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| Title picture: recipe at bottom |
Last Tuesday1
marked the
end of my self-imposed exile from meat – for lunch, I had stir-fry, and threw
in some bacon just because I could – and it tasted awesome. There is something
about the chewy, meaty, wholesome flavor of meat that simply cannot be replicated,
no matter how intricate the synthetic substitute.
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| Hard-boiled quail eggs: like chicken eggs, but a miniature version that tastes way better |
I made it through the week eating relatively well, compared
to my prior forays into eating vegetarian – I deep-fried tofu (possibly
removing all health benefits attached with said protein), made hard-boiled
quail eggs to go with my stir-fry (a favorite of mine growing up), and had a
lot of salads.
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| Quail egg stir-fry with deep fried tofu over rice |
One of the biggest issues I have with eating vegetarian is
how bland a lot of the food is – without that bite of meat to complement a
meal, it often seems that my plate is missing something integral to a dining
experience.
To combat that perceived blandness, I decided to make my own
chipotle aioli, so that I could slather the sauce on everything I ate over the
next few days. Having always wanted to make my own, I finally got the chance
when I found that the local Dominick’s actually has an international aisle,
with a Mexican subsection carrying the ever-elusive chipotle in adobo sauce.
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| Little bit lumpy, but tasty nonetheless |
Chipotle Aioli
(makes approx. ½ cup/ 4 oz.):
3 whole chipotle peppers in adobo, diced and (optional)
de-seeded2
2 tsp. adobo sauce
Mayo, to taste (approx. 1/3 cup – or a few good squirts of
your bottle of mayo)
2 cloves garlic, minced
Juice of half a lime
Start by adding chipotle peppers, adobo sauce, mayo, and
lime juice to a bowl and mixing together with a spoon. Taste and add mayo as
necessary to achieve a heat level to your liking. For aesthetic appeal and a
smokier-tasting aioli, more adobo sauce can be added as necessary to darken the
color of your chipotle aioli (from a light orange to more of a burnt orange
color). I prefer to do this step
without garlic just so there aren’t as many flavors to sift through while
trying to decipher just how spicy the finished product will be.
If you want a smooth sauce, add your chipotle mayo
concoction to a blender/ food processor, add the minced garlic, and blend. This
helps if you want to store your aioli in a squeeze bottle for easy dispensing.
If you don’t mind a chunkier sauce, you can leave it as is in the bowl and mix
in the garlic and call it a day. Just don’t do what I did – which was leave it
chunky and then try and squeeze it out of a bottle. All that happened was bits
of chipotle peppers kept jamming the nozzle of my squeeze bottle, resulting in
my cursing loudly and stabbing at the offending nozzle-clogger with the tines
of my fork.
The good news is, despite the immense difficulty I had with
storing and dispensing the aioli, the finished product still tasted great. The
garlic gives it a punch separate from the heat that the peppers provide – also,
by adding garlic to this recipe, you can officially call it a chipotle aioli,
which is far cooler sounding than its lamer garlic-less cousin chipotle mayo3. Even though the aioli I ended up with
had enough heat to make grown men cry for mercy, I still used it in abundance
over the week. I had them with skillet potatoes; as a salad dressing; with
eggs; as a sauce for my Portobello mushroom spinach wrap (recipe below). The
uses for chipotle aioli are endless – anything that needs an infusion of spicy
garlicky flavor will benefit form having this added to the dish.
Portobello spinach mushroom wrap:
1 whole Portobello mushroom, sliced lengthwise
1 handful fresh spinach
1 tomato, diced (or, substitute a few spoonfuls of canned
diced tomatoes)
Olive oil, for sautéing
1 tbsp. chipotle aioli
In a sauté pan, heat olive oil over medium heat. Add
Portobello mushrooms – sauté for about three minutes, until they start becoming
tender. Add spinach and tomatoes – continue to sauté until spinach wilts, about
five to seven minutes in all.
Heat the tortilla in a microwave for 30 seconds – alternatively, use a skillet over medium-low flame. Either of these should
serve to soften the wrap for easier assembly of the wrap.
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| Start with a layer of sliced, sauteed portobellos |
Assemble: Over the tortilla, start with a layer of Portobello
mushrooms. Top with spinach and tomato mixture – finish by drizzling chipotle
aioli over the filling of your wrap. Wrap4,
eat, have a meal without meat for a rare change!
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| End by heaping everything else on there! |
1. It’s a
miracle that I’m even writing this post today – my productivity is shockingly
low when you consider an average day for me consists of sitting in my desk
chair/ armchair/ bed/ couch for 5 hours to prepare for my daily run, and then
nursing my phantom running injuries for the next 7 hours while playing video
games before going back to bed.↩
2. For a milder
aioli, de-seed the peppers; for an aioli that produces a brain numbing burn
followed by an intense need to pour milk down your throat as fast as you can
gulp, leave seeds in. Obviously I left the seeds in. The resulting product was
incredibly tasty, but so fiery that my eyes would well up and I’d break into a
sweat trying to eat my salad with the aioli as dressing.↩
3. The word
aioli derives its meaning from Spanish for “oil with garlic” – here, the oil is
present in mayonnaise.↩
4. There are no
photos of my actually wrapped wrap because clearly it fell apart immediately
and I wolfed the whole thing down like a sloppy oversized taco with Portobello
mushrooms and chipotle aioli dripping everywhere onto my plate before I
shoveled the remnants into the gaping maw known as my mouth.↩
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