Foodie Friends: Johnny Vee

Posted on by
3

There’s something of the devil about Chef Johnny Vee. Just look at those impish eyebrows, that devilish goatee and the glint—yes the glint—in his eyes. Over the top? Maybe. But ask anyone who’s taken a class with him at Las Cosas Cooking School in Santa Fe, New Mexico and I’ll bet they’ll agree.

Why? Because Johnny’s got a real passion for cooking. Sure he teaches classes like “Cut the Fat-Cut the Sugar-Cut the Carbs” but what’s he really saying? Add the butter, stir in the sugar and make mine a triple tortilla please. Food for him is about pleasure, enjoyment and above all else – fun. He’s been teaching at Las Cosas since 1999 and he’s put it on the map as the must-go destination for locals and tourists alike.

“I’d say we attract about 70% locals and about 30% tourists,” he told me during a rare break from teaching. The school is located in the Las Cosas Cooking Shop, a treasure-trove for the foodie-minded, about a mile from the downtown Plaza.

“When I started, most cooking schools only did demonstrations where you sat and watched the teacher. I disagreed. I like hands-on where the students do the cooking. It’s the best way to learn and definitely more fun.” Today he hosts classes that run the gamut from homegrown creations such as “New Mexico Favorites” to the far flung like “North Indian Street Food”.

One thing students never get tired of is chile. “In New Mexico, we don’t think of chile as a spice. Chile is the thing. So when you’re making chile sauce it’s not seasoned with chile, it is chile.” Are there misconceptions about chile? Absolutely. “People who haven’t eaten a lot of chile think it’s all hot. But there are levels of heat and heat shouldn’t be all that you get because then you’re knocking your taste buds out.”

Before taking Santa Fe by storm, Chef Johnny Vee (short for Vollertsen) worked for top restaurants in New York City and launched a bunch of places in Australia, some with a southwestern theme. It was a move that would eventually take him to Santa Fe. Now he’s here full time and just launched his first cook book, Cooking with Johnny Vee. It’s packed with loads of his favorites (check out the Eggplant Adovada—a vegetarian take on a southwestern classic) and a devilish good time (sorry, couldn’t resist).

And drumroll please! One lucky person will win a signed copy of Cooking with Johnny Vee! To enter, just answer this question:

What is Chef Johnny’s full last name?

Email answers to sales@loschileros.com by November 7th. Include your full name and address. We’ll pick one winner randomly from everyone who writes in. The winner will be announced next Friday in The Chile Trail. And if you don’t win, don’t sulk. You can buy a copy and Johnny will sign it for you (what a nice boy!). Just email him at: chefjohnnyee@aol.com.

Chef Johnny was kind enough to share his fabulous Quick Cured Smoked Salmon recipe. Here’s what he had to say about it:

“The Swedes knew that curing salmon in a mixture of sugar and course salt, not only preserved the prized fish but by adding sprigs of dill to the curing process, the fish was delicious thin-sliced. I gave the traditional cure mixture a Santa Fe spin by adding Caribe Chile flakes that give it a kick and by using brown sugar instead of white which gives it an almost barbecue flavor when the fish is smoked. If you don’t smoke the salmon, leave the cure on for 3 days and then slice it and serve as gravlax.”

QUICK CURED SMOKED SALMON WITH HOT MUSTARD SAUCE

(For 2 pounds of salmon.)

1/4 cup kosher salt
3/4 cup dark brown sugar
4 teaspoons Los Chileros Red Caribe Chile
fresh ground pepper
2 pounds of fresh salmon, whole sides

1. Check salmon for pin bones and remove with needle-nose pliers or tweezers.

2. In a large, non-reactive, oblong pan, mix salt and sugar until well blended and spread it out into a shape that will facilitate the most contact to the salmon flesh. Sprinkle Caribe Chile over salt/sugar mixture.

3. Season salmon with fresh ground pepper and lay it flesh side down, onto prepared cure mixture.

4. Cover with plastic wrap and place a similarly sized pan directly onto salmon. Weigh down pan with canned goods or brick and refrigerate for 24 hours.

5. Remove salmon from the marinade and gently scrape of a majority of the marinade.

6. Prepare the smoker and smoke salmon for 8-12 minutes, depending on the thickness of the flesh*, in a smoker using a mild wood (alder, apple, pecan, cherry).

7. Serve at room temperature with Hot Mustard Sauce.

8. Alternatively Salmon can be grilled over prepared fire. Place flesh side down and grill for 4 minutes then flip and finish skin side down. Grill until flesh comes away from the skin easily. Serve with Mustard Sauce.

*8 minutes for salmon that is up to 1 inch thick
10 minutes for up to 2 inches thick
12 minutes for thicker than 2 inches

HOT MUSTARD SAUCE

1/2 cup sour cream
1/4 cup hot mustard, any style such as Chinese or Wasabi,
1 garlic clove, minced
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon fresh ground pepper
1 scallion, root end removed, minced
1 teaspoon fresh lime juice

1. Mix all ingredients together in a medium bowl and chill for one hour.

Travel notes: Milan top 6

Posted on by
2

Here’s the challenge…we’ve asked some of our favourite bloggers and foodie aficionados to share their top six foodie finds for a city. They got to choose the city, we got the inside scoop. What a deal!

Choosing a city was no sweat for our first guest blogger, Charlotte Moore. American-born Charlotte has lived in Milano (that’s Milan to you and me) for 15 years and knows it like the back of her mano (ok enough with the Italian). Charlotte is an advertising creative director/art director (check out her work at charlottemoore.it) and blogs on The Daily Cure where she charts her love affair with Italy and France with a healthy dose of food thrown in for good measure.

Stay tuned in upcoming weeks for more Travel Notes from The Chile Trail.


Ciao tutti! Welcome to my city. Milano is, in many regards, an over-grown town waiting to be discovered, and chock full of hidden treasures. Especially gastronomical ones. If you live here, you end up searching hard for your favorite places (the ones that make you feel happy to be here), and when you find them, you feel like they belong to you and to no one else. So, these are my neighborhood secrets. Shhhh.

1. La Macelleria di Walter Sirtori, Via Paolo Sarpi 27. If you’re a meat eater, you just died and went to heaven. Actually, you’re in an Italian butchershop sitting in the middle of Milan’s Chinatown, but let’s not be sticklers for detail. Here you’ll find an awe-inspiring range of meats and poultries—plus rare bits, bobs and preparations—that always surprise with their sheer outer and inner beauty. This is food handled with love, care and knowledge. Features: organic meats; ready-to-cook meatballs, loaves, and cutlets; all possible Italian salumi; and fresh pastas, salsas and sughi. Not to mention string shopping bags for who’s come empty-handed, and goose eggs when the farmer has any available. And its all exquisitely wrapped up in an atmostphere that makes you wish you had to wait in line just a little bit longer.

2. Trattoria Ottimofiore, Via Bramante 26. A little deeper into China town, and off to the right, you’ll find this tiny piece of Sicily. Mamma’s often a bit brusque with the costumers, but she’s always right, and after eating her pasta alle sarde (a Sicilian preparation featuring fresh sardines, wild fennel, pinenuts, raisons and breadcrumbs) you’d forgive her anything. There’s a beautiful table of mixed antipasti (my favorites: eggplants crusted in almonds and an exquisitely agrodolce—sweet and sour—caponata). Reserve a table; the place draws a crowd particularly on weekend nights when a guitarist is known to materialize in the already packed eatery.

3. Hodeidah, Via Piero della Francesca 8. Coffee bar and purveyor of fine coffee (they roast their own), teas from around the world (green, red, black, white, South African, Japanese, Chinese, unsmoked and smoked), hard to find biscuits, and chocolates (including their own and several varieties from Modena). Step into the rich, authentic aroma of roasting coffee beans, time gone by and an attention to the finest, granular-sized, details. Belly up to the bar and ask for the standards (cappucini, espressi or marocchini) or venture forth with an espresso con panna. During the warmer months, you’ll do well to order granita al caffe con panna sotto e sopra, caffe scecherato (the italianization of “shakerato” i.e. shaken) or an iced infusion of sotto boschi (wild woodland berries). You pay in the back, which is a trap of sorts, as the cash register is surrounded by a closet-sized dreamland of floor-to-ceiling candies, fudges, jellies and sourballs. Browse with a basket and fill it to your heart’s delight.

4. Vegetables. I know. That’s not a specific restaurant, supplier or location. Suffice it to say that Milan, like most of Italy, knows how to “do” vegetables. There are fresh fruit and vegetable vendors everywhere, and while some are certainly better than others, they are for the most part exquisite everywhere. My personal favorite is probably All’Ortolana in Via Canonica, 59. Run by a crew of youngish men (the owners are brothers) this shop overwhelms with fresh options, in a polite, no frills, rough and tumble style (they’re too busy to be otherwise). Aside from supplying many restaurants (Ottimofiore is one of them), they’ll fill your bags, baskets and carts with the best that Campania, Sicily, and Liguria have to offer at terribly reasonable prices. They also deliver. By bicycle. What else?

Otherwise, hit an open air market (I recommended the market of Via Vincenzo Monti on Friday morning) or a covered, communal marketplace (I recommend the market in Piazza Wagner). They are all over the city, every day of the week (schedule here), and the produce is out of this world. Well, actually, it isn’t. It’s mostly from right here, right now (whatever season “now” happens to be) which is precisely what makes it so amazing. Please note, these markets have excellent fresh fish, meat and cheeses as well. Bring big bags, or even better, a wheeled cart.

It is worth noting that 75% of what I’ve learned to prepare in Italy, I’ve learned from butchers, seafood vendors and the fruit & veg shopowners. Shop without a list. Let yourself be inspired. And ask questions. The results are delicious.

5. Panini have become popular the world over. But, here, at De Santis (Corso Magenta, 9) you’ll come face to face with the originals. A tiny, narrow restaurant furnished with what looks like monks’ benches and tables, the De Santis menu features complex and creative combinations of meats, cheeses, salsas and, yes, chiles that are designed to wow. Sandwiches as delicious as the traditional atmosphere in which they are served. Worth waiting for the door to open. The place fills up in a Milanese minute.

6. I’m a bit restaurant heavy here, but it’s hard not to be. We’ve talked where to buy fruits, veg and meat for the home chef, but let’s face it. Sometimes you just have to let someone else do the cooking. When I wish I could board a plane for some other Italian city, but I can’t, I go to Da Silvano (via Londonio 22). This gets my vote for seafood and pasta served in an authentic Italian (Tuscan/Sardinian) atmosphere that always transports me away from the here and now. Career waiters treat you and themselves with dignity. Regulars sit at their regular tables. Tuna tartar is hand chopped to order. And female customers are greatly outnumbered at lunch-hour, which gives it a charming, almost fraternal vibe. Not to miss: the cooked, mixed seafood antipasti.

Chile Portrait: Green Chiles

Posted on by
4

I have a recurring dream – ok, nightmare. In my ‘dream’, I wake up to a world that is devoid of all meaning…a world in which all that is good is gone…a world in which I no longer have the will to carry on. Yes…you got it. A world without green chile. I told you it was bad, didn’t I? When this happens, I dash to the kitchen, throw open the cabinets and reassure myself that It’s OK. We still have green chile..

This isn’t just my bad dream. It’s the bad dream of about 99.9% of the people in New Mexico. And let’s face it, you don’t want to know the other .1% The reason? We’re mad about chile. Over the top, crazy like a coyote, mad.

We’ve been growing chile for hundreds of years and it’s our top agricultural crop (cue, inspirational music and fluttering of state flags). Now don’t get me wrong. There are lots of chiles out there that are green (think green jalapenos, poblanos – you get the idea). But in New Mexico, when we say green chile, we mean the stuff we grow right here, either in Northern New Mexico or down south around Hatch.

And every August our hearts start to flutter when we see the first chile roasters pop up along every roadside, parking lot, farmer’s market and backyard around.

The place goes bonkers. The black wire cages fed by propane start turning and we stand there mesmerized. It’s the smell. It’s impossible to describe how intoxicating it is. And all the more so because we know it won’t last.

What’s the difference between green and red chile? Time (and taste). Green chile is harvested when it’s ‘unripe’ (which sounds a bit mean like someone introducing you as so-and-so’s younger brother or sister). But the point is that if green chile is left on the plant, it will turn red and develop a different flavor. Now that’s not a bad thing because red chile is fabulous. But it does mean that for a short window of time, New Mexico’s farmers are harvesting this year’s green chile crop, then it’s over until next year.

Luckily, roasted green chile dries like a dream (this time a good dream). All you have to do is rehydrate it and it’s back in business. You can even pick up that elusive chile roaster aroma. So go back to bed…even when the roasters have been stored away for another year, you can still get your green chile fix.

GREEN CHILE CROQUE MONSIEUR

You’ve got to hand it to the French. They take ham and cheese and give it a fancy-pants name like Croque Monsieur and suddenly it sounds all oh-la-la. But you know what? A Croque Monsieur is pretty incredible because it’s more than a grilled ham and cheese sandwich. The egg batter makes it puff up slightly, so it’s all crispy on the outside and yummy on the inside. And this version is even better because the green chile gives it a nice kick.

Serves 2, or one very hungry person.

1 large egg
1 ½ tbsp milk
¼ tsp Los Chileros Chile Molido Powder
Salt
4 slices of brioche or a nice white country loaf
Thinly sliced cheddar cheese – enough to cover four slices of bread
Sliced ham – enough to cover two slices of bread
Los Chileros New Mexico Green Chile Whole, rehydrated*
2 tbsp butter

Whisk the egg, milk, red chile powder and salt to season in a shallow bowl, large enough to comfortably fit the bread. Place 2 slices of bread on the counter. Top with a layer of cheese. Cover the cheese with strips of green chile, then the ham and finish off with another layer of cheese. Place another slice of bread on top and set aside. Repeat with the other two slices of bread so you have two sandwiches. Dip the sandwiches in the egg batter. Heat the butter in the skillet. When the butter has melted and is slightly sizzling (but not burning!) add the sandwiches and cook on both sides until nicely browned. Slice each sandwich in half and serve.

*You’ll probably have leftover green chile but what a great problem to have! Dice it up and toss it in chicken soup. Throw some on a tortilla with grilled veggies, a dollop of guacamole and crumbled goat’s cheese. Pop it on a burger. Puree it and make a sauce. What are you waiting for? Get going!

Wanted. Used school bus.

Posted on by
2

Willing to travel for the right one. Promise a new life of fun and adventure.

If we’d written a want ad, that’s what it would have said. But who needs an ad when there’s eBay? So when we got this mad idea that Los Chileros de Nuevo Mexico, our chile and Southwestern food company, needed a school bus (note: needed not merely wanted) we hit the world’s favorite second hand shop.

And we came up with a recently retired yellow school bus in Branson, Missouri. Chuck – the shark – handled bidding and we got it. We flew out and drove back. Let’s just say that miles-per-gallon is not the best-selling-feature of our bus.

A little paint (okay, a lot) and a new-look interior and voila – the Los Chileros bus was ready to hit the trail. We’ve gotten some eye rolls and strange looks (could there be some bus envy going on?) but you know what? It always gets noticed.

Which is how we feel about chile. Chile takes the ordinary and makes it extraordinary. The ho-hum becomes hee-hee. It adds some spice – literally – to life. Not convinced? Try our Chile Roasted Potatoes and see how the humble spud gets a new lease on life with a healthy dash of chile. Then keep your eye out for our bus. Who knows…we might be coming to your town.

CHILE ROASTED POTATOES

Serves 6-8, with the slight possibility of leftovers

2 pounds new potatoes, skin on
5-6 tbsp olive oil
Sea salt
1-2 tsp Los Chileros Organic New Mexico Red Chile Powder
8 garlic cloves, unpeeled
1 bay leaf

Preheat oven to 400°F. If the potatoes are small, leave whole. If a bit larger cut into halves or quarters. Toss them in a baking dish with the olive oil and the other ingredients. Roast for about 30-40 minutes or until the potatoes are tender. Check for seasoning (you can add more salt and chile powder if you want). Remove the bay leaf. Place the potatoes and garlic cloves in a serving dish. Let your lucky guests remove the garlic from its skin and enjoy with the chile potatoes.