2/7/2012 - Food and lizards

I had every intention, a couple of days ago, to make some sausage and peppers for dinner. I'm very susceptible to written treatises on food and I just finished reading a book by John Irving called "Last Night In Twisted River". One of the protagonists was a cook. At one point in the book, he whipped up some peppers and sausages for a drunk friend. It sounded so good I just had to make some. I was lucky enough to find some kielbasa as well as another sausage of some type at Mega Foods one day. Normally, about the only sausage you find down here is chorizo or turkey hot dogs so I was pretty stoked to find real sausage.

However, on the day I planned to cook it, Mike and Melissa from s/v Tortue stopped by on their way to town.

"We're going down to see the shrimp ladies. Do you want us to pick you up anything?"

Well, what could we say? Of course we want you to pick us up something. We'll take a kilo of the medium large shrimps, without heads. They returned later in the afternoon with our kilo of shrimp. Cost all of $100 (about $7.69 US for 2.2 pounds of headless shrimp). Now, you and I both know that shrimp does not keep well. The sausages would have to wait.

I decided to cook up a version of camarones al mojo de ajo (garlic shrimp), since that's the way we like it best. I found a recipe on the internet that sounded good and easy. Along with the shrimp, I cooked up some Mexican rice. We ate like kings.

The rice was damn near as good as the shrimp. The thing with Mexican rice is that you first saute the rice in a little oil until the grains start to get a nice golden brown color. Then add chicken broth instead of water along with some chopped onions, garlic, and peppers. Then just cook it until it's done.

So, we feasted on shrimps and rice (very, very nice...) and had enough left over to make shrimp fried rice the next night. So, looks like the sausages will have to wait again.

Now, it's not like we always have everything on hand to make all these dishes. Fortunately, there's a store not too far away. Santa Fe is like a very large convenience store. Not nearly the inventory of a supermarket, but way more than you typical convenience store. But the best part about a trip to Santa Fe is that it's a walk that basically never leaves a marina. What's so good about that? Well, always having the water on one side of you makes for some interesting sightseeing while walking. Sure, there are the big ol' boats but the real draw are the iguanas. That's right, iguanas. They love to hang out on the sun-drenched rocks of the rip-rap along the edge of the marina.

It's fun to see just how many we can see on a typical walk to the store.

Today we saw a record-setting FIFTEEN iguanas between Siempre Sabado and Santa Fe. This guy was right up on the sidewalk and gave us a pretty good show.

But, you didn't come here to read about iguanas, did you? Not unless I'm cooking them up in a tasty BBQ sauce anyway. No, you want to know what we had for dinner tonight. I know you do. So here it is.

After the shrimps and rice, we had shrimp fried rice the next day. And guess, what? There's still enough left to have it again! That means we'll get 3 meals for 2 from 1 kilo of shrimp. At $100(Mx)/kilo, that comes out to $16.67 pesos per plate or about $1.28(US).

But, we couldn't face the final day's shrimp fried rice ration tonight. Too much shrimp in too short a timespan. So, tonight I finally got to try making my sausage and peppers. I found a likely-looking recipe called "Sausage and Peppers in Spicy Ragu on Polenta". Well, I skipped the polenta and cooked up some shell macaroni instead. Other than that, I followed the recipe at least in spirit.

Started with a big pan of peppers, onions, and garlic.

Add some tomato paste, red wine, and the sausages and then serve over hot, buttered noodles.

Dress it up with a little Parmesan cheese and you're good to go.

BTW, if you like food as much as we like food, check out this website. It's one of the places that I waste much of my time when I'm not cooking or eating.