January 6-9, 2011, Tucson

Ok, so, the kids and I took a trip down to Tucson. Home to my father, senseless violence, and Mexican food. We have decent Mexican here in Flagstaff too, but all our good eats are hole-in-the-wall taquerias, whereas Tucson has upscale Mexican like Poca Cosa, my favorite restaurant ever. Anyway, Tucson really excels when it comes to markets, it's fantastic for home chefs. I usually come home with groceries from Roma's imports, the 17th Street market, and the Sunday farmer's market. This weekend had specific culinary goals, deep-fry a turkey and make tamales. Both were accomplished. Now for the breakdown:
We arrived Thursday to pasta with meat sauce. It was good, my dad adds heavy cream to his, which was really a nice touch. Though I don't think it is something I will do on a regular basis with my own. We found out that his wife is a picky-er eater than my children. The real discovery was in the salad, which had this AMAZING vinegar in the dressing. It was a balsamic, and thick and sweet as honey. I was told it was a gift. Whomever gives such things can send some to me anytime, in fact I have a birthday next week.
Friday was busy with outdoor activity, also the turkey was still defrosting. I ran, we hiked, it was sunny and warm in Tucson. Perfect desert weather, just lovely. We decided to go out for dinner, Mexican specifically. I requested a casual family type place we used to go to when I was a kid. Instead I was lured into Teresa's Mosaic Café. It was just ok, it got good reviews and had buzz around it, but I was unimpressed. Perhaps I am spoiled. The best part was the fresh tortillas, those were excellent. Though, not as flaky and thin as the ones from the tortillería here in Flag, I like my tortillas like my pastry, flaky over gummy. We had some guacamole to start with, it was just ok. The salsa, however, was really good. The kids ate a massive cheese crisp, the kind I have only ever seen in Tucson. I had a sampler, a tamale, an enchilada, and a taco. It was just ok. The meat in the taco was too dry, the enchilada sauce was bland, and the tamale was a little on the heavy side. It was edible, but nothing spectacular. When I go out I like to eat better than I do at home, sometimes we don't get there. My dad gave his tamales favorable reviews. Caitlin's mole was awful, harsh and unbalanced it screamed out for a fat to meld the flavors. That's what we get for going to the foodie place in the foothills and not the sixty year old family joint on the east side of town. I was disappointed there were no carnitas on the menu. I think they were trying to do a healthy thing, which is fine, but they may be taking it too far.
Saturday we deep fried a turkey. It is remarkably easy. The skin was excellent and the meat was just good. I think brining it would have helped. There's almost no prep, just rub a turkey with a spice rub, and put it in a big vat of hot peanut oil for 40 minutes or so. It was served with blanched green beans, boiled new potatoes, and sunchokes. Good all around. Everything was boiled and tossed with butter and salt, I like to roast my green beans with chili powder, but whatever. In my humble opinion deep frying poultry skin makes everything good. Lucas ate a bit of everything, including several servings of both turkey and green beans. Evert ate a bunch of green beans and potatoes.
Sunday we went to the market, it's nice how Tucson and Flagstaff have opposite seasons for farmer's markets. This means that when my dad and I get together we always have a market to go to. I took home some lettuce, the advent of farmer's markets has made me picky about my lettuce. It must have flavor. Afterward we made tamales, and these were the highlight of the weekend, for me at least. We had already made a chile verde for the filling. You can find the recipe we used here: http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/chile_verde/ the only changes we made were we used roasted hatch chiles in place of the poblanos, and we used five or six of them. We shredded the pork before we put it in the tamales. To make the tamales you soak corn husks, prepare a masa dough, spread the masa on the husks and top with filling, roll the tamales, and steam them. They are so good I have been eating them ever since. Because this was the first time either of us had done this we followed recipes pretty closely, including this one: http://www.chow.com/food-news/55368/tamales-for-the-holidays/ the recipes were good, I would keep the added chiles and next time triple the masa dough.
We also had a ton of chile verde left over. This morning I fried some leftover tortilla (broken into pieces) in oil, then added some chile, I let that heat and then pushed it to the side of the pan. Then I fried an egg, plated the tortilla and chile and put the egg on top. Yum. Next up for the chile is tacos with black beans.