Choosing salsa verde or salsa roja — red sauce or green sauce – when indulging in Mexican food is always a difficult decision. Green usually wins for me because I love the tart flavor of tomatillos. But it’s fun to get creative with tomatillo salsa, so this time I’m incorporating Poblano peppers. On the Scoville…
7 Tips for Fluffy White Rice
Everyone has varying techniques for cooking a batch of plain white rice and other rice-based recipes. Because of its wishy-washy nature, rice deserves its own blog post about how to yield an irresistibly light and fluffy batch, regardless of which technique you use. After much trial and error since I was a newbie home cook,…
Easy Plain Tomato Sauce
Countless comfort food recipes – especially many for rice and beans – call for a small 8 ounce can of plain tomato sauce. Upon reading the labels on the tomato sauce sold in stores, you’ll notice that many brands seem to have some trace of “spices”, herbs, or sometimes “red” coloring. Plus, take notice of…
Rice with Pigeon Peas (Arroz con Gandules)
Pigeon peas (gandules) are a global ingredient, but I first encountered these nutritious legumes in a Puerto Rican context bywatching chef Daisy Martinez. This was basically her recipe, until I started doing things differently as I progressed over the years. The global concept of cooking rice and beans in the same pot seems quite simple….
Jalapeño Poppers Stuffed with Pork Shoulder
Pork shoulder is perfectly suited for making Jalapeño poppers due to its long, fibrous texture. This cut of meat allows you to break it apart into long pieces that conform easily to the pepper shape and still remain intact when stuffed into a Jalapeño. Also, the fat rendered from pork shoulder can be brushed on…