I am going to start off by saying I love bars! This is no surprise to me considering I have Minnesota blood running through my veins. To spell it out for you, this means I have a genetic pre-disposition to crave and create bars. You can tell by any Midwest church potluck, Minnesota women love making bars. Every event is like a bar baking competition to see who has the most delectable and unique bars, with secret recipes being passed down generation to generation.
Here, today, I will reclaim my Midwestern heritage by the creation of the bar. Only difference being I am going to throw in a little southwest flair, Lime Bars; also, to accompany the bars, fajitas.
To start, we are going to discuss limes. Above is a Persian lime. I don't like these, at all. I refuse to use these for making lime bars because I end up going through all this work to make a bar that I actually dislike, hard to do considering my genetic programming.
Here bigger does not mean better. These are the limes you want, the cute itty bitty ones known as key limes; they are much smaller than the traditional Persian lime. Yes, I understand that technically these are not actually "key" limes because they don't come from the Florida Keys. Whatever, they are listed as key limes in the stores and they are the limes you want. They can be a little trickier to find. Try any of your local grocery stores that cater to the Hispanic population; my favorite is Ranch Market. Even though these limes are harder to find, it is worth it because I find the flavor far less bitter and therefore will devour any food made with these little gems.
The first step for your lime bars is to zest your limes. I have learned the hard way, trying to zest already juiced limes is an exercise in futility. You need 2 tablespoons of zest which means some work considering how tiny these buggers are. I use a micro-planer (shiny metal thing over the bowl) to zest. I recommend finding one of these because they are dead useful for all kinds of cooking. I can't imagine my kitchen without it.
Here is my note on zesting : you only want green! The green part of the skin is where all the yummy flavor is. Once you hit the white stuff, known as pith, it becomes bitter and not the delicious. As you can see from the picture once you hit white stop!!
Now that we have finally zested, we get to juice. A commonly used tool is one of these pointy ridged things that look like a medieval torture device, a reamer. When working with key limes this practically is a torture device. If you use one of these, by the time you are done, your hand will be seriously cramped and tears of frustration will have been running down your face after your 15th lime. Not that I have any personal experience in this matter...
You want one of these bad boys. This juicer is like a gift sent from God. Our own personal blessing that says, "Go forth and juice, make lime bars, and be happy!"
All you do is place half the lime face down (not like I know from experience, again).
Once the lime is in all you have to do is squeeze. It's sheer genius! Note: Since key limes are so small their seeds can easily get stuck in the holes of the juicer. To fix it, just keep a toothpick handy and periodically push the seeds out.
Like I said above, key limes are super tiny and inevitably some of the seeds and pulp will get squeezed through the holes of the juicer. Once you have squeezed all the limes just pour the juice through a fine strainer like this one and it will be beautifully clear of all debris...
like this! See all the extra bits the strainer caught, not good for bars.
Now to the crust!! The recipe I use is from America's Test Kitchen. If you weren't aware, these people are awesome; they are essentially food scientists! They make the recipe up to 100 times using all different methods and ingredients, documenting all the various results, trying to find what works the absolute best. After the conclusion of their lime bar studies, evidence showed that the best lime bars crust was made from animal crackers.
Start by putting 10 oz (I actually use a scale and weigh them, you should get a scale it is the most accurate form of measurement for baking. Professionals use weight when baking, don't you want to be professional and sophisticated too?) in a food processor and use the pulse button to break down the crackers (even though they are really cookies, but whatever). Once they are already broken down, process them until they are evenly fine crumbs, about 10 seconds. Next, add the salt and 6 tablespoons brown sugar to the processor and mix until everything is integrated and happy. Now for the good stuff, take 8 tablespoons melted butter and pour it evenly over the top of the crumbs, like above.
Pulse the butter and crumbs until everything is equally... moist... I know, it's like a naughty word isn't it... moist... hehehe. Anyway your crust is now ready for the pan.
In order for you pan to be ready for your crust and bars you have to make it an aluminum foil sling. How do you do that? Easy! Just take two large pieces of foil; first, lay one piece across the pan the long way and let the extra hang over the ends; then, take the second piece and lay it across the width of the pan with the extra hanging over. Tah dah, foil sling! Give the whole thing a good spritz of non-stick spray and we are ready to rock.
Pour your crumb stuff in the pan and spread it out as evenly as possible. Now you want to press it flat. Easiest way to accomplish that is to use a measuring cup, or regular cup, or anything with a smaller diameter and round bottom and start pressing down, working your way to the edges. When you get it all flat and even, just pop that baby in a 325 oven for 18 to 20 minutes, or till golden. After that, just let it cool so we can add filling, mmmmmm filling.
While it cools you can work on the filling, you amazing multi-tasker .
Start by mushing the room temp cream cheese, 4 oz, and 2 tablespoons lime zest. Don't stop till it's all creamy and thoroughly mixified (yes it's a word! Cooking lingo you know).
When the cream cheese stuff is finally all creamy you can add one of the sweetest pleasures of all time, sweetened condensed milk. This stuff is amazing and you are going to add two cans of it to the cream cheese. Start whisking this dreamy concoction of dairy deliciousness until there is not a lump left in sight.
Once you are absolutely sure you are lump free, add two egg yolks and whisk again till combined. I hope you have strong wrists ;) I know I am being naughty again.
The last thing you have to add to the filling is 1 cup lime juice. Whisk this gently in. Strangely enough everything will get just a little bit thicker during this last step. When you are done, the filling should look like this picture, yummy.
Pour everything on top of your now cool crust and smooth it out so it is all even. Pop this bitch into a 325 oven for 15 to 20 minutes. When it's done the edges will pull away slightly from the pan like in the picture below.
This is the hardest part, you now have to wait. First wait at least 1 1/2 hours until the bars are cool. Then you have to wait another 2 hours while the bars chill in the fridge. I understand this is cruel and unusual, but in the end it is worth it. Just cut them into pieces and serve, or horde for yourself if that's your preference.
Now it's on to fajitas!
First step is to combine all the marinade ingredients in a blender. Here you can see I have my 4 tablespoons olive oil, the juice of 1 orange, and two limes. Notice the handy strainer keeping the ucky bits out of my marinade.
Next into the blender is 3 chipotle peppers in adobo. These come in a can. You will always have extra. A cool thing to do with extras is to chop one up super fine and mix it in with some sour cream, yum! Chipotle cream is fantastic on soup, chili, tacos, and fajitas.
Here is where I deviate from the actual recipe. Originally we are supposed to add 3 tablespoons roughly chopped cilantro. I don't think so, cilantro and I don't get along. It makes me gag. Instead I replace it with flat leaf parsley. Parsley is in the same family as cilantro but has a much milder flavor, thus not making me gag. :)
Into the pot goes 1 teaspoon of salt and cumin. Here is what it looks like before blended.
For my fajitas I will be using skirt steak. Originally this was the preferred meat for the almighty fajita until flank steak swooped in and stole the title. If you noticed I included the label in my picture. This place is awesome!! Because this skirt steak came from The Meat Shop, it is local, grass fed beef. For those of you in the know, grass fed beef is the way to go: supports local farmers, supports small business, is leaner, improves your carbon foot print, is less likely to contaminated with gross bacteria, just better.
Once my marinade was all blended I added it to a bag with my beautiful piece of steak.
Make sure you get as much in there as possible, we don't want to be wasteful now, do we?
Once all the lovely flavor juice is in the bag, squeeze out as much air as possible. Seal the bag and mush the marinade all over the meat to make sure every last centimeter is covered. I always put the bag in a bowl. This is my CYA just in case the bag leaks. No one wants to ruin their fajita experience by having to scrub the fridge.
* Ok, here is the deal. I originally started this post the day I was making all these wonderful goodies. Unfortunately, things started to go very very wrong during the fajita cooking process. After the crisis was over, the sting of failure and frustration was so great that I walked away from the blog with it unfinished. Now that I have had time to heal, I will conclude this epic monstrosity of a blog. Do note however, I will be switching writing styles. Please excuse the bitterness that will inevitably leak through as a I recall this cooking disaster.
This is what you should get after 2 hours of bathing in the marinade. Try to wipe off the extra and let it sit to warm to room temperature while your coals heat up. It is my impression that by letting the meat reach a more even temperature it cooks quicker, and therefore, more evenly on the grill.
If you get bored while waiting for coals you can make yourself more efficient by preparing you fajita vegetables for the grill.
When the coals get good and ready go ahead and take that luscious slab of meat and throw it down. DON'T MOVE IT!! Why? Because, if you just let it sit there you will get those visually appealing grill lines streaking magnificently across your meat. It will end up being a treat for eyes and stomach. Besides, anybody important knows, food tastes better when it looks good. FACT.
Let the meat cook for 4 minutes on one side then go back in there and flip that shit. Now you may be asking yourself, "Hey Jess, where are the grill lines in your picture?" Good question. They are not really there because this is where I had trouble. On this day I tried using a different kind of coals. Allegedly, these natural wood coals are supposed to cook hotter. In my case they might have, but what they really did was just cook shorter. By the time they were ready they had almost lost all their juice and my poor meat just didn't get the good searing it deserved. This shouldn't happen to you though.
Let the other side get its 4 minutes too. Pull the meat off and go tent it (basically wrap or cover it) in aluminum foil. Just let the meat rest while you grill the veggies. This is good because it lets all the tasty juices settle back into the meat. This means that when you cut into it the juice stays in the meat more instead of leaking out all over your cutting board and shamefully going to waste.
I don't have any more pictures of veggies cooking or anything else because the coals going cold. Also I didn't show pictures of the meat cut because it was far too raw, stupid coals, and I had to rescue it by cooking it under the broiler in the oven.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the recipes and I hope you try them.
I apologize now, I am not writing in the lime bar recipe separate right now. I have it saved in another document that I am currently unable to reach right now. As much as I love all of my readers (Eric) I am not going to type the whole thing by hand from the paper copy I have sitting next to me. What I will do is post the full recipe, without all the pictures, later. All the measurements should be with the pictures anyway, along with all the steps, it will just be harder for you to know everything you need. Please forgive me.
