Month 9 aka 91 recipes down, 64 to go

Month 9 clearly marks a low point for Susie’s MK Project.  I have been lazy about updating and clearly, lazy too about cooking.  I could give all the usual excuses about how busy I’ve been (I really have been busy!), but this refrain is getting a bit tired, isn’t it?  So I’m just going to recap the 3 lonely recipes that I made this month and try to move on as best I can for Month 10.

Back on May 4th I made Crusty Lentil Cakes with Garlic and Herbs VBRED7.  These were cooked lentils mixed with sautéed onion, roasted garlic, parmesan cheese (my local market doesn’t carry queso añejo), and cilantro.  This mixture is formed into cakes which are dipped in egg and breadcrumbs and then fried in oil and served with a roasted tomato-jalepeño salsa (I used Rick’s store-bought variety).  This was a good meal but lentils aren’t my favorite and the multi-step prep will probably keep me from making this again.  If you like lentils, I would definitely recommend it.

The next day was Cinco de Mayo and so I couldn’t not cook Mexican then!  So I made Seared Skirt Steak with Chipotle and Garlic MD23.  This is seared skirt steak with a roasted tomatillo-chipotle salsa with a healthy dose of garlic added in.  I remember this being good but honestly, the details are a little fuzzy for me.  I guess that’s what I get for waiting so long to write about it.

Finally, my mom was in town for a visit and I decided to try Pan-Roasted Salmon in Aromatic Green Pipián MD17 for her.  It was a huge success and the highlight of the month!  The star of this dish was the Pipián which is Essential Tomatillo-Serrano sauce with the addition of toasted sesame seeds, cilantro, fennel fronds (I remain unable to find hoja santa), and chicken broth.  This all gets simmered together and then is puréed.  A piece of roasted salmon is served atop the sauce.  All agreed that this was fantastic (creamy, tangy, spicy, wonderful) and I will certainly be making this again.

So the winner of Month 9 is clearly Pan-Roasted Salmon in Aromatic Green Pipián MD17.

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.

79 recipes down, 76 to go

It may seem as though I’ve been slacking because I have neglected to update my site recently.  You may even be worried that, despondent over falling behind, that I have abandoned my project.  Fear not!  I have been cooking and have five new recipes to show for my efforts of the last two weeks.  This time period even includes a five day visit from my Mom where I did no Mexican cooking. Note too that I am now officially more than half way through the project!!!

Two weeks ago at the very start of Month 7 and just before the arrival of my Mom, I made Roasted Poblano Chile Salad with Smoked Fish (SOS11).  This uses ever ubiquitous Essential Roasted Poblano Rajas with Seared White Onions and Herb (EF13).  This iteration of the rajas was relatively mild.  The rajas is mixed with some red onion that has marinated in cider vinegar.  This mixture, along with the shredded smoked fish (we used smoked trout from Whole Foods), is served atop lettuce along with some crumbled queso fresco.  We both really liked this salad.  John thought it was one of the best things I’ve made.

Post project whenever I make anything with rajas, I will always plan to make extra as there are so many recipes that have it as a starting point.  I did so on this occasion too, and was thrilled to be able to easily throw together some Tacos of Creamy Braised Chard, Potatoes and Poblanos (TEOCE8) for a nice Sunday lunch.  I had offered to make these for my mom and she passed.  I’m sure she knows not what she turned down because these were great!  The taco filling was made by combining the rajas with potatoes and the chicken broth in which they had been cooked, along with chard and cream.  This mixture is cooked until the chard is wilted and is then ready to be topped with some crumbled queso fresco and used as a taco filling.  These were delicious, creamy and complex, and rank as one of my favorites for both flavor and ease of preparation.

Next, I used the leftover Essential Sweet-and-Smoky Chipotle Seasoning Salsa from a couple of weeks ago to make Chipotle Shrimp (MD10).  A purée of roasted tomatoes, roasted garlic, pepper, cloves and water is cooked.  A small amount of the salsa (remember, it is very potent!) is added and then the shrimp are cooked in the sauce.  I made a side of Classic White Rice and served the dish with tortillas.  This too, was excellent.  The salsa lends a good amount of spice to the dish but it really went well with the sweetness of the shrimp and with the rice.

Finally, last night I made Campeche Baked Fish Fillets with Tomato, Habanero and Citrus (MD16).  This was my first experience cooking with Habanero chiles (or I should really say chile since I only used one).  I was also thrilled to again kill two birds with one stone as this marked my first use of Essential Simmered Tomato-Habanero Sauce (EF5).  The sauce is made by cooking one stemmed and halved habanero chile in a sauce of puréed roasted tomatoes with fried white onion.

Then you place the fish fillets (we used halibut) in a baking dish, top with lime juice and cilantro and then spoon the sauce on to cover.  This is baked until the fish is done.  Our fillets were quite thick so they took a little longer than the recommended baking time of 15 minutes.

The result was amazing!  The tangy, spicy flavor of the sauce is aptly described by Rick as “bright”.  The habanero really added a good amount of spice to the sauce but it was not overwhelming.  I will not be afraid to cook with these chiles again.  Although, who knows, maybe I got a really mild one.  I guess time will tell; I have two more recipes to make with this sauce.  Plus, the fish itself was excellent and perfectly cooked.  I got another “This is my favorite thing that you’ve made” for this recipe from John.  I hope I can keep turning out new “favorite” dishes every couple of weeks!  At the very least, Month 7 is off to a respectable start.

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.