#3 Huevos Rancheros

I was happy to see huevos rancheros on the list.  After spotting versions of it on many a yuppie brunch menu over the years — with mango salsa, on multi-grain toast, with baked tofu — I thought, I’d boil this dish down to its authentic self.  Huevos rancheros was originally served on Mexican ranches to the farmhands as a second breakfast — after eating a lighter meal at dawn.  I found this recipe on simplyrecipes.com that fulfilled my purist requirement: just eggs, corn tortillas and homemade salsa.

The ingredients were a case for GrandMart, the most extensive and inexpensive ethnic market in the DC area. GrandMart does Korean, Chinese, North African and, most importantly in this case, Mexican and Central American. The best part of GrandMart is its amazing selection of fruits and veggies. (Try it for excellent lychees every July.) This includes every imaginable type of pepper, from the scorching chipotles in adobe sauce (one of my favorite ingredients) to mild anaheims. They also have a variety of corn tortillas; I got mine thick and handmade.  

The recipes is easy.  Saute the salsa, brown the tortillas and fry an egg. Be careful not to add too many chipotles, or your salsa will end up — like ours did  – a scorching mix guaranteed to give you an unpleasant case of 10 am heartburn. 

#4 Steak Tartare

I was not so excited about steak tartare. I knew the dish, a gourmet treat in northern and eastern Europe, simply as raw beef.  We found this recipe  online that called for tenderloin. In the comments, the readers hashed out the consequences of eating uncooked meat. “Danger,” proclaimed one commenter. Just a “risk,” wrote another. I figure that we have immune systems and stomach acid for reason. So, in an attempt to get the highest-quality beef, we headed back to Whole Foods.  Buying from Shoppers, Giant or, even worse, GrandMart would be asking for trouble.

The half pound of grass-feed beef tenderloin set us back $13. We cut up the beef into tiny pieces. Many recipes call for ground beef, but a meat grinder is the one kitchen gadget we lack. We served it with a sauce of mustard, capers, anchovies, egg yolk and Worcestershire and rye toast points. I wish I could say it was delicious.

The steak tartare tasted like a wet sponge dipped in mustard. Sigh. What a waste of the highest quality meat I’ve ever purchased. We barely made a dent in the beef, so I packed it away for use in stir fry. What else can you do with with tiny bits of beef? It will be my gourmet chow mein. 

However, I can vouch for Whole Food’s beef.  I woke up the next morning food poisoning free. 

Coming up next: Pho. We try the best place in the DC area.

The next food on the list is nettle tea. We looked for tea made from the leaves of the stinging nettle in Whole Foods (this list is turning into a Whole Foods advertisement) and The Vitamin Shoppe, the ubiquitous store that I believed only sold un-FDA approved bodybuilding supplements. Nettle tea is also available on Amazon.com.

I wandered around Whole Foods until I found the tea aisle. The racks were filled with a boggling variety of teas touting a boggling array of promises. There are teas for colds, for weight loss, for pregnancy, for getting pregnant, for better memory, better skin, better hair and better moods — just to name a few. 

The closest thing I could find to nettle tea was Allegro Fine Tea’s “Glowing and Flowing.” Although the main ingredient is green tea, nettle is second on the list. (I didn’t want to hold up my blogging by ordering away fro the food.) The name frightened me; the packet described drinking the tea as “spring cleaning for your body.” But at least it’s preferable to the conception tea, which was the only other one containing the super herb.

When I got home and began to research nettle tea, I found that the plant’s promises are equal to that of Whole Food’s entire tea aisle. According to one website, nettle tea fights coughs, tuberculosis, asthma, arthritis, rheumatism, tendonitis, intestinal disorders, skin problems, allergies and urinary tract infections.

However, Foodmatters.tv boils down nettle tea’s charms to one thing: It gets your bowels moving.  ”The nettle leaves increase the thyroid function, increase metabolism and releases mucus in the colon allowing for the flushing of excess wastes,” says the site.

Sure, it tastes like grass clippings, but maybe it’s a way to “flush out” this weekend’s gravy binge. But, a few days and a few cups later, it, um, hasn’t yielded any noticeable results. 

Next up: steak tartar. Impatient? Check out last week’s post on venison. 

A friend recently forwarded me the list of the 100 foods that every omnivore should eat in his or lifetime.  The list, compiled by a British food blogger at Very Good Taste, runs from the ridiculous (road kill) to the standard (a Big Mac meal) to the pricey (Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant).

 Scanning down the document, I knew it was my chance to join the herds of bloggers who decide to take on a task and blog it to completion. Yes, I’m sure you’ve seen the blogs or read the books or seen the movies of those trying to, say, cook all of Julie Child’s recipes, have sex every day for a year or live a waste-free life. So, for the next year – or however longs it takes – we will eat from one to 100. I will try to go in order, but I’m making no promises.  

Venison

First up, is something I’ve long wanted to try: venison.

It took me two weeks to track down venison. At Yelpers’ recommendation, I tried Whole Foods and then the expansive gourmet grocery Wegman’s (there’s one in Fairfax and off 95 in Woodbridge). Whole Foods told me that they stopped carrying venison because they “we’re sure where our vendor was getting it from.” Wegman’s did have it. But at about $30 a pound, I decided to save my funds for food I knew tasted good.

Fortunately, we went to West Virginia last weekend – a state where everyone apparently keeps a steak (or side) of venison in the freezer. In hunting season – the height of which is next week – school kids have vacation so they can join their parents in the woods with a rifle.  

Considering this, I’m not too surprised I was served venison not once – but twice – in one weekend.  

The first was the tenderloin cooked with honey and truffle oil. It was a bit like pork, dry and dense, but not unpleasant. The second time, we had a leg – or at least that’s what I think it was judging from the bone.  It was stringy like jerky. After a few bites, when the hostess wasn’t looking, it went under the table for the dog.  She enjoyed it.

Next up: Nettle tea.