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.

67 recipes down, 88 to go

Last night I made Crusty Chayote Casserole with Poblanos, Corn and Two Cheeses (VBRED4).  This was my first time working with Chayote (which is not pronounced chai-OHT, but rather chi-OH-tay).  After a quick peek in my Food Lover’s Companion I learned that I was dealing with a indistinctly flavored fruit that can be prepared as would any summer squash.  In this recipe the chayotes are peeled, seeded, cut in cubes and steamed.

The steamed chayote is then mixed with Essential Roasted Poblano Rajas (always a welcome addition), corn and milk.  This mixture is then layered with Chihuahua cheese and baked.  Halfway through baking you top the casserole with a breadcrumb, oil and parmesan mixture.

I really liked this casserole.  The chayote, as promised, had very little flavor of its own and seemed to take on the flavor of the corn.  The texture, however, was very nice: crisp and juicy.  The poblano rajas provided a nice spice (a little bit stronger than the last batch) and the corn balanced the spice with its sweetness.  Once again, I came away feeling like I had eaten something both fresh and flavorful.  One more note: Rick had commented in the intro to the recipe that this would go well with a ham on a breakfast buffet; I totally agree and would make this again for that purpose.

I also made extra rajas which I will use to make an Oaxacan Omelette either tomorrow or Saturday.  I also have a Chicken Main Dish planned for the weekend.  I mean business this month and hoping to maintain a good pace

56 recipes down, 99 to go

Woohoo! I finally have fewer than 100 recipes to go! And what a great recipe to have helped me past this threshold. Since we were traveling for Christmas and getting ready for that I knew that for this last mid-week recipe I couldn’t pick anything too involved. I came up with Tomato-Rice Casserole with Poblanos and Melted Cheese (VBRED20), which has as its base Essential Roasted Poblano Rajas.

Let’s start with the rajas, which (after my initial disappointment with what turned out to be inordinately spicy poblanos in the Roasted Tomato Soup) is fast becoming one of my favorite bases. For me the key to this base is slicing both the onions and the roasted poblanos a little more thinly than what Rick suggests. He says 1/4 inch; I say slice them as thinly as you can.
The rajas is then cooked with the roasted tomatoes. I am using tomatoes that I roasted and froze at the end of the summer. And what a brilliant idea that was! It requires just a little bit of effort when the tomatoes are abundant and then it’s so easy to just pop what you need out of the freezer and that’s one less dirty pan for each recipe calling for roasted tomatoes.
To assemble the casserole you layer cooked rice, the rajas-tomato mixture and Chihuahua cheese. We took Rick’s suggestion and added the optional layer of shredded grilled skirt steak which I cooked on our stove-top griddle.
The result was excellent! The rajas mixture gives the whole dish a really pleasant but mild spice. The rice lends a nice texture and I love the chihuahua cheese. I don’t even mind having to buy a pound of it (the only increment in which it is sold at Whole Foods) because the kids like to eat it too. Adding the steak definitely made it a one dish meal. I will happily make this again once the project is over.

48 recipes down, 107 to go

For lunch I made Spicy Tomato-Sauced Enchiladas with Jalapeños and Aged Cheese (TEOCE15)/Enjitomatadas with Essential Simmered Tomato-Jalapeño Sauce (EF1).
I wrote that last sentence two weeks ago. I actually had to go back and look at my calendar to see when it had been. It was such a nice day, that Friday. It was the day before Halloween and John took the day off to go to Jack and Scarlett’s school Halloween program which left me with a free morning to, what else, make a nice Mexican lunch for us! Since it’s been a couple of weeks, the details of the meal are a little fuzzy but I remember three things right off the bat: one was that I was nervous about cooking with jalapeños, worrying that the sauce would be too spicy, but decided, nevertheless, not to knock down the level too much, two that it was really good and not spicy at all. The next time I see Rick Bayless (and I hope to see him in December when John and I have reservations for Topolobampo!), how to determine how spicy fresh peppers are will be my first question. The third thing , being a linguist (but not knowing Spanish), I was left wondering how the word Enjitomatadas really could encompass all the meaning of the english title: Spicy Tomato-Sauced Enchiladas with Jalapeños and Aged Cheese. Any Spanish speakers out there? Anyway, back to the enchiladas. As the recipe reads the enchiladas are not filled with anything. They’re just dipped in the sauce and served with additional sauce and queso añejo (which really does taste similar to parmesan) on top. We had some leftover chicken so we added that. Rick does give another alternative, which is to stuff them with either ricotta or soft goat cheese. That would probably be really good too. This recipe was pretty easy and I would make it again.

Then I think it was the Monday after Halloween that I made Chilied Tortilla Soup with Shredded Chard (LHS1). I had made this once before, pre-project. Although I think when I made it before I used the more traditional variation without the chard and with avocado instead. This time I stuck to the recipe and I have to say that the chard in the soup was fantastic, not to mention that I can’t help but feel healthy when eating leafy greens like chard. I also love how the Chihuahua cheese melts. We didn’t use it all in the soup and it has been really good on my sandwiches in the Panini maker. The fried tortilla strips were also great and it was hard not to snack on too many of them while waiting to serve the soup. The only problem I have with this recipe the fried pasilla chile pieces. The recipe calls for dried pasilla chiles to be cut into small pieces and then fried in oil until crisp. Some of them are then rehydrated and puréed with the broth, roasted garlic and tomato (which really gives the broth a nice dark color; John thought I had used beef broth, not chicken), while the rest are sprinkled on the bowls of soup with the cheese and tortilla strips. My chile pieces didn’t taste good to me and I remember that feeling of not liking the chile strips from the last time I made this (the taste of them puréed in the broth didn’t bother me, though and John did like them and was happy to put all of them in his bowl. All in all, this recipe is great and I’ll be happy to make it again and perhaps do a smaller amount of pasilla chiles just for flavoring the broth.

It was just after this recipe that things got off track for me. I hosted my bookclub but all of the remaining appetizer recipes in the book were too complicated for me to do with the amount of time I had so I went in a non-Mexican direction. Then, both Scarlett and I got sick and I’m only now feeling better (although I still don’t have much of a voice). I’m hoping to get back on track this weekend. John has requested a bbq brisket for his birthday tomorrow so I’ll try to do a menu on Sunday.