Winter Holiday Dinner 2015

I had not made any holiday meals since Thanksgiving 2011. In the past I cooked using either my ex’s family’s recipes or those belonging to my family. I decided that for 2015 I would create my on traditions. I have wanted to make pipián sauce for years, specifically pipián rojo de pepitas. Pipián rojo de pepitas is a red pipián sauce using pumpkin seeds which are known as pepitas in Spanish. I first found this in a jar from Doña Maria brand sauces. I loved the heat and the depth of flavor. I used to have a cookbook with a pipián de pepitas recipe, but it was lost.

                                                        

When I decided to go looking for Mexican cuisine cookbooks, one had to have a version of that recipe. That is why I bought 1,000 Mexican Recipes by Marge Poore. It did not hurt it had other recipes I liked. This was going to be my gravy for the winter holiday dinner. I decided if I was making pipián de pepitas, I would go with Mexican or Mexican inspired dishes. Since I made this on Christmas Eve, December 24, 2015, and ate it again on Christmas Day, I refer to it a winter holiday as opposed to the specific day.

Pipián Rojo de Pepitas 

I made the pipián rojo de pepitas twice, once following the recipe and the other swapping the dried anchos for the dried guajillos. I preferred the guajillo version. The ancho version was tasty, but it had no kick or heat. I found a pipián rojo using guajillos, but it was a sesame seed version. To go with the season, I wanted pumpkin seed pipián. Pipián is a sauce using seeds or nuts and is a form of Mexican mole sauce.

Since I was just cooking for me, I only planned on making a turkey breast not a whole bird. I was going to adjust the recipe accordingly. I found this wonderful roasted turkey recipe. It used a guajillo chile pepper marinade and roasted the bird in banana leaves. After watching a few Mexican cuisine cooking/food shows I was intrigued about using guajillos. Guajillos were easy to find. I had to go to an Asian market to find the banana leaves. This turkey was most succulent turkey I have had in long time.

Turkey Breast Roasted in Banana Leaves

As my side dish I decided to make esquites. Esquites is a Mexican roasted corn salad. It is related to elotes, a Mexican street food. The main difference between the two dishes is that elotes is corn on the cob and esquites is corn off the corn. Both have lime juice, chile powders, mayonnaise, cotija cheese, cilantro, and of course corn. I found a great recipe online. However next time I will tone down the lime juice just a tad.

Esquites

I found a recipe for Masa Stuffing online. Masa is the flour used to make corn tortillas and tamales. I changed the recipe since I was already making a corn side dish. I replaced corn with canned diced tomatoes and black beans. This recipe also needed more water or broth, because it resulted in being too dry. The pipián sauce and cheese were used to moisten the stuffing after making the dish.  

Masa Stuffing

This was a fantastic winter holiday meal. I loved all the dishes, some needed some tweaks. That is always the case with new recipes. I will include links to the online recipes. 

Roast Turkey with Pipian Sauce

Esquites (Mexican Corn Salad)

Masa Stuffing

10 Layer Salad

This is another family recipe that comes from my Grandma Mac. This is originally called 7 Layer Salad, but when I made this for the first time since coming back to cooking it had 10 layers. There is cooking involved, one needs to cook up the bacon. You could use pre-made bacon bit, but I prefer fresh. The layers can and do vary between who cooks it.

In my mother’s family this is a winter holiday dish. Someone makes it for the family gathering. I was that person for the longest time. I tailored it to the tastes of my ex, my parents, my brother, and my brother’s family. It usually has peas in it, I stopped using those. I added olives.

10 Layer Salad

The typical ingredients are lettuce, cabbage, celery, onions, shredded carrots, peas, sliced black olives, Miracle Whip, sugar, dried minced onion flakes, bell peppers, cheddar cheese, and bacon bits. Grandma Mac added crab (canned, fresh lump, or imitation works) or small salad (or bay) shrimp from time to time. This is another dish I made frequently in the old life. It was perfect in the summer, when cold salads that fill you up are great. You could also use cooked chunks of chicken breast. To make it spicy you could add sriracha or any other hot sauce to the Miracle Whip dressing. Colby and Colby Jack are good alternatives to cheddar.

I made this on December 21, 2015. I did not use enough shrimp. It still was tasty. I purposely chose to make this close to the winter holidays. It brings back a good deal of fond holiday memories to me. This is a great dish and I am glad to share it with everyone.

7 Layer Salad

1 quart or long glass dish

1 head of shredded lettuce fill pan to ¾ to ½ inch thick

1 cup of dice celery

1 green bell pepper sliced

10 oz of frozen green peas

1 purple onion sliced

2 cup of Miracle Whip

1 tablespoon sugar

1 ½ to 2 cups of shredded Cheddar cheese

1 cup of bacon bits (diced cooked bacon works too)

Layer the lettuce, celery, bell pepper, peas, and onions in that order. Mix Miracle whip and sugar together. Layer that next then Cheese and bacon. Put in refrigerator and let set 4- 8 hours.

Variations

Lettuce, 1 cup of shredded carrots, peas, 1 cup of shredded purple cabbage, 2 cans of shrimp or crab (both can or imitation works too), Miracle Whip with on 2 Tablespoons of mince/ flaked dry onion and two teaspoons of sugar. Top that off with cheese.

Rick’s Variations

Lettuce, purple cabbage, celery, diced onions, shredded carrots, Miracle Whip with sugar and dried onion flakes, cheese, bacon and 2 cans sliced olives I know this is a nine layer version but I like it. The ten layer version add shrimp and/or crab before dressing (Miracle Whip, sugar & flaked onion).

Rice Noodles in Thai Peanut Sauce

I discovered this dish in the early to mid 1990’s. It was a cold dish I found in various grocery store deli counters. Their version more than likely used standard wheat noodles. This is the dish that led to my love of Thai peanut sauce and satay sauce. It has usually been spicy and served cold. Originally when I made this I bought pre-made sauces and various Asian wheat noodles found in the refrigerated sections of the grocery store next to the tofu.

I have to be honest; I have a peanut butter addiction. As a kid I loved peanut butter sandwiches. I am not talking about peanut butter and jelly or jam, but straight on just peanut butter sandwiches. I grew up on all natural peanut butters that meant peanuts and salt. The typical peanut butters like Skippy and Jif are too sweet in my opinion. Mind you, I used to eat peanut butter and honey. I controlled how sweet it was. My love of peanut butter extends to sweets, specifically candy bars. My biggest weaknesses are Hershey’s 5^th Avenues and Hershey’s Whatchamacallits. I do not care for Butterfingers; they taste like artificial peanut butter to me.

Rice Noodles in Thai Peanut Sauce  

I have always wanted to make my own and I decided to do so in December 2105. I looked around at various recipes. I found one I wanted to try online. On December 11, 2015, I did my first batch. I used all natural peanut butter, but not the unsalted variety. This recipe had two salty elements, soy sauce and fish sauce. It was a little too salty, due to the salted peanut butter with the fish sauce and soy sauce. It was less salty when mixed with the rice noodles. That was the other thing I did, I used rice noodle sticks. I am still trying to trim down my wheat use. Another issue was the ginger was a bit too prominent in this version.

In January 2016, I wanted to make another attempt. This batch used a peanut sauce recipe with fewer ingredients. It called for red curry paste. This dish was at my ceiling of heat tolerance. Two tablespoons of red curry paste per recipe was too much and I doubled the batch so I used four tablespoons. That was a little strong. I used an unsalted peanut butter this time. I am developing my own recipe, using both previous recipes and a satay recipe I found. We will see where this takes me.

Thai Peanut Sauce
Easy Thai Peanut Sauce Recipe
The Best Thai Peanut Sauce

Rick’s Veggie Pizza

In December 2015, I had been continuing my addition of more vegetarian dishes to my diet. I wanted pizza, so I decided to make a vegetable AKA veggie pizza. I still had quarts of my homemade marinara. As to what vegetables, that was the question. Among the vegetables I put on my pizza are spinach, sun dried tomatoes, diced tomatoes, onions, mushrooms (yes, I know actually they are fungi), zucchini, scallions (green onions), bell peppers, and black olives. I decided to go with mushrooms, black olives, pickled jalapeños, and green bell peppers.

On December 4, 2015, I made my Veggie Pizza. I once again used Mama Mary’s thin crust pizza shells. I layered the olive oil, marinara sauce, mozzarella, mushrooms, bell peppers, olives jalapeños, more mozzarella, and Parmesan. The amount of veggies led to the first pie being a little soggy on the crust. I cooked it longer on the second pie.

Rick’s Veggie Pizza

I had been working on my tolerance for spicy, hence why the jalapeños appeared on this pizza. There already was a small amount of red pepper flakes in the sauce. Other possible vegetables are Ortega chiles, roasted Anaheims, roasted poblanos, pepperoncini peppers, banana peppers, cucumbers, and squash blossoms.

I will make a pie like this or use pesto sauce with the Veggies. It is a healthy alternative to the meat heavy pizzas. I have not experimented with creamy garlic sauce as the base sauce for a pizza. I would need to find a recipe I liked.