Culinary freedom.

So I finally acquired employment, as a cook and dishwasher at a nearby Mexican restaurant and bar. It's going reasonably well so far, except for the part where I was forced to take an entire week off work, not even a week and a half after starting, as I had to watch my sisters while my parents were out of town.

The upshot of this though, is that I got complete control of the menu. Of course, when I went and did the shopping, I was at that time unaware of the fact that I'd have two extra mouths to feed. Fortunately, I'd chosen a menu that hinged on making big batches of dishes, that I could eat over time.

For the first night, I made a big batch of jambalaya, with baby shrimp and Italian sausage. For the second night, shrimp fried rice with cilantro and a chili-lime infused soy sauce.

The piece de resistance however, was supposed to come the third night: The family recipe Italian sausage burritos, made almost completely from scratch, from the refried beans, to the salsa, and even the tortillas.

The last of course, was the one approached with the greatest trepidation, as I'd never attempted such a think before, and I already knew from previous experience that the rolling pin skills upon which successful making of flour tortillas hinges so heavily and which I would thus require, were practically non-existent in my repetoire of cooking skills.

Which of course proved to be just one of many problems. I'm not sure the recipe I acquired was actually accurate: it claimed to yield 12 12-inch tortillas, but there was no such chance with the amount of dough produced. I missed the part of the recipe to let the dough rest. My rolling skills were awful, and resulted in horribly misshapen messes, and my pan and heat were all wrong, so the tortillas weren't cooking right.

Eventually, I gave up after the 3rd attempted tortilla, and wound up feeding most of the failed scraps to the dog, while reserving the remaining dough for, well, something. Not sure what yet, maybe some kind of thin boiled dumpling, as I've seen in one of the Caribbean restaurants Andrew Zimmern visited in one episode.

I was now without tortillas for my burritos, as I had somewhat overconfidently skipped acquiring any sort of back up plan, like some pre-made tortillas, or the masa flour I'd considered buying. Corn tortillas are pressed, instead of rolled, meaning that while I'd have to improvise something to use as the weight, it wouldn't rely on my total lack of skill in the rolling pin area.

After a not insignificant amount of general swearing at my failure, I finally decided to just go with a plate of rice and beans instead. So I set about boiling the pinto beans for the frijoles refritos (look at me with the foreign language reference twice in the same post! Could I be anymore pretentious?).

While the beans boiled with a bit of salt and chopped bacon for a good two hours, I got to work on the salsa. Dead simple recipe, just a 16 oz can of whole tomatoes in sauce, half an onion roughly chopped, half a green pepper roughly chopped, one jalapeno sliced, the juice of one half a lime, and a little salt, all pulsed in a blender, and then mixed in a healthy dose of chopped cilantro.

For the beans, you need fat. Many of the traditional recipes I've read use mountains of straight-up lard, though my recipe goes a lot lighter than that. A couple strips of bacon, rendered out into the pan (save the bacon itself for your own snacking once it's cooked, we only need the fat), to which we add a pound of hot Italian sausage. Once that's good and browned, in go our cooked beans, drained, but conserving the stock.

Then we start mashing them up. I just used a good potato masher, I used to use a fork a lot. I think the fork gives you better control over the texture, but for a large batch of beans it really isn't practical. If I weren't cooking the meat in with the beans, and I actually owned one, I'd imagine a stick blender would work pretty well for this too.

Throughout the mashing process, you're also adding back some of the stock from the beans. This keeps them from drying out, and also helps us get to the right texture we want out of the beans. I like mine a bit thicker than is the standard in most Mexican restaurants, but remember, if you add too much liquid, you can just keep cooking until it thickens up again, so you really can't go wrong. At the restaurant I work at, the beans just sit on low heat all day, with the cook adding back water periodically over the course of the day if the beans get too thick or too dry.

For the rice, I just boiled some long-grain rice, with some sprigs of cilantro, some chili paste, and minced garlic.

For the final plating, I topped both the rice and beans with some grated cheese, giving it a minute or so to melt, before topping off with some of the salsa.

The result was quite delicious, and filling, and ultimately served to wash away any and all frustration left from my failure at tortilla making.

Last night's meal was simply the leftover jambalaya, which reheats remarkably well in the microwave for a rice dish, with a side of garlic toast. So, I guess to make up for the lack of actual cooking that day, I decided I wanted cake, and after some digging around for a recipe for a simple cake, finally decided on the pound cake recipe out of the Betty Crocker cookbook.

It came out fantastic, and lighter in flavor and texture than I expected. I'm used to pound cake being a pretty dense, rich sort of cake, but I'm not sure if it was a product of the recipe, or me over whipping the ingredients, but it came out with a texture that was firm, yet pillowy soft, with a slightly crispy crust, and a much lighter, gentle flavor than I normally expect. Fantastic.

Not sure what I'll do tonight. My stepfather had to return due to a work emergency, so I guess my plan of making a second batch of jambalaya, this time with pork in place of the shrimp, won't work, as he refuses to eat anything with rice.

Alas, the shackles have returned, and I am again constrained in my options. But it was sure fun while it lasted.