The 3-Meat Super Bowl

Hal and I like to have a Super Bowl party every year - it prevents us from needing a designated driver. We love the big game, and the big food that comes with it. This year, a small plate of carrots and ranch dip was the only healthy option available. I decided to skip fruit/veggies, and go straight for the all-meat fiesta. It's only once a year, right?

So which three meats? Chicken, pork and beef. I made a beef vindaloo I saw on Aarti Party, another of Aarti Sequeira's recipes from her blog- Sriracha Pomegranate Chicken Wings, and an Asian-style honey barbecue pork that I made up. Yes, I'm obsessed with Aarti these days. I've made several of her recipes now, and they've all been fantastic. She's amazing.

The beef vindaloo was about medium-spicy the way I made it (just like her recipe, only I used a sweet onion instead of red). I cooked it on the stove, then transferred to a crock pot. I took the serrano pepper out of the crock once it came to the right spice level for me.

I changed up the chicken a bit more - for starters, I didn't make wings. I made the sauce just like the recipe, using her idea of cooking down pomegranate juice since I didn't find the molasses. Then I used the rub (made with ground cardamom instead of pods - I can't find those anywhere) on some regular chopped up chunks of chicken breast. Once again, I let it cook on the stove after the chicken sat in the rub for a while, and kept warm in a crock pot. Yes, I have two.

I had to borrow the third (thanks Lindsay!). In that one, I put the Asian pork I made. For that, I chopped up a pork tenderloin and cooked it up in a mixture of equal parts hoisin sauce and plum sauce with generous drizzles of soy sauce and honey - I just played with those until I was happy. I didn't want it too sweet. This took about 20 minutes total, including chopping the pork.

The whole meat-topia took about 1.5 hours to create, which I didn't think was bad at all considering the amount of food and things like curry made from scratch. Woot!

There were also 3 great dips. We had my homemade guacamole (original recipe courtesy of my sister Kristin's Cuban sister-in-law), a corn and cheese dip I learned from my sister Shannon, and a killer salsa dip my friend Amanda brought. My guac is just avocado, finely chopped onion and garlic, lots of cilantro and fresh lime juice. The Cuban secret is that you don't mix it - you cut through it with a knife repeatedly until it is well mixed and you still have some great chunks of avocado. It only takes a minute, and it's totally worth it.

Here is the magic corn and cheese dip: 14 oz of fiesta corn (with the peppers in it), 1.75 cups of good lite mayo (trust me, the store-brand stuff makes it weird), 2 cups shredded colby jack, half cup shredded parmesan, and 2 heaping Tbsp finely chopped jalapeno. Stir all of that together, and bake at 350 for 30 minutes. That's it. And you can save the world with that dip.

There were also brownies, chips, the poor, out-of-place carrots, a mini-keg of Newcastle and a lovely bucket of sangria. Okay it wasn't actually in a bucket. I feel horribly full again just thinking about all of this. Maybe that's why it took me a week to write about it - I had to let my tummy heal a bit. Or maybe I just didn't want to admit that football season is actually over. Sigh...see you next year, meat-topia.

Spring Rolls

I made Spring Rolls for the second time tonight, and I still can't seem to get them wrapped tightly enough. I think its my filling - this time I used shrimp, cucumber, red pepper, scallions, cilantro and angel hair pasta, with a tiny smear of oyster sauce to make it stick. I don't want to load them with cabbage or coleslaw mix like many recipes call for, since I don't like cabbage or carrots. They taste great - the flavor combination seems to work really well with a tiny bit of Hoisin sauce for dipping, they're just hard to grab since everything moves around inside and tries to squeeze out. I've cut everything very very thin (using a mandolin with julienne attachment), so I don't think its a chunk issue. I'm afraid I'll rip the rice paper if I pull it too hard when wrapping. I guess I'll just have to keep trying (more's the pity). Any suggestions?