Sunday cookery

Thanks to my diligent use of my debit card as a Visa I found myself with a $250 Best Buy gift card which I blew on a new camera. What this means is the self-indulgent food photography index of this blog is about to go through the roof. I'm still learning how to get the new camera to do what I want it to do so some of these photos of my late Sunday lunch aren't as nice as I was hoping.

I started out with a wet rub of two finely chopped ancho chilis, the juice of half a lime, a teaspoon of kosher salt and a half teaspoon of garlic powder. The ancho wasn't quite dry enough when I chopped it last night so I let it dry overnight then gave it another good chop before making the paste. Next time I'll go a little lighter on the lime juice, too. The rub was a bit tart for my liking.


I then generously applied the rub to both sides of a couple of thin turkey breast cutlets. Why turkey breast cutlets? Well, I hadn't cooked meat at home for a long time so when I went to the store on Friday I was thinking pork chops but then these little things caught my eye. I guess they kind of look like pork chops.

While the cutlets were hanging out in the fridge post-rub I got to preparing one of my sides. I've been reading books about chefs lately so I decided to get kind of fancy with this preparation. I had an avocado and an Ataulfo mango that were about the same size. I diced the mango while keeping one half of the peel intact. While I was letting the mango macerate in a little lime juice, a pinch of salt and a half-teaspoon of sugar I sliced the avocado in half and removed the pit. I put one half aside and seared the other half on high heat in my cast-iron skillet for about a minute. The fat content kept the avocado from sticking but it got a nice caramelization. I then removed that half avocado from its skin, slid it into the mango peel and filled the pit cavity with the diced mango.

Then I seared the cutlets on very high heat for about a minute on each side. Since the cutlets were so thin this was enough to cook them to a safe internal temperature without drying them out. I then sliced the other half of the avocado and put those slices between the two cutlets.

The finished plate, avomango and ancho-lime seared turkey cutlets with avocado served with some spicy cole slaw I made a couple of nights ago, and the magazine close up are below.