Fernando Ruiz
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hef Fernando Ruiz beats me to the El Paisano Supermarket at Cerrillos Road and Calle del Cielo, but I suspect it’s because he’d told me by phone a few days earlier how he “totally loves that place.” Ruiz grew up in Arizona and spent summers at his grandparents’ ranch in Guaymas, Sonora, Mexico where he was butchering goats by the time he was 10 or 11. El Paisano reminds him of his time in Mexico, and as we wander the aisles picking out ingredients for our meal, he points to particular cooking contraptions, piñatas, wheat snacks and even shaved tamarind as things you can’t likely find in just any old store. “My grandma had this huge tamarind tree on the ranch, and we’d eat those kind of beans that came off it,” Ruiz recalls. “Tamarind is one of the main ingredients of Worcestershire sauce. See, this is the kind of stuff you’ll see in Mexican grocery stores, and I love it. Because I like to look around, you know? I don’t know what I want to eat tomorrow or next week—I want to walk around and see what looks good now.” Ruiz came to cooking while in prison in Arizona. Working in the kitchen, he tells SFR, he realized “this is cool...this is what I want to do.” Once free, he worked his way up through the ranks to eventually become the executive chef at Santacafé. He also toppled celebrity chef Bobby
Stop, Shop & Cook BY ALEX DE VORE, RILEY GARDNER, JULIE ANN GRIMM a u t h o r @ s f r e p o r t e r. c o m
ALEX DE VORE
Local chefs take SFR shopping and share recipes for homemade meals
Flay on his own Food Network show, Beat Bobby Flay; and Ruiz won the channel’s competitive cooking show, Chopped, in 2016. He chooses a number of thinsliced pork steaks, two chayote squashes, a couple serrano peppers, a fistful of green onion and cilantro, a few green tomatillos and a package of corn tortillas. We head next to a house owned by a friend of Ruiz’s who has kindly allowed us to use her kitchen. Once there, Ruiz washes his veggies and sets about slicing them into manageable pieces. The tomatillos—which Ruiz says are not quite ripe because it’ll add a brighter flavor and color— go into a blender with the cilantro and one and a half serranos, salt and pepper and, surprisingly, a few ice cubes. “The blender can get pretty hot, so these ice cubes are going to keep the salsa from getting hot or kind of cooked,” he explains. “It’ll make it a little wet, too.” This is the kind of salsa you could make in any blender, he notes, and within a few moments, his ingredients have meshed into a satisfying chunky sauce. It has a subtle kick from the serranos that just plain works, and the thought of it soon joining the rest of the dish is enticing to say the least. “I only added one and a half serranos,” he cautions, “because you want the taste but you don’t want it
JULY 20-26, 2022
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SFREPORTER.COM
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6-7 pork steaks (thin cut)
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1 chayote squash (sliced longways)
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10-12 tomatillos (washed and cut in half)
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2 serrano peppers (sliced)
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1 bunch cilantro
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green onion (just the green part, but save the white part)
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corn tortillas
The Steps: 1. For the salsa verde, add the tomatillos, serranos, cilantro, green onions, salt and a few ice cubes in blender, then blend until “salsa consistency.”
3. Season chayote squash and the white parts of the leftover onion with olive oil, salt and pepper.
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12
You’ll Need:
2. Salsa is done and set aside.
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like to just see what’s here and then we go from there.” It’s a simple enough plan for a chef heading into a local grocery store, but what about bone-tired household cooks on their way home from work? How simple and yet satisfying can we make it? Could it feel a little fancy? SFR spent time with four local professional chefs to learn how they might approach the daily task of dinner, to walk us through the shopping process and let us follow them into the kitchen. Each shared a recipe and some tips for making every dinner table sing.
Pork Tacos
4. Grill the squash and onion. 5. Season pork with salt, pepper and dry oregano on both sides. 6. Grill on high heat for about 3 minutes each side. 7. The most important part of this recipe or ANY recipe is to SEASON YOUR FOOD!
Chef Fernando Ruiz “totally loves” El Paisano’s selection.
