I’m not really sure why I didn’t just write this as an addendum to the last post, but my dedication to the project has been a little lacking in recent weeks and I was probably just a little depressed at how pathetic Month 8 actually was. Yes, I was on vacation in the middle of Month 8. Yes, I was sick upon return. You are, perhaps, tiring of my seemingly endless stream of excuses as to why I haven’t done this, that, or the other. The numbers don’t lie; I cooked only 4 recipes in Month 8, all of which are detailed in the previous post. I did not make it to Pilsen. I didn’t toast or re-hydrate a single chile. However, I did make a fabulous Smoky Shredded Chicken and Potatoes with Roasted Tomatoes (MD5) which was the highlight of the month. Things can only look up from here, right?
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.
73 recipes down, 82 to go
It’s taken me a little while to write this entry on the food made for our Superbowl Party last Sunday, maybe because my Colts lost. I can’t really feel bad for the Saints and I was in the decided minority rooting for the Colts. About the only other person I could recruit to my side was my 3 year old daughter Scarlett. But even she insisted on using the golden cups and plates at the party so her allegiance was half-hearted at best. Jack, who rooted for the Colts in the playoffs, decided that it was okay to cheer for the Saints because he had already rooted for the Colts.
Anyway, on to the food. First, the Chorizo-Stuffed Ancho Chiles with Sweet-Sour Escabeche (SOS15). Let me just say right now that I feel like I’ve made all of the easier starters (which really consist only of the guacamoles) in the book and so against perhaps better judgement I decided to add this to our party menu. The recipe states that the escabeche and filling can be made ahead so I did this on Saturday. The escabeche is made by frying diced carrots in olive oil and then adding garlic, allspice, bay leaves, vinegar, water and piloncillo and cooking until the piloncillo dissolves. Finally you add thinly sliced red onion. This becomes both the marinating liquid for the dried anchos and the topping for the stuffed chiles.
The stuffing consists of chorizo and potatoes. The chorizo is cooked in a skillet and then the already boiled potatoes are fried in some of the chorizo oil and then combined with the cooked chorizo.
The issue with this appetizer is that for one, de-seeding the marinated chiles is messy and difficult. Imagine picking each and every of at least dozens of seeds per chile out of something that is coated with an oily mixture. Then, contrary to Rick’s suggestion that this is a perfect party dish, I quickly realized that the oily chiles would be difficult to eat unless seated with a knife and fork, and thus not the perfect party dish. I agree more with Rick’s assessment of the dish as being “stunning as a first course or light main dish” (108). So at the last minute I decided that I would not serve them at the party.
John and I did, however, have them, and they were amazing!! Both the chorizo-potato filling and the anchos themselves were good and spicy. But the spice was balanced with the sweet and tangy flavor of the escabeche. Also the crisp texture of the carrot and onion complemented the creaminess of the potato filling. All in all I would make this again for a sit down first course. One last note is that we had extra filling and it makes a wonder taco filling, especially with eggs for breakfast tacos!
What did get served as one of the main dishes at the party was Chicken Breasts in Nutty Queretaro Green Mole (CFF4). This dish is probably the one that we had made most often pre-project, so I was very familiar with making it. Of the moles in the book, it is one of the easier ones, and also relatively mild, making it a good choice for a crowd with perhaps variable spice tolerance. However, as I’ve come to learn, poblanos (the base pepper of this mole) are themselves variable in their spice level and so we’ve had this mole be more or less spicy. In this particular case, it ended up being less spicy.
Making up the complex flavor of this nutty green sauce is poblanos, tomatillos, plantain, romaine, golden raisins, almonds, sesame seeds, peanuts, corn tortilla, cinnamon, pepper, aniseed, cloves, parsley, garlic and chicken broth. More or less, this all gets ground up, strained and simmered. I did it myself in an afternoon a few days before the party. In the book version, boneless, skinless chicken breasts are baked in the sauce in the oven. That worked well and produced nice juicy meat. I’ve also in the past baked the meat separately, shredded it, and let people determine how much of the sauce they wanted. I served this with tortillas and Classic White Rice. I got nothing but complements about the sauce which as usual, was nutty, fruity, mildly spicy, in a word, good! I will note that I actually grinded whole aniseed this time (I usually use it already ground) and I noticed the anise flavor as being more pronounced than usual. Maybe I should try freshly grinding cinnamon next time. I know I will make this again (although probably not as often as I now have so many other good options to try again after the project is over)!
Finally, we made a double batch of the Topolo Margaritas (WAM2). It’s hard to believe that we waited so long to try another of the three margarita recipes but I guess that a Superbowl party was a good excuse to buy a new bottle of tequila. This recipe calls for Sauza Conmemorativo tequila. We actually made a batch on Friday night prior to the Superbowl and found that they were less strong tasting than the Frontera’s Gold Margarita with more lime flavor. We had no trouble polishing off 4 servings among the two of us. For the party we made a double batch it was quickly gone!
And now, after such a good start to Month 6, John has informed me that he needs a week off of Mexican cooking. So I may not make anything this weekend (we’ll see) and next Wednesday night we have our wine dinner at Frontera. Ideally, I’d like to make it to the half-way point before the end of Month 6. For that I need to make 5 more recipes.
70 recipes down, 85 to go
I’ve made three more recipes: Oaxacan Omelette with Roasted Tomatoes and Green Chiles (VBRED23) for dinner on Saturday and Broiled Chipotle Chicken with Creamy Spinach (MD3) last night which featured the new (for me) essential flavor, Essential Sweet-and-Smoky Chipotle Seasoning Salsa (EF10.5).
The Omelette came together very easily as I had already made the Essential Roasted Poblano Rajas for last week’s chayote casserole. I also still have frozen roasted tomatoes left from the summer. So really all I had to do was combine those with a little broth to make the sauce. The eggs then get cooked and the sauce goes on top with queso fresco and cilantro to garnish. This was good and easy to put together, although, honestly I think I preferred the egg dishes with tortillas. But then again, I’m not really an omelette fan in general so I guess that’s not too surprising. One more note, the poblanos in the rajas were actually quite spicy. Not to the point of being too spicy, but definitely more like a serrano. I’ve found the poblanos to be the most variable in terms of spiciness. It’s a question I plan to ask Rick about if I get the chance at our wine dinner in a couple of weeks.
I had intended to make the Broiled Chipotle Chicken on Sunday night but made the classic mistake of not reading the recipe and thus not realizing that the chicken was to marinate for several hours. So we ended up making the Chipotle Seasoning Salsa on Sunday night and then the Chicken last night.
Let’s talk for a moment about the salsa. The recipe calls for 4 ounces of dried chipotle chiles (the spiciest variety that I’ve worked with) which comes out to around 50 chiles. That is a serious amount of spice!! These are fried in oil and then puréed with garlic and piloncillo-sweetened water. The purée is then fried until thick (although mine was pretty thick after being puréed and so did not need to cook as long as indicated. We were almost afraid to try it when it was done. I coated about a third of a baby spoon with the salsa and it kept my tongue tingling for a good 45 minutes. But it’s not just heat. There is a depth of flavor, a smokiness to it giving it its appeal. According to Rick, “The first time you stir a spoonful into that bowl of black beans you’re having for dinner, the first time you add a little to that bland barbecue sauce you bought, you’ll know why I think of it as essential, even when it isn’t widely known or used in Mexico” (52). One more nice thing about this salsa is that it keeps for several weeks and is only needed in small quantities so I will be able to make the three recipes calling for it with this batch.
Now, for the chicken, 2 tablespoons of the salsa is mixed with an equal amount of cream and slathered over boneless, skinless chicken breasts and left to marinate. I let them marinate overnight (really almost 24 hours). The chicken is then broiled on one side and then flipped, doused with more cream, and broiled on the other side until the chicken is done. The cream is then put in a sauce pan with a little broth and some spinach and cooked until the spinach wilts.
This was fantastic!!! For all the spice in the salsa, the cream really tempers it and you are left with all the good smoky flavor and the feeling of the spice without it being overwhelming. The chicken was cooked to perfection and I’m also a big fan of wilted greens. This is a dish where you definitely need some bread to sop up any remaining sauce on your plate because it simply can’t be left behind. Or, if you’re at home and among family or good friends, there would certainly be no shame in licking the plate 
I will make this again for sure.
p.s. I forgot to take a pic of the chicken so I’ll try to remember when we have the leftovers.
55 recipes down, 100 to go
So with the holidays coming up (we’ll be heading to CT at the end of month 4 to visit family for Christmas) I figured that if I was going to make any progress this month that I had better get going. I decided to tackle three new recipes on Sunday. I prepared the perfect start to the day with Rustic Red-Sauced Eggs on Corn Tortillas (VBRED22) made with a repeat for me: Essential Roasted Tomato-Jalapeño Salsa (EF2). This was pretty easy to make, even doing the salsa from scratch. You toast tortillas on a dry griddle and top them with a fried egg and warm salsa. This is then topped with cheese and voilà . . . yummy breakfast! I also got the spice level in the salsa right!!! The recipe called for 2-3 jalapeños; I used 2 but only the seeds from half of one. It was pleasantly spicy. I probably could have done a full pepper with seeds, but I have plenty of experience with overdoing it and I didn’t want to sour my desire for a Mexican dinner. The only alteration I made to the recipe is that I used queso fresco instead of queso añejo (the latter not readily available at my local grocery options).
For lunch we had John’s Polish side of the family’s specialty: perogi stuffed with sauerkraut. I had been at my Mother-in-law’s on Saturday morning making them with all of the women in the family, a December tradition. They were delicious and certainly the perfect contrast to our Mexican breakfast and dinner.
For dinner we had Chicken Breasts with Poblanos, Mushrooms and Cream (MD6) with a side of Green Poblano Rice (VBRED17). It seems now hard to believe that I had never cooked out of the Main Dish section of the cookbook before starting the project. This dish definitely did not disappoint. The sauce was full of poblano flavor without much spice (although I cooked it exactly as directed minus the optional epazote which I haven’t been able to find). The shitake mushrooms provided a nice earthy flavor that paired well with the creaminess of the sauce. Plus, I really liked the green color of the sauce. The only problem I had with this recipe was that my chicken breasts were larger than what was called for (he said 6 breasts totaling 2 pounds; my 4 did that) and so I had to increase the baking time. But that really wasn’t a big deal. The Poblano Rice had a bright, slightly tangy taste in which the cilantro was as prominent as the poblano. This is a dinner that I would repeat for company, especially since the majority of it can be done ahead.
I also have a big event to report!!! John and I have reservations to Topolobambo for Thursday night! It will be our first visit to a Bayless restaurant since I’ve started the project, so needless to say I’m thrilled to be going. Not to mention the fact that we’re spending the night downtown while John’s parents stay with the kids. I’m not sure I’ll cook anything Mexican before Thursday but if not, I’ll be certain to do something this weekend.
45 recipes down, 110 to go
We had our neighbors and their children over for dinner last Sunday and made a great Mexican meal! It was really nice to share this experience with others who are excited about the project. My friend Kristi even made Creamy Lime Pie (D10) from the book to complement the meal, but also to not make anything that I haven’t made yet (since I would probably be tempted to count it without actually cooking it). I made Oaxacan Black Bean Soup (LHS7) and Red Chile-Braised Chicken with Potatoes and Greens (MD1). I also made poached chicken for the kids who didn’t want Mexican food and Kristi brought pasta with parmesan and carrots. In all there were 5 kids, aged 3, 5, 6, 8, and 11. Only the 11 year old wanted to try the “adult” food but I’m happy to report that she liked everything. The other kids were happy with their selections and all enjoyed the pie
Let’s start with the soup. This recipe was both easy and fabulous!! It’s a definite keeper. Just simmer black beans with water, fennel (since I couldn’t find avocado leaves), chorizo (only 4 oz. for 6 servings so I would count this as a healthy dish too), and onion. Once the beans are fully cooked you purée the soup with an immersion blender (truly one of the best ever invented kitchen tools!) and season with salt adding more water to get the consistency that you want. The soup is served with fried tortilla strips and crumbled queso fresco. The soup had a great smooth texture with the wonderful earthy flavor of the black beans. I was also really surprised at how much flavor a relatively small amount of chorizo added. It added a nice meaty spice to the dish that was subtle but a wonderful contribution. The queso fresco and the crunchy fried tortilla strips provided a nice flavor and texture contrast.
You can also add optional shrimp which would be cooked in the soup at the end. I had, in fact, intended to do this but I shopped for the meal early in the week and thought I would go out the day of and get the shrimp. Of course when the day came I didn’t think about it until I didn’t really have time to run out again. But really, unless you’re doing the soup as a main course, I don’t think you need them. I do sense that I’ll be making this soup again so at some point I’ll have to go the shrimp route to see what that adds.
Next was the Red Chile-Braised Chicken. I have to say that I really like dishes that are prepared all in one pot. This is probably because complete meal planning has never been my forte. For most of my adult life I’ve thought that if I’ve remembered to take fish or chicken out of the freezer for dinner that I would be done. It’s only after that fish or chicken is ready to eat that usually John will say “So, what are we having with this?” So one-pot meals have always appealed to me in that the meat and the veggies are all taken care of in one dish. In my defense, I am starting to get better at meal planning. I made a pretty big leap in this area over lent when I gave up meat. I knew I had to plan more than one thing for each meal and that has carried over. That and we’re trying to eat less meat in general (reading Michael Pollen’s books have convinced me that for the most part the veggies should be the center with meat as a side complement) so I’m trying to make sure that we have good sides.
What was I talking about? Oh yeah, Red Chile-Braised Chicken. I had John quarter the whole chicken for me (he really is better at poultry deconstruction than I am) and the pieces were browned in oil and set aside. Then you make the flavor base which in this recipe was EF10 Essential Sweet-and-Spicy Ancho Seasoning Paste. I have made this once before with the simple red mole enchiladas. The paste is combined with broth to make a sauce and the chicken, potatoes, and greens (in our case, collards) are cooked in the sauce. This is then all served together. This, too, was excellent. The chicken was moist and the sauce had a very nice spicy, earthy, tangy flavor. I am also a fan of greens; I feel so healthy when I’m eating them. And when they’re smothered in a yummy sauce, so much the better My only complaint was that the potatoes were just slightly under cooked. Instead of halving them I would try quartering them the next time.
I’ll just make a couple of notes about the Creamy Lime Pie, made by Kristi. She made all of the substitutions of the more authentic ingredients: shortening instead of lard in the crust, all-purpose flour instead of masa harina and creme fraîche instead of Mexican crema. Here’s how I would rate the result. I think the crust made with lard was a little more flaky. The filling, however, tasted just as I had remembered mine tasting. That said, her pie didn’t firm up in the oven and after exceeding the cooking time waiting for it to firm up, we took it out (also, the crust was starting to get a little too brown). But by the time we cut it into pieces, though, it had firmed up and so was fine. There was also a little bit of a lag between preparing the filling and getting it into the oven, so maybe that had an effect. She made the filling at home and we cooked it chez moi so that it would be warm for serving (as recommended by Rick).
