Yucatecan salad gone awry

It's been pretty steamy in Toronto recently so we went with a cold dinner this week.  Back to Fiesta at Rick's for Yucatecan Shredded Steak Salad with Habanero and Cilantro (p. 139) along with guacamole and roasted tomatillo salsa.  But we're starting with dessert, Caramelized Mango Tart with Mexican Chocolate and Pepitas.  Mad props to Mark, one of my oldest and dearest friends, and his wife Niveen for bringing not only a fine French wine, but legitimately bringing it from France.

We've usually got about a dozen mangoes doing their thing on the window sill.  We buy them by the case which often has mixed benefits.  You get a pile of mangoes at a good price, but they usually all come ripe at the same time.  So we're always looking for ways to put a pile of ripe mangoes to good use.

The chocolates.  In the foreground is a square of bittersweet baking chocolate and behind it is a wheel of "Mexican Chocolate" as it was sold to us.  Rick recommends Ibarra brand but this was what we found.  According to my extremely quick and dirty research, Mexican chocolate is sold with the intent of being turned into hot chocolate, as per the ancient tradition. Neat!

Action shot!  We picked up hulled pumpkin seeds (pepitas) and weren't really certain if they had been toasted and figured, hey, a little more toasting never hurt anybody.  The cast iron lends pretty well to flinging nuts and seeds around while roasting so I couldn't resist taking this photo.

Now I like peanut butter.  Especially all natural peanut butter.  But almond butter is like someone took all of the good stuff out of peanut butter, and put way more awesome stuff in.  Unfortunately, you pay for that awesomeness; this tiny jar was expensive.

Puff pastry rolled out, chocolate spread around, and caramelized mangoes hanging out on top.   Oven bound for about 25 minutes.  With that done we were onto dinner.

Tomatillos being roasted up in the cast iron.  I put a little bit of oil in the bottom just to make sure that the charring of the tomatillo wasn't going to affect the seasoning on my pan.  It turned out to be a little too much oil so I ended up patting off the excess with a paper towel.  Back in April we made the Smokey Chipotle Salsa with Pan Roasted Tomatillo and used our Green Pan to roast the tomatillos.  It required lots elbow grease to get it clean after that.  I think it worked a little better with the cast iron.

We used a flank steak, when the recipe called for a skirt steak.  Once again, boiling meat does not for nice pictures make.  So after boiling with some onions and garlic, you let it cool, and then shred it into coarse strands.  Pretty straight forward stuff.  Make sure you do this well early, it boils for an hour and then has to cool for just about as long.

Here's the damager.  One habanero, half way through being cut up finely.  I managed to avoid rubbing my eyes, but I did manage to get it all over my nose and upper lip.  Wow.  Next time I'm going to wear a pair of nitrile gloves.  And a hazmat outfit.  The habanero goes into the bowl of shredded beef along with some sliced red onion, cilantro and a whack of lime juice to just chill out for a while.

Another colourful place setting.  The glasses are actually souvenirs from Mexico. Along with the Fiestaware dishes, it's a wonder we didn't start Friday Night Mexican sooner.

Salad o'clock! Rick says if warm tortillas are more your bag (which is true for us) you can just heap things on a corn tortilla.  So the beef is sitting on a small patch of romaine; flanked by roasted tomatillo salsa and guacamole.  Blue corn chips are there for colour and to act as a vehicle for the guac and salsa.

We tarted up this dessert with some ice cream, to attack the ambient heat a little more.  I took about three or four photos of this dish before I got it right and there was a visible change in the shape of the ice cream between them.  No fooling.  It was hot.  But the dessert was bang on.  It's not as heavy as you would think it would be, and the Mexican chocolate really stands out well.