mix dressing by whisking vinegar, mustard, and salt. Slowly whisk in the olive oil.
In a shallow dish, pour the dressing/marinade over the chiles and marinade for about an hour
Stuff the chiles with guacamole, drizzle the dressing/marinade over the chiles
Serve immediately

Brisket Salpicon
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5lb flat of brisket
2 large onions, peeled and sliced
1 qt beef broth
4 poblano chiles or 6-8 long green chiles (more mild)
1 7 oz can Chipotles en Adobo
2/3 cup olive oil
1/2 cup fresh lime juice
1/3 cup white wine vinegar
1.5 tsp salt
2 garlic cloves, crushed
8 oz monterey jack cheese
1 cup diced red onion
3/4 cup minced cilantro
1 head romaine lettuce
3 medium ripe, red tomatoes
2 ripe avocados
5 radishes

Cook brisket in dutch oven or crockpot. Cover the brisket with the onion slices. Pour in beef broth and water to cover. Bring to boil, reduce heat, and simmer for 4 hours, turning the brisket halfway through. Cook until it can be easily shredded with a fork.

Roast, steam, peel the chile peppers before removing stems and seeds. Cut the chiles into 1/4" wide strips

When brisket finished, pour off and strain the broth, reserving the liquid. Trim the fat and shred the brisket with forks.
Combine the shredded beef and liquid broth, let stand for up to 2 hours. Do not refrigerate.

Prepare the dressing in a bowl by whisking together the chipotles en adobo (puree in food processor first), olive oil, lime juice, vinegar, salt, and garlic.

Drain the shredded meat and combine in bowl with the dressing mixture, diced monterey jack cheese, cilantro, chile pepper strips, and red onion. Toss and season to flavor.

Mound the beef mixture on romaine lettuce leaves and garnish as desired with tomatoes, radishes, and avocados.
Serve on warmed corn tortillas if desired.

That all sounds great!

In some Venezualan recipes for sauces I have, they put Mayo in with Avocado, Cilantro, etc., ....

At first reading, I thought the Miracle Whip might bring too much sweetness, but with that much heat, it might be good.

No lime in the Guacamole ?

Aside from a missing taste element, I would think the Avocado & Cilantro would turn brown/black....

Either way, all sounds like a great meal.

I've never stuffed peppers with guacamole, I'll have to try that...maybe alternate cheese in one, guac in one ...

Slight change of plans. Less than half the avocados from the store were really ripe so will put off the guacamole stuffed chile peppers for a couple days till they ripen. Brisket is cooking now, we're trying the pressure cooker instead of the crock pot so we'll see how that goes. The wife has more experience and faith in the pressure cooker than I do

Oh yes we always use some lime in the guacamole. Just forgot to put it in the recipe above.
That's a great idea alternating cheese and guac stuffed peppers. Maybe a queso fresco or something like that.

This is all experimental, first time recipe for us so we'll see how it turns out.

Edit: Belated picture of the salpicon. Turned out great and is delicious. Actually is even better when served as a salad with shredded romain along with the heated brisket salpicon mixed in. Pictured here ladled over whole romaine leaves.

Breakfast: Cheese grits, brisket point slices, and a poached egg, dusted with my beef rub.

Caldo Verde - Portuguese soup of kale, potato and linguica sausage, and a still-warm loaf of bread. The bread needed to be a little more dense, and form a better crust. It was too soft to butter properly. Yes, that loaf is past-tense...

What kind of bread is that? Doesn't look like a yeast bread. Soup sounds great!

That's a good question, and not one I can answer very well - I used bread flour, some salt, some sugar, and some yeast that had been left to sit in warm water with some golden syrup for 10 minutes before being added to the dough, along with warm water, at 64% of the weight of the flour, then barely mixed and allowed to sit in the fridge for 24 hours. This gave a slightly sour, slightly fizzy dough that I dumped into the bread tin and baked at 450 with some steam, until an internal temperature over over 195. I caught it at 197.

Interesting. Definitely a yeast bread, but crumbling? More kneading, maybe less water. Looks overbaked a bit, hard to tell.

Soon I will start a bread baking thread. I will start my biga next week.

Wow. I’m wondering what you would consider a good answer.

This is a description of what I did, but no measurements. I didn't measure the salt or sugar, and those are definitely factors at play. I also didn't measure the oven temperature - I opened the oven and threw "a big handful of ice into the cast-iron pan at the bottom" to get the steam in the oven that promotes a good crust. It turns out that I probably used too much ice and cooled the oven down as a result, but since I didn't measure the amount of ice or the oven temperature I don't actually know for sure.



It's not crumbling, but if it were cake it would certainly crumble a lot. Less water - probably. There was no kneading at all - I let it do its thing in the fridge for 24 hours to develop gluten. That's one of the reasons to try to lower the hydration a little more. I didn't count the water that the yeast was brought to life in.

I think the yellow tinge came from the golden syrup that was first to hand when I was bringing the yeast up.

It's fun to experiment with bread that is for sure. I will just use a tray or two of water heated with the oven. IMHO if you didn't knead the dough you won't have any chew or stretch. Even a simple punch down a little massage and letting rise again will vastly improve the dough and finished product.

Split pea soup. Good heaping portions of carrots, onions, shallots, garlic, and celery sauteed in butter for couple minutes. Combine with 2 lbs of dried split green peas, salt, chicken bouillon, fresh thyme, couple bay leaves, then salt & pepper to taste. Add 4 ham hocks. Bring to boil then simmer for a couple hours. Remove ham hocks, trim for meat, and return meat to soup. Slice up a boneless ham steak and add to the soup. Cook for another hour.

It'll be ready in an hour or so.

Ham is my New Years dinner, so that will be what comes of the leftovers.

We normally use ham hocks but nothing beats an old fashioned ham bone with chunks of meat left on it to simmer away.