Dark Days Week 15: Huevos Rancheros!
Posted by Lauren on 01 Mar 2010 at 01:36 am | Tagged as: Dark Days Challenge 09, eggs
For some reason I got all het up to make some sour cream this week. I followed this recipe, because I didn’t realize Mother Earth News had one too. But they are pretty much the same.
So once I had this sour cream, I froze 3/4 of it but we still needed to use up a half-pint of it that I kept fresh in the fridge. We also have a LOT of eggs (want eggs? email me!!) and Garth loves black beans almost as much as he loves ketchup. So: huevos rancheros, only mostly following the recipe (as usual).
- Black beans from Alvarez Farm (150+ miles, but just barely), simmered for a long time with pre-fried Skagit River Ranch bacon and Laughing Crow Farm onions, and a bay leaf from our farmers’ market.
- Fresh tortillas from the awesome tortilla-maker machine at Central Market! (Now that we have lard we might be making our own tortillas soon!)
- Salsa: onion from Laughing Crow, organic storebought :( tomatoes, homegrown jalapeños, Laughing Crow hot peppers that we dried at home last summer (not sure what variety, but I thought they looked a lot like Bulgarian Carrot peppers). Obviously did not use cilantro, as it is, you know, February.
- Homegrown eggs! as always. Fried in my happy cast iron pan with leftover tasty bacon fat.
- Homemade sour cream with cream from Fresh Breeze dairy, also as always. I used Nancy’s organic full-fat plain yogurt as the starter.
Verdict: YUM. Will definitely be making this again. I usually order this when out for breakfast because I don’t eat meat whose origins are not intimately known to me, and it’s often one of the only vegetarian meals on a breakfast menu. But the addition of the little bit of bacon in the beans is fantastic and adds a nice depth to the whole thing. I also cooked the salsa for a good long while, which made it caramelizey, and neutralized the acids a bit, mellowing it out — though it still had some good heat from the peppers.
Homegrown: eggs, jalapeños
Island-grown: onions, hot peppers, garlic
Local (150 miles): cream for sour cream; bacon; bay leaf
Local (Washington): beans!
Locally-made from unknown ingredients: tortillas!
Unknown, organic: tomatoes :(
[...] at Dropstone Farms takes the brunchy route to local eating with a batch of huevos rancheros. She stacks locally-made tortillas with black beans, home-raised eggs, and home-made sour cream [...]
This is one of my absolute favorite dishes. I always get this if we eat out. So how did your sour cream come out? I tried making it last winter from http://www.cheesemaking.com’s starter and nasty! But I have buttermilk and I have cream so I could try this instead.
I’m totally making this for dinner one night this week. Except I have to make the tortillas since I don’t live near Poulsbo…
This sounds delicious!! I am having a hard time cooking my black beans, but I’ve only been simmering them for about 1 1/2 hours…should I leave them on longer? I would appreciate advice, because I love black beans and NEED to learn how to cook them!
The sour cream turned out well! Not as tangy as storebought, and not as firm either — it was more like a soft butter, which I guess makes sense because it was pretty much like a soft butter that cultured longer instead of being whipped.
I used buttermilk that I saved from cultured butter I had just made, using Nancy’s also. Then after ~18 hours it hadn’t firmed up as much as I wanted, so we put the meal off to the next night and I put a spoonful of yogurt into the sour cream cream also, and put it in the oven on the bread proof (100°) setting. It firmed up quite nicely in there. When I drained it there was very little liquid.
I think I’ll let it culture longer next time, though.
I wonder if any of the other Central Market branches (?) have a tortilla maker? It might be worth a trip out to Poulsbo to stock up, if not. They are SO tasty and soft and delicious. But of course, unknown wheat, etc.
If you have a good recipe, please post! We have a lovely tortilla press but we got discouraged when we tried to use it sans lard.
Sara, I have asked Garth, the beanmaster, to come share how he cooks the beans. I know it usually involves LOTS of simmering. He doesn’t soak them, although I always do, because he can plan 6 hours in advance but not 24.
Hmmm. I’m not fancy with the beans. I put them in a bean pot with some water, some salt, and some fat. Then I stick them in the oven at around 250F for some time. Usually 3-4 hours maybe? I tend to start them long before I’d like to eat them and let them hold in the oven for as many hours as it takes to get the rest of the meal/day finished. The reason I don’t know how long I cook the beans for is that I don’t time it, I just cook them until they seem done.