Hola, bitches. Ian here. Isley recently outed me to the world for using Velveeta in making chile con queso. Now, I’m the first one to admit that this is kind of skeevy. Plain Velveeta just doesn’t taste like cheese. I think it’s fair to say that Velveeta:cheese::Crisco:butter. You can use the former in place of the latter with certain benefits, but you don’t want to eat that shit on a sandwich.
<jessica> Well, ACTUALLY – speaking of tater tot casserole and mayonnaise sandwiches and things…I’m not gonna say it was the BEST grilled cheese I ever had, but I had an interestingly Velveeta-ed grilled cheese at this bar called Swig one night. It was, like, a club, first of all, which – how did the toast the middle slice of bread??? It is a mystery. And second of all, it was made with these thick-ass slices of actual block-Velveeta (not even the shrink-wrapped sandwich slices!), and I did not hate it. So there. Though also I was eating it at a bar, which might have contributed to my complacency. Christ, it’s kind of depressing sometimes when I’m blogging and I accidentally type out yet another warning sign of alcoholism. </jessica>
<jessica> How worried were you guys that my “well, actually -” was in reference to my love of Crisco sandwiches? </jessica>
So, anyway, last night I made Spanish rice, and as per usual there were tons of leftovers. When it came time to warm them up for dinner tonight, I decided to drop some science and make some non-processed-chile-con-queso. I scoured the tubes for a recipe for queso that didn’t call for Velveeta. This is surprisingly difficult, as you can check yourself. I eventually settled on this, which seemed promising enough. I’m not a huge fan of Emeril as a guy, but his recipes have yet to let me down (bam!).
<jessica> Pow! </jessica>
But, wait! No dinner of warmed up rice leftovers and queso is complete without homemade tortillas. So, I, uh… made some.
*yawn* The pictures didn’t turn out that great, so I’ll cut to the chase.
Et voila:
<jessica> Actually, someone probably should make him post his tortilla recipe at some point. It’s the fastest, easiest, best thing he makes. </jessica>
Okay, so back to the queso. The problem with using real cheese (in this case cheddar and pepper jack) is its meltiness. Since real cheese contains curds and no oil (as opposed to Velveeta, which I’m pretty sure can be used to power your car’s internal combustion engine), it melts into a lumpy, curdy substance. Everything I’ve heard (via AB and other sources) says the lumpy melting can be mitigated by building a roux first, and then melting the cheese into this. I have used this technique fairly successfully to make cheese sauces before, so I assumed that I would work fairly well for the queso. It essentially didn’t.
The flavor was really great. The DIY pepper/onion/tomato mix was wonderful, perhaps even better than Rotel. The problem was that it was lumpy, pronounced with the umpy. The texture really overrode the flavor and ruined the queso for me. No me gustan los terrones.
<jessica> That’s Italian for, “I won’t feed your dog.” </jessica>
Though it was crappy on a chip, it tasted dandy on the tortillas with the rice.
<jessica> Eh…here’s me officially disagreeing that it was crappy on chips. Fine, it was lumpy, which was a little weird. But it wasn’t, like, weird and oily and separate-y the way you expect melted cheddar to be. And it tasted fucking great. If I were you, I wouldn’t have actually clicked through to read the recipe, so, for those of you who didn’t – he actually roasted a serrano chile and a jalapeno on the gas oven burners and blackened the outside skins before he chopped them up and put them in the cheese. (I’m just a crappy photographer, is the only reason there’s no neat pyrotechnic documentation.) It tasted pretty fucking great. I was willing to put up with the lumps. </jessica>
After the fact, I looked up tips for reducing lumpiness in cheese sauces. I found two suggestions: use high quality cheeses, and add the cheese off the heat at the very last minute. I did neither of these things. The former was because I was too lazy to walk to the nice grocery store ten blocks away, the latter because I didn’t know any better. Maybe next time? Probably not. Velveeta works really, really well for melting, and the pepper mix covers up the processed-skeeve flavor.
A couple more things before I sign off. First, Jessica discovered an excellent use for Nutella and leftover tortillas. Also, she has a cute haircut, but I wouldn’t put my finger anywhere near her mouth while she’s eating Nutella!
<jessica> Which is the more embarrassing photo of me: the one where I have butter smeared accross my cheek and am fending the cat off my soup? Or the one where I’m laying into a knife-ful of Nutella like a yeti on Christmas morning? And where does the one where I’m cheesing out with a beet stuck in my front teeth fall in the spectrum? Is this another warning sign of alcoholism, or just an indicator of my enjoyment of Ian’s skill in the kitchen? </jessica>
Second, every time I make something in the oven I burn my goddamned hands. Because I’m a klutz? No. Because my “hotpad” can only handle temperature up to 114 degrees Fahrenheit? Yes. It sucks, and I need a new one. Luckily, my crafty lady-partner can fabricate a set of hotpads using only an old pair of jeans and some scrap fabric, lickety-split.
<jessica> She sounds awesome! </jessica>
(Ed. By popular demand, the tortilla recipe)
1.5 cups bread flour
1.5 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
.25 cup fat (shortening, butter, lard, or some combination thereof [I usually use shortening])
.75 cup hot water (as hot as your faucet will produce, but not boiled or anything)
Add the first four items to a bowl and squish together until the fat is integrated and mixture clumps on squeezing. Then add the water in thirds, thoroughly mixing in at each step. Knead the dough 7-10 minutes, then roll out into a tube and divide into 8-12 parts. Roll the parts into balls, place on a plate, and cover with a warm, damp cloth. Let the dough balls rest for 20-25 minutes, then roll out into flat rounds. The type of fat used seems to affect how thin you can get them rolled out. Then throw them onto a frying pan on high for 45 seconds or so on one side and then 15-30 on the other side. The first pancake rule holds: the first few don’t turn out that well. Usually you can tell when they’re ready to flip because bubbles have formed and expanded to a large but manageable size; squish the bubbles down on flipping.
Recent Comments