Chim Chimeny Chim Chim Churri
I dropped by my folks' place for dinner on Memorial Day. It was pretty awesome. When I'm on my own, sadly, I tend to do more "prepare food" than "cooking" - the distinction being that in the first case, I'm basically performing several variations on "boil water and put something in it" than actually going from fresh ingredients and combining them and fussing over them. The Memorial Day dinner, though, was awesome. We started with a Sunset article about California chef Guy Fieri, then tweaked a bit. We used the steak and grilled corn from the article plus my mother's potato salad. For afters, watermelon and pineapple. I want to reproduce one particular chunk of the meal: the chimichurri sauce. I'm still going through the extra, and it's great. I think at least tixen, tracerj, and circuit_four want to have this under their culinary hats.
Four-Herb Chimichurri
How much: Makes half a cup to a cup.
How long: 10 minutes if you're confident, twice that if you're reading the recipe for the first time and fiddling around like I was.
How difficult: Quite easy.
What you need:
Don't get too hung up on chopping and mincing while you're getting all that together: the preparation is to throw all the solid ingredients into a food processor, pulse until it's about the consistency of thick salsa, then add the liquid ingredients and give it a little more time to combine.
Making it on Monday, I wanted it on the spicy side and I wanted enough for there to be leftovers, so I used heaping half-cups of cilantro-parsley-basil (mostly from our garden, yay!), plus extra bell pepper and onion. The easy way to turn up the spiciness would be to add more chile powder, which is what Sunset recommended. Instead of doing that, I added red pepper flakes (not quite the same thing, but really close, I know), and a pinch of powdered ginger (because I am super-predictable that way). I got what I wanted.
Doing it again, I'd consider adding tomatoes to just make a straightforward dipping salsa out of this, or adding a lot of avocado and some lime juice to make it into a spicy guacamole. Either way, I'm loving this stuff.
Four-Herb Chimichurri
How much: Makes half a cup to a cup.
How long: 10 minutes if you're confident, twice that if you're reading the recipe for the first time and fiddling around like I was.
How difficult: Quite easy.
What you need:
- 4 chopped garlic cloves
- 1/2 cup cilantro leaves
- 1/2 cup parsley leaves
- 6 large basil leaves
- 1 tablespoon oregano leaves
- 2 tablespoons minced white onion
- 2 tablespoons minced red bell pepper
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
- 1 teaspoon ancho chile powder
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 2 tablespoons red-wine vinegar
Don't get too hung up on chopping and mincing while you're getting all that together: the preparation is to throw all the solid ingredients into a food processor, pulse until it's about the consistency of thick salsa, then add the liquid ingredients and give it a little more time to combine.
Making it on Monday, I wanted it on the spicy side and I wanted enough for there to be leftovers, so I used heaping half-cups of cilantro-parsley-basil (mostly from our garden, yay!), plus extra bell pepper and onion. The easy way to turn up the spiciness would be to add more chile powder, which is what Sunset recommended. Instead of doing that, I added red pepper flakes (not quite the same thing, but really close, I know), and a pinch of powdered ginger (because I am super-predictable that way). I got what I wanted.
Doing it again, I'd consider adding tomatoes to just make a straightforward dipping salsa out of this, or adding a lot of avocado and some lime juice to make it into a spicy guacamole. Either way, I'm loving this stuff.