88 recipes down, 67 to go

I really have made an effort since getting back from Florida to do some Mexican cooking.  I’ve just been slow to post.  So here it is. (Kind of a pathetic intro, I know, I just have this laryngitis turned into sinus cold that I can’t seem to shake.  It’s leaking into my writing).

On the Friday after returning from Florida (the 9th), I made Tomatillo-Braised Pork Country Ribs with Mexican Greens (MD30).  This had one of my favorite sauce bases: Essential Simmered Tomatillo-Serrano Sauce.  It was also a good one-pot meal with the meat, starch and veggies all together.  This iteration of the sauce was spicy, but good.  I also liked both the potatoes and the chard and overall I liked the dish too.  My only complaint was about the pork country ribs.  I just found them to be a little too fatty for my taste.  This is the same feeling that comes to me whenever I have short ribs.  The sauce is always good but the meat has too much fat.

I got right back to cooking on Sunday (the 11th), making both Grilled Steak with Spicy Guajillo Sauce (MD22) and Sonoran Fried Beans with Chorizo and Cheese (VBRED12).  I had some leftover Essential Simmered Guajillo Sauce in the freezer that I decided to use now that it was finally nice enough out to fire up the grill.  Because I already had the sauce, this recipe was very easy.  Just marinate the steaks with some of the sauce and some vinegar, grill and serve with some grilled red onion slices and additional sauce.

The steaks were good, although really not spicy.  My sauce had been in the freezer for awhile and so I’m sure that some of the flavor had been lost.  It was also interesting to see some visible pieces of chile in the sauce.  I immediately thought how much better it would be if I had redone it with my new blender.  The grilled onions were a really nice addition to the steaks and their sweetness really complemented the chile sauce.

Because the steaks were so easy, I figured I could knock out the final bean dish in the book.  These require a lot of unattended cooking so are easy if you’re going to be home.  After simmering the beans for a couple of hours, you fry up some chorizo, add that to the beans and then in the chorizo drippings, you fry some dried, ground chile (I used Penzey’s ancho).  The beans and chorizo are then added back to this and shredded Chihuahua cheese is added.  John really liked the beans; I thought they were ok.  The texture was good and I liked the cheese, but for me, I didn’t like the addition of the dried, ground ancho, which I thought had a slightly bitter taste.  Now that I’ve made all of the bean dishes, my favorite is still Classic Mexican Fried Beans.

Finally, last Friday (the 16th) I made Smoky Shredded Chicken and Potatoes with Roasted Tomatoes (MD5).  This was the best dish of the bunch!  It called for Essential Quick-Cooked Tomato-Chipotle Sauce which I decided to make with canned chipotle chiles en adobo.  This eliminates the frying and re-hydrating of the dried chipotles.  Plus, I still have a few frozen roasted tomatoes so the sauce was easy to put together.  Skinned chicken thighs are cooked in the sauce, removed and meat torn from the bones.  In another skillet grated potato and sliced onion are cooked in oil.  Then everything is combined: the chicken, sauce, potatoes and onion.  To serve the mixture is topped with queso fresco and avocado and served with tortillas.

I loved this dish!  The combination of flavors and textures was perfect.  You know when you make something and it’s so good that you look forward to lunch the next day when you can have the leftovers?  That’s how I felt about this dish.

Ok, you can now consider yourselves updated and I can stop feeling guilty about not posting.  I’ll soon move on to some guilt over not doing more cooking   See you at the Month 8 update.

81 recipes down, 74 to go

The last week or so has seen me do a bit of Mexican cooking and I do have something on the agenda for tonight, but I’ve also been busy filling in at the kids’ preschool because the Director is out on a family emergency.  I still don’t know how Julie Powell mananged to keep her blog so well while working full time!

Anyway, last week I made “Drunken” Pintos with Cilantro and Bacon (VBRED11) and Chile-Seasoned Pot-Roasted Pork (MD28).

The beans are essentially pinto beans simmered with some pork shoulder until they are tender.  They become drunken with the addition of a small amount of tequila before serving.  I thought the tequila accentuated the sweetness of the beans.  They were also served topped with bacon pieces and really, what is not improved with a little bacon?

As for the pork, it marks my last chile purée made in the Cuisinart.  That’s right, I now have in my kitchen a brand new Vitamix 5200 blender!  So far I have only warmed it up with a couple of smoothies, but tonight it will sample its first chile purée.  Last week’s pork, however, was slowly roasted in the oven in a purée of ancho and guajillo chiles, vinegar, onion, garlic, herbs and spices.  It came out nice and tender and made a good taco filling.

One more random note, I keep meaning to look up and see if there is some white onion issue out there.  Neither grocery store that I shop at have had any for the last two weeks.  Anyone know what’s going on?

41 recipes down, 114 to go

Here I am posting about last night’s meal. Yes, I’m actually doing this within 24 hours of the meal and so my temporary phase of posting postponement is done. And an excellent meal it was, in addition to being not too difficult to prepare. I managed it in between Scarlett’s dentist appointment, gymnastics class, and a playdate, as well as a fair amount of bickering since both kids were home from school for Columbus day (their 4th day in a row of being together 24/7 as Friday was a teacher day, plus Jack was sick most of last week). Can you tell how happy I am to be typing in pure silence right now?
Anyway, on to the meal. I made Herby Ricotta-Poblano Tacos (TEOCE10) with a side of Black Bean Rice (VBRED18).

Let’s start with the tacos. The filling for these tacos was really easy to make; just combine ricotta, roasted garlic, roasted poblanos, and fresh herbs (I used cilantro). This is served in a tortilla garnished with some radish sticks. You also serve with it Tomatillo-Green Guacamole (SOS2) that has been spiked with some additional roasted poblanos. The guacamole was also pretty easy and so so tasty! The base is EF8 (Essential Roasted Tomatillo-Serrano Salsa, a repeat) and I think I have loved everything I’ve made with this base. This guacamole was better than the regular for me. I just love the contrast of creamy avocado with the spice of the serrano and the tang of the tomatillo. This will become our house guacamole from now on. And also, it really paired well with the creamy, earthy flavor of the ricotta and garlic in the taco filling. This is a definite make again dish both because of the flavor and the ease of preparation.
Now onto to beans. To make these you first need to make Classic Mexican “Pot Beans” (VBRED9, a repeat) with black beans. Then the rice (along with some onion) cooks in the broth leftover from cooking the beans. This turns the rice a beautiful black color and gives it a nice earthy flavor. If I were making black beans I would definitely make this rice again. However, I’m now left with about 8 cups of cooked black beans which is more than we could realistically eat in a week’s time. This would be the appropriate spot for a bean joke, but instead I’ll just tell you that I plan to freeze them in the amounts needed for the remaining black bean recipes, of which there are a few.

22 recipes down, 133 to go

How many recipes I actually made: 7. How many new recipes I made: 5. When we were planning to eat this meal: Friday night. What we ended up eating Friday night: leftover Mexican rice supper. What got added to the menu because of the delay: a reprise of Frontera’s Gold Margaritas. When we did get to eat the meal: last night. Verdict on whether it was worth the wait: definitely!
Ok, so seriously, here is what we made (I had a lot of help from John this time; especially on the mole and the margaritas): VBRED9 Classic Mexican “Pot” Beans, VBRED10 Classic Mexican Fried Beans with Onion and Garlic, TEOCE17 Poached Chicken (here’s repeat number 1), EF10 Essential Sweet-and-Spicy Ancho Seasoning Paste, TEOCE16 Simple Red Mole Enchiladas with Shredded Chicken, D10 Creamy Lime Pie, and WAM1 Frontera’s Gold Margaritas. I guess it was sort of silly to think that we could make the mole and eat it in one evening. Unlike Julie Powell, I’m not a big fan of dinner at 11pm.
The beans were both easier than they seem (VBRED9 was the base of VBRED10) and delicious. I used pintos, per Rick’s suggestion of what would go well with the mole. Most of the time is spent letting the beans simmer in water, onion, and here’s the key, bacon fat (which I had saved from making last weekend’s BLT sandwiches). Then you fry up more onion, garlic and then add and mash the beans to make the final product which as I said were wonderful. They were almost sweet and the perfect palate cleanser for the spice of the mole.
When Rick titles this mole Simple, it is perhaps a tad misleading. Ok, let’s not sugarcoat it. This recipe is not simple. There are 20 ingredients including two other recipes (EF10, which involves the usual toasting and rehydrating of dried chiles among other things, and poached chicken, which involves, well, poaching a chicken), as well as bread, raisins, Mexican chocolate, onion, tomato, etc. There is also a considerable amount of simmering, which was really the downfall of our Friday night meal. All that said, it really is not difficult to make, just a little time-consuming. If you’ve mastered reading and following instructions, I’m sure you can make it too, and you should, because it’s really good. And when I say good, I actually mean fantastic, and spicy, sweet, rich, and complex. The moles are really the best recipes and the primary reason I bought Mexican Kitchen in the first place.

The pie was also pretty easy to make although the crust was a bit of a challenge. Although, it’s possible that the problem lies elsewhere. Let’s just say that pie crust and I aren’t fast friends. Don’t get me wrong, I can make pie. In fact, I love baking in all its forms, I just can’t seem to make pretty pies. Rarely, do my crusts not crumble into pieces, having to be re-formed like a puzzle into the pan. When a recipe calls for a lattice-crust, I just mentally plan for a solid top crust. I’ve come to understand my limitations and accept them. I really should take a pie class some time. So when Rick describes transferring the rolled dough as follows: “I find it easiest to roll the dough onto the rolling pin, then unroll it onto the pie pan”, I was skeptical. As I should have been. No lightly floured surface was going to prevent this crust from sticking. Also, the amount of dough was not exactly generous. Certainly there was not enough for the purported 12-inch circle, which, according to the recipe, I should have been able to decoratively crimp. Oh well, in the end, it was fine. Actually, it was more than fine, the crust was delicious! And so I accept that it was not beautiful. As for the filling, living up to its name, it was creamy at first taste, and then tart. One more thing about the pie. I was supposed to dribble Crimson Prickly Pear Sauce (aka D11) around the slices of pie. However, the amount of prickly pears that I would have needed for the recipe would have been about $16 at Whole Foods, so I decided to save making the sauce until I return to La Casa del Pueblo.

One more note for this week’s houseguests, in case you’re reading, I’m planning Menu 21 (Rustic Jícama Appetizer with Red Chile and Lime and Achiote-Roasted Pork Tacos with Pickled Red Onions) for Thursday evening with the addition of D9 Crunchy Amaranth Tart, if my amaranth arrives in time. So for those of you following, that means that I have been unable to find puffed amaranth in the store and so had to pay a ridiculous $8.72 to have it shipped the less than 10 miles to my house.