Besito Mexican Kitchen and Agave Lounge (Huntington, NY)

Besito is sort of a jewel among jewels in downtown Huntington, NY on Long Island. J and I spent the entire day there on Sunday, and found literally dozens of restaurants, bars, and short-orders shacks that piqued our curiosity, many of which were recently given high ratings in the Long Island Press "Best of L.I." issue.

Besito itself was rated the best Mexican restaurant on Long Island, and a jewel it certainly is.

The interior of the restaurant is dim and atmospheric with a clean, modern style. The smallish bar greets you first as you walk in the door, backed by shelves heavy with their myriad selection of tequilas (hence, the "agave lounge" part of their name - they have the most extensive tequila menu I've ever seen, longer even than their dinner menu). The long dining room in which we were seated was a mix of tables and deep, comfortable looking booths, dominated by a huge photo-print of two beautiful horses hung on the far wall. Another seating area was located on a slightly raised area on the other side of the restaurant. Before taking our seats, the polite yet somewhat cool hostess offered to check our coats - of course we took her up on it.

After a few moments to peruse the drink menu (I'm ashamed to say we did not take advantage of their massive tequila offerings, but neither of us are really tequila drinkers), our smiling and friendly waitress appeared tableside and offered to take our drink and appetizer orders. J ordered a tequila mojito (at least he HAD tequila) and I a pomegranate martini, both of which arrived in short order along with a duo of firey salsas and a basket of warm corn tortillas. She also offered some quacamole to start, and I must admit that this was a crafty move on her part, because the guacamole was one of the more expensive appetizers on offer, but she snuck it into her spiel so that for a second it sounded like a complimentary starter, so of course we said yes. Unsurprisingly, this was not the case, and I was mentally kicking myself a bit for letting myself be had. But we both do enjoy guacamole, and decided it wasn't a problem.

And in the end, the guacamole was absolutely worth both the price and the shifty delivery. Just moments after our drinks were delivered (both of which were quite tasty, my martini made interesting by a shot of vanilla vodka along with the pomegranate) our waitress reappeared, wheeling a cart across the dining room that was covered in guacamole-making ingredients and tools. She made our order of guacamole right there at tableside in a molcajete, right down to splitting and scooping the fresh avocados. After a few moments of mixing and smashing, the molcajete was deposited on our table with a basket of fresh, warm tortilla chips. We dug in as she rolled the cart away. The guacamole was a smooth, velvety base studded with onions, tomatoes, jalapenos, and big chunks of unmashed avocado, and was as fresh as fresh could be. We'd asked for medium spiciness, which she described as having just a bit of jalapeno (the mild had none) and although I'm sure it wasn't hot enough for J, it was just about right for me - bites with a piece of jalapeno would alternate with bites without, so my mouth would have a chance to recover. I must admit to preferring my guacamole rather smoother, and it seemed in need of some fresh lime juice to cut the richness of the avocado, but really, it was delicious.

As we enjoyed our guacamole, we perused the dinner menu and selected our entrees. J chose the Salmon Manchamanteles, described as "roasted wild salmon with crispy bananas, pineapple pico de gallo and mole manchamanteles". True to form, I ordered enchiladas: Enchiladas Barbacoa y Chorizo, to be exact, which was described as "Beef barbacoa & chorizo baked in roasted tomato & tomatillo salso, topped with potatoes, raja, and queso fresco". Mmm, sign me up. Our waitress also tempted us with a list of optional sides, including yucca fries, which I don't remember actually seeing on the menu - J jumped at that, and I had to oblige.

The meal was well paced, and we had plenty of time to leisurely enjoy our guacamole and drinks before our entrees arrived. The plating was attractive but unfussy - J's fish arrived with a graceful curl of thin, crispy banana perched on top, sitting in a shallow pool of deep dark mole; and my enchiladas were covered in a tumble of sauteed onions and peppers (the "rajas" of the menu description) crispy potatoes and shredded crisp lettuce, and a generous fine grating of queso fresco. But we all know what really mattered - the flavor. And as we both took our first bites, we were silent for just a second or two before our eyes met and we smiled. This was GOOD. Really, REALLY good.

My enchiladas were full to bursting with tender, meaty shredded beef ("barbacoa" refers to long-cooked meat, often beef from the head of cow, like the cheeks) and generous chunks of garlicky, spicy chorizo, all wrapped up in soft corn tortillas and swimming deeply flavorful tomato-chili sauce. The sweetness of the rajas, the salty crunch of the just-shy-of-bunt potatoes, the fresh crispness of the lettuce, and the mild tang of the queso, provided perfect counterpoints to the rich taste and body of the enchiladas themselves. Every bite was different and exciting and deeply satisfying. J's fish was cooked just right, tender but flaky and moist, and the sweet pico de gallo was an inspired foil to the smoky, complex mole. And the yucca fries, which we've never actually eaten before, were crispy, slightly sweet, and generously salted (perhaps a bit too generously, if truth be told) and delicious dipped in the chili aioli that accompanied them.

This was easily the best and most creative Mexican meal I have ever eaten, and to have found such a treasure in Huntingon, of all places, was revelatory. The menu may be based in standard tex-mex staples like enchiladas, tacos, quesadillas, chili rellenos, taquitos and tamales, are prepared with unique and exciting culinary twists that keep the diner on their toes and turn what could be a run-of-the-mill mexican meal into something truly special.

And if the food alone wasn't enough to sell you, the service was gracious and cheerful, the pacing was perfect (neither rushed nor sluggish), and the atmosphere was lovely. All together, this was a wonderful dining experience, and we will be returning. Often.

Besito Mexican Kitchen and Agave Lounge
420 New York Ave
Huntington, NY
p-631.549.0100
f-631.549.0155
www.besitomex.com

There is apparently a second Besito location in Roslyn, NY - you can find more information at the Besito website. The Huntington location was the first, however, so I would recommend trying it out first.

Also, if you feel like exploring downtown Huntington, the owner of Besito also owns Honu, a "small plates" restaurant just down the street from Besito, as well as a short-order burger shop America Roadside one block further - I bet they're worth checking out as well. They're certainly on our list!

Barefoot Bloggers: Mexican Chicken Soup

Hi folks! We're away on vacation, visiting J's parents in the wilds of Wyoming for the Thanksgiving holiday. I actually wrote this post almost two weeks ago, because I knew we'd be gone when it was supposed to go up, and I didn't really want to think about it in the days leading up to our departure.

Wyoming isn't exactly known for great cuisine, but I know we'll be making one hell of a Thanksgiving dinner with the folks, so I'll be sure to embarrass myself and take lots of pics to show y'all when we get back. Hope everyone has a fun-and-food-filled Turkey Day!

This week's Barefoot Bloggers recipe is Ina's Mexican Chicken Soup, chosen by Judy of Judy's Gross Eats. As far as I can tell, this is basically just Ina's riff on a chicken tortilla soup, but I certainly can't find fault with that - I love soups, I love tex-mex flavors, and unsurprisingly, I loved this recipe.



I have to admit, I kinda screwed up a bit on this because, well, I didn't read the entire recipe all the way through before we did our grocery shopping last weekend. Shame on me. I totally missed that the corn tortillas were not, in fact, intended to be baked or fried for the tortilla chip garnish mentioned at the end of the recipe, but were actually supposed to be added to the soup as a thickener. Since we usually skip the chips when it comes to Mexican soups and chillis, I didn't buy the tortillas. And then I pulled up the recipe on the night we were going to make this, and realized my mistake. Whoopsie!

Luckily, I had a box of quick-cooking polenta in the pantry, and figured that a few tablespoons of that added in near the end of the cooking time would basically accomplish the same thing as the tortillas added near the beginning - it'd thicken the soup, give it some really interesting texture, and infuse a bit of subtle corn sweetness into the final flavor. And in the end I think it worked just fine, and both J and I really enjoyed it just the way it was. Unfortunately that means I can't really weigh in on the success of the recipe as written, but I think the food gods will forgive me just this once.

Aside from that one little foible, I pretty much made the recipe as written with just two small changes. I used dry cilantro instead of fresh, because I just can't bring myself to buy fresh cilantro anymore unless we're going to be using it in every meal for a week. Its impossible to get anything but a bunch the size of my head around here, and every single time we buy it we end up have to throw half of it out because we can't use it fast enough. Given the price of fresh herbs, I just can't keep letting that happen. Also, I substituted a long hot chili (a serrano, I think?) instead of the 2-4 jalapenos that Ina's recipe calls for, mostly because I'm a total wuss and that much jalapeno would probably kill me, but also because we had this other chili lying forlornly in our vegetable drawer and I wanted to use it up before buying more. It actually ended up being the perfect choice, because it definitely added some heat, but not enough that I needed a loaf of bread and a handkerchief to get through the meal. Got my sinuses to open up a bit though, that's for sure.

I guess I should also include the fact that we used some of the leftover chicken from the roast bird we made the weekend before instead of roasting fresh chicken breasts just for the soup, but that's kind of a no-brainer as far as I'm concerned, and all it basically changed was the amount of time needed to make this soup from start to finish.



Unfortunately, my other screw-up was forgetting to bring my camera and tripod into the kitchen while making this, so I don't have a bunch of photos of the raw ingredients and prep work to share this time. Honestly though, this recipe is so easy, I doubt you need the photographic help.

The technique is basically the same as almost every other soup I make - sautee the base flavor ingredients (in this case a standard mire poix with the hot chili and some garlic added in) in some olive oil at the bottom of your soup pot until they are softened and beginning to brown a bit. Toss in your liquid ingredients, herbs and spices (chicken stock, canned tomatoes with their juice, and some cumin, coriander seed, and dry cilantro) then bring to a boil and let 'er rip for awhile to get the veg nice and soft. Give it a taste for seasoning - I found it needed a bit more of both cumin and coriander for my tastes, and I threw in a splash of red wine vinegar for a bit of balancing tang. Then add in the chicken, followed by about 1/4 cup of quick-cooking polenta, which I added very gradually while stirring constantly to avoid clumps. Keep it on the heat for another 5 minutes so that the polenta can rehydrate and thicken the soup nicely, making sure to stir once in awhile to keep things from sticking on the bottom. Once its done, ladle it into some bowls and top with a dollop of sour cream (I spiked ours with a bit of fresh lime juice) and a sprinkling of cilantro. Couldn't be easier, really.

We enjoyed our soup with a double-decker quesadilla made with these fantastic multigrain tortillas from Mission and some fancy Sargento shredded cheese (2 varieties, one with seasoning and one without), which is frankly one of my favorite things in the world to make and eat because its so easy its almost stupid and well, is there really anything better than tortillas stuffed with gooey, melty cheese? I don't think so.

All you do is heat up a large, flat pan on the stove (we use an old, warped griddle pan that desperately needs to be replaced but still does the job) and brush one side of one tortilla with some melted butter or vegetable oil. Put it on the hot pan, lube-side down, and top with a decent sized pile of one kind of cheese, spreading it around to make an even layer. Top the cheese with a second tortilla (no oil or butter needed here), then top that with a second kind of cheese. Finished with a third tortilla, again brushed with butter or oil and this time placed lube-side UP so that when you flip it, the oil will come in contact with the pan. Weigh down with a flat pot lid or a plate to help the bottom tortilla get nice and crisp and brown and to help the cheese melt, and let it sizzle away for a few minutes. Check after 3 or 4 to be sure its not burning, but don't flip it until you see plenty of golden toastyness down there. When you DO flip, do so carefully in case there is cheese in that top layer that isn't quite melted yet and the thing doesn't stay together - you really don't want shredded cheese flying all over your kitchen. Trust me. Now put the pot lid or plate back on top of the quesadilla and give it another 2-3 minutes to crisp up on the second side. When its done, just cut it into wedges with a pizza cutter or a big, sharp knife (a chef's knife or santoku works well) and serve. The wedges make absolutely awesome dippers for this soup.



I would totally make this dinner again. I'd make it all the time, in fact. Its hot, spicy, hearty and comforting, and a really nice change from a regular bowl of beef-and-beans chili. And, well, anything that gives me an excuse to make quesadillas is just fine in my book.

Its a crying shame that J managed to get all the leftovers, because I could really go for a bowl right now.

Rules Shmules

I am completely incapable of following the rules when it comes to food. I almost never actually follow a recipe, even when I'm baking, because I'm always tweaking flavor components and finishing methods, and I can't remember the last time I made any sort of traditional ethnic dish the way it is traditionally made. I've always gotta get my little hands right down into the heart of a recipe and futz with things to get the result I want, which I suspect won't win me any fans from the militant-accuracy set. But I don't care. Know why? Because my food tastes GOOD.

Please, please excuse my horrible photography - I'm still experimenting with my digicam and don't have anything resembling the right set-up to take well-light or focuses photos. I can guarantee you, my next gift to myself is going to be a tripod, closely followed by the materials to make myself a lightbox.

Take these enchiladas, for example.

In my admittedly-non-extensive experience, your standard enchiladas are made with corn tortillas, either cheese, meat, or perhaps bean filling, and topped with a simple red chili sauce and shredded white cheese like cheddar or jack. And I like standard enchiladas. I really do. I almost always go for some kind of enchiladas when we go out for tex-mex, my favorite being the ubiquitous combination platter of one cheese, one chicken, and one bean enchilada with rice and refritos. I love me some enchiladas, I do.

However, when it comes down to it, I've never been a huge fan of corn tortillas unless they're in chip form. I've even made my own homemade corn tortillas, and while I liked them and would make them again (with the proper tool for flattening them out, anyway) they're still just not my favorite as a yummy filling and sauce delivery system. I generally prefer flour tortillas for almost everything, but since we've recently been trying to replace as much of our carb intake as possible with whole grain alternatives, this time around I used some really delicious multi-grain tortillas made by Mission brands.

Also, since I always like a combination of different kinds of enchiladas on my plate, I figured, why go to all the trouble to make three different kinds of enchiladas of individual fillings? I'll just mix 'em all up in the whole batch.

And then, instead of using a basic white cheese for the topping, I used a mix of a couple of sharp artisan cheeses we picked up at the Italian specialty store the week before. Once again, I've given my dinner an identity crisis. I'm surprised my food doesn't grow legs and run away screaming as soon as I bring it home, just to avoid the emotional trauma.

Anyway, despite all these deviations form the norm, let me just tell you that these were some seriously delicious enchiladas. J made the chili sauce from scratch, and I wish to God I was paying attention when he did because although he followed this recipe by Emeril to begin with, he changed it all over the place and I have no clue how. I really hope he can remember what he did because I want him to make some more of the stuff that I can jar and keep in the pantry for future deliciousness. The filling itself was a mixture of some smoked pulled pork that we'd made much earlier in the summer and have had bags of in the freezer ever since (didn't do THAT the right way either because we couldn't keep it int he smoker long enough to get that uber-tender pull-apart texture, so we had to finish it in the crock pot with some bbq sauce to finish it... I know, I know, we should both turn in our pitmaster-in-training badges) plus some cooked black beans and some of the same cheese I used to top them with. It was a perfect combination, smoky and sweet and decadently cheesy, but without the grease that always seems to accompany the cheese enchiladas I get in restaurants. The finished enchiladas tasted sinful, but really weren't all THAT bad for you. Not healthy, but not that bad.

I'm not going to try to write a recipe here, because really once you have all the different components - tortillas, fillings, sauce, cheese, all of which you can alter to fit your own tastes - making enchiladas is all about assembly. Each enchilada ought to have the same amount of filling, and with a combination of fillings like I used, you want to have the same amount of each thing in each tortilla so that the flavor will be consistent. You want to pack the filled tortillas into your baking dish pretty tightly so that they stay rolled neatly and get all hot and soft and gooey when they cook. You want enough sauce both below and above the tortilla rolls so that they won't stick or dry out, but not so much that it ends up drowning in sauce and turning into something you have to slice, because at the end of the cooking process, after the whole dish cools for maybe 5 minutes, you want to be able to lift each roll out individually to serve. I've learned how to achieve these things just from trial and error and having quite a few dishes of enchiladas just disintegrate when I dipped a spatula in to serve, and this time around I got it just right.

We ate them with some quick homemade yellow rice (long grain brown rice cooked in chicken stock with saffron, tumeric, and chili powder) and a big 'ole dollop of sour cream, with sliced green onions sprinkled over everything. They were perfect - warm, savory, spicy, and comforting.

And I really, really wish I had some more right now.

Lessons Learned

I've been a little absent from the blogosphere this week. I'm sorry. Its way too early in the game here at "Table for Two?" for me to disappear for 6 days straight, and I apologize. I'll try not to let it happen again but, well, you know how it is. Life gets in the way sometimes.

That being said, there are a couple of legitimate reasons for my neglect. The first is that the Olympics started last Friday, and I've been watching them just about every night. I've been looking forward to the games for months, and there's been some really great stuff going on this year (Michael Phelps, anyone?) and I just don't want to miss a minute of it if I can avoid it.

The second is that we naively planned a couple of positively epic meals this week, and when we spend 2-3 hours making dinner after a full day of work, its all I can do to sit in front of the boob tube for an hour or so of Olympics coverage afterwards before passing out for the night.

This week did, however, yield quite a few valuable learning experiences which I'd like to pass on.

Mmmm. Melty Mexican goodness.

Lesson #1
Enchilada sauce, or red chili sauce, is shockingly easy to make at home, and tastes SO much better than the canned, store-bought variety that I've always used. J actually made the sauce this first time around, and although he used Emeril's recipe as a jumping-off point, he changed enough as he went along to render the original probably nearly unrecognizable. The end result? Pretty much what I would consider the perfect enchilada sauce: rich, savory, and tangy, with just a bit of warmth from some dried chilis. Poured under and over whole grain tortillas wrapped around smoked pulled pork and black beans, it yielded what J called "the best enchiladas EVAR" but I'll leave the details for a separate post.

Lesson #2
Cleaning your own squid is an absolutely monstrous job, and not at all pleasant. More importantly, its a hell of an undertaking for a weeknight. I don't think we ate dinner until after 9pm that night, and when you're used to eating dinner closer to 7:30pm, that is a seriously late meal.

I volunteered to do the squid-cleaning first, and I have to admit that my knee-jerk revulsion to handling shellfish innards (and having my fingers anywhere near a dead creatures eyes) lessened significantly after the first 2 or 3. I managed to get through about 8 before deciding I'd had enough, and passing the torch to J to finish up. Of course that meant he ended up doing almost twice as many as I did (the package we bought had a shockingly large number of whole squid in it) but he was graciously silent about the clearly unfair division of labor. I think I owe him a 6-pack or something for that.

We cleaned out all the bodies (or tubes) so that we could stuff them with a mixture of veggies and breadcrumbs, then bake them in a basic tomato sauce. The tentacles ended up getting discarded because, frankly, they just didn't look that good after being frozen and thawed. But of course, what you really want to know is, was it worth it?

No. Not at all. Never mind the fact that the plate of food up there will never win any beauty awards. It just didn't taste that good. The sauce and the stuffing, taken individually, were delicious. And being that we based it on one of Mario Batali's recipes, I'm not surprised. But the squid itself? Meh. Not impressed. I do think it was cooked just about right, as the finished product had a texture somewhat like al dente pasta. However, I'm used to squid being relatively non-fishy, and this was definitely fishy. I'm not sure if that's because it had been frozen whole and then thawed, or if we just didn't do a thorough-enough job of cleaning it (I suspect the latter, because some pieces were significantly more fishy than others) but quite frankly, I couldn't finish it. It was dsappointing, to say the least, and not something we'll be repeating anytime soon.

Now we've got a bag of about a dozen squid tubes in the freezer that we'll need to use up, though. I'm thinking we'll probably just fry them up at some point. Not anytime soon - I've got some mental scarring from this first fresh-squid encounter that needs to heal before I even look at it again - but eventually.

Lesson 3
Those little mini-springform pans I bought on my birthday are every bit as awesome as I expected them to be. I used them this week to make these delicious single-serving broccoli quiches, and they were really the perfect size for dinner when paired with some sauteed snow peas. The quiches rose in the oven and then held their form perfectly when removed from the pans, and were just perfectly cooked. I can't wait to find more uses for them.

Lesson 4
Sometimes, just sometimes, you want something simple. Something comforting. Something that fills your belly and warms your soul without breaking the bank. Something like... franks and beans. Or as J calls them, beanie weenies (*gigglesnort*). However, just because you're making a dish that your father made for you for dinner in grade school, doesn't mean you can't make it spectacular. We had this deceptively simple meal one night this week and made it amazing by making the baked beans from scratch, using dry beans that were soaked overnight and then cooked for a looooong time (over 12 hours) in the crock pot while we were at work. As a pleasant counterpoint to the squid fiasco, this made for a quick and easy dinner once we got home - all we had to do was crisp up the hot dogs a bit and then toast a couple of hot dog rolls in the rendered fat to have a supremely satisfying and surprisingly delicious dinner.

You know you want some of this. C'mon, don't try to hide it.

Even more surprising is that this particular dish was really not that bad for you - if you skip the bread-toasted-in-hot-dog-fat part, the franks and beans themselves have no added fat (helped along by that pre-cooking step with the dogs). There's a fair amount of sugar though, so diabetics may want to keep away from this sort of dish. The rest of you? Go get some beans soaking. Because I can guarantee there'll be a day this week when you won't want to cook, and this bowl of hot, hearty goodness is sure to soothe you after even the most difficult day.

Lesson 5
I still can't make fried rice. I tried my hand at a thai-style vegetarian fried rice on Thursday, and although it was basically ok, it just wasn't quite right. I'm pretty sure I overcooked the rice the night before, so it was a little too sticky and mushy when I tried to stir fry it, and fried rice just shouldn't be mushy, ever. I also think I used too much fish sauce in the seasoning, because the flavor was just a bit too prominent for me to really enjoy the dish. The basic premise was good, and the bites that got a piece of fresh tomato or pineapple were really delicious, but I couldn't quite finish my serving. J loved it, which I'm glad of, but I just know I could make it better if I could just get the rice part of it right.

Lesson 6
Rabbit is delicious. Also, "deconstructed" dishes are a ton of fun. But, I'll leave those details for my next post.

Bonus Lesson:
My photography SUCKS. Its virtually impossible to take decent photos in this dim-as-hell basement apartment. Normally I enjoy the gentle lighting we've got going on down here, but its not at all conducive to taking attractive photos of our dinners. I've really gotta work on that lightbox...