Barbacoa beef cheeks with green sauce and salsa

I wandered around Stirling Farmers Market on Sunday and headed over to the caravan which always has some great quality meat, and this day was no different. I picked up some chunky beef cheeks for $12, enough to feed quite a few, it was a bargain! I wasn't really that keen on making a stew, it's too wintery for this weather. What could I do with this tough, sinewy cut?

I decided that I would go down the Mexican route, and slow cook the meat, in a heady mix of spices until it was falling apart, and make tacos. Now if tacos aren't summery and vibrant then what is?

I chose this recipe from Food 52 for Barbacoa Beef Cheeks, but adapted it to suit what I have in the cupboard... Looking up Barbacoa, I found out that it's actually a way of cooking meat that originated in the Caribbean and Mexico, and it means to barbeque, usually in a coal pit. Pork cooked this way is called carnitas, which you'll see in many a Mexican restaurant. But interestingly, I found that a typical Mexican barbacoa cooks the meats without any sauces or spices, rather adds them once they're cooked. However there are variations, and the Arawak people, who lived in the Caribbean, are thought to be the first to use this method of cooking, and they add the sauces and spices before cooking as a means to preserve the meat, and this is the method the recipe calls for. It ends up saucy from the cooking juices, and richly spiced, which can be forked apart and piled onto a taco! The recipe includes a teaspoon of instant coffee, which gives the dish a richness and really works together with the smokey characters that the chipotle and smoked paprika give.

It's traditionally served with mole or salsa, and so I decided to have both!

I wanted a tasty, tangy sauce to counter the rich, unctuous (that's a wanky food word, but really, I can't think of another word for it!) meat, and so I threw together a bright green sauce of rocket, spring onions, garlic oil, cumin, chilli, tomato, vinegar and cayenne pepper into the blender. What came out was, to quote Nigel Slater, such a bright tasting sauce. I would have preferred to have lemon/lime instead of vinegar, and garlic instead of garlic oil but some days, you run out of things in the house! Today was one of those days. Room for improvement yes, but it was still great. Isn't that what cooking is about? An experiment here and there, finding out what works and making it better!

The salsa I served it with has got to be one of the simplest sides you can serve. It goes with any meat. Really. Roast beef, grilled fish, or slow roasted barbacoa beef! Slice up a couple of tomatoes, spring onions, and if you like, cucumber. Add a generous pinch of salt to draw out the moisture, and a shlug of white wine vinegar. That's it. It's delicious straight away, or after you let the juices develop into a tangy dressing - I make this aaaall the time! 

This whole meal requires very little effort, just a little forward planning! This cut of meat is cheap and all the ingredients are easy to find, you'll probably have them all already anyway! The chipotle we found at a specialist spice shop at Coventry Market. We served our meal with corn wraps - in hindsight, get something sturdier, like actual tortillas, you need something to hold onto the juicy contents without splitting!!

Barbacoa Beef Cheeks

Ingredients
1kg beef cheeks

4 cloves garlic

1 chipoltle chilli (soaked or zapped in water in the mincrowave)

1 tbsp honey

2 tsp cumin

1 tsp smoked paprika

1 handful fresh rocket

1 tsp instant coffee

Salt and pepper

Olive oil

1 lemon/lime

Method

1) Place all the ingredients aside from the beef and the lemon/lime into a blender/mortar and pestle and mix until you get a loose paste.

2) Trim the beef cheeks of any excess fat and sinew, then marinate the beef, covered, in the paste overnight.

3) Place the beef in an ovenproof dish with all the marinade, and roast slowly  for 5-6 hours on 100C. Make sure you cover the meat up with foil or a lid, otherwise it will dry out. Turn the beef every now and again (not the end of the world though if you can't). You can also use a slow cooker, but I have not tried this.

4) When there is about an hour to go, turn the oven up to about 150C and cook until the meat is tender and the sauce has thickened.

5) Take the meat out and let it rest while you prepare the other sauces etc. When it has cooled slightly, use 2 forks to tear the meat apart and coat generously in the cooking juices. Squeeze the juice of a lemon (to taste) over the meat before serving.

6) Serve with tortillas, mole, salsa, avocado, and some greens.

La Cholita - Northbridge

A week or so ago I won 4 tickets to see Super Night Shot at Studio Underground at the State Theater of WA as part of the Perth International Arts Festival, which was pretty awesome - free night out! The tickets were worth $50 each so I was pretty stoked to have won them! I asked Carolanne (of Carolannes Kitchen) and Mr T to come out with us, and we decided that we'd better go and have something to eat first. It started at 8:30 and after all, one mustn't go into the theater without filling ones belly with all manner of delicious things! We decided that since we were in Northbridge, we'd have to try the much hyped La Cholita.

I'd read that you need to get there early to get a table, as if you wait for later on in the night its going to be a 2 hour wait! There's no way Id ever wait that long for a table anywhere, so S went there after work at about 5ish to score us a place in the waiting area. You can order drinks, corn chips with dip, entrees and tostadas in the waiting area, to tide you over until you get into the eating area. We ordered Pico de Gallo, a sangria ($6) and a Dos Equis beer while we waited for our dining companions to arrive.

S didn't like the Dos Equis at all, it had no flavour - it was like drinking beer flavoured water! Wont be bothering with that beer anymore! The Pico de Gallo was nice - chopped tomatoes, onions, coriander, with a hint of chilli and a generous squeeze of lime. The corn chips were slightly denser than I'd like but still tasty. I would have liked to have tried to guacamole but S doesn't really like it much so I left that one!


When we were ready (they won't seat you in the eating area until your whole party has arrived), we were seated at a cool bench by the bar, and our drinks orders taken. I liked the sangria enough to get 500ml of it, which was $15 - pretty good value! I found it to be very fruity and easy to drink, there wasn't as much of a red wine taste as Im used to - but on a hot, humid day, it was icy cold and went down a treat!

S and I ended up ordering the wood fired Black Angus beef with chimmichurri, a pulled pork and pineapple taco, a beef cheek taco, mexican rice and tortillas. Carolanne and Mr T got the street corn, guacamole,  Mole Negro chicken, wood fired pork hock, and refried beans. When you order they bring out 4 sauces for you to use with your meals, which was a nice touch! There was salsa verde, chilli, fresh limes and I think yoghurt and mayo.

I managed to snag one of their pieces of corn and it was delicious! I loved it. Blackened on the outside, with a creamy dressing and some spices that none of us could put our fingers on! They were great, Id love to try and recreate these at home!

Our beef came out first, probably 10mins before anyone else got anything. It wasn't great that we had to wait for our sides to come out, and the beef had started to go a bit cold by that stage - we ate some when it was hot anyway though of course! It was delicious, tender, charred on the outside and the chimmichurri was great. Gave it the extra boost of flavour that a well cooked steak pairs so well with. It was a lot chunkier than any chimmichurri I've had before but I still enjoyed it.

We eventually got our sides and tacos, and the others got theirs too. The pork hock looked so awesome, meltingly tender and falling off the bone. I had a little piece and it was yummy - but we all agreed that the huge layer of fat over it would have been put to far  better use had they made crackling out of it... waste of pork fat!! We also tried their mole negro chicken, and while the others really liked it and said it was their fave, S and I didn't like the sauce. It was really nutty, and I just didn't really enjoy that flavour paired with the chicken so much.

Our tacos were nice, they're really small and really only good for one person (tho S and I shared ours!). The pork and pineapple was nice but I would have liked to have gotten way more flavour from the pineapple - I couldn't taste it nearly as much as I wanted to. The pork was nice, juicy with a good flavour. The beef cheek was S's fave, though I found it a little dry. We used the sauces they gave us but I thought they gave us so little of each one that I was paranoid about using too much of it. I enjoyed them but they didn't blow my mind really.

Our rice was alright, quite dry but had alot of flavour. It was really warmly spiced with something like cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg or something similar. It was a very small serve though and would feed 2 ppl max, the bowl would have been the size of my palm and maybe an inch n a bit deep - so not a huge serve! But you didn't need much of it anyway... Our tortillas were nice, and come 3 to a serving. Home made, slightly thicker than what you might be used to from supermarkets, but tasty.

The boys then ordered a tequila (one of their 67 varieties!), which comes with a shot of sangrita, a non alcoholic tomato based chaser which cuts all the harshness out of the spirit. The boys were pretty blown away by how it erased the burn and left them with a totally clean palate! Their tequilas range from $8 - $120 so theres something there for you!


Mr T also ordered the mango, lime and chilli tart, which I snaffled a bite from. The base was light and flakey, and the lime topping was sweet and sharp, with a tiny sprinkle of chilli on top. There was some fresh mango sliced up on the side as well which Mr T said worked really well with the tart.


We spent $240 between 4 of us, including drinks, so its not the cheapest night out. The atmosphere is great there, though a little loud, not the place for a first date perhaps! Its decorated with all kinds of kitschy knick knacks, and the glass panels in the floor are pretty cool too! The staff were all very friendly though sometimes they took a while to get to your table, you pretty much have to flag one down if you want something.


I'd go back, but I wouldn't race back. Partially because you have to get there so early to get a table, partially because while the food was nice, it didn't blow me away. 

Santa Fe - Subiaco

After another session transporting our things to the new house, my bf and I decided to skip Leederville, and head to Subiaco for dinner instead. We wandered around for a while, but since we had driven past Santa Fe, one mention of Mexican food and he was sold.

It was a rainy sunday night, and it was about 7pm so it wasnt busy at all, but we were seated no worries and had some water bought out. The menu looked good, we were having trouble deciding, should I get the pork chimichanga? Or the paella? And for entree? Chicken wings, chilli poppers, albondegas?? I had trouble deciding because it all looked really good.


We decided upon the chorizo espanola, cooked in ranchero sauce and wine, with olives and potatoes, served on a sizzling skillet with tortillas for entree. This came out fairly quickly, sizzling as promised! It looked good, but a big portion size for an entree... We soon found out that we really needed something like sour cream or guacamole to tone this down. It wasnt overly hot but way overspiced, the sauce was overreduced and its flavour was far too concentrated and rich. It was a really heavy entree, too salty and too much. We drank an entire bottle of water while eating it. We asked for another bottle of water but didnt get one...

For mains I decided on the New Mexico Paella, which had chicken, snapper, squid, prawns and chorizo cooked with arborio rice, a medley of vegetables and their special Santa Fe spice mix, with crispy tortillas. Bf ordered the Santa Fe Famous pork ribs, slow roasted until tender, basted with either homemade chipotle bbq sauce, or sticky bourbon glaze, served with your choice of fries, garlic mash or corn on the cob. He went for the bbq sauce and chips.

Our meals came out, again, fairly quickly, and the serving sizes were generous. Unfortunately it just meant more of the paella. It wasnt nice. The fish served on top tasted like it had been cooked on the same grill as everything else, and didnt really taste much like fish anymore. The chicken was quite dry, but I ate that anyway. The prawns were somehow the nicest part of the meal I think, I thought they'd get lost in the, again, overspiced and rich flavours in the paella but they managed it. Maybe I liked them because they muted the flavour of the rice... The Santa Fe spice mix was too much. It overpowered everything, and made all the elements of the dish just taste like a spoonful of spice mix. The crispy tortillas were a nice textural change to the stodgy rice, however they tasted a little like old oil, which wasn't pleasant. I didnt eat that much of it, I left about half of it.

The ribs were quite a big serve as well, lotsa ribs, lotsa chips, about 3 lettuce leaves. The ribs weren't cooked in a sauce, it was poured over it at the end instead. They had obviously been slow cooked for a really long time, the meat literally just fell off the bones. Knife and fork not necessary at all! They definately needed to be cleaned up better though, it seemed like scrappy butchering - there was still alot of slippery slidey bits that just peeled off the underside of the ribs, as well as bloodlines and things like that... as tasty as they were, for the price you pay, you expect them to be finished better than that.

The service was fine all night, though one of the waitresses interrupted conversation about what to order, to ask if we were ready to order, which I found strange. We asked for more water but didnt get it. I also thought the fact that they only served cleanskins and that they were $7 a glass? The decor was pretty standard for a mexican place, nothing to report there, however I felt the tables were a bit squished in.

I wonder how often people come to Santa Fe when they DONT have all the specials and happy hours? The bill came to almost $80, which I thought was overpriced for what we got. I probably wouldnt be back, if I want mexican food, Ill head to Zapatas!