Agave

I have a new found appreciation for Mexican cuisine. Part of this can be attributed to Rick Bayless' win on Top Chef Masters. I have seen him on TV for years, and always found him pretentious and awkward, telling me to make recipes using ingredients I would never be able to find where I lived. I think Top Chef Masters is a much better medium for him than his own cooking show. I still found him pretentious, but in a thoughtful, academic way that was legitimately interesting, and rendered charming by his (at least appearance of) complete enthusiasm and sincerity. What major American chef admits on national TV that it took him twenty years to learn how to make one sauce? Charming. And, of course, my foray into Taco Truck cuisine in August contributed to my new appreciation. Fresh food with a beautiful complexity sounds like a recipe for yummy to me, and it is exactly what I learned good Mexican food should be.

So, I will admit that I went to Agave on Friday with a moderate expectation. It is, after all, a joint venture between the owner of Moxie, always a good standby for good pricey food, and the owner of DeLeon, whose name is legendary here on the Spokane food scene. Surely those two owners would be enough to overcome the odor of failure lingering from the previous tenants of the space, Blue Fish. I actually really liked Blue Fish for a couple of years, but the quality went down hill precipitously towards the end, and then they made things worse with that ill conceived asian bistro disaster.

I was wrong. Now, there is a lot to like at Agave. The service was prompt, professional, and friendly. Some of the food was outstanding; indeed, the smoked paprika grilled prawns rates as one of the best shrimp dishes I have ever had. Ever. It was spicy and smoky and grilled, the shrimp were tender but with a nice char, the salad underneath was fresh and well dressed, and it all came together in a harmonious, exciting dish. I ordered the mahi mahi tacos, where too the fish was perfectly cooked and wonderfully spiced. And my margarita a delight, with fresh citrus and clear tequila presence. Plus, it came in a glass the size of a chalice, which is not a bad thing.

So, what went wrong? Why was it that Jeremy and I both walked out feeling no desire to revisit Agave? Was it that the food wasn't consistently exiting? That was certainly the case. The rice was underseasoned and underflavored, as were the ranchero beans. Jeremy's wild boar chile verde was an awful lot of gammy funk with very little other flavor. The fresh fried chips were excellent, but the salsa bordered on having too much raw garlic. But the food wasn't really it. Even very good restaurants can have less successful dishes, and usually one dish as good as those prawns would be enough to bring me back.

I believe the entire problem with Agave is that they didn't de-Blue Fish enough. They didn't paint (I believe). They didn't remove, or apparently clean, the blue-lit fish tank in the entrance. They didn't rethink the awkward table floor plan. Blue Fish was a dated hipster doofus establishment when it opened, and the passing years have exacerbated the dated and the doofus part of the establishment, and Agave shouldn't be hipster anyway. Adding some Latin knickknacks and some of the ugliest curtains I have ever seen just isn't enough to give Agave it's own personality and vibe.

There's an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, season four, when the misunderstood but psychotic Faith switches bodies with our hero Buffy. Badness ensues. That's what Agave feels like: like a good restaurant shoved into a completely different restaurant's body. It just isn't right. It's a shame, because I think Agave deserves better.

In the meantime, since the wild boar chile verde is a disappointment, here is a recipe for a Pork and Green Chile stew that, I think, makes up for it:

2-3 lbs trimmed pork butt or lean country style ribs, or some other fatty pork (you can do it with a lean pork, but the meat won't be as tender at the end), but into 1 to 2 inch chunks

6 poblano (also called pasillo) chiles, roasted, peeled, seeded and ribbed, and cut into 1 inch squares*

1 jalopeno, also roasted, peeled, seeded, ribbed, and chopped. *

6-10 tomatillos, roasted and chopped*

1 large onion, chopped

1 28 ounce can crushed tomatoes

3 large garlic cloves, chopped

1 tbls dried oregano

1 tbls cumin

about 3 cups chicken broth (canned is okay)

flour, salt, pepper, oil

1) coat the meat in flour, salt and pepper, and fry in a couple of tbls of oil until the meat is well browned on all sides. Do in batches so as not to crowd your pan.

2) in the same pan, add a little more oil if needed, and saute onions until they are soft and browned. Then add everything else, including the meat. It should be quite a loose soup at this point. Simmer uncovered for about two hours, adding more stock if it looks like it is drying out. You know it's done when the meat is really tender and the sauce is thick.

3) Serve -- I like some grated cheddar and a little sour cream, but any of the usual chili toppings would be fine.

*Preparing these roasted ingredients is a little time consuming, but not difficult. I have a grill built into my stove, and I can get a good char all over the peppers in about ten minutes, but your could do this on a conventional grill, under a broiler or in a heavy duty skillet, or even over a gas burner using tongs. The only trick is to get the entire surface of the peppers charred, and then stick them in a bag until they are cool enough to handle. The charred skin will just rub off, and the you can open up the peppers and rinse out the seeds without losing flavor. The tomatillos just need to be softened up and browned a little bit, then chopped up.

Green Tomatoes

Spokane is exceptionally lovely in the fall, and this fall has been exceptionally lovely, even by Spokane standards. The sky is crystal blue, the air is crisp, and the nights, alas, the nights are cold. As in frosty. Which is, as we all know, very bad for tomato plants. It held off for a good long time, long enough for a few more of my mammoth heirloom tomatoes to ripen to red, purple, and black deliciousness, but as always happens here in the land of the short growing season, frost has found many, many big tomatoes still green on the plant. This used to make me very sad, until I discovered how yummy green tomatoes are. Now I get excited when I get to go out and harvest a big bowl of fruit. Besides, look how beautiful they are!

Given my personal history, I have to start with fried green tomatoes (don't get the joke? Read the book!), although I have to admit that I didn't make these for ages because I wasn't sure if the tomatoes were green because they were unripe, or if it was a special recipe for green heirloom tomatoes. Sometimes a little pretentiousness can be a bad thing. Just to clarify, we are talking unripe tomatoes. Just slice the tomatoes fairly thick, coat in cornmeal or breadcrumbs, and fry in the oil of your choice. I think bacon grease is traditional (it is a southern recipe, after all), but I prefer olive oil. The only hint I have: don't fry them in too hot a pan. You want to give the tomatoes themselves a chance to cook and soften before the coating burns. Otherwise, you are just eating unripe tomatoes. Wild Sage often has a beautiful fried green tomato appetizer, served with crab, bacon, and remoulade (i.e. really good homemade tartar sauce. If if you are going to make tartar sauce at home, shouldn't you get to reward yourself with a fancy french name for it?) Another good reason to go to Wild Sage.

Last year, I had a bumper crop of green cherry tomatoes, so I pickled them. I got this idea from some local pickles I found up at Green Bluff, in the Walter's store. Mine were better -- eventually. Here's what I did: I packed small canning jars with green cherry tomatoes, fresh dill, dried red peppers, and chunks of garlic -- about half a medium sized clove per chunk. I put in a lot of the seasoning agents, since I like my pickles strong and spicy. Then I made up a batch of pickling brine, which involved boiling the following ingredients together for a few minutes:

2 cups white vinegar

1/2 cup water

3 tbls kosher salt

1/4 cup sugar

3 tbls pickling spice

1 tbls mustard seeds

1 tbls black peppercorns

Once this mixture cooled, I poured it over the tomatoes and then tightened the lids. You don't have to worry about sealing them, because nothing noxious can grow in that much acid. Then, I put them in the refrigerator until Christmas. I tried some earlier, but they weren't pickled yet. In fact, they seemed to reach their height of goodness around May.

The absolute best thing I know how to do with green tomatoes is green tomato curry. I adapted this recipe from my beloved Mangoes and Curry Leaves. It's rich and spicy and easy and so, so good. Really, I like this one a lot.

Ingredients:

2 tbls vegetable oil

1/2 an onion, chopped

2 green serrano peppers, seeded and chopped (unless you like heat, in which case, don't seed them)

6-8 fresh or frozen curry leaves (you can find these frozen at Bollywood on Sprague. They seem to keep eternally in the freezer, and are definitely worth the trip)

1/4 tsp fenugreek, powder or seed

pinch of turmeric

About 2 cups green or blushing tomatoes, coarsely chopped

2 tsp salt

1 can coconut milk (which may be high in saturated fats, but is apparently also very high in anti-oxidents, so this is even a healthy recipe!)

Heat the oil, and add onion, chilis, and curry leaves. Cook until onion is soft and the edges have browned. Add everything else but the coconut milk, and cook over medium heat for about fifteen minutes, until the tomatoes have broken down. Add the coconut milk (you might not want to add some of the watery stuff at the bottom of the can if your curry looks too thin). Cook about five minutes, uncovered, or until the curry is thick. It should be the consistency of applesauce, with some chunks still in it.

This stuff is great over rice. It's great next to roasted or grilled meat. It's great with a spoon. I heat up leftovers at work, and people start to stick their noses out of their offices.

A final word: unlike their ripe brethren, green tomatoes freeze. Just put them in ziplock bags, and you can have green tomato curry into the winter. Or, if you lack will power, until about next month.

Any other favorite green tomato recipes out there?