Welcome to my cookbook
UPDATE 2021-10-11:
I started a keto diet earlier this month.
That means there will be a fundamental change in the recipes from now on: no bread, flour, sugars or other starches.
For meat, seafood and vegetable dishes, that does not need to make much of a difference. Just leave out potatoes, rice and pasta, which we rarely used anyway for the past few months.
The biggest difference will be in sauces: no starches allowed, so the entire roux-based category disappears until I find an acceptable substitute.
This means that after 8 years I am adding a new category: "keto." When I find the time, I will update existing recipes to mark those that are keto-clean, or add suggestions on how to make them.
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This is a compilation of the recipes that I have posted in my facebook group from 2013 onward and many I did not. When I started organizing those recipes in 2015, I was quite surprised there were so many already. And since then, there have been many more, enough for a really big book.
I have tried to compile that book. It turned out to be a never-ending story. And who would ever get to read it when I have no means of distributing it? I am publishing my recipes in this website to make them more widely available than through facebook alone.
I didn't always care for cooking. While I was still working, I usually ate in the hospital's cafeteria. I didn’t mind. Some of them were actually pretty good. It wasn’t until several years after retirement that I started finding some interest in cooking at home.
Eventually, I even came to enjoy food preparation for its own sake, but only for my own family in my own home. Don't expect me to open a restaurant anytime soon. I would hate having to cook the same things day after day over and over again.
I rarely prepare a recipe repeatedly in the exactly same way. Even for those few favorites like onion soup and beef tongue, I have made many unique variations.
This is home cooking.
Do not expect five-star restaurant
presentation here.
I have no professional culinary background at all. I expect most of you won’t either. And yet— just like mine—your families need to be fed every day too.
Delicate flavors and beautiful presentation are not my priority at all. This is about feeding the family with wholesome delicious food with BIG bold flavors This is about making an enjoyable meal with the limited food variety of small-town America.
I live in Deming, New Mexico, USA, a small southwestern middle-of-nowhere town near the Mexican border.
- Peppers is the one local grocery store that survived Walmart moving into town some 10 years ago. Peppers caters more towards the Hispanic population than Walmart and it is my preferred store for produce and meat purchases.
- As one might expect, Walmart carries items that Peppers doesn't.
- Every 2-3 months, we drive 70 miles to Las Cruces, NM, and make use of the opportunity to stock up at Sprouts and Sam's Club on some goodies we can't get here in town.
- Between the four of them, the variety of fresh food still remains limited compared to big cities with a more international population mix.
- Many foods are only available frozen or canned.
My recipes reflect those limitations. After all, I can’t cook what I can't get. One does what one can to relieve tediousness. In 2013, I started a vegetable garden and began raising chickens, ducks and rabbits. That ended abruptly in July 2015 when a tornado took out the chicken coop and rabbit house and killed most of the animals. In 2016 I started ordering frozen fish online to have a greater variety of seafood.
This is not a comprehensive cooking manual
There are huge gaps in this listing (e.g. drinks, desserts, baking) for the simple reason that I hardly ever do those things.
One criticism of professionals will likely be that my grouping of recipes is not according to the French or other established cooking schools. I couldn’t care less. Again, this is
MY real-life home cooking, not a chef’s Masterwork presentation.
This is not a formal cooking class.
Nevertheless, I
do take time to explain why I make certain choices. I consider it more important that you understand why I use a specific cooking method in a recipe than that you can follow instructions to the letter. Once you understand the reasoning behind that first choice in every recipe, you will be able to make those choices for your future cooking adventures without having to consult a manual.
Substitute & adapt
I do my thing, you should do yours.
- I rarely use butter. I prefer olive oil for most of my recipes.
That is my personal preference, but it does not mean you have to do the same. - I add powdered chicken bouillon to nearly all my recipes. I add dehydrated 'vegetable recipe mix' to nearly all my soups. I like the MSG in those products. That is so much my idea of personalized seasoning that I don't even mention it in most recipes.
- I often make 10-12 quart soups and 8+ servings oversize meals, even though there's only ever 2 for dinner. Refrigerating and reheating leftovers is imo an efficient way of reducing the time I spend in the kitchen and it is easy enough to add a few extra ingredients to make it a different dish.
Whenever I use something you don't like, do your own thing and substitute with something that you do like.
- Use the vegetable oil or animal fat that you prefer for cooking.
- Any recipe with meat can also be prepared with other meats or even no meats at all: vegetarians can substitute meats with mushrooms, tofu, palm hearts, nuts or other food items. It won't be the same flavor of course, but it won't be any less delicious or nutritious.
- Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera ... —The king of Siam
my oven is not your oven
Oven thermostats are not all the same. One oven's 350 ºF. may not be the same temperature in another. Also, the actual temperature can be higher or lower than the indicated one. When I increase oven temperature by 25-30 ºF, quite often the oven is already at that higher temperature. To get an idea of these fluctuations in your oven, attach a bimetal thermometer to the inside of the oven window to display the actual temperature.
One of the bigger differences between my new and old ovens is convection. The new oven has that fan that forces the hot air to circulate throughout. With convection, the thermostat can be set up to 60 ºF. lower than with a conventional one. Don't expect that you can just shorten the cooking time. Baking in a convection oven at the recommended 425 ºF. for a conventional oven will burn your pastries to a crisp well before the recommended cooking time is over. Trust me on this one. Been there, done that.
Pictures
With computer editing, it is now possible to include many more pictures in the text than printed books could, to document every step in cooking a recipe. It makes following the recipe a lot easier and more pleasant.
I took most of the pictures in this site myself while cooking these recipes. I did borrow some pictures from the internet when I forgot to take pictures or when mine didn’t come out well enough to my liking. I have credited the source of any recipes and pictures when possible. Information borrowed from the internet is included under fair usage, for educational purpose only.
Navigating THIS SITE
I have tried to make it as simple as possible.
You can get from any page in this cookbook to any other with only 2 clicks.
- The recipes have been divided in 7 main categories, with an extra one for 'other' kitcheneering articles if I ever get to write those.
- The banner and footer of very page in this website have links to this home page and to those 8 categories.
- Each category page shows links to all recipes in that category.
- I write new pages almost every day. I try to update the website on the server every few months with those new pages, so do visit again occasionally for new recipes.
next-level links
other page links
Articles not accessible from the group pages:
ABBREVIATIONS
- Boil, reduce and simmer
= Bring to a boil, then reduce heat, cover the pot and simmer over low heat. - Reduce
= Boil or simmer to reduce the volume of a liquid and concentrate the flavors.
Reduce to 50% = do that until you have only half the original volume left. - ( for) reference only
= Information without recipes, may refer to recipes elsewhere in this site. - IMO, imo
= in my opinion - S&P
= salt and pepper to taste.
That means as much or as little as you want to add, or none at all.
That also means any other seasoning you want to add. - S&wP
= salt and white pepper, for those few recipes where white pepper is specified. - Oil Dough
I rarely use butter for cooking. I prefer to use olive oil instead.
In analogy with beurre manié (Fr. kneaded butter,) oil dough is a mixture of equal parts vegetable oil and flour that I use to thicken soups and sauces. It gives sauces an almost glossy appearance.
IN CONCLUSION:
Feel free to visit as often as you wish.
I hope
you'll like what you see well enough to occasionally give
some of my recipes a try.