Red Vinegar

Sweet and spicy beef, kimchi, edamame, and a cucumber salsa make these Korean inspired nachos addictive.

Three juicy delicious burgers that have beer in all of the ingredients!

These ribs are rubbed with a garam masala, smoked for 3 hours, and then slathered with a vindaloo inspired BBQ sauce.

These tacos are sweet and spicy and go great with Sabra Salsa.

These tots are flavored from the inside out with a spicy vindaloo paste.

Because I work at a burrito shop that has great tacos, I don’t usually make them at home. The craving came up the other day though for plantain tacos so I whipped some up! They were much different than what we have at work so I was happy that I had made them. I highly recommend these as a filling vegetarian dinner and something new to eat next week!

Mexican chorizo is not really that common in New England, in fact, most people around here think you are talking about the much more common portuguese variety when you say the name. At my burrito shop, we used to get fresh Mexican chorizo that was delicious, but then the supplier kept sending the portuguese stuff by mistake and it was starting to annoy me. We are a burrito shop man! One day we ran out of the mexican kind so I whipped up a quick homemade version after skimming a few recipes. It came out ok, but everyone REALLY liked the stuff we were bringing in much better. This reaction made me really want to make chorizo better than the store bought one, so I tested recipe after recipe for several months until I got it right! Now we not only save money on it, but everyone loves the stuff! If you happen to live close enough to Cafe Burrito, come in and try some on a burrito or taco (it’s especially good on our breakfast burritos), But if not, here is the super easy recipe to make some on your own!

Roger Mooking has a commercial on Cooking Channel where he whips together a tasty looking simple plantain gratin and it inspired me to make a more intricate deeper version of a plantain casserole. I wanted lots of layers of tasty things that I think go with plantains, like black beans, cojita cheese, onions, tomato, and habanero. I also mixed in a little quinoa just to add a little more substance and protein to the veggie dish. The whole thing turned out great, but make sure you use really ripe plantains. Most of mine were nice and yellow, but a few still had a little green to them and they were very noticeable and we mostly ate around them.

A super spicy and tangy sweet sauce makes a unique glaze for this ham.

As with most families these days, I have some vegetarians in mine. Being the conscious cook, I decided to try and make a vegetarian version of baked beans that would be so delicious that no one would miss the pork or even realize something was different. I based the beans off a hearty Italian tomato sauce, and added every non-meat based version of umami I could think of. Within 5 minutes of getting to the annual 4th of July party, my vegetarian aunt reminded me that she hates beans. Oh well! These beans were worth it anyways.

While I was traveling I caught up on some food magazines that I had been neglecting when I was so busy. I really enjoyed busting through some Lucky Peach, Food and Wine, and Bon Appetite, and this dish is sort of a mashup of dishes I saw in all of the publications. As you can imagine, they were all summer themed issues, and this bean salad would go perfectly as a side on any BBQ spread.

Also known as Triple B soup! Doing soup Mondays this winter has been great. I really enjoyed coming up with new soup ideas week after week. Since the beginning of 2013, I have been eating pretty healthy, and the weekly soups have been a fun chance to try mixing new veggies in different ways. This is going to be the last soup Monday of the season, but you can be sure it will be back when the weather turns chilly come November.