Cafe Rio deliciousness

Anyone who knows me knows I am in LOVE with Cafe Rio. While my obsession has become less severe in the past year, I still get excited when I have a chance to partake of the food. If you haven't had the pleasure of enjoying this tasty treat, make it a priority to visit one of their locations in Utah, Arizona, Nevada, Idaho, Colorado, or California.

While I do have access to the restaurant, my friend and I had decided to start cooking together every so often, and decided to start by trying out some Cafe Rio recipes. And let me say, it was AMAZING!

We made the famous sweet pork, rice, beans, and cilantro/ranch salad dressing. And we finished everything off with an AMAZING tres leche.

Cafe Rio Pork

Recipe

2 pounds pork
3 cans Coke (NOT diet)
1/4 c. brown sugar
dash garlic salt
1/4 c. water
1 can sliced green chilies
3/4 can enchilada sauce
1 c. brown sugar

Put the pork in a ziploc bag to marinade. Add about a can and a half of coke and about 1/4 c. of brown sugar. Marinade for a few hours or overnight.

Drain marinade and put pork, 1/2 can of coke, water, and garlic salt in crock pot on high for about 3-4 hours (or until it shreds easily, but don't let it get TOO dry) or on low for 8 hours. Remove pork from crock pot and drain any liquid left in the pot. Shred pork.

In a food processor or blender, blend 1/2 can Coke, chilies, enchilada sauce and remaining brown sugar (about a cup, you can add a little more or less to taste..). If it looks too thick, add more Coke little by little.

Put shredded pork and sauce in crockpot and cook on low for 2 hours.

Cilantro/Ranch Dressing

This is where things really got interesting for us. You see, we are both young, single professionals and don't exactly have complete kitchens. So, we did not have a blender for completing this recipe. So we made due with my trusty Magic Bullet. We mixed everything together in a bowl first and then divided the recipe into THREE cups to mix separately. Yes, we were determined to complete the recipe even though we didn't have the right equipment.

Recipe
1 packet TRADITIONAL Hidden Valley Ranch mix (the store was out when we shopped, so we got Buttermilk, which worked fine for us)
1 c. mayonnaise
1 c. buttermilk
2 tomatillos, remove husk, diced
1/2 bunch of fresh cilantro
1 clove garlic
juice of 1 lime

Mix all ingredients together in the blender.

Chopping up the tomatillos

The mixture before we added the cilantro and before we separated it into the Magic Bullet cups

The lovely separated and ready to mix dressing—Magic Bullet style

Cafe Rio Rice

Recipe
1 c. uncooked rice (traditionally it's white, but we used brown rice)
1 tsp. butter or margarine
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp. freshly squeezed lime juice
1 can (15 oz) chicken broth
1 cup water
1 Tbsp. freshly squeezed lime juice
2 tsp. sugar
3 tablespoons fresh chopped cilantro

In a saucepan combine rice, butter, garlic, 1 tsp. lime, chicken broth and water. Bring to a boil. Cover and cook on low 15-20 minutes, until rice is tender. Remove from heat. In a small bowl combine lime juice, sugar and cilantro. Pour over hot cooked rice and mix in as you fluff the rice.

Cafe Rio Beans

Recipe
2 Tbsp. olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp. ground cumin
1 can black beans, rinsed and drained
1 1/3 c. tomato juice (we couldn't find juice so just used sauce, so our beans were a bit thicker than normal, but still delicious!)
1 1/2 tsp. salt
2 Tbsp. fresh chopped cilantro

In a nonstick skillet, cook garlic and cumin in olive oil over medium heat until you can smell it. Add beans, tomato juice, and salt. Continually stir until heated through. Just before serving stir in the cilantro.

For our tortillas, we put a little butter in the pan and toasted them and melted cheese on them. We used green leaf lettuce and each tore up pieces for our own salad. I also had a big bag of tortilla chips, so we crumbled those to top our salads with a crunchy touch.


And now...DESSERT!!

Tres Leche Cake

This is actually where we ran in to a few problems. Haha! We'd been cooking for a while already, and silly us, we kinda assumed we could make dessert last and let it cook and such while we finished up dinner and ate.

NOT THE CASE!!!

We really should have read the directions better before hand (really, read on :P), but the first think I noticed is that the cake needs to cool for about 4 hours. At least. We just decided to go ahead and we'd eat the dessert a bit later that evening.

The next problem came when the first part of the recipe asked for 6 egg whites. We didn't know we needed the yokes later, and kinda threw them away. Yes, we were wasteful, I'm sorry. But two steps later, we realized the mistake. Luckily I had enough eggs so we took the yokes from 6 MORE...but this time saved the whites because, yes, I eat egg whites regularly.

We were a little impatient and put the cake in the freezer to cool faster...we just left it in a little too long so it wasn't DELICIOUS until it thawed a little and the milk mixture started goozing. Yum!! I unfortunately did not get a picture of this amazing delight.

Recipe
6 large eggs, separated
2 cups granulated sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 cup whole milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Cream topping:
1 14-ounce can evaporated milk
1 14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk
1 cup heavy cream

To make the cake: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly grease and flour a 9 by 13-inch baking dish and set aside. (I used a smaller rectangle pan & a muffin tin, b/c I wanted individual cakes for presentation)
In the bowl of a mixer, beat the egg whites on low speed until soft peaks form. Add the sugar gradually with the mixer running and peak to stiff peaks. Add the egg yolks 1 at a time, beating well after the addition of each.

Sift together the flour and baking powder and add to the egg mixture, alternating with the milk. (Do this quickly so the batter does not lose volume.) Add the vanilla. Bake until golden, 25 minutes.

To make the cream topping: In a blender, combine the evaporated milk, condensed milk, and heavy cream and blend on high speed.

Remove the cake from the oven and while still warm, pour the cream mixture over it. Let sit and cool to room temperature. Cover and refrigerate until well chilled, at least 4 hours or overnight.