Chicken Tacos
I said yesterday that I wasn't going to throw away a $14.00 chicken even if I did burn the hell out of it. So... if you have something that is charred and smoky... add something charred and smoky and make it look as if it was supposed to be that way all along. Like Chipotles!
Yes... chipotles. In adobo. I love 'em.
While I was first thinking a nice Mexican chicken salad, tacos sounded even better.
I had tossed the burnt skin and charred bones, but there was still the majority of a chicken left. And it wasn't exactly cooked all the way, either. I finished cooking it all in a skillet and put it away...
Tonight, it went back into a skillet with bell pepper, onion, chopped green chilis, sofrito sauce, canned diced tomatoes, and the aforementioned chipotles in adobo. I simmered it all up and served it in corn tortillas with lettuce, shredded cheeses, black olives, salsa, sour cream...
There were big chunks of chicken that just made a perfect mess when eating. Everything was sliding all over the place and we went through numerous napkins.
It was a successful meal!
Victor's in the kitchen working on tomorrow night's dinner... Life is good.
Quesadillas
I had a hankerin' for quesadillas. There's just something about them that endears them to me.
They were a staple for years - just cheese - but the fillings and toppings have grown a lot over the years. (So have I. Coincidence?!?) They can range from a simple appetizer to a full-blown meal; upscale and elegant or clean-out-the-refrigerator.
They work no matter what.
Tonight's filling was clean-out-the-refrigerator.
Ground beef, onion, garlic, green pepper and hot cayenne peppers from the garden, and a shot of tomato paste, cumin, salt, and pepper. I had havarti and provolone cheeses in the fridge, so I used them. Not exactly traditional, but - it's what I had. They worked well. I also added sliced cherry tomatoes - also from the garden - and green onions. Sour cream and salsa were added at the table.
I actually made two each of these guys for our dinner - and made two too many! These were filling! Leftovers went into the 'fridge.
The best part was the peppers. The cayennes are h-o-t! One adds heat. Two add fire. I added two.
It was a really quick dinner - on the table in about 15 minutes.
Olé!
Chili and Corn Sticks
Tonight's dinner is brought to you by a Facebook conversation we had with a friend of ours. She was looking for a cornbread recipe, I posted Mike's recipe, Victor asked me what we were having for dinner (it wasn't cornbread) and said he would love corn sticks.
How could I refuse?!? He's leaving before the crack of dawn for Dallas tomorrow. Besides, it really did sound better than what I was planning - a ground lamb in puff pastry...
And corn sticks require chili because I wasn't doing fried chicken and greens and all that.
Chili. Yum. And perfect for the hot dogs and chili burgers I'll be consuming this week.
Perfect.
So out came the corn stick pan. Rumor has it it came out of a school down South Carolina way. It's cast iron. Probably made a million corn sticks in its time. It could probably stand to be re-seasoned one of these days. It sticks. But it still makes a damned fine corn stick. And the beauty of this corn bread is it's flour-free. Yes, you gluten-intolerant people out there. You can eat it!
Mike's Corn Bread
Ingredients:
Preheat oven to 450°.
- Two cups self-rising white or yellow cornmeal, or add 3 tsp baking powder and 1 tsp salt to plain cornmeal
- 1 Tbsp sugar
- One egg, beaten
- 3 Tbsp vegetable oil or melted fat (I used bacon fat)
- 1-1/4 cups buttermilk (or plain milk with 2 tsp vinegar to sour it)
- 1/4 cup vegetable oil to coat pan
Take the 1/4 cup of the vegetable oil and put it in the frying pan. Turn the pan to coat the bottom and sides well. Too much is better than not enough. You should be able to see a shallow pool of oil in the bottom of the pan. Put pan in oven to heat.
Put dry ingredients in a bowl and mix well. Add the wet ingredients all at once and stir to make the batter.
When the oil is HOT! (smoking slightly), pour the batter into the pan and enjoy the sizzle. Return it to the oven for 20 minutes. It is done when a knife inserted into the top comes out clean.
Turn out of pan upside-down onto a plate. Stand and be amazed at the reddish brown crackled crust approximately 1/8” thick covering it.
Just perfect.
I baked the sticks for about 15 minutes.
But before all that, I made the chili.
Pork Chili
- 1 1/2 lbs cubed pork
- 1 large onion, chopped
- 1 qt beef broth
- 1 jar Sofrito sauce
- 1 can diced tomatoes in juice
- 2 cans pinto beans, rinsed and drained
- 1 tsp cumin
- 1 tsp chili powder
- 1 tsp garlic powder
- 1 tsp chipotle powder
- salt and pepper, to taste
- cheddar cheese
- sour cream
Brown pork and onions in a splash of oil. Add spices and cook until very fragrant. Add broth, scrapte up bits in pan, and then add remaining ingredients. Bring to a boil and then simmer until pork is tender.
Top with cheddar cheese and sour cream.
For an unplanned throw-together dinner, this rocked.
The corn sticks were perfectly crunchy on the outside and tender in the center. They tasted faintly of bacon which complimented the chili perfectly.
The chili was juuuuust smoky-and-spicy enough. Not too thick, not too thin, and the corn sticks dipped into it perfectly.
And I have enough left over for a couple of good meals this week!
Life is good.
Frozen Mexican
Dinner tonight came right out of the freezer. All of it. The whole thing.
Slightly unusual, I know, but I just wasn't in the mood to cook tonight. Also unusual.
But having a meal like this now and again makes me realize how much better food is when I actually do cook it myself.
The best part of the meal was probably the little tacos. It's kinda hard to screw up a crunchy little corn tortilla. The orangish-blob in the center of the plate is cheese enchiladas. I admit that I am not overly-familiar with frozen cheese enchiladas, but these were nothing to write home about. They filled a void. And they also do not transfer from cardboard container to plate.
The tamale was not bad but really could have used that wonderful brown sauce from Johnson's Tamale Grotto in San Francisco.
Johnson's... ::sigh:: They were at 24th & Vicente and made the best tamales around. They were "cup" tamales. Not rolled in husks, but formed in cups. They had a turkey tamale - made with fresh-roasted turkey, of course - that was out of this world. With rice and beans.
Those were the days... I guess it's a bit unfair to try and compare frozen concoctions with freshly-made items of my youth, but it really does bring home the point that even fast-food once upon a time, was really, really good. We had several take-out-type places in the neighborhood that served some really fine food. They took pride in what they served and sold.
Then, again, people had different standards about what they would eat.
As a kid I didn't eat a lot of frozen foods because there were six of us kids - and frozen food was expensive. I remember the extremely rare times we actually got to eat a Swanson's TV Dinner! My favorite was the Salisbury Steak. Or a frozen pot pie (back when there was a top and bottom crust!) They were so much fun - because we never had them.
After moving out of the ancestral home I never had frozen food because I worked in restaurants. I ate fresh. Heck, for the longest time I rarely shopped for groceries at all except for Coca Cola and Dorrito's. (Great for the munchies...)
So... dinner tonight wasn't bad, it just wasn't fresh, homemade, or out of the Johnson's steam table.
I probably won't be making it a weekly dining experience.
Pico de Gallo
One of the things I picked up at Atlantic Spice on Saturday when we were up on The Cape was a bag of pico de gallo. Pico de gallo is generally a salsa of sorts, made with tomatoes, onions, peppers, lemon juice, cilantro... The ingredients vary from area to area and it can be firey hot or fruity mild.
The bag I bought was a blend of spices and seasonings. While I usually don't buy a lot of spice blends, I thought what the heck. Actually, I just think that I don't buy a lot of spice blends... when I opened the spice cabinet to figure out how I was going to fit yet another item in there, I noticed just how many spice blends I don't buy.
I can't believe how many I don't buy.
I decided I needed to do something vaguely Mexican tonight. I had chicken already cooked from the bird I cooked yesterday for the soup, pico de gallo spice... An idea started forming.
My first thought was to do something like a gordita or an El Salvadoran pupusa. (A woman I worked with years ago at San Francisco General Hospital made the best pupusas!!! Alicia, I miss you and your cooking!)
But... I made more of a tamale dough than a pupusa or gordita dough. Much softer and lighter.
So, I decided to make something open-faced.
I made the dough:
- 1 cup masa harina
- 1/3 cup lard
- 1 cup warm water
- pinch salt
The filling was:
- chicken
- pico de gallo
- roasted red peppers
- chopped green chiles
topped with:
- quesso fresco
- cotija
Cotija is an aged Mexican cheese. Salty and dry, it's like a Mexican version of parmesan.
The topless gorditas were very soft, so I put the tray in the 'fridge for an hour for them to firm up. I never would have gotten them off the pan at room temperature.
I fired up the griddle and browned them really well and then stuck the griddle under the broiler to melt the cheeses and heat everything through.
I topped them with salsa verde and a few sliced black olives.
It may not have been the most authentic of Mexican meals, but it definitely hit the spot! I can definitely see some variations on this theme!
Ancho Pork Medallions
Another Cooking Light recipe!
I'm actually trying to be a good boy and maybe even drop a couple of pounds before the wedding. What I really want to do is lose all of the weight I gained after I quit smoking, but I'm thinking short-term goals are probably more realistic. A couple of pounds between now and October 14th.
I can do it.
Enter Cooking Light. Now... if you've picked up a copy of the magazine recently, you'll notice that some of their recipes really are anything but light. Lots of sugar, lots of butter... Granted, they are favorite ingredients of mine, but sometimes sugar and butter are actually unnecessary in a recipe. (Yes, you read that correctly!)
Just like the one I made tonight. It calls for a minuscule amount of sugar in the spice rub, but... since the recipe later calls for pepper jelly, I saw no reason to add it to the spice rub.
That being said, the dish came out stupendous! It is a definite keeper. It just rocked. Vaguely sweet and vaguely spicy, but lots and lots of flavor. The spices and the jelly really worked well together.
I followed the recipe pretty much as stated - except for the sugar in the spice mixture.
Ancho Pork Medallions
Pepper jelly and aromatic spices give your average pork tenderloin a bold new flavor. Serve with a spinach salad for a complete meal.
Other Time: 20 minutes minutes
Yield: 4 servings (serving size: 2 medallions)
- 1 (1-pound) pork tenderloin, trimmed
- 3/4 teaspoon ancho chile powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon sugar
- 1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
- 1/8 teaspoon ground allspice
- 2 tablespoons jalapeño pepper jelly
- 1 teaspoon lime juice
- 2 teaspoons olive oil
1. Cut pork crosswise into 8 equal pieces. Combine chile powder and next 4 ingredients (through allspice) in a small bowl; rub evenly over both sides of pork. Combine jelly and lime juice; set aside.
2. Heat oil in a large heavy skillet over medium-high heat. Add pork to pan; cook 1 minute on each side. Brush pork with half of jelly mixture; turn and brush with remaining jelly mixture. Cook 1 minute on each side or until desired degree of doneness. Remove pork from pan; let stand 5 minutes before serving.
CALORIES 168 ; FAT 6.1g (sat 1.6g,mono 3.2g,poly 0.6g); CHOLESTEROL 63mg; CALCIUM 7mg; CARBOHYDRATE 4.6g; SODIUM 363mg; PROTEIN 22.5g; FIBER 0.1g; IRON 1.2mg
The side dish was a fun one, too.
It was a bit of a clean out the refrigerator dish that went well with the pork.
Potatoes and Tomatoes with Raspberry Chipotle Sauce
- 8 oz teeny potatoes
- 4 green onions, chopped
- 4 oz mushrooms, sliced
- 2 tomatoes, diced
- 1 tbsp cilantro, minced
- 1 small jar Bronco Bob's Roasted Raspberry Chipotle Sauce
Boil or steam potatoes until tender.
Saute green onions and mushrooms until lightly browned. Add tomatoes and cook. Add the chipotle sauce and cilantro. Add the potatoes and mix well.
Let simmer a few minutes and serve.
We pick up little sample jars of the sauces whenever we hit Cost Plus out west. It's a fun store with lots of fun products from all over the world. We've bought a lot of goodies there over the years, from furniture to dishware to Christmas ornaments and more. I first shopped with them a bazillion years ago when their only store was on Bay Street in San Francisco. A cavernous place where one could get lost for hours. Alas, they've become a slick almost-cookie-cutter store and have re-branded themselves as "Cost Plus World Market" but I can still drop a few bucks there, easily.
But back to the veggies...
The sauce is smokey but not spicy-hot so it went well with the vegetables and the pork spices.
I can see more of this in our future...
Tacos
It's amazing how many dishes, pots, and pans it takes to make a simple taco dinner!
The meat, the rice, the beans... guacamole, sour cream, salsa, cheese, lettuce, olives, tomatoes, onions... and the taco shells! I'm beginning to remember why I don't make these very often!
But they are good!
I got silly with the deep fryer and deep-fried the corn tortillas. And just to be a little sillier, I fried a couple of flour tortillas, as well. They puffed up like balloons! Victor made a taco salad sort of affair with one of them. I made a really big taco and used a dozen napkins to help clean up the mess I was making eating it.
I don't have a real taco shell basket, so I used a cannoli form and tongs to help them hold their shape in the oil. It worked pretty well.
No real secrets for the beef... It was hamburger cooked with some chopped onion, and then a bunch of different herbs and spices; Mexican oregano, chipotle powder, chili powder, cumin, garlic, salt and pepper, and a can of tomato sauce. Oh - and half a can of diced green chiles. The other half went into the beans.
The kitchen was properly destroyed, Victor put it all back together, and we have tapioca pudding for dessert later on.
Life is definitely good!
Pollo Sofrito
I could eat pasta like we had last night every night 'til the end of my days. Unfortunately, if I ate it every night, the end of my days would be here a lot quicker than I want.
Time to regroup.
This is a bit of a clean-out-the-fridge dinner. I had a couple ears of corn that needed using up, plus some fresh tomatoes and some fresh peppers from the yard that were calling to me. And poached chicken from Saturday.
Throw it all together with some sofrito sauce and chopped green chiles and dinner was served!
Into the skillet went 6 chopped roma tomatoes with 2 ears of corn cut from the cob and 4 hot peppers, chopped. I simmered it for a few and then added a heaping teaspoon of cumin, a half-cup of sofrito sauce, a can of tomato sauce, a can of diced green chiles, and a bit of salt and pepper.
To make it all even better, I cooked a whole-grain rice medley of brown, mahogany, and black rices mixed with wild rice. Not exactly Mexican, but... It's a great blend.
The peppers from the yard were much spicier than the first few we picked. It wasn't OMG hot but it had a good kick to it.
It was one of those meals that will probably never be replicated, but it worked well, tonight.
Vaguely Mexican
I went a bit overboard on the rib-buying a while back and we've been coming up with clever ways to use them besides merely grilling them (which, of course, is wonderful, but.....)
After Victor simmered some in his pasta sauce, I thought a Mexican variation would be fun. Growing up out west, Vaguely Mexican is possibly my favorite no-recipe-throw-together-cuisine. I love the spices, the peppers, the heat... It's pretty much my ultimate comfort food.
Into a hot skillet, I added a chopped onion, chopped red pepper, and, from our garden, 4 hot Hungarian peppers. I then added a teaspoon of cumin and cooked it a bit. Then went in about 6 ribs, a jar of Sofrito sauce, and 6 chopped roma tomatoes from the yard...
I simmered it all for about 3 hours, added a can of pinto beans, an then 30 minutes before dinner, I added a half-cup of rice and cooked it all together.
Topped with shredded jack cheese.
It was just like a Mexican risotto. Or a paella. Or something.
I also made corn tortillas.
While they really tasted good, I doubt I would make them again without a tortilla press. Rolling them out wasn't difficult, it was just time-consuming. And they came out anything but round.
But the dough is simplicity.
Fresh Corn Tortillas
- 2 cups masa harina (corn flour - NOT corn meal!)
- 1 1/3 cups hot water
- pinch salt
Mix masa harina, water, and salt together with a fork. When it is cool enough to handle, knead for about 3 or 4 minutes until a smooth dough is formed that is not sticky. Divide into balls slightly larger than a golf ball.
For best results, use a tortilla press. Otherwise...
Roll them out between gallon-sized baggies. The baggies work better than plastic wrap because it is thicker. Dust with a small amount of corn flour before rolling.
Fry on a hot ungreased griddle or skillet about 2 minutes pr side.
They looked a bit bizarre, but they tasted really good!
Not Your Normal Nachos
I had planned to do something with a couple of pork chops tonight. On the grill, whatever. I didn't give it a lot of thought when I pulled them out of the freezer this morning.
Everything changed, however, when I got home and found a present from our friend Luigi - a bottle of Gates Kansas City BBQ Sauce! No way could I grill chops tonight. I have Gates Kansas City BBQ Sauce! I need to plan using this. The chops went back into the 'fridge. I needed another plan tonight.
Pseudo-Mexican!
Mexican is my go-to style of cooking when I don't know what I'm going to cook. I was thinking tacos of some sort - I had the necessary stuff to pull it off. Victor came in and said something about Nachos. The mind started creating...
Our tastes are remarkably similar, but when it comes to tortillas, Victor is more of a flour tortilla kinda guy and I'm definitely of the corn persuasion. I like fried and crunchy, he's more soft.
So... how to combine two different tastes into one dish?!? Fry up some corn tortilla wedges and bake some flour tortilla wedges. Pile one type on half the plate, pile the other type on the other half of the plate.
Simple.
The filling (or is it topping?) was strictly clean-out-the-refrigerator. I fried up some ground beef with an onion and then added some sofrito sauce and a bit of chipotle powder. I heated up the leftover polenta from the other night. Tamales are made with corn meal. Polenta is corn meal. 'Nuff said.
Fresh corn. I cut the kernels off an ear. Pinto beans. And those fried peppers from the other day. Lots of them. And some of the cucumber salad from last night. Diced tomatoes. Cheese.
It was one of those dishes that just screamed YUM!
It was messy to eat and every bite was slightly different. Each chip had a slightly different combination of filling. It was a lot of fun. It would make a great communal party dish.
Fun food.
And speaking of fun food.....
I'm thinking a mixed grill of sorts tomorrow. I have pork chops and pork ribs. Maybe some steak tips, as well. Corn on the cob and a salad.
I can't wait!
Mexican Spaghetti Pie
A while back I picked up a package of corn noodles at the Asian grocery store. I had no idea what I was going to do with them - corn noodles really aren't something I associate with the Far East - but I picked them up, anyway. I think they may have been 99¢. Inexpensive and different. Two of my favorite things. Into the shopping cart they went.
At home, they went into the cabinet. And stayed there, languishing amongst the other things I've picked up here and there but have yet to use.
Until today.
Last night, while taking inventory for my grocery shopping this morning, I saw them and took them down. I decided they were going to be a part of dinner tonight. I wasn't sure what, but they were going to be dinner.
As I said, corn noodles don't immediately shout out Asia to me, but corn screams Mexico. I was trying to envision some sort of Mexican spaghetti dish but all I was seeing was tamales. Then the idea of spaghetti pie hit me. It's like a tamale pie but with corn noodles instead of masa. How could it be bad?!?
The answer, of course, is "It wasn't!".
I dirtied several pots and pans making the "one-pot" dinner, but the end result was worth it. And I sliced it almost immediately after taking it out of the oven instead of waiting for it to set up a bit, so... no pictures of the plate. It wasn't exactly photo-quality. But it sure did taste good.
Mexican Spaghetti Pie
- 8 oz corn spaghetti noodles
- 4 oz cheddar cheese
- 4 oz quesso fresco or ricotta salada
- 1/2 cup ricotta, drained
- 2 eggs, slightly beaten
- 1 lb ground pork
- 1 small onion, diced
- 1 tsp cumin
- 1 tsp chipotle powder
- 1 jar Sofrito sauce
- 1 large tomato, sliced
- butter
- salt and pepper, to taste
Preheat oven to 350°. Butter 10" pie plate.
Cook corn noodles according to package instructions. Drain and cool. Mix 1 pat melted butter into noodles. Add two slightly beaten eggs and the shredded cheddar cheese.
Mix well and place in pie plate, working it up the sides to create a "crust".
Saute onion in a pat of butter or oil. Add cumin and chipotle powder and cook until fragrant. Add pork and cook completely.
Spread cooked pork mixture over noodles, staying within the noodle crust.
Mix the ricotta with the quesso fresco. Spread on top of the pork mixture, covering it completely.
Spoon one jar of Sofrito sauce on top, covering the cheese mixture completely.
Top with sliced tomato.
Bake at 350° for about an hour.
I suppose I should have let it set longer and tried to take out smaller slices.
It didn't look that great falling apart, but it had all the flavors I was looking for!
I can see a few different variations on this.
And who knows... maybe I'll even find a Vietnamese recipe for the corn noodles.
It could happen!
Pork Chops, Mexican-Style
Tonight's dinner was all about having some polenta. But polenta is usually Italian, and I wasn't in the mood for Italian pork chops. But corn meal and Mexico are an even more natural combination. We went to Mexico!
The pork chops were simple. I added cumin and garlic to bread crumbs, breaded the chops, browned them in a skillet, and then finished them off in a hot oven. 425° about 10 minutes.
The polenta was even more fun.
I sauteed half a small onion in a bit of olive oil. I added chili powder and chipotle powder, a pinch of salt and pepper. After cooking it up a bit, I added about a cup of frozen corn. Then 2 cups of water, brought to a boil.
Then a half-cup of polenta slowly stirred in. (Basic polenta is 4 parts liquid to 1 part dry polenta.) I simmered it the requisite 25 or so minutes, and then stirred in about 3 ounces of cream cheese. OMG! It was really good! Spicy, creamy, and cheesy all in one!
It was a lot of fun. And easy.