Mexican Style Horchata

My wife and I typically hit up Anna's Taqueria whenever we're in Allston and want a quick, cheap bite to eat. We were in the area the other day and decided to grab lunch there. We each grabbed a super quesadilla with carnitas, and my wife ordered a side of horchata for us to share. I've had horchata a number of times before, but it's been a while and drinking it again the other day reminded me just how much I enjoy it.

When I got home, I found a number of recipes for horchata online. Spanish style horchatas are made from chufa nuts, but they're incredibly hard to find. Almost all of the Mexican style recipes I found called for white rice, water, cinnamon stick, sugar, and milk. These are all ingredients already in my pantry, so I decided to give it a go.

Using my Vitamix, I first blended about a cup of long grain white rice until it was a fine powder.

I emptied the rice powder into a small container and then added about three and a half cups of warm water to it along with one cinnamon stick. I stored this mixture in my fridge for about 24 hours to allow the cinnamon and rice flavor to infuse.

 

After the mixture finished steeping, I removed the cinnamon stick and then blended everything together until smooth. A lot of recipes recommend straining out the rice solids using cheesecloth at this point, but I didn't have any and even the finest strainer I had didn't make any difference. I finally added about a cup of sugar and 2-3 cups of whole milk, stirring until incorporated.

Add a dash of ground cinnamon when serving. Here's the final result again, which was pretty close to Anna's version:

Note: you can add a shot of espresso to the horchata to mix things up and add an interesting spin on the traditional version.

Sous Vide Pork Loin, Five Spice, Hoisin BBQ Sauce, Gailan

This past weekend my wife and I picked up a pork loin from BJ's for around $3 a pound. We decided to go Asian and do a riff on the roast pork you often find at Chinatown BBQ joints. Chinese roast pork, also called "siu yuk" or "sio bak", is typically pork belly that is marinated with Chinese five spice and then roasted to perfection until the skin is crisp.

With the pork loin we purchased, I rubbed the meat all over with Chinese five spice powder and let this sit for about 24 hours in the refrigerator. After coming back home from work tonight, I seasoned the meat with salt and then sous vide it for about an hour and a half at 144 degrees. I have an old school Sous Vide Supreme, but there are many better, cheaper sous vide options available now such as Joule and Anova. After taking the meat out of the immersion circulator, I dried off the exterior of the meat and seared it in a hot pan with some oil.

As I was sous viding the meat, I cooked up some plain white rice and blanched some Chinese broccoli tips in salted boiling water. I also made a quick Asian barbeque sauce of sorts, combining in a small sauce pan a quarter cup of water, a half tablespoon granulated garlic powder, and around 4 tablespoons each of hoisin sauce, ketchup, and honey.

The meat was incredibly tender and moist and had great flavor from the barbeque sauce, which was savory from the hoisin, sweet from the honey, acidic from the ketchup, and fragrant and aromatic from the five spice blend.