Roasted Hatch chile mayonnaise

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It's Hatch chile season again, and food lovers in my neighborhood are going nuts. The long, tapered green chiles from New Mexico have a cult following here in southern California. I can get both the hot and mild varieties at just about every grocery store within a 10-mile radius.

Many stores have chile-roasting events in their parking lots so you can take home bags of freshly roasted chiles instead of having to roast them at home. Personally, I don't mind roasting them at home.

I wash the Hatch chiles, turn the burners on my gas stove to high, and lay the peppers directly on the iron grates of my stove. I turn them until they're blackened on all sides, then pop them into a zip-top bag to steam. The charred skin slips off easily and I'm left with strips of fragrant roasted chiles to use in sandwiches, quesadillas, casseroles, and condiments like this Hatch Chile Mayonnaise.

I've already made several quarts of this roasted Hatch Chile Mayonnaise since Hatch chiles showed up in local stores a few weeks ago. My husband and sons love it on a roast beef sandwich. Or you could:

• Spread it on a sandwich with roast turkey, thinly sliced Granny Smith apples, shaved red onions and watercress
• Spoon it on a burger (put some diced roasted Hatch chiles in the burger itself, too)
• Serve it with broccoli fritters, zucchini fritters or spinach pancakes
• Use it as a sauce for oven-roasted salmon fillets or chicken
• Mix it with chopped hard-boiled eggs for the best egg salad of your life

Enjoy!

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Hatch Chile Mayonnaise

by Erika Kerekes July-21-2015

A simple condiment made with roasted fresh Hatch chiles from New Mexico

Ingredients

• 6 Hatch chiles (hot or mild)
• 1 1/2 cups mayonnaise
• 1 Tablespoon lime juice

Instructions

Wash the Hatch chiles. Roast them over an open flame on a gas stove (I lay mine directly on the burner grate), turning frequently, until the skin is black and charred on all sides. (If you don't have a gas stove, broil the peppers in the oven, turning frequently.)Put the charred Hatch chiles in a zip-top bag for 30 minutes. They will steam as they cool.Slip the charred black skin off the chiles. If you want your Hatch Chile Mayonnaise very mild, remove the seeds and ribs from inside the peppers. Put the roasted Hatch chiles, mayonnaise and lime juice into a food processor. Process until smooth.Store in a clean jar with a tight-fitting lid in the refrigerator up to 2 weeks.

Details

Prep time: 20 mins Cook time: 5 mins Total time: 25 mins Yield: 2 cups

Steakhouse-style blue cheese dressing

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One of the reasons I decided to try a low-carb diet when it was time to improve my health (although I hate that word, diet, so let's call it a low-carb style of eating) is that I cannot live without blue cheese dressing.

This is not hyperbole.

The first time I tasted blue cheese dressing on a salad I was nine. It was late winter. My parents had decided to drive the family out to the east end of Long Island for a seafood dinner, so maybe we were in Greenport, or Orient Point, or even Montauk.

I'm not sure what prompted me to order blue cheese dressing for my salad. But with my first bite, these words formed clearly in my pre-adolescent brain:

I can't live without this.

I don't ever recall a stronger reaction to a taste. Not before that day, and not since.

Ever since I committed to myself that I was going to get healthier, I have been packing raw vegetables in my lunchbox every day, along with a container of this homemade blue cheese dressing. I love to dip. Lettuce, cucumber, radishes, carrots, bell peppers, celery, kohlrabi, cherry tomatoes: They all taste better dunked in blue cheese dressing.

This easy recipe takes less than five minutes to put together. The key is to let it sit overnight. It's much, much better after a rest in the refrigerator.

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Homemade Blue Cheese Dressing

by Erika Kerekes July-7-2016

This steakhouse-style blue cheese dressing is packed with umami-rich chunks of pungent blue cheese. Let it rest in the refrigerator overnight for maximum flavor. This makes a very thick dressing - if you prefer a thinner consistency, add a little water or heavy cream.

Ingredients

• 1 pint (2 cups) sour cream
• 1 cup mayonnaise
• 2 Tablespoons fresh lemon juice (about half a lemon), or to taste
• a few dashes hot sauce, like Tabasco
• 1 Tablespoon Asian fish sauce (can substitute Worcestershire sauce)
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, or more to taste
• 12 ounces blue cheese, crumbled

Instructions

In a medium-sized bowl, whisk together the sour cream, mayonnaise, lemon juice, hot sauce, fish sauce, and pepper. Add the crumbled blue cheese and stir to combine, mashing the cheese with the back of your spoon if the chunks are too big.Transfer to an airtight container. Refrigerate overnight before serving.

Details

Prep time: 5 mins Cook time: Total time: 5 mins Yield: 4 cups

Introducing Not Ketchup

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If you've been wondering where I've been, take a look at http://www.notketchup.com and all will be clear.

More later. Must go pack boxes.

Santa Rosa plum jam

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The first thing I did when my husband and I bought our house in Santa Monica 17 years ago was to plant fruit trees in the backyard.

The house came with an old avocado tree, a scraggly lemon tree, and a dwarf fig tree. I put in lime, tangerine, Meyer lemon, kumquat.

Most of which died. Turns out the huge eucalyptus tree we removed when we moved in did something nasty to the soil, and baby trees don't like eucalyptus oil.

But the Santa Rosa plum tree I put in about five years ago has held its own. Last year it gave us three plums. I was encouraged.

This year we got a cool dozen and a half plums. All of which ripened at once. So I cut them up, added some sugar and boiled them down into a gem-colored jam that looks and tastes like a southern California sunset during fire season, all flame-red and intense.

Santa Rosa plums are hard to find outside California. They're thin-skinned and turn soft as soon as they ripen, so shipping them is nearly impossible. But you'll never find a plum that tastes more like a plum than a Santa Rosa. If you see them, grab them.

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Santa Rosa plum jam

by Erika Kerekes July-17-2013

Fruit, sugar and heat: That's all you need to make this Santa Rosa plum jam. If you can't find Santa Rosas, substitute another tart, purple-skinned plum.

Ingredients

• 2 pounds Santa Rosa plums, pitted and chopped (weigh after removing pits)
• 2 cups granulated sugar

Instructions

In a medium-sized pot, combine the chopped plums with the sugar. Let sit 5 minutes. Bring the plum mixture to a boil, then quickly turn down the heat to medium (not low) and cook the jam about 20 minutes, until the syrup has thickened and the bubbles coming to the top are big and viscous. Turn off the heat and puree the jam with a hand-held immersion blender, or pour the mixture into a countertop blender or food processor and blend until smooth.Immediately pour the jam into a clean jar or other glass container. Cover, let cool on the counter, then refrigerate until chilled. Use within 4 weeks. (Alternatively, you can process the jam in a water bath according to standard canning methods - I'm just way too lazy.)

Details

Prep time: 10 mins Cook time: 20 mins Total time: 30 mins Yield: about 2 1/2 cups